Black NJ: Over 1,000 marchers in Newark demands federal Civil Rights charges against Zimmerman

Immediately after the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in February of 2012, POP took to the streets

“We want President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a federal investigation and bring civil rights charges against George Zimmerman,” Larry Hamm, NJ state chairman of the People's Organization for Progress.

When the usual "hard-core" 18-25 People's Organization for Progress members and supporters who begin every rally or march became a spirited picketline of more than 50 nearly an hour before an event is scheduled to begin, you know that the event answers a felt need in the community. 

When the picket demanding Justice for Trayvon Martin at the intersection Broad & Market in downtown Newark on Sunday quickly filled up the entire sidewalk on one side of the intersection, Newark police practically begged POP to take it to the streets! Before 3:00 PM, nearly 500 marchers were lined up on Broad Street to march down to the Federal Building. By the conclusion of the march and rally, the Newark Star Ledger  estimated 700 participants, so I would suggest that 1,000 marchers is probably a conservative evaluation (see Hundreds Rally in Newark… for the Star Ledger's report on Sunday's march and rally).

Reflecting on the NAACP's call for federal Civil Rights charges, People's Organization for Progress has a bit of experience with the strengths and weaknesses of this tactic. In 1999, when the State of NJ refused to even consider prosecuting the Orange, NJ police officers responsible for the murder of aspiring rapper Earl Faison (in what the Federal Prosecutor would later refer to as a "stairwell of torture" in the Orange PD building), the only option available was charging the officers with violating Mr. Faison's civil rights. 

Remember, that judicially, murder, manslaughter and homicide are state crimes. There is no federal equivalent, so the closest to justice that the Faison family could hope for was that a literal conspiracy of wilding by the cops would result in a few short jail terms.

Similarly for the family of Trayvon Martin, a federal civil rights conviction against George Zimmerman simply means he is not blameless, as the acquittal in Sanford court indicates the jurors believe. A greater victory, more justice for Mr. Martin's family would probably be the repeal of racist "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida and throughout the US.

Interestingly, Newark mayor "Hollywood" Booker has gone out of his way to distance himself from those angered by Zimmerman's acquittal (see Booker, other NJ figures…). Apparently, part of his US Senate campaign involves making himself so "non-offensive" to those he sees as his constituents that, by comparison, NYC's racist Mayor Mike is an absolute radical! Hopefully this will make Ras Baraka's election certain…

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Black NJ: People's Organization for Progress on the FBI & NJ State Police attack on Assata Shakur

FBI/NJ State police put up a new billboard advertising their call for an extrajudicial hit against our sister Assata Shakur

This past week, many movement activists were shocked when our sister, Assata Shakur, was suddenly placed atop an until then unknown FBI "terrorist" list. In response, at noon on Friday May 10 People's Organization For Progress, the New Black Panther Party and a host of allied organizations and individuals held a press conference in at the Rodino Federal Building in Newark, NJ. The statement that follows was read by Lawrence Hamm, NJ state chairman for POP:

Take Assata Shakur off the Terrorist List

The People's Organization For Progress (POP) calls upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to remove Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard) from its Most Wanted Terrorists List.  She does not belong on the list because Ms. Shakur was never charged nor convicted of an act of domestic or international terrorism.

To place her on such a list is fundamentally unjust. It is a perversion of justice and involves the ex post facto application of terrorist laws and definitions of terrorism that were not in existence or applied to her case at the time of her arrest and conviction.

Furthermore, she did not commit the crime she was accused of.   She was placed on the list because her conviction connected her to the murder of a police officer. However, evidence in her case shows that she could not have shot and killed that officer.  She became a fugitive because given the circumstances of her case, the atmosphere of repression, and the racism of the criminal justice system she could not get justice in this country and to remain here may have cost her life.

The move to place her on the list and the doubling of her bounty to $2 million has little to do with justice and everything to do with politics. It is an opportunistic attempt to use the criminal justice system to score political points in this highly charged post Boston bombing environment.

Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list when she was not convicted of a "terrorist act" is in essence falsely accusing her of a crime that she did not commit. It is the abandonment of the law in the name of enforcing the law.

Like the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, preemptive strikes, and the abandonment of international law, it is the establishment of a false premise as a rationale for violent action, which has no legal basis but for which political support may be imagined or conjured up.  Placing Assata Shakur on the terrorists list sets a dangerous precedent.

With the false premise established what will be next?  Will Cuba be given the ultimatum to give up Shakur like the Afghanistan government was told to give up Osama Bin Laden before the US invasion of that country?  Will there be a drone strike of Shakur's supposed residence in Cuba?  Will Navy Seal Team "7" be sent on a covert mission to assassinate Assata Shakur who is an American citizen?

Zayid Muhammad of the New Black Panthers introduces Newark elder Amiri Baraka, who also spoke eloquently at the press conferenc 

By identifying Shakur as a terrorist the FBI is taking the terrorists list and making it a "political enemies" list, which is an instrument of state terror. And why not?  This fits in perfectly with unjust and illegal trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, extraordinary renditions, black site secret prisons in foreign lands, torture, assassination of US citizens, military courts, secret trials, Guantanamo, elimination of habeas corpus, indefinite detention, government domestic spying, arbitrary arrests, police brutality, racial profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, school to prison pipeline, suppression of dissent, COINTELPRO type operations, ignoring the Constitution, trashing the Bill of rights, and trampling upon our civil liberties.  

And let's look at her accusers. Who is calling her a terrorist?  The FBI who spied on Dr. Martin Luther King. The FBI whose Director J. Edgar Hoover made it his mission to destroy Dr. King. The FBI who engaged in acts of state terror that included assassination against people and organizations in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.

And the New Jersey State Police who shot up Newark and killed innocent people during the rebellion. The New Jersey State Police who for years engaged in the worst forms of racial profiling.  The New Jersey State Police, a department so rife with racism that the federal government had to put it under a "master" to force it to reform its racist ways.

With this precedent the rights of all Americans are placed in greater jeopardy. Now, anyone can be deemed a terrorist, not because this was proven in a court of law but by fiat, proclamation or declaration by the President, US Attorney General, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, or some other agency of the federal government.

And this can be done not just for transgressions of the present. It can be done retroactively for sins of the past, ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. If the government doesn't like someone just put them on the terrorist list.

Of course, this exercise of twenty-first century US democracy would not be complete unless accompanied by the economic incentive that American capitalism can provide. In this age of robber billionaires a $1 million dollar bounty on the head of Assata Shakur was not enough. It has been doubled to $2 million.

Who are the $2 million pieces of silver for? Are they for enterprising US citizens? No. Assata Shakur has been given political asylum in Cuba. This pot of gold is to entice elements within Cuban Society to violate the laws and policies of the Cuban government.

The FBI and company hope that in Cuba there are corrupt persons within the police, or criminal elements, or people opposed to the government who will take the bait and do this bit of subcontracting work and keep some of the heat off the bosses in the US.

They hope that there are Hamid Kharzais in Cuba who would like to have bags of money delivered to them on a monthly basis. "Bring Assata Shakur to us and you to can be a millionaire." Dead or alive has not been specified.

The placing of Assata Shakur on the terrorist list while portrayed as a noble act in the attempt to get justice for a slain police officer is in fact a shameful act of revenge, opportunism, political manipulation, and authoritarianism.  It is part and parcel of a corrosive trend eating away at the democratic processes and institutions in our country for half a century and which has accelerated since 9/11.

Assata Shakur should not be on the terrorist list. She should be removed from that list just as Nelson Mandela was removed from that list several years ago. When the threat of terrorism and the terrorist label is misused in this manner the victims of real acts of terror are dishonored.

(Fire on the Mountain thanks POP Corresponding-Secretary Ingrid Hill for her photographs from the press conference/picket at the Rodino Office Building)

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UPDATED: “History had me glued to my seat…”

Ms. Claudette Colvin speaks at Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church

Ms. Claudette Colvin had more than 200 assembled activists stuck to their seats as she shared the story of her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. As a fifteen-year-old youngster who'd heard Black History Week presentations in her high school, she felt the spirit of Harriet Tubman "like a hand on my shoulder forcing me to remain seated," when the driver instructed her and three other students to move so a young white woman could have a seat alone on two benches.

After her arrest, Miss Colvin became active in the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council organized by Mrs. Rosa Parks, so she had multiple sources of inspiration, though she was taken off the bus and busted some nine months before Mrs. Parks herself was arrested.  

MS. Colvin with POP members Aminifu Williams and Sharon Hand

"Mrs. Parks was our Esther," Miss Colvin suggested, explaining the difference between her own arrest that became part of a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court and ended segregation on public transit in the US and that of Rosa Parks, which became the basis of the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. Esther, from the Bible, she explained had a variety of unique gifts that allowed her to fight in ways unavailable to other Hebrews in ancient Persia.

Lawrence Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, also spoke about these two different direction in the people's struggle, though matter-of-factly. 

"Inside and outside," Larry said. "Though legal, court battles are less exciting than taking to the streets and marching, they each complimented one another, and the struggle against segregation on Montgomery buses could not have been won without both components."

Larry Hamm, Newark City Councilman Ras Baraka, NJ Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka & Claudette Colvin before the evening program

Hamm expanded on this, speaking about POP's 381 days of struggle for Peace, Jobs & Justice this past year. We'd mounted daily picketlines, in the heat of summer and the snows of winter, under all weather conditions, demanding a National Jobs Program; the End to Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya; preservation of Workers' Rights and Collective Bargaining; a Moratorium on Foreclosures; the End to Privatization Schemes and other Attacks on Public Education; a National Healthcare Program; Affordable College Education. 

Why 381 days? Because the People's Organization for Progress took our cue from the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, and our goal was to keep our Campaign for Peace, Jobs & Justice running at least that long. In the course of this campaign POP built a coalition of nearly two hundred labor, grassroots, community, and religious organizations, and, as Chairman Hamm noted, the campaign is still active with weekly demonstrations and other activities.

New Jersey State Assemblyman Thomas Giblin

As Assemblyman, and President of the Essex County Central Labor Council, Tommy Giblin noted, this "was one heck of an impressive achievement." Giblin, who spoke as a member of the NJ Assembly for Essex County, was by no means the only elected official present. Municipalities from all over northern New Jersey sent proclamations honoring Ms. Colvin. From Elizabeth to Paterson, from Montclair to Irvington; Essex County, Union County, Passaic County, nearly every elected official wanted to be part of this event. Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith included the Key to the City with the proclamation he presented to Ms. Colvin. Noteworthy, and somewhat perplexing, was the slim participation of Newark elected officials. South Ward council member (and mayoral candidate) Ras Baraka may have been the only local municipal elected official in attendance. 

Approximately 200 community residents and other activists filled the pews of Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church.

As we honor Ms. Colvin and share the lessons of her life, as well as this successful forum, it is important to remember that Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanette Reese were also plaintiffs in the case Attorney Fred Gray brought before the US Supreme Court, ending segregation on public transportation across the country. But perhaps more important in this era when Mrs. Parks' memory is applauded and lionized, when a statue of her likeness stands in the Capitol Rotunda, is that Rosa Parks herself was for many years the "forgotten woman of the Montgomery Boycott."  In 1960, she was living in Detroit where she'd been forced to move after the successful struggle in Montgomery. Ill, unemployed, poverty-stricken and ignored by the Montgomery Improvement Association and NAACP alike, it was only through the efforts of the militant United Autoworkers NAACP branch at the Ford River Rouge plant that she received support, and eventually a staff job with the newly-elected Congressman John Conyers.

[UPDATE: Click on the link Claudette Colvin to view over two hours of video of the entire event, including Ms. Colvin's presentation, Thursday evening, March 28 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Out thanks to WBAI videographer Fred Nguyen]

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Newark supports ACLU NJ petition for Justice Department intervention

When Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, published the Op-Ed piece Newark Police Department needs an intervention; the ACLU-NJ turns to the federal government this past September, it was in many respects the result of ACLU NJ's close work in recent years with community-based organizations like the People's Organization for Progress and others. So when the ACLU NJ filed their 96 page petition enumerating 407 cases of police misconduct (see US Intervention Sought for Newark Police Abuse, and ACLU accuses Newark police of false arrests, excessive force, for more information), nearly 100 members of the People's Organization for Progress, the New Black Panther Party,  families of police abuse victims, and concerned community residents responded by marching on Newark Police Headquarters on Green Street to begin the campaign demanding that the Justice Department begin an investigation.

Among the concerned community residents, a contingent from Irvington reported on the rally against street violence they'd participated in this past Wednesday. This event was a candlelight prayer vigil to mourn the murder of Saleemah Baines, the pregnant mother of three who was killed along with her companion. This vigil, which many Irvington elected officials had endorsed and espoused their support of was set upon by Irvington cops in what can only be described as a police wilding incident!

Witnesses and victims of the police wilding in Irvington report

Lawrence Hamm, chairman of POP, thanked ACLU NJ for their work interviewing victims of police abuse and ACLU's efforts writing, submitting and popularizing the federal petition for Justice Department intervention. NBPP National Minister of Culture Zayid Muhammad also thanked ACLU NJ and called for a National United Front Against Police Abuse.


To see additional photos from today's rally click here.

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"We need a United Front challenging state sponsored terror against our communities!"

At Fire on the Mountain we've covered campaigns of the People's Organization for Progress against police violence directed at Black people and immigrants since the very inception of our blog. The recent shooting-attack by Rahway, NJ police against Fritz Louissaint is just the latest in these terrorist attacks on people of African Descent (see Justice for Fritz Louissaint, and …Police violence in Rahway, for more information).

This past weekend the Haitian Student Association, the NJ Haitian Chamber of Commerce, the NJ American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant rights groups and concerned community members joined the People's Organization for Progress and the New Black Panther Party to rally in front of the Rahway municipal center and march to King's Motel on Route 1 where Mr. Louissaint was shot by Rahway Police Department officers, Sgt. Anthony DeCarlo and Edward O'Donnell.

After reaching King's Motel, James Carey of POP's Union County branch called-out the motel manager for his deceptive fabrication on the Rahway police 911 emergency-line when he reported that Mr. Louissaint was harassing residents with a gun. Zayid Muhammad of the New Black Panther Party called for a united front against police terror. Speakers from the Haitian community, the immigrant defense organizations and the student movement vowed to bring larger numbers to Rahway in December…

To see additional photos of the Saturday, November 6, 2010 march, rally and demonstration, click here.

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"Breathing the spirit of rebellion into our youth…"

"We must breath the spirit of rebellion into our youth," Lawrence Hamm said, reflecting on the importance of this past Saturday's commemoration of the 179th anniversary of August 21, 1831 South Hampton County Virginia slave revolt with these words. In fact, Newark, NJ may be the only place in the US where there is a park honoring Nat Turner, the leader of this rebellion.


In addition to brother Hamm, Roger Smith and Elizabeth McGrady spoke representing the Friends of Nat Turner Park, the Central Ward community group that reached out to the Trust for Public Land, the Newark Public School, the Springfield/Belmont Super Neighborhood Council and other public advocacy groups to bring this, the largest city-owned park into Newark, into existence. Smith, a former member of the original Black Panther Party has been active in the city his entire life and was able to shed light on exactly how this unique park came into existence over the last four decades.


"Street Doctor" Earl Best reflected on the many ways the Central Ward needs this new park, while Larry Adams, POP's co-chair, shared Nat Turner's story and the history of the 1831 slave revolt he led. POP chairman Hamm decribed Adams presentation as a "deep and thoroughly materialist" history. POP elder and movement griot, Aminifu Williams expanded on brother Adams' masterful history lessons, melding in his own seven-decades of experience in the people's struggles, while POP historian Wade McIver shared little-known facts about Turner's revolt. Revolutionary poet Carlos Dufflar shared brand new verse devoted to Turner's life and legacy.

Zayid Muhammad, National Minister of Culture of the New Black Panther Party, roused the nearly 100 participants in attendance, speaking about the political and cultural implications of Nat Turner's revolutionary ideals and their implications for a new generation of revolutionaries. "We need to wonder," brother Muhammad asked, "how this revolutionary people's park got the approval of the reactionary Booker administration?"

The answer to this question is that the very existence of Nat Turner Park is the legacy of an earlier generation of activism. As Roger Smith pointed out, the 1967 Newark Rebellion energized the Committee for a Unified Newark, which in turn led to the election of Kenneth Gibson, Newark's first African-American mayor in 1970. The mood, attitude and community culture of the times that attempted to build the Kawaida Tower low-income housing, succeeded in getting the land set aside and  designated for Nat Turner Park. It took more than 30 years to build, but it is certainly a people's victory… 

[This Fire on the Mountain blog entry is dedicated to the memory of our brother Ron "Slim" Washington, an African-American labor and community leader who passed Sunday, August 22. In the words of his friends, he devoted the entirety of his intellect, passion and energy to the cause of Black Liberation. Slim would most certainly have been with POP at  the Commemoration of Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt, just as he played a leading role in the many struggles of the past four decades that helped bring this park into existence. Ronald "Slim" Washington, Ashé! Ronald "Slim" Washington, Presenté!]


Thanks once again to POP photographer Jon Levine for sharing the photos used in this blog. For more pictures from Newark's 1st Annual Commemoration of Nat Turner's Rebellion click on this link.

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Newark's Celebrity Mayor: Wrong Again!

UPDATE: Friday, August 6, 12:30 AM— 
Additional information and corrections to yesterday's FotM blog

Picket line in front of Newark City Hall

Mayor Cory Booker, darling of New Jersey's suburban middle class, stands up against the interests and needs of Newark's citizenry once again!

This is getting to be old news, but apparently information that the news media can neither learn or even report on. Some months back Fire on the Mountain (FotM) reported on the water crisis in Newark in the blog entry Black New Jersey: The community fights "Hollywood" Booker over water rights …Newark Wins! We've also reported on Booker's anti-community stance on police brutality, street violence, and his personal aspirations that leave our community in a sorry second (or third) place to his political career.

After his backers' money-grubbing attempts to privatize Newark's world-renowned water supply failed to win City Council approval last October, "Hollywood" Booker is at it again! [editor's note: Those who doubt our statements about the pristine purity of Newark's water supply may not know or remember that the original breweries in the NY metropolitan area all used Newark water. Mostly they were located in town, but even Knickerbocker across the river transported Newark water to brew their beer. Before Milwaukee's water let it claim the title "Beer Capital of the World," before Shlitz billed itself as, "The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous," every US brewery wanted Newark water. And Newark still draws the same water supply from the same reservoirs, fed by the Pompton and Ramapo Rivers.]


Chants of "No M.U.A.!", "We Are Not for Sale!" and "Water is a Human Right!" rang out in front of Newark City Hall as upward to 75 demonstrators from the People's Organization for Progress, Newark Water Group, the New Black Panther Party and many unaffiliated concerned community members picketed the meeting of the City Council. Speaking for the Newark Water Group, Brenda Toyloy presented in-depth background, recounting the role of Andrea Hughie, chair of the People's Organization for Progress Youth Committee played in bringing the issue to light last fall. The Council was deliberating on the Booker Administration's proposed "Municipal Utility Authority" scheme to sell the City's water. The M.U.A., in the name of covering budget shortfalls, will also create 6-figure taxpayer funded "jobs" for Corys' loyal friends. 


POP friend, Councilman Ras Baraka, left the demonstration to join in Council discussion of the vicious proposal.

FotM regulars who've followed this story from the beginning will remember the leading role that students and young people have played in this fight from the first. It was a young nurse and community activist who first brought the issue to POP's attention when she went on a home visit to the apartment of a young mother with children and discovered that the rules of her employment would require the termination of assistance to this family because there was no running water. This struggling family was on public assistance (with rent paid by state agencies), so it was the landlord and not the mother who was responsible for the unpaid utility bill. Yet it would be the children forced to pay the price of the landlord's greed.

Our children will be forced to pay for elected officials' greed, aspirations, and their blindness
to community needs. 

The City Council tabled the Municipal Utilities Authority privatization plan at its meeting the day after the Water Coalition demonstration. "This is an important, if partial victory," according to Lawrence Hamm, Chairman of the People's Organization for Progress. "But we must also recognize the systemic roots of the urban crisis that forced Mayor Booker to promote this barbaric attack on Newark residents. 


"The crisis is real and would exist no matter who sat in City Hall. Cutbacks in funding of urban aid go back to the Reagan Administration, at least. For more than twenty years, the U.S. government has funded military adventures abroad at the expense of aid to the cities. While this has only become worse with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the gutting of community support to bailout banks and failing corporations has a long history," Hamm added.

Many organizations and individuals are working to protect our water, the very "life's blood" of our city. The Newark Water Group, the People's Organization for Progress, the Newark Chapter of the New Black Panther Party as well as  countless others all have a role to play in safeguarding our children's legacy and future. For additional information about this key fight please join us at the weekly POP General Assembly meeting, 6:30 PM every Thursday evening at Newark's Abyssinian Baptist, 224 West Kinney St., between Prince and Broome Streets, just below Irvine Turner Blvd.

(Special thanks to Ingrid Hill, POP's Corresponding Secretary, for the photographs in this Fire on the Mountain. Ingrid was gracious enough to make her shots available when FotM's usual Newark photographer couldn't attend the demonstration.)

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Black NJ: P.O.P. Celebrates Kuumba (creativity) on 6th Day of Kwanzaa

New Years Eve 2009, was the People's Organization for Progress' evening this past year to host one of Newark's Kwanzaa celebrations. For years, each night's observance has been sponsored by a different local organization and because POP's weekly General Assembly is Thursday, this year our turn corresponded to Kuumba, the celebration of creativity.

And because Thursday was New Years Eve, the usual meeting location, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, was completely committed Watch-Night activities and unavailable to POP. But since one of our senior members, Mr. Aminifu Williams is also associated with REFAL we were fortunate enough to get access to their Kommuniversity location. POP Elder Aminifu was also associated with Dr. Maulana Karenga's US Organization in Los Angeles back at the time Kwanzaa in the U.S. originated in the middle-1960s, so POP's Griot, Aminifu, was also able to provide historic background on Kwanzaa's origins that many other celebrations of the holiday lack.

Bringing our celebration back to issues in the community:
Because this was the People's Organization for Progress celebration, we didn't simply follow the order of the activities designated by the Nguzo Saba (the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa). As a community-based festival Kwanzaa demands that we link each of the Seven Principals, Umoja (Unity); Kujichagulia (Self-Determination); Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility); Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics); Nia (Purpose); Kuumba (Creativity); and Imani (Faith) back to our ongoing activism. This year's Kwanzaa had two themes, as well as the principle of creativity that we recognized.

Because Sundiata Acoli (Black Panther Party member and a political prisoner incarcerated for 36 years) is scheduled for a parole hearing scheduled for February, New Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Zayid Muhammad presented a letter-writing campaign aimed at winning Acoli's parole (see link for more information about this campaign). Sundiata (who is 73 years old) is a former NASA mathematician who was arrested and imprisoned for alleged involvement in the shooting death of NJ State Trooper Werner Foerster. Acoli was convicted in 1972 and sentence to Life plus 30 years. This is the same shooting incident that our sister Assata Shakur was framed for after being shot twice.

The second theme for this year's POP Kwanzaa was Youth. Some of the People's Organization for Progress' most successful and inspiring campaign this past year have been thanks to the involvement of our Youth Committee (see The Community Fights for Water Rights & Wins for one electrifying example). Andrea Jones, C0-Chair of the POP Youth Committee, reviewed the past year and presented the committee's plans for 2010.

Lawrence Hamm, POP's chairman, introduced and closed the program explaining the need for self-esteem in the context of the historic experiences of African Americans. Kwanzaa was developed as a component of this assertion of dignity and achievement. The holiday is based on the historic harvest celebrations of many African civilizations. It takes its name from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza" which means "first fruits."

K'Sakhem Wé, Chairman of REFAL People's Organization for Progress Chairman Larry Hamm

To view more photos from this event, go to People's Organization for Progress Kwanzaa 2009. Thanks to POP photographers Ingrid Hill, chair of POP's Reparations Committee, Labor Committee chair Jon Levine.

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"Hollywood Mayor" Looks to Move Up — And Out of Newark

Newark mayor Cory Booker couldn't wait a week. NJ Governor Jon Corzine was just voted out in an widely-reported odd-year race that was more about suburban control of the state than about taxes, Wall Street, corruption, or any of the issues that Republican challenger "Krispy Kreme" Christy pushed.

The media-hungry mayor hastened to disassociate himself from the fellow Democrat that he had supposedly been supporting--and also to throw his own hat into the ring for the next gubernatorial race. This is pretty clear evidence that he's going to spend the next four years running instead of governing.

Cory "Hollywood" Booker has a lot of incentive to run for state-wide office. Not least is the fact that he's reduced nearly all his bridges in Newark to smoking wrecks. He lies--repeatedly and blatantly--at every public appearance.

At this year's Labor Day March in Newark, he represented himself as a "friend of labor" at the rally to the very unions he's attempted to bust (while trying to upstage US Congressman Donald Payne -an actual "friend of labor"-- who was the parade's Grand Marshal). His most repeated claim is to be pro-education as he destroys city public schools in favor of charter-schools owned by political contributors. He professes to support citizens against greedy and corrupt businesses, while turning off tenants' water because their landlords had unpaid water-bills and taxes (see The Community Fights "Hollywood" Booker Over Right to Water… Newark Wins!).

And all the while, Cory Booker maintains that, as mayor, he has reduced street-crime.

This is, perhaps, the biggest lie of them all. Anyone who actually lives in Newark has witnessed the ever-increasing levels of street-violence. Booker has allowed his Giuliani-esque police force to run amok in the neighborhoods. The sharpest single example of the anti-community policies carried out by Police Director Gary McCarthy, an NYC transplant, is the police murder this past May of Basire Farrell. Farrell was beaten to death by Newark police while in handcuffs.

Defenders of McCarthy's police policies insist that neighborhood residents who'd witnessed the beat-down "had to be lying" because they claimed that the cops used tasers. "Stun guns are not standard issue in Newark." As though they are not for sale to anyone with a badge at cop shops down on Williams Street or anywhere in the state.

Last Saturday saw a rain-soaked march to the 5th Precinct on Bigelow Street, called by Mr. Farrell's aunt, Sharonda Smalls. It was far broader than simply a demand for justice for her nephew. Ms. Smalls reached out to families of other victims of police brutality, as well as the People's Organization for Progress (of which she is a member) and other community-based groups.

"We're all family," Ms. Smalls said. "The moment you hear the horrifying news about a loved one, you become a member of my family." She went on to talk about the many neighborhood residents who've suffered at the hand of the local police. But Smalls also broadened the issue beyond the precinct and even Newark, when she expanded the battle by talking about Amar McLean who was handcuffed and then "shot in the back, execution-style" by deputies of the Essex County Sheriff's Department..

"The 5th Precinct has a reputation for arrested suspects never making it to the station house," Lawrence Hamm, POP's chairman said. "This has got to stop! This is Newark, 2009 -- not Montgomery in the 1950s."

"We need to hold elected officials accountable for what happens on their watch," New Black Panther Party spokesman Zayid Muhammad said. "And if Cory Booker can be reelected after this, the shame is on us!"

The broader lesson is very clear. Cory "Hollywood" Booker is interested in Newark as a stepping-stone to state-wide or even national office, and that's all. His "tough love" policies are designed to polish his image at the expense of Newark residents. Because he's young, photogenic and well-spoken, folks like Oprah Winfrey have taken to him and are promoting him as a kind of "America's Mayor," Rudy Giulani-style.

And we can't forget the other thing besides name recognition that campaign for high office in this country requires. Money. Lots of money. And Cory Booker has the closest thing you can get to a public money-laundering scheme without winding up in jail. Here's how it works: well-meaning out-of-towners, following Oprah's example, donate money to help provide better schools for Newark. Booker takes their money and directs it to privately-owned, for-profit charter schools owned by campaign contributors. These folks turn around and make fat contributions to Booker's electoral war-chest.

It is our responsibility in Newark to stop Cory "Hollywood" Booker's climb to power--on our backs--right here and now. We have to expose his money-laundering schemes and the policies he promotes because they look good to well-meaning NJ suburbanites. And we have to fight for our own needs and interests, because he sure won't be doing it.

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Black New Jersey: The community fights "Hollywood" Booker over right to water… Newark Wins!

Wednesday evening, October 21, hundreds of concerned citizens gathered to picket outside the Newark, NJ City Hall and moved the protest into the Council Chambers when the weekly City Council meeting began. Residents were indignant about illegal water terminations that had been going on for months in the city. The massive protest had been organized by a coalition of the People's Organization for Progress, the Newark United Tenants Association, the Newark Water Group, the New Black Panther Party, as well as other concerned community organizations and residents.

These water shut-offs were most surprising to tenants who rely on their landlords to pay the water bill. In a substantial number of cases, residents were up to date in rent (which, according to their lease agreements, includes heat and water) and didn't event know that the landlord hadn't paid the water bill. Likewise, many residents receiving Section-8 housing subsidies have no way of even knowing if their payments are up-to-date. Their caseworkers send paperwork that result in vouchers to landlords who then get money that the welfare recipient never sees. These transactions take place without any "client" involvement, supposedly protecting the money from being misspent. When these tenants have their water turned off, they are clearly blameless.

Like many People's Organization for Progress sponsored demonstrations, this picket and rally began with 30 or so POP & NBPP members and supporters, but these numbers quickly grew to hundreds and hundreds of angry tenants before moving inside to the council chambers. In reaction to this undeniable mass of angry citizens, the Newark City Council was compelled to reverse the draconian water policy. This was truly a people's victory of major magnitude. But a more complicated, deeper and truer analysis must examine the background that allowed this policy to have been enacted in the first place. In many ways, this was (and still is) a government-imposed crisis, and the paper trail leads directly to Mayor Corey Booker's office, but we'll return to this later.

Some Background:
Months ago, a dedicated, young idealistic nurse, whom we'll call Aisha, went on a home visit to an indigent mother with five children and found a nursing nightmare; an apartment with no running water. As Aisha recently explained, the rules community healthcare workers operate under require that she report children living under these circumstances. Had these rules been followed, the next step would have involved the County taking these youngsters away from their mother's care. Aisha is a Newark resident and an active member of the People's Organization for Progress, and this is how POP initially found out about this aspect of Newark's water crisis.

The general issue of the city selling the water supply to outside investors was something with which POP had already become involved. Newark was historically the east coast's Milwaukee because, contrary to popular wisdom, it has some of the best water in the entire country. This is why the breweries for the New York metropolitan area, and much of the east coast were historically located within city limits. Any corporate purchase of Newark's water supply is not simply an attempt to make money from a staple of life that should be guaranteed to all residents, it is an attempt to control the food production industries as well.

The People's Organization for Progress united against prior schemes to sell Newark's water. The current double-billing and shut-offs by by Mayor Corey Booker (Newark's celebrity mayor) to balance the city budget involves attempting to charge residents twice for their water . If the mayor's business administrator doesn't understand that these tenants being penalized don't pay their water bills directly, she certainly doesn't have the business experience her office demands. More likely, Director Thomas is "firing a shot across the bow" of businesses that are delinquent in water payments without hurting those key businesses directly. If so, this is precisely the sort of attack on residents that Corey Booker claimed to be running against when he was first elected mayor.

The battle lines were probably best explained by the protest's organizer, Andrea Hughie chairwoman of POP's Youth Committee. “We discovered many families that receive Section 8 housing vouchers that have been living in homes without water for weeks. These families are already financially compromised and it is disappointed the city of Newark refused to protect the rights of these tenants against the absentee landlords. We rely on city officials to help us, not hurt us." Because sister Hughie reached out to her friends first, "this movement to protect community water was led by young people." Faced with potential charges of money-laundering, Newark's Hollywood Mayor "would agree to anything to avert bad publicity."

But this issue if far from settled. The people's victory at the City Council merely gives tenants a temporary reprieve through the end of the year. "In January," Ms. Hughie informs us, "the water cut-offs may begin again."

Thanks to the chairwoman of the People's Organization for Progress Reparations Committee (and POP photographer) Ingrid Hill for pictures used with this report…

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