Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 03:49 PM PDT
Truth, lies and Afghanistan

How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.
Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.
My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.
I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

From Bad to Abysmal

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.
And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.
In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”
As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.
“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”
According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.
As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.

The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.
On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.

To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.

In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”

One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’ Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’ They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”

On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here’s how the conversation went:
Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”
Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them.
“Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.

“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe.

“And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”

That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.

Credibility Gap

I’m hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground.

A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office noted that public statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at the end of 2010 were “sharply divergent from IMF, [international military forces, NGO-speak for ISAF] ‘strategic communication’ messages suggesting improvements. We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here.”

The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.

“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote. “They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.

I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level “experiment” that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a “digital division” with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn’t take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army’s preference. Citing the AWE’s “results,” Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in killing capability.

A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss, Texas. It didn’t take long to discover that the same thing the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997 was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS. Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success. Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to show for $18 billion spent.

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

A nonclassified version is available at http://www.afghanreport.com/. [Editor’s note: At press time, Army public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post this longer version.]

Tell The Truth

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Obama

By FOUAD AJAMI

On Nov. 6, 1956, Election Day, to be precise, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a brief message to British Prime Minister Anthony Eden: "We have given our whole thought to Hungary and the Middle East. I don't give a damn how the election goes."

Eisenhower could afford that kind of attitude—he was a genuine American hero in World War II, and there was no chance of his losing his bid for a second term to the inconsequential Adlai Stevenson. But the election came, as the historian David Nichols put it, during a "perfect storm." Britain and France had invaded Egypt under the guise of bringing to a halt fighting in the Suez Canal between Egypt and Israel, and the Soviet Union had deemed this the right time to crush a Hungarian bid for freedom.

Ours is a different world. Barack Obama isn't to be held to the Eisenhower standard. Indeed, as a fortunate "off-mic" moment recently revealed, this president bargains with Russian errand boy Dmitry Medvedev over something as trivial as protecting Europe with a missile defense system. I will have more "flexibility," the leader of the Free World says, with my last election behind me.

Thankfully, we don't live in the shadow of a nuclear showdown. But from its very beginning, this presidency has been about the man himself and his personal ambition, and less so his duty to democracy.

So what's to be said of Mr. Obama's foreign-policy accomplishments? Has he, like Eisenhower, given his whole thought to the troubles of the Middle East? As a candidate, he declared Afghanistan the "war of necessity." But the war does not detain or torment him, nothing here of the anguish of LBJ over Vietnam. He ordered his own surge in Afghanistan but took away so much of its power by announcing a date for American withdrawal in 2014—two good, safe years after his second presidential bid. This way peace could be had with the Taliban who could wait us out—and with the "progressives" at home who have no use for this war but are willing to grant the president prosecuting it time and indulgence.

In the same vein, the primacy of electoral politics over the necessities of strategy had driven the decision to quit Iraq and give up our gains in that vital country. Mr. Obama gave the Iraqis an offer they were meant to refuse. The small residual force he said he would accept, a contingent of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers, could hardly defend itself, let alone be of any use to the Iraqis.

Associated Press

President Barack Obama.

No one was fooled. The American president had given every indication that he had no interest in Iraq and its affairs. A decade of sacrifices lay behind us in Iraq, the new order was too fragile to stand alone. We could have had an appreciable presence in Iraq—the Kurds, the Shiites, the Sunnis would have all been glad for the American protection. This presence would have served us well as a hedge against the hegemonic ambitions of Iranian theocracy, and an Iraq in the orbit of U.S. power would have been less likely to cast its fate with the embattled House of Assad in Syria.

For a year now, the people of Syria have been in the midst of a heroic struggle against a tyrannical regime, but no American help has come their way. Moral considerations aside, Syria is now a strategic battleground, a place where Iranian power challenges, by proxy, the moderate order of nations in the region. For three decades, the Iranian radical theocracy has waged campaigns of terror away from its soil.

In Syria, the mullahs are determined to prevail in the face of the moderate Arabs and Western democracies. Much of the order of the region hangs in the balance. Were the Iranian bid for regional hegemony to be broken in Syria, the Middle East would change for the better.

As the noted scholar of strategy Charles Hill put it, Syria is the ideal place to rattle the turbans. Were the Assad regime to bite the dust, the stranglehold of Hezbollah over Lebanon would come to an end. In "the East" there is that age-old instinct for reading the wind and riding with the victor.

It had taken some five months for President Obama to call on Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power, but once that call was made we were reduced to mere spectators of the Syrian calamity. We exaggerated the might of the Assad killing machine, belittled the opposition, and doubting their purpose and cohesiveness, refrained from arming the defectors.

American intelligence and policy statements could never get it right: Assad was, alternately, a dead man walking or firmly in the saddle. When a measure of ambiguity about American intentions could have aided the Syrian rebellion, the Pentagon and State Department went out of their way to reassure the despot in Damascus that there was nothing to worry about in Washington. No wonder the suspicion has grown that the Obama administration is content to see Assad ride out the storm.

From this great contest, the administration wishes to be spared. Were Assad to fall, the claim could be made that the Obama wisdom had been vindicated, that an "organic" Arab rebellion had prevailed. In the meantime, the agony of Homs and Hama, the popular upheaval against a monstrous tyranny, is left untended.

Mr. Obama has never owned up to the fact that the cruel regimes in Tehran and Damascus were the ones he had been eager to court at the dawn of his presidency. Read the Wikileaks from Damascus in early 2009—they are full of false hope that the olive branch extended to the Damascus dictatorship had altered its ways.

History is perhaps forgiving nowadays, the Syrian rebellion could be crushed without Mr. Obama paying an appreciable political price. It is a sad truth that the president has become the embodiment, and the instrument, of our retreat from distant shores—and concerns. He trades away strategic American assets in the hope that the American people will not care or notice. On the face of it, he exudes a sublime confidence that the world could be held at bay—at least until November, past that last election.
Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chair of Hoover's Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

A version of this article appeared April 2, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama and the Eisenhower Standard.

Obama

Your President is obviously playing election year politics with black life, trying to insure the black vote is solid so he can continue his policy of killing children around the world, e.g., Iraq,Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere too numerous to mention with the USA's trillion dollar military killing machine. If he cares so much about the sons that could be his son, why doesn't he call for an end to New York's stopping and frisking of 700,000 young black men like Trayvon Martin? After all, if they fail the "tone test" they could all end up like Trayvon. When stopped, depending on the tone of voice, black men can be arrested, released or killed.
Why doesn't he call for a general amnesty of the 2.4 million incarcerated black, brown and poor white sons locked down in the America gulags for mostly petty crimes committed while they were drug addicted and mentally ill?
Why doesn't he have a jobs program for his American sons, similar to the one he's offering the young men in Afghanistan if they will lay down their arms and pledge allegiance to the puppet Karzai regime? How can he offer the Taliban sons housing, jobs and education while his American sons are homeless, jobless, ignorant, drug addicted and mentally ill? Vote for me, I'll set you free!
--Marvin X

Obama on Trayvon Martin: ‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon’

President Obama, addressing the shooting of an unarmed Florida high school student, made a personal appeal for further investigation into an incident he described as a “tragedy.”
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said from the Rose Garden, referring to 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a neighborhood watch guard last month. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”

The case has stirred immense passions nationwide for its racial element: Martin, who was black, was killed by George Zimmerman, 28, a Hispanic neighbor, who has since claimed self-defense. Zimmerman has not been charged in the shooting.

Obama had refrained from commenting on the case, leaving it to Attorney General Eric Holder to navigate the details, and on Friday, Obama chose his words carefully. He did not declare the shooter guilty, and said it is “imperative that we investigate every aspect of this.”
Obama spoke directly to the parents of the young boy, who was walking back from a convenience store carrying candy and drinks when he was killed. The parents, Obama said, “are right to expect that all of us, as Americans, are going to treat this with the seriousness it deserves.”
--Washington Post

Obama

Let's be clear, the infidels have lost the war in Afghanistan and shall exit in a manner similar to Vietnam, perhaps only slower thus more pitiful but shameful none the less. The Afghans thus maintain their tradition of defeating all occupiers since Alexander the Great.
--Marvin X

Western countries scramble for Afghan exitsBy Fozil Mashrab

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - As international forces prepare for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Western countries are already in talks with Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors to bring their troops and military equipment back home.

The Pakistani route and the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through Central Asian countries are the two viable routes for international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The United States and Afghanistan are in the process of negotiating an accord for a long-term US presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when most foreign combat forces are due to withdraw. The US wants some advisers and special forces to stay on.

There are also "emergency scenario options" in the event either or both of the Pakistani route or/and the NDN are closed. This would require airlifting military equipment to Ulyanovsk airport in Russia or even to a suitable military airport in India, and from there transporting it to the nearest port city.

The Pakistani route, which has remained closed since November 2011 after a "friendly fire incident" involving North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces at the AfPak border area which killed 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounded dozens others, was partially reopened earlier this year to allow the US and NATO to ship food items to Afghanistan.

Currently, both US and Pakistani authorities are in search of a mutually acceptable arrangement that would allow both sides to scale down negative feelings and fully reopen the Pakistani route.

Such an arrangement could include a sharp increase in transit fees for US and NATO convoys crossing Pakistani territory, while the US could also insist that Pakistani military forces provide stronger security for these convoys.

Meanwhile, Western governments have already started to cultivate Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors by dispatching their top military officials and defense ministers to various capitals.

Since the beginning of 2012, apart from frequent visits of US military officials to respective Central Asian countries, United Kingdom Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks and more recently Federal Defense Minister of Germany Thomas de Maiziere and Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak have visited Uzbekistan, the key Central Asian country that is part of the NDN. The UK deputy defense secretary is expected to visit Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the near future.

It has been reported that the US government has already secured the consent of some of the Central Asian countries to use their territory to bring heavy military equipment out of Afghanistan.

Other NATO member countries, especially those that have large military contingents in Afghanistan, such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, are also trying to secure similar arrangements for themselves.

However, there have also been some dissenting voices among Western countries with regards to the costs involved in withdrawing troops and equipment from Afghanistan using the NDN though Central Asia.

In particular, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was reported recently to have voiced his preference for using the Pakistani route in view of the higher costs involved for transporting military equipment through Central Asian countries compared to the Pakistani route.

France and other NATO countries' military officials have been quietly angry over various negative incidents involving US troops in Afghanistan recently; these they believe help fuel anti-US and anti-Western feelings in Afghanistan and put their troops at increased danger. The killing of several French soldiers by an Afghan trainee recently is a case in point.

Recently, the US government has intensified its efforts to reach out to the Pakistani government by resuming high-level talks to convince it to reopen the Pakistani route.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on the margins of the "Somali Conference" in London and the visit of General James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, to Pakistan in February are part of the bilateral efforts to mend ties.

Both sides seem to be slowly edging towards reconciliation, for their own reasons. After a decade of military cooperation with the US on Afghanistan, Pakistan seems to have developed dependency on the billions of dollars in US military and financial aid it receives and which was suspended last year when relations between the countries deteriorated precipitously.

What is more, Uzbekistan's "no" to allowing its territory to be used for the transit of "lethal" military equipment to and out of Afghanistan adds urgency to US efforts to talk sweet to Pakistan.

At the same time, the US plans to utilize the "Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Latvia" route bypassing Uzbekistan as an alternative to transport heavy military equipment out of Afghanistan.

Most probably, the US will strip everything "lethal" from its heavy military equipment to transport through Uzbekistan rather than take the long and tortuous route bypassing Uzbekistan though Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Moreover, in an effort to secure Central Asian countries' cooperation and goodwill for transporting equipment out of Afghanistan, the US and British governments have dangled the prospect of donating some of their military equipment to those countries that allow the transit of material. This would be in addition to transit and other fees paid to each Central Asian country.

The high cost involved aside, the NDN also some advantages over the Pakistani route - the security of the convoys.

Previously, frequent attacks by Pakistan based pro-Taliban militant groups on US and NATO convoys and scenes of burning trucks carrying fuel and other military vehicles were part of the picture for using the Pakistani route.

Therefore, the security of the convoys will be an important calculation for Western countries that wish to make an "honorable" and smooth exit from Afghanistan, rather than being seen as getting chased out of the country and plundered on the way out.

According to Western observers, both the NDN and the Pakistani routes will need to remain open to allow for a timely and orderly withdrawal of Western troops and military equipment from Afghanistan - the failure to reopen the Pakistani route might lead to the rescheduling of withdrawal deadlines.

Fozil Mashrab is a pseudonym used by an independent analyst based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Call for Papers: Africana/Black Studies Leadership

Volume 4 • Number 9 • 2012





Greetings:

The Journal of Pan African Studies (www.jpanafrican.com) has extended its call for papers for a special edition on ‘Leadership in Africana/Black Studies’. Thus, we call for papers that investigate the lived experiences of those who hold or held a leadership position in the construction of Africana/Black Studies. Contributions may come in the form of interviews, personal narratives, oral histories, multi-media presentations, and other means that extract the mission, goals, objectives and outcomes of Africana/Black Studies. And we also welcome self-reflective analysis and contributions from our new generation of leaders within Black Studies.

Our selection criteria involves: relevance to theme, clarity of paper, intellectual significance, and originality. Participants should send us a 50 word abstract by April 24, 2012, and their final paper by July 15, 2012 (the paper and abstract must include your name, affiliation, paper title, and e-mail address) to atjpas@gmail.com.

Itibari M. Zulu, Th.D.

Senior Editor, The Journal of Pan African Studies;

Vice President, The African Diaspora Foundation;
Founding Member & Vice Chair, The Bennu Institute of Arizona

Stop and Frisk, the Old Black Codes

We know New York's Stop and Frisk law originated in the Black Codes of the American slave system, as much of American law and institutions, including the police who evolved from the slave catchers. It is shameful to know nearly 700,000

black and minority men were stopped by the NYPD last year. It is disgusting to watch it happen on the streets of New York, especially and mostly in black neighborhoods. It is indicative of life under occupation, similar to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank in occupied Palestine, or the old apartheid regime in South Africa.

Perhaps the NYPD should follow the example of the pass system used in South Africa or in San Francisco during the hunt for Patty Hearst: all black men in San Francisco were stopped and given a pass to carry while the hunt for the kidnapped rich white girl was on. I was stopped and given a pass to indicate the SFPD were familiar with me already so I could hurry on my business.

An old black woman once said, "It ain't so bad being black, it's just inconvenient." And so it is.
Aside from Henry Louis Gates, life is much different when a black lives in a white community, one is treated so very different by the police. I had a rich friend who lived in a affluent area of the Bay where few blacks lived. His teenage son was stopped repeatedly for driving with no license, no registration, no insurance and speeding. Each time the police simply called his father to come get his son and that was it. Isn't this wonderful? On one occasion I was babysitting this teenager when he had a party and the police came. Even though the teenagers were drinking and smoking weed, the officers only wanted to know if an adult was present. When I came to the door, the officers said, "Sir, thank you and have a nice evening."

The reemergence of Jim Crow laws represent a society in fear of itself, its children, especially those "other" children, simply because they are not wanted nor needed in the global economy. They are worth more in jail, prison and juvenile hall. The slave catchers returned the slaves to their owners, although they could kill them if they resisted, but they had to pay the owners for the loss of their property. Today, the Africans caught in the neo-slave system are worthless and thus can be killed by the police (slave catchers) or can kill themselves as in black on black homicide. Surely, there was no black on black homicide during the centuries of the American slave system. A black wouldn't think of killing another black owned by the white master.

How long can this go on, this low intensity war against North American Africans? Perhaps we should fill the jails and prisons, even though at this hour there are 2.4 million incarcerated, mostly black, brown and poor white. Would America then feel save and secure when all unneeded black men are off the streets, and of course their families would be placed in family prisons or community centers since the ghettos would quickly be gentrified with yuppies and buppies so that the American life can return to its normal state in the world of make believe.

The jails and prisons would then, of course, be places of education in revolution and critical thinking, where black men could configure a new life when the opportunity afforded itself. Resistance would grow to a point when a general amnesty would be forced upon the socalled American social order and probably a large population of the disaffected would be deported to some territory within or without these United States of America.
--Marvin X

Taking On Police Tactic, Critics Hit Racial Divide

By JOHN ELIGON

Published: March 22, 2012

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ALBANY — Black and Latino lawmakers, fed up over the frequency with which New York City police officers are stopping and frisking minority men, are battling what they say is a racial divide as they push legislation to rein in the practice.

Victor Blue for The New York Times

Councilman Jumaane Williams spoke last month at a rally to change the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy.

The divide, they say, is largely informed by personal experience: many who object to the practice say that they have themselves been stopped by the police for reasons they believe were related to race.

Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, recalled several occasions when, as a high school student walking home in Flatbush, he was stopped by the police, patted down, told to empty his pockets, produce identification and divulge his destination.

Assemblyman Karim Camara, a Democrat from Brooklyn, remembers greeting a woman who was walking down a street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, when, he said, officers in plain clothes approached him and demanded to know who he was, where he was going and whether he had any guns or drugs.

And when Senator Adriano Espaillat, a Manhattan Democrat, was just 14, he said, detectives threw him against a wall and patted him down in Washington Heights, in Manhattan, when he was on his way to buy a Dominican newspaper for his father.

The lawmakers say the racial imbalance with which stop-and-frisk is applied has a corollary effect: Many white legislators have remained silent on the issue, or have supported the police, revealing a racial gap over attitudes toward the practice.

“There is an ethnic divide on who’s being stopped and frisked, and there is an ethnic divide on who’s fighting against the policy,” said State Senator Eric L. Adams, a Democrat and a retired police captain from Brooklyn.

The lawmakers’ effort to set off a debate in Albany is taking place with an increased focus on the interplay between race and public safety. It was highlighted in New York by the fatal shooting last month of Ramarley Graham, 18, by a police officer in the Bronx, and nationally by the fatal shooting last month of Trayvon Martin, 17, by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. The young men were unarmed.

“Both illustrate the perils of racial stereotyping when individuals are empowered with the capacity to make life and death decisions,” said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat. He said the shootings had “further emboldened legislators to continue to fight to deal with the out-of-control stop-and-frisk practices.”

The split among Albany lawmakers over the stop-and-frisk issue reflects a divide among New York City voters: according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on March 13, 59 percent of white voters approve of it, and 27 percent of black voters do.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, facing increased complaints about the practice, has pushed back hard against critics. Last week, assailed by the City Council over the practice, Mr. Kelly said that the policy was an important policing tool intended to reduce the violence that has victimized blacks and Hispanics, and that, “What I haven’t heard is any solution to the violence problems in these communities.”

“People are upset about being stopped,” he continued, “yet what is the answer?”

According to the Police Department, 96 percent of shooting victims last year, and 90 percent of murder victims, were minorities.

“There’s more police assigned to a place like East New York than, say, a precinct in Riverdale,” said the Police Department spokesman, Paul J. Browne, “so the police are going to be in a position to observe suspicious behavior more frequently.”

The Police Department has said that it conducted a record 684,330 stops last year, and that 87 percent of those stopped were black or Hispanic. About 10 percent of the stops led to arrests or summonses and 1 percent to the recovery of a weapon, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has examined police data.

But the Police Department frames the numbers in a different way: last year, it said, it recovered 8,000 weapons, 800 of them handguns, via stops. And over the last decade, the number of murders has dropped by 51 percent, “in part because of stop, question and frisk,” Mr. Browne said.

Some white elected officials have strongly criticized the stop-and-frisk policy. They included the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, and the public advocate, Bill de Blasio, both of whom are likely candidates for mayor; and Brad Lander and Daniel Dromm, who are on the Council. Senator Michael Gianaris, a Democrat from Queens, has offered a bill that would make it illegal for the department to set a quota for the number of stops officers must make.

Mr. Stringer said it was important for elected officials “who look like me” to help broaden the coalition of New Yorkers fighting against stop-and-frisk.

But race continues to dominate discussion of the issue. Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a black Democrat from Harlem, is still smarting over a legislative debate he had in 2008 with Assemblyman David R. Townsend Jr., a white Republican from central New York, on a proposal to prohibit racial profiling. Mr. Townsend said part of good police work involved questioning people who seemed out of place in a particular neighborhood, regardless of their race.

“If you were spotted in an affluent section of Oneida County where we don’t have minority people living, and you were driving around through these houses, and I was a law enforcement officer and a highway patrol, I would stop you to say, No. 1: ‘Are you lost? Is there something we can help you with, or what are you doing here?’ ” Mr. Townsend said to Mr. Wright.

Two years ago, the Legislature passed a law requiring police officials in New York City to no longer store the names and addresses of people stopped but not charged. Gov. David A. Paterson, the state’s first African-American governor, signed the measure despite objections not only from city officials, but also, he said, from an all-white panel advising him on the issue.

In a recent interview, Mr. Paterson, a Democrat, said his views of the measure were informed by his own experience, which included being stopped three times by the police.

“It’s a feeling of being degraded,” he said. “I think that’s what people who it hasn’t happened to don’t understand.”

Now, Mr. Jeffries is sponsoring a bill that would make it a violation, not a crime, to possess small quantities of marijuana in public view. The bill, he said, would curb the tens of thousands of arrests each year that result when officers stop people and ask them to empty their pockets, leading to the revelation of small amounts of marijuana.

Mr. Wright has been urging passage of a bill that would prohibit police officers from stopping people based solely on their race or ethnicity. Mr. Parker is behind legislation to create the post of inspector general for the police.

And in the Council, Jumaane D. Williams has introduced bills that would require officers to inform people they stop that they can refuse to be searched and make mandatory and citywide a pilot program in which officers give those stopped a business card with a phone number, in case they want to lodge a complaint.

Mr. Williams has had his own run-ins with police. He said he was stopped in Brooklyn last year, after he had bought a BMW, by officers who said, “We want to make sure it’s yours.” And, in an episode that drew widespread publicity, he was detained by the police last year after an argument with officers over whether he was allowed to use a closed sidewalk during the West Indian American Day Parade.

“We know that the legislation is not going to stop stop-and-frisk,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is provide more accountability with the N.Y.P.D. and their practices and policies.”

Forget Oil, The Water Wars are Here

U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global Water Tensions

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: March 22, 2012

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WASHINGTON — The American intelligence community warned in a report released Thursday that problems with water could destabilize countries in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia over the next decade.

Increasing demand and competition caused by the world’s rising population and scarcities created by climate change and poor management threaten to disrupt economies and increase regional tensions, the report concludes.

Prepared at the request of the State Department, the report is based on a classified National Intelligence Estimate completed last October that reflected an increasing focus on environmental and other factors that threaten security. An estimate reflects the consensus judgment of all intelligence agencies.

While the report concluded that wars over water are unlikely in the coming decade, it said that countries could use water for political and economic leverage over neighbors and that major facilities like dams and desalination plants could become targets of terrorist attacks. Coupled with poverty and other social factors, problems with water could even contribute to the political failure of weaker nations.

The public report, unlike the classified version, did not specify countries at greatest risk for water-related disruption but analyzed conditions on major river basins in regions with high potential for conflict — from the Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates to the Brahmaputra in South Asia.

“During the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will almost certainly experience water problems — shortages, poor water quality, or floods — that will contribute to the risk of instability and state failure, and increase regional tensions,” the report said. “Additionally states will focus on addressing internal water-related social disruptions which will distract them from working with the United States on important policy objectives.”

The report warned that water shortages would become acute in some regions within the next decade, as demand continued to rise. While disputes over water have historically led to negotiated settlements over access, upstream countries will increasingly use dams and other projects “to obtain regional influence or preserve their water interests” over weaker countries downstream.

This is already happening on the Tigris and Euphrates, where Turkey, Syria and Iran have harnessed the headwaters of the two rivers that flow through Iraq.

The release was timed to the announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of a partnership to promote conservation and improved management in conjunction with corporations like Coca-Cola and Ford and nongovernmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy.

The report said that improvements in management — like the use of drip irrigation systems — could ease the potential for shortages, especially in agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the world’s water use.

Whitney and the Addiction to White Supremacy

How can you win, if you ain't right within?, says a recent rap song. And James Brown sang Money can't save you, but time will take you out! Why do so many artists, myself included, have the need for drugs and alcohol? Applause is not enough, money is not enough, and yes, sometimes love is not enough, especially when there is no love of self. It doesn't matter how many people love you when you don't love yourself. After the concert with fan applause is over, one often sits in the dressing room alone, exhausted and unhappy. At the performance of my play One Day in the Life at San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Dr. William H. Grier, co-author of the 60s classic Black Rage, asked me how I was doing. I said I don't know. Dr. Grier told his son, "I don't know what's wrong with Marvin, he's got Mayor Willie Brown opening his show, a packed audience and a Jaguar parked outside. What's wrong with him?" Some call it divine discontent, i.e., no matter how many blessings God bestows upon us, it is not enough. And then sometimes we are simply ungrateful bastards. And so we turn to drugs for comfort, to medicate, to reach that altered state of mind that the human touch cannot fulfill, or perhaps the human touch is not there, or perhaps we cannot touch that divine self that must be touched before we can enjoy the touch of another, the love of another, no matter it be husband, wife, children, friend or fans.

But we know the cause for our addiction is deeper than drugs or the trappings of materialism, it is something in the air that stinks like rotten meat, as Langston Hughes put it. Sometime when I'm in the South, I get that feeling that something ain't right up in here, in this blood soaked land, land of the slave system that endures to this day. Or is it that same feeling W.E.B. DuBois felt in China when Chairman Mao introduced him to a million people, "Thank you Chairman Mao for the great introduction, but in my country I am just a nigguh."

Did Whitney feel like just a nigguh, with all her talent, fame and fortune? May Allah grant you peace of mind, Whitney!
--Marvin X

Whitney Houston drowned after cocaine use, says coroner

The pop star was laid to rest in her home state of New Jersey after a star-studded funeral

Related Stories

Whitney Houston's death was caused by accidental drowning, but drug abuse and heart disease were also factors, a coroner has ruled.

Coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey said drug tests indicated the 48-year-old US singer was a chronic cocaine user.

The announcement ends weeks of speculation over the cause of Houston's death.

She was found submerged in the bath of her Los Angeles hotel room on the eve of the Grammy Awards on 11 February.

In a statement, the LA County Coroner's office described Houston's manner of death as an "accident", adding that "no trauma or foul play is suspected".

The cause was cited as drowning and "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use".

Other drugs found in her blood included marijuana, as well as an anti-anxiety drug, a muscle relaxant and an allergy medication.

But these were not factors in her death, the coroner's statement said.

Patricia Houston, the singer's sister-in-law and manager, told the Associated Press news agency: "We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure."

The pop star was laid to rest at a cemetery in her home state of New Jersey after a funeral that was attended by celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige.

The singer, who was one of the world's best selling artists from the mid-1980s to late 1990s, had a long battle with drug addiction.

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Claude McKay

Archives in India and Black America

What's happening in India applies to Black America as well. "Don't throw away shit!," Marvin X has advised North American Africans. The wealth of our people is in those letters, papers, photos, notebooks, scrapbooks in that old trunk grandma kept. But usually upon her transition, relatives will trash the house looking for money, gold and jewelry, then throw any papers in the trash. The paper is the gold, the treasure that shall last long after any money is spent by greedy relatives. Those papers reveal how we survived this slave system called America.

The archives of Marvin X are at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.


March 22, 2012, 8:23 am

India’s Archives: How Did Things Get This Bad?

By DINYAR PATEL
New York Times

Manpreet Romana for The New York TimesA farman or imperial directive issued by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb lies in a torn folder at the National Archives of India, New Delhi. The label reads, “It is very badly damaged and broken at places.”

Why has modern India had such a difficult time preserving its history?

Tridip Suhrud, professor who has written extensively on Mohandas K. Gandhi, blamed a lack of historical sensitivity for problems in his state. Gujarat’s local maharajas and business families, he remarked, did not place much importance on keeping records.

Courtesy of Sabarmati AshramA letter written by Mahatma Gandhi at Birla House, Mumbai on September 23, 1945, part of the Sabarmati Ashram archives.

Consequently, there has been little interest in creating or patronizing archival institutions. Mr. Suhrud can only count three other scholars currently working at the Sabarmati Ashram Library in Ahmedabad, the principal repository of Gandhi’s personal papers (properly preserved in a locked, temperature-controlled room, he noted).

Murali Ranganathan, an independent researcher, based in Mumbai, pointed out that the pre-colonial tradition of archives and libraries was extremely strong elsewhere in India: dynasties in Maharashtra, Assam, and Mysore kept vast collections that still survive. Beginning around 1900, he argued, Indians started to become too poor to properly maintain their collections, although several institutions, such as the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna and the Saraswathi Mahal Library in Thanjavur (Tanjore), have maintained excellent traditions of preserving pre-British era books and manuscripts.

Courtesy of Khuda Bakhsh Oriental LibraryA leaf from a rare undated copy of the Holy Quran written in Kufic script, believed to be from the 9th century.

Perhaps the most important factor has been India’s moribund bureaucracy. During the Raj, government archives were treated as repositories of sensitive information, carefully guarded by officials. This attitude did not change much after 1947. Bureaucrats censored scholars’ notes at the end of the workday. Remarkably, many files about nationalists, marked “confidential” by the British, remained inaccessible in the post-independence period. A certain colonial paranoia about free information access persists in the halls of many Indian government institutions.

The government, furthermore, failed to woo many of India’s qualified historians and preservationists, instead staffing its archives, museums, and libraries through bureaucratic and frequently highly politicized channels. As a result, many institutions remain what they were a hundred years ago — simple “godowns” (warehouses) of supposedly sensitive documents and artifacts, staffed by individuals resistant to innovation, openness, or a culture of scholarly investigation.

“When you think of the pace at which other nations are digitizing their archival collections, cataloging information, and disseminating knowledge to scholars and citizens, India is falling behind,” commented Durba Ghosh, a historian at Cornell University. “It is a shame that the Indian government has so severely under-invested in the improvement and maintenance of its archives. Given India’s growing prowess in software and technology and its aspirations for producing a highly educated public, the indifference to archives and India’s history can no longer be explained by a lack of expertise or wealth.”

Several private institutions have now harnessed increased funding opportunities, access to technology, and a new generation of trained archivists to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Sabarmati Ashram and the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata, which has the papers of Subhas Chandra Bose, have digitized their collections, thereby preserving the letters of two of India’s preeminent independence leaders. One of the largest repositories of Jain manuscripts in the world, the Hemacandra Jnan Mandir in northern Gujarat, has also scanned its holdings. In addition to digitization, the Forbes Gujarati Sabha in Mumbai, home to a rare collection of Gujarati books and periodicals, has constructed a special chamber to mitigate the high acid content of Indian paper, one of the primary reasons why books in India fall apart so easily.

Courtesy of National Mission for ManuscriptsThe digitization of manuscripts at the National Mission for Manuscripts in Delhi, which sources historical documents from Manuscript Partner Centres including the Forbes Gujarati Sabha in Mumbai.

In addition to the National Archives, other government institutions are finally following suit. Digitization has been a popular first step for preservation since proper temperature control remains a challenge for many institutions. The Maharashtra State Archives in Mumbai, for example, is housed in an open-air structure built in 1888. Suprabha Agarwal, who became director of the Archives in July 2010, tried to install air-conditioning but ran against the strict heritage laws governing the building. Even utilizing fans, she noted, is problematic since the breeze tears apart brittle documents. As a result, the Archives bought a fleet of scanners and has started digitizing its oldest and most damaged collections. Aside from sending her staff to training seminars, Ms. Agarwal has also lobbied the government to build a modern, fully air-conditioned structure for the Archives in a Mumbai suburb and hopes to relocate the institution here around 2015.

Courtesy of Maharashtra State ArchivesSome of Maharashtra’s oldest newspaper such as “Bombay Courier” and “The Bombay Durpun” have been preserved by the Maharashtra State Archives in Mumbai.

Ultimately, Indian citizens themselves will need to play a much greater role in ensuring that their government properly maintains the country’s history. Mr. Guha is optimistic that this will happen. “It is now clear that a historical sensibility is developing amongst the Indian public,” he said, observing a surge in the number of history titles in Indian bookstores. “Now that more Indians are getting interested in history, people should play a part in helping preserve it. Private philanthropy is needed. Local pressure is needed for proper preservation.”

India has the resources and the talent, Mr. Guha noted, but the government needs to channel this into moribund institutions. “The leadership provided by Mushirul Hasan at the National Archives and Mahesh Rangarajan, the new director at the Nehru Library, shows that places can change,” he concluded. “If you have good archival historians in positions of authority, look at what can be done.”

Our Son,Trayvon Martin, Didn't Deserve to die

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If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Claude McKay

1. Signatures

   983,909 out of 1,000,000

   Petitioning

   1. Florida's 18th District State's Attorney (+ 3 others)

      Petitioning

      close

      • Florida's 18th District State's Attorney (Norman Wolfinger)
      • Florida Attorney General (Pam Bondi)
      • Sanford Police Chief (Bill Lee)
      • US Attorney General (Eric Holder)

2. Created By

   Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton

   Sanford, FL

Our son didn't deserve to die. Trayvon Martin was just 17 years old when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Trayvon wasn't doing anything besides walking home with a bag of Skittles and some iced tea in his hands.

What makes Trayvon's death so much harder is knowing that the man who confessed to killing him, George Zimmerman, still hasn't been charged for Trayvon's killing.

That's why we started a petition on Change.org calling for Zimmerman's prosecution and trial. We aren't looking for revenge, we're looking for justice -- the same justice anyone would expect if their son were shot and killed for no reason.

Click here to join 900,000 people who have already signed our petition calling for justice for our son Trayvon.

No family should ever have to go through this nightmare. The law should protect everyone, regardless of where they live, how much money they make, or what color their skin is.

With our petition at 900,000 signers so far, we've made important progress toward making some sense out of what happened. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate Trayvon's death, and so will the FBI and Department of Justice.

But Trayvon's killer is still free. The surest path to justice runs through Sanford, Florida, and through the office of State's Attorney Norman Wolfinger, who is responsible for bringing charges against Zimmerman. With your help, we believe he'll have no choice but to give Trayvon and his killer their days in court.

Please sign our petition calling on Florida authorities to prosecute our son's confessed killer.

Thank you so much.

- Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton

Oakland's Townhall Meeting on Too Short's Pimpin'

Oakland’s Townhall on Misogyny, Teen Violence & the Influence of Rap Music w/ Too Short

Last night (March 14th 2012) the Oakland chapter of 100 Black Men and Safe Passages, an organization from ‘Tha Town’ that is in the forefront of dealing with domestic violence and sexual assault, hooked up with members of the Hip Hop community to hold a town hall meeting inside City Hall. The topic was Misogyny, Teen Violence and the influence Rap Music has on our behavior..

Lemme just say this from jump street.. what took place last night was riveting, honest, powerful and inspiring..It wasn’t a gripe session or a finger-pointing rap bashing occasion. It wasn’t an event where two generations (Hip Hop and Civil Rights) found themselves at odds blaming one another…

What you had at the Oakland Town Hall was a community who clearly understands there are important issues at hand impacting young minds and we have to go in another direction..

One of the highlights of the town hall was the discussion with Bay Area rap pioneer Too Short. But folks were clear from the beginning these issues are systemic and go way beyond one rapper, one magazine or one incident.. However, the recent controversy around Too Short giving explicit ‘fatherly advise‘ to middle school age boys in an online video hosted by rap publication XXL had put him on the hot seat..

Short said he takes full responsibility for his actions and wanted to be part of the conversation to help rectify and repair the damage and disappointment he caused.. Many felt he was candid and forthcoming with his remarks and the evening ended with him noting this is just a starting point and him appealing to other artists in the room to change direction, expand their horizons and re-define the legacy of Oakland rap..

Last night’s Town hall saw in addition to Too Short, other key stake holders including elected officials, community activists and local artists come together with a spirit of love, a desire to heal and eager to find ways to bring about brighter tomorrows..Some of the most powerful statements came from the young survivors of rape and sexual assault who shared their perspectives and solutions..

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson

During the Town hall, Alameda County supervisor Keith Carson along with a couple of members of 100 Black men set the tone, by discussing the harrowing statistics around sexual assault. Carson noted that every couple of minutes a woman is sexually assaulted. He said over 10 million kids had witnessed domestic violence and one out of 5 teenage girls has been assaulted..He also pointed out that since 2005 over 2 million boys/men have been sexually assaulted.

Carson surmised that the figures are probably much higher. he was just noting what had been reported. He also pointed out that rather than we point fingers and play the blame game, we come at this from the spirit of sparking dialogue with a goal of getting solutions to turn the tide..

Dereca Blackmon who is part of the We Are 44% Coalition gave a great presentation on the commodification of songs celebrating sexual abuse and degenerate behavior. She noted that many have come to see confuse videos with real life. She broke down how that impacts us all.

Dereca Blackmon

Afterwards Blackmon sat down with Too Short and had a 20 minute revealing discussion about the music industry, the role artists should take in turning things around and his own personal journey to understanding some of the issues being addressed. He talked about the XXL Controversy and eye-opening the conversation he had with writer Dream Hampton

The evening concluded with a panel discussion where we heard some power statements and solutions from young activists and artists, some of who are survivors of rape, sexual assault and violence.

The mood at the end of the evening was upbeat with many feeling very inspired. Sadly and in typical fashion some of that good energy was dampened by what was shown on the evening news. In particular KTVU and KPIX did what many described as hit pieces.. They left before the panel discussion that featured the young folks.. They didnt show any of the commentary from the survivors of rape and sexual assault who sat with Too Short and questioned him.. They totally ignored what everyone plainly stated the gathering was about.. It was not reflective of what took place last night. In fact the reporter from KTVU seemed hostile that folks were coming together to uplift and not take down.. I encourage all to watch the video of the Oakland Townhall to get a better understanding of what took place..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAl_6HJmvJg

As your watching the video, we want folks to keep in mind what took place last night was by no means was a new or unique in terms of the topics discussed. Every couple of years something pops off and captures the attention of the media or activists and hence such discussions unfold.. A few years ago we saw this topic broached after radio host Don Imus went on air called women on a college basketball team, ‘Nappy Headed Hos‘. His remarks set off a firestorm with people calling for Imus to be fired. He in turn countered and claimed that he made the unsavory remarks because he was influenced by rap music.. That in turn lead to many of us having reflective self-examination type discussions.

Nelly

A couple of years prior to Imus’s remarks, we had a situation involving rap star Nelly, who was shown on a video to his popular song ‘Tip Drill‘ swiping a credit card thru the cheeks of bikini clad dancer.. Again it set of a storm of controversy leading up to Spelman College rejecting him when he was scheduled to come on campus and do a Bone Marrow benefit and bring awareness to the plight of his cancer stricken sister..

We can go on and on citing examples where the activities of artists ranging from 2 Live Crew to NWA to 2Pac to Snoop Dogg to Jay-Z and 50 Cent, have led to town hall style meetings, vigorous radio and TV debates to Senate and Congressional Hearings…

As was mentioned earlier, last night’s Town Hall which was held in the chambers of the Oakland City Council came in the wake of incident last month involving Bay Area rap pioneer Too Short and XXL Magazine.. The magazine produced an online video that depicted Too Short dispensing ‘fatherly advise’ to young 12 & 13-year-old boys on how to ‘turn out young girls’ and ‘take it to the hole’..

Rosa, Joan and Marc-Are Part of the Newly formed We are the 44%

This outraged a number of Hip Hop generation Black and Latina activists, writers and scholars like Joan Morgan, Rosa Clemente and Dream Hampton to name a few, who felt that not only did this cross some major fault lines but was the nail in the coffin for what they saw as increasing attacks on young girls, women of color and women in general.

These aforementioned sisters linked up with other women and a growing number of male allies like Dr Marc Anthony Neal, Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele and filmmaker Byron Hurt to name a few who also who shared in the outrage to form the We Are the 44% Coalition.

We Are the 44% Coalition felt it was important that awareness be raised around the fact that 44% of sexual assault and rape survivors are under the age of 18 and that as a group they push to create a climate where what Too Short & XXL did is never repeated by other artists and publications.

XXL Editor and Chief Vanessa Satten

They demanded that Harris Publication which owns XXL take steps to fire the editor(Vanessa Satten) and donate space in the magazine to have issues of sexual assault to be adequately addressed.

They ‘blew the whistle’ on Too Short and demanded he educate himself and start working with organizations in our community that deal with sexual assault.

Soon after forming weekly online twitter chats started taking place with the hash tag #ItsBiggerThan2Short. It is there that many started come together to discuss these issues, demands and craft solutions.

During last nights town hall there was a call to action for all of us to not allow the daily assaults on women both verbal and physical become normalized. Many recognize there is currently an all out war on women both within our community and the society at large that is systemic and far-reaching..

We see attacks coming from law makers in Congress and the Senate where they hold all male panels on women’s reproductive health with them refusing to seat at least one woman to share insights and testimony.

We see legislatures in states like Arizona propose laws that would allow employers to fire a woman for taking birth control pills..

We see popular radio hosts and political leaders like Rush Limbaugh resort to publicly demeaning women by calling them ‘sluts’ and ‘prostitutes’ when he has a political disagreement.

We see many in our mainstream press as well as esteemed lawmakers at the highest echelons of power ignore and try to sweep under the carpet our military’s dirty secret.. Last year alone there were over 19 thousand sexual assaults.. A woman serving in our military is more likely to be sexually assaulted by our own male soldiers then be killed or wounded by enemy fire..

Now, 19 thousand is a staggering number, but one would not know that’s going down by looking at our mainstream news coverage.. an across the board news blackout about 20 thousand rapes that have taken place on military bases rapes of women in our military the large number of rapes in our own military.

Rev Harry Williams

This was part of the backdrop that led last night’s Oakland’s Town hall meeting …The other part to this was the fact that Oakland and the Bay Area has some ongoing issues that has led to many people talking. First this is a major hub for human trafficking..Recently Allen Temple Baptist Church had a couple of gatherings where over thousand people came out..According to Reverend Harry Williams who heads up the Street Disciple Ministry at AT which deals the rise in human trafficking, in this depressed economy and a competitive drug game that has been sewn up by international cartels making it hard to get supplies, many have turned to pimping. He noted that from his work many who are returning from prison after doing long stretches have stepped into this arena with young girls being a primary target..

This has been echoed by Diamond a local artist and promoter who is also peer leader at United Roots and the Sister Circle which counsels young women. In a recent round table discussion she noted that she has seen increased aggression toward women over the past couple of years. Like Williams she noted that many are returning home after being incarcerated 15-20 years under California’s harsh 3 strikes law, which has all but eliminated rehabilitation and education. For those who don’t know California’s 3 Strikes law was put into place back in 1994 after the kidnapping and murder of then 12-year-old Polly Klass.. Over 40 thousand men were put behind bars under it.. Diamond agreed with William’s assessment that many are jumping into the pimp game to try and make money….

Both Williams and Diamond noted that this all doubly compounded with the rise of ‘Sneaker Pimps‘. These are young boys 11, 12 and 13 out here pimping young girls of similar age. Some are working for older men, but many others have come up without parents and live on the streets with this being the only hustle they know.

This wasn’t the main topic of discussion during last night’s town hall, but its important to understand this as part of the local landscape and the pervasiveness of what they call Rape Culture.. Anyone interested in the discussion we had on this topic with front line workers like Rev Harry Williams and Diamond can watch the video we did at the link below

http://livestre.am/1iKUN

http://livestre.am/1iKUN

Overall shout out to everyone who came out and represented.. Special Shout out to Chuck Johnson who reached out to all of us and set the ground work for an important discussion..

Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at "Take your righteous steps... and, let our Divine do the rest. Walk in Faith... on each and every day!"