A Brief History of Pelican Bay

Have you heard about the Pelican Bay prison hunger strike? Learn all about the strike, the history of the prison, and how you can be involved at Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity.

The Problem With Affirmative Action

Lewis R. Gordon speaks the TRUTH! Read his amazing article about Affirmative Action in Truthout and revel in his genius.

Some of the wisdom contained therein:

The rewards lavished on many whites in the modern world have not been based on merit. What many people of color discovered upon entering those previously closed corridors was not white superiority but, for the most part, white mediocrity.

Uh oh!

Gordon also writes about a black man, James Weldon Johnson, who passed the bar exam in 1897 with no college background. Whites at the American Bar Association took action:

First, there was the bachelor’s of law. Since many blacks couldn’t afford to go to college, that reduced the pool by a significant number. But since there was a growing black middle class, even with American apartheid, more began to meet that criterion. So, the American Bar Association then required post-graduate study. To sit for the exam, a candidate must now have completed law school, which is, for the most part, three years of study after completing an undergraduate degree. In effect, seven or more years of investment in higher education became the criterion to sit before the bar. The stratagem was effective: the number of blacks qualified to take the bar examination plummeted.

AAAAAAAA! The Truth… hurts. And therefore should be covered up with myths of reverse racism. Ah, isn’t that better?

Hershey Abuses Foreign Student Workers

This protest is awesome:

From the Guestworker Alliance website:

On August 17, hundreds of student guestworkers from around the world were joined by unemployed American workers and labor leaders in a factory sit-in at the Hershey Chocolate Company packing plant in Pennsylvania.

The students paid $3,000-6,000 each to come to America this summer for what they thought would be a cultural exchange program. Instead, they found themselves packing chocolates at the Hershey’s plant in deeply exploitative conditions.

Their demands: end the exploitation of student workers at the Hershey’s plant, and make these jobs living wage jobs for local workers.

The NYT wrote on article on the situation: Not the America They Expected

You can follow the struggle on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #JusticeatHersheys or by following @NGAdignity.

Don’t forget to follow the Verizon strike’s progress also! Search for the hashtag #verizonstrike. You can sign a petition here. The Communication Worker’s of America’s website has all the latest details.

Attica Prison Uprising 101- A Short Primer

Check out this awesome new resource from Project Nia, who’s mission is to “dramatically reduce the reliance on arrest, detention, and incarceration for addressing youth crime and to instead promote the use of restorative and transformative practices, a concept that relies on community-based alternatives.”

They say about the primer:

This publication about the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 is not intended to be a curriculum guide, but a brief primer for educators and organizers. It includes a timeline of events (with primary sources); testimonies from Attica prisoners; poetry by Attica prisoners; sample activities for youth; and other suggested resources.

Image from the primer:

Pregnant Women Are Irresponsible, As Are All Women

So this exists:

Women are so dumb!

The Face of the Modern Day Harriet Tubman

This man is Republican Florida Representative Allen West. Here is what he has to say these days:

You have this 21st-century plantation that has been out there, where the Democrat Party has forever taken the black vote for granted. And you have established certain black leaders, who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation. And now the people on that plantation are upset, because they have been disregarded, disrespected, and their concerns are not cared about.

So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad, away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.

I’m not sure what any of this means. An “Underground Railroad” that leads to a “sense of sensibility”? West has made a career of expanding American empire, supporting our invasion of other nations, and subjugating citizens of foreign nations. So could someone explain to me what this man has in common with Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who literally, physically, personally helped scores enslaved Africans escape the South and liberated hundreds more in the Civil War? And went on to become a woman’s suffragist to boot, while establishing charity organizations to assist liberated blacks?

How does this compare to a man like West, who has publicly defended war criminals found even by our slanted court system to have unjustly murdered civilians in US-occupied Iraq?

How many people has he actually, physically removed from bondage into real, literal freedom?

He describes black Democrats as “plantation bosses”. I think while making political hay out of his perceived ability to safely attack black Democrats based on their shared race, he does a grave injustice to the memory of people who, like Tubman actually grew up on slave plantations.

Watch him actually say the words:

British Elites Are “Shocked” the Poor Are Rising Up Against Austerity Measures

Everyone’s favorite article explaining the British youth riots: Panic on the Streets of London by Penny Red.

An excerpt:

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

“Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Read the whole thing. H/t RH.

You Know Who’s Responsible for the Poor Economy? The Common Person.

That’s the verdict reached by the Boston Globe last Thursday in a special article entitled “Shaken consumers rein in spending” with the subheading “Closed wallets do little to stoke recovery”.

Thanks for the incisive journalism, Globe. I’m sure it’s your exemplary investigative journalism that led you to the true culprits for our lack of economic recovery when other newspapers are fumbling around with obvious red herrings like increasing wealth inequity, high unemployment, unscrupulous financial institutions, and a poor-hating government.

“I was feeling more optimistic before, but the economy’s turning again for the worse,’’ said [John] Bresnihan, 33, a social worker from Belmont. “I feel like I can’t get into a big purchase right now.’’

Consumers like Bresnihan are a key reason policy makers, analysts, and financial markets are increasingly worried about the direction of the US economy. The rate of consumer spending – which drives about two-thirds of economic activity – fell sharply in the second quarter, according to a recent report from the Commerce Department. Weak consumer spending underlies what has been a lackluster and now slowing recovery. Should consumers continue to pull back, it could push the nation into a deeper slump.

Gosh, as an unemployed person with almost no savings, I sure do feel guilty that I am pushing the nation into a slump by my inability to shop.

The real victims here, of course, are the real people: corporations who want to sell stuff that we are unjustly not buying. “Corporations are people, my friend,” says very smart man Mitt Romney.

Czech-Approved News Sources!

I just set up a new feature on The Czech. I have been getting many requests for quality news sources, and I’m tired of hand-writing the same list over and over. So now you can get them all in one place! Just cast your eyes to the left-hand column and scroll down until you see the section Czech-Approved News Sources.

I included a link to listings of African-American newspapers because I have found in many cities that I’ve visited the best independent print news can be found in the African-American newspapers. Shout out to Amsterdam News, The San Francisco Bay View, and The Chicago Defender!

Please add anything you think I missed in comments. My list is especially low on non-US sources of independent and alternative news, so help a sister out.

Remember Poverty?

I cannot recommend the latest issue of City Limits Magazine more strongly. This issue is titled “Remember Poverty” and contains several articles that are worth your time. The magazine is based in New York City, so the articles pertain to the specific NYC situation, but the general message is relevant to the whole country.

A short description of the issue from their website:

Fifteen years after federal welfare reform, five years after New York City embarked on a quest to reduce poverty, more Americans are poor than ever before and one in five New Yorkers remains below the poverty line. Yet poverty is absent from political debates and media headlines. Everyone, it seems, is tired of talking about poverty–except poor people. In this 35th anniversary issue, City Limits lets low-income New Yorkers talk about their daily fight for survival and independence. Their stories defy simple explanations of poverty’s causes or consequences. And they reveal that efforts to assist low-income people often serve to complicate their lives, even as they provide crucial support.

In other news, Warren Buffet recently had some interesting things to say in his article “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” in a recent New York Times:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice”… [But] while the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.

…88 of the 400 [Americans reporting the largest income] in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest.