Guest Article: Back to Africa - Black Press Business/Economic Feature Week of July 26, 2018

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:



The evidence is more and more compelling that our ties between ourselves, the Diaspora, and our Motherland, Africa, are strengthening and growing more and more solid.  As a result, we have to become more and knowledgeable about the issues and opportunities that exist or are potential between us - especially since every other force on the planet is trying hard to keep us apart, separated, ignorant, victimized and poor.

We are coming up on the 400th year of our captivity and kidnapping from Africa, our enslavement, and the first ship landing on American soil in 1619.  The fact is those ships of horror historically have already left African shores with our precious ancestors stacked on top of each other, or thrown overboard.

We had actually begun our initial reunification in the 1920's, thanks to the wisdom, knowledge and insight of Marcus Garvey - but the effort was stopped by the combined efforts of British and American forces (the same forces that enslaved us to begin with) coming together and conspiring to sink our ships, incarcerate our leaders, and break up the relationship between Africa and African Americans by telling each of us lies about the other.

The second major effort of reunification between Africa and African Americans came in the 60s during the Black Power Era, when we truly began to return to our African roots.  We started truly returning to our African roots by wearing natural hair, Afrocentric clothes, making movies, writing books, poems, and making pilgrimages to the Motherland to trace our African roots.  We changed our names to reflect wherever we thought we came from, learned African dances and traditions, and made plans to repatriate to our homeland and build our homes and our futures there.  We even demanded that African and African history be taught in the schools so our children would not continue to be whitewashed.  

Sekou Toure - Guinea

Stokeley Carmichael

First Black Model with Afro

Kwame Nkruman

The upshot of the whole thing is the deliberate destruction of our relationship - via the so-called "Cold war" between Russia and the US - something Africa had absolutely nothing to do with - by fighting it out on African soil.  Subsequently, while Africa was aggressively shedding her colonial monsters - they had the audacity to try to claim that Africa owed them money for their seizure of her lands and the subjugation of her people. 

Coming into the 21st Century there has been a resurgence of African/African American relations - aided in large part by technology - internet, cell phones, overthrow of despotic colonial dominated leaders - and the progress was such that, once again conspiracy has raised iit's ugly head - via the new Chinese invasion to siphon off African autonomy via pseudo building of properties that are not reflective of African needs or wants.  

But this time, something is new - African Americans and Africans are more in tune with each other and collaborating with each other than ever.  Perhaps it's in part because the first Black president of the US is also of African Heritage (Kenyan); but it's more likely that there has been growing interest in Africa long before the 2016 election, with increased travel between the US and the Continent - making the roots deeper and more solid that ever before.  Both Africans and African Americans have been victims of a common enemy - and suffer from "post traumatic slave/colonization shock syndrome" (yeah, I just came up with that).  

But we also share a resiliency and a determination to not remain under the foot of ignorance or oppression - and the opportunities are now even greater for the regeneration of a full fledged successful, progressive amalgamation of our ingenuity, skill, creativity and talent.  This time we cannot afford to be caught on the late show.  We cannot be ignorant of this wonderful opportunity to ensure our and our children's futures.

Interestingly enough the movie "Black Panther" -  a work of science fiction (fact) has reawakened our nascent African affinity on many levels.  While there had already been some stirrings among African Americans,  this movie has catapulted our interests in the possibilties 1000%.  

Black Panther's WAKANDA  started a Paradigm Shift

Whites - especially the New York Times - are already smelling the possibilities and our  progress and have started staking their claim - Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa - are all in their gun sites - just to mention a few.  If they know this, we should be so far ahead of the curve that they will be trailing behind us.  This may be our last opportunity for reunity.  We cannot afford to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.  If we are going to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of slave ships coming to the US, it should be by the reverse, with as many of her descendants having a pivotal interest in the Motherland from which they were stolen.  The time to start is now; the ones to do it is us.  This is an effort at a wake up call - regardless of what your educational or financial level.  This s our time to not be on the late show.

NOTE:  Please be advised that when I say Diaspora, I mean all Black descendents of African Heritage - USA, South America, Haiti, the Caribbean - wherever those ships landed and dropped us off - i.e., ECLECTICALLY BLACK PEOPLE!!

Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria 

Black Press Business/Economic Feature Week of July 26, 2018
By William Reed

Back to Africa

Former US President Barack Obama went to his ancestral home in Kogelo Village, Kenya. Obama’s grandmother lives in Kogelo where he danced at the opening of a youth center launched by his half-sister Auma Obama's Sauti Kuu Foundation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/world/africa/obama-kenya-visit-africa.html 

Obama in South Africa on Mandela's 100th Birthday

The first Black American president is leading what’s expected to be Black families and descendants back to Africa. A son of Africa, Obama’s primary gig in Africa was Johannesburg to give the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture. In reality, Obama’s appearance was made in partnership with the multi-billion dollar-endowed Motsepe Foundation. Obama’s benefactor, Dr. Patrice Motsepe is founder and chairman of African Rainbow Minerals and one of Africa’s Black billionaires. Celebrity Net Worth reports that both Barack and Michelle Obama’s net worth as $40 million. Both are examples of the up-and-coming contemporary African in the Diaspora. 

https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2018/07/16/barack-obama-visits-kenya-during-first-post-presidency-trip-to-africa/36908899/

The requested action is “Send money back to Africa.” The continental African Union (AU) union consists of all 55 countries on the African continent. The Diaspora is an AU ambassadorial post to "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our continent, in the building of the African Union". The African Diaspora are people who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in Brazil, the United States and Haiti. The AU defines the African Diaspora as consisting: "of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent".

Her Honor Arikana Chihombori-Quao - President of the African Union

Thirteen million Africans were shipped to the New World; 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Large numbers of Diaspora Blacks live and work in high-income countries and among prosperous populations. Most Diaspora members' incomes are modest by the standards of rich nations, and their savings might seem meager in the world of development funding, but collectively they can add up to staggering amounts of money. Worldwide, African Diaspora members have accumulated an estimated US$53 billion in savings ad remittances.

Mounds of opportunity exist in the African Diaspora. Moving cash within Africa is an untapped opportunity for money transfer. Remittances to sub-Saharan-Africa rose to $37.8 billion in 2017. The development potential for Africa's Diaspora is “in human capital" of knowledge and expertise gained while working abroad. The World Bank and other development partners say that the total money transfers by African migrants to their region or country of origin grew to $35.2 billion, in 2015.

We should think Blacks of the Diaspora share values, interests and heritage. The Diaspora’s Blacks could all get rich by connecting and working together. According to the AU, links between the African Diaspora and African development are already happening. Diaspora members already invest in real estate, entrepreneurial businesses, and capital markets. Sometimes they pool their money with friends or form an investment consortium.

Merging of the mindsets and monies of Africans of the Diaspora is the AU’s goal. Blacks can be Diaspora benefactors by matching keen entrepreneurial sensibilities, strong cultural ties to partners in the ancestral homeland. Africa’s Diaspora accumulates an estimated US$53 billion every year.

The African Union Commission is seeking to implement the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). The African Continental Free Trade Agreement is a noteworthy achievement in African diplomacy, trade, and economic development. The CFTA has the potential to cover 1.2 billion people and over $4 trillion in combined consumer and business spending. The CFTA opens the continent to new investors and better opportunities for its entrepreneurs.

Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao, a Ghanaian national (from Zimbabwe), is the Permanent Representative of the African Union Representational Mission to the United States of America.  She recently invited the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Quartey Thomas Kwesi to Washington to discuss next steps for implementing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA).  The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) is a noteworthy achievement. A groundbreaking achievement in African diplomacy, trade, and economic development the CFTA has the potential to cover 1.2 billion people and over $4 trillion in combined consumer and business spending opens up the continent to new investors and better opportunities for its entrepreneurs.  Intra-African trade is expected to skyrocket, and with it, industry and manufacturing. At the same time, the agreement introduces opportunities to re-approach existing trade relationships, like the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), to make trade more beneficial for all.

William Reed is publisher of “Who’s Who in Black Corporate America” and available for projects via Busxchng@his.com

 NOW THAT YOU KNOW

WHAT ARE YOU 

GOING TO DO 

ABOUT IT?

Stay Blessed &

ECLECTICALLY BLACK 

Gloria

The End of Black Harlem??? Let's don't make this a self-fulfilling prophecy

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:


I am reprinting this post in its entirety.  It is of vital importance that we all pay attention to what is going on under our very noses, with our consent - to some extent - the decimation of our communities, our living spaces, our culture - deliberate dismantling of the Black communities - and we're allowing it to happen. 

Many will say it's not true - but by our very inaction, concomitant with our verbal consent, we have brainwashed ourselves into co-signing the demise of our neighborhoods.  Not only are being pushed out by egregious rent increases, we are not doing what we can to prevent it; and neither are our elected  officials.  What good are they if they are not going to be the ones to prevent this from happening.  There is a disconnect between what they say they are about, and what they actually do.  But just as bad is the fact that we, in the majority in many cases in our own communities, are not taking action - civil and legal - prevent rampant gentrification and desecration of our homes.

Read the article - it's not just Harlem - it's a national move to push Black people out - and we have to be as vehement about not letting it happen!  There is an organization called Save Harlem.  There needs to be an organization on a nationwide level called SAVE BLACK PEOPLE!!   Because we are under siege - physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, environmentally, politically, educationally, financially, morally - and we've been buying in to it,  or cowering from it.  It's not just to say "Black Lives Matter."  We have to make it matter to ourselves. And we have to stop operating in the victims' role. 

I wrote an article 4 years ago entitled, "Gentrify it Yourself."  It was aimed at Black people utilizing their creativity and skills to clean up, improve and control their own communities, instead of allowing their surroundings to degenerate to such a level that it looked as if we had no sense of our own humanity or self worth.  We sometimes allow our neighborhoods to deteriorate to such a level of squallor, and then blame others for not cleaning it up for us, that those looking at us from other cultures view us as either subhuman, or depraved.  It's not that we don't know how to do the improvements; it's that we have become so subconsciously mired in the mentality that "they don't want us to have this or that" that we have become paralyzed by our own cynicism.  

If Black Harlem is dying, it's partly suicide and partly murder - genocide.  We should not be helping them destroy us.  The same is true for Black America; Black Africa; Black South America; the Caribbean.  We've always had the wherewithal to work for them - do their dirty work; we now have to take those same muscles, powers, and creativity and build for ourselves.  The buck has to stop right here - we are either going to survive and surpass or go out of existence.

It would do each of us well to stop vetching and pick up the autobiography of MARCUS GARVEY - and begin to take huge lessons from his example and apply them to our situations right now.  In New York, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Baltimore, DC, Virginia, Chicago - UP YOU MIGHT RACE - YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL!  If anybody should be honored and remembered this Memorial Week end, it must be Garvey.  Take his techniques, methodologies, examples, and begin to apply them, teach them, share them, utilize them - make them work now - or you will see more and more buildings, communities, and neighborhoods and lives destroyed by these racists.

And this time, we will all be Garveys - so it won't be so easy to pick us off the way they did our original, valiant leader.

Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria

Invisible Man: A Memorial to Ralph Ellison by Sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, 2003. Riverside Park at 150th Street, in Harlem. CreditJoseph Michael Lopez for The New York Times 

The End of
Black Harlem

Newcomers say gentrification is about wealth, not
race. But that’s a distinction without a difference.

By MICHAEL HENRY ADAMSMAY 27, 2016

I HAVE lived in Harlem for half my life — 30 years. I have seen it in all its complexities: a cultural nexus of black America, the landing place for Senegalese immigrants and Southern transplants, a home for people fleeing oppression and seeking opportunity. Harlem is the birthplace of so much poetry and music and beauty, but in the eyes of many who have never set foot here, it has long been a swamp of pain and suffering.

It is also changing, rapidly. A few years ago I was on Eighth Avenue, also known as Frederick Douglass Boulevard, picketing a fund-raiser for a politician who was pushing for denser mixed-use zoning along 125th Street, the “Main Street” of my sprawling neighborhood. Harlem has seen an influx of tourists, developers and stroller-pushing young families, described in the media as “urban pioneers,” attracted by city tax abatements. New high-end housing and hip restaurants have also played their part. So have various public improvements, like new landscaping and yoga studios. In general all this activity has helped spruce the place up. Not surprisingly, on that day a few passers-by shot us ugly looks, as if to say, “Why can’t you accept a good thing?”

Photo

In Harlem, The Frederick Douglass Memorial statue, by Gabriel Koren at 110th Street and Central Park North. The lighter building in the background is the new luxury building, One Morningside Park. While a portion of the apartments are supposed to be allocated as “affordable housing,” two bedroom condominiums there are listed starting at 2.5 million dollars.CreditJoseph Michael Lopez for The New York Times 

But even then, a few boys passing by on their bikes understood what was at stake. As we chanted, “Save Harlem now!” one of them inquired, “Why are y’all yelling that?” We explained that the city was encouraging housing on the historic, retail-centered 125th Street, as well as taller buildings. Housing’s good, in theory, but because the median income in Harlem is less than $37,000 a year, many of these new apartments would be too expensive for those of us who already live here.

Hearing this, making a quick calculation, one boy in glasses shot back at his companions, “You see, I told you they didn’t plant those trees for us.”

It was painful to realize how even a kid could see in every new building, every historic renovation, every boutique clothing shop — indeed in every tree and every flower in every park improvement — not a life-enhancing benefit, but a harbinger of his own displacement.

In fact, it’s already happening. Rents are rising; historic buildings are coming down. The Renaissance, where Duke Ellington performed, and the Childs Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ, where Malcolm X’s funeral was held, have all been demolished. Night life fixtures like Smalls’ Paradise and Lenox Lounge are gone.

A few ask, isn’t this a good thing — or, at least, the price of a good thing? “You and all the others had better get over your grieving, we need Whole Foods,” said my friend and fellow Harlem resident James Fenton, the noted English writer.

Photo

Left, the Lenox Lounge in Harlem after its renovation in 2000; right the Lenox Lounge in May.CreditJeffrey Henson Scales/HSP Archive 

But this is the problem with gentrification — what James, with all due respect, doesn’t get, but what that boy on Eighth Avenue did. For so many privileged New Yorkers, like James, Whole Foods is just the corner store. But among the black and working-class residents of Harlem, who have withstood red-lining and neglect, it might as well be Fortnum and Mason. To us, our Harlem is being remade, upgraded and transformed, just for them, for wealthier white people.

There is something about black neighborhoods, or at least poor black neighborhoods, that seem to make them irresistible to gentrification. Just look at U Street in Washington or Tremé in New Orleans. “Everywhere I travel in the U.S. and even in Brixton, in London, a place as culturally vibrant as Harlem, wherever people of color live, we and the landmarks that embody our presence, unprotected, piece by piece, are being replaced,” said Valerie Jo Bradley, who helped found the preservation advocacy group Save Harlem Now!

This isn’t a new story. As the historian Kevin McGruder explains in “Race and Real Estate: Conflict and Cooperation in Harlem, 1890–1920,” an assessment of how Harlem came to be America’s “black Mecca,” African-Americans began moving north in large numbers into the area in the early 20th century after Macy’s, Penn Station and the theater district replaced what had been black neighborhoods farther south.

The extension of the subway to 145th Street gave black leaders an opportunity, within the nation’s leading metropolis, to set up an autonomous black city. Black churches strategically relocated here, and prime residential properties were bought for settlement by black residents. In the early 1920s followers of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, promoting political and economic independence, built a complex of shops, a theater and dance hall they called the Renaissance Theater and Casino. It quickly became a centerpiece of the neighborhood. (It was demolished in 2015.) With slavery scarcely a generation behind, the audaciousness of this plan was staggering.

By 1930 hundreds of thousands of blacks (and not a few whites) lived in Harlem. And yet, even then, residents understood that the black hold on Harlem was tenuous. That same year the author James Weldon Johnson asked in “Black Manhattan,” his classic account of Harlem’s early years, “The question inevitably arises: Will the Negroes of Harlem be able to hold it?”

After all, Harlem is a broad, flat section of northern Manhattan, poised just above Central Park with easy access to high-end jobs farther south and La Guardia Airport to the east. It is a mix of stately Victorian rowhouses and miles of apartment houses, the former ripe for adaptation, the latter for destruction and replacement by gleaming glass-cube condos. As Horace Carter, the founder of the Emanuel Pieterson Historical Society, insisted to me, “I tell you, they have a plan. Harlem is too well placed. The white man is ready to take it back.” It’s possible to remember a short time ago when this warning seemed pathetically alarmist.

Photo

Smalls’ Paradise, Harlem, 1955, at 2294 Seventh Avenue; right, the International House of Pancakes located today at the same address.CreditLeft, Austin Hansen/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, New York Public Library; right, Byron Smith for The New York Times 

Today the pace of change is bracing, as is the insolence of the newcomers. A local real-estate speculator who specializes in flipping buildings in the shrinking Little Senegal section of Harlem told me that new tenants complained, “We’re not paying that much money to have black people living in our building!”

That’s what happens in the rentals, he said. But, he added, “What really upsets them is having blacks freeloading in noneviction co-op conversions. Blacks are paying $800 a month for the same four-bedroom, two-bath unit the newcomers bought for $2 million. Whites pay $2,000 just for maintenance! It’s not the blacks, but their poverty that’s resented. They ask me, ‘How come they didn’t buy this building when it cost nothing?’ ”

These are just some of the myths newcomers like to tell themselves, that gentrification isn’t about race, but about wealth and social class. But especially in Harlem, is this not a distinction without a difference? It’s not just that blacks happen to occupy the lower ranks of America’s wealth tables. It’s that the economy and our political system, even as they promise equality, are stacked against us: From America’s beginning, slave labor funded the affluence of those who counted as citizens. Political reform has not yet brought economic parity. The median white household is worth around $141,000 today, but a typical black household’s wealth is only $11,000.

Interestingly, not all gentrifiers are comfortable with the change they’re bringing. “I couldn’t afford it, and I’m relieved,” Rene Gatling, who moved to Harlem in 2009 but left in 2014 for Connecticut, told me. But it wasn’t just price that persuaded her to leave. “Suddenly I thought, Why is there no anger, no push back? Our being here is pushing people out.”

Blacks who relocated here when Harlem was still affordable have been disillusioned, too. When I told Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, who wrote the elegiac book “Harlem Is Nowhere,” about the group Save Harlem Now! just the name made her respond, “It’s too late.” She said that she and her young son were moving out. “It costs too much.”

Still Harlem endures as a community with high hopes, and in 2013, we felt sure we had found a champion. Bill de Blasio ran as the mayor for everyone, which we figured had to include Harlem. Black voters were crucial to his victory, and we thought we were covered and cared for. He even has a likable son, as liable to get stopped by the police as ours might.

We were wrong. The man we saw as “our mayor” may talk about housing affordability, but his vision is far from the rent control and public housing that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia once supported, and that made New York affordable for generations. Instead, he has pushed for private development and identified unprotected, landmark-quality buildings as targets. He and the City Council have effectively swept aside contextual zoning limits, which curb development that might change the very essence of a neighborhood, in Harlem and Inwood, farther north. At best, his plan seems to be to develop at all speed and costs, optimistic that the tax revenues and good graces of the real estate barons allow for a few affordable apartments to be stuffed in later.

Photo

The bar at Red Rooster on Lenox. CreditByron Smith for The New York Times 

And so even under “our mayor,” the dislocation of minorities continues apace. Gentrification in Harlem might well be likened to the progress of the British Raj, where the most that “civilizing” interlopers could muster was a patronizing interest in token elements of local culture. Thus: Yes to the hip Afro-fusion restaurant, but complaints to 311 over Sundae Sermon dances, barbecues and ball games in parks or church choir rehearsals.

These are people who, in saying “I don’t see color,” treat the neighborhood like a blank slate. They have no idea how insulting they are being, denying us our heritage and our stake in Harlem’s future. And, far from government intervention to keep us in our homes, houses of worship and schools, to protect buildings emblematic of black history, we see policies like destructive zoning, with false “trickle down” affordability, changes that incentivize yet more gentrification, sure to transfigure our Harlem forever.

But when we friends gather at a restaurant like Cheri for a convivial romp hosted by the owner, Alain, or on a Friday, at the Rooster, presided over by the D.J. Stormin Norman, we are every color, every race, every age, identity and class. In the moment, laughing, drinking and dancing together, it seems marvelous. This Harlem, this is what New York is supposed to look like, to be like. Only, most of us know that our fun times together are doomed.

NOW THAT YOU KNOW - WHAT ARE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT???

Stay Blessed &

   ECLECTICALLY BLACK

  Gloria 

Open Letter to Britain from former Jamaica PM Patterson: When do we get an apology and our reparations for British Slavery?

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:

This is of extreme importance to us all, whether we're from the Caribbean, have relatives there, or even more significant, we are people of African ancestry and heritage.  My friend, K. Mensah Wali, sent this to me, and think it must be shared - because we have to begin to demand reparations for all Black people the world over - whether in the US, the Caribbean, Africa, South America - We can no longer bite our tongues, and dig our toes in the sand, and walk around with hat in hand and hope these miscreants will repay us for the trauma we suffered, the losses we incurred, and the work we've done (remember the song by the Staple Singers:  WHEN WILL WE BE PAID FOR THE WORK WE'VE DONE?")

So check this out - and I'm posting it in its entirety.  

Stay Blessed & 

   ECLECTICALLY BLACK

   Gloria  

http://www.humejohnson.com/on-slavery-an-open-letter-from-jamaicas-former-prime-minister-to-britains-david-cameron/

Ex Jamaican PM pulls no punches in response to British leader on slavery 

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Tuesday October 13, 2015 – Are we not worthy of an apology, or less deserving?

That was the question former Jamaica prime minister PJ Patterson posed in an open letter to UK Prime Minister David Cameron who visited the island recently, following the Brit leader’s failure to apologize for his country’s role in the slave trade and his suggestion that Caribbean countries should put the injustices of slavery behind them and move on.

Cameron’s comments also followed calls from Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller for the UK to discuss the issue of reparations in “a spirit of mutual respect, openness and understanding”.

As he announced a package of over £360 million (US$545.8 million) of bilateral aid for the region, the British leader acknowledged that slavery is abhorrent in all its forms and “Britain is proud to have eventually led the way in its abolition”.

But he made it clear that reparations was not on his agenda: “That the Caribbean has emerged from the long, dark shadow it cast is testament to the resilience and spirit of its people. I acknowledge that these wounds run very deep indeed. But I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future.”

But Patterson was adamant that the mere acknowledgement of the horror of slavery would not suffice.

“It was and still is a most heinous crime against humanity — a stain which cannot be removed merely by the passage of time. Those who perished in the Middle Passage and the fatal victims on the sugar plantations were the victims of genocide. This is a crime in accordance with international law,” he said.

“You have refused to apologize. Yet your Government has apologized to everyone else for horrid crimes. Are we not worthy of an apology or less deserving?

“The international community and international law call for formal apologies when crimes against humanity are committed. The UN has deemed slave trading and slavery as crimes against humanity. The refusal to apologize is a refusal to take responsibility for the crime. In a law-abiding world this is not acceptable,” he added.

The former prime minister said those affected by the slave trade could not simply forget and move on if there is no explicit admission of guilt.

“Where is the prior confession that Britain fashioned, legalized, perpetuated and prospered from the slave trade?

Indeed, the facts speak to a different explanation. In Jamaica, the enslaved led by Sam Sharpe tried to abolish slavery themselves three years before your Parliament acted. The British Army destroyed these freedom fighters and executed their leaders.

This attempt to destroy the seed of freedom and justice in Jamaica continued for another 100 years. In 1865, the peasants sought to occupy Crown lands in order to survive widespread hunger. The British Government sent in the army and massacred those people, executing Paul Bogle, George William Gordon and other leaders.

Furthermore, the British Act of Emancipation reflected that the enslaved people of Jamaica were not human, but property. The 800,000 Africans in the Caribbean and elsewhere were valued at £47 million. The government agreed to compensate the slave owners £20 million, and passed an Emancipation Act, in which the enslaved had to work free for another four to six years in order to work off the £27 million promised slave owners. It was they who paid for their eventual freedom.

The enslaved paid more than 50 per cent of the cost of their market value in compensation to slave owners. This is what your Emancipation Act did. The enslaved got nothing by way of compensation. The Act of Emancipation was self-serving and was designed to support British national commercial interests alone.

Patterson added that it was precisely because “we all want to move on that the reparatory justice movement is alive and growing”.

“We all want to move on, but with justice and equality,” he contended.

“Contrary to your view, the Caribbean people will never emerge completely from the long, dark shadow of slavery until there is a full confession of guilt by those who committed this evil atrocity. The resilience and spirit of its people is no ground to impair the solemnity of a privileged parliamentary occasion and allow the memory of our ancestors to be offended once again.”

Cameron has also been chastised for his comments by American actor and civil rights activist Danny Glover, who was in Jamaica last week.

He said the British leader showed “his ignorance” by suggesting that descendants of slave simply put the atrocity behind them and get on with their lives.

Read PJ Patterson’s letter here.

Don Rojas,

Director of Communications,

Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW),

51 Millstone Road,

Randallstown, MD 21133

Ph: 410-844-1031

Web: www.ibw21.org

OCTOBER 25: Celebrating Lou Wilson of MANDRILL's 73rd Birthday Anniversary - Peace and Love Be Unto Him

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOU WILSON Tall, Dark & Chocolate!

Well, it's here again, and I'm in a lot better space this year than I was last year - Lou's birthday is today, Saturday, October 25, 2014 - and, though I was a basket case leading up to this occasion, I've actually walked through the valley and come out on the other side in a much better space - emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, mentally and even physically than I went in.  

LOU & GLO WILSON

Truth be told, I spent the better part of this week tripping on how I was going to handle October 25 without him being here - without surprising him with at least 3 zany birthday greeting cards (I could never ever choose just one); without all the silly, mushy stuff we said to each other.  So as it got closer and closer to the date,  I allowed myself to wallow in the blues for the past few days - literally - and when I say wallow, I mean I wallowed.  I bawled, I cried, I sobbed, I prayed, I vividly relived all the treasured times we spent together - all the agonizing times we spent apart.  I looked him in the eyes and traveled all the way back to the first time we met at Temple University's McGonigle Hall (in Philadelphia) -  all the way to January 5, the date of our the last conversation we had about travel plans and moving arrangements. I remember reminding him that it was our grandson's birthday (as if he would forget that!), and laughing at how fast time was whizzing by.

I literally went through all the  agonizing "why me?" "it's not fair"  moments.  I think it's what most of us call the blues - and I had it soooo bad, I didn't come outside for two days!!!

And just when I thought that I would surely cry my eyeballs out, I felt the most amazing aura of peace and love I'd ever experienced in my life come over me and permeate the room.  And I heard Israel Houghton's song:  "It's Not Over," in my mind - as if he and New Breed had just stepped into the room and started singing, as if to tell me that everything was gonna be okay; and this was not going to be ongoing pain, but the end of pain, which was now transformed into treasured moments.   

It was if God had just stepped into the room and said it's time to come out of the valley and move forward ("Moving Forward" by EH).  I sat on the edge of the bed and started smiling into the darkness, as I heard him say, "Hey Glo, between you, me, and the what? Lamp post - the lamp post can't talk; it tells no secrets - so really between you and me, we had a wonderful time here; we did a lot of things - they are all in here; that's what really matters. Right?  It's time for you to get up and get your glow back." 

So as I celebrate Lou, I honor all that we shared, and what we were able to complete in our walk together.  I take all that I've learned from him -  all those wonderful 3:00AM conversations and thank him for the blessings, the fun, the lessons - and yes, the trials and tribulations we went through to get to the point of reunion and resurrection before his transition.    I can now smile and listen to his music with enjoyment; I can  remember the times he spent over that Fender Rhodes picking out the lyrics for a new song that suddenly struck him; or recording into the tape recorder a sound that he wanted to inculcate into a new song idea that struck him;  impromptu jam sessions at the hotels where we stayed while on the road; or pulling out the old classic crooners like Johnny Hartman,  Latin vocalists and others that he so admired to go over why they were great.   (He loved Joe Cocker - I could never understand that one); revered the Beattles (I learned to enjoy them too) - and we both were comedy nuts - from Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby and Saturday Night Live and beyond.

Fiercely proud of his Caribbean heritage - Jamaican Dad, Barbadian Mom, born in Panama (Jamaica/Basha/Manian man), he would start the day playing Sparrow, Lord Kichener, and all the others he'd grown up listening to in Panama and Brooklyn.  All that culture and music was infused into this wonderful 6'4" giant, and he embraced it all - and melded it into his new found cultural base as an African American Caribbean brother from Bed Stuy.

I'm rejoicing that his genius has been passed through our DNA to our children and their children, and that it's blossoming in them in so many wonderful ways - not necessarily as musicians, but as wit and wisdom; masters of humor and conversation; outgoing, friendly, warm hearted generosity.  I have come to realize that Lou may have made his transition to the ancestors, but he's not dead - because he lives in each one of his children; he lives in that great body of music he gave to the world via MANDRILL - a great deal of which is still sitting on tapes in his brother's garage.  He may have even lent some of his DNA to his nieces and nephews - via his words of wisdom, his love of children, his love of education was transmitted to them every chance he had to be with them. 

Celebrating the Birthday of Lou Wilson of Mandrill:

Saturday, October 25, 2014, marks the 73rd Birthday of Lou Wilson, the love of my life.  It's been a challenge to make it through the month of October with so many memories and realizing that his Birthday will soon be here, but he won't be here to celebrate it with us.  Birthdays are a big deal in our family and it would usually be planning some way to surprise, shock and awe each other with some outlandish gift or homage.  But now, I'm dealing with the memories, the fun, our beautiful children - Kira, Rais & Adiya; our fantastic grandchildren - His brothers: Ric (Doc), Carlos (Carl), Wilfredo (Wolf) = the Group; and his wonderful parents Doris & Wilfred Wilson, and his kid brother Alonzo, who made their transitions before him - All that went to make up this wonderful, creative, talented, big hearted, complex Fine Black Man. He exuded music; his life was one long series of lyrics.  So Happy Birthday Lou Wilson (Tall/Dark&Chocolate)  - I celebrate you and the joy you brought to so many of us while you were here among us, and the treasured memories while you are with the Ancestors - Say hello to Gil Scott-Heron, Mom & Dad (yours and mine); Jitu Weusi, Amiri and all our friends.  I know you're all having a blast.

- Love You Always -

Stay Blessed -

GloW

LOU, CARLOS, RIC, WILFREDO

LOU WILSON BLACK IN THE DAY

Stay Blessed & 

       ECLECTICALLY BLACK 
       Gloria Dulan-Wilson

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