Profoundly sad movie š¢ But what must be received, is that this was the beginning of the #CivilRights movement for our country. Not even 90 days later did Rosa Parks refuse to give up her seat! š š½āāļø
Like @mamietillmobleymemorial knows, our childrenās blood need not be in vain. This movie teaches valuable lessons of tragedy, and strategy. āš½ #LettheWorldSee #TillMovie
Special Thank you to the #EmmettTill Family for their blessings, and participation.
The slave ship Cotilda was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ā Researchers studying the wreckage of the last U.S. slave ship, buried in mud on the Alabama coast since it was scuttled in 1860, have made the surprising discovery that most of the wooden schooner remains intact, including the pen that was used to imprison African captives during the brutal journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
While the upper portion of the two-masted Clotilda is gone, the section below deck where the captured Africans and stockpiles were held is still largely in one piece after being buried for decades in a section of river that hasn’t been dredged, said maritime archaeologist James Delgado of the Florida-based SEARCH Inc.
At least two-thirds of the ship remains, and the existence of the unlit and unventilated slave pen, built during the voyage by the addition of a bulkhead where people were held as cargo below the main deck for weeks, raises questions about whether food and water containers, chains and even human DNA could remain in the hull, said Delgado.
The discovery enhances the research value of the Clotilda’s remains and sets them apart from all other wrecks, Delgado said. The finding was confirmed in a report that was provided to The Associated Press and led to the site becoming part of the National Register of Historic Places in November.
“It’s the most intact (slave ship) wreck ever discovered,” he said. “It’s because it’s sitting in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta with fresh water and in mud that protected it that it’s still there.”
For Joycelyn Davis, a sixth-generation granddaughter of African captive Charlie Lewis and vice president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, the story of what happened more than 160 years ago is best told through the people who were involved, not a sunken ship. But she said she’s excited to learn more about what has been discovered, adding: “I think it’s going to be a surprise for us all.”
The Clotilda was the last ship known to transport African captives to the American South for enslavement. Nearly 90 feet (27 meters) in length, it departed Mobile, Alabama, for an illegal trip to purchase people decades after Congress outlawed such trade in 1808.
The ship had been sent across the ocean on a voyage financed by a wealthy businessman whose descendants remain prominent in Mobile. The Clotilda’s captain transferred its human cargo off the ship once it arrived in Alabama and set fire to the vessel to hide evidence of the journey. But most of the ship didn’t catch fire and remained in the river.
The state has set aside $1 million for preservation and research, and additional work planned at the site in early 2022 could show what’s inside the hull, Delgado said. But far more work is needed to determine whether the ship could ever be pulled out of the mud and put on display, as some have suggested.
“Generally, raising is a very expensive proposition. My sense is that while it has survived, it is more fragile than people think,” said Delgado. “A recovery could be a very delicate operation and also a very expensive and lengthy process.”
Freed after the South lost the Civil War, some of the enslaved Africans who were transported to America on the Clotilda settled in a community they started called Africatown USA a few miles north of downtown Mobile.
A documentary about the now-impoverished community by Alabama-born filmmaker Margaret Brown titled “Descendant” will premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2021 and descendants of the Clotilda captives are planning an annual gathering in February. Work is underway on a new museum that’s meant to be a catalyst for tourism and new development in the area.
A movie about the true story of the man in the iconic portrait of āWhippedPeterā, a runaway slave who manages to find his way through the swamps of Louisiana, on a tortuous journey to escape plantation owners that nearly killed him.
EmancipationMovie #BlackMovieSunday
Two photographers/abolitionists arrange Peter’s posture as he sits in a chair. They ask him to turn his scourged back toward the lens, to move his face to the side.
Peter asks, “Why are you doing this?” The photographer reverently responds: “So the world might know what slavery truly looks like.” In a film about the universally historic impact of the image known as “Whipped Peter,” the conversation is historic. And still over 150 years later, we’re still suffering from the horrors of slavery in this country, no one can deny.
Brittney Griner arrived in the U.S. early Friday, landing at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas.
The WNBA star, who was arrested on February 17th, 2022, and held in Russian prisons on drug charges (she was found to have less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage) was released Thursday in a one-for-one-prisoner swap for notorious international arms dealer Viktor Bout, bringing an end to an ordeal that sparked intense high-level negotiations between the two governments, Washington DC, and Moscow, Russia. to bring her home.
Griner, a 32-year-old star center for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was detained at a Russian airport in February and later pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the discovery of cannabis-derived oil cartridges in her luggage. Griner said she didn’t mean to bring the cartridges with her when she traveled to the country to play in a Russian basketball league during the WNBA offseason.
CBS News learned last Thursday that the Griner-for-Bout swap was in the offing but agreed to a White House request to hold the reporting because officials expressed grave concern about the fragility of the then-emerging deal.
Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, tweeted, “So happy to have Brittney back on U.S. soil. Welcome home BG!”
Did you know South Phoenix had a Farmers Market? You Do Now!
Facing Hell In Prison …
HOMOPHOBIA, RACISM & 16-HOUR WORK DAYS
Brittney Griner will face horrific conditions during her time in a Russian prison … with environments that will include homophobia, racism and 16-hour work days.
According to The Nation’s Dave Zirin, prisoners in Mordovia — where Griner was taken to earlier this month — are barely treated like humans.
Bigotry is commonplace, medical care is nearly nonexistent … and, Zirin says, inmates are expected to sew the uniforms for police and guards.
In fact, it’s unclear if Griner will even get a bed that will fit her 6-foot-8 frame.
Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founder of the feminist group Pussy Riot, spent two years in Mordovia following a 2012 arrest, and per Zirin, described the place as hell, where “beatings and torture” are common.
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Griner’s camp, however, has insisted the WNBA star is trying to remain brave in the face of it all … saying in a statement following her move to Mordovia earlier this month that “Brittney is doing as well as could be expected.”
“Despite the fact she is alone and now nearing her ninth month in detention separated from her loved ones,” her reps said, “she is trying to stay strong.”
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Griner has been detained in Russia since February after she was accused of bringing hashish oil in her luggage to a Moscow airport. In August, she was sentenced to nine years in prison. An appeal of that sentence was denied in October.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, have said they’re actively working to get her out, currently in the process of negotiating a prisoner swap with Russia.
A beautiful evening in deed! Black Women of Faith along with many of our Black Community Partners, presented The AZ Recovery Care Give Thanks Dinner, at United Nations Church with Special Guests of A Better Way Transitional Home Foundation.
We served mighty men who are in the process of recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. Many of these men have lost all but hope!
Our special guest speakers included, Minister Tye Rush, Apostle Timothy Craig, and Dr Larry Witherspoon, whom gave the men a charge to be encouraged in their pursuit of stability.
After much sharing of information, it has come to our understanding that the organizations who focus on caring for the recovering persons, need support in their endeavors. The chance for one being successful in sobriety is increased when their spirituality is engaged in the process. Recovery is not only a personal effort, but a community effort, and the church and leaders, must take its rightful place in our society to assist.
Awards of recognition were presented to our servants for their engagement and leadership within our community.
Special recognition was given to a several of our front line Black owned recovery home owners; A Second Chance Group Homes, Residential Rehab Services, Community Builders, A Path to Resilience, and A Better Way.
A great Thank you to the many ladies of @BlackWomenofFaith, and our men of faith who spent their thanksgiving eve to serve for this purposeful event. Iād also like to give special mention to the United Nations Church, and itās Pastor for hosting our event in excellence!
šš½AZ RECOVERY CARE HOMES and BLACK COMMUNITY PARTNERS, serve as a network of resources for our Black owned nonprofits and transitional homes families. We are making great strides to network our efforts of care for our community. Our businesses have long standing needs to build and collaborate to find funding and resources available to them. We pray we fill that need. Over the course of the next couple months, we will be sharing information on our growth and success in this process, and endeavor.
AZ Recovery Care Homes Black Women of Faith Black Community Partners BLM TV United Nations Church Glendale Mr. Black Arizona OCCUPi Media & Entertainment Ctyc-tv Network – Connect to Your City, LLC Black Woman in AZ Rights and Wishes of Will and Trust Annual Walkathon Miasia Pasha
Two Yeezy sources say Westās plan for his own small āuniverseā has been in the works for years, describing it as a self-sustained enterprise that would have its own branded products and services.
In the midst of all the chaosfrom Westās past month, his team filed a slew of trademark applications that would allow West to create his own mini-community ā or as West intends to call it, the āYecosystem.ā
Westās plan for his own small āuniverseā has been in the works for years, two Yeezy sources confirm to Rolling Stone. The sources describe it as a self-sustained enterprise that would have its own branded homes, retail stores that sell Yecosystem-branded food items and beverages. The plan is serious, with arrangements to launch the first campus as early as next month, one source says. Eventually, West hopes to establish these mini-communities across the country, the source says.
Westās vision is on par with Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, another source says, adding that West is adamant on creating something equally as world-changing. āHeās trying to do shit that people couldnāt even conceive of and heās trying to make it happen,ā they explain. āHe comes from a good place. Itās definitely his goal that everything that people touch thatās his is a good thing and has a good impact on the world.ā
KANYE WEST MIGHT have plans as ambitious as running for president.
In the midst of all the chaosfrom Westās past month, his team filed a slew of trademark applications that would allow West to create his own mini-community ā or as West intends to call it, the āYecosystem.ā
Westās plan for his own small āuniverseā has been in the works for years, two Yeezy sources confirm to Rolling Stone. The sources describe it as a self-sustained enterprise that would have its own branded homes, retail stores that sell Yecosystem-branded food items and beverages. The plan is serious, with arrangements to launch the first campus as early as next month, one source says. Eventually, West hopes to establish these mini-communities across the country, the source says.
Westās vision is on par with Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, another source says, adding that West is adamant on creating something equally as world-changing. āHeās trying to do shit that people couldnāt even conceive of and heās trying to make it happen,ā they explain. āHe comes from a good place. Itās definitely his goal that everything that people touch thatās his is a good thing and has a good impact on the world.ā
Instead, West said he wanted to build his own company and purchase his own factories, boasting that his new private school, Donda Academy, would āfocus on bringing the American economy back, starting with our children.ā āWe are focusing on engineering for our species ā whatās the thing we need the most? Food. [We are] engineering food,ā he told CNBC, adding that Donda Academy students would also be learning automotive, software and shelter engineering.
Days after his CNBC appearance, Westās company Mascotte Holdings filed numerous trademark applications that create the framework of a mini-community, trademark attorney Josh Gerben tells Rolling Stone.
āThe way these series of trademark applications were filed would very much be how you would file trademark applications to protect this type of idea of building this type of community out,ā Gerben explains.
The trademark applications cover branding and typical products, such as clothing items and retail goods. But in a first for West, the CEO of Mascotte, these new filings include a range of beverages; pre-made alcoholic drinks and liquors; raw fruits and vegetables; snacks, candy, and other processed foods.
The filings indicate that West plans to create a variety of services under the Yecosystem umbrella, such as consulting services for nutrition, beauty, interior design and a public relations firm. Yecosystem has filings that would establish a production arm for movie, television, and radio programs, as well as an online media site that features āinformation on a recording artist in the fields of beauty, fashion, modeling, acting, music, [and] the arts.ā The Yecosystem also hopes to create its own āresidential buildings and houses.ā
Thereās also a philanthropic arm associated with the filings, indicating charitable services that include biological cloning, reproductive healthcare, childrenās education and supporting members of the United States military.
Westās vision is borne out of a sincere desire to make the world a better place, one Yeezy source explains, such as creating new technology like his Stem Player and offering a new approach to education with Donda Academy. āThereās a saying that he would say, which is like, āYeezy makes life easy,ā they say. āI think his ideal vision is, āLet me use where Iāve come from and what Iāve achieved to spread good in the world.āā
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan sought to āright a grave wrongā by signing legislation that apologized for the governmentās forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II and established a $1.25 billion trust fund to pay reparations to those who were forced into internment camps and to their families.
However, the United States has never apologized for the nationās treatment of enslaved people and their descendants. What do you think? Do you think that the descendants of enslaved people are owed anything for the wrongs of slavery?
When James Forman, a civil rights pioneer who later served briefly as the Black Panther Partyās foreign minister, demanded $500 million in reparations in his 1969 Black Manifesto, he grounded his argument in an indisputable fact: Unpaid slave labor helped build the American economy, creating vast wealth that African-Americans were barred from sharing.
The manifesto called for white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues to pay for projects like a black university and a Southern land bank. āWe have helped to build the most industrial country in the world,ā it declared, at the same time that āracist white America has exploited our resources, our minds, our bodies, our labor.ā
Other civil rights leaders, such as Bayard Rustin, were not in agreement. Mr. Rustin said, āIf my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but heās dead and gone and nobody owes me anything.ā
Many people argue that while slavery happened in the past, its legacy still continues today:
The question of reparations, however, extends far beyond the roughly four million people who were enslaved when the Civil War started, as Ta-Nehisi Coates explained in an influential essay published in The Atlantic in 2014. Legalized discrimination and state-sanctioned brutality, murder, dispossession and disenfranchisement continued long after the war ended. That history profoundly handicapped black Americansā ability to create and accumulate wealth as well as to gain access to jobs, housing, education and health care.
For every dollar a typical white household holds, a black one has 10 cents. It is this cumulative effect that justifies the payment of reparations to descendants of slaves long dead, supporters say.
The article raises the question: How much money would recipients of reparations get? Economists, including William A. Darity Jr., an economist at Duke University and a leading scholar on reparations, have looked to other models to calculate possible answers:
Compensation programs can take many forms. In the United States, after a congressional study, people of Japanese descent who were forced into internment camps during World War II received $20,000 in 1988 and a formal apology.
Since 1952, Germany has paid more than $70 billion in reparations through various programs, primarily to Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, and continues to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Payments vary from a lump sum distributed to individuals to a monthly pension based on years working in a slave labor camp. Money is also given to organizations to cover home care for older survivors or for grants. A small portion goes for research, education and documentation.
A reparations program in the United States could likewise adopt a single method or several at once. Families could get a one-time check, receive vouchers for medical insurance or college, or have access to a trust fund to finance a business or a home. Mr. Darity argues that āfor both substantive and symbolic reasons, some important component must be direct payment to eligible recipients.ā
Other scholars have emphasized different features. Roy L. Brooks, a law professor at the University of San Diego and the author of āAtonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations,ā has reservations about what he calls the āsettlement model,ā a legalistic approach that looks backward to compensate victims for demonstrable financial losses. He prefers what he calls the āatonement model,ā emphasizing longer-term investments in education, housing and businesses that build up wealth.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
Do you think that the United States owes the descendants of enslaved people an apology for slavery? If yes, what do you think an effective apology would look or sound like? Do you think that things like monuments, statues or memorials could be forms of apology?
The article cites investments in education, housing and business as other models for reparations. What do you think about these approaches?
Students at Georgetown University have voted to increase their tuition by $27.20 each semester to ābenefit descendants of the 272 enslaved Africans that the Jesuits who ran the school sold nearly two centuries ago to secure its financial future.ā What do you think about this action on behalf of Georgetown students? Do you think the fee effectively addresses the universityās ties to slavery? If you were a student at Georgetown, would you have supported this decision? Do you think that other schools, colleges or institutions should follow Georgetown Universityās example and investigate their ties to slavery?
Do you think descendants of enslaved people are owed reparations, in a similar way that the United States gave reparations to Japanese-Americans? Or the ways that Germany has given money and services for Holocaust survivors? Do you think there is a thoughtful and fair way to do this, or has too much time passed since slavery was abolished to make reparations practically feasible or appropriate?
Linkage disequilibrium (LD) is a population-based parameter that describes the degree to which an allele of one genetic variant is inherited or correlated with an allele of a nearby genetic variant within a given population (Bush and Moore, 2012).Feb 11, 2020
Not only is Kanye West the richest Black Man in America, but he is also the richest musician in the world.
Kanye Explains his rantā¦
His portrayed declaration of War against the āJewsā, is just the beginning of a Full Pledge Act of Purposeful Exposure of an Industry built on our backs and from our pain, to expose their true agenda against the Black American People of True Jewish descent.
They should arrest him if they feel that bad, but they donātā¦theyād rather exercise their authority and expose their power to socially, and materially execute him.
Defcon 3 means āincrease in force readiness above normal readinessā and would be used in situations that may not pose immediate danger but warrant significant alert. Under this warning, the military must be prepared to launch operations within 15 minutes of warning.
6 days ago ā “I’m sorry for the families of the people that had nothing to do with the trauma that I have been through,” the rapper said.
What Kanye has saidā¦
1. āIma use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.ā
2. āJesus is Jewā
3. āIām a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up Iām going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,ā he wrote.
5. āThe funny thing is I actually canāt be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also,ā
6. āYou guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.ā
7. Planned Parenthood as being created āto control the Jew population.ā When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are.ā
8. āI prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering,ā he said, in a comment that appeared to allude to ideas that Jews are good with money.
10. āThink about us judging each other on how white we could talk would be like, you know, a Jewish person judging another Jewish person on how good they danced or something,ā
Indianaās attorney general, Todd Rokita, tweeted that āKanyeās message in this instance is fair and accurate, & regardless, he is entitled to his opinion,ā adding, āThe media will steamroll anyone if they do not kowtow to their way of thinking. According to them, youāre not thinking correctly if you donāt completely agree with them.ā
Young men, of the village Tlokweng, share with visitors their traditional wedding Setswana Dance.
A team of young men entertain the crowd with an exciting piece of traditional setswana dance during a wedding inTlokweng..Enjoy the scincillating performance!
BLM TV NETWORK to Host the Movie Premier of āTillā, in Scottsdale, AZ, Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 at 6:00PM.
BLM TV is set to host one of the most controversial movies released this year. On Wednesday, October 19th at 6:00 PM, many of the valleys leading intellectuals, will review the movie āTillā which was produced by Whoopi Goldberg.
It is based on the true story of Mamie Till, an educator and activist, who pursued justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son Emmett Till, in 1955.
Immediately following the movie we will interview the leaders to get their immediate reactions of the film.
Black Women of Faith and BLM TV Network To Sue Multiple Companyās In a Class-Action Lawsuit for Selling Products Hair Straightening Chemicals that Cause are Linked with Uterine Cancer
Katt Mckinney
(Nancy Lipid)
Oct 17
Hair-straightening products may significantly increase the risk of developing uterine cancer among those who use them frequently, a large study published on Monday suggests.
“We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70, but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” study leader Alexandra White of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Safety (NIEHS) said in a statement.
“However, it is important to put this information into context. Uterine cancer is a relatively rare type of cancer,” she added.
Still, uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with rates rising, particularly among Black women.
Researchers tracked 33,947 racially diverse women, ages 35 to 74, for an average of nearly 11 years. During that time, 378 women developed uterine cancer.
Call To Action –
Have you worn a straightening perm? If yes, please continue.
Have you experienced any pain in your stomach area?
Have you had a diagnosis or have ever had uterine cancer?
Contact Medical Provider right away for records.
Call BWF LEGAL SERVICES at (702) 683-2521.
Leave a message with your name, age, and diagnosis.
List of Pending Lawsuits
Soft Sheen-Carson, Hawaiian Silky, Beautiful Textures, Gentle Treatment, Affirm, QRS, CrĆØme of Nature, TCB, Designer Essentials, Silk Elements, Just For Me, Africas Best, and more.
Ames Family Rejects Apologies of City of Phoenix Mayor, and Police Chief.
Monday, June 17th, 2019
FAMILY BRUTALIZED AND VIOLATED BY PHOENIX POLICE TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY AT 11:00AM OUTSIDE OF THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO PHOENIX CITY HALL IN RESPONSE TO MAYOR AND POLICE CHIEFāS āMEANINGLESS SHAM APOLOGY AND CONTINUED LACK OF SUBSTANTIVE ACTIONā TO FIRE AND DISCIPLINE ALL OFFICERS INVOLVED IN ATTACK THAT OUTRAGED MILLIONS.
āYOU WILL NOT INSULT US,ā SAYS KATT MCKINNEY OF BLACK WOMEN OF FAITH.
NEW ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE RELATED TO THE VIOLENT ENCOUNTER WILL BE REVEALED, AS THE MOTHER INVOLVED RECOUNTS HER BODY SEARCH BY MALE OFFICER AND HIS FAILURE TO CALL FOR OR WAIT FOR A FEMALE OFFICER.
THE FAMILY, THEIR LAWYERS, AND SPOKESMEN WILL ALSO DETAIL THE LIES AND SLANDEROUS DEMONIZATIONS THAT POLICE ATTEMPTED TO PASS OFF AS FACTS TO THE MEDIA IN THE NOW WIDELY CRITICIZED POLICE REPORT.
MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY WILL ALSO OUTLINE PLANS FOR A PROTEST OF THE MAYOR AND POLICE CHIEFāS PLANNED TUESDAY MEETING AND WEDNESDAYāS COUNCIL MEETING. FURY BUILDS.
MASS MARCH BEING PLANNED FOR THURSDAY TO DEMAND OFFICERS INVOLVED IN AMES-HARPER FAMILY ASSAULT BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY…
Phoenix, AZ – As the City of Phoenix continues to reel from national outrage over two damning videos that captured police officers assaulting and abusing an innocent Black Family over an alleged theft of a dollar-store doll, the community is mobilizing for mass action intended to pressure elected officials to take action, including the firing of the officers involved. Outrage grows.
The group will debunk and denounce the police report of this incident. Glaring omissions and altered facts that contradict video tape will be outlined and condemned. Ames and Harper will also speak about failed attempts by police to destroy and assassinate their character.
The family and their representatives will also share, for the first time, Ieshaās gut-wrenching account of her body search by a male police officer who refused to call or wait for a female officer to conduct it. Ms. Harper was not guilty of committing any crime and the officer has not been fired.
Members of the community will also outline protest plans for THURSDAY of THIS WEEK, intended to increase pressure on city leaders to fire all of the officers involved in this incident and adopt the 12 POINT PLAN residents submitted to police. The department has FAILED to implement the community recommendations for policy and procedural reforms for more than half a decade. Community members say the police department is hostile to civil rights and guilty of collusion to violate the Constitutional rights of people of color.
The press conference will also detail plans for protests at the planned TUESDAY meeting organized by the Mayor to try and mislead and manipulate the community with, āMore lies and false promises that mean absolutely nothing.ā
āThere are a lot of new facts, new abuse allegations, and new attacks on this family to unpack,ā says Rev. Maupin, āThe Family continues to be victimized by Phoenix Police but that will not deter them from their quest for justice and reform. The officers involved must be fired and policies and procedures must be strengthened. There will be a change. We must demand it.ā
The Reverend Jarrett Maupin and Katt Mckinney of Black Women of Faith, are releasing a video today of a Black family that has come forward with accusations that Phoenix Police Officers engaged in unlawful acts of brutality and excessive force following a harrowing encounter, just days ago, that ended with no arrests or charges. Luckily, there is footage.
The FIRST, of TWO videos, is being released as of today, see belowā¦
The FIRST video (recorded on May 29th, 2019) shows an officer using abusive and foul language while employing extreme violent force to, unlawfully, detain and restrain the father (Dravon Ames, 22 years old, 5-5, 140lbs).
On the recording, officers can be seen grabbing and injuring the mother and the youngest child (the little girl suffered an injury to her arm, shoulder, and hand).
Again, no criminal charges were filed and NO ONE was ever arrested and booked, only handcuffed and detained, removed from the scene, nor transported to a jail.
The victims and several eye witnesses reported officers saying such things as:
āI will shoot you in your face in front of your kids.ā
āI will shoot you in your fucking face.ā
Among other vile and memorable linesā¦
One of the cops in the video has been identified simply as, āOfficer Welchā. Police never signaled nor made any obvious effort to pull the family over. Police waited until the family parked (on a routine trip to the babysitter) to pounce on the unsuspecting and law abiding family. And Police were NOT wearing body cameras!
According to officers, the 4 year old stole a DOLL from a nearby FAMILY DOLLAR.
Officers did recover the DOLL. Neither the store nor the state are pressing any charges.
The parents were never charged with or suspected of being co-conspirators. Despite this, both were handcuffed and harassed for an hour after the assault.
The father was ticketed for having an expired license, though the courts informed his attorney that no ticket was ever processed or turned in by police.
The Reverend Jarrett Maupin says he will release a SECOND and more graphic video, which more closely and clearly shows the identity, actions, words, and fury of the officers involved.
āThe second video is worse than the first. These officers are acting like bullies and thugs. They endangered an unborn child and traumatized two toddlers. Shame on them and shame on the department for not suspending them immediately ā without pay,ā says Maupin, āWe want to know, are any of these sickos on the so-called Brady List of known rogue or problem officers? Are any of these cops part of the 75 identified social media racists who kept their jobs? What happens to officers when they are caught on tape violating policies and procedures and how fast does it happen? The culture of wilding within the Phoenix PD is making a mockery of police everywhere.ā
As soon as the pregnant mother is healthy enough to endure a press conference, Maupin will bring the entire family forward. He says his team is planning for a Thursday morning press conference outside the main entrance of Phoenix City Hall. āWe are planning for Thursday (June 13th, 2019) at 11:00am. We just want to make sure that mother and baby are fit for the gauntlet that is taking on the Phoenix PD,ā says the Reverend, āThis Family has more footage and more facts to share.ā
Jarrett Maupin says the family will sue and is being represented by former Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne. He adds, āThe family would like the chief of police to apologize to the children, now. After the second video is released, she will, but it wonāt be enough.ā
āGive her her baby doll back!ā Katt Mckinney demands of #PhoenixPolice
Come out to support the families and victims of the City of Phoenix Policing Crisis, and speak along with them to City Council Members on why this problem in our community must be addressed.
This is a National, International and Humanitarian Crisis that we must SPEAK ON!
#PolicingCrisis
#PHXPOLICINGCRISIS
#NationalPolicingCrisis
#12PointPlan
More Info:
1. Request to Speak
The public may request to address the Council regarding an agenda item by submitting a yellow āRequest to Speakā card at the meeting, or may submit a white card to state their support or opposition to an item for the record without speaking. Individuals wishing to speak or submit their position on an item should arrive and submit a card by the beginning of the meeting, before action is taken on the item.
2. Citizen Comments
Citizen Comments are heard for up to 30 minutes (unless extended by the Chair) before adjournment or recess of the formal meeting provided a quorum of the Council is present. Additional time for Citizen Comments may be allowed at the discretion of the presiding officer. ANY member of the public may address the Council to comment on issues of interest or concern to them. Citizen Comments will be televised as part of the formal meeting. Members of the public will be given a maximum of three minutes each to address the Council. In compliance with the Arizona Open Meeting Law, the City Council cannot discuss or take formal action on any matter raised during Citizen Comments.
3. Accommodations
An assistive listening system is available in the City Council Chambers to assist individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Headset units for this system are available at the front table in the Council Chambers. In addition, with 72 hours advance notification, the City Clerkās Office will provide sign language interpreting services.
Join us as the COMMUNITY marches and rallies against racism and police brutality after NEW EVIDENCE has come forward proving the Phoenix Police Department is riddled with racist police! (See Latest News Articles Below)
NOW WE HAVE IRREFUTABLE, UNDENIABLE, OUTRAGEOUS PROOF OF ACTIVE RACISTS WITHIN THE PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT!
It is time to shut down the city! SHUT IT DOWN!
Come and show your support for the families and victims of police racism and brutality!
Stand side by side with the families of Michelle Cusseaux, Jacob Harris, Edward Brown, and others as they lead the community on a march and rally through downtown and at police headquarters!
Show up, show out, shut down the streets as we demand the officers involved in this blatant racist and culture of discrimination be FIRED!
We will gather at 620 W. Washington Street (Phx PD HQ) at 7:00pm on THIS FRIDAY! (June 7th)
We will no longer tolerate the abuse, racism, hostility, prejudice, bigotry, and physical / verbal violence openly practiced on our community by Phoenix Police officers!
JOIN THE COMMUNITY and make your voices heard! BRING SIGNS, BRING FRIENDS, BRING YOUR LOUD VOICES AND DEMANDS FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY as we take bold action to demand the badges of racists!
DETAILS:
Join the families of police brutality and racism victims as we stand up to the EXPOSED culture of racism and violence against BLACK AND LATINO residents within the Phoenix PD!
7:00PM FRIDAY (June 7th)
Outside of
Phoenix Police Headquarters
620 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85003
BE PRESENT FOR THE MARCH AND RALLY!
SHOW UP, STAND UP, SPEAK UP!
As we mobilize the masses and shut down the streets of downtown to DEMAND that racist police be immediately FIRED!
Join us as the COMMUNITY marches and rallies against racism and police brutality after NEW EVIDENCE has come forward proving the Phoenix Police Department is riddled with racist police! (See Latest News Articles Below)
NOW WE HAVE IRREFUTABLE, UNDENIABLE, OUTRAGEOUS PROOF OF ACTIVE RACISTS WITHIN THE PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT!
It is time to shut down the city! SHUT IT DOWN!
Come and show your support for the families and victims of police racism and brutality!
Stand side by side with the families of Michelle Cusseaux, Jacob Harris, Edward Brown, and others as they lead the community on a march and rally through downtown and at police headquarters!
Show up, show out, shut down the streets as we demand the officers involved in this blatant racist and culture of discrimination be FIRED!
We will gather at 620 W. Washington Street (Phx PD HQ) at 7:00pm on THIS FRIDAY! (June 7th)
We will no longer tolerate the abuse, racism, hostility, prejudice, bigotry, and physical / verbal violence openly practiced on our community by Phoenix Police officers!
JOIN THE COMMUNITY and make your voices heard! BRING SIGNS, BRING FRIENDS, BRING YOUR LOUD VOICES AND DEMANDS FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY as we take bold action to demand the badges of racists!
DETAILS:
Join the families of police brutality and racism victims as we stand up to the EXPOSED culture of racism and violence against BLACK AND LATINO residents within the Phoenix PD!
7:00PM FRIDAY (June 7th)
Outside of
Phoenix Police Headquarters
620 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85003
BE PRESENT FOR THE MARCH AND RALLY!
SHOW UP, STAND UP, SPEAK UP!
As we mobilize the masses and shut down the streets of downtown to DEMAND that racist police be immediately FIRED!
Subject: Breaking: PHOENIX CITY COUNCIL SET TO VOTE TODAY ON PAYMENT OF $200,000.00 TO FAMILY OF BALENTINE MBEGBU TO SETTLE WRONGFUL DEATH CLAIMā¦
For Immediate Releaseā¦
Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
Media Notice:
PHOENIX CITY COUNCIL SET TO VOTE TODAY ON PAYMENT OF $200,000.00 TO FAMILY OF BALENTINE MBEGBU TO SETTLE WRONGFUL DEATH CLAIM. MBEGBU WAS KILLED AFTER POLICE USED EXCESSIVE FORCE DURING A WRONGFUL ARREST. HE WAS TASERED TO DEATH IN HIS FAMILIES HOME BY POLICE.
CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST REVEREND JARRETT MAUPIN SAYS CITYāS PAYMENTS TO VICTIMS, āNEVER REALLY ENOUGH,ā AND THAT WHAT FAMILIES TRULY WANT IS JUSTICE THROUGH POLICY CHANGES, IMPROVED TRAININGS, INCREASED DIVERSITY, AND PROSECUTIONS OF POLICE WHO VIOLATE CIVIL RIGHTS AND PERPETRATE UNJUSTIFIED HOMICIDES.
āTODAY IS BITTERSWEET. BALENTINE HAS JOINED THE HOST OF MARTYRS SLAIN, UNJUSTLY, BY THE PHOENIX POLICE DEPARTMENT. I DO NOT KNOW HOW THE CITY COUNCIL SLEEPS AT NIGHT KNOWING HOW BAD THE SITUATION IS RIGHT NOW, CONCERNING POLICE BRUTALITY AND EXCESSIVE FORCE,ā SAYS MAUPIN, āHERE WE ARE ANOTHER QUARTER TO HALF A MILLION TAX PAYER DOLLARS LATER AND STILL WE HAVE NO MEANINGFUL REFORMS. THE CITY SHOULD BE ASHAMED THAT THEIR INEPTITUDE HAS COST THEM MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. WE COULD BE BUILDING COMMUNITY CENTERS, FUNDING YOUTH JOBS, OR DEVELOPING AFFORDABLE HOUSING. INSTEAD, THE CITY IS HEMORRHAGING CASH TO SETTLE LAWSUITS. THE CHOICE IS THEIRāS. TODAY IS A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY, BUT NOT ONE WE CELEBRATE. $200,000.00 WILL NOT BRING BACK BALENTINE MBEGBU AND HIS FAMILY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.ā
(Rev. Maupin [center] and supporters with the Widow MBegbu [seated] picketing outside of Phoenix City Hall. Mbegbu will receive $200,000.00 today from the City Council as a payment to settle her wrongful death claim.)
Balantine Mbegbu, a 65-year-old Phoenix resident, died on October 6 after being tased by a Phoenix police officer.
“I really want to know, why did they kill my husband?” asked Ngozi Mbegbu, Balantine’s wife.
According to Phoenix police, officers responded to the couple’s home that night after a third party called 911 to report a fight between the Mbegbus.
Balantine Mbegbu “immediately became belligerent and confrontational” with responding officers, according to a statement provided by Phoenix police.
“As one of the officers was trying to calm him down, Mr. Mbegbu backed the officer across the room and assaulted him,” the PPD statement continues. “The officers were then able to temporarily calm Mr. Mbegbu down. When the additional officers arrived to assist, Mr. Mbegbu began to actively fight with them and violently resisted arrest. Mr. Mbegbu spilled hot liquid on the officers and kicked an officer in the groin.”
At that point, police say one officer deployed the taser, and shortly after being handcuffed, Mbegbu started having apparent medical problems. Police called for the fire department to respond and take Mbegbu to a hospital, and Mbegbu was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Sabinus Megwa, an attorney representing Mbegbu’s wife, said what Mbegbu’s wife and sister-in-law say happened at the house last night is “totally different from the police account of what transpired.”
Megwa said there was no fight at the home, and police shouldn’t have been there. He added that Mbegbu only became agitated after police refused to leave the home.
Although the PPD statement says the department is “committed to ensuring a complete and thorough investigation into this incident to determine the circumstances of Mr. Mbegbu’s death,” Megwa and the protesters at city hall yesterday were calling for an independent investigation.
“This is not the first time a black person has been killed in this city by police,” Megwa said. “Each time, they find nothing. It’s about time that they do a thorough investigation and tell us why it is that this man died.”
(Megwa is also the attorney representing the family of Michelle Cusseaux, a 50-year-old mentally ill black woman who was fatally shot by a Phoenix police officer in August. Not long after a protest was organized at city hall over Cusseaux’s death, Phoenix police agreed to have the Arizona Department of Public Safety investigate the death.)
Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865, (post Civil war) in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who were buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp? They dug up the bodies working for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. Afterwards a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children marched, sang and celebrated.
During the Civil war, Union soldiers, who were prisoners of war being held at the Charleston Race Course, died and were buried in unmarked graves. Together with teachers and missionaries, Black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers.
The Black freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, and built an enclosure and an arch labeled, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Nearly ten thousand people, mostly Black freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the dead soldiers. Involved were 2800 school children newly enrolled in freedmen’s schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, Black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field.
Today the site is used as Hampton Park. Years later, the celebration would come to be called the “First Decoration Day” in the North.
Donald Trump declined invitations to speak to high-profile black organizations, according to a New York Times report.
Trump has mostly stayed with speaking to crowds at various locations around the country, largely dismissing any Black outreach effortsādespite blaming Democrats for economic issues in the Black community.
When he is invited to speak in front of various black groups, his campaign either does not respond or waits āuntil shortly before the events to say he would not be attending.ā
The organizations that have asked him to speak include the NAACP, National Urban League, and the National Association of Black Journalists. In some cases, the campaign waited until either the day before or a few days before the planned speaking engagements before declining the offers.
Now Donald Trump wants to woo black voters: ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ I’ll tell you what you have to lose…THE PRESIDENCY.
A United Nations panel of human rights activists has urged the United Statesā government to pay reparations to the descendants of Africans who were brought to the US as slaves. The committee blamed slavery for the plight of African-Americans today.The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descentās preliminary report follows a year of aggravated racial tensions in the United States that saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, whose members rally against the deaths of unarmed black men like Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, the chairwoman of the committee, drew parallels between the police killings in the United States and racist lynchings that occurred in the South until the civil rights era.
“Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror lynchings in the past,” Mendes-France told reporters. “Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
The committee released its preliminary recommendations on Friday after an 11-day fact-finding mission in the US, meeting with black Americans and others in different cities across the country.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, DC, the group said that Congress should pass the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, establish a national human rights commission and publicly acknowledge that the Atlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity.
Mendes-France, who is the daughter of leading black intellectual Frantz Fanon, said that the group was “extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African-Americans,ā according to AP.
āThe colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the U.S. remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,ā she continued.
While reparations are often envisioned in the United States as individual payments of cash, Mendes-France, a French woman, told Vice that she does not favor such a method. Instead, she recommended that the money be spent for the “full implementation of special programs based on education, socioeconomic, and environmental rights.”
The group will not release a full report of its findings until a September meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, but a preliminary statement said that issues such as mass incarceration and police brutality are proof that there is āstructural discriminationā in the United States.
“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of African-Americans today,” the report said.
“The persistent gap in almost all the human development indicators, such as life expectancy, income and wealth, level of education and even food securityā¦ reflects the level of structural discrimination that creates de facto barriers for people of African descent to fully exercise their human rights.”
While the group criticized a lack of strict gun control and the implementation of stand-your-ground laws in many states, they praised initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act, which they say allowed 2.3 million black people to get health insurance.
However, the panel said that “despite the positive measuresā¦the Working Group is extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African-Americans.” Despite legislative work to change mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes, the committee said that the war on drugs has led “to mass incarceration that is compared to enslavement, due to exploitation and dehumanization of African-Americans.”
In 2008, the House of Representatives successfully voted to apologize for slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed, and a year later the Senate passed its own apology bill as well. However, the two chambers of Congress could not agree on wording that would prevent the government from being liable for future reparations lawsuits, preventing the bill from ever reaching the presidentās desk.
A United Nations working group visiting the United States walks away “extremely concerned about the human rights situation of African Americans,” members said in a preliminary report released Friday, in which they urged the US government to address the legacy of slavery with “reparatory justice,” a national human rights commission, and ongoing criminal justice reform.
“The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism, and racial inequality in the US remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” wrote members of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, at the conclusion of a 10-day trip to the United States.
The Working Group is preparing a final report to deliver in September 2016, as part of the International Decade for People of African Descent, which the UN began in 2015 to recognize and remedy the ongoing impacts of slavery and colonialism on more than 200 million people of African descent living around the world. Many of its preliminary recommendations are drawn from a similar report following a study visit to the US.
“The state is also not acting with due diligence to protect the rights of African American communities,” the group writes, citing problems from disproportionate imprisonment and police violence to hate crimes such as the massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015:
The persistent gap in almost all the human development indicators, such as life expectancy, income and wealth, level of education and even food security, among African Americans and the rest of the US population, reflects the level of structural discrimination that creates de facto barriers for people of African descent to fully exercise their human rights.
According to Pew, wealth inequality between blacks and whites has reached its highest point since 1989, when white households had 17 times the wealth of black households.
The working group applauds a number of criminal justice reforms, such as the Task Force on 21st Century Policing and the Fair Sentencing Act, as well as the Affordable Health Care Act, and urges the creation of a national commission for African American human rights. Many of its suggestions, however, are focused on education and commemoration, including “reparatory justice”:
There is a profound need to acknowledge that the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity and among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and that Africans and people of African descent were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences. Past injustices and crimes against African Americans need to be addressed with reparatory justice.
Their recommendations do not specify what is meant by “reparatory justice.” Frequently, however, reparations involve financial compensation for a community’s violated human rights, as when West Germany paid more than $7 billion (in today’s currency) to the newly-created state of Israel and the World Jewish Congress, a move bitterly opposed by many Germans and Jews alike.
The working group does encourage Congress to pass H.R. 40, a bill introduced year after year by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the longest-serving member of Congress. Rep. Conyers, who is black, was first elected in 1965.
H.R. 40 calls to create a commission to study slavery’s past and present impact on African American communities, and to consider appropriate reparations.
By M.Jackson
The Lynching of Jesse Washington
Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks, was castrated, and his ears were cut off.
A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the tire. Jesse attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this the men cut off his fingers.
Jesse was 15.
Standing in the United States Capitol today, President Obama reflected on the progress we’ve made since the U.S. abolished slavery in 1865.
On December 6, 1865, the U.S. ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution: the abolition of slavery. It was a long overdue step in the long road we continue to walk in our efforts to address and uproot the systemic injusticesĀ embedded into our society.
Standing in the United States Capitol today, President Obama reflected on the history of our progress — hard-fought, hard-won, incomplete, but always possible. Watch his remarks here:
As many made clear at the time of its ratification, the 13th Amendment was not a final step, but rather the first step in making real the promise that all men are created equal. Read the letter that Annie Davis,Ā an enslaved woman living in Maryland, wrote to President Lincoln asking if she was free after he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He never replied, but the answer was no. It would take an amendment to Maryland’s constitution — and the 13th Amendment — to ensure that she and all enslaved people in the U.S. were free in the eyes of the law.
Emancipation Proclamation
Drafted December 22, 1862 The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House/Congress on January 31, 1865. The National Consensus of the Proclamation/Bill/Amendment happened after end of Civil War December Ā 6th, 1865. Ā The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”.
Transcript of Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Read By the President of the United States of America,
September 22, 1862:
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
13th Amendment signed by all states on December 5th, 1865
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
Mr. President
On August 25, 1864, Annie Davis, an enslaved woman living in Maryland, wrote this letter to President Lincoln asking if she was free. No reply from President Lincoln has been located, but the answer to her question would have been: āNo.ā
President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in states that had seceded from the Union. But it excused slave-holding border states like Maryland that had remained loyal to the Union, as well as parts of the Confederacy already under Northern control. And further the Emancipation Proclamation ultimately depended on a Union military victory.
That means slavery continued to exist in Annieās Maryland until a rewritten Maryland Constitution freeing slaves came into effect on November 1, 1864. And the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States finally finished the work of freeing the slaves nationwide when ratified after the end of the Civil War on December 6th, 1865ā150 years ago this week.
It is my Desire to be free. To go to see my people on the eastern shore. My mistress wonāt let me. You will please let me know if we are free. And what I can do. I write to you for advice. Please send me word this week. Or as soon as possible. And oblige.
Annie Davis
āOur freedom is bound up with the freedom of othersāregardless of what they look like, or where they come from, or what their last name is, or what faith they practice.ā āPresident Obama
Letter from Annie Davis to President Abraham Lincoln 08/25/1864 RG 094 Old Military and Civil Records Colored Troops Division, Letters Received D-304, 1864 Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780s-1917 00913_2005_001
“Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.” Ā Frederick Douglass
Experts and scholars find black women and our patterns of behavior fascinating, and are perpetually attempting to assess and analyze us. An area of particular interest is our commitment and devotion to faith as an overall group. A recent survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post found that 74 percent of black women (and 70 percent of black men) view “living a religious life” as important.
In an article posted on EURWeb.com, the survey’s results are cited, which concluded that in hard times, 87 percent of black women from all walks of life, education, class, and income level turn to faith–the highest percentage of any group.
Stacey Floyd-Thomas, an Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, weighed in on the study last month. She links black women’s historical struggle to our firm faith roots.
āBlack women have been the most mistreated and scandalized in U.S. society and culture as they wrestle both individually and collectively with the triple jeopardy of racism, sexism and classism,ā said Floyd-Thomas.
According to her, black women, due to our oppression, seek out faith “as a way of finding relief, reprieve, resolution, and redemption.”
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Colby College in Maine, on the other hand, views things from somewhat of a different perspective. Gilkes suggests black women’s religious devotion can be tied to cultural heritage.
“African Americans are more likely to have grown up with gospel music in the background of their lives, as well as with a mother or grandmother who insisted on all-day church on Sundays and Bible school in the summers,” says the article featuring Gilkes, an African American ordained minister and assistant pastor at a Baptist church.
Last week Delpani was hit with a lawsuit by Alan Meyer, a former top scientist for the company. The suit claims that Delpani made a number of disparaging and racist comments about Jewish and black people. Delpani is accused of saying that he ācould smell a black person when he entered a room.ā
Recent photos posted to the companyās Instagram account are overrun with comments ā primarily from black women ā urging others to #BoycottRevlon. Their latest photo, posted 2 days ago, received nearly 150 comments. Thatās a noticeable spike from images posted before news of the lawsuit broke. Unfortunately for Revlon, the overwhelming majority of those comments are from women vowing not to buy their products.
In a Revlon post featuring an African-American couple, one commenter quips āCan he smell those to from the picture?ā
Another writes, āLooking for a new foundation this weekend. Until you remove that CEO you WONāT smell any of my money.ā
However it seems as if Revlon is standing by their man. The company said the following in a statement last week:
Revlon’s CEOĀ Lorenzo Delpani
Alan Meyerās lawsuit is a completely meritless attack by a former employee who is trying to distract from his own failed performance with false, sensational, and offensive allegations. Our Chairman, Ronald Perelman has expressed his unequivocal support for Lorenzo Delpani in the face of these offensive allegations.
LAURENS COUNTY, GA- A Georgia widow is filing charges against Laurens County PoliceĀ following the murder of her husband in a SWAT raid on their home in September. This week, herĀ attorney claimed David Hooks was shot as he was face down in the drug raid that turned up nothing. As the Hooksā family attorney noted,
āThat search of some 44 hours conducted by numerous agents of the G.B.I. [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] resulted in not one item of contraband being found.ā
In fact, Hooks owned a construction company that contracted with theĀ military. He had undergone background checks by the Department of Homeland Security and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to obtain security clearance.
āBetween 10:30 and 11, I turned the light off upstairs. I heard a car coming up the driveway really fast, and I looked up the upstairs window. I saw a black vehicle with no lights. I saw 6 to 8 men, coming around the side of my house, and I panicked. I came running downstairs, yelling for David to wake up. He was in the bedroom asleep, had been for about an hour and a half. When I got downstairs to the bottom of the stairs, he opened the door and he had a gun in his hand, and he said, āWho is it?,ā and I said I didnāt know. He stepped back into the bedroom like he was going to grab his pants, but before he could do that, the door was busted down. He came around me, in the hall, into the den, and I was gonna come behind him, but before I could step into the den the shots were fired, and it was over.ā
āThe trajectory of both of those shots coupled with the numerous shots that were obviously fired downward lead us to believe that David Hooks was face down on the ground when he was shot those last two times.ā
A police statement made shortly after the raid claims that Hooks became aggressiveĀ and it was only then that they fired shots. ShookĀ disagreed:
āThe task force and the SRT members broke down the back door of the familyās home and entered, firing an excessive sixteen shots. There is no evidence that David Hooks ever fired a weapon.ā
āIn the affidavit that the G.B.I. agent did to get the second search warrant, there was a statement in there which obviously came from Laurens County officers and deputies indicating that David Hooks was seen retreating up the stairs, that he then came back down the stairs with a gun. First of all we know from Teresa Hooks statement of what happened that is not what happened. Secondly we know thatās not what happened because it would be completely impossible for the entry team to have seen the stairs that Teresa Hooks came down to awaken David Hooks that night.ā
The Hooksā case is particularly disturbing because if the medical evidence is correct (the autopsy is still forthcoming), it implies the final shots fired were execution-style and entirely unnecessary as the victim was already debilitated on the floor.
Naturally, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Laurens County Police have refused to comment any further on the case. ShookĀ said
āThe Sheriffās Department has [gone]Ā into complete lockdown. They have issued no statements. They wonāt tell the press or even the Hooks family who the people who participated in this illegal raid were. They havenāt told us if theyāve been placed on administrative leave, suspended, or if theyāre still out there supposedly enforcing the law.ā
ShookĀ hopesĀ āā¦the Laurens County District Attorney will take the case to a grand jury and not solely rely on law enforcementās take of the deadly raid.ā Given the recent trends, however, such an outcome is aĀ long shot.
This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author Carey WedlerĀ and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune-in to The Anti-Media radio show Monday-Friday @ 11pm EST, 8pm PST.Ā Carey Wedler
Across this country a persistent flurry of unjust police shootings, acts of excessive force, and wanton police violence has and will continue to rob our communities of the lives of our brothers and sisters. We must respond.
Just this year we’ve added Mike Brown – Eric Garner – Michelle Cusseaux – Tamir Rice – Ballentine Mbegbu – Rumain Brisbon and many other names to the ever growing list of victims. Victims, sacrificed to the evil trinity of police brutality, racial profiling, and antiquated policies that instill in law enforcement a seemingly insatiable drive to criminally dehumanize people.
The time for action is at hand. As a result of the latest case of a preventable police related fatality, we are organizing a town hall & march in Phoenix, Arizona to refocus our energies and redouble our efforts for a national push to solve this pandemic of hate defined violence.
Brothers and sisters, all roads lead to Phoenix.
We invite you and your organizations to become actively involved in this campaign to right wrongs and to combat injustice.
Please find below, an outline of the events taking place in Phoenix:
____________________
– December 16th, 2014
The Stop The Killing Organizing Committee will be hosting a training for local and visiting organizers to ensure the effectiveness of our upcoming protests and give an overview of what has and is happening in Phoenix. You are invited. This event is by invitation only.
The meeting will be held at the HISTORIC Tanner Chapel AME Church in downtown Phoenix from 7:00PM to 9:00PM. Doors open at 6:30PM.
Historic Tanner Chapel AME Church
20 S. 8th Street, Phx, AZ 85034
_____________________
– December 20th, 2014
STOP THE KILLING!!!!
MARCH ON PHOENIX
3:00PM
Cesar E. Chavez Plaza
251 W. Washington Street, Phx, AZ 85003
This march is set to descend on downtown Phoenix and will include stops at Phoenix city hall, Phoenix police headquarters, the Maricopa county attorney’s office and will culminate outside of the office of the United States department of justice satellite office.
__________________
– December 22, 2014
STOP THE KILLING !!!
NATIONAL TOWN HALL
(open to the public)
Featuring:
Attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz
President/ Founder
of Black Lawyers for Justice Association
(Keynote Speaker)
Special Guests
Student-Minister Akbar Muhammad
(International Representative of the Nation of Islam)
Bro. Anthony Shaheed – Ferguson, Mo
Tori Russell – Hands Up United
Other special invited guests, members of the clergy, and the elect.
Starts 7:00PM
Historic Tanner Chapel AME Church
20 S. 8th Street, Phx, AZ 85034
Doors Open At 6:00PM
ALL roads lead to Phoenix! We strongly encourage our youth, fraternities/sororities, churches mosques, nonprofits, community organizations, elected and appointed officials, and other groups to attend. We’re stronger together and through our unity we will:Ā STOP THE KILLINGS!
YOU ARE INVITED!
PLANNING MEETING FOR CLERGY, GROUP AND ORGANIZATION LEADERS, AND INTERESTED PROFESSIONALS (SINGERS, DOCTORS, NURSES, BAND MEMBERS, COMPUTER NETWORK SPECIALISTS, ARTISTS, SOCIAL NETWORK SPECIALISTS, PROMOTERS)
REGISTER YOUR GROUP, ORGANIZATION, CHURCH, OR SELF AT: STOPTHEKILLINGSMEDIA@GMAIL.COM
Nat Turner,Ā Ā (born October 2, 1800,Ā Southampton county, Virginia, U.S.ādied November 11, 1831,Ā Jerusalem, Virginia)
Nat Turner was a Black American slave who led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion (August 1831) in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves and stiffened proslavery, antiabolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861ā65).
Turner was born the property of a prosperous small-plantation owner in a remote area of Virginia. His mother was an African native who transmitted a passionate hatred of slavery to her son. He learned to read from one of his masterās sons, and he eagerly absorbed intensive religious training. In the early 1820s he was sold to a neighbouring farmer of small means. During the following decade his religious ardour tended to approach fanaticism, and he saw himself called upon by God to lead his people out of bondage. He began to exert a powerful influence on many of the nearby slaves, who called him āthe Prophet.ā
In 1831, shortly after he had been sold againāthis time to a craftsman named Joseph Travisāa sign in the form of an eclipse of the Sun caused Turner to believe that the hour to strike was near. His plan was to capture the armoury at the county seat, Jerusalem, and, having gathered many recruits, to press on to the Dismal Swamp, 30 miles (48 km) to the east, where capture would be difficult. On the night of August 21, together with seven fellow slaves in whom he had put his trust, he launched a campaign of total annihilation, murdering Travis and his family in their sleep and then setting forth on a bloody march toward Jerusalem. In two days and nights about 60 white people were ruthlessly slain. Doomed from the start, Turnerās insurrection was handicapped by lack of discipline among his followers and by the fact that only 75 blacks rallied to his cause. Armed resistance from the local whites and the arrival of the state militiaāa total force of 3,000 menāprovided the final crushing blow. Only a few miles from the county seat the insurgents were dispersed and either killed or captured, and many innocent slaves were massacred in the hysteria that followed. Turner eluded his pursuers for six weeks but was finally captured, tried, and hanged.
Nat Turnerās rebellion put an end to the white Southern myth that slaves were either contented with their lot or too servile to mount an armed revolt. In Southampton county black people came to measure time from āNatās Fray,ā or āOld Natās War.ā For many years in black churches throughout the country, the name Jerusalem referred not only to the Bible but also covertly to the place where the rebel slave had met his death.
With the racial unrest swirling across the United States serving as a backdrop, the United Nations yesterday kicked off the International Decade of People of African Descent, spanning from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2024, with a goal of confronting the challenges faced by people of African descent across the globe because of pervasive racism against Black people. While racism and discrimination against people of African descent has been a problem that has infected world societies for generations, this is an auspicious time to commence such a campaign, considering how prominent a topic racism is in the United States. The nightly protests, involving multiracial crowds of angry Americans, occurring across the country to protest police killings and brutality are a shocking development in a country that typically has tried to keep discussions of racism as far from the mainstream as possible. But the grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, seem to have awakened outrage among Americans who previously werenāt inclined to see racism as still a major problem in the U.S. Sam Kutesa, president of the United Nation General Assembly, introduced the International Decade of People of African Descent by declaring that people of African descent still face racism in every country, region and continent of the world.
āOver the next 10 years, people everywhere are encouraged to take part in the global conversation on the realities faced by people of African descent,ā said Kutesa, who is from Uganda.Ā āThe Decade will allow us to explore the challenges faced by people of African descent due to pervasive racism and racial discrimination engrained in our society today.ā His remarks were reported on the United Nations website, un.org. The resolution for the international decade was actually adopted a year ago, on Dec. 23, 2013, with the themeĀ āPeople of African descent: recognition, justice and development.ā Kutesa pointed out that when global societiesĀ ensure the protection of the human rights of all people of African descent, it makes a tangible improvement in the lives of millions of people of African descent around the world. He said people of African descent are ātoo oftenā victims of crime and violence, and then face discrimination when they attempt to seek legal redress. It was hard not to consider his comments aimed at the United States, which many countries often accuse of hypocrisy because the U.S. frequently accuses other nations of human rights violations while clearly denying equal rights to Black and brown people inside the U.S. Kutesa said theĀ international community has also recognized the correlation between poverty and racism, which serves to marginalize people of African descent in world economies, despite the significant contributions people of African descent have made to the development of world societies. The UN is encouraging nations to assist people ofĀ African descent by revisiting policies and practices that have a negative impact on Black people. Kutesa said the coming decade offers the world a chanceĀ to āunite our voicesā and renew the political will to eliminate racial discrimination against anyone, anywhere. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was represented at the kickoff byĀ UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, who noted thatĀ people of African descent suffer from inequality and disadvantage from the history of slavery and as a result are among the poorest and most marginalized around the world, with limited access to healthcare, education and even employment. Speaking for Ban, Amos called on governments around the world to do more to protect people of African descent from the alarmingly high rates of police violence and racial profiling. The entire effort is to see that āa decade from now the situation of people of African descent is improved.ā āHuman rights belongs to us all,ā saidĀ UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Å imonoviÄ, noting that the recent events in New York with the death of Garner and the grand jury decision serve as tragic reminders that people of African descent face disproportionate levels of racial discrimination. āThis Decade aims to shine a light on inequality, invisibility, underdevelopment, discrimination and violence on each and every continent,ā the human rights chief said. During the coming decade, the UN hopes to seeĀ the adoption of anti-discrimination laws around the world, in addition to countries fighting against impunity in regard to racial profiling and guaranteeing the equal protection of the law. The Decade will also promote the right to development for people of African descent, which is always a big issue on the African continent, in addition to equal access to education, health, and employment.
Activists participate in a “die-in” outside the Justice Department during a rally on Dec. 1 in Washington in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo
Hundreds of people are laying motionless on the ground, pretending to be dead. They are staging die-ins, a form of protests during which participants simulate death in areas with high foot traffic, to grab the attention of passersby.
This week, die-in participants are protesting a grand jury’s decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, a white Staten Island police officer who placed Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in a choke hold that killed him, all on camera. Last week, they were protesting a similar decision in the case of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
It’s not surprising that photos of these die-ins have been shared widely across social media. The images of the unmoving bodies strewn on the floor are haunting. It’s difficult to look away, and it’s difficult not to snap a photo to show someone else. Die-ins are meant to trigger feelings of grief and shock, emotions that peopleāand, most often, the people of the Internetātend to want to experience alongside others when it comes to disturbing national news.
Die-ins have been used to protest American-fought wars and foreign conflicts like those in Gaza, and by anti-abortion and gun-control activists. On Sept. 15, 2007, hundreds of peopleĀ sprawled out on a walkway in front of the Capitol to protest the Iraq War, 189 of whom were arrested by police.
Political protests ā both violent, peaceful and downright strange ā have a rich past, with varied degrees ofĀ successĀ in accomplishing what they originally set out to do.
The following historically significant political protests include a decisiveĀ eventĀ in the Civil Rights movement, two history-changing moments that occurred within one year and the medieval defiance of one man:
TheĀ Protestant Reformation
The reformation began with the quietest and most orderly single protest in this list ā the nailing to the door of a German church a treatise on the abuses of Catholicism by Martin Luther, in 1517. However, the movement that followed would ultimately spill blood and tear empires apart.
The Storming of the Bastille
This one act of July 14, 1789, has come to symbolize the entireĀ French RevolutionĀ and indeed was a major catalyst to the 10-year-long rebellion against the crown. On that day, a throng of Parisians descended on the Bastille (long a symbol of royal authority and excess), beheaded its governor and overtook the prison.
Gandhi’s Salt March
Another protest against British taxation sent Mahatma Gandhi on a 23-day, 240-mile journey to the coast of India to collect his own salt, which was illegal under crown laws. More than 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself, were incarcerated for participating in the salt march, but it ultimatelyĀ turned the tide of world sympathyĀ towards Indian, rather than British, interests.
. The Boston Tea Party
Despite its quaint-sounding name, the 1773 “tea party” was in fact a bitter reaction to harsh new British taxation acts. Over the course of three hours on Dec. 16, more than 100 colonists secretly boarded three British ships arriving in harbor and dumped 45 tons of tea into the water. The unorthodox protest was a key precursor to the American Revolution. South Africa’s National Day of Protest
Nelson Mandela’s ANC party organized this anti-apartheid work stoppage in 1950, in retaliation for a new bill effectively allowing the government to investigate any political party or organization. On June 26, hundreds of thousands of South Africans participated in the “Stay at Home,” a tactic that was used several times in the next decade. June 26 was celebrated as National Freedom Day in South Africa until 1994.
March on Washington
Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered during this August 1963 rally to promote racial equality in the United States. More than 200,000 demonstrators gathered peacefully at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., and the event is credited with pressuring President John F. Kennedy to draw up firm civil rights legislation. Tiananmen Square
A mass of at least 1 million people, mostly students seeking democratic reform, had peacefully occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven weeks when the Chinese militaryĀ unexpectedly rolled in tanksĀ to clear them out. Numbers are imprecise, but it is estimated that at least several hundred protesters were killed in the city, drawing harsh criticism from the international community. Berlin Wall Protests
The concrete division that had separated East and West Berlin for 28 years came down just two months after public protests occurred throughout Germany. Pressure to take down the wall had been growing in 1989 and the demonstrations were the final straw for the East German government, which finally opened the gates on Nov. 9.
The Orange Revolution
In late 2004, hundreds of thousands of people flooded Kiev’s main square to protest the results of the Ukrainian presidential election. Demonstrations continued for 12 days through sleet and snow until a revote was called, reversing the results and putting the opposition candidate (whose party colors are orange) in office instead.
WE CAN’T BREATHE UNTIL WE KNOW WHO THE MURDERER IS!
āThe shooting death of Rumain Brisbon by Phoenix police has sparked outrage in our community! The slaying of this unarmed black man and the unjust profiling that proceeded it are abominable offenses! The only thing worse is the impact of his tragic death on his family and little girls.ā
Rev. Jarrett Maupin
Where:Ā ELKS LODGEĀ 1007 S 7th Ave, Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Why: THE POLICE HAS REFUSED TO GIVE UP NAME OF OFFICER…WE WANT HIS NAME!
MARCH on POLICE DEPARTMENT starting at 7PM UNTIL!
We join thousands of people across the nation raising their voices, taking to the streets, rallying and demanding justice for the lives of the Black men, women and children killed every 28 hours by police. Rumain Brisbon, father of four and resident of Phoenix, AZ was killed by an unnamed Phoenix Police Officer on Tuesday December 2, 2014. Police statements and mainstream media outlets allege that Mr. Brisbon was a drug dealer and threatened the officer, causing the officer to use deadly force. However, witnesses, family and friends present a different story. Rumain was not a drug dealer. In fact, he was just in front of his home while approached by the police officer. Sources say, Rumain was shot in front of his young children. The white police officer mistook a pill bottle for a gun.
The police ambush started because of a phone call put in by a unnamed resident. The caller told police Rumain looked suspicious. However, Rumain was dropping off food for his little girls.
REV. AL SHARPTON TO GIVE EULOGY AT AKAI GURLEYāS FUNERAL ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5TH–
āPUBLIC SERVICE TO BE HELD FOR THE 28-YEAR-OLD UNARMED MAN FATALLY SHOT BY POLICE IN EAST NEW YORK—
Ā
WHO:
Rev. Al Sharpton, President, National Action Network
Ā
WHEN:
Friday, December 5, 2014Ā ā
5:00-7:00p.m. ET Viewing (open to public)
7:00-9:00p.m. ET Akai Gurleyās funeral service (open to public)
WHERE:
Brown Memorial Baptist Church
484 Washington Ave. (at Gates Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY 11238
WHAT:
Rev. Sharpton to give the eulogy at Akai Gurleyās funeral, the 28-year-old unarmed man fatally shot by police in East New York. The viewing and funeral are open to the public.
Paid for by National Action Network
NEW YORK (AP) ā Stunned relatives of an unarmed man killed by a rookie police officer in a dark public housing stairwell looked on as the Rev. Al Sharpton and public officials demanded a full investigation Saturday into what law enforcement officials have termed an apparent accident.”We’re not demonizing the police,” Sharpton said, but “this young man should not be dead.”
Police said the fatal shooting Thursday night of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn’s gritty East New York neighborhood appears accidental. But “how do we know until there is a thorough investigation of all that happened?” Sharpton asked.
He spoke at a rally in Harlem, standing alongside Gurley’s 2-year-old daughter, her mother and several elected officials. Gurley’s relatives remained silent during and after the rally.
Gurley’s death comes at a sensitive time, with a grand jury weighing whether to bring criminal charges against another officer in the chokehold death of a man on Staten Island, and the nation bracing for a potential announcement soon on whether an indictment will be handed up in the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri.
“Until we address the issue of police killing people of color, we’re going to always have the problem; we’re deaf on the issue,” Alex Mallory, 64, a Bronx resident who once lived in public housing, said after the rally. “I could have easily been this guy, walking down the stairs.”
City police often conduct “vertical patrols” inside public housing by going from roofs down staircases that sometimes are havens for crime. Police Commissioner William Bratton has said the patrols are needed, and the development where Gurley was shot had recently seen a shooting, robberies and assaults.
Officer Peter Liang and his partner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stairwell with flashlights late Thursday, police said. Gurley, 28, was leaving his girlfriend’s apartment after she had braided his hair, according to the girlfriend, who is not his daughter’s mother.
Police said the officers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor landing when Gurley and his girlfriend opened a stairwell door one floor down, after giving up on waiting for an elevator. Police said Liang, patrolling with his gun drawn, fired without a word and apparently by accident, hitting Gurley from a distance of about 10 feet.
Mallory, the former public housing resident, said an officer should never patrol a building with a gun drawn.
“What are you saying, people who live in developments are animals, or something?” he asked.
Bratton said officers generally have discretion on whether to draw their weapons based on what they are encountering or believe they may encounter. He called Gurley’s death a tragedy that befell someone “totally innocent.”
It was unclear how long the stairway’s lights had been out or whether there had been complaints. The New York City Housing Authority did not answer those questions Saturday, saying only that the shooting was tragic and that housing officials would “continue to work with the NYPD and our residents to make our properties as safe as possible.”
The fatal shooting came a decade after 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury was shot dead by a startled officer on a Brooklyn rooftop of a housing complex. His family got a $2 million settlement with the city.
Liang, 26, has been placed on modified duty. Under standard policy, police internal affairs investigators won’t be able to question him until prosecutors have decided whether to file criminal charges. Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has called the shooting “deeply troubling” and said it warrants “an immediate, fair and thorough investigation.”
New York Assemblyman-elect Charles Barron organized a protest march on Saturday evening from the shooting scene to the police department office that patrols housing developments.
In a statement, march organizers said there was nothing accidental about Gurley’s shooting.
“This is the deadly consequence of the increasing militarization of the police, from New York City to Ferguson ā and beyond.”
Rumain Brisbon, father of four and resident of Phoenix, AZ was killed by an unnamed Phoenix Police Officer on Tuesday December 2, 2014. Police statements and mainstream media outlets allege that Mr. Brisbon was a drug dealer and threatened the officer, causing the officer to use deadly force. However, witnesses, family and friends present a different story. Rumain was a loved father, son, brother and neighborhood member. Phoenix community members and activists are rallying support to get the truth of how and why Rumainās life was taken. The following is a heartfelt statement from family and friends.
In the wake of the Ferguson verdict, citizens across America have been questioning their safety amongst police officers. Specifically, those questioning have been members of the Black community. As a Black woman, Ferguson hit home for obvious reasons, as Iām a sister, daughter, cousin and friend of these āBlack Maleā victims that have been sweeping the nation in recent months.
Last night, I relived Ferguson all over again, with the murder of friend Rumain Brisbon, a Phoenix resident. Rumain is the father of four, in his mid-30s, a wonderful spirit who enjoyed spending time with his family, but his death came suddenly too soon.
The reason being, he was Living While Black.
His Blackness warranted a call to the Phoenix police department the night of December 2nd, from a resident in his apartment complex. The resident thought Rumain looked suspicious because he was sitting in his parked SUV in the apartment parking lot with his best friend; again, in front of his own home.
One simple call led police officers to bum rush the two young men, while accusing them of selling drugs. Panicked and rightfully confused, Rumain ran unarmed towards his home, only to be shot twice in the torso. His friend is now in police custody.
Questions have been raised by Phoenixās Black community & activists because his family was not permitted to see the body of their slain son, brother, and cousin. His family was denied answers to their questions of concern about what happened to their loved one. The crime scene was blocked off for hours. Could he have been saved? Was he left to die on the scene? Most importantly, can someone explain WHY this happened? Why are police officers quick to shoot as if lives donāt matter? These are questions, that might painfully go unanswered.
While grieving, the family has to endure false media headlines, that accuse Rumain for being āa drug dealer and the cop as a hero.ā This false accusation led to his death and his hero is nothing more than a murderer with a badge. As an open to carry firearms state (in Arizona), police found a small handgun in Rumainās vehicle. He didnāt take the gun out to shoot back at any policemen. It was simply left behind and he ran away unarmed. Itās been reported, the drugs that claimed to have been found, was of no large amount for any type of distribution.
In these times, itās important to question the integrity of our armed forces. Officers set-up crimes to make it appear, as they want it to be reported. As a community, weāre smarter than this. As an intelligent force of Black individuals weāre able to service our own media news and report truth. Weāre able to be heard. If they arenāt looking out for us, its time the Black community looks out for each other.
Rumain lost his life for being in the right place at the right time. Simply sitting in front of his home spending time with his best friend.
The community is coming together to stand up for Rumain:
As the video below unmistakably shows, Eric Garner was killed by the cops.
His crime? Allegedly selling cigarettes not approved and taxed by the state. Garner was knocked to the ground and a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, strangled him to death. The suffocation was exacerbated by the fact Garner suffered from asthma.
With Ferguson fresh in their minds, Police Commissioner William Bratton met with elected officials and clergy members on Staten Island Monday to talk about possible reaction to a grand jury decision (scheduled to be released any day) in the Eric Garner case. NY1’s Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.
Bratton Meets Officials on SI Ahead of Eric Garner Grand Jury Decision
“Staten Island is not Ferguson.” That was the message after a 90-minute meeting in St. George Monday between Police Commissioner William Bratton, community leaders and elected officials.
The agenda, according to Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, was “how we’re going to deal with the emotions coming in this next week.” That’s because a special grand jury could soon announce whether or not it’ll hand up an indictment against police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of 43-year-old Eric Garner.
Pantaleo is seen on video putting Garner in a chokehold as officers tried to arrest him this summer for illegally selling cigarettes.
Garner’s death happened less than a month before Michael Brown’s, and the case has stirred some of the same strong emotions.
“There certainly will be increased police presence in the area, especially around the vicinity of where they anticipate demonstrations to be taking place, and that is something that I believe the NYPD is taking very seriously,” said Assembly woman Nicole Malliotakis, whose district covers parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn.
A rally for Garner this summer drew thousands of protesters. While some businesses along the march route decided to close their doors that day, the demonstration was largely uneventful.
“The businesses that remained open actually got business, a lot of business, and it was just a peaceful demonstration. We’re expecting the same thing,” said City Councilwoman Debi Rose of Staten Island.
“Here on Staten Island, Eric Garner had a lot of friends, especially in that area, and he’s very, very well missed by a lot of people who’s anxiously waiting the decision,” said Cynthia Davis of the National Action Network. “So I even think maybe some agitators may try to worm their way in and try to cause problems, but we’re just praying and hoping that that doesn’t happen.”
The National Action Network said it isn’t planning a march or protest on Staten Island after a decision is announced. Instead, the group says it plans to march over the Brooklyn Bridge to federal court in Brooklyn.
“We’re praying that federal prosecutors take over the case,” Davis said.
“The tone and tenor that has been set by his mother Gwen and by all of the family is that they do not want to see violence, and we’ve tried to echo that message throughout the city,” said the Rev. Victor Brown of the Mt. Sinai United Christian Church.
On July 17, 2014, in Staten Island, New York, United States, Eric Garner died of neck compression, combined with asphyxia proximate to chest restriction, as a result of a chokehold applied while police officers were arresting him for the suspected sale of untaxed cigarettes.[3][4] Garner previously had been arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes. When a police officer attempted to arrest Garner, he had broken up a fight which brought additional police units to the scene. He was approached by police officer Justin Damico.[5][6] A New York City Police Department officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put Garner on the ground by the use of force, which included the use of aheadlock, backed by video evidence of the event.[1] Garner died some minutes later. NYPD Union leader Patrick Lynch challenged that chokehold claim.[7]
On August 1, 2014, medical examiners concluded that police brutality as the primary causes of Garner’s death and Garner’s heart problems, obesity and asthma as additional factors.[8] As a result of Garner’s death, four EMTs and paramedics who responded to Garner’s death were suspended without pay on July 21, 2014, and officers Justin Damico and Daniel Pantaleo were placed on desk duty, the latter stripped of his service gun and badge.
The event stirred public protestsĀ and ralliesĀ with charges of police brutality and was broadcast nationally over various media networks.
Response to Current Events by the MinisterĀ Louis Farrakhan
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Black History Month is coming to a close with a historic moment honoring the lateĀ Rosa Parks. Ā The unveiling for Parksā statue at Capitol Hillās Statuary Hall took place today. Ā President Barack Obama spoke at the ceremony.
āThis morning, we celebrate a seamstress slight in stature but mighty in courage,ā the president said. āIn a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world.ā
Parks is the first African-American woman to have a statue placed in the hall. Ā āAs the first African-American woman to be honored in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, Mrs. Parksā dedication to ensuring no human being is treated like a second class citizen in this country will be remembered and discussed for generations to come,ā saidĀ Congressional Black CaucusĀ Chair Marcia Fudge.
Each state donates two statues of their most prominent citizens toĀ Statuary Hall. The 109th Congress authorized this tribute in 2005. Ā Ā Parks will represent the state of Alabama, where she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and became the āmother of the civil rights movement.ā
WASHINGTON (AP) ā Vice President Joe Biden is hailing Frederick Douglass for his work to bring about equal justice, leading a series of tributes at the unveiling of a statue of the 19th-century orator and writer.
Biden, along with Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, used the U.S. Capitol ceremony to call for equal voting rights for citizens of the District of Columbia ā an issue dear to Douglassā heart.Ā Biden said the people of the District āmade the right choiceā in selecting Douglass as their representative.
The 7-foot bronze likeness of Douglass joins sculpted statues of fellow blacks Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth in Emancipation Hall.Ā Douglass was born a slave in 1818 in Talbot County, Md. and advised President Abraham Lincoln.
The Capitol building sits on a 59-acre park that includes hundreds of trees. Ā The newest, a sycamore, was planted Monday, in memory of a black teenager who, nearly 60 years ago, was murdered for whistling at a white woman, helped spark the civil rights movement.
His name was Emmett Till.
On August 28th, 1955, the Chicago teen was taken by a group of white men from his great-uncleās home while visiting Money, Miss. His shot and battered body was found three days later in a nearby river. Two white men were acquitted. At Tillās funeral, his mother Mamie proclaimed: Let the world see what they did to my boy.
Fifty thousand people filed by his open casket.
āAll those people who are about his age, you are about 14 in 1955, then became the front ranks of the civil rights movement,ā said Nelson.Documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson says Tillās murder served as a catalyst for supporters of civil rights.
PerhapsĀ this young American Sycamore Tree will help keep Tillās memory alive.
The complete guide to every public eyewitness interview in the shooting death of Mike Brown
Oct 31, 2014 1:01pm PDT by Shaun King
Mike Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in broad daylight on a hot Saturday afternoon in Ferguson, Missouri. Consequently, eyewitnesses were standing at virtually every angle to observe exactly what happened that day. Seven have come forward publicly. Many gave interviews in the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Canfield Drive. Below is an annotated list of every public interview and video given by each eyewitness.Dorian JohnsonDorian Johnson is an essential eyewitness. He was walking with Mike Brown when they were first confronted by Officer Wilson and has given the only public account of what was said and done throughout the early stages of that confrontation.
ā¢ Here is the video interview with Johnson still on the scene soon after Brown was killed in which he describes everything he saw.
ā¢ Here Johnson does a video interview with the local press in which he recounts the story, the same as he said when he was on the scene. But he adds that it felt as if Brown was gunned down “like an animal.”
Additional links to interviews can be found below the fold.
Tiffany MitchellTiffany Mitchell does not live on Canfield Drive, but was driving there to pick up Piaget Crenshaw, a co-worker. She witnessed the shooting from the perspective of Canfield Drive.
ā¢ The very first interview Mitchell gave regarding what she saw. She was there for the initial confrontation and witnessed every gunshot.
ā¢ Here are Tiffany Mitchell and Piaget Crenshaw, months after the shooting, stating that they stand by their accounts and stating that they saw Mike Brown shot with his hands up, surrendering.
Piaget Crenshawā¢ Piaget Crenshaw observed the shooting from her balcony on Canfield Drive and filmed the immediate aftermath just seconds after Brown was shot and killed.
ā¢ A raw cellphone video of an unreleased interview Crenshaw did after the shooting.
ā¢ Here are Tiffany Mitchell and Piaget Crenshaw, months after the shooting, stating that they stand by their accounts and stating that they saw Mike Brown shot with his hands up, surrendering.
Michael BradyMichael Brady lives in the apartments on Canfield Drive. After witnessing what he describes as a tussle between Brown and Wilson, he ran outside to take a closer look.
Emanuel Freeman (@TheePharaoh on Twitter)Emanuel Freeman lives in a basement level apartment on Canfield Drive that had a direct view of the crime scene. Freeman, known as @TheePharaoh on Twitter, live-tweeted the entire shooting and even took a picture of Darren Wilson standing over Brown’s body. His tweets gave very helpful timestamps and verification to other accounts.
Two Construction WorkersTwo (white) construction workers were on Canfield Drive working on a project when Wilson shot and killed Brown. Their immediate reactions to the shooting were recorded on video, and they have since spoken anonymously to the media. They are afraid of losing their jobs or being targeted if their identities are released.
āIn America, we share a dream that lies at the heart of our founding: that no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter how modest your beginnings or the circumstances of your birth, you can make it if you try. Yet, for many and for much of our Nationās history, that dream has gone unfilled. For African-Americans, it was a dream denied until 150 years ago, when a great emancipator called for the end of slavery. It was a dream deferred less than 50 years ago, when a preacher spoke of justice and brotherhood from Lincolnās memorial. This dream of equality and fairness has never come easily ā but it has always been sustained by the belief that in America, change is possible.
Today, because of that hope, coupled with the hard and painstaking labor of Americans sung and unsung, we live in a moment when the dream of equal opportunity is within reach for people of every color and creed. National African American History Month is a time to tell those stories of freedom won and honor the individuals who wrote them. We look back to the men and women who helped raise the pillars of democracy, even when the halls they built were not theirs to occupy. We trace generations of African-Americans, free and slave, who risked everything to realize their God-given rights. We listen to the echoes of speeches and struggle that made our Nation stronger, and we hear again the thousands who sat in, stood up, and called out for equal treatment under the law. And we see yesterdayās visionaries in tomorrowās leaders, reminding us that while we have yet to reach the mountaintop, we cannot stop climbing.
Today, Dr. King, President Lincoln, and other shapers of our American story proudly watch over our National Mall. But as we memorialize their extraordinary acts in statues and stone, let us not lose sight of the enduring truth that they were citizens first. They spoke and marched and toiled and bled shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary people who burned with the same hope for a brighter day. That legacy is shared; that spirit is American. And just as it guided us forward 150 years ago and 50 years ago, it guides us forward today. So let us honor those who came before by striving toward their example, and let us follow in their footsteps toward the better future that is ours to claim.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim February 2013 as National African American History Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.ā
A US prisoner who once faced execution has been cleared of doing anything wrong after spending 39 years of his life in prison! Ricky Jackson from Ohio spent almost four decades in captivity until a key witness at his trial admitted this year that he had lied as a boy. (WOW!!!!)
Ricky Jackson
He was jailed alongside two other men over the 1975 murder of a Cleveland, Ohio man called Harold Franks. There was no other evidence linking the prisoner to the murder. Mr Jackson is said to have cried in court as all charges were dropped against him. He is the longest-held US president to be completely exonerated, according to legal group the Ohio Innocence Project.
“The state is conceding the obvious,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said, as charges were dropped against Mr Jackson. He is expected to be freed on Friday November 21st, 2014.
The men jailed alongside Mr Jackson have also asked for a retrial, though their petitions have not yet received a response. Authorities were said to be within 20 days of starting the execution of the men until Ohio ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. Execution has since been reinstated as a punishment in the state, with those found guilty suffering a lethal injection.
SUPERHUMAN – being above the human :divine: exceeding normal human power, size, or capability : having such power, size, or capability magical, miraculous, phenomenal, preternatural,supernatural, supernormal, transcendent, transcendental, uncanny, unearthly.
In the first test–Ā researchers Kelly Marie Hoffman and Sophie Trawalter, of the University of Virginia, and Adam Waytz, of Northwestern University, performed Implicit Association Tests.Ā White participants were asked to associate certain words to images of a person. It was found that white people were more likely to link words commonly associated with the supernatural, (ghost, paranormal, spirit, wizard, supernatural, magic, mystical), to pictures of black people, and more likely to link Ā “human words,” (person, individual, humanity, people, civilian, mankind, citizen), to pictures of white people, New York Magazine reported. These results remained consistent, even as researchers varied the experiments in order to rule out the possibility of bias.
In the second testĀ — to account for the possibility that the bias in test one occurred in part because of White-Human associations as opposed to Black-Superhuman associations — the researchers used categorization tasks, again asking participants to quickly associate a word with an image, this time with more groupings, (Black/Human, Black/Superhuman, Black/Subhuman, White/Human, White/Superhuman, White/Subhuman), and asking participants to quickly sort words as belonging to a category based on the image of a face flashed on the screen. They found the same bias present as in study one.
The third testĀ — was a bit more specific. In it, the participants were shown images of both a white person and a black person and were asked to choose which person they believed possessed a series of supernatural abilities. The questions included:
1. Which person is more likely to have superhuman skin that is thick enough that it can withstand the pain of burning hot coals?
2. Which person is more capable of using their supernatural powers to suppress hunger and thirst? 3. Which person is more capable of using supernatural powers to read a personās mind by touching the personās head? 4. Which person is more capable of surviving a fall from an airplane without breaking a bone through the use of supernatural powers? 5. Which personal has supernatural quickness that makes them capable of running faster than a fighter jet? 6. Which person has supernatural strength that makes them capable of lifting up a tank?
White people chose an image of a black person an overwhelming 63.5 % Ā of the time for everything except for the abilities to survive a plane crash and read minds.
TheĀ final study — āspecifically shows superhumanization of blacks predicts denial of pain to Black versus White targets.āĀ The results suggest superhumanization of black individuals may contribute to the undertreatment of pain for black patients because they’re viewed as being able to endure more. (Which supports earlier research from the same authors that showed nurses of any race see black patients as less sensitive to pain than white patients.)
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The authors assert superhumanization may also explain white tolerance for police brutality against black people. The authors of the study suggest that āperhaps people assume that blacks possess extra (superhuman) strength that enables them to endure violence more easily than other humans.ā Ā The authors say their results “might also explain why people consider Black juveniles to be more ‘adult’ than White juveniles when judging culpability.”
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How is this bias reflected in American culture? Sportscasters discussing fast-twitch muscle fiber, stereotypes about genitalia, and phrases like “black don’t crack” are common.
The Boston Globe pointed out a Los Angeles Times op-ed from 2007 calling out the elevation of Barack Obama as a savior figure by some who had outsized expectations of his ability to single-handedly effect change.
The paper cites Director Spike Lee’s famous criticism of the way black characters are portrayed in Hollywood films like The Green Mile or The Legend of Bagger Vance: “These films all have these magical, mystical Negroes who show up as some sort of spirit or angel, but only to benefit the white characters.”
The phenomenon has received virtually no empirical attention thus far, according to the authors, thoughĀ the studies ādemonstrate this phenomenon at an explicit level,ā showing that āwhites preferentially attribute superhuman capacities to blacks versus whites.”
And while imbuing a group of people with superhuman abilities might seem like a complimentary thing on the surface, the study contends this bias leads to dehumanization on the personal and political level.
Work with us!!! We challenge you to stand up with your people to do something! To donate money for busses to get ppl from around the country thereā¦not to riot, but to organize!! Contact me if u up to it got time for it care about it! DO YOU REALLY HAVE THE PROPER MINDSET TO LEAD AND HELP YOUR PEOPLE???? CALL ME IF YOU DO!
The Ferguson Protester community is home to many voices and experiences. Informed by many voices, this letter serves as a statement of purpose for those who may not yet understand the movement in #Ferguson or why protests still continue, 102 days later.
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Originally published October 17:
In Ferguson, police met our protesting of police brutality with the disgusting irony of greater brutality, the likes of which Americans have rarely seen on our own soil. In this American town, officers tapped their batons, pointed guns in our faces, kneed our womenās heads, threw our pregnant mothers to the ground, jailed our peaceful clergy and academics, and tear gassed our children.
We are living an American Horror Story.
But it is significantly past time for the story to end. Never to be told again.
The onus to close this book falls directly on our leadership. Our elected leaders bear direct responsibility to ensure the safety of every one of its citizens at the hands of its agents, and to capture justice for every life taken. In this, the land of the free, you are responsible for securing and preserving that freedom for all of your citizens, irrespective of ā or perhaps, especially because of ā our skin. In a story in which we have been overwhelmingly targeted, unduly struck down by threat of our blackness, we require explicit attention, protection and value. We require freedom, and will hold everyone accountable to preserving our inalienable right.
We will no longer live this American Horror Story.
Nonviolent direct action is a necessary, vital, and wholly American tool in forcing meaningful, permanent, transformative action from our leaders and fellow citizens.
Today, the 70th day of this nightmare, some may wonder why we have yet to stop ā to stop chanting, stop marching, stop occupying. But we have not yet found peace because we do not yet know justice. Therefore we, together with our allies, will continue to occupy the streets and the American consciousness until the book is closed.
Even in facing this terror, we have not met those who mean us harm with the same. Even in the face of this terror, we will continue to force the readers and writers of this, a most American of horror stories, to face the blackness that they fear, the blackness they have spent this entire story trying to erase, trying to soften, trying to co-opt, trying to escape. We will no longer allow you to escape this story and pretend that the epidemic of black lives dying by white hands is merely a figment of an active Black imagination. You must come face to face with the horror that we live daily. You must come to know and profess the truth of this story, and be determined to end it.
We are not concerned if this inconveniences you. Dead children are more than an inconvenience.
We are not concerned if this disturbs your comfort. Freedom outweighs that privilege.
We are not concerned if this upsets order. Your calm is built on our terror.
We are not concerned if this disrupts normalcy. We will disrupt life until we can live.
This is an American Horror Story. Together, we are writing the final chapter.
Michele Roberts – Executive Director of NBA -First Black and First Woman to Head Any Major Professional Sports Union in North America.
When it comes to our players having caps on salary, and the revenue generated has none, Roberts states,Ā “It’s incredibly un-American. My DNA is offended by it.”
Michele Roberts, the NBA players’ union executive director, on Wednesday questioned several of the principles that for decades have governed owner-player relations in the league, objecting to the concept of a salary cap while making clear she’d push for much more than a 50-50 split of basketball-related income.
“Why don’t we have the owners play half the games?” Roberts said, speaking in her Harlem office to ESPN The Magazine. “There would be no money if not for the players.”
“Let’s call it what it is. There. Would. Be. No. Money,” she added, pausing for emphasis. “Thirty more owners can come in, and nothing will change. These guys [the players] go? The game will change. So let’s stop pretending.”
But given the context of a nine-year, $24 billion TV deal set to begin in 2016, and the players’ ability to opt out of the league’s collective bargaining agreement after the 2016-17 season, Roberts’ relatively radical perspective could prove to be just as profound a change.
“I don’t know of any space other than the world of sports where there’s this notion that we will artificially deflate what someone’s able to make, just because,” she said, talking about a salary cap — a collectively bargained policy that, in its current form, has constrained team spending in the NBA since 1984-85. “It’s incredibly un-American. My DNA is offended by it.”
Roberts, a prominent attorney who will finish up her work for the prestigious law firm Skadden, Arps, does not have an extensive background in labor or sports but through work or pleasure is familiar with both.Ā “Her background is in negotiation, it’s in changing minds and it’s in listening ability and all of those skills will be very important to the union,” Ogletree said. “People will have a chance to see a woman who is well-prepared, willing to push for what’s right and has the ability to understand what it means for the long haul.”
All those factors are very important for the NBPA, which has struggled since the 2011 lockout and resulting collective bargaining agreement. Former executive director Billy Hunter was fired during All-Star weekend in 2013 after it was discovered he mismanaged union business, and the union has been without a permanent director since.
She sold the players on two key points: her personal story (growing up in a Bronx project) and her basic vision of a union.
“The players’ vision of the union is that it belongs to them and it should exist to promote, protect and advance their interest and not any other stakeholder or any other person,” Roberts said. “What they wanted in an executive director was someone who understood that and would not consider any deviation from that vision.”
Based in Washington, D.C., Roberts, who will turn 58 in September, has worked at Skadden, Arps for the past three years. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1977 and California-Berkeley’s law school in 1980.
Roberts was raised in a housing project in the South Bronx. She attended a prep school in the New York City suburbs. She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1977 and her J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. She began her career in 1980 at Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. She served in that role for eight years, rising to the chief of the trial division. She was mentored by attorney Charles Ogletree.[2][3]
Roberts was named executive director of the National Basketball Players Association in July 2014.[1] She succeeded Billy Hunter in the position, who was ousted for incompetence and nepotism. She received 32 of 36 votes.
Interesting question KRS One asked the KKK…Where are the thousands even millions of Klan robes? (It is said that at height of their movement, during the 1920’s, there were over 4 million members). One thing we know for sure is that they are still making and selling them, so we know, for our common sense tells us, they are still being used!
So I ponder a different perspective. Id like to know where are all the members? Im sure many are still alive! I would like to know why one must be anonymous to participate? I would like to know for what reason are the ceremonies kept a secret? If the belief of the organization is so strong, Why hide? If its right for you, surely its right for all. Please help all who don’t know to understand your logic towards the whole world. We must know, as this mindset is dictatory of our survival.
SOPHISTICATED SQUALOR…Yesterday, upon our visit to Nogales Detention Center, which was in fact the Border Patrol Warehouse, we stumbled upon more than 1000 children, held in barbed wire fence cages, who were unbathed, some for two weeks, laying on 1 1/2 inch thick army mats, sitting on 6 inch wide park benches, with the usuals of border crossing illnesses (scabies being largest health concern at the time) inside of a poorly lit warehouse.
This is a problem! For anyone’s children! (But where are the parents anyway?) This is clearly not the border patrols problem, as they are doing what they believe they are within their scope to provide, but in fact, it is the shedding of a poorly written comprehensive immigration policy which avoids the most obvious oversights and also lacks a clear structured plan for future citizens. Unfair and inhuman to deal with influx of children in this manner. And if it were my child, I’d have a grave problem with it.
Call emergency congress session, and not just for money this time, but for a plan to first secure borders, secondly setup social workers to find these children proper housing, and thirdly to rewrite the poorly written and antiquated immigration act!
But How do you integrate 2-300 children per day? (Obama you got business to handle at home.) You must stop it at border, (or even worse the core of government) or this crisis will continue to enLARGE.
The needs and issues concerning Black women are often overlooked by most all politicians, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress entitled, “The State of African-American Women in the United States.ā But Black women have capability to stand for their rights and push for their concerns regardless, as we have a great and loud
Voice and We must be heard!
āBlack women have become one of the most important voting blocks in the U.S. Having had the greatest turnout number across race, ethnicity and gender in the 2008 presidential election and helping to make history in the 2012 presidential election as black turnout surpassed the rate of white turnout for the first time on record,ā Janaye Ingram, National Action Networkās (NAN) national executive director, tells MadameNoire Business. āAs we look to the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential elections, black women can again play a critical role in ensuring that our voices are heard and our issues are part of the conversation by using the power of our vote.ā
10 Things Black Women Must Do To Make Strong Political Presence
1. REGISTER TO VOTE
āMake sure that we are registered to vote and then that we encourage our family members and friends to do the same,ā says NANās Janaye Ingram, who, in her 30s, is leading one of the largest civil rights organizations in the country. This āis an important and necessary first step in being part of the political process,ā she continues.
2. EDUCATE SELF AND OTHERS ON LAW
āIn many states, there are new laws affecting voter participation. Registered voters need to familiarize themselves with the new laws and make sure that they know how to continue to participate in compliance with them. In addition to knowing the laws in your state, women need to identify the issues that are affecting them and their communities,ā explains NANās Janaye Ingram, who works very closely with the White House on behalf of the civil rights.
āThere are a wealth of issues that will be decided in any election. Knowing the positions and proposed solutions of any candidate is important in deciding which candidate is more deserving of your vote. Just remember, good is not the enemy of perfect. You might not find a candidate who aligns with you on every issue, but the key is to find the candidate who aligns with you on the most important issues affecting you.ā
Donāt just register, you have to participate in the process. āOnce you have registered, you know the laws regarding your participation and you have identified which candidate(s) you will vote for, the most crucial part of the process is going to the polls and casting a ballot,ā explains Ingram.
3. MOBILIZE VOTERS
The more black women who vote, the stronger the bloc. āUrge your female circle of family and friends to vote. āEach one of us can encourage and empower other voters to participate in the electoral process. It happens through each step of engagement, but we should be assisting others in our family and other circles to obtain the information they need to be active and engaged voters as well,ā says Ingram.
4. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
Take the time to participate in peaceful protests or boycotts. There are some times that it will be necessary to take to the streets or withhold your business in order to really be heard. Make sure you know who the eventās organizerās are and that you agree with the philosophy before picking up the picket sign.
5. ENLIST MEN
Get the men in your life on board. Make them understand the various concerns and perspectives involved with the issue. And encourage them to show their support by voting, getting involved in events with you, donating money to your causes and spreading the word to their friends.
6. JOIN GROUPS
There are strength in numbers. Join organization that are promoting your causes. But donāt only attend meetings. Take in active role by helping to organize events, attract new members, and volunteer your ideas. Itās also a good idea to invite politicians to come meet and speak with the group. Go directly to the source of change!
7. PUT IT IN WRITING
If you want your representative to vote a certain way or disagree with an action she has taken, call or write to their office. Make sure the message is professional, succinct and that it gets your message across.
8. RUN FOR OFFICE
Donāt like the way things are being done, so them how to do it. Make a run for office in your community.
āThere are a small number of women who run for political office and a smaller number are women of color. We need more women of color to run for office so we can have a seat at the table where important policy decisions are made,ā Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine tells us. Devine is the first African-American female to serve on Columbia, SCās City Council and the first African-American to be elected at-large.
9. SUPPORT CANDIDATES THAT SUPPORT OUR ISSUES
Back those who have a history of pushing the concerns of black women. āEven if we donāt run for office, we need to be able to influence policy. The best way to do that is to support candidates that support our issues. The more people in office that care about issues that are important to us, helps shape good policy around those issues,ā says Councilwoman Devine
10. SPEAK OUT
Make your voice heard. āMake sure you are speaking out on issues on all levels. From your school board members, county and city council, all the way to national offices, make sure you are communicating with your elected officials. When you see things that are not right, speak up about it. And when you see that they donāt know enough about an issue that you have a particular expertise on, offer to educate them,ā says Councilwoman Devine, who is also a founding partner in the law firm of Jabber & Associates.
Jahi’s case drew national attention and fueled debate as a fierce court battle unfolded between devastated family members fighting to keep her on a ventilator and doctors arguing she’d already died.
Family members say the eighth-grader was alert and talking after doctors removed her tonsils, adenoids and extra sinus tissue in a surgery at the Oakland hospital on December 9.
Doctors had recommended the surgery to treat pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, a condition which made her stop breathing in her sleep and caused other medical problems.
Before the surgery, Jahi said she was worried that she would never wake up, according to her uncle. She seemed fine after the surgery, but asked for a Popsicle because her throat hurt.
Not long afterward, something went terribly wrong. In an intensive care unit, the girl began bleeding profusely, the family said.
According to family members, Jahi went into cardiac arrest. Days later, she was declared brain-dead.
Hospital officials have said privacy laws prevent them from discussing details of the case.
The Court Battle and the Medical Debate
The family and the hospital disagreed over whether to disconnect her from a ventilator, and the issue wound up in Alameda Superior Court.
In court documents and public comments, the hospital maintained that there’s no doubt that McMath is brain-dead, describing the condition as irreversible.
“No amount of prayer, no amount of hope, no amount of any type of medical procedure will bring her back,” Children’s Hospital Oakland spokesman Sam Singer said last month. “The medical situation here in this case is that Jahi McMath died several weeks ago.”
A judge on December 23 appointed Dr. Paul Fisher, chief of pediatric neurology at Stanford Children’s Hospital, to evaluate Jahi.
Fisher concluded the next day that she met the criteria for brain death. According to a court filing, Fisher found that the girl’s pupils were fully dilated and unresponsive to light and that she did not respond to a variety of intense stimuli.
His report also says Jahi showed no sign of breathing on her own when a ventilator was removed: “Patient failed apnea test.” The report says her heart was beating only because of the mechanical ventilator.
In addition, an imaging test showed no blood flow to Jahi’s brain, while another showed no sign of electrical activity.
Fisher’s conclusion: “Overall, unfortunate circumstances in 13-year-old with known, irreversible brain injury and now complete absence of cerebral function and complete absence of brainstem function, child meets all criteria for brain death, by professional societies and state of California.”
After seeing Fisher’s report, Alameda Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo concluded on December 24 that Jahi was brain dead. But Grillo twice ruled that the hospital had to hold off on disconnecting Jahi from life support, ultimately giving the family and the facility until January 7 to come to a resolution.
The Alameda County coroner issued a death certificate for Jahi on Friday, listing December 12 as the date of death. The certificate still needed to be accepted by the health department to become official.
Medical ethicists, meanwhile, say the high-profile case fuels a misperception: that the case is “giving the impression that dead people can come back to life,” Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, told CNN last month.
Family Members SeeĀ Reason for Hope
Jahi’s family members maintain that they’re hoping for a miracle.
Her mother told CNN last month that she’d seen improvements, including indications from a hospital monitor that she said suggest her daughter was trying to breathe on her own.
The girl’s uncle, Sealey, told reporters last week that a pediatrician has seen Jahi and has sworn she is not dead.
When asked about the girl’s possible movement, Singer, the hospital spokesman, said he would not comment directly on any claims the family makes, citing privacy laws. However, Singer said it is “quite common” for the muscles of brain dead patients to move, stressing it’s “not a sign of life.”
So far the family has raised more than $50,000 on GoFundMe.com to move her.Ā According to the site, more than 1,300 people have donated money in 10 days.
“We’re very grateful, very proud,” said Sealey. “We want to thank everyone that supported us, everyone that stood in our corner, everyone that prayed for us, everyone that helped donate to make this possible. Without you guys, none of this would be possible.”
He didn’t rule out the possibility that the family could eventually file a lawsuit against the hospital. But he dismissed concerns that details about what happened during and after Jahi’s surgery could be lost if she remains on a ventilator.
“That’s pretty much saying that she’s evidence and she’s a body, and we don’t look at it that way,” Sealey said. “We’re not worried about accountability. We’re worried about survival.”
In releasing Jahi, the hospital said: “Our hearts go out to the family as they grieve for this sad situation and we wish them closure and peace.”
See Hospital Accept the Responsibility to Care for Jahi McMath Here…
CNN’s Joe Sutton, Martin Savidge, Janet DiGiacomo, Greg Botelho, Elizabeth Landau and Caleb Hellerman contributed to this report.
DON’T expect this stuff to be taught in school……………. So let’s get to it…………..
1. The ENTIRE human race is of African origin. The oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans (or homo sapiens) were excavated at sites in East Africa. Human remains were discovered at Omo in Ethiopia that were dated at 195,000 years old, the oldest known in the world.
2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa that date back between 4 and 5 million years. The oldest known ancestral type of humanity is thought to have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at least 4.4 million years ago.
3. Africans were the first to organise fishing expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in northeastern ZaĆÆre (now Congo), was recovered a finely wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool, equally well crafted, believed to be a dagger. The discoveries suggested the existence of an early aquatic or fishing based culture.
4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site, dated the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old.
5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years ago. The Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches carved into it found in the Ishango region of ZaĆÆre (now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old, but a more sensitive recent dating has given dates of 25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of notches. Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four carved next to eight, ten carved next to two fives and finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8, and 10 and 5, represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven notches carved next to twenty-one notches, and nineteen notches carved next to nine notches. This represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 – 1 and 10 – 1. Finally, Row 3 shows eleven notches, thirteen notches, seventeen notches and nineteen notches. 11, 13, 17 and 19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20.
6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the first known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred Wendorf discovered that people in Egypt’s Western Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas, dates, legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools were also recovered. There were grindstones, milling stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving burins, and mortars and pestles.
7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter in south western Libya. The infant was buried in the foetal position and was mummified using a very sophisticated technique that must have taken hundreds of years to evolve. The technique predates the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by at least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but the mummy may date from 7438 (Ā±220) BC.
8. Africans carved the world’s first colossal sculpture 7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of Giza was fashioned with the head of a man combined with the body of a lion. A key and important question raised by this monument was: How old is it? In October 1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered conservative.
9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an article on its front page also page sixteen that was entitled Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In this article we were assured that: “Evidence of the oldest recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia” (i.e. the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of modern Egypt.)
10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”
11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer tells us that the Egyptians “manufactured a very striking range of combs in ivory: the shape of these is distinctly African and is like the combs used even today by Africans and those of African descent.”
12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city of Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists regularly visit today. An outer wall, now mostly in ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the entrance are a series of columns, the first stone-built columns known to historians. The North House also has ornamental columns built into the walls that have papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of limestone blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the centre of the complex is the Step Pyramid, the first of 90 Egyptian pyramids.
13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most extraordinary building in history, was a staggering 481 feet tall – the equivalent of a 40-storey building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, some weighing 100 tons.
14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the world’s first planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city was divided into two parts. One part housed the wealthier inhabitants ā the scribes, officials and foremen. The other part housed the ordinary people. The streets of the western section in particular, were straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other at right angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre wide, ran down the centre of every street.
15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun – each boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or quarters. There was a master’s quarter, quarters for women and servants, quarters for offices and finally, quarters for granaries, each facing a central courtyard. The master’s quarters had an open court with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this was a colonnade.
16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls, was the very largest building in antiquity. Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were above ground and the other 1,500 were underground.
17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient Egypt. One of the pharaohs built a city now known as Amarna. An American urban planner noted that: “Great importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in other Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use to dispose waste. Soap was made for washing the body. Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour. A solution of natron was used to keep insects from houses . . . Amarna may have been the first planned ‘garden city’.”
18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on earth – even more than Egypt. There are at least 223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal and MeroĆ«. They are generally 20 to 30 metres high and steep sided.
19. The Sudanese city of Meroƫ is rich in surviving monuments. Becoming the capital of the Kushite Empire between 590 BC until AD 350, there are 84 pyramids in this city alone, many built with their own miniature temple. In addition, there are ruins of a bath house sharing affinities with those of the Romans. Its central feature is a large pool approached by a flight of steps with waterspouts decorated with lion heads.
20. Bling culture has a long and interesting history. Gold was used to decorate ancient Sudanese temples. One writer reported that: “Recent excavations at Meroe and Mussawwarat es-Sufra revealed temples with walls and statues covered with gold leaf”.
21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese invented a writing script that had twenty-three letters of which four were vowels and there was also a word divider. Hundreds of ancient texts have survived that were in this script. Some are on display in the British Museum.
22. In central Nigeria, West Africa’s oldest civilisation flourished between 1000 BC and 300 BC. Discovered in 1928, the ancient culture was called the Nok Civilisation, named after the village in which the early artefacts were discovered. Two modern scholars, declare that “[a]fter calibration, the period of Nok art spans from 1000 BC until 300 BC”. The site itself is much older going back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC.
23. West Africans built in stone by 1100 BC. In the Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists have found “large stone masonry villages” that date back to 1100 BC. The villages consisted of roughly circular compounds connected by “well-defined streets”.
25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of Ancient Ghana, flourished from 300 to 1240 AD. Located in modern day Mauritania, archaeological excavations have revealed houses, almost habitable today, for want of renovation and several storeys high. They had underground rooms, staircases and connecting halls. Some had nine rooms. One part of the city alone is estimated to have housed 30,000 people…:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
26. West Africa had walled towns and cities in the pre-colonial period. Winwood Reade, an English historian visited West Africa in the nineteenth century and commented that: “There are . . . thousands of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of ancient Greece.”
27. Lord Lugard, an English official, estimated in 1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in existence in the whole of just the Kano province of northern Nigeria.
28. Cheques are not quite as new an invention as we were led to believe. In the tenth century, an Arab geographer, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe region of Ancient Ghana. Writing in 951 AD, he told of a cheque for 42,000 golden dinars written to a merchant in the city of Audoghast by his partner in Sidjilmessa.
29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD, informs us that the King of Ghana was “the richest king on the face of the earth” whose pre-eminence was due to the quantity of gold nuggets that had been amassed by the himself and by his predecessors.
30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was paved in 1000 AD on the orders of a female ruler with decorations that originated in Ancient America. Naturally, no-one wants to explain how this took place approximately 500 years before the time of Christopher Columbus!
31. West Africa had bling culture in 1067 AD. One source mentions that when the Emperor of Ghana gives audience to his people: “he sits in a pavilion around which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold: behind him stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair . . . The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed . . . they wear collars of gold and silver.”
32. Glass windows existed at that time. The residence of the Ghanaian Emperor in 1116 AD was: “A well-built castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows.”
34. One of the great achievements of the Yoruba was their urban culture. “By the year A.D. 1300,” says a modern scholar, “the Yoruba people built numerous walled cities surrounded by farms”. The cities were Owu, Oyo, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ketu, Popo, Egba, Sabe, Dassa, Egbado, Igbomina, the sixteen Ekiti principalities, Owo and Ondo.
35. Yoruba metal art of the mediaeval period was of world class. One scholar wrote that Yoruba art “would stand comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had to offer.”
36. In the Malian city of Gao stands the Mausoleum of Askia the Great, a weird sixteenth century edifice that resembles a step pyramid.
37. Thousands of mediaeval tumuli have been found across West Africa. Nearly 7,000 were discovered in north-west Senegal alone spread over nearly 1,500 sites. They were probably built between 1000 and 1300 AD.
38. Excavations at the Malian city of Gao carried out by Cambridge University revealed glass windows. One of the finds was entitled: “Fragments of alabaster window surrounds and a piece of pink window glass, Gao 10th ā 14th century.”
39. In 1999 the BBC produced a television series entitled Millennium. The programme devoted to the fourteenth century opens with the following disclosure: “In the fourteenth century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threatened civilisations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa the Empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world.”
40. Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.
41. On a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD, a Malian ruler, Mansa Musa, brought so much money with him that his visit resulted in the collapse of gold prices in Egypt and Arabia. It took twelve years for the economies of the region to normalise.
42. West African gold mining took place on a vast scale. One modern writer said that: “It is estimated that the total amount of gold mined in West Africa up to 1500 was 3,500 tons, worth more than $****30 billion in today’s market.”
43. The old Malian capital of Niani had a 14th century building called the Hall of Audience. It was an surmounted by a dome, adorned with arabesques of striking colours. The windows of an upper floor were plated with wood and framed in silver; those of a lower floor were plated with wood, framed in gold.
44. Mali in the 14th century was highly urbanised. Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus was laid the foundation of an urban civilisation. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated”.
45. The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th century population of 115,000 – 5 times larger than mediaeval London. Mansa Musa, built the Djinguerebere Mosque in the fourteenth century. There was the University Mosque in which 25,000 students studied and the Oratory of Sidi Yayia. There were over 150 Koran schools in which 20,000 children were instructed. London, by contrast, had a total 14th century population of 20,000 people.
46. National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its intellectual culture. According to Professor Henry Louis Gates, 25,000 university students studied there.
47. Many old West African families have private library collections that go back hundreds of years. The Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and Oudane have a total of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. There may be another 6,000 books still surviving in the other city of Walata. Some date back to the 8th century AD. There are 11,000 books in private collections in Niger. Finally, in Timbuktu, Mali, there are about 700,000 surviving books.
48. A collection of one thousand six hundred books was considered a small library for a West African scholar of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library of any of his friends – he had only 1600 volumes.
49. Concerning these old manuscripts, Michael Palin, in his TV series Sahara, said the imam of Timbuktu “has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse, they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations and were given a very hard time for it.”
50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had a government position called Minister for Etiquette and Protocol.
51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.”
52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum fĆ¼r Vƶlkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”
53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare . . . But the part of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”
54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an article of cloth can be woven by the Yoruba weavers as by any people . . . in durability, their cloths far excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.”
55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city of Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was 100 miles long and seventy feet high in places. The internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.
56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were also distinguished. Various European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote of the delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth of tissue and velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious observation that: “Their brocades, both high and low, were far more valuable than the Italian.”
57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one modern scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting . . . the existence of an expert metallurgical art in the ancient Kongo . . . The Bakongo were aware of the toxicity of lead vapours. They devised preventative and curative methods, both pharmacological (massive doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting of pressure to free the digestive tract), for combating lead poisoning.”
58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano dates back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has gradually evolved over generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial report of the city from 1902, described it as “a network of buildings covering an area of 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15 feet inside . . . in itself no mean citadel”.
59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that the emperor’s cavalry had golden “stirrups, spurs, bits and buckles.” Even the ruler’s dogs had “chains of the finest gold”.
60. One of the government positions in mediaeval Kanem-Borno was Astronomer Royal.
61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective of town planning.
62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.”
63. The Nigerian city of Kano in 1851 produced an estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million hides each year for export.
64. In 1246 AD Dunama II of Kanem-Borno exchanged embassies with Al-Mustansir, the king of Tunis. He sent the North African court a costly present, which apparently included a giraffe. An old chronicle noted that the rare animal “created a sensation in Tunis”.
65. By the third century BC the city of Carthage on the coast of Tunisia was opulent and impressive. It had a population of 700,000 and may even have approached a million. Lining both sides of three streets were rows of tall houses six storeys high.
66. The Ethiopian city of Axum has a series of 7 giant obelisks that date from perhaps 300 BC to 300 AD. They have details carved into them that represent windows and doorways of several storeys. The largest obelisk, now fallen, is in fact “the largest monolith ever made anywhere in the world”. It is 108 feet long, weighs a staggering 500 tons, and represents a thirteen-storey building.
67. Ethiopia minted its own coins over 1,500 years ago. One scholar wrote that: “Almost no other contemporary state anywhere in the world could issue in gold, a statement of sovereignty achieved only by Rome, Persia, and the Kushan kingdom in northern India at the time.”
68. The Ethiopian script of the 4th century AD influenced the writing script of Armenia. A Russian historian noted that: “Soon after its creation, the Ethiopic vocalised script began to influence the scripts of Armenia and Georgia. D. A. Olderogge suggested that Mesrop Mashtotz used the vocalised Ethiopic script when he invented the Armenian alphabet.”
69. “In the first half of the first millennium CE,” says a modern scholar, Ethiopia “was ranked as one of the world’s greatest empires”. A Persian cleric of the third century AD identified it as the third most important state in the world after Persia and Rome.
70. Ethiopia has 11 underground mediaeval churches built by being carved out of the ground. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Roha became the new capital of the Ethiopians. Conceived as a New Jerusalem by its founder, Emperor Lalibela (c.1150-1230), it contains 11 churches, all carved out of the rock of the mountains by hammer and chisel. All of the temples were carved to a depth of 11 metres or so below ground level. The largest is the House of the Redeemer, a staggering 33.7 metres long, 23.7 metres wide and 11.5 metres deep.
71. Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports research that was conducted in the region in the early 1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in caves or partially or completely cut from the living rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were known. At least as many more probably await revelation.”
72. In 1209 AD Emperor Lalibela of Ethiopia sent an embassy to Cairo bringing the sultan unusual gifts including an elephant, a hyena, a zebra, and a giraffe.
73. In Southern Africa, there are at least 600 stone built ruins in the regions of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. These ruins are called Mazimbabwe in Shona, the Bantu language of the builders, and means great revered house and “signifies court”.
74. The Great Zimbabwe was the largest of these ruins. It consists of 12 clusters of buildings, spread over 3 square miles. Its outer walls were made from 100,000 tons of granite bricks. In the fourteenth century, the city housed 18,000 people, comparable in size to that of London of the same period.
75. Bling culture existed in this region. At the time of our last visit, the Horniman Museum in London had exhibits of headrests with the caption: “Headrests have been used in Africa since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. Remains of some headrests, once covered in gold foil, have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and burial sites like Mapungubwe dating to the twelfth century after Christ.”
76. Dr Albert Churchward, author of Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, pointed out that writing was found in one of the stone built ruins: “Lt.-Col. E. L. de Cordes . . . who was in South Africa for three years, informed the writer that in one of the ‘Ruins’ there is a ‘stone-chamber,’ with a vast quantity of Papyri, covered with old Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Boer hunter discovered this, and a large quantity was used to light a fire with, and yet still a larger quantity remained there now.”
77. On bling culture, one seventeenth century visitor to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that ruled over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress in various ways: at court of the Kings their grandees wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold and silk cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width four covados [2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes with gold lace in between, trimmed on two sides, like a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place with a two fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses on silk.”
78. Southern Africans mined gold on an epic scale. One modern writer tells us that: “The estimated amount of gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients was staggering, exceeding 43 million tons. The ore yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which today would be valued at over $******7.5 billion.”
79. Apparently the Monomotapan royal palace at Mount Fura had chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An eighteenth century geography book provided the following .. “The inside consists of a great variety of sumptuous apartments, spacious and lofty halls, all adorned with a magnificent cotton tapestry, the manufacture of the country. The floors, cielings [sic], beams and rafters are all either gilt or plated with gold curiously wrought, as are also the chairs of state, tables, benches &c. The candle-sticks and branches are made of ivory inlaid with gold, and hang from the cieling by chains of the same metal, or of silver gilt.”
80. Monomotapa had a social welfare system. Antonio Bocarro, a Portuguese contemporary, informs us that the Emperor: “shows great charity to the blind and maimed, for these are called the king’s poor, and have land and revenues for their subsistence, and when they wish to pass through the kingdoms, wherever they come food and drinks are given to them at the public cost as long as they remain there, and when they leave that place to go to another they are provided with what is necessary for their journey, and a guide, and some one to carry their wallet to the next village. In every place where they come there is the same obligation.”
81. Many southern Africans have indigenous and pre-colonial words for ‘gun’. Scholars have generally been reluctant to investigate or explain this fact.
82. Evidence discovered in 1978 showed that East Africans were making steel for more than 1,500 years: “Assistant Professor of Anthropology Peter Schmidt and Professor of Engineering Donald H. Avery have found as long as 2,000 years ago Africans living on the western shores of Lake Victoria had produced carbon steel in preheated forced draft furnaces, a method that was technologically more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.”
83. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory was found at Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, etcetera, as well as the moon, in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days.
84. Autopsies and caesarean operations were routinely and effectively carried out by surgeons in pre-colonial Uganda. The surgeons routinely used antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. Commenting on a Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, one author wrote: “The whole conduct of the operation . . . suggests a skilled long-practiced surgical team at work conducting a well-tried and familiar operation with smooth efficiency.”
85. Sudan in the mediaeval period had churches, cathedrals, monasteries and castles. Their ruins still exist today.
86. The mediaeval Nubian Kingdoms kept archives. From the site of Qasr Ibrim legal texts, documents and correspondence were discovered. An archaeologist informs us that: “On the site are preserved thousands of documents in Meroitic, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, Arabic and Turkish.”
87. Glass windows existed in mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found evidence of window glass at the Sudanese cities of Old Dongola and Hambukol.
88. Bling culture existed in the mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists found an individual buried at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in the city of Old Dongola. He was clad in an extremely elaborate garb consisting of costly textiles of various fabrics including gold thread. At the city of Soba East, there were individuals buried in fine clothing, including items with golden thread.
89. Style and fashion existed in mediaeval Sudan. A dignitary at Jebel Adda in the late thirteenth century AD was interned with a long coat of red and yellow patterned damask folded over his body. Underneath, he wore plain cotton trousers of long and baggy cut. A pair of red leather slippers with turned up toes lay at the foot of the coffin. The body was wrapped in enormous pieces of gold brocaded striped silk.
90. Sudan in the ninth century AD had housing complexes with bath rooms and piped water. An archaeologist wrote that Old Dongola, the capital of Makuria, had: “a[n] . . . eighth to . . . ninth century housing complex. The houses discovered here differ in their hitherto unencountered spatial layout as well as their functional programme (water supply installation, bathroom with heating system) and interiors decorated with murals.”
91. In 619 AD, the Nubians sent a gift of a giraffe to the Persians.
92. The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has ruins of well over 50 towns and cities. They flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries AD.
93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note that Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys high”.
94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, include the city walls, the palace, private houses, the Great Mosque, seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.
95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a water purifier made of limestone for recycling water.
96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains evidence of piped water controlled by taps. In addition it had bathrooms and indoor toilets.
97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city of Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was the “principal city on the coast the greater part of whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.” Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built.”
98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which they wear on their legs and arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears”.
99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins of Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian city of Kilwa. It had over a hundred rooms, including a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and an octagonal swimming pool.
100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent ambassadors to China carrying a gift that created a sensation at the Imperial Court. It was, of course, a giraffe.
So there it is………………….
This was on my Myspace page many years back, and when I went to de-activate i found it again. So rather than lose this precious information, I chose to re-distribute it to Facebook! Read it all, hope something clicks off for you!
Courtesy of Norm J. Blunt
**Disclaimer: Credits to this blog goes to SHEPHAT magazine, they put this wonderful information together and
I am simply sharing…***
Kathryn McKinney
Due to recent studies regarding the practice of adding fluoride to our water, I believe that its time to increase our awareness and make some informed decisions.
50 REASONS TO OPPOSE FLUORIDATION
By Paul Connett, PhD (updated in September 2012)
Introduction
In Europe, only Ireland (73%), Poland (1%), Serbia (3%), Spain (11%), and the U.K. (11%) fluoridate any of their water. Most developed countries, including Japan and 97% of the western European population, do not consume fluoridated water.
In the U.S., about 70% of public water supplies are fluoridated. This equates to approximately 185 million people, which is over half the number of people drinking artificially fluoridated water worldwide. Some countries have areas with high natural fluoride levels in the water. These include India, China and parts of Africa. In these countries measures are being taken to remove the fluoride because of the health problems that fluoride can cause.
Fluoridation is a bad medical practice
1) Fluoride is the only chemical added to water for the purpose of medical treatment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies fluoride as a drug when used to prevent or mitigate disease (FDA 2000). As a matter of basic logic, adding fluoride to water for the sole purpose of preventing tooth decay (a non-waterborne disease) is a form of medical treatment. All other water treatment chemicals are added to improve the waterās quality or safety, which fluoride does not do.
2) Fluoridation is unethical. Informed consent is standard practice for all medication, and one of the key reasons why most of Western Europe has ruled against fluoridation. With water fluoridation we are allowing governments to do to whole communities (forcing people to take a medicine irrespective of their consent) what individual doctors cannot do to individual patients.
Put another way: Does a voter have the right to require that their neighbor ingest a certain medication (even if it is against that neighborās will)?
3) The dose cannot be controlled. Once fluoride is put in the water it is impossible to control the dose each individual receives because people drink different amounts of water. Being able to control the dose a patient receives is critical. Some people (e.g., manual laborers, athletes, diabetics, and people with kidney disease) drink substantially more water than others.
4) The fluoride goes to everyone regardless of age, health or vulnerability. According to Dr. Arvid Carlsson, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology and one of the scientists who helped keep fluoridation out of Sweden:
āWater fluoridation goes against leading principles of pharmacotherapy, which is progressing from a stereotyped medication ā of the type 1 tablet 3 times a day ā to a much more individualized therapy as regards both dosage and selection of drugs. The addition of drugs to the drinking water means exactly the opposite of an individualized therapyā (Carlsson 1978).
5) People now receive fluoride from many other sources besides water. Fluoridated water is not the only way people are exposed to fluoride. Other sources of fluoride include food and beverages processed with fluoridated water (Kiritsy 1996; Heilman 1999), fluoridated dental products (Bentley 1999; Levy 1999), mechanically deboned meat (Fein 2001), tea (Levy 1999), and pesticide residues (e.g., from cryolite) on food (Stannard 1991; Burgstahler 1997). It is now widely acknowledged that exposure to non-water sources of fluoride has significantly increased since the water fluoridation program first began (NRC 2006).
6) Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. No disease, not even tooth decay, is caused by a āfluoride deficiency.ā(NRC 1993; Institute of Medicine 1997, NRC 2006). Not a single biological process has been shown to require fluoride. On the contrary there is extensive evidence that fluoride can interfere with many important biological processes. Fluoride interferes with numerous enzymes (Waldbott 1978). In combination with aluminum, fluoride interferes with G-proteins (Bigay 1985, 1987). Such interactions give aluminum-fluoride complexes the potential to interfere with signals from growth factors, hormones and neurotransmitters (Strunecka & Patocka 1999; Li 2003). More and more studies indicate that fluoride can interfere with biochemistry in fundamental ways (Barbier 2010).
7) The level in mothersā milk is very low. Considering reason #6 it is perhaps not surprising that the level of fluoride in motherās milk is remarkably low (0.004 ppm, NRC, 2006). This means that a bottle-fed baby consuming fluoridated water (0.6 ā 1.2 ppm) can get up to 300 times more fluoride than a breast-fed baby. There are no benefits (see reasons #11-19), only risks (see reasons #21-36), for infants ingesting this heightened level of fluoride at such an early age (an age where susceptibility to environmental toxins is particularly high).
8 ) Fluoride accumulates in the body. Healthy adult kidneys excrete 50 to 60% of the fluoride ingested each day (Marier & Rose 1971). The remainder accumulates in the body, largely in calcifying tissues such as the bones and pineal gland (Luke 1997, 2001). Infants and children excrete less fluoride from their kidneys and take up to 80% of ingested fluoride into their bones (Ekstrand 1994). The fluoride concentration in bone steadily increases over a lifetime (NRC 2006).
9) No health agency in fluoridated countries is monitoring fluoride exposure or side effects. No regular measurements are being made of the levels of fluoride in urine, blood, bones, hair, or nails of either the general population or sensitive subparts of the population (e.g., individuals with kidney disease).
10) There has never been a single randomized controlled trial to demonstrate fluoridationās effectiveness or safety. Despite the fact that fluoride has been added to community water supplies for over 60 years, āthere have been no randomized trials of water fluoridationā (Cheng 2007). Randomized trials are the standard method for determining the safety and effectiveness of any purportedly beneficial medical treatment. In 2000, the British Governmentās āYork Reviewā could not give a single fluoridation trial a Grade A classification ā despite 50 years of research (McDonagh 2000). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to classify fluoride as an āunapproved new drug.ā
Swallowing fluoride provides no (or very little) benefit
11) Benefit is topical not systemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 1999, 2001) has now acknowledged that the mechanism of fluorideās benefits are mainly topical, not systemic. There is no need whatsoever, therefore, to swallow fluoride to protect teeth. Since the purported benefit of fluoride is topical, and the risks are systemic, it makes more sense to deliver the fluoride directly to the tooth in the form of toothpaste. Since swallowing fluoride is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous, there is no justification for forcing people (against their will) to ingest fluoride through their water supply.
12) Fluoridation is not necessary. Most western, industrialized countries have rejected water fluoridation, but have nevertheless experienced the same decline in childhood dental decay as fluoridated countries. (See data from World Health Organization presented graphically in Figure).
13) Fluoridationās role in the decline of tooth decay is in serious doubt. The largest survey ever conducted in the US (over 39,000 children from 84 communities) by the National Institute of Dental Research showed little difference in tooth decay among children in fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities (Hileman 1989). According to NIDR researchers, the study found an average difference of only 0.6 DMFS (Decayed, Missing, and Filled Surfaces) in the permanent teeth of children aged 5-17 residing their entire lives in either fluoridated or unfluoridated areas (Brunelle & Carlos, 1990). This difference is less than one tooth surface, and less than 1% of the 100+ tooth surfaces available in a childās mouth. Large surveys from three Australian states have found even less of a benefit, with decay reductions ranging from 0 to 0.3 of one permanent tooth surface (Spencer 1996; Armfield & Spencer 2004). None of these studies have allowed for the possible delayed eruption of the teeth that may be caused by exposure to fluoride, for which there is some evidence (Komarek 2005). A one-year delay in eruption of the permanent teeth would eliminate the very small benefit recorded in these modern studies.
14) NIH-funded study on individual fluoride ingestion and tooth decay found no significant correlation. A multi-million dollar, U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study found no significant relationship between tooth decay and fluoride intake among children. (Warren 2009) This is the first time tooth decay has been investigated as a function of individual exposure (as opposed to mere residence in a fluoridated community).
15) Tooth decay is high in low-income communities that have been fluoridated for years. Despite some claims to the contrary, water fluoridation cannot prevent the oral health crises that result from rampant poverty, inadequate nutrition, and lack of access to dental care. There have been numerous reports of severe dental crises in low-income neighborhoods of US cities that have been fluoridated for over 20 years (e.g., Boston, Cincinnati, New York City, and Pittsburgh). In addition, research has repeatedly found fluoridation to be ineffective at preventing the most serious oral health problem facing poor children, namely ābaby bottle tooth decay,ā otherwise known as early childhood caries (Barnes 1992; Shiboski 2003).
17) Tooth decay was coming down before fluoridation started. Modern research shows that decay rates were coming down before fluoridation was introduced in Australia and New Zealand and have continued to decline even after its benefits would have been maximized. (Colquhoun 1997; Diesendorf 1986). As the following figure indicates, many other factors are responsible for the decline of tooth decay that has been universally reported throughout the western world.
18) The studies that launched fluoridation were methodologically flawed. The early trials conducted between 1945 and 1955 in North America that helped to launch fluoridation, have been heavily criticized for their poor methodology and poor choice of control communities (De Stefano 1954; Sutton 1959, 1960, 1996; Ziegelbecker 1970). According to Dr. Hubert Arnold, a statistician from the University of California at Davis, the early fluoridation trials āare especially rich in fallacies, improper design, invalid use of statistical methods, omissions of contrary data, and just plain muddleheadedness and hebetude.ā Serious questions have also been raised about Trendley Deanās (the father of fluoridation) famous 21-city study from 1942 (Ziegelbecker 1981).
Children are being over-exposed to fluoride
19) Children are being over-exposed to fluoride. The fluoridation program has massively failed to achieve one of its key objectives, i.e., to lower dental decay rates while limiting the occurrence of dental fluorosis (a discoloring of tooth enamel caused by too much fluoride. The goal of the early promoters of fluoridation was to limit dental fluorosis (in its very mild form) to10% of children (NRC 1993, pp. 6-7). In 2010, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 41% of American adolescents had dental fluorosis, with 8.6% having mild fluorosis and 3.6% having either moderate or severe dental fluorosis (Beltran-Aguilar 2010). As the 41% prevalence figure is a national average and includes children living in fluoridated and unfluoridated areas, the fluorosis rate in fluoridated communities will obviously be higher. The British Governmentās York Review estimated that up to 48% of children in fluoridated areas worldwide have dental fluorosis in all forms, with 12.5% having fluorosis of aesthetic concern (McDonagh, 2000).
20) The highest doses of fluoride are going to bottle-fed babies. Because of their sole reliance on liquids for their food intake, infants consuming formula made with fluoridated water have the highest exposure to fluoride, by bodyweight, in the population. Because infant exposure to fluoridated water has been repeatedly found to be a major risk factor for developing dental fluorosis later in life (Marshall 2004; Hong 2006; Levy 2010), a number of dental researchers have recommended that parents of newborns not use fluoridated water when reconstituting formula (Ekstrand 1996; Pendrys 1998; Fomon 2000; Brothwell 2003; Marshall 2004). Even the American Dental Association (ADA), the most ardent institutional proponent of fluoridation, distributed a November 6, 2006 email alert to its members recommending that parents be advised that formula should be made with ālow or no-fluoride water.ā Unfortunately, the ADA has done little to get this information into the hands of parents. As a result, many parents remain unaware of the fluorosis risk from infant exposure to fluoridated water.
Evidence of harm to other tissues
21) Dental fluorosis may be an indicator of wider systemic damage. There have been many suggestions as to the possible biochemical mechanisms underlying the development of dental fluorosis (Matsuo 1998; Den Besten 1999; Sharma 2008; Duan 2011; Tye 2011) and they are complicated for a lay reader. While promoters of fluoridation are content to dismiss dental fluorosis (in its milder forms) as merely a cosmetic effect, it is rash to assume that fluoride is not impacting other developing tissues when it is visibly damaging the teeth by some biochemical mechanism (Groth 1973; Colquhoun 1997). Moreover, ingested fluoride can only cause dental fluorosis during the period before the permanent teeth have erupted (6-8 years), other tissues are potentially susceptible to damage throughout life. For example, in areas of naturally high levels of fluoride the first indicator of harm is dental fluorosis in children. In the same communities many older people develop skeletal fluorosis.
22) Fluoride may damage the brain. According to the National Research Council (2006), āit is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain.ā In a review of the literature commissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fluoride has been listed among about 100 chemicals for which there is āsubstantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity.ā Animal experiments show that fluoride accumulates in the brain and alters mental behavior in a manner consistent with a neurotoxic agent (Mullenix 1995). In total, there have now been over 100 animal experiments showing that fluoride can damage the brain and impact learning and behavior. According to fluoridation proponents, these animal studies can be ignored because high doses were used. However, it is important to note that rats generally require five times more fluoride to reach the same plasma levels in humans (Sawan 2010). Further, one animal experiment found effects at remarkably low doses (Varner 1998). In this study, rats fed for one year with 1 ppm fluoride in their water (the same level used in fluoridation programs), using either sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride, had morphological changes to their kidneys and brains, an increased uptake of aluminum in the brain, and the formation of beta-amyloid deposits which are associated with Alzheimerās disease. Other animal studies have found effects on the brain at water fluoride levels as low as 5 ppm (Liu 2010).
23) Fluoride may lower IQ. There have now been 33 studies from China, Iran, India and Mexico that have reported an association between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ. One of these studies (Lin 1991) indicates that even just moderate levels of fluoride exposure (e.g., 0.9 ppm in the water) can exacerbate the neurological defects of iodine deficiency. Other studies have found IQ reductions at 1.9 ppm (Xiang 2003a,b); 0.3-3.0 ppm (Ding 2011); 1.8-3.9 ppm (Xu 1994); 2.0 ppm (Yao 1996, 1997); 2.1-3.2 ppm (An 1992); 2.38 ppm (Poureslami 2011); 2.45 ppm (Eswar 2011); 2.5 ppm (Seraj 2006); 2.85 ppm (Hong 2001); 2.97 ppm (Wang 2001, Yang 1994); 3.15 ppm (Lu 2000); 4.12 ppm (Zhao 1996). In the Ding study, each 1 ppm increase of fluoride in urine was associated with a loss of 0.59 IQ points. None of these studies indicate an adequate margin of safety to protect all children drinking artificially fluoridated water from this affect. According to the National Research Council (2006), āthe consistency of the results [in fluoride/IQ studies] appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence.ā The NRCās conclusion has recently been amplified by a team of Harvard scientists whose fluoride/IQ meta-review concludes that fluorideās impact on the developing brain should be a āhigh research priority.ā (Choi et al., 2012). Except for one small IQ study from New Zealand (Spittle 1998) no fluoridating country has yet investigated the matter.
24) Fluoride may cause non-IQ neurotoxic effects. Reduced IQ is not the only neurotoxic effect that may result from fluoride exposure. At least three human studies have reported an association between fluoride exposure and impaired visual-spatial organization (Calderon 2000; Li 2004; Rocha-Amador 2009); while four other studies have found an association between prenatal fluoride exposure and fetal brain damage (Han 1989; Du 1992; Dong 1993; Yu 1996).
25) Fluoride affects the pineal gland. Studies by Jennifer Luke (2001) show that fluoride accumulates in the human pineal gland to very high levels. In her Ph.D. thesis, Luke has also shown in animal studies that fluoride reduces melatonin production and leads to an earlier onset of puberty (Luke 1997). Consistent with Lukeās findings, one of the earliest fluoridation trials in the U.S. (Schlesinger 1956) reported that on average young girls in the fluoridated community reached menstruation 5 months earlier than girls in the non-fluoridated community. Inexplicably, no fluoridating country has attempted to reproduce either Lukeās or Schlesingerās findings or examine the issue any further.
26) Fluoride affects thyroid function. According to the U.S. National Research Council (2006), āseveral lines of information indicate an effect of fluoride exposure on thyroid function.ā In the Ukraine, Bachinskii (1985) found a lowering of thyroid function, among otherwise healthy people, at 2.3 ppm fluoride in water. In the middle of the 20th century, fluoride was prescribed by a number of European doctors to reduce the activity of the thyroid gland for those suffering from hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) (Stecher 1960; Waldbott 1978). According to a clinical study by Galletti and Joyet (1958), the thyroid function of hyperthyroid patients was effectively reduced at just 2.3 to 4.5 mg/day of fluoride ion. To put this finding in perspective, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, 1991) has estimated that total fluoride exposure in fluoridated communities ranges from 1.6 to 6.6 mg/day. This is a remarkable fact, particularly considering the rampant and increasing problem of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) in the United States and other fluoridated countries. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include depression, fatigue, weight gain, muscle and joint pains, increased cholesterol levels, and heart disease. In 2010, the second most prescribed drug of the year was Synthroid (sodium levothyroxine) which is a hormone replacement drug used to treat an underactive thyroid.
27) Fluoride causes arthritic symptoms. Some of the early symptoms of skeletal fluorosis (a fluoride-induced bone and joint disease that impacts millions of people in India, China, and Africa), mimic the symptoms of arthritis (Singh 1963; Franke 1975; Teotia 1976; Carnow 1981; Czerwinski 1988; DHHS 1991). According to a review on fluoridation published in Chemical & Engineering News, āBecause some of the clinical symptoms mimic arthritis, the first two clinical phases of skeletal fluorosis could be easily misdiagnosedā (Hileman 1988). Few, if any, studies have been done to determine the extent of this misdiagnosis, and whether the high prevalence of arthritis in America (1 in 3 Americans have some form of arthritis ā CDC, 2002) and other fluoridated countries is related to growing fluoride exposure, which is highly plausible. Even when individuals in the U.S. suffer advanced forms of skeletal fluorosis (from drinking large amounts of tea), it has taken years of misdiagnoses before doctors finally correctly diagnosed the condition as fluorosis.
28) Fluoride damages bone. An early fluoridation trial (Newburgh-Kingston 1945-55) found a significant two-fold increase in cortical bone defects among children in the fluoridated community (Schlesinger 1956). The cortical bone is the outside layer of the bone and is important to protect against fracture. While this result was not considered important at the time with respect to bone fractures, it did prompt questions about a possible link to osteosarcoma (Caffey, 1955; NAS, 1977). In 2001, Alarcon-Herrera and co-workers reported a linear correlation between the severity of dental fluorosis and the frequency of bone fractures in both children and adults in a high fluoride area in Mexico.
29) Fluoride may increase hip fractures in the elderly. When high doses of fluoride (average 26 mg per day) were used in trials to treat patients with osteoporosis in an effort to harden their bones and reduce fracture rates, it actually led to a higher number of fractures, particularly hip fractures (Inkovaara 1975; Gerster 1983; Dambacher 1986; OāDuffy 1986; Hedlund 1989; Bayley 1990; Gutteridge 1990. 2002; Orcel 1990; Riggs 1990 and Schnitzler 1990). Hip fracture is a very serious issue for the elderly, often leading to a loss of independence or a shortened life. There have been over a dozen studies published since 1990 that have investigated a possible relationship between hip fractures and long term consumption of artificially fluoridated water or water with high natural levels. The results have been mixed ā some have found an association and others have not. Some have even claimed a protective effect. One very important study in China, which examined hip fractures in six Chinese villages, found what appears to be a dose-related increase in hip fracture as the concentration of fluoride rose from 1 ppm to 8 ppm (Li 2001) offering little comfort to those who drink a lot of fluoridated water. Moreover, in the only human epidemiological study to assess bone strength as a function of bone fluoride concentration, researchers from the University of Toronto found that (as with animal studies) the strength of bone declined with increasing fluoride content (Chachra 2010). Finally, a recent study from Iowa (Levy 2009), published data suggesting that low-level fluoride exposure may have a detrimental effect on cortical bone density in girls (an effect that has been repeatedly documented in clinical trials and which has been posited as an important mechanism by which fluoride may increase bone fracture rates).
30) People with impaired kidney function are particularly vulnerable to bone damage. Because of their inability to effectively excrete fluoride, people with kidney disease are prone to accumulating high levels of fluoride in their bone and blood. As a result of this high fluoride body burden, kidney patients have an elevated risk for developing skeletal fluorosis. In one of the few U.S. studies investigating the matter, crippling skeletal fluorosis was documented among patients with severe kidney disease drinking water with just 1.7 ppm fluoride (Johnson 1979). Since severe skeletal fluorosis in kidney patients has been detected in small case studies, it is likely that larger, systematic studies would detect skeletal fluorosis at even lower fluoride levels.
31) Fluoride may cause bone cancer (osteosarcoma). A U.S. government-funded animal study found a dose-dependent increase in bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in fluoride-treated, male rats (NTP 1990). Following the results of this study, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reviewed national cancer data in the U.S. and found a significantly higher rate of osteosarcoma (a bone cancer) in young men in fluoridated versus unfluoridated areas (Hoover et al 1991a). While the NCI concluded (based on an analysis lacking statistical power) that fluoridation was not the cause (Hoover et al 1991b), no explanation was provided to explain the higher rates in the fluoridated areas. A smaller study from New Jersey (Cohn 1992) found osteosarcoma rates to be up to 6 times higher in young men living in fluoridated versus unfluoridated areas. Other epidemiological studies of varying size and quality have failed to find this relationship (a summary of these can be found in Bassin, 2001 and Connett & Neurath, 2005). There are three reasons why a fluoride-osteosarcoma connection is plausible: First, fluoride accumulates to a high level in bone. Second, fluoride stimulates bone growth. And, third, fluoride can interfere with the genetic apparatus of bone cells in several ways; it has been shown to be mutagenic, cause chromosome damage, and interfere with the enzymes involved with DNA repair in both cell and tissue studies (Tsutsui 1984; Caspary 1987; Kishi 1993; Mihashi 1996; Zhang 2009). In addition to cell and tissue studies, a correlation between fluoride exposure and chromosome damage in humans has also been reported (Sheth 1994; Wu 1995; Meng 1997; Joseph 2000).
32) Proponents have failed to refute the Bassin-Osteosarcoma study. In 2001, Elise Bassin, a dentist, successfully defended her doctoral thesis at Harvard in which she found that young boys had a five-to-seven fold increased risk of getting osteosarcoma by the age of 20 if they drank fluoridated water during their mid-childhood growth spurt (age 6 to 8). The study was published in 2006 (Bassin 2006) but has been largely discounted by fluoridating countries because her thesis adviser Professor Chester Douglass (a promoter of fluoridation and a consultant for Colgate) promised a larger study that he claimed would discount her thesis (Douglass and Joshipura, 2006). Now, after 5 years of waiting the Douglass study has finally been published (Kim 2011) but in no way does this study discount Bassinās findings. The study, which used far fewer controls than Bassinās analysis, did not even attempt to assess the age-specific window of risk that Bassin identified. Indeed, by the authorsā own admission, the study had no capacity to assess the risk of osteosarcoma among children and adolescents (the precise population of concern). For a critique of the Douglass study, click here.
33) Fluoride may cause reproductive problems. Fluoride administered to animals at high doses wreaks havoc on the male reproductive system ā it damages sperm and increases the rate of infertility in a number of different species (Kour 1980; Chinoy 1989; Chinoy 1991; Susheela 1991; Chinoy 1994; Kumar 1994; Narayana 1994a,b; Zhao 1995; Elbetieha 2000; Ghosh 2002; Zakrzewska 2002). In addition, an epidemiological study from the US found increased rates of infertility among couples living in areas with 3 ppm or more fluoride in the water (Freni 1994), two studies have found increased fertility among men living in high-fluoride areas of China and India (Liu 1988; Neelam 1987); four studies have found reduced level of circulating testosterone in males living in high fluoride areas (Hao 2010; Chen P 1997; Susheela 1996; Barot 1998), and a study of fluoride-exposed workers reported a āsubclinical reproductive effectā (Ortiz-Perez 2003). While animal studies by FDA researchers have failed to find evidence of reproductive toxicity in fluoride-exposed rats (Sprando 1996, 1997, 1998), the National Research Council (2006) has recommended that, āthe relationship between fluoride and fertility requires additional study.ā
34) Some individuals are highly sensitive to low levels of fluoride as shown by case studies and double blind studies. In one study, which lasted 13 years, Feltman and Kosel (1961) showed that about 1% of patients given 1 mg of fluoride each day developed negative reactions. Many individuals have reported suffering from symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, rashes and stomach and gastro intestinal tract problems, which disappear when they avoid fluoride in their water and diet. (Shea 1967; Waldbott 1978; Moolenburgh 1987) Frequently the symptoms reappear when they are unwittingly exposed to fluoride again (Spittle, 2008). No fluoridating government has conducted scientific studies to take this issue beyond these anecdotal reports. Without the willingness of governments to investigate these reports scientifically, should we as a society be forcing these people to ingest fluoride?
35) Other subsets of population are more vulnerable to fluorideās toxicity. In addition to people suffering from impaired kidney function discussed in reason #30 other subsets of the population are more vulnerable to fluorideās toxic effects. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR 1993) these include: infants, the elderly, and those with diabetes mellitus. Also vulnerable are those who suffer from malnutrition (e.g., calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin D and iodine deficiencies and protein-poor diets) and those who have diabetes insipidus. See: Greenberg 1974; Klein 1975; Massler & Schour 1952; Marier & Rose 1977; Lin 1991; Chen 1997; Seow 1994; Teotia 1998.
No Margin of Safety
36) There is no margin of safety for several health effects. No one can deny that high natural levels of fluoride damage health. Millions of people in India and China have had their health compromised by fluoride. The real question is whether there is an adequate margin of safety between the doses shown to cause harm in published studies and the total dose people receive consuming uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water and non-water sources of fluoride. This margin of safety has to take into account the wide range of individual sensitivity expected in a large population (a safety factor of 10 is usually applied to the lowest level causing harm). Another safety factor is also needed to take into account the wide range of doses to which people are exposed. There is clearly no margin of safety for dental fluorosis (CDC, 2010) and based on the following studies nowhere near an adequate margin of safety for lowered IQ (Xiang 2003a,b; Ding 2011; Choi 2012); lowered thyroid function (Galletti & Joyet 1958; Bachinskii 1985; Lin 1991); bone fractures in children (Alarcon-Herrera 2001) or hip fractures in the elderly (Kurttio 1999; Li 2001). All of these harmful effects are discussed in the NRC (2006) review.
Environmental Justice
37) Low-income families penalized by fluoridation. Those most likely to suffer from poor nutrition, and thus more likely to be more vulnerable to fluorideās toxic effects, are the poor, who unfortunately, are the very people being targeted by new fluoridation programs. While at heightened risk, poor families are least able to afford avoiding fluoride once it is added to the water supply. No financial support is being offered to these families to help them get alternative water supplies or to help pay the costs of treating unsightly cases of dental fluorosis.
38) Black and Hispanic children are more vulnerable to fluorideās toxicity. According to the CDCās national survey of dental fluorosis, black and Mexican-American children have significantly higher rates of dental fluorosis than white children (Beltran-Aguilar 2005, Table 23). The recognition that minority children appear to be more vulnerable to toxic effects of fluoride, combined with the fact that low-income families are less able to avoid drinking fluoridated water, has prompted prominent leaders in the environmental-justice movement to oppose mandatory fluoridation in Georgia. In a statement issued in May 2011, Andrew Young, a colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr., and former Mayor of Atlanta and former US Ambassador to the United Nations, stated:
āI am most deeply concerned for poor families who have babies: if they cannot afford unfluoridated water for their babiesā milk formula, do their babies not count? Of course they do. This is an issue of fairness, civil rights, and compassion. We must find better ways to prevent cavities, such as helping those most at risk for cavities obtain access to the services of a dentistā¦My father was a dentist. I formerly was a strong believer in the benefits of water fluoridation for preventing cavities. But many things that we began to do 50 or more years ago we now no longer do, because we have learned further information that changes our practices and policies. So it is with fluoridation.ā
39) Minorities are not being warned about their vulnerabilities to fluoride. The CDC is not warning black and Mexican-American children that they have higher rates of dental fluorosis than Caucasian children (see #38). This extra vulnerability may extend to other toxic effects of fluoride. Black Americans have higher rates of lactose intolerance, kidney problems and diabetes, all of which may exacerbate fluorideās toxicity.
40) Tooth decay reflects low-income not low-fluoride intake. Since dental decay is most concentrated in poor communities, we should be spending our efforts trying to increase the access to dental care for low-income families. The highest rates of tooth decay today can be found in low-income areas that have been fluoridated for many years. The real āOral Health Crisisā that exists today in the United States, is not a lack of fluoride but poverty and lack of dental insurance. The Surgeon General has estimated that 80% of dentists in the US do not treat children on Medicaid.
The largely untested chemicals used in fluoridation programs
41) The chemicals used to fluoridate water are not pharmaceutical grade. Instead, they largely come from the wet scrubbing systems of the phosphate fertilizer industry. These chemicals (90% of which are sodium fluorosilicate and fluorosilicic acid), are classified hazardous wastes contaminated with various impurities. Recent testing by the National Sanitation Foundation suggest that the levels of arsenic in these silicon fluorides are relatively high (up to 1.6 ppb after dilution into public water) and of potential concern (NSF 2000 and Wang 2000). Arsenic is a known human carcinogen for which there is no safe level. This one contaminant alone could be increasing cancer rates ā and unnecessarily so.
42) The silicon fluorides have not been tested comprehensively. The chemical usually tested in animal studies is pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride, not industrial grade fluorosilicic acid. Proponents claim that once the silicon fluorides have been diluted at the public water works they are completely dissociated to free fluoride ions and hydrated silica and thus there is no need to examine the toxicology of these compounds. However, while a study from the University of Michigan (Finney et al., 2006) showed complete dissociation at neutral pH, in acidic conditions (pH 3) there was a stable complex containing five fluoride ions. Thus the possibility arises that such a complex may be regenerated in the stomach where the pH lies between 1 and 2.
43) The silicon fluorides may increase lead uptake into childrenās blood. Studies by Masters and Coplan (1999, 2000, 2007), and to a lesser extent Macek (2006), show an association between the use of fluorosilicic acid (and its sodium salt) to fluoridate water and an increased uptake of lead into childrenās blood. Because of leadās acknowledged ability to damage the developing brain, this is a very serious finding. Nevertheless, it is being largely ignored by fluoridating countries. This association received some strong biochemical support from an animal study by Sawan et al. (2010) who found that exposure of rats to a combination of fluorosilicic acid and lead in their drinking water increased the uptake of lead into blood some threefold over exposure to lead alone.
44) Fluoride may leach lead from pipes, brass fittings and soldered joints. In tightly controlled laboratory experiments, Maas et al (2007) have shown that fluoridating agents in combination with chlorinating agents such as chloroamine increase the leaching of lead from brass fittings used in plumbing. While proponents may argue about the neurotoxic effects of low levels of fluoride there is no argument that lead at very low levels lowers IQ in children.
Continued promotion of fluoridation is unscientific
45) Key health studies have not been done. In the January 2008 issue of Scientific American, Professor John Doull, the chairman of the important 2006 National Research Council review, Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Review of EPAās Standards, is quoted as saying:
What the committee found is that weāve gone with the status quo regarding fluoride for many yearsāfor too long reallyāand now we need to take a fresh look . . . In the scientific community people tend to think this is settled. I mean, when the U.S. surgeon general comes out and says this is one of the top 10 greatest achievements of the 20th century, thatās a hard hurdle to get over. But when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on.
The absence of studies is being used by promoters as meaning the absence of harm. This is an irresponsible position.
46) Endorsements do not represent scientific evidence. Many of those promoting fluoridation rely heavily on a list of endorsements. However, the U.S. PHS first endorsed fluoridation in 1950, before one single trial had been completed and before any significant health studies had been published (see chapters 9 and 10 in The Case Against Fluoride for the significance of this PHS endorsement for the future promotion of fluoridation). Many other endorsements swiftly followed with little evidence of any scientific rational for doing so. The continued use of these endorsements has more to do with political science than medical science.
47) Review panels hand-picked to deliver a pro-fluoridation result. Every so often, particularly when their fluoridation program is under threat, governments of fluoridating countries hand-pick panels to deliver reports that provide the necessary re-endorsement of the practice. In their recent book Fluoride Wars (2009), which is otherwise slanted toward fluoridation, Alan Freeze and Jay Lehr concede this point when they write:
There is one anti-fluoridationist charge that does have some truth to it. Anti-fluoride forces have always claimed that the many government-sponsored review panels set up over the years to assess the costs and benefits of fluoridation were stacked in favor of fluoridation. A review of the membership of the various panels confirms this charge. The expert committees that put together reports by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1941, 1944 and 1954; the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, 1971, 1977 and 1993; the World Health Organization in 1958 and 1970; and the U.S. Public Health Service in 1991 are rife with the names of well-known medical and dental researchers who actively campaigned on behalf of fluoridation or whose research was held in high regard in the pro-fluoridation movement. Membership was interlocking and incestuous.
The most recent examples of these self-fulfilling prophecies have come from the Irish Fluoridation Forum (2002); the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC, 2007) and Health Canada (2008, 2010). The latter used a panel of six experts to review the health literature. Four of the six were pro-fluoridation dentists and the other two had no demonstrated expertise on fluoride. A notable exception to this trend was the appointment by the U.S. National Research Council of the first balanced panel of experts ever selected to look at fluorideās toxicity in the U.S. This panel of twelve reviewed the US EPAās safe drinking water standards for fluoride. After three and half years the panel concluded in a 507- page report that the safe drinking water standard was not protective of health and a new maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) should be determined (NRC, 2006). If normal toxicological procedures and appropriate margins of safety were applied to their findings this report should spell an end to water fluoridation. Unfortunately in January of 2011 the US EPA Office of Water made it clear that they would not determine a value for the MCLG that would jeopardize the water fluoridation program (EPA press release, Jan 7, 2011. Once again politics was allowed to trump science.
More and more independent scientists oppose fluoridation
48) Many scientists oppose fluoridation. Proponents of fluoridation have maintained for many yearsā despite the fact that the earliest opponents of fluoridation were biochemistsāthat the only people opposed to fluoridation are not bona fide scientists. Today, as more and more scientists, doctors, dentists and other professionals, read the primary literature for themselves, rather than relying on self-serving statements from the ADA and the CDC, they are realizing that they and the general public have not been diligently informed by their professional bodies on this subject. As of January 2012, over 4,000 professionals have signed a statement calling for an end to water fluoridation worldwide. This statement and a list of signatories can be found on the website of the Fluoride Action Network. A glimpse of the caliber of those opposing fluoridation can be gleaned by watching the 28-minute video āProfessional Perspectives on Water fluoridationā which can be viewed online at the same FAN site.
Proponentsā dubious tactics
49) Proponents usually refuse to defend fluoridation in open debate. While pro-fluoridation officials continue to promote fluoridation with undiminished fervor, they usually refuse to defend the practice in open public debate ā even when challenged to do so by organizations such as the Association for Science in the Public Interest, the American College of Toxicology, or the U.S. EPA (Bryson 2004). According to Dr. Michael Easley, a prominent lobbyist for fluoridation in the US, āDebates give the illusion that a scientific controversy exists when no credible people support the fluorophobicsā viewā (Easley, 1999). In light of proponentsā refusal to debate this issue, Dr. Edward Groth, a Senior Scientist at Consumers Union, observed that, āthe political profluoridation stance has evolved into a dogmatic, authoritarian, essentially antiscientific posture, one that discourages open debate of scientific issuesā (Martin 1991).
50) Proponents use very dubious tactics to promote fluoridation. Many scientists, doctors and dentists who have spoken out publicly on this issue have been subjected to censorship and intimidation (Martin 1991). Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was fired from her position as Chair of Toxicology at Forsythe Dental Center for publishing her findings on fluoride and the brain (Mullenix 1995); and Dr. William Marcus was fired from the EPA for questioning the governmentās handling of the NTPās fluoride-cancer study (Bryson 2004). Many dentists and even doctors tell opponents in private that they are opposed to this practice but dare not speak out in public because of peer pressure and the fear of recriminations. Tactics like this would not be necessary if those promoting fluoridation were on secure scientific and ethical grounds.
Conclusion
When it comes to controversies surrounding toxic chemicals, vested interests traditionally do their very best to discount animal studies and quibble with epidemiological findings. In the past, political pressures have led government agencies to drag their feet on regulating asbestos, benzene, DDT, PCBs, tetraethyl lead, tobacco and dioxins. With fluoridation we have had a sixty-year delay. Unfortunately, because government officials and dental leaders have put so much of their credibility on the line defending fluoridation, and because of the huge liabilities waiting in the wings if they admit that fluoridation has caused an increase in hip fracture, arthritis, bone cancer, brain disorders or thyroid problems, it will be very difficult for them to speak honestly and openly about the issue. But they must, not only to protect millions of people from unnecessary harm, but to protect the notion that, at its core, public health policy must be based on sound science, not political expediency. They have a tool with which to do this: itās called the Precautionary Principle. Simply put, this says: if in doubt leave it out. This is what most European countries have done and their childrenās teeth have not suffered, while their publicās trust has been strengthened.
Today is not only the day we memorialize Nelson Mandela, but it is also celebratory Human Rights Day. The UN General Assembly proclaimed 10 December as Human Rights Day in 1950, to bring to the attention āof the peoples of the worldā the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.
Johannesburg (CNN) – They gathered in the tens of thousands — presidents, prime ministers, royals, celebrities and ordinary South Africans — all united to say farewell to a man hailed as a global symbol of reconciliation.
In what has been billed as one of the largest gatherings of global leaders in recent history, representatives from around the world joined street sweepers, actors and religious figures to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela.
From President Barack Obama to Cuba’s Raul Castro, praise came from all sides in a four-hour memorial service at Johannesburg FNB stadium for the revered statesman, who died Thursday at age 95.
“We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again,” Obama said in a speech to roaring cheers.
“To the people of South Africa — people of every race and every walk of life — the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us,” he said, calling him a “giant of history.”
Gray skies and pouring rain throughout the service did little to dampen the mood.
Inside the stadium, the atmosphere was celebratory, with people dancing, blowing vuvuzela plastic horns and singing songs from the anti-apartheid struggle.
Around them, huge poster pictures of Mandela hung inside the stadium. In that same place 23 years earlier, Mandela had delivered his first speech after he was released from prison, hailed by supporters as the hope of a new South Africa.
Also known as Soccer City, the stadium was where Mandela made his last public appearance at the World Cup final in July 2010.
On Tuesday, many people carried banners honoring “Madiba,” Mandela’s traditional clan name. Others were draped in materials covered with his face or the green, yellow, black, red and blue colors of the South African flag.
CNN’s Michael Pearson, Athena Jones, Holly Yan, Chris Cuomo, Kim Norgaard, Robin Curnow, Arwa Damon Errol Barnett and David McKenzie contributed to this report.
Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest leaders of modern times, passed away Thursday at his home in Johannesburg. He was 95.
āOur nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father,” South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma said in a televised address Thursday, adding Mandela passed away peacefully.
Mandela’s respiratory problems in recent years may be connected to his imprisonment, when he contracted tuberculosis after working in a prison quarry. He had been in hospital in recent months.
His hospitalization on June 8, 2013, marked his fifth visit to hospital in two years. In April 2013, he spent 10 days in hospital after being treated for pneumonia.
Mandela was a prominent international figure for more than half a century, first as a leading human rights campaigner in South Africa and then as the world’s best-known political prisoner.
Following his release, he again became the leader of the anti-apartheid struggle, and in 1994 became the first president of a democratic South Africa.
On July 18, 2009, the first Mandela Day declared by the United Nations, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke about how “Nelson Mandela has made a lasting imprint on our lives.”
Mandela: the first 25 years
Born the son of a tribal chief on July 18, 1918, in the village of Mvezo in Transkei in the Eastern Cape province, he was given the name Rolihlaha Mandela. Rolihlaha roughly translates from Xhosa as “troublemaker.” For the white South African government, he would soon live up to his Name. When Mandela was 9, his father died, and he was sent to live with the chief of the Thembu people.
After Mandela was expelled from university because of his protest activity, the Thembu chief arranged a marriage for Mandela, which he avoided by leaving the Transkei for Johannesburg in 1941. He earned a BA from the University of South Africa in 1943 and then a law degree. Around this time, he joined the African National Congress (ANC).
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote, “I have no epiphany, no singular destiny, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.”
Co-founds ANC Youth League
Formed in 1912, the ANC had been pursuing a non-violent constitutional approach to winning human rights for non-whites.
In 1944, Mandela co-founded the ANC Youth League. He and other ANCYL leaders pushed for a more militant strategy, one that paid more attention to the needs of the black masses.
That same year, Mandela married Evelyn Mase, a cousin of ANC leader Walter Sisulu. Nelson and Evelyn had four children.
The implementation of apartheid in 1948 gave added urgency to the ANCYL’s cause, and by 1949 they had taken over the leadership of the ANC. Their new program emphasized self-determination for blacks, which was to be achieved through boycotts, strikes, demonstrations and civil disobedience.
In 1948, Mandela was elected ANCYL secretary and, in 1951, its president.
The new ANC program was implemented in 1952 as the “Defiance Against Unjust Laws Campaign.” That led to a violent government response and increased prominence for Mandela, who was elected president of the Transvaal ANC and national deputy president that year.
4Ā½-year treason trial
The South African government continued to implement apartheid laws and intensify repression. In 1956, with the protest movement gaining strength, the government charged Mandela and 155 other leaders with treason and other crimes.
Mandela led the defence in the 4Ā½-year trial, using the courtroom to defend the ANC and the anti-apartheid cause.
While the trial dragged on, police attacked unarmed protesters in the Johannesburg suburb of Sharpeville in 1960. That sparked a new wave of protests, which led the government to ban the ANC and declare a national emergency. Mandela was again detained.
Finally, in March 1961, the judge acquitted all the defendants in the treason trial, finding there was insufficient evidence and that the ANC policy was non-violent.
During the trial years, Mandela’s marriage to Evelyn “collapsed because of differences in politics,” according to Mandela, and they divorced. (Evelyn died in 2004.) In 1958, he married Winnie Madikileza and became father to two more daughters.
Mandela goes underground
After the trial, Mandela went underground. In August 1962, Mandela was arrested and charged with helping organize a three-day general strike and leaving the country without a valid travel document.
Once again, Mandela used the courtroom to present his ideas of equality. He argued he could not receive a fair trial from a judicial system intended to enforce white supremacy. He was convicted on both charges and sentenced to five years in prison.
A police raid on the ANC underground headquarters in 1963 uncovered documents about an ANC guerrilla movement called Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), which Mandela had helped found in 1961. Umkonto claimed to have carried out more than 70 acts of sabotage against the government. Mandela was charged with treason and sabotage.
During the trial, Mandela declared from the dock, “I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society, in which all persons will live together in harmony, and with equal opportunities. It is an idea for which I hope to live and to see, but, my lord, if it need be, it is an idea for which I am prepared to die.” He received a life sentence.
27 years in prison
Mandela spent 18 years in the Robben Island prison, in which time he was forced to quarry limestone, harvest seaweed and endure brutality from the guards.
Nelson Mandela greets people as he walks with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on his arrival in Ottawa in 1990 during a three-day visit to Canada. (Wm. DeKay/Canadian Press)
In 1982, along with other imprisoned ANC leaders, he was transferred to Pollsmoor prison outside Capetown. He was hospitalized with tuberculosis in 1988, recovered and returned to prison.
During his years of imprisonment, Mandela had no contact with the outside world, except visits with Winnie.
In 1989, reformer F. W. de Klerk became leader of the governing party and then South African president. Mandela’s release seemed imminent.
On Feb. 11, 1990, TV networks around the world broadcast Mandela’s walk out of the prison gates to freedom.
Resuming the political fight
At age 71, Mandela plunged back into the anti-apartheid fight, soon taking over the leadership of the now-legal ANC.
That summer, he embarked on a tour of 13 countries, including Canada, to advocate for a continuation of the international economic sanctions campaign.
In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk finally reached agreement on ending apartheid and holding democratic elections. That year, the two men were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The next year, Mandela published his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
Democratic South Africa’s first president
In 1994, not only did Mandela vote for the first time, but he was also elected democratic South Africa’s first president. The ANC received 63 per cent of the vote.
Many predicted bloodshed and feared the possibility of civil war, fuelled by those seeking retribution for years of apartheid policies. But Mandela oversaw a peaceful transition, embarking on a strategy of reconciliation and urging forgiveness for the perpetrators of past apartheid-era crimes.
He helped establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to record human rights violations from all sides of the apartheid struggle, but also had the power to grant amnesty to those who committed abuses.
For two years, Mandela headed a coalition government, with de Klerk as deputy president, until de Klerk and his party left the government.
In 1996, Nelson divorced Winnie and two years later married Graca Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique.
The new South Africa was not easy to govern. In addition to other challenges, the crime rate soared as Mandela’s government worked to improve social conditions and rebuild the economy.
In 1999, at the completion of one term in office, Mandela stepped down as president, “an old man who wants to go into eternity with a smile on his face,” he said.
International mediator
However, the “old man” kept up the pace, mediating peace talks in Burundi that year and the next year overseeing negotiations between Libya and the west concerning the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
In 2001, he visited Canada for the third time, becoming an honorary Canadian citizen.
The following year, he established 46664, a global HIV/AIDS campaign named for Mandela’s prisoner number at Robben Island and famous for organizing benefit concerts around the world. (Mandela’s son Makgatho died of AIDS in 2005.)
In 2003, he established the Mandela Rhodes Foundation to provide scholarships and mentoring for African youth.
While Mandela said in 2004 that he was officially retiring from public life, he nevertheless went on to initiate The Elders in 2007. This group of former global leaders focuses on peace building, securing the release of political prisoners, humanitarian relief and women’s rights.
Not all enslaved Africans gave up their freedom so easily. This is a historical compilation of few of the revolts Iniated of enslaved Blacks, that your children will not learn about in school:
THE NEW YORK SLAVE REVOLT
āŖ
The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 happened in New York City, when 23 enslaved Africans killed nine people of European descent and injured six more. The slaves planned and organized the revolt on the night of April 6, 1712. After setting fire to a building on Maiden Lane near Broadway, they waited for colonists to rush to put out the flames, then proceeded to attack them.
THE FIRST MAROON WAR
In 1739, the Jamaican Maroons were the first enslaved Africans to win their freedom from European slave masters. During the First Maroon War, they fought and escaped slavery and established free communities in the mountainous interior of the island. For 76 years, there were periodic skirmishes between the British and the Maroons, alongside occasional slave revolts.
Eventually, the British government and slave holders realized they couldnāt defeat the Maroons, so they came up with a peace treaty that allowed them to live in their own free states in Jamaica. As a result, the Maroons established their five main towns: Accompong, Trelawny Town, Moore Town, Scots Hall, and Nanny Town.
āŖTHE AMISTAD REVOLT
In 1839, Africans took control of the Spanish slave boat called La Amistad while sailing along the coast of Cuba. The African captives, led by Joseph Cinque, escaped their shackles and killed many of the crew, but spared a few to sail the ship back to their home to Sierra Leone. However, the crew tricked them, sailing north where they were apprehended near Long Island, New York. After a highly publicized court trial, the African captives were released as free men.
ZANZIBAR REVOLUTION
When Zanzibar was granted independence by Britain in 1963, a series of parliamentary elections reserved two-thirds of the seats for Arabs and Indians. Frustrated by under-representation in Parliament despite winning 54 percent of the vote in the July 1963 election, the mainly African Afro-Shirazi Party joined forces with the left-wing Umma Party. Early on the morning of Jan. 12, 1964, ASP member John Okello mobilized approximately 600 to 800 revolutionaries on the main island of Unguja (Zanzibar Island). They overran the countryās police force and confiscated their weaponry. The insurgents then overthrew the Sultan and his government. Reprisals against Arab and South Asian civilians on the island left a death toll ranging from several hundred to 20,000.
Sources: africanholocaust.net
This is the origin of our problems as people today. We must acknowledge the mindset that has encircled and kept us captive….Now we can Stand!
Louisianaās Code Noir (1724)
Primary Documents:
To regulate relations between slaves and colonists, the Louisiana Code noir, or slave code, was introduced in 1724 and remained in force until the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803. The Codeās 54 articles regulated the status of slaves and free blacks, as well as relations between masters and slaves. These were also called the “Christian Slave Codes” due to its Catholic and Church mentions and for it’s intended purpose of using Christianity to impose this indoctrination. The entire body of laws appears below.
BLACK CODE OF LOUISIANA
I. Decrees the expulsion of Jews from the colony.
II. Makes it imperative on masters to impart religious instruction to their slaves.
III. Permits the exercise of the Roman Catholic creed only. Every other mode of worship is prohibited.
IV. Negroes placed under the direction or supervision of any other person than a Catholic, are liable to confiscation.
V. Sundays and holidays are to be strictly observed. All negroes found at work on these days are to be confiscated.
VI. We forbid our white subjects, of both sexes, to marry with the blacks, under the penalty of being fined and subjected to some other arbitrary punishment. We forbid all curates, priests, or missionaries of our secular or regular clergy, and even our chaplains in our navy to sanction such marriages. We also forbid all our white subjects, and even the manumitted or free-born blacks, to live in a state of concubinage with blacks. Should there be any issue from this kind of intercourse, it is our will that the person so offending, and the master of the slave, should pay each a fine of three hundred livres. Should said issue be the result of the concubinage of the master with his slave, said master shall not only pay the fine, but be deprived of the slave and of the children, who shall be adjudged to the hospital of the locality, and said slaves shall be forever incapable of being set free. But should this illicit intercourse have existed between a free black and his slave, when said free black had no legitimate wife, and should said black marry said slave according to the forms prescribed by the church, said slave shall be thereby set free, and the children shall also become free and legitimate ; and in such a case, there shall be no application of the penalties mentioned in the present article.
VII. The ceremonies and forms prescribed by the ordinance of Blois, and by the edict of 1639, for marriages, shall be observed both with regard to free persons and to slaves. But the consent of the father and mother of the slave is not necessary; that of the master shall be the only one required.
VIII. We forbid all curates to proceed to effect marriages between slaves without proof of the consent of their masters; and we also forbid all masters to force their slaves into any marriage against their will.
IX. Children, issued from the marriage of slaves, shall follow the condition of their parents, and shall belong to the master of the wife and not of the husband, if the husband and wife have different masters.
X. If the husband be a slave, and the wife a free woman, it is our will that their children, of whatever sex they may be, shall share the condition of their mother, and be as free as she, notwithstanding the servitude of their father; and if the father be free and the mother a slave, the children shall all be slaves.
XI. Masters shall have their Christian slaves buried in consecrated ground.
XII. We forbid slaves to carry offensive weapons or heavy sticks, under the penalty of being whipped, and of having said weapons confiscated for the benefit of the person seizing the same. An exception is made in favor of those slaves who are sent a hunting or a shooting by their masters, and who carry with them a written permission to that effect, or are designated by some known mark or badge.
XIII. We forbid slaves belonging to different masters to gather in crowds either by day or by night, under the pretext of a wedding, or for any other cause, either at the dwelling or on the grounds of one of their masters, or elsewhere, and much less on the highways or in secluded places, under the penalty of corporal punishment, which shall not be less than the whip. In case of frequent offences of the kind, the offenders shall be branded with the mark of the flower de luce, and should there be aggravating circumstances, capital punishment may be applied, at the discretion of our judges. We command all our subjects, be they officers or not, to seize all such offenders, to arrest and conduct them to prison, although there should be no judgment against them.
XIV. Masters who shall be convicted of having permitted or tolerated such gatherings as aforesaid, composed of other slaves than their own, shall be sentenced, individually, to indemnify their neighbors for the damages occasioned by said gatherings, and to pay, for the first time, a fine of thirty livres, and double that sum on the repetition of the offence.
XV. We forbid negroes to sell any commodities, provisions, or produce of any kind, without the written permission of their masters, or without wearing their known marks or badges, and any persons purchasing any thing from negroes in violence of this article, shall be sentenced to pay a fine of 1500 livres.
XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, provide at length for the clothing of slaves and for their subsistence.
XX. Slaves who shall not be properly fed, clad, and provided for by their masters, may give information thereof to the attorney-general of the Superior Council, or to all the other officers of justice of an inferior jurisdiction, and may put the written exposition of their wrongs into their hands ; upon which information, and even ex officio, should the information come from another quarter, the attorney-general shall prosecute said masters without charging any costs to the complainants. It is our will that this regulation be observed in all accusations for crimes or barbarous and inhuman treatment brought by slaves against their masters.
XXI. Slaves who are disabled from working, either by old age, disease, or otherwise, be the disease incurable or not, shall be fed and provided for by their masters ; and in case they should have been abandoned by said masters, said slaves shall be adjudged to the nearest hospital, to which said masters shall be obliged to pay eight cents a day for the food and maintenance of each one of these slaves ; and for the payment of this sum, said hospital shall have a lien on the plantations of the master.
XXII. We declare that slaves can have no right to any kind of property, and that all that they acquire, either by their own industry or by the liberality of others, or by any other means or title whatever, shall be the full property of their masters ; and the children of said slaves, their fathers and mothers, their kindred or other relations, either free or slaves, shall have no pretensions or claims thereto, either through testamentary dispositions or donations inter vi-vos ; which dispositions and donations we declare null and void, and also whatever promises they may have made, or whatever obligations they may have subscribed to, as having been entered into by persons incapable of disposing of any thing, and of participating to any contract.
XXIII. Masters shall be responsible for what their slaves have done by their command, and also for what transactions they have permitted their slaves to do in their shops, in the particular line of commerce with which they were intrusted ; and in case said slaves should have acted without the order or authorization of their masters, said masters shall be responsible only for so much as has turned to their profit; and if said masters have not profited by the doing or transaction of their slaves, the pcculium which the masters have permitted the slaves to own, shall be subjected to all claims against said slaves, after deduction made by the masters of what may be due to them ; and if said peculium should consist, in whole or in part, of merchandises in which the slaves had permission to traffic, the masters shall only come in for their share in common with the other creditors.
XXIV. Slaves shall be incapable of all public functions, and of being constituted agents for any other person than their own masters, with powers to manage or conduct any kind of trade ; nor can they serve as arbitrators or experts; nor shall they be called to give their testimony either in civil or in criminal cases, except when it shall be a matter of necessity, and only in default of white people ; but in no case shall they be permitted to serve as witnesses either for or against their masters.
XXV. Slaves shall never be parties to civil suits, either as plaintiffs or defendants, nor shall they be allowed to appear as complainants in criminal cases, but their masters shall have the right to act for them in civil matters, and in criminal ones, to demand punishment and reparation for such outrages and excesses as their slaves may have suffered from.
XXVI. Slaves may be prosecuted criminally, without their masters being made parties to the trial, except they should be indicted as accomplices; and said slaves shall be tried, at first, by the judges of ordinary jurisdiction, if there be any, and on appeal, by the Superior Council, with the same rules, formalities, and proceedings observed for free persons, save the exceptions mentioned hereafter.
XXVII. The slave who, having struck his master, his mistress, or the husband of his mistress, or their children, shall have produced a bruise, or the shedding of blood in the face, shall suffer capital punishment.
XXVIII. With regard to outrages or acts of violence committed by slaves against free persons, it is our will that they be punished with severity, and even with death, should the case require it.
XXIX. Thefts of importance, and even the stealing of horses, mares, mules, oxen, or cows, when executed by slaves or manumitted persons, shall make the offender liable to corporal, and even to capital punishment, according to the circumstances of the case.
XXX. The stealing of sheep, goats, hogs, poultry, grain, fodder, peas, beans, or other vegetables, produce, or provisions, when committed by slaves, shall be punished according to the circumstances of the case ; and the judges may sentence them, if necessary, to be whipped by the public executioner, and branded with the mark of the flower de luce.
XXXI. In cases of thefts committed or damages done by their slaves, masters, besides the corporal punishment inflicted on their slaves, shall be bound to make amends for the injuries resulting from the acts of said slaves, unless they prefer abandoning them to the sufferer. They shall be bound so to make their choice, in three days from the time of the conviction of the negroes ; if not, this privilege shall be forever forfeited.
XXXII. The runaway slave, who shall continue to be so for one month from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice, shall have his ears cut off, and shall be branded with the flower de luce on the shoulder : and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in during one month from the day of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third offence, he shall suffer death.
XXXIII. Slaves, who shall have made themselves liable to the penalty of the whip, the flower de luce brand, and ear cutting, shall be tried, in the last resort, by the ordinary judges of the inferior courts, and shall undergo the sentence passed upon them without there being an appeal to the Superior Council, in confirmation or reversal of judgment, notwithstanding the article 26th of the present code, which shall be applicable only to those judgments in which the slave convicted is sentenced to be hamstrung or suffer death.
XXXIV. Freed or free-born negroes, who shall have afforded refuge in their houses to fugitive slaves, shall be sentenced to pay to the masters of said slaves, the sum of thirty livres a day for every day during which they shall have concealed said fugitives ; and all other free persons, guilty of the same offence, shall pay a fine of ten livres a day as aforesaid ; and should the freed or free-born negroes not be able to pay the fine herein specified, they shall be reduced to the condition of slaves, and be sold as such. Should the price of the sale exceed the sum mentioned in the judgment, the surplus shall be delivered to the hospital.
XXXV. We permit our subjects in this colony, who may have slaves concealed in any place whatever, to have them sought after by such persons and in such a way as they may deem proper, or to proceed themselves to such researches, as they may think best.
XXXVI. The slave who is sentenced to suffer death on the denunciation of his master, shall, when that master is not an accomplice to his crime, be appraised before his execution by two of the principal inhabitants of the locality, who shall be especially appointed by the judge, and the amount of said appraisement shall be paid to the master. To raise this sum, a proportional tax shall be laid on every slave, and shall be collected by the persons invested with that authority.
XXXVII. We forbid all the officers of the Superior Council, and all our other officers of justice in this colony, to take any fees or receive any perquisites in criminal suits against slaves, under the penalty, in so doing, of being dealt with as guilty of extortion.
XXXVIII. We also forbid all our subjects in this colony, whatever their condition or rank may be, to apply, on their own private authority, the rack to their slaves, under any pretence whatever, and to mutilate said slaves in any one of their limbs, or in any part of their bodies, under the penalty of the confiscation of said slaves ; and said masters, so offending, shall be liable to a criminal prosecution. We only permit masters, when they shall think that the case requires it, to put their slaves in irons, and to have them whipped with rods or ropes.
XXXIX. We command our officers of justice in this colony to institute criminal process against masters and overseers who shall have killed or mutilated their slaves, when in their power and under their supervision, and to punish said murder according to the atrocity of the circumstances; and in case the offence shall be a pardonable one, we permit them to pardon said masters and overseers without its being necessary to obtain from us letters patent of pardon. XL. Slaves shall he held in law as movables, and as such, they shall be part of the community of acquests between husband and wife ; they shall not be liable to be seized under any mortgage whatever; and they shall be equally divided among the co-heirs without admitting from any one of said heirs any claim founded on preciput or right of primogeniture, or dowry.
XLI, XLII. Are entirely relative to judicial forms and proceedings.XLIII. Husbands and wives shall not be seized and sold separately when belonging to the same master : and their children, when under fourteen years of age, shall not be separated from their parents, and such seizures and sales shall be null and void. The present article shall apply to voluntary sales, and in case such sales should take place in violation of the law, the seller shall be deprived of the slave he has illegally retained, and said slave shall be adjudged to the purchaser without any additional price being required.
XLIV. Slaves, fourteen years old, and from this age up to sixty, who are settled on lands and plantations, and are at present working on them, shall not be liable to seizure for debt, except for what may be due out of the purchase money agreed to be paid for them, unless said grounds or plantations should also be distressed, and any seizure and judicial sale of a rea,l estate, without including the slaves of the aforesaid age, who are part of said estate, shall be deemed null and void.
XLV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII, XLIX. Are relative to certain formalities to be observed in judicial proceedings.
L. Masters, when twenty-five years old, shall have the power to manumit their slaves, cither by testamentary dispositions, or by acts inter vivos. But, as there may be mercenary masters disposed to set a price on the liberation of their slaves ; and whereas slaves, with a view to acquire the necessary means to purchase their freedom, may be tempted to commit theft or deeds of plunder, no person, whatever may he his rank and condition, shall be permitted to set free his slaves, without obtaining from the Superior Council a decree of permission to that effect ; which permission shall be granted without costs, when the motives for the setting free of said slaves, as specified in the petition of the master, shall appear legitimate to the tribunal. All acts for the emancipation of slaves, which, for the future, shall be made without this permission, shall be null ; and the slaves, so freed, shall not be entitled to their freedom ; they shall, on the contrary, continue to be held as slaves; but they shall be taken away from their former masters, and confiscated for the benefit of the India Company. LI. However, should slaves be appointed by their masters tutors to their children, said slaves shall be held and regarded as being thereby set free to all intents and purposes.
LII. We declare that the acts for the enfranchisement of slaves, passed according to the forms above described, shall be equivalent to an act of naturalization, when said slaves are not born in our colony of Louisiana, and they shall enjoy all the rights and privileges inherent to our subjects born in our kingdom or in any land or country under our dominion. We declare, therefore, that all manumitted slaves, and all free-born negroes, are incapable of receiving donations, either by testamentary dispositions, or by acts inter vivos from the whites. Said donations shall be null and void, and the objects so donated shall be applied to the benefit of the nearest hospital.
LIII. We command all manumitted slaves to show the pro foundest respect to their former masters, to their widows and children, and any injury or insult offered by said manumitted slaves to their former masters, their widows or children- shall be punished with more severity than if it had been offered to any other person. We, however, declare them exempt from the discharge Of all duties or services, and from the payment of all taxes or fees, or any thing else which their former masters might, in their quality of patrons, claim either in relation to their persons, or to their personal or real estate, either during the life or after the death of said manumitted slaves.
LIV. We grant to manumitted slaves the same rights, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by free-born persons. It is our pleasure that their merit in having acquired their freedom, shall produce in their favor, not only with regard to their persons, but also to their property, the same effects which our other subjects derive from the happy circumstance of their having been born free.
In the name of the King,
Bienville, De la Chaise.
B. F. French, Historical Collections of Louisiana: Embracing Translations of Many Rare and Valuable Documents Relating to the Natural, Civil, and Political History of that State (New York: D. Appleton, 1851)
At the end of the 19th century, no book in the history of Western literature had more editions, spin-offs and translations than Robinson Crusoe. What’s interesting is that this book houses the reasoned teaching of the slavery indoctrination.
Given to the Western World (The New World) at it’s inception, with more than 700 such alternative versions, including children’s versions with mainly pictures and no text, accounts of one mans trial and error of protocols (adventure) of domesticating a savage. He depicted that the slave owner would first make the savage fear him and his gun, he would then chain him (for his own protection), then change his name to one he chooses, make him call him master, then tell him who his God was.
The author shows a sharp distinction of savage versus human, and perpetuates that it was his duty to offer humanity to the cannibal. I contend that this book issued America its much needed reasoning’s, quieted the new slave owners consciousness, and justified the actions, of wicked men for many generations. An American Classic? Shameful!
BRITTNEY GRINER
 inside of a poorly lit warehouse. This is a problem! For anyone's children! (But where are the parents anyway?) This is clearly not the border patrols problem, as they are doing what they believe they are within their scope to provide, but in fact, it is the shedding of a poorly written comprehensive immigration policy which avoids the most obvious oversights and also lacks a clear structured plan for future citizens. Unfair and inhuman
to have to deal with influx of children in this manner. And if it were my child, I'd have a grave problem with it. Call emergency congress session, and not just for money this time, but for a plan to first secure borders, secondly setup social workers to find these children proper housing. But How do you integrate 2-300 children per day? (Obama you got business to handle at home.) You must stop it at border, (or even worse the core of government) or this crisis will continue to enLARGE.
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