10 Horror Eyes (Part 6)
A new month means another set of Horror Eyes. It's the simple things in life that thrill me...
Pissed-Off Gypsy Eyes (Drag Me to Hell) 
Grant Mazzy Eyes (Pontypool) 
Streetwalker Eyes (From Hell) 
Poor lil' Kitty Eyes (Home Movie) 
Slutty Chick's Eyes (Elsewhere) 
Hot Blondie's Eyes (Pop Skull) 
Evil Architect Eyes (Walled In) 
Christopher Lee Eyes (Dracula Has Risen From the Grave) 
Zombie Eyes? (Deadgirl) 
Victim's Eyes (Defenceless) 
Trailer Round-Up
Here we go with this week's batch of new and sometimes even cool trailers...
Carriers (This one looks really good.)
Surveillance (We reviewed this one last year, and loved it.)
A Perfect Getaway (Great cast, Turistas-like premise. I'll check it out.)
The Betrayed (I love Melissa George.)
H2 (The yellow band trailer!)
* Thanks to Quiet Earth, Dread Central, Bloody Disgusting.
Remake Heaven or Hell- An American Werewolf in London
Another one bites the dust...
It was bad enough when some asshole decided that An American Werewolf in Paris was a great idea for a sequel, but with news of the impending An American Werewolf in London remake, I've officially resigned myself to the fact that Hollywood just doesn't give a shit anymore.
No doubt the remake will boast lazy CGI, replacing the Academy Award winning FX of Rick Baker that made the original so great. That's right; it won an Academy Award!
Better than CGI.
My only question is how is Dimension going to ruin this one for us? Make it edgy and dark, forgoing the black humor which made the original work so well? Maybe they'll make the 2 backpacking tourists chicks? How about a pack of CGI werewolves instead of just one? Maybe cater to the pre-teen Twilight crowd by casting a bunch of shirtless tween actors to pout at each other for 90 minutes?
Any way you slice it, this idea just sucks. Me no happy.
Release Date: Too soon
Rating: Probably PG-13
Verdict: Dimension can blow me.
It was bad enough when some asshole decided that An American Werewolf in Paris was a great idea for a sequel, but with news of the impending An American Werewolf in London remake, I've officially resigned myself to the fact that Hollywood just doesn't give a shit anymore.
No doubt the remake will boast lazy CGI, replacing the Academy Award winning FX of Rick Baker that made the original so great. That's right; it won an Academy Award!
My only question is how is Dimension going to ruin this one for us? Make it edgy and dark, forgoing the black humor which made the original work so well? Maybe they'll make the 2 backpacking tourists chicks? How about a pack of CGI werewolves instead of just one? Maybe cater to the pre-teen Twilight crowd by casting a bunch of shirtless tween actors to pout at each other for 90 minutes?
Any way you slice it, this idea just sucks. Me no happy.
Release Date: Too soon
Rating: Probably PG-13
Verdict: Dimension can blow me.
Justice for Basire Farrell Rally (Video)
Basire Farrell died while in the custody of the Newark police department. I'm not sure if a taser was involved in his death yet. However, the community continues to agitate for answers.
The video gives highlights of the Peoples Organization for Progress rally for Basire Farrell at 5th Precinct in Newark, NJ. POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm is the primary speaker at this May 2009 rally.
Can anyone point us to further details on the Basire Farrell death?
The video gives highlights of the Peoples Organization for Progress rally for Basire Farrell at 5th Precinct in Newark, NJ. POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm is the primary speaker at this May 2009 rally.
Can anyone point us to further details on the Basire Farrell death?
Another Taser Death in America - Shawn Iinuma (California)
Fontana (CA) family of 37-year old Shawn Iinuma called '911' at 1:15 am this morning to get him some medical attention. Fire personnel treated him for an apparent methamphetamine overdose.
At some point during his medical treatment the police decided to unleash 50,000 volts of electrocity into Shawn Iinuma's body with their taser gun. Police say he turned violent and so they felt justified in killing him with their taser guns.
"While being treated..., Iinuma became violent with those assisting him. During a lengthy struggle, a taser was used by police. Thereafter, Iinuma was restrained and, after being restrained, stopped breathing."He later died at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Fontana.
The early stages of this story are typical of the 24 taser-related deaths in America this year. The dead person is always villified by the police. Time will tell if the facts and circumstances match this initial statement by the police. In my view, Shawn Iinuma was a human being who did not deserve to be killed. His two children are now without a father.
I just keep wondering why people continue to die from these taser deaths without someone in congress taking notice?
June 2009 Wrap-Up
June was a pretty decent month. True Blood is back and firing on all cylinders), we got some pretty cool flicks at the box office, even though they are limited releases, and even DVD gave us a decent handful of goods.
At the Box-Office we got...
Dead Snow- Awesome Nazi-zombie flick, this is one of our faves of the year so far.
-Moon has been getting all sorts of praise, and looks great.
-Limited runs of Surveillance and Blood: The Last Vampire; the first one we saw and liked, the second one we'd like to see, but we're not sure if we'll like it or not.
-True Blood returned with its second season!
On DVD we got...
Own it- Gozu, Friday the 13th (2009), Sauna, F13th 4-6.
Rent it- Elsewhere, Backwoods.
Skip it- Razortooth, Anaconda 4, Trail of Blood, Silent Venom, Ghosts of Goldfield, Born, Terror at Bloodfart Lake, The Cell 2, The Tribe.
The ones we haven't seen yet- Retardead, Second Coming, The Seventh Seal, Platoon of the Dead, Killing Ariel.
June was ok, but July looks even better on the theatrical front; Orphan could be interesting, and we're dying to see Chan-wook Park's Thirst. DVD is bringing us some summer heat too, with movies such as Acolytes, [Rec], and Near Dark. Sweaty and bloody, July looks like it's ready to soak us either way!
*Make sure to check our Release Date List to stay up to date on what's coming out and when.
At the Box-Office we got...
Dead Snow- Awesome Nazi-zombie flick, this is one of our faves of the year so far.
-Moon has been getting all sorts of praise, and looks great.
-Limited runs of Surveillance and Blood: The Last Vampire; the first one we saw and liked, the second one we'd like to see, but we're not sure if we'll like it or not.
-True Blood returned with its second season!
On DVD we got...
Own it- Gozu, Friday the 13th (2009), Sauna, F13th 4-6.
Rent it- Elsewhere, Backwoods.
Skip it- Razortooth, Anaconda 4, Trail of Blood, Silent Venom, Ghosts of Goldfield, Born, Terror at Bloodfart Lake, The Cell 2, The Tribe.
The ones we haven't seen yet- Retardead, Second Coming, The Seventh Seal, Platoon of the Dead, Killing Ariel.
June was ok, but July looks even better on the theatrical front; Orphan could be interesting, and we're dying to see Chan-wook Park's Thirst. DVD is bringing us some summer heat too, with movies such as Acolytes, [Rec], and Near Dark. Sweaty and bloody, July looks like it's ready to soak us either way!
*Make sure to check our Release Date List to stay up to date on what's coming out and when.
Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), 'Black Power'
I was president of the student body during my college years at the University of California, Riverside. One of the great moments during that time of my life was a visit to our campus on March 16, 1979 by Kwame Ture ... known better to some of you as Stokely Carmichael.
I didn't know him personally. However, I have always been struck by his story. In 1998, at the age of 57, Kwame Ture died from complications of prostate cancer. To the end he answered the telephone, "ready for the revolution."
I smiled when I learned that American Rhetoric included Ture in their list of the Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century. Kwame Ture delivered Top Speech #65 in Berkley CA during a Black Power rally in October 1966. There is no available video of his speech, however, we do have an audio clip and text transcript [SOURCE].
Thank you very much. It’s a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West. We wanted to do a couple of things before we started. The first is that, based on the fact that SNCC, through the articulation of its program by its chairman, has been able to wi
n elections in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here will win an election in California, in 1968 I'm going to run for President of the United States. I just can't make it, 'cause I wasn't born in the United States. That's the only thing holding me back.
We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and that we're not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power. That’s a function of people who are advertisers that call themselves reporters. Oh, for my members and friends of the press, my self-appointed white critics, I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw two days ago, and I came across a very important quote which I think is most apropos for you. He says, "All criticism is a[n] autobiography." Dig yourself. Okay.
The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. The Black existentialist philosopher who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the question. He said that man could not. Camus and Sartre was not. We in SNCC tend to agree with Camus and Sartre, that a man cannot condemn himself. Were he to condemn himself, he would then have to inflict punishment upon himself. An example would be the Nazis. Any prisoner who -- any of the Nazi prisoners who admitted, after he was caught and incarcerated, that he committed crimes, that he killed all the many people that he killed, he committed suicide. The only ones who were able to stay alive were the ones who never admitted that they committed a crimes [sic] against people -- that is, the ones who rationalized that Jews were not human beings and deserved to be killed, or that they were only following orders.
On a more immediate scene, the officials and the population -- the white population -- in Neshoba County, Mississippi -- that’s where Philadelphia is -- could not -- could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his deputies, and the other fourteen men that killed three human beings. They could not because they elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did; and that for them to condemn him will be for them to condemn themselves.
In a much larger view, SNCC says that white America cannot condemn herself. And since we are liberal, we have done it: You stand condemned. Now, a number of things that arises from that answer of how do you condemn yourselves. Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they're built upon racism. And the question, then, is how can Black people inside of this country move? And then how can white people who say they’re not a part of those institutions begin to move? And how then do we begin to clear away the obstacles that we have in this society, that make us live like human beings? How can we begin to build institutions that will allow people to relate with each other as human beings? This country has never done that, especially around the country of white or Black.
Now, several people have been upset because we’ve said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by Blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this country has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of integration," and that some negroes have been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next to white people; and that that does not b
egin to solve the problem; that when we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and that people ought to understand that; that we were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy.
Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves Black people after they’re born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying Black people their freedom; that is, they must stop denying freedom. They never give it to anyone.
Now we want to take that to its logical extension, so that we could understand, then, what its relevancy would be in terms of new civil rights bills. I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for Black people. For example, I am Black. I know that. I also know that while I am Black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a Black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill, again, was for white people, not for Black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live.
So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.
And so in a larger sense we must then ask, How is it that Black people move? And what do we do? But the question in a greater sense is, How can white people who are the majority -- and who are responsible for making democracy work -- make it work? They have miserably failed to this point. They have never made democracy work, be it inside the United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines, South America, Puerto Rico. Wherever American has been, she has not been able to make democracy work; so that in a larger sense, we not only condemn the country for what it's done internally, but we must condemn it for what it does externally. We see this country trying to rule the world, and someone must stand up and start articulating that this country is not God, and cannot rule the world.
Now, then, before we move on we ought to develop the white supremacy attitudes that were either conscious or subconscious thought and how they run rampant through the society today. For example, the missionaries were sent to Africa. They went with the attitude that Blacks were automatically inferior. As a matter of fact, the first act the missionaries did, you know, when they got to Africa was to make us cover up our bodies, because they said it got them excited. We couldn’t go bare-breasted any more because they got excited.
Now when the missionaries came to civilize us because we were uncivilized, educate us because we were uneducated, and give us some -- some literate studies because we were illiterate, they charged a price. The missionaries came with the Bible, and we had the land. When they left, they had the land, and we still have the Bible. And that has been the rationalization for Western civilization as it moves across the world and stealing and plundering and raping everybody in its path. Their one rationalization is that the rest of the world is uncivilized and they are in fact civilized. And they are un-civil-ized.
And that runs on today, you see, because what we have today is we have what we call "modern-day Peace Corps missionaries," and they come into our ghettos and they Head Start, Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, 'cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: 'cause he does not have money -- period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money -- period.
And you ought not to tell me about people who don’t work, and you can’t give people money without working, 'cause if that were true, you’d have to start stopping Rockefeller, Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, the whole of Standard Oil, the Gulf Corp, all of them, including probably a large number of the Board of Trustees of this university. So the question, then, clearly, is not whether or not one can work; it’s Who has power? Who has power to make his or her acts legitimate? That is all. And that this country, that power is invested in the hands of white people, and they make their acts legitimate. It is now, therefore, for Black people to make our acts legitimate.
Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or not Black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction to it; and that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the word "Black Power" -- and let them address themselves to that; but that we are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired waiting; every time Black people move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position before they move. It’s time that the people who are supposed to be defending their position do that. That's white people. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.
Now it is clear that when this country started to move in terms of slavery, the reason for a man being picked as a slave was one reason -- because of the color of his skin. If one was Black one was automatically inferior, inhuman, and therefore fit for slavery; so that the question of whether or not we are individually suppressed is nonsensical, and it’s a downright lie. We are oppressed as a group because we are Black, not because we are lazy, not because we're apathetic, not because we’re stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are Black.
And in order to get out of that oppression one must wield the group power that one has, not the individual power which this country then sets the criteria under which a man may come into it. That is what is called in this country as integration: "You do what I tell you to do and then we’ll let you sit at the table with us." And that we are saying that we have to be opposed to that. We must now set up criteria and that if there's going to be any integration, it's going to be a two-way thing. If you believe in integration, you can come live in Watts. You can send your children to the ghetto schools. Let’s talk about that. If you believe in integration, then we’re going to start adopting us some white people to live in our neighborhood.
So it is clear that the question is not one of integration or segregation. Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is Black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not a
llow him. So vice versa: If a Black man wants to live in the slums, that should be his right. Black people will let him. That is the difference. And it's a difference on which this country makes a number of logical mistakes when they begin to try to criticize the program articulated by SNCC.
Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, Black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent. You ought to be concerned about them too. The question is, Are we willing to be concerned about those 94 percent? Are we willing to be concerned about the Black people who will never get to Berkeley, who will never get to Harvard, and cannot get an education, so you’ll never get a chance to rub shoulders with them and say, "Well, he’s almost as good as we are; he’s not like the others"? The question is, How can white society begin to move to see Black people as human beings? I am Black, therefore I am; not that I am Black and I must go to college to prove myself. I am Black, therefore I am. And don’t deprive me of anything and say to me that you must go to college before you gain access to X, Y, and Z. It is only a rationalization for one's oppression.
The -- The political parties in this country do not meet the needs of people on a day-to-day basis. The question is, How can we build new political institutions that will become the political expressions of people on a day-to-day basis? The question is, How can you build political institutions that will begin to meet the needs of Oakland, California? And the needs of Oakland, California, is not 1,000 policemen with submachine guns. They don't need that. They need that least of all. The question is, How can we build institutions where those people can begin to function on a day-to-day basis, where they can get decent jobs, where they can get decent houses, and where they can begin to participate in the policy and major decisions that affect their lives? That’s what they need, not Gestapo troops, because this is not 1942, and if you play like Nazis, we playing back with you this time around. Get hip to that.
The question then is, How can white people move to start making the major institutions that they have in this country function the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question. And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there. It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada. It is white people who make sure that we live in the ghettos of this country. it is white institutions that do that. They must change. In ord
er -- In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human relationships, a new society must be born. Racism must die, and the economic exploitation of this country of non-white peoples around the world must also die -- must also die.
Now there are several programs that we have in the South, most in poor white communities. We're trying to organize poor whites on a base where they can begin to move around the question of economic exploitation and political disfranchisement. We know -- we've heard the theory several times -- but few people are willing to go into there. The question is, Can the white activist not try to be a Pepsi generation who comes alive in the Black community, but can he be a man who’s willing to move into the white community and start organizing where the organization is needed? Can he do that? The question is, Can the white society or the white activist disassociate himself with two clowns who waste time parrying with each other rather than talking about the problems that are facing people in this state? Can you dissociate yourself with those clowns and start to build new institutions that will eliminate all idiots like them.
And the question is, If we are going to do that when and where do we start, and how do we start? We maintain that we must start doing that inside the white community. Our own personal position politically is that we don't think the Democratic Party represents the needs of Black people. We know it don't. And that if, in fact, white people really believe that, the question is, if they’re going to move inside that structure, how are they going to organize around a concept of whiteness based on true brotherhood and based on stopping exploitation, economic exploitation, so that there will be a coalition base for Black people to hook up with? You cannot form a coalition based on national sentiment. That is not a coalition. If you need a coalition to redress itself to real changes in this country, white people must start building those institutions inside the white community. And that is the real question, I think, facing the white activists today. Can they, in fact, begin to move into and tear down the institutions which have put us all in a trick bag that we’ve been into for the last hundred years?
I don't think that we should follow what many people say that we should fight to be leaders of tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God knows we need to be leaders today, 'cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick. So that can we on a larger sense begin now, today, to start building those institutions and to fight to articulate our position, to fight to be able to control our universities -- We need to be able to do that -- and to fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones? That’s the real question that face us today, and it is a dilemma because most of us do not know how to work, and that the excuse that most white activists find is to run into the Black community.
Now we maintain that we cannot have white people working in the Black community, and we mean it on a psychological ground. The fact is that all Black people often questi
on whether or not they are equal to whites, because every time they start to do something, white people are around showing them how to do it. If we are going to eliminate that for the generation that comes after us, then Black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating for themselves, for themselves.
That is not to say that one is a reverse racist; it is to say that one is moving in a healthy ground; it is to say what the philosopher Sartre says: One is becoming an "antiracist racist." And this country can’t understand that. Maybe it's because it's all caught up in racism. But I think what you have in SNCC is an anti-racist racism. We are against racists. Now if everybody who is white see themself [sic] as a racist and then see us against him, they're speaking from their own guilt position, not ours, not ours.
Now then, the question is, How can we move to begin to change what's going on in this country. I maintain, as we have in SNCC, that the war in Vietnam is an illegal and immoral war. And the question is, What can we do to stop that war? What can we do to stop the people who, in the name of our country, are killing babies, women, and children? What can we do to stop that? And I maintain that we do not have the power in our hands to change that institution, to begin to recreate it, so that they learn to leave the Vietnamese people alone, and that the only power we have is the power to say, "Hell no!" to the draft.
We have to say -- We have to say to ourselves that there is a higher law than the law of a racist named McNamara. There is a higher law than the law of a fool named Rusk. And there's a higher law than the law of a buffoon named Johnson. It’s the law of each of us. It's the law of each of us. It is the law of each of us saying that we will not allow them to make us hired killers. We will stand pat. We will not kill anybody that they say kill. And if we decide to kill, we're going to decide who we going to kill. And this country will only be able to stop the war in Vietnam when the young men who are made to fight it begin to say, "Hell, no, we ain’t going."
Now then, there's a failure because the Peace Movement has been unable to get off the college campuses where everybody has a 2S and not going to get drafted anyway. And the question is, How can you move out of that into the white ghettos of this country and begin to articulate a position for those white students who do not want to go. We cannot do that. It is something -- sometimes ironic that many of the peace groups have beginning to call us violent and say they can no longer support us, and we are in fact the most militant organization [for] peace or civil rights or human rights against the war in Vietnam in this country today. There isn’t one organization that has begun to meet our stance on the war in Vietnam, 'cause we not only say we are against the war in Vietnam; we are against the draft. We are against the draft. No man has the right to take a man for two years and train him to be a killer. A man should decide what he wants to do with his life.
So the question then is it becomes crystal clear for Black people because we can easily say that anyone fighting in the war in Vietnam is nothing but a Black mercenary, and that's all he is. Any time a Black man leaves the country where he can’t vote to supposedly deliver the vote for somebody else, he’s a Black mercenary. Any time a -- Any time a Black man leaves this country, gets shot in Vietnam on foreign ground, and returns home and you won’t give him a burial in his own homeland, he’s a Black mercenary, a Black mercenary.
And that even if I were to believe the lies of Johnson, if I were to believe his lies that we're fighting to give democracy to the people in Vietnam, as a Black man living in this country I wouldn’t fight to give this to anybody. I wouldn't give it to anybody. So that we have to use our bodies and our minds in the only way that we see fit. We must begin like the philosopher Camus to come alive by saying "No!" That is the only act in which we begin to come alive, and we have to say "No!" to many, many things in this country.
This country is a nation of thieves. It has stole everything it has, beginning with Black people, beginning with Black people. And that the question is, How can we move to start changing this country from what it is -- a nation of thieves. This country cannot justify any longer its existence. We have become the policeman of the world. The marines are at our disposal to always bring democracy, and if the Vietnamese don’t want democracy, well dammit, "We’ll just wipe them the hell out, 'cause they don’t deserve to live if they won’t have our way of life."
There is then in a larger sense, What do you do on your university campus? Do you raise questions about the hundred Black students who were kicked off campus a couple of weeks ago? Eight hundred? Eight hundred? And how does that question begin to move? Do you begin to relate to people outside of the ivory tower and university wall? Do you think you’re capable of building those human relationships, as the country now stands? You're fooling yourself. It is impossible for white and Black people to talk about building a relationship based on humanity when the country is the way it is, when the institutions are clearly against us.
We have taken all the myths of this country and we've found them to be nothing but downright lies. This country told us that if we worked hard we would succeed, and if that were true we would own this country lock, stock, and barrel -- lock, stock, and barrel -- lock, stock, and barrel. It is we who have picked the cotton for nothing. It is we who are the maids in the kitchens of liberal white people. It is we who are the janitors, the porters, the elevator men; we who sweep up your college floors. Yes, it is we who are the hardest workers and the lowest paid, and the lowest paid.
And that it is nonsensical for people to start talking about human relationships until they're willing to build new institutions. Black people are economically insecure. White liberals are economically secure. Can you begin to build an economic coalition? Are the liberals willing to share their salaries with the economically insecure Black people they so much love? Then if you’re not, are you willing to start building new institutions that will provide economic security for Black people? That’s the question we want to deal with. That's the question we want to deal with.
We have to seriously examine the histories that we have been told. But we have something more to do than that. American students are perhaps the most politically unsophisticated students in the world, in the world, in the world. Across every country in this world, while we were growing up, students were leading the major revolutions of their countries. We have not been able to do that. They have been politically aware of their existence. In South America our neighbors down below the border have one every 24 hours just to remind us that they're politically aware.
And we have been unable to grasp it because we’ve always moved in the field of morality and love while people have been politically jiving with our lives. And the question is, How do we now move politically and stop trying to move morally? You can't move morally against a man like Brown and Reagan. You've got to move politically to put them out of business. You've got to move politically.
You can’t move morally against Lyndon Baines Johnson because he is an immoral man. He doesn’t know what it’s all about. So you’ve got to move politically. You've got to move politically. And that we have to begin to develop a political sophistication -- which is not to be a parrot: "The two-party system is the best party in the world." There is a difference between being a parrot and being politically sophisticated.
We have to raise questions about whether or not we do need new types of political institutions in this country, and we in SNCC maintain that we need them now. We need new political institutions in this country. Any time -- Any time Lyndon Baines Johnson can head a Party which has in it Bobby Kennedy, Wayne Morse, Eastland, Wallace, and all those other supposed-to-be-liberal cats, there’s something wrong with that Party. They’re moving politically, not morally. And that if that party refuses to seat Black people from Mississippi and goes ahead and seats racists like Eastland and his clique, it is clear to me that they’re moving politically, and that one cannot begin to talk morality to people like that.
We must begin to think politically and see if we can have the power to impose and keep the moral values that we hold high. We must question the values of this society, and I maintain that Black people are the best people to do that because we have been excluded from that society. And the question is, we ought to think whether or not we want to become a part of that society. That's what we want to do.
And that that is precisely what it seems to me that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is doing. We are raising questions about this country. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want it -- don't want to be part of that system. And the question is, How do we raise those questions? How do we ....How do we begin to raise them?
We have grown up and we are the generation that has found this country to be a world power, that has found this country to be the wealthiest country in the world. We must question how she got her wealth? That's what we're questioning, and whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping every -- everybody else across the world. That's what we must begin to question. And that because Black people are saying we do not now want to become a part of you, we are called reverse racists. Ain’t that a gas?
Now, then, we want to touch on nonviolence because we see that again as the failure of white society to make nonviolence work. I was always surprised at Quakers who came to Alabama and counseled me to be nonviolent, but didn’t have the guts to start talking to James Clark to be nonviolent. That is where nonviolence needs to be preached -- to Jim Clark, not to Black people. They have already been nonviolent too many years. The question is, Can white people conduct their nonviolent schools in Cicero where they belong to be conducted, not among Black people in Mississippi. Can they conduct it among the white people in Grenada?
Six-foot-two men who kick little Black children -- can you conduct nonviolent schools there? That is the question that we must raise, not that you conduct nonviolence among Black people. Can you name me one Black man today who's killed anybody white and is still alive? Even after rebellion, when some Black brothers throw some bricks and bottles, ten thousand of them has to pay the crime, 'cause when the white policeman comes in, anybody who’s Black is arrested, "'cause we all look alike."
So that we have to raise those questions. We, the youth of this country, must begin to raise those questions. And we must begin to move to build new institutions that's going to speak to the needs of people who need it. We are going to have to speak to change the foreign policy of this country. One of the problems with the peace movement is that it's just too caught up in Vietnam, and that if we pulled out the troops from Vietnam this week, next week you’d have to get another peace movement for Santo Domingo. And the question is, How do you begin to articulate the need to change the foreign policy of this country -- a policy that is decided upon race, a policy on which decisions are made upon getting economic wealth at any price, at any price.
Now we articulate that we therefore have to hook up with Black people around the world; and that that hookup is not only psychological, but becomes very real. If South America today were to rebel, and Black people were to shoot the hell out of all the white people there -- as they should, as they should -- then Standard Oil would crumble tomorrow. If South Africa were to go today, Chase Manhattan Bank would crumble tomorrow. If Zimbabwe, which is called Rhodesia by white people, were to go tomorrow, General Electric would cave in on the East Coast. The question is, How do we stop those institutions that are so willing to fight against "Communist aggression" but closes their eyes to racist oppression? That is the question that you raise. Can this country do that?
Now, many people talk about pulling out of Vietnam. What will happen? If we pull out of Vietnam, there will be one less aggressor in there -- we won't be there, we won't be there. And so the question is, How do we articulate those positions? And we cannot begin to articulate them from the same assumptions that the people in the country speak, 'cause they speak from different assumptions than I assume what the youth in this country are talking about.
That we're not talking about a policy or aid or sending Peace Corps people in to teach people how to read and write and build houses while we steal their raw materials from them. Is that what we're talking about? 'Cause that’s all we do. What underdeveloped countries needs -- information on how to become industrialized, so they can keep their raw materials where they have it, produce them and sell it to this country for the price it’s supposed to pay; not that we produce it and sell it back to them for a profit and keep sending our modern day missionaries in, calling them the sons of Kennedy. And that if the youth are going to participate in that program, how do you raise those questions where you begin to control that Peace Corps program? How do you begin to raise them?
How do we raise the questions of poverty? The assumptions of this country is that if someone is poor, they are poor because of their own individual blight, or they weren’t born on the right side of town; they had too many children; they went in the army too early; or their father was a drunk, or they didn’t care about school, or they made a mistake. That’s a lot of nonsense. Poverty is well calculated in this country. It is well calculated, and the reason why the poverty program won’t work is because the calculators of poverty are administering it. That's why it won't work.
So how can we, as the youth in the country, move to start tearing those things down? We must move into the white community. We are in the Black community. We have developed a movement in the Black community. The challenge is that the white activist has failed miserably to develop the movement inside of his community. And the question is, Can we find white people who are going to have the courage to go into white communities and start organizing them? Can we find them? Are they here and are they willing to do that? Those are the questions that we must raise for the white activist.
An
d we're never going to get caught up in questions about power. This country knows what power is. It knows it very well. And it knows what Black Power is 'cause it deprived Black people of it for 400 years. So it knows what Black Power is. That the question of, Why do Black people -- Why do white people in this country associate Black Power with violence? And the question is because of their own inability to deal with "blackness." If we had said "Negro power" nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. Or if we said power for colored people, everybody’d be for that, but it is the word "Black" -- it is the word "Black" that bothers people in this country, and that’s their problem, not mine -- they're problem, they're problem.
Now there's one modern day lie that we want to attack and then move on very quickly and that is the lie that says anything all black is bad. Now, you’re all a college university crowd. You’ve taken your basic logic course. You know about a major premise and minor premise. So people have been telling me anything all black is bad. Let’s make that our major premise.
Major premise: Anything all black is bad.
Minor premise or particular premise: I am all black.
Therefore...
I’m never going to be put in that trick bag; I am all black and I’m all good, dig it. Anything all black is not necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that’s what white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting their same fears and guilt on us, and we won’t have it, we won't have it. Let them handle their own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it.
I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself: "Now there is a man who’s desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion." But every time I see Lyndon on television, I said, "Martin, baby, you got a long way to go."
So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do, how we are willing to say "No" to withdraw from that system and begin within our community to start to function and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something cal
led the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. It is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a Party you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of Black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.
Now there is a Party in Alabama called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It has as its emblem a white rooster and the words "white supremacy" for the write. Now the gentlemen of the Press, because they're advertisers, and because most of them are white, and because they're produced by that white institution, never called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization by its name, but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our question is, Why don't they call the Alabama Democratic Party the "White Cock Party"? (It's fair to us.....) It is clear to me that that just points out America's problem with sex and color, not our problem, not our problem. And it is now white America that is going to deal with those problems of sex and color.
If we were to be real and to be honest, we would have to admit -- we would have to admit that most people in this country see things black and white. We have to do that. All of us do. We live in a country that’s geared that way. White people would have to admit that they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. They are afraid. That's a fact. They're afraid because they’d be "beat up," "lynched," "looted," "cut up," etcetera, etcetera. It happens to Black people inside the ghetto every day, incidentally, and white people are afraid of that. So you get a man to do it for you -- a policeman. And now you figure his mentality, when he's afraid of Black people. The first time a Black man jumps, that white man going to shoot him. He's going to shoot him. So police brutality is going to exist on that level because of the incapability of that white man to see Black people come together and to live in the conditions. This country is too hypocritical and that we cannot adjust ourselves to its hypocrisy.
The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when Black people move to defend themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every night in the ghetto -- Don't anybody talk about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines Johnson is busy bombing the hell of out Vietnam -- Don't nobody talk about nonviolence. White people beat up Black people every day -- Don't nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as Black people start to move, the double standard comes into being.
You can’t defend yourself. That's what you're saying, 'cause you show me a man who -- who would advocate aggressive violence that would be able to live in this country. Show him to me. The double standards again come into itself. Isn’t it ludicrous and hypocritical for the political chameleon who calls himself a Vice President in this country to -- to stand up before this country and say, "Looting never got anybody anywhere"? Isn't it hypocritical for Lyndon to talk about looting, that you can’t accomplish anything by looting and you must accomplish it by the legal ways? What does he know about legality? Ask Ho Chi Minh, he'll tell you.
So that in conclusion we want to say that number one, it is clear to me that we have to wage a psychological battle on the right for Black people to define their own terms, define themselves as they see fit, and organize themselves as they see it. Now the question is, How is the white community going to begin to allow for that organizing, because once they start to do that, they will also allow for the organizing that they want to do inside their community. It doesn’t make a difference, 'cause we’re going to organize our way anyway. We're going to do it. The question is, How are we going to facilitate those matters, whether it’s going to be done with a thousand policemen with submachine guns, or whether or not it’s going to be done in a context where it is allowed to be done by white people warding off those policemen. That is the question.
And the question is, How are white people who call themselves activists ready to start move into the white communities on two counts: on building new political institutions to destroy the old ones that we have? And to move around the concept of white youth refusing to go into the army? So that we can start, then, to build a new world. It is ironic to talk about civilization in this country. This country is uncivilized. It needs to be civilized. It needs to be civilized.
And that we must begin to raise those questions of civilization: What it is? And who do it? And so we must urge you to fight now to be the leaders of today, not tomorrow. We've got to be
the leaders of today. This country -- This country is a nation of thieves. It stands on the brink of becoming a nation of murderers. We must stop it. We must stop it. We must stop it. We must stop it.
And then, therefore, in a larger sense there's the question of Black people. We are on the move for our liberation. We have been tired of trying to prove things to white people. We are tired of trying to explain to white people that we’re not going to hurt them. We are concerned with getting the things we want, the things that we have to have to be able to function. The question is, Can white people allow for that in this country? The question is, Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country? If that does not happen, brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to say very clearly, "Move over, or we’re going to move on over you."
Thank you.
Well, villagers ... what do you think about this speech? Share your village voice in the COMMENTS area below.
I didn't know him personally. However, I have always been struck by his story. In 1998, at the age of 57, Kwame Ture died from complications of prostate cancer. To the end he answered the telephone, "ready for the revolution."
I smiled when I learned that American Rhetoric included Ture in their list of the Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century. Kwame Ture delivered Top Speech #65 in Berkley CA during a Black Power rally in October 1966. There is no available video of his speech, however, we do have an audio clip and text transcript [SOURCE].
Thank you very much. It’s a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West. We wanted to do a couple of things before we started. The first is that, based on the fact that SNCC, through the articulation of its program by its chairman, has been able to wi
n elections in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here will win an election in California, in 1968 I'm going to run for President of the United States. I just can't make it, 'cause I wasn't born in the United States. That's the only thing holding me back.We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and that we're not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power. That’s a function of people who are advertisers that call themselves reporters. Oh, for my members and friends of the press, my self-appointed white critics, I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw two days ago, and I came across a very important quote which I think is most apropos for you. He says, "All criticism is a[n] autobiography." Dig yourself. Okay.
The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. The Black existentialist philosopher who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the question. He said that man could not. Camus and Sartre was not. We in SNCC tend to agree with Camus and Sartre, that a man cannot condemn himself. Were he to condemn himself, he would then have to inflict punishment upon himself. An example would be the Nazis. Any prisoner who -- any of the Nazi prisoners who admitted, after he was caught and incarcerated, that he committed crimes, that he killed all the many people that he killed, he committed suicide. The only ones who were able to stay alive were the ones who never admitted that they committed a crimes [sic] against people -- that is, the ones who rationalized that Jews were not human beings and deserved to be killed, or that they were only following orders.
On a more immediate scene, the officials and the population -- the white population -- in Neshoba County, Mississippi -- that’s where Philadelphia is -- could not -- could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his deputies, and the other fourteen men that killed three human beings. They could not because they elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did; and that for them to condemn him will be for them to condemn themselves.
In a much larger view, SNCC says that white America cannot condemn herself. And since we are liberal, we have done it: You stand condemned. Now, a number of things that arises from that answer of how do you condemn yourselves. Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they're built upon racism. And the question, then, is how can Black people inside of this country move? And then how can white people who say they’re not a part of those institutions begin to move? And how then do we begin to clear away the obstacles that we have in this society, that make us live like human beings? How can we begin to build institutions that will allow people to relate with each other as human beings? This country has never done that, especially around the country of white or Black.
Now, several people have been upset because we’ve said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by Blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this country has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of integration," and that some negroes have been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next to white people; and that that does not b
egin to solve the problem; that when we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and that people ought to understand that; that we were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy.Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves Black people after they’re born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying Black people their freedom; that is, they must stop denying freedom. They never give it to anyone.
Now we want to take that to its logical extension, so that we could understand, then, what its relevancy would be in terms of new civil rights bills. I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for Black people. For example, I am Black. I know that. I also know that while I am Black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a Black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill, again, was for white people, not for Black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live.
So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.
And so in a larger sense we must then ask, How is it that Black people move? And what do we do? But the question in a greater sense is, How can white people who are the majority -- and who are responsible for making democracy work -- make it work? They have miserably failed to this point. They have never made democracy work, be it inside the United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines, South America, Puerto Rico. Wherever American has been, she has not been able to make democracy work; so that in a larger sense, we not only condemn the country for what it's done internally, but we must condemn it for what it does externally. We see this country trying to rule the world, and someone must stand up and start articulating that this country is not God, and cannot rule the world.
Now, then, before we move on we ought to develop the white supremacy attitudes that were either conscious or subconscious thought and how they run rampant through the society today. For example, the missionaries were sent to Africa. They went with the attitude that Blacks were automatically inferior. As a matter of fact, the first act the missionaries did, you know, when they got to Africa was to make us cover up our bodies, because they said it got them excited. We couldn’t go bare-breasted any more because they got excited.
Now when the missionaries came to civilize us because we were uncivilized, educate us because we were uneducated, and give us some -- some literate studies because we were illiterate, they charged a price. The missionaries came with the Bible, and we had the land. When they left, they had the land, and we still have the Bible. And that has been the rationalization for Western civilization as it moves across the world and stealing and plundering and raping everybody in its path. Their one rationalization is that the rest of the world is uncivilized and they are in fact civilized. And they are un-civil-ized.
And that runs on today, you see, because what we have today is we have what we call "modern-day Peace Corps missionaries," and they come into our ghettos and they Head Start, Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, 'cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: 'cause he does not have money -- period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money -- period.
And you ought not to tell me about people who don’t work, and you can’t give people money without working, 'cause if that were true, you’d have to start stopping Rockefeller, Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, the whole of Standard Oil, the Gulf Corp, all of them, including probably a large number of the Board of Trustees of this university. So the question, then, clearly, is not whether or not one can work; it’s Who has power? Who has power to make his or her acts legitimate? That is all. And that this country, that power is invested in the hands of white people, and they make their acts legitimate. It is now, therefore, for Black people to make our acts legitimate.
Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or not Black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction to it; and that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the word "Black Power" -- and let them address themselves to that; but that we are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired waiting; every time Black people move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position before they move. It’s time that the people who are supposed to be defending their position do that. That's white people. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.
Now it is clear that when this country started to move in terms of slavery, the reason for a man being picked as a slave was one reason -- because of the color of his skin. If one was Black one was automatically inferior, inhuman, and therefore fit for slavery; so that the question of whether or not we are individually suppressed is nonsensical, and it’s a downright lie. We are oppressed as a group because we are Black, not because we are lazy, not because we're apathetic, not because we’re stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are Black.
And in order to get out of that oppression one must wield the group power that one has, not the individual power which this country then sets the criteria under which a man may come into it. That is what is called in this country as integration: "You do what I tell you to do and then we’ll let you sit at the table with us." And that we are saying that we have to be opposed to that. We must now set up criteria and that if there's going to be any integration, it's going to be a two-way thing. If you believe in integration, you can come live in Watts. You can send your children to the ghetto schools. Let’s talk about that. If you believe in integration, then we’re going to start adopting us some white people to live in our neighborhood.
So it is clear that the question is not one of integration or segregation. Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is Black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not a
llow him. So vice versa: If a Black man wants to live in the slums, that should be his right. Black people will let him. That is the difference. And it's a difference on which this country makes a number of logical mistakes when they begin to try to criticize the program articulated by SNCC.Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, Black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent. You ought to be concerned about them too. The question is, Are we willing to be concerned about those 94 percent? Are we willing to be concerned about the Black people who will never get to Berkeley, who will never get to Harvard, and cannot get an education, so you’ll never get a chance to rub shoulders with them and say, "Well, he’s almost as good as we are; he’s not like the others"? The question is, How can white society begin to move to see Black people as human beings? I am Black, therefore I am; not that I am Black and I must go to college to prove myself. I am Black, therefore I am. And don’t deprive me of anything and say to me that you must go to college before you gain access to X, Y, and Z. It is only a rationalization for one's oppression.
The -- The political parties in this country do not meet the needs of people on a day-to-day basis. The question is, How can we build new political institutions that will become the political expressions of people on a day-to-day basis? The question is, How can you build political institutions that will begin to meet the needs of Oakland, California? And the needs of Oakland, California, is not 1,000 policemen with submachine guns. They don't need that. They need that least of all. The question is, How can we build institutions where those people can begin to function on a day-to-day basis, where they can get decent jobs, where they can get decent houses, and where they can begin to participate in the policy and major decisions that affect their lives? That’s what they need, not Gestapo troops, because this is not 1942, and if you play like Nazis, we playing back with you this time around. Get hip to that.
The question then is, How can white people move to start making the major institutions that they have in this country function the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question. And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there. It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada. It is white people who make sure that we live in the ghettos of this country. it is white institutions that do that. They must change. In ord
er -- In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human relationships, a new society must be born. Racism must die, and the economic exploitation of this country of non-white peoples around the world must also die -- must also die.Now there are several programs that we have in the South, most in poor white communities. We're trying to organize poor whites on a base where they can begin to move around the question of economic exploitation and political disfranchisement. We know -- we've heard the theory several times -- but few people are willing to go into there. The question is, Can the white activist not try to be a Pepsi generation who comes alive in the Black community, but can he be a man who’s willing to move into the white community and start organizing where the organization is needed? Can he do that? The question is, Can the white society or the white activist disassociate himself with two clowns who waste time parrying with each other rather than talking about the problems that are facing people in this state? Can you dissociate yourself with those clowns and start to build new institutions that will eliminate all idiots like them.
And the question is, If we are going to do that when and where do we start, and how do we start? We maintain that we must start doing that inside the white community. Our own personal position politically is that we don't think the Democratic Party represents the needs of Black people. We know it don't. And that if, in fact, white people really believe that, the question is, if they’re going to move inside that structure, how are they going to organize around a concept of whiteness based on true brotherhood and based on stopping exploitation, economic exploitation, so that there will be a coalition base for Black people to hook up with? You cannot form a coalition based on national sentiment. That is not a coalition. If you need a coalition to redress itself to real changes in this country, white people must start building those institutions inside the white community. And that is the real question, I think, facing the white activists today. Can they, in fact, begin to move into and tear down the institutions which have put us all in a trick bag that we’ve been into for the last hundred years?
I don't think that we should follow what many people say that we should fight to be leaders of tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God knows we need to be leaders today, 'cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick. So that can we on a larger sense begin now, today, to start building those institutions and to fight to articulate our position, to fight to be able to control our universities -- We need to be able to do that -- and to fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones? That’s the real question that face us today, and it is a dilemma because most of us do not know how to work, and that the excuse that most white activists find is to run into the Black community.
Now we maintain that we cannot have white people working in the Black community, and we mean it on a psychological ground. The fact is that all Black people often questi
on whether or not they are equal to whites, because every time they start to do something, white people are around showing them how to do it. If we are going to eliminate that for the generation that comes after us, then Black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating for themselves, for themselves.That is not to say that one is a reverse racist; it is to say that one is moving in a healthy ground; it is to say what the philosopher Sartre says: One is becoming an "antiracist racist." And this country can’t understand that. Maybe it's because it's all caught up in racism. But I think what you have in SNCC is an anti-racist racism. We are against racists. Now if everybody who is white see themself [sic] as a racist and then see us against him, they're speaking from their own guilt position, not ours, not ours.
Now then, the question is, How can we move to begin to change what's going on in this country. I maintain, as we have in SNCC, that the war in Vietnam is an illegal and immoral war. And the question is, What can we do to stop that war? What can we do to stop the people who, in the name of our country, are killing babies, women, and children? What can we do to stop that? And I maintain that we do not have the power in our hands to change that institution, to begin to recreate it, so that they learn to leave the Vietnamese people alone, and that the only power we have is the power to say, "Hell no!" to the draft.
We have to say -- We have to say to ourselves that there is a higher law than the law of a racist named McNamara. There is a higher law than the law of a fool named Rusk. And there's a higher law than the law of a buffoon named Johnson. It’s the law of each of us. It's the law of each of us. It is the law of each of us saying that we will not allow them to make us hired killers. We will stand pat. We will not kill anybody that they say kill. And if we decide to kill, we're going to decide who we going to kill. And this country will only be able to stop the war in Vietnam when the young men who are made to fight it begin to say, "Hell, no, we ain’t going."
Now then, there's a failure because the Peace Movement has been unable to get off the college campuses where everybody has a 2S and not going to get drafted anyway. And the question is, How can you move out of that into the white ghettos of this country and begin to articulate a position for those white students who do not want to go. We cannot do that. It is something -- sometimes ironic that many of the peace groups have beginning to call us violent and say they can no longer support us, and we are in fact the most militant organization [for] peace or civil rights or human rights against the war in Vietnam in this country today. There isn’t one organization that has begun to meet our stance on the war in Vietnam, 'cause we not only say we are against the war in Vietnam; we are against the draft. We are against the draft. No man has the right to take a man for two years and train him to be a killer. A man should decide what he wants to do with his life.
So the question then is it becomes crystal clear for Black people because we can easily say that anyone fighting in the war in Vietnam is nothing but a Black mercenary, and that's all he is. Any time a Black man leaves the country where he can’t vote to supposedly deliver the vote for somebody else, he’s a Black mercenary. Any time a -- Any time a Black man leaves this country, gets shot in Vietnam on foreign ground, and returns home and you won’t give him a burial in his own homeland, he’s a Black mercenary, a Black mercenary.
And that even if I were to believe the lies of Johnson, if I were to believe his lies that we're fighting to give democracy to the people in Vietnam, as a Black man living in this country I wouldn’t fight to give this to anybody. I wouldn't give it to anybody. So that we have to use our bodies and our minds in the only way that we see fit. We must begin like the philosopher Camus to come alive by saying "No!" That is the only act in which we begin to come alive, and we have to say "No!" to many, many things in this country.
This country is a nation of thieves. It has stole everything it has, beginning with Black people, beginning with Black people. And that the question is, How can we move to start changing this country from what it is -- a nation of thieves. This country cannot justify any longer its existence. We have become the policeman of the world. The marines are at our disposal to always bring democracy, and if the Vietnamese don’t want democracy, well dammit, "We’ll just wipe them the hell out, 'cause they don’t deserve to live if they won’t have our way of life."
There is then in a larger sense, What do you do on your university campus? Do you raise questions about the hundred Black students who were kicked off campus a couple of weeks ago? Eight hundred? Eight hundred? And how does that question begin to move? Do you begin to relate to people outside of the ivory tower and university wall? Do you think you’re capable of building those human relationships, as the country now stands? You're fooling yourself. It is impossible for white and Black people to talk about building a relationship based on humanity when the country is the way it is, when the institutions are clearly against us.
We have taken all the myths of this country and we've found them to be nothing but downright lies. This country told us that if we worked hard we would succeed, and if that were true we would own this country lock, stock, and barrel -- lock, stock, and barrel -- lock, stock, and barrel. It is we who have picked the cotton for nothing. It is we who are the maids in the kitchens of liberal white people. It is we who are the janitors, the porters, the elevator men; we who sweep up your college floors. Yes, it is we who are the hardest workers and the lowest paid, and the lowest paid.
And that it is nonsensical for people to start talking about human relationships until they're willing to build new institutions. Black people are economically insecure. White liberals are economically secure. Can you begin to build an economic coalition? Are the liberals willing to share their salaries with the economically insecure Black people they so much love? Then if you’re not, are you willing to start building new institutions that will provide economic security for Black people? That’s the question we want to deal with. That's the question we want to deal with.
We have to seriously examine the histories that we have been told. But we have something more to do than that. American students are perhaps the most politically unsophisticated students in the world, in the world, in the world. Across every country in this world, while we were growing up, students were leading the major revolutions of their countries. We have not been able to do that. They have been politically aware of their existence. In South America our neighbors down below the border have one every 24 hours just to remind us that they're politically aware.
And we have been unable to grasp it because we’ve always moved in the field of morality and love while people have been politically jiving with our lives. And the question is, How do we now move politically and stop trying to move morally? You can't move morally against a man like Brown and Reagan. You've got to move politically to put them out of business. You've got to move politically.
You can’t move morally against Lyndon Baines Johnson because he is an immoral man. He doesn’t know what it’s all about. So you’ve got to move politically. You've got to move politically. And that we have to begin to develop a political sophistication -- which is not to be a parrot: "The two-party system is the best party in the world." There is a difference between being a parrot and being politically sophisticated.
We have to raise questions about whether or not we do need new types of political institutions in this country, and we in SNCC maintain that we need them now. We need new political institutions in this country. Any time -- Any time Lyndon Baines Johnson can head a Party which has in it Bobby Kennedy, Wayne Morse, Eastland, Wallace, and all those other supposed-to-be-liberal cats, there’s something wrong with that Party. They’re moving politically, not morally. And that if that party refuses to seat Black people from Mississippi and goes ahead and seats racists like Eastland and his clique, it is clear to me that they’re moving politically, and that one cannot begin to talk morality to people like that.
We must begin to think politically and see if we can have the power to impose and keep the moral values that we hold high. We must question the values of this society, and I maintain that Black people are the best people to do that because we have been excluded from that society. And the question is, we ought to think whether or not we want to become a part of that society. That's what we want to do.
And that that is precisely what it seems to me that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is doing. We are raising questions about this country. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want it -- don't want to be part of that system. And the question is, How do we raise those questions? How do we ....How do we begin to raise them?
We have grown up and we are the generation that has found this country to be a world power, that has found this country to be the wealthiest country in the world. We must question how she got her wealth? That's what we're questioning, and whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping every -- everybody else across the world. That's what we must begin to question. And that because Black people are saying we do not now want to become a part of you, we are called reverse racists. Ain’t that a gas?
Now, then, we want to touch on nonviolence because we see that again as the failure of white society to make nonviolence work. I was always surprised at Quakers who came to Alabama and counseled me to be nonviolent, but didn’t have the guts to start talking to James Clark to be nonviolent. That is where nonviolence needs to be preached -- to Jim Clark, not to Black people. They have already been nonviolent too many years. The question is, Can white people conduct their nonviolent schools in Cicero where they belong to be conducted, not among Black people in Mississippi. Can they conduct it among the white people in Grenada?
Six-foot-two men who kick little Black children -- can you conduct nonviolent schools there? That is the question that we must raise, not that you conduct nonviolence among Black people. Can you name me one Black man today who's killed anybody white and is still alive? Even after rebellion, when some Black brothers throw some bricks and bottles, ten thousand of them has to pay the crime, 'cause when the white policeman comes in, anybody who’s Black is arrested, "'cause we all look alike."
So that we have to raise those questions. We, the youth of this country, must begin to raise those questions. And we must begin to move to build new institutions that's going to speak to the needs of people who need it. We are going to have to speak to change the foreign policy of this country. One of the problems with the peace movement is that it's just too caught up in Vietnam, and that if we pulled out the troops from Vietnam this week, next week you’d have to get another peace movement for Santo Domingo. And the question is, How do you begin to articulate the need to change the foreign policy of this country -- a policy that is decided upon race, a policy on which decisions are made upon getting economic wealth at any price, at any price.
Now we articulate that we therefore have to hook up with Black people around the world; and that that hookup is not only psychological, but becomes very real. If South America today were to rebel, and Black people were to shoot the hell out of all the white people there -- as they should, as they should -- then Standard Oil would crumble tomorrow. If South Africa were to go today, Chase Manhattan Bank would crumble tomorrow. If Zimbabwe, which is called Rhodesia by white people, were to go tomorrow, General Electric would cave in on the East Coast. The question is, How do we stop those institutions that are so willing to fight against "Communist aggression" but closes their eyes to racist oppression? That is the question that you raise. Can this country do that?
Now, many people talk about pulling out of Vietnam. What will happen? If we pull out of Vietnam, there will be one less aggressor in there -- we won't be there, we won't be there. And so the question is, How do we articulate those positions? And we cannot begin to articulate them from the same assumptions that the people in the country speak, 'cause they speak from different assumptions than I assume what the youth in this country are talking about.
That we're not talking about a policy or aid or sending Peace Corps people in to teach people how to read and write and build houses while we steal their raw materials from them. Is that what we're talking about? 'Cause that’s all we do. What underdeveloped countries needs -- information on how to become industrialized, so they can keep their raw materials where they have it, produce them and sell it to this country for the price it’s supposed to pay; not that we produce it and sell it back to them for a profit and keep sending our modern day missionaries in, calling them the sons of Kennedy. And that if the youth are going to participate in that program, how do you raise those questions where you begin to control that Peace Corps program? How do you begin to raise them?
How do we raise the questions of poverty? The assumptions of this country is that if someone is poor, they are poor because of their own individual blight, or they weren’t born on the right side of town; they had too many children; they went in the army too early; or their father was a drunk, or they didn’t care about school, or they made a mistake. That’s a lot of nonsense. Poverty is well calculated in this country. It is well calculated, and the reason why the poverty program won’t work is because the calculators of poverty are administering it. That's why it won't work.
So how can we, as the youth in the country, move to start tearing those things down? We must move into the white community. We are in the Black community. We have developed a movement in the Black community. The challenge is that the white activist has failed miserably to develop the movement inside of his community. And the question is, Can we find white people who are going to have the courage to go into white communities and start organizing them? Can we find them? Are they here and are they willing to do that? Those are the questions that we must raise for the white activist.
An
d we're never going to get caught up in questions about power. This country knows what power is. It knows it very well. And it knows what Black Power is 'cause it deprived Black people of it for 400 years. So it knows what Black Power is. That the question of, Why do Black people -- Why do white people in this country associate Black Power with violence? And the question is because of their own inability to deal with "blackness." If we had said "Negro power" nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. Or if we said power for colored people, everybody’d be for that, but it is the word "Black" -- it is the word "Black" that bothers people in this country, and that’s their problem, not mine -- they're problem, they're problem.Now there's one modern day lie that we want to attack and then move on very quickly and that is the lie that says anything all black is bad. Now, you’re all a college university crowd. You’ve taken your basic logic course. You know about a major premise and minor premise. So people have been telling me anything all black is bad. Let’s make that our major premise.
Major premise: Anything all black is bad.
Minor premise or particular premise: I am all black.
Therefore...
I’m never going to be put in that trick bag; I am all black and I’m all good, dig it. Anything all black is not necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that’s what white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting their same fears and guilt on us, and we won’t have it, we won't have it. Let them handle their own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it.
I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself: "Now there is a man who’s desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion." But every time I see Lyndon on television, I said, "Martin, baby, you got a long way to go."
So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do, how we are willing to say "No" to withdraw from that system and begin within our community to start to function and to build new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something cal
led the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. It is a political party. The Alabama law says that if you have a Party you must have an emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of Black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.Now there is a Party in Alabama called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It has as its emblem a white rooster and the words "white supremacy" for the write. Now the gentlemen of the Press, because they're advertisers, and because most of them are white, and because they're produced by that white institution, never called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization by its name, but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our question is, Why don't they call the Alabama Democratic Party the "White Cock Party"? (It's fair to us.....) It is clear to me that that just points out America's problem with sex and color, not our problem, not our problem. And it is now white America that is going to deal with those problems of sex and color.
If we were to be real and to be honest, we would have to admit -- we would have to admit that most people in this country see things black and white. We have to do that. All of us do. We live in a country that’s geared that way. White people would have to admit that they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. They are afraid. That's a fact. They're afraid because they’d be "beat up," "lynched," "looted," "cut up," etcetera, etcetera. It happens to Black people inside the ghetto every day, incidentally, and white people are afraid of that. So you get a man to do it for you -- a policeman. And now you figure his mentality, when he's afraid of Black people. The first time a Black man jumps, that white man going to shoot him. He's going to shoot him. So police brutality is going to exist on that level because of the incapability of that white man to see Black people come together and to live in the conditions. This country is too hypocritical and that we cannot adjust ourselves to its hypocrisy.
The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when Black people move to defend themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every night in the ghetto -- Don't anybody talk about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines Johnson is busy bombing the hell of out Vietnam -- Don't nobody talk about nonviolence. White people beat up Black people every day -- Don't nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as Black people start to move, the double standard comes into being.
You can’t defend yourself. That's what you're saying, 'cause you show me a man who -- who would advocate aggressive violence that would be able to live in this country. Show him to me. The double standards again come into itself. Isn’t it ludicrous and hypocritical for the political chameleon who calls himself a Vice President in this country to -- to stand up before this country and say, "Looting never got anybody anywhere"? Isn't it hypocritical for Lyndon to talk about looting, that you can’t accomplish anything by looting and you must accomplish it by the legal ways? What does he know about legality? Ask Ho Chi Minh, he'll tell you.
So that in conclusion we want to say that number one, it is clear to me that we have to wage a psychological battle on the right for Black people to define their own terms, define themselves as they see fit, and organize themselves as they see it. Now the question is, How is the white community going to begin to allow for that organizing, because once they start to do that, they will also allow for the organizing that they want to do inside their community. It doesn’t make a difference, 'cause we’re going to organize our way anyway. We're going to do it. The question is, How are we going to facilitate those matters, whether it’s going to be done with a thousand policemen with submachine guns, or whether or not it’s going to be done in a context where it is allowed to be done by white people warding off those policemen. That is the question.
And the question is, How are white people who call themselves activists ready to start move into the white communities on two counts: on building new political institutions to destroy the old ones that we have? And to move around the concept of white youth refusing to go into the army? So that we can start, then, to build a new world. It is ironic to talk about civilization in this country. This country is uncivilized. It needs to be civilized. It needs to be civilized.
And that we must begin to raise those questions of civilization: What it is? And who do it? And so we must urge you to fight now to be the leaders of today, not tomorrow. We've got to be
the leaders of today. This country -- This country is a nation of thieves. It stands on the brink of becoming a nation of murderers. We must stop it. We must stop it. We must stop it. We must stop it.And then, therefore, in a larger sense there's the question of Black people. We are on the move for our liberation. We have been tired of trying to prove things to white people. We are tired of trying to explain to white people that we’re not going to hurt them. We are concerned with getting the things we want, the things that we have to have to be able to function. The question is, Can white people allow for that in this country? The question is, Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country? If that does not happen, brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to say very clearly, "Move over, or we’re going to move on over you."
Thank you.
Well, villagers ... what do you think about this speech? Share your village voice in the COMMENTS area below.
June Week 4- The week in "Do Not Want!"
Only one this week. It feels good for a change, though something tells me this next week will bring us more than one clunker to sit through...
Born- I should have known the minute that the title screen popped up that I was in trouble... did they use a Commodore Vic-20 for that graphic? It doesn't get much better from there, with scripting, acting, and a plot that are mostly awful. This movie may have been going for dark humor (then again it may not, I couldn't tell) but it failed.
A few good points, and I use the word "good" very lightly:
-Alison Brie's boobs were awesome, as was her pregnant tummy. She's just awesome.
-Nudity galore. Sex galore. Even some alleyway lesbian action!
-Plenty of gore.
Everything Else:
-When Kane Hodder is the best actor in the movie, run. No offense Kane, I'm a big fan, but come on.
-Wow, is Joan Severance looking old.
-What happened to Denise Crosby? She's a good actress, and yet winds up in this mess?
-The acting in this movie may be the worst I've seen in a LONG time; especially the dad (grandfather?) and slutty sister. The script didn't help much either.
-A dad checks his daughter out to make sure her hymen is still intact... with her sister holding her legs open? What?!?
-"Pin the tail on the pussy, Grandpa!" That actually happened.
Born- I should have known the minute that the title screen popped up that I was in trouble... did they use a Commodore Vic-20 for that graphic? It doesn't get much better from there, with scripting, acting, and a plot that are mostly awful. This movie may have been going for dark humor (then again it may not, I couldn't tell) but it failed.
A few good points, and I use the word "good" very lightly:
-Alison Brie's boobs were awesome, as was her pregnant tummy. She's just awesome.
-Nudity galore. Sex galore. Even some alleyway lesbian action!
-Plenty of gore.
Everything Else:
-When Kane Hodder is the best actor in the movie, run. No offense Kane, I'm a big fan, but come on.
-Wow, is Joan Severance looking old.
-What happened to Denise Crosby? She's a good actress, and yet winds up in this mess?
-The acting in this movie may be the worst I've seen in a LONG time; especially the dad (grandfather?) and slutty sister. The script didn't help much either.
-A dad checks his daughter out to make sure her hymen is still intact... with her sister holding her legs open? What?!?
-"Pin the tail on the pussy, Grandpa!" That actually happened.
Military Coup in Honduras
I wonder what Americans would have done if George W. Bush tried to stay in the White House beyond the 8-year term limits established by the Constitution? The folks down in Honduras didn't have any patience with their president when he tried to extend his stay in the palace.
Military troops arrested President Manuel Zelaya before a proposed referendum on presidential term limits. President Zelaya wanted to seek a second term next year. By law, the Honduran leader, elected in 2005, is limited to one term in office.
Honduran lawmakers appointed a provisional president Sunday following the arrest and deportation of Zelaya. Roberto Micheletti, the head of the Honduran Congress,
was installed as the country's new leader hours after soldiers detained Zelaya, placed him on a plane and flew him to Costa Rica.
The apparent coup prompted criticism by Human Rights Watch, which called Zelaya's ousting a "breach of democracy in Honduras" and called for the Organization of American States to act quickly to push for the re-establishment of democracy in Honduras.
Military troops arrested President Manuel Zelaya before a proposed referendum on presidential term limits. President Zelaya wanted to seek a second term next year. By law, the Honduran leader, elected in 2005, is limited to one term in office.
Honduran lawmakers appointed a provisional president Sunday following the arrest and deportation of Zelaya. Roberto Micheletti, the head of the Honduran Congress,
was installed as the country's new leader hours after soldiers detained Zelaya, placed him on a plane and flew him to Costa Rica.The apparent coup prompted criticism by Human Rights Watch, which called Zelaya's ousting a "breach of democracy in Honduras" and called for the Organization of American States to act quickly to push for the re-establishment of democracy in Honduras.
"The OAS has a key role to play now. It must rapidly find a multilateral solution to this breach of democracy in Honduras," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for the international rights group. "To allow this coup to stand would be a huge step back from the progress that the region has made toward democracy in recent decades."America is not recognizing the new leadership.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying the action taken against Zelaya "violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all."Iran elections ... Honduras coup ... the world is a very difficult and dangerous place. What are your thoughts about this international development?
"We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue," Clinton said. "Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago."
Am I Not Human? Darfur: Time to Turn Words Into Action
We support the 'Am I Not Human?' blogging campaign that lights up the 27th of each month. I encourage all villagers to find a way to support this effort to shine a light on human rights abuses taking place all over the world.My focus this month is the continuing crisis in Darfur. Darfur has been a consistent topic on this blog. Villagers know that the conflict in Darfur that has taken some 300,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million. During the Bush years this was a passionate, rallying cause for liberal activists, some of whom now are well-placed in the Obama administration. The need to resolve it remains.
The following update on Obama's Sudan policy can be found on the White House website:
Ending the crisis in Darfur and ensuring Sudan’s long-term stability through the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is a top priority for the Obama Administration. The humanitarian crisis there makes our task all the more urgent. The President has appointed a Special Envoy for Sudan as a strong signal of his commitment to support the people of Sudan. We are committed to working with the international community to end the suffering, seek a lasting settlement to the violence, and ensure a stable and secure future for the region.More than two months ago, President Obama reminded us of his commitment and obligation to end t
he atrocities in Darfur. Since then, we've been anxiously waiting for him to turn his words into action with a PUBLIC plan for peace.I realize that Obama has been quite busy ... but, all of us recognize that Obama moves as fast as a speeding bullet ... he has the ability to multitask. We need for him to PUBLICALLY release his plan for peace in Darfur.
By publicly releasing his plan, President Obama can rally other nations to do everything they can to support peace as well. We're waiting, the people of Darfur are waiting, and time is running out.
The people of Darfur cannot wait any longer. Every day, millions struggle to get by in makeshift refugee camps, and the coming rainy season will present even more hardships. Sudanese President Bashir's expulsion of 13 humanitarian aid groups means the people in these camps have even more limited access to vital services as the rainy s
eason rolls in. Right now, President Bashir is betting that there will be no consequences for his actions, and he is growing bolder every day.Please join me and send a message to President Obama urging him to announce his plan for Sudan NOW.
The people of Darfur are asking the question -- Am I Not Human?
President's Weekly Address: 'Opening the Door to a Clean Energy Economy'
President Obama is focused on three things this year -- economy, energy and education. He passed another obstacle yesterday when the House of Representatives passed legislation intended to address global warming and transform the way the nation produces and uses energy.
The legislation, which passed 219-212, with eight Democrats voting against it, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.
At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and others to trade pollution permits, or allowances. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and driving industry to find cleaner ways of producing energy.
The President praised this historic energy legislation in his weekly address:
The battle for this energy legislation now moves to the US Senate. I hope that it passes because I think that America needs to find a way to create jobs and become a world-class leader in the so-called 'green' economy.
What say u?
Jena 6 are Free
My blog is a mere cog in the afrosphere ... however, my blog was part of the online mobilization in support of the Jena Six that led to today's deal allowing five of the young men to plead 'no contest' to greatly reduced charges.This is a just resolution to the racially-charged case. These young men were initially charged with attempted murder and conspiracy, they ultimately pleaded no contest to simple battery, and will serve a sentence of just 7 days of probation.
In addition, a civil suit filed by the family of Justin Barker was settled when the Jena 6 defendants (including Mychal Bell) agreed to pay the Barker family an undisclosed settlement. Attorneys are not allowed to reveal the details of the settlement but a reliable source has disclosed that the payment was approximately $24,000.
ColorOfChange.org said that the plea deal marked an acknowledgement by officials that the Louisiana justice system initially treated the then-teenage boys too harshly, privileging white students' accounts of a schoolyard fig
ht over those of Black students in the largely segregated town of Jena."Today's plea deal shows that the original charges in the case were unfair and vastly overblown," said James Rucker, ColorOfChange.org's executive director. "The story of the Jena 6 was an extreme example of what can happen when a justice system biased against Black boys operates unchecked. But it's also an example of what can happen when hundreds of thousands of people across the country stand up to challenge unequal justice. Together, we drew the country's attention to this case and raised the money necessary to fund a strong legal defense."The Jena 6 are now free to move ahead with their lives. Mychal Bell served his time under an earlier agreement. Each of the five remaining defendants in this case pleaded 'no contest' to the misdemeanor charge of simple battery. Each will be placed on non-supervised probation for one week and must pay a $500 fine and in
most cases an additional $500 in court costs.Pictured (left to right) are Corwin Jones, 20, Jesse Ray Beard, 18, Bryant Purvis (20), Robert Bailey (19) and Theo Shaw (20) and attorney Alan Bean. Judge Thomas Yeager was clearly impressed that all five of the defendants who appeared before him today are enrolled in college.
In a week of tragic news ... it is nice to end it with a victory. The Jena 6 are free!
OURstory: Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche is Only Black Man to Die on the Titanic
Joseph Laroche was the only Black man to perish in the Titanic; that's after he saved his wife and kids. Laroche was born in Cap Haitien, Haiti, on May 26, 1889.
Joseph Laroche was born into a powerful family. His uncle, Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti. When Joseph was fifteen, he left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France. Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller. The two eventually married.
Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph's skin color left him unable to find employment in France. The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship. His body was never recovered.
Joseph Laroche was born into a powerful family. His uncle, Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti. When Joseph was fifteen, he left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France. Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller. The two eventually married.
Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph's skin color left him unable to find employment in France. The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship. His body was never recovered.
We need to share OURstory 24/7/365. If we don't spread the word within our villages ... who will do so? What did you think of this bit of history from the Titantic?
Daybreakers!
This trailer looks wicked to the point that Ethan Hawke even looks cool. That's saying something.
Deadgirl (2009)
Meh. This one should have been so much better...
DEADGIRL
Sub-Genre- Zombie/Teen Terror
In Attendance- Me
Cast Members of Note- Candice Accola, Shiloh Fernandez, Andrew Dipalma, and the ever trusty Michael Bowen.
What's it About?- Ah, High School. A magical land of cliques, intolerance, girls that turn slutty way to early, and math. Also, awkward mutual-masturbation sessions between friends, but I only read about that on the internet... Anyways, Ricky and JT are High School losers who skip school, drink beer, and dabble in rape together. They live on the edge.
Rebels with no cause, whatsoever.
Together they find a naked chick chained to a table in an abandoned old insane asylum, and decide to use her as a sex slave. JT (who looks/acts like Christian Slater's retarded cousin Clint) is all for the rape, especially since she's "Dead", and even gets some other friends in on it. Soon enough, the dank basement turns into an after school gang-bang hang out. Doesn't that just remind you of your own High School years? No? Me neither.
She obviously wants it, that's why she's chained there naked against her will.
From here on out, really horrible kids make some really asinine decisions, and flat out defy any semblance of reality with their actions. Even the girl, whom we feel for throughout the movie, seals her own fate by being a moron. Just desserts all around.
The Good- Deadgirl achieves a pretty high level of disturbing, that for all its faults, is still fairly engaging. It's one of those movies that make you feel dirty while watching it, and long after, which I suppose is its job. It's nasty, sometimes creepy, disturbing and horrific. The acting is far better than the script is, with the cast doing their jobs pretty well.
A tool with a tool. How apropos.
Candice Accola was definitely one good thing about this flick. She's a good little actress, and also a hottie. Aside from this, check her out in On the Doll; not a horror flick, but disturbing in its own right.
More please.
The Bad- Why do I get the feeling that the filmmakers totally dropped the ball here? Great premise, fairly well made, and yet I failed to sympathize with any of the characters, even the ones that were supposed to be sympathetic. I'm tired of horror movies making their characters do completely moronic things for no reason other than to actually advance a plot. I get that realism and horror seldom go hand in hand, but there is/should be a limit to the amount of shit we have to swallow.
The Downright Horrendous- I know the level of ignorance, apathy and recklessness is way worse amongst teens now than when I was in school, but the kids in this movie are pieces of shit. The rape, gang rape, "Pay me $10 and I'll let you into our rape club" shit was just insane. Worse still, the "nice guy" of the group that thinks what's going on is "wrong", doesn't have a bit of fucking sense in his head to call the police? Death to them all, and any others of their ilk.
The Gory- This movie definitely has some blood and gore... The bathroom scene. Jesus. The "mouth" scene was nasty too. There are plenty of nasty bits spread throughout this one to make the gorehound in you happy.
"Wharrgarbl!"
The Naked- The Deadgirl is naked the whole time, but it's a creepy kind of naked. Plenty of it though. Oh, and tons of rape. No hotness to be found here, aside from Candice Accola.
Best Line- "You should have fucked her when you were 9, you had the chance boy!" or "Yeah? Why don't you go for the mouth then?" Nasty.
What did we learn?- Hollywood thinks that all teens are blithering idiots. Also, do not mess with fat chicks... they will fuck you up.
We also learned that this dog rules.
Rating- C (5.5/10) This was a pretty good movie, but it had some big flaws that frustrated the hell out of me, and ultimately made it much less of a movie than it could have been. If you can forgive the absolutely ridiculous premise, and abide some of the worst characters ever, then you might like this. Rent it before you buy.
Final Thoughts- Candice Accola is a doll.
DEADGIRL
Sub-Genre- Zombie/Teen Terror
In Attendance- Me
Cast Members of Note- Candice Accola, Shiloh Fernandez, Andrew Dipalma, and the ever trusty Michael Bowen.
What's it About?- Ah, High School. A magical land of cliques, intolerance, girls that turn slutty way to early, and math. Also, awkward mutual-masturbation sessions between friends, but I only read about that on the internet... Anyways, Ricky and JT are High School losers who skip school, drink beer, and dabble in rape together. They live on the edge.
Together they find a naked chick chained to a table in an abandoned old insane asylum, and decide to use her as a sex slave. JT (who looks/acts like Christian Slater's retarded cousin Clint) is all for the rape, especially since she's "Dead", and even gets some other friends in on it. Soon enough, the dank basement turns into an after school gang-bang hang out. Doesn't that just remind you of your own High School years? No? Me neither.
From here on out, really horrible kids make some really asinine decisions, and flat out defy any semblance of reality with their actions. Even the girl, whom we feel for throughout the movie, seals her own fate by being a moron. Just desserts all around.
The Good- Deadgirl achieves a pretty high level of disturbing, that for all its faults, is still fairly engaging. It's one of those movies that make you feel dirty while watching it, and long after, which I suppose is its job. It's nasty, sometimes creepy, disturbing and horrific. The acting is far better than the script is, with the cast doing their jobs pretty well.
Candice Accola was definitely one good thing about this flick. She's a good little actress, and also a hottie. Aside from this, check her out in On the Doll; not a horror flick, but disturbing in its own right.
The Bad- Why do I get the feeling that the filmmakers totally dropped the ball here? Great premise, fairly well made, and yet I failed to sympathize with any of the characters, even the ones that were supposed to be sympathetic. I'm tired of horror movies making their characters do completely moronic things for no reason other than to actually advance a plot. I get that realism and horror seldom go hand in hand, but there is/should be a limit to the amount of shit we have to swallow.
The Downright Horrendous- I know the level of ignorance, apathy and recklessness is way worse amongst teens now than when I was in school, but the kids in this movie are pieces of shit. The rape, gang rape, "Pay me $10 and I'll let you into our rape club" shit was just insane. Worse still, the "nice guy" of the group that thinks what's going on is "wrong", doesn't have a bit of fucking sense in his head to call the police? Death to them all, and any others of their ilk.
The Gory- This movie definitely has some blood and gore... The bathroom scene. Jesus. The "mouth" scene was nasty too. There are plenty of nasty bits spread throughout this one to make the gorehound in you happy.
The Naked- The Deadgirl is naked the whole time, but it's a creepy kind of naked. Plenty of it though. Oh, and tons of rape. No hotness to be found here, aside from Candice Accola.
Best Line- "You should have fucked her when you were 9, you had the chance boy!" or "Yeah? Why don't you go for the mouth then?" Nasty.
What did we learn?- Hollywood thinks that all teens are blithering idiots. Also, do not mess with fat chicks... they will fuck you up.
Rating- C (5.5/10) This was a pretty good movie, but it had some big flaws that frustrated the hell out of me, and ultimately made it much less of a movie than it could have been. If you can forgive the absolutely ridiculous premise, and abide some of the worst characters ever, then you might like this. Rent it before you buy.
Final Thoughts- Candice Accola is a doll.
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