Voices and Soul
by
Black Kos Poetry Editor, Justice Putnam
I was thinking about Kurt Vonnegut the other day. I was thinking about the firebombing of Dresden and the burning of Beatles albums in the South. I was thinking about the destruction of the Library in Alexandria and dynamiting of the Buddhas of Bamyan. I was thinking of laws that prevented blacks from reading, and if there were no laws, the local Citizens Council made sure no reading occured.
Vonnegut was not the only one to call the bombing of Dresden an act of terror. Even British Air Commodore Colin McKay Grierson, a confidant of Churchill, admitted to AP war correspondent Howard Cowan, that the raid also helped destroy...
... what is left of German morale.
Cowan then filed a report that the allies had resorted to terror bombing.
The firebombing of Dresden, a center for Art and Literature, was a strategic act of terror. The burning of Beatles albums was a conscious act by white supremacists and one meant to intimidate. Laws to prevent the education of blacks and brown peoples are making a virulent resurgence. In fact, black and brown peoples are now routinely locked up in ice box baby gulags, and a pandemic has further fractured an already fractured world.
Cause and Effect is a powerful dynamic, it informs all the Physics of human interaction. For every conman near the Oval Office, there are millions of good people working their butts off and helping those less fortunate. For every inside stock “traitor,” there is an equal number of good people sharing what they have. And for every bigot, there are scores wondering about their own bigotry and want to do something about it. We are, by and large, a forgiving people. Especially when the apologies are deep, heartfelt and real. And even more especially, when least expected.
Which reminds me of another knock-on-wood
memory. I was cycling with a male friend,
through a small midwestern town. We came to a 4-way
stop and stopped, chatting. As we started again,
a rusty old pick-up truck, ignoring the stop sign,
hurricaned past scant inches from our front wheels.
My partner called, "Hey, that was a 4-way stop!"
The truck driver, stringy blond hair a long fringe
under his brand-name beer cap, looked back and yelled,
"You fucking niggers!"
And sped off.
My friend and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
We remounted our bikes and headed out of town.
We were pedaling through a clear blue afternoon
between two fields of almost-ripened wheat
bordered by cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace
when we heard an unmuffled motor, a honk-honking.
We stopped, closed ranks, made fists.
It was the same truck. It pulled over.
A tall, very much in shape young white guy slid out:
greasy jeans, homemade finger tattoos, probably
a Marine Corps boot-camp footlockerful
of martial arts techniques.
"What did you say back there!" he shouted.
My friend said, "I said it was a 4-way stop.
You went through it."
"And what did I say?" the white guy asked.
"You said: 'You fucking niggers.'"
The afternoon froze.
"Well," said the white guy,
shoving his hands into his pockets
and pushing dirt around with the pointed toe of his boot,
"I just want to say I'm sorry."
He climbed back into his truck
and drove away.
-- Marilyn Nelson
“Minor Miracle”
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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#MyFeminismLooksLike is a digital series from Colorlines that celebrates feminists of color who shaped the women’s rights movement. Color Lines: What Does Your Feminism Look Like?
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This Women’s History Month celebrates more than 100 years of feminists of color fighting for gender equity, even as White-led feminism attempted to prevent them from mass organizing and using their political voices. This exclusion forced people of color, people living below the poverty line and folks in the LGBTQ+ community to craft their own spaces and coalitions and create their own version of feminism that shapes the way we win human rights to this day.
We’ve seen Black women create public demonstrations around gender inclusion such as the Million Women’s March in 1997, and give public speeches about women’s rights as far back as 1851 with Sojourner Truth’s “Aint I a Woman?”
We’ve seen youth climate activists of color like Autumn Peltier and Mari Copeny use their voices to speak on national platforms about environmental justice.
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In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech that many say saved his presidential campaign. Titled "A More Perfect Union," it addressed his thoughts about how Americans experience race and racism, and about how he understands both, as the son of black and white parents with relatives of many ethnicities. Obama gave the speech in response to the release of videotaped comments from his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in which the minister lambasted America's foreign policies and treatment of minorities, especially African-Americans.
But it was also an urgent call for racial harmony. Candidate Obama emphasized that both white and black communities had valid arguments about their place in America.
On the speech's 12-year anniversary, Sam investigates whether its message holds up. He talks to Jon Favreau, host of Pod Save America and Obama's former speechwriter, about the process of writing the speech.
Then, Professor Tracey Sharpley Whiting, who edited a book about the speech, talks about its impact today. Also featured is Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and principal at Black Futures Lab, discussing why Obama's words do not fully address the depth of racial discrimination. Sam also talks to his former classmate, Jasmine Beach Ferrara, who remembers watching the speech live in class with Sam.
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Along with DuVernay, the former New York City prosecutor is also suing Netflix and the series’ co-writer Attica Locke for defamation. She is asking for damages and “a public apology, removal of the scenes she calls false and a disclaimer added that labels the series as a dramatization and not a true story.”
TMZ continues:
Once it came out in June 2019, Fairstein says every episode in which she appears portrayed her as a “racist, unethical villain who is determined to jail innocent children of color at any cost.”
In the suit, obtained by TMZ, Fairstein objects to nearly every single aspect of the case ... as it’s portrayed in the series. She denies taking any of the following actions: unlawfully interrogating unaccompanied minors, calling for a roundup of “young black” thugs, manipulating the timeline to pin the jogger’s rape on the Central Park 5, referring to people of color as animals, directing NYPD detectives to coerce confessions, and suppressing DNA evidence.
This suit comes months after police interrogation firm John E. Reid and Associates filed a suit against DuVernay and Netflix, claiming defamation.
Since the premiere of When They See Us, the social pressure against Fairstein has heightened and she recently faced what many critics believed to be long overdue consequences (including being dropped by her agent and publisher) for her role in the unjust prosecution of the now Exonerated Five. These are the breaks. Since Fairstein is both an attorney and a crime fiction author, she is likely familiar with the inner-workings of dramatization and the complicated legal aspects that come with it.
As legal guide site Nolo states, “A defamatory statement must be false — otherwise it’s not considered damaging. Even terribly mean or disparaging things are not defamatory if the shoe fits. Most opinions don’t count as defamation because they can’t be proved to be objectively false. For instance, when a reviewer says, “That was the worst book I’ve read all year,” she’s not defaming the author, because the statement can’t be proven to be false.”
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The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office is under fire over a viral video that appears to show a police officer planting drugs on a suspect.
The arrest of a Black male in Bridge City that was caught on camera has sparked fury and debate across social media after a cop is seen moving what appears to be small baggies of narcotics near the suspect, who was reportedly selling drugs in the neighborhood.
PSO spokesman Capt. Jason Rivarde said deputies were called to the area Monday afternoon over the illegal activities and found a male fitting a 911 caller’s description of a drug dealer near the intersection of Fourth St. and Westewego Ave., Fox8live.com reports.
The Sheriff’s Office issued a statement after facing backlash on social media, noting that the suspect —identified as Dominique Griffin — bit one of the officers while resisting arrest.
“The video in question is part of the evidence that has been collected in this case. It has been alleged by third parties that evidence on the scene was planted by one of our deputies. Our on-scene deputies have been interviewed in this matter and gave reasonable explanations to the actions depicted in the video,” a statement from the JPSO said.
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The pills arrived with no instructions. Delivered on a Sunday to Joy’s home in Kayole, an informal settlement in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, by someone she didn’t know.
She had ordered them because she was pregnant, and didn’t want to be. At 19, she said, she couldn’t support a baby, and the father had stopped answering his phone after she told him. Desperate, she had asked an older friend, who said she knew someone who could help.
She took all three pills at once and the bleeding started soon after. Her lower abdomen hurt so badly that she didn’t sleep all night.
“That was when I knew I’d gone wrong,” Joy said, relating her story from Kenyatta National hospital a few days later. Her surname has been withheld to protect her identity.
The bleeding continued for two days, soaking a sanitary pad every few minutes. She lost consciousness once and “had no blood left in [her] hands” when she finally went to the hospital on Wednesday, she said.
Tucked away in the winding halls of Kenyatta, the country’s largest hospital, is a ward that handles acute gynaecology issues. Dozens of women with complications from unsafe abortions pass through it each month. Consultant Dr Allan Ikol Adungo said the patients range from young teenagers to married women in their mid-30s. They are usually from poor backgrounds.
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Because getting health care advice at home saves time and money — and possibly lives. Ozy: THE APP HELPING NEW MOMS IN NIGERIA
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In August last year, when Benita Joshua was pregnant, she started experiencing sharp pains in her lower abdomen when doing household chores. Since this was the Nigerian woman’s first pregnancy, she asked some friends for advice. One recommended an app where she could share her experience in community forums and also get medical advice. When she posted about her situation, she was relieved to quickly hear from “different mothers” that abdominal pain is typically experienced during pregnancy and that sometimes it’s related to weight gain, she explains.
The Omomi app provides access to lifesaving maternal and child health information for women — and this is a big deal in Africa’s most populous nation. Nigeria currently has a doctor-patient ratio of 1-to-6,000 (the World Health Organization recommends 1-to-600). This results in serious delays in treatment, often because of access or cost. This often dangerous situation prompted Dr. Charles Akhimien and Dr. Emmanuel Owobu, who is also a social entrepreneur, to create a low-cost platform that quickly connects mothers to medical advice.
Omomi (meaning “my child”) is a mobile app, web and SMS-based platform that provides virtual health care services to pregnant women and mothers of young children. Subscribers can expect basic antenatal care, postnatal care and other child health care services. “Launching Omomi app was like a call to duty for us,” Owobu explains. “Our goal was to help reduce maternal and child morbidity in Nigeria and improve health education and access to medical doctors.”
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One day, when my daughter was eight, I asked her to help me unload the dishwasher. She moaned, dragged her feet and pleaded for Haribo in exchange for this simple task. I asked her if she knew how lucky she was and told her that, in many homes in Nigeria, girls as young as her were forced to do chores all day, every day. They were not allowed to go to school, or eat at the table, or watch TV. She was amazed. Looking into her face, the horror of what was considered so normal during my childhood really hit me. It was child slavery – and it continues today. It was for these forgotten girls, trapped in domestic slavery, that I wrote my debut novel, The Girl With the Louding Voice.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 15 million, but due to the nature of the problem it is almost impossible to land on an accurate number. A large proportion of these children are young girls, who work as “house girls”: domestic servants who are often underage and forced against their will into this kind of work. Many of them never see their “wages”, as they are paid directly to agents or family members.
I was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. I lived in a smart, middle-class neighbourhood, in a house that sat in the middle of a row of terraced houses. Our neighbourhood wanted for nothing. Nearby, there was a well-equipped primary and secondary school, a church with stained-glass windows and stunning green surrounds, a supermarket that sold the best vanilla ice-cream I have ever tasted, paved driveways filled with good cars, a local beach where you could buy the best grilled meat. Pretty much all of the families who lived around us employed domestic servants, who in some cases were girls as young as eight.
I remember two girls in particular. Mariam, a maid to our neighbour, and Edna, who worked for another neighbour. It was easy to spot a house girl. Many of them had unkempt hair and were dressed in tattered, dirty clothes. They would stand behind a family of well-dressed, well-fed, well-spoken children, their heads bent, silent.
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An effort to rename a post office after award-winning poet and Civil Rights activist Maya Angelou became a topic of intense debate on Capitol Hill.
The House of Representatives tackle the names of post offices on more lax days, which typically are known to be unanimous decisions no matter who suggests the proposition.
NBC News reports the details of two new post offices, one in California with a unanimous 381-0 vote in an effort to change to “Medal of Honor” post office. But the second, a post office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was opposed by 9 republican voters and one submitting as present, resulting in a pass of only 371 votes.
“While Maya Angelou did many good things in her life, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-5) did not believe it appropriate to name an American Post Office after a communist sympathizer and thereby honor a person who openly opposed America’s interest by supporting Fidel Castro and his regime of civil rights suppression, torture, and murder of freedom-loving Cubans,” Lauren Vandiver, a spokesperson for Brooks, said in a statement.
The nine opposing Republican voters were GOP Reps Mo Brooks of Alabama, Ken Buck of Colorado, Michael Burgess of Texas, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Andy Harris of Maryland, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, and Steven Palazzo of Mississippi. Rep. Don Young of Alaska was the present voter.
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