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ChickenBones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes |
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ChickenBones: A Journal -- Historic Website -- Collected by Library of Congress (Ich habe negerschwer gearbeitet. - Rudy) |
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Help Save ChickenBones—Our Literary Journal An Appeal by The Committee to Keep ChickenBones Alive
Conversation on ChickenBones Survival Donate and Support our Fundraiser Folk Life |
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Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal / 13219 Kientz Road / Jarratt, VA 23867-- Rudy, I don't know if I've mentioned it recently but 'bones looks great. There's not much out there to compete with it as a presenter of Black literary and philosophical thought. I'm constantly referring folk to it. Chuck (9/28/07) We have received thus far $225 in Donations in August 2008. Help meet our monthly goal of $500. Donate Today! or Visit Our Store (Books, DVDs, Music, and more) Or make use of ChickenBones Publishing Services |
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Bring the Troops Home: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." A Time to Break Silence by Rev. Martin Luther King 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" / MLK: Mountaintop Speech (on War) Robert Byrd: I Weep For My Country: The Arrogance of Power / Deeper into the Mouth of Hell / John le Carré: The United States of America Has Gone Mad / |
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Atlanta Constitution on Race Problem Origin of Segregation Intermarriage a No-No Who Wants Integration The Problem of Integration The Racial Problem |
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An Editorial on Political Rhetoric By Rudolph Lewis |
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The Cost of Lies -- America With Its Pants Down The Dark Side of Obedience Locked Up A Lie Unravels the World Lies Truth and Unwaged Housework |
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“The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles." Just Another Fine Gentleman Obama and Bitterness Republicans' Brilliant Cynical Coup |
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The Mindlessness is Total: Are You Ready for Nuclear War?—It is obvious that American foreign policy, with its goal of ringing Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear war. Every American needs to realize this fact. The US government's insane hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet. Russia has made no threats against America. The post-Soviet Russian government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe. Russia has made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international law and treaties. It is the Americans who have thrown international law and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians. In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing to its contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime has rekindled the cold war. As American living standards decline and the prospects for university graduates deteriorate, "our" leaders in Washington commit us to a hundred years of war. If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a nuclear war, vote Republican.—Paul Craig Roberts |
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Amin Sharif Reviews: AfriClassical.com: Song of a New Race Arturo Sandoval in Baltimore Muddy Waters on PBS Blue Note: A History of Modern Jazz |
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Thoughts for Today The Narrative Does Not End “The End of the Black American Narrative” |
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Eighty Moods of
Maya |
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A Commentary on an Ebony Magazine Article By Amin Sharif |
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Technical foul on the old guy—it's interesting to see America's oldest presidential candidate out on the hustings transforming himself into a yahoo and a cracker. . . . And it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. . . . whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than thirty seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant. Good luck with that, sir. Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. Kansascity.com |
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Samuel
Gompers
John Mitchell John L. Lewis |
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Forward Is Where We Have to Go "Obama’s best intention is that there is the making of a post racist coalition." By Amiri Baraka |
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We need facts figures precision and skill. It is work and study that will change the world. The rest is clearly bullshit. Immau Amiri Baraka (1973) |
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New York Times Attempts to Define and Dictate Black Politics By Glen Ford Is Obama the End of Black Politics? Lord, No By Mel Reeves |
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Love One Another / The Ancestors Are Not Really Dead / Into His Arms / On Learning of Walter Rodney's Death & Other Poems |
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"We are a nation that . . . rewards the wealthy for being wealthy." By Austin L. Sydnor, Jr. |
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New Yorker Cover Depicts the Obamas as Terrorists (Williams) / William Greider on the Legalizing of Usury by Congress |
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A Poem by Ayodele Nginga |
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The Osu Caste Discrimination in Igboland (Victor Dike) / World Empire and the Balance of Power (James Burnham) |
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Report on Leimart Park Village Book Fair (Larry Uklai Johnson Redd) Towards a Strategic Geopolitical Vision of Afro-Arab Relations By Kwesi Kwaa Prah Where Obamaism Seems to be Going By Adolph Reed, Jr. |
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Cynthia Mckinney Accepts Green Party Nomination (video) / Cynthia McKinney Deserves Your Support, Obama Does Not (Ford) |
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Poetry and National Security
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Man dies after cop hits him with Taser 9 times—A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge. He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead. Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes' January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide. Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old sawmill worker was jolted so many times by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered. Williams ruled Pikes' death a homicide in June after extensive study. CNN How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police—How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago Police—By 1999, it was "common knowledge," according to U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur, "that in the early to mid-1980s, (Jon Burge) and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis." Alternet |
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African Underground: Democracy in Dakar is a groundbreaking documentary film about hip-hop youth and politics in Dakar Senegal. The film follows rappers, DJs, journalists, professors and people on the street at the time before during and after the controversial 2007 presidential election in Senegal and examines hip-hop's role on the political process. Originally shot as a seven part documentary mini-series released via the internet - the documentary bridges the gap between hip-hop activism, video journalism and documentary film and explores the role of youth and musical activism on the political process. http://nomadicwax.com/film/democracy-in-dakar/ |
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Running While Black—So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he’s not some kind of unpatriotic ogre. Mr. Obama told them: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.” The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received. But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck. Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades. He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition. NYTimes |
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International Criminal Court Calls for the Arrest Of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for Genocide |
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The Lynching of Robert Mugabe: Critique of Empire, History and Memory! (Part 4) By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh The Lynching of Robert Mugabe (part 1) Empires and Lynching (part 2) Witnessing in Perilous Times (part 3) The African World |
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The Courage and Character of Obama—"That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down. "We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid." Berlin Speech July 2008 |
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The Ancestral Spirits Are Watching (Jeannette Drake) / Plato on Obama Drama (Marvin X) / Clinton and Obama Legislative Records I am because we are and since we are therefore I am (The Soho of South Africa ) / The society made up of brothers and sisters provides strength. (Igbo of Nigeria) |
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In-Dependence from Bondage / The ABCs of Class Struggle / Southern Needs / Race Struggle is Class Struggle / Obama in Berlin (Grossman) |
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Ekere Tallie --Forced Entry A Poem for A Man WhoKnows Elemental Sounds Permanent Rain Reunion Jazz Musicians Suddenly I Need One Thing Constant |
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Mary E. Weems Table Say it Loud: Poems about James Brown On Almost Meeting Alice Walker |
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The Challenge of the Changing Face of America— • The highest rates of poverty are among children, especially children of color. The poverty rate for white children is 10 percent, while it is 28 percent for Latino children, 27 percent for Native-American children, and 33 percent for African-American children. • African Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans are about three times as likely to live in poverty as are whites. While the poverty rate for non-Hispanic whites is 8 percent, the rate for African Americans is 24.1 percent, for Hispanics, 21.8 percent, and for Native Americans, 23.2 percent. • The most extreme poverty in the United States is concentrated in specific geographical areas such as the urban cores of major cities and Native American reservations. These areas of concentrated poverty are the result of decades of policies that confined the impoverished to these economically isolated areas. • Finally, we also noted the stark racial disparity in the distribution of wealth in the United States. White families not only have on average 10 times the net worth of families of color, but also between 1998 and 2001, their wealth grew by 20 percent, while the net worth of African American households actually declined during that same period. CatholicCharitiesUSA |
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Labor Must Battle Racism to Elect Obama (Trumka) Sexual Morality, Black Male Abandonment, and Stable Households (Lewis) Ten Days That Changed Capitalism—Officials Improvised To Rescue Markets (Wall Street Journal ) Hancock: A Black Family Man's View (Agozino) |
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in
the hot house of black poetry |
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BoL -- Music Commentary by Mtume & Kalamu ya Salaam |
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BoL -- Music Commentary by Mtume & Kalamu Drums, Trains, / Boogie Down Productions / Earth, Wind & Fire / Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln WAR / "Body and Soul" / Nina Simone / Bob Marley / Alice Coltrane / James Brown / Staple Singers / Police Brutality and Rappers |
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Henry Nicholas on Social Justice in America A Black Commentator Interview
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Trouble don' set like rain: Economic Crises in Jamaica John Maxwell Why South Sudan Want Obama to Lose White House Bid (Mulumba) / Obama and the Israeli Lobby (Uri Avnery) |
"And while Austin and folks from her generation rush to condemn Jackson and call him a "Grandpa" who is "off his meds," they also owe him and others who fought the good fight against racist discrimination a little bit of gratitude." |
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Letter to Sister Cynthia McKinney From Tilani Lybon Mabasa Socialist Party of Azania Cynthia Mckinney Accepts Green Party Nomination (video) / Cynthia McKinney Deserves Your Support, Obama Does Not (Ford) |
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“The Supreme Court has surrendered. . . . It has destroyed the Civil Rights Bills, and converted the Republican Party into a party of money rather than a party of morals." -- Frederick Douglass, 1894 |
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U.S.-Ethiopian Occupation of Somalia Millions Displaced in "Worst Humanitarian Disaster" By Glen Ford The "War on Terror" and Africa's Worst Humanitarian Crisis (Sadia Ali Aden) The African World |
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After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men -- Simmons Review After Hours Contributors / Love, Sex, and Erotica Table
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Claude McKay and Michael Manley Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations By Lloyd D. McCarthy |
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Jesse Helms, White Racist –What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country -- a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life. . . What is unique about Helms—and from my viewpoint, unforgivable -- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans. Many of the accounts of Helms's retirement linked him with another prospective retiree, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Both these Senate veterans switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But there is a great difference between them. Thurmond, who holds the record for the longest anti-civil rights filibuster, accepted change. For three decades he has treated African Americans and black institutions as respectfully as he treats all his other constituents. To the best of my knowledge, Helms has never done what the late George Wallace did well before his death -- recant and apologize for his use of racial issues. And that use was blatant. WashingtonPost |
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The New Paradigm for Financial Markets The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means -- Book Review by Kam Williams |
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Short Story by Onyeka Nwelue |
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How US Energy Policy Got Militarized—The association between "energy security" (as it's now termed) and "national security" was established long ago. President Franklin D. Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered "by any means necessary, including military force." To implement this "doctrine," Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organization, the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every president since Reagan has added to CENTCOM's responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons, and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, U.S. military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well. Alternet |
