African America and the End of the Occupation of Iraq

The invaluable Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson has just published an essential piece on the near-universal opposition to the occupation of Iraq among African Americans. I encourage folks to read it and spread it around.

One point he raises is of the highest importance:

This war, launched under false pretenses, now has so little merit that the enrollment of African-Americans in the military may be at its lowest point since the creation of the all-volunteer military in 1973. In 2000, 23.5 percent of Army recruits were African-American. By 2005, the percentage dropped to 13.9 percent. National Public Radio this week quoted a Pentagon statistic that said that African-American propensity to join the military had dropped to 9 percent.

Nine percent! Nine!! This is hard to wrap the brain around. Before G.W. Bush took office, African Americans joined the military at a rate approaching double their presence in the US population (about 14% according to the census). In seven short years, that has fallen to an enlistment rate less than 2/3 of what might be expected given population figures, less than forty percent of what it had been historically!

Three points need to be made here.

First, this is the most significant contribution to ending the unjust and unjustifiable occupation of Iraq that any large subsection of the US population has made. The stunning and sudden loss of African American cannon fodder has contributed big time to all the problems the Pentagon is having recruiting and maintaining the occupation force—Stop Loss, extended deployments, IRR call-ups, loosened recruiting standards around age, health, IQ and criminal records, etc.

The fear that the Armed Forces are being “broken” (to say nothing of the National Guard) is the major cause of the growing Bring Them Home Now! sentiment in the officer corps, channeled to the public though retired officers like General Batiste and especially Representative John Murtha.

Second, this represents a collective decision on the part of the Black Nation (or African America or the Black community or whatever formulation you prefer), and not one arrived at entirely unconsciously either. Consider that since WW2, parents and grandparents had told generations of young men and, more recently, women, “Since you got out of high school, you’ve been hanging out on the corner and getting in trouble, and I’m not having it. We’re going down to the recruitment office.”

Today, that has been reversed. A young person who says “I’ve been talking to the recruiter,” gets told, “Oh, no, honey, that’s not happening!”

The brass recognize this, as Jackson reports:

Pentagon officials largely attribute the drop in African-American interest in the armed forces to "influencers," parents, coaches, ministers, and school counselors who urge youth not to enlist.

(I had a conversation on the A train last fall with a Sergeant, in uniform, who works with JROTC programs in New York and he said he tells his charges to use the program for what they need—discipline, scholarships--but absolutely not to enlist until the war is over.)

Third, that collective decision is based on a political calculus embraced by elders and the youth themselves. Gregory Black, a retired Navy diver and commentator, calls it “an oilman’s war” and says:

African-Americans detest this war. Everybody kind of knows the truth behind this war. It's a cash cow for the military defense industry, when you look at the money these contractors are making. African-Americans saw this at the beginning of the war and now the rest of the country has figured it out. It's not benefiting us in the least.

As for young folks, Black says:

I taught ROTC in high school, and the kids themselves are a lot smarter about this stuff. They see the news and they can't justify going into a fight for something they have no faith in.

Looking at the ongoing Congressional dithering about funding the occupation, you can only wish that these high school students were sitting in the Capitol instead.

UPDATE:

While the general trends hold and I think my three conclusions are valid, a contributer at the left liberal DailyKos, where this article was also posted, has cast doubt on that 9% figure. (Read through the comments thread here.) Instead of stunned, I am now skeptical.

Read more!

Black NJ Prepares To March!

This blog has been tracking the enormously important development of the Peace & Justice Coalition, an alliance of over 100 community, religious, labor, social, educational and other organizations centered in the Black communities of Northern New Jersey, from its inception. FotM published the first call, summarized the founding convention and reported on its first event, a March 24 anti-war rally that drew over 600.

Now the Peace & Justice Coalition is taking it to the next level. Larry Hamm, a convener of the Coalition and long-time chair of the People's Organization for Progress, has issued a statement calling for a statewide march in Newark on August 25.

I know years of exposure to demonstration announcements, press statements and the like can induce a kind of scanning mode where more of the document bounces off the eye than penetrates it. I encourage you, dear reader, to take a little time to read this one. Study its concerns, consider its language.

It comes out of the African American community in New Jersey and it lays out issues that community and other communities of color are facing. It draws the links between the occupation of Iraq, the War at Home, and the crimes of this government in clear accessible terms. IF you don't think the anti-war movement needs a lot more of this, perhaps you've been in a different movement than the one I've spent the last five years dealing with.

Finally I hope that, having read it, if you are anywhere in the Northeast, you set aside August 25 to take part in the People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs and Justice.

I'll see you there.

THE PEACE & JUSTICE COALITION CALL TO
THE PEOPLE'S MARCH FOR PEACE, EQUALITY, JOBS & JUSTICE
(Statement on behalf of the Peace & Justice Coalition by Lawrence Hamm)
May 11, 2007

Unjust War Abroad & Social Crisis At Home

The U.S. war on Iraq must be brought to an end and the U.S. government must begin to concentrate on solving the dire economic and social problems in the United States. This is an immoral and illegal war. President Bush and Vice President Cheney started this war of aggression based on false assertions including claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was somehow responsible for the attack that led to the destruction of the World Trade Center. They launched an invasion against a country that did not attack nor pose any significant threat to the United States.

In Iraq, since the beginning of the unjust and unnecessary U.S. invasion and occupation, thousands of U.S. troops have been killed. Tens of thousands have been wounded. Many of them have had limbs amputated and large numbers now suffer from war related mental disorders. When these veterans come home many cannot get adequate medical care and other services. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died since the invasion and we have practically destroyed their country. Contrary to the Bush administration’s claims about stopping terrorism, the world is a far more dangerous place since the war began, and now we are faced with the possibility that the U.S. could attack Iran or another country in the midst of the current war with Iraq. President Bush said that the U.S. had to send troops there to help promote democracy. However, it appears to many that we were more concerned about access to and control of Iraq's vast oil reserves. Thus far, the U.S. has spent more than 500 billion or one-half trillion dollars on this war with the probability that at least a trillion will be spent before it is over.

In the U.S., another type of war is going on, a war on our communities. The Bush administration, while increasing war spending, has decreased domestic spending for education, health care, housing, employment, veterans’ care and other social programs. While the U.S. wages war abroad our civil liberties, civil rights, human rights and voting rights are being violated and taken away at home.

As billions of our tax dollars are spent on a war that military experts say cannot be won, the ranks of the poor and working poor in our country continue to swell, millions are unemployed and millions more are without health insurance. Schools are under funded, hospitals are being closed, and thousands of homeless sleep on the streets of our nation. Racism, racial inequality and police brutality are on the rise. Working people are struggling paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, many in the middle class are losing ground. College students and their families are falling deep into debt in order pay the astronomical cost of higher education. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is wider than it has ever been. These conditions facilitate the recruitment of young people by the U.S. military who are then sent to fight and die on the battlefields of Iraq. Immigrants are being harassed and deported without due process. The numbers of people imprisoned and detained are exploding. Environmental pollution and global warming threaten our very existence. State governments cannot adequately respond to natural disasters because many of their national guardsmen and equipment are being used in Iraq by the U.S. military. Our democracy is in crisis as people find their government unable to fulfill their desire for peace and justice.

The continued waste of billions of dollars on the war against Iraq in the face mounting social problems in our own country can only bring disastrous consequences. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his speech in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, "A Time To Break Silence," a nation that spends more on its military than it does on its social development is a nation that "is approaching spiritual death."

A Time to March

It is time for a revolution of priorities. We must end this unjust war now and focus the energy and resources of our nation on solving our problems at home! Towards that end, this urgent call goes out to people across the nation to rise up and participate in The People's March for Peace, Equality, Jobs, and Justice, which will take place Saturday, August 25, 2007 in Newark, New Jersey. The purpose of the march is to demand an immediate end to the U.S. war on Iraq, redirection of funding for the war towards domestic needs, and the realization of racial equality, social and economic justice in the United States.

The goals of The People's March are to demonstrate the profound grassroots opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq, bring pressure to bear upon the government to end the war now, educate people about the war and its impact upon our communities in the U.S. and organize and mobilize people around a peace and justice agenda that will link the struggle against the war in Iraq to the struggles against injustice at home. We will march for an end to war abroad and an end to the war on our communities.

March for Peace

Now is the time to put the nation on a new course. If this war is to end and our social problems are to be seriously addressed then all of us who want peace and justice must act now. Everyone that wants an end to the war is invited to join us in Newark on August 25th. Let us all march together for peace.

We will demand an immediate end to the U.S. war on Iraq and the closing of U. S. military bases there, the return home of all U.S. troops now, adequate care for the troops upon their return, the cutoff of funding for the war in Iraq and the redirection of those funds towards domestic and social programs. We will call upon the Bush Administration to repair the damage done by U.S. military forces in Iraq. We will also demand an end to the war in Afghanistan and that no future wars be initiated against Iran or other countries.

March for Human Rights

We will demand the restoration and preservation of human rights, constitutional rights and civil liberties, which have been steadily eroded by the Bush administration in the name of the “war on terror.“ We will demand an end to the use of torture, extraordinary renditions (secret abductions), secret trials and prisons, indefinite detentions, denial of the right of habeas corpus, racial profiling, use of banned weapons, and further violations of the Geneva Conventions and international law against individuals whether they are U. S. citizens or residents, or citizens of other countries.

We will demand that the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay be closed, and that the PATRIOT, Homeland Security and Military Commissions acts and the unlawful expansion of presidential power be repealed. We will call for justice and freedom for all political prisoners.

March for an End to Violence

We cannot call for an end to the war on Iraq while ignoring the war that is going on in the streets of the United States. Violence is engulfing communities throughout the nation. There is a state of emergency in many cities and towns. Every year thousands die from gun-related and other forms of violence in our country. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of homicide among the industrialized nations of the world. When we march on August 25th, we will call for unity in our communities, peace in our streets and an end to the violence that pervades U.S. society. We will demand an end to the flow of illegal drugs and guns into our communities. And we will demand an end to the grinding poverty and other economic and social conditions that drive so many towards drugs, crime, violence and death.

March for Equality

Forty-four years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of a dream of racial equality. During the sixties, as a result of African Americans' struggle for freedom and justice some progress was made. However, since then many of the gains that were made have been rolled back or eliminated. Racial equality has not yet been realized for African Americans and other communities of color in our country. Racial inequality, discrimination, segregation, oppression, violence, and police brutality are still a part of everyday life in America. In fact, in some respects racial inequality and injustice is greater today than it was during Dr. King's lifetime.

On August 25th, let us march with renewed commitment for the realization of racial equality in the United States. We will call for an end to the poverty, unemployment, substandard schools and housing, and other adverse conditions that continue to plague African American, Latino, Native American and other communities of color. We will once again demand an end to police brutality and the establishment of truly empowered police review boards and agencies. We will demand equal voting rights and representation for District of Columbia residents. We will demand reparations for the descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States and the passage of H.R. 40, the Conyers reparations study bill.

We will march for equal rights and fair treatment for all people regardless of race, color, ethnicity, sex, class, nationality, religion, creed, disability or sexual orientation or preference. We will demand an end to racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination, oppression and violence. We call for an end to bias related violence, harassment and attacks against and unjust deportations of Muslim, Arab, Asian, and Latino citizens and immigrants.

March for Jobs and Justice

On that day, let us march for jobs and economic justice. We will demand the redirection of funds for the U.S. war on Iraq towards employment, housing, healthcare, education, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other domestic programs. During his lifetime Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called upon Congress to enact into law an economic bill of rights. On August 25th, we will demand an economic bill of rights that includes the creation of a massive jobs program that pays a living wage, an increase in the minimum wage, health care for all people from the cradle to the grave and the passage of H.R. 676, the national health insurance bill.

We will call for economic democracy. We will demand an end to poverty, unemployment and homelessness. We will call for the passage of H.R. 4347, a bill to help end homelessness in the U.S. We will demand affordable housing for all and environmental justice. We will demand jobs programs to end the depression-level unemployment that exists in African American and other communities of color. We will call for economic development in our urban communities and the revitalization of our cities. We will demand the environmental clean up and funding for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast and its communities. We will demand for justice, housing, jobs, and the right of return for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. We will call for the creation of jobs to develop renewable sources of energy and to increase energy efficiency within our society in order to decrease our oil dependency and help stop global climate change.

On that day, we will march for the right of all workers to be organized and represented by unions, without fear of retribution by their employers for participating in union activities. We will demand fair and decent wages for immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, an end to unjust raids on immigrant communities and to the stealth deportations that separate and destroy families.

March for Accountability

On that day, let us march to demand accountability. Those responsible for the disaster caused by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe must be held accountable. We will call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their handling of the Iraq war and its resulting crimes against humanity and the Hurricane Katrina crisis.

March of History

The march is being held on August 25th to coincide with the 44th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and with the second anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, which killed many and left hundreds of thousands displaced and devastated due to the failure of the federal government to adequately respond to their needs. Marching in Newark enables us to connect this event to the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1967 Newark Rebellion, a major event in the struggle for racial justice. It also helps us to highlight the needs of our cities and the need for local organizing.

March for a Just Society and Peaceful World

The People’s March is sponsored by The Peace & Justice Coalition, which is comprised of more than 100 diverse grassroots organizations. The coalition calls upon everyone who wants an end to the war on Iraq to join the march and fill the streets of Newark on August 25th. We call upon people of all races, all people of good will across the country, and people from all walks of life to join us on that day.

We especially call upon historically oppressed communities, including African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Indigenous and other peoples of color who have been among those most opposed to this war to join us and make their opposition visible. On August 25th, let us march in the spirit of unity and hope, determined to keep the pressure on until the war in Iraq is ended and the ideal of a more just society, peaceful world and better life for all is finally realized.

Read more!

Black-led Protest in Newark: Impeach Bush & Cheney!

The People's Organization for Progress, the terrific Newark, NJ, group which is at the center of recent anti-war initiatives in the Black community in Northern Jersey has stepped forward again. On Saturday, POP held a rally that drew 80 peace and justice activists to the intersection of Broad & Market Streets in Newark.

Their demand was simple: that the entire Bush regime be held accountable for lying to go to war.

"Impeach Bush and Cheney, Bring the Troops Home Now!" the pickets chanted as Larry Hamm, POP's state chairman, read the applicable articles from the US Constitution explaining the impeachment process. He also ran down the reasons to impeach and try both Bush and Cheney, as well as Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Gates, Alberto Gonzales, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and former SecDef Rumsfeld. They are, after all, collectively and individually responsible for the unjust war against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as for the war against the poor at home.

Speakers slammed the administration, and so did participants in the crowd:

Today, the overwhelming majority of people in the US agree that the war must end and the troops must be returned home now. Still the Bush regime shows their true stripes, ignoring the will of the people in order to follow the dictates of Exxon, Mobil, Shell, and BP Oil.

FotM regular Bondi, who submitted the information in the above report, also provided the press release POP sent to the media in advance of the action:

PEOPLE’S ORGANIZATION FOR PROGRESS
POST OFFICE BOX 22505
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 07101-2505
(973) 801-0001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
LAWRENCE HAMM (973) 801-0001

PEOPLE’S ORGANIZATION FOR PROGRESS WILL
PROTEST BUSH VETO AND DEMAND IMPEACHMENT

The People’s Organization for Progress will have a demonstration to protest President Bush’s veto of the war funding bill calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and to demand his impeachment on Saturday, May 5, 2007, 12:00 noon at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in Newark, New Jersey.

“The majority of Americans want this war to end. By vetoing this bill President Bush is telling the majority of Americans that our opinion doesn’t matter. He is going to do what he wants to do anyway,” POP chairman Lawrence Hamm stated.

“The president and vice president are going to stubbornly follow their failed policy no matter how many Americans and Iraqis are killed and how much money it costs. This madness must end,” Hamm said.

“Because the president and vice president have led the country into a war of aggression based on false assertions, continue to squander billions of our tax dollars on this failed effort, and refuse to heed the will of the people on this matter we are compelled to call for their impeachment,” he said.

Read more!

BLACK NJ ORGANIZES AGAINST THE WAR [PART 5]

Fire on the Mountain has been tracking the development of a Black-led anti-war initiative in New Jersey for several months now. We publicized the call, the endorsers' list and the program for the initial conference. A FotM reader contributed an incisive report on that January 20 conference, emphasizing the forward looking nature of the event.

Determined that this not be a "one-time" event, participants planned a continuations committee to hold the coalition together to build a massive state-wide march for peace and justice in Newark later this year.

FotM regular, Bondi, has now written a report on the Coalitions followup event, a mass rally in Newark last Saturday (noted here the same day by Prairiefyre).

"We Are ALL Prisoners of War"

After rocking the house with their version of "The World is a Ghetto" to open the anti-war rally of the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, James Kelly and his band, "Affect," got serious. Mr. Kelly related how his son, Sgt. Clarence Lavon Floyd, had joined the 111 Airborne Light Infantry after failing to secure any other kind of work, and ended up in Iraq. A series of firefights gained him both the respect of the troops he was stationed with and the rank of sergeant. When he was killed by a "sniper" shot to the back of the head, this raised "friendly fire" issues for the family, but apparently not for the Army investigators. "We are ALL POW's, Prisoners of War," Mr. Kelly explained.

Over 600 activists filled the gymnasium at Essex County College in Newark for the rally Saturday. This was the first major follow-up event to January's exciting and successful conference on the U.S. War in Iraq and Our Communities: "Breaking the Silence: The Grassroots Speak." The coalition of more than 124 African-American churches and community groups, street organizations, labor, peace, student, and veterans organizations, who had joined the People's Organization for Progress in sponsoring the January conference, clearly came through on their promise to build on that gathering.


Among new participants in the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (formerly the People's Peace Coalition), was Wake-Up, a group of young people who, along with their teachers, took the bleachers because the main seating area was completely full. New to the Coalition as well were the Union County and Essex County Chapters of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Central Northern NJ Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.

Two speakers from Iraq Veterans Against the War, USN vet Michael Embridge of Jersey City and Army veteran Margaret Stevens of Newark, explained the extent to which the troops understand that they are being used as mercenaries for the oil companies.

Speakers also included Rev. William Howard of the Bethany Baptist Church, U.S. Congressman Donald Payne and NJ State Senator Ronald L. Rice, who, as a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, drew parallels between the "poverty draft" of the 1960s and that of today. Madelyn Hoffman of NJ Peace Action, and Minister James Muhammad, chairman of the NJ Committee for the Millions More Movement, also addressed the enthusiastic crowd.

The organizations that have united into the People's Peace and Justice Coalition are still looking ahead. As Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, “The truth of the matter is only a handful of people want to continue this war. We must increase the presence of African-American, Latino and other persons of color in the anti-war movement”.

The rally ended with all the sponsoring organizations committing themselves to a Saturday, August 25 march in Newark for Peace, Equality, Jobs and Justice.

Read more!

Sallie Holley--Inspiration From Our History

This bit of US history is the latest in a series of posts written in part to call attention to the essential new book, The Cost of Privilege. This one highlights an abolitionist little remembered today, a white woman named Salley Holley. Because she is relatively unknown, I will front-end load this essay with three reasons why she is important to us now.

1. At a time when US society held that women should avoid mixed company and public spaces, Sallie Holley became one of the small, much-loved, much-reviled band of women speakers who took to the platform and the pulpit to denounce slavery.

2. She lived her whole adult life with a supportive companion, Caroline Putnam, whom she met at college. While I have no knowledge of what they did in bed, and no desire to impose ahistorical categories on them, anybody wishing to claim them as foremothers of modern lesbian people's fighters like Audre Lorde will get no argument from me.

3. Most important, Sallie Holley and Caroline Putnam stayed with the struggle for justice for African Americans until their deaths, long after many of their white abolitionist comrades had moved on to currency reform, women's suffrage, spiritualism, temperance or commercial pursuits. It is no easy thing to be a revolutionary for an entire lifetime, and while she never described herself that way, that's what she was.

I have taken the liberty of laying out Sallie Holley's life in four stages, or battles. Most of this piece is drawn from a book entitled A Life For Liberty, published in 1899. It is a compilation of Sallie Holley's letters and excerpts, selected and introduced by a minister named John White Chadwick, who knew Sallie and many in her circle. I doubt that even the late Sonny Bono can restore copyright to it from beyond the grave and hope that someone will scan, OCR, and post a copy on the Internet.

Sallie Holley's First Battle--To Be A Full Human Being

Sallie, born in 1817, was fortunate in her father. Myron Holley was a politician and businessman who had extremely progressive ideas for his era. He loved his children and paid as much attention to the education of his daughters as his sons, at a time when the debate was "Should women learn the alphabet?" Sallie always attributed her anti-slavery values to his teachings. He did not become actively involved until the late 1830s when he helped bring into being the Liberty Party, an early precursor of Lincoln's Republicans and the first US party with an organized abolitionist group at its core. He died, barely solvent, in 1841.

From him she also got her religion, a strong New England Unitarianism. Salley remained extremely interested in religious matters her whole life, for their own hold on her, as well as because in the 19th century they were so deeply intertwined with the political issues of the day (so unlike our own time). Her values were strongly held. While young, she met General Childs and challenged him on the morality of the Seminole war, in which he had taken part:

He confessed its injustice but pleaded that as a soldier he must obey the commands of his superiors. Miss Holley did not see why.

Staying with family, she considered a career teaching or nursing, but friends persuaded her to attend Oberlin College in Ohio, and she went in 1847. Oberlin was a radical place--formed in 1835, it admitted women and Black people, unheard of at the time. When a scholarship ran out, she supported herself doing washing, baby-sitting, baking, tutoring, and sewing.

Even at radical Oberlin, Sallie Holley was something of a rebel, the only Unitarian and an increasingly "ultra" abolitionist. She met and soon was inseparable from Caroline Putnam, a fellow student. Caroline's description, from half a century later, of Sallie speaking at graduation resonates with love and appreciation:

She was radiantly lovely as she stepped forward on that great stage of the Oberlin Tabernacle, animated by the preceding music, her deep blue eyes looking off from her manuscript now and then to more earnestly impress her heretical 'Ideal of Womanhood.' Her ideas put bees in the bonnets of the sages, humming as they did with women's right to vote, to preach and with the brightest humour, poetry, and satire...

Salley Holley's Second Battle--To End Slavery

What Caroline Putnam refers to as "the momentous, the decisive convention of our lives" came in Litchfield, Ohio in 1852:

Among the speakers at this meeting was Abby Kelley Foster, who made an eloquent appeal to her listeners in behalf of the slave-woman and asked:

"Who in this great assembly is willing to plead her cause?"

At the close of her address and in the recess of the meeting Miss Holley advanced to say, 'I will plead the cause of the slave-woman.'

She wrote Caroline, "Putty, I've decided to be an anti-slavery lecturer!"

True to her pledge, she hit the speaking trail agitating against slavery and collecting funds for William Henry Garrison's magazine, The Liberator, and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Traveling from village to village by buggy and wagon, staying with strangers, facing crowds ranging from rapt to hostile, she lived "the rough and tumble kind of a life the anti-slavery lecturer experiences."

Her unrelenting attitude was captured in one letter from Farmersville, NY:

A week or two ago at a common school celebration in this village, the county superintendent invited me to address the children. Accordingly I told them of the slave-children in this country, who are not allowed to read or write or spell or commit to memory the multiplication table which they had just repeated so well. Whereupon two Buchanan men rose up and left in high indignation that 'an abolition lecture was poked at them.' I am very sorry to even seem rude and 'fanatical' but know not how to avoid it and be faithful to the cause of the slave. In fact, nothing else is so important and proper for all occasions, to be talked of, as the slave and his cause.

Sallie Hollie's Third Battle--To Resist The Dissolution Of The Anti-Slavery Movement After The Civil War

Although she was a coworker and follower of the pacifist William Lloyd Garrison, like him, she welcomed the war that followed Lincoln's election in 1860. Even before that,

on the day following John Brown's raid, she thanked God in the prayer before her lecture in Ellsworth, Maine, for John Brown's heroic deed.

After the passage of the 13th Amendment and the end of the Civil War, new tasks presented themselves. In August, 1865, she attended an Oberlin reunion:

They insisted on my relating what I had been about. I said I was afraid they wouldn't care to hear how I had been holding anti-slavery meetings all these years and still 'spoke in public.' Mr. Cooper asked what I lectured upon now. 'Oh,' I said, 'Black folks must vote all through the country.' Helen Finney, who was present with her husband, General Cox, said she thought I wanted women to vote. 'Oh, yes!" I said, 'that's inevitable,' whereupon there was 'immense sensation,'as the newspapers say.

Garrison and others argued that the goal of the American Anti-Slavery Society had been accomplished with Emancipation and it should vote itself out of business. The internal struggle which followed raged for five years, with Sallie Holley among the most passionate of those arguing that it was still needed.

Sallie wrote a scathing letter to one woman who favored closing it down, and it was published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1868. This excerpt will give the flavor:

It is heartless, cold-blooded, worldly apathy, that can object to the name or the work of an Anti- Slavery Society. Since this New Year began, three negroes were seized in Tennessee, bound over logs, and beaten nearly dead, because they voted the Republican ticket. Three thousand black men in Mississippi petition Congress to send them to Liberia. In their touching language, "The white people have all the land, all the money, all the education. Many of the planters refuse to pay us all to gether, and they work generally to prevent the education of our children." And you tell me there is no need of an Anti-Slavery Society.

See black men all over the South persecuted, driven from homes, such as they have had, denied work and bread, for daring to vote loyally. See them still shot down--killed by all the cowardly, ruffianly means known to the old barbaric days of slavery--and then, if you have a human heart, ask the American Anti-Slavery Society to stop its work, if you can! Are you afraid the black people will have too many friends, too much justice, too much liberty?

Sally Hollie's Fourth Battle--To Educate and Empower The Freed Slaves

When the struggle to preserve the American Anti-Slavery Society was finally lost, in 1870, she undertook the battle that would last until her death. Two years earlier, in 1868, her beloved Caroline had moved to Lottsburg, Virginia and started a school for the freed slaves in the area. As it became clear that the defeated Southern slavocracy craved revenge and restoration and that the North was unwilling to force them to accept defeat, Sallie joined Caroline Putnam there in 1870, at the age of 52. Through the coming decades they lived at the Holly School, as Caroline named it, leaving one at a time for an annual trip North to beg funds and supplies from friends and old movement comrades.

They worked unrelentingly, growing much of their food in a massive garden and steadily improving the facilities for their students, and did so under a near-total boycott of any communication by their white neighbors:

Though our new schoolhouse is not entirely completed at this date, yet I rejoice to write, the second coat of plaster is this day going on and by November our school will enter triumphantly. These Virgina rebels are fairly confounded to see our schoolhouse spring up so magically, and our fortunes revive from their hostile tread. Like the chamomile bed, the more it is trod upon, the more fragrant and lively it becomes. Our coloured friends are cheered to the vary marrow of their bones. Their faces shine as day after day they call on us to exult and crow. Still we know the enemy ever sits with lance in rest to take advantage as often as he can make a deadly thrust.

One can sense the deep isolation of these two properly-brought-up New England ladies in Sallie's response to Southern religion, so different from the austere Unitarianism and subdued Quakerism with which she was so familiar:

The white folks' campmeeting has just ended. Over thirty conversions! The coloured 'protracted meeting' is this week in full blast, making night hideous with terrible noises.' All this kind of religion seems to me worthless. It doesn't save from lies and stealing. Nobody's character is elevated or ennobled. Vanity and self-conceit are fostered. People pray and shout and say the Holy Ghost is moving their souls! It is awful.

This last is only one example of the class bias and white paternalism that appear in Sallie Hollie's letters, and it should not be swept under the rug. But weighed against it must be the consistency with which she fought and taught and organized. In late 1892, with only scraps of the Reconstruction program in the South left, she laments that after 25 years of organizing to hold Republican majorities in local elections and relentless vote rigging by the white Democrats,

our Lottsburgh ex-slave-holders boast that they will get the post office in March. One of the most bitter told a white woman that 'That old Yankee,' meaning me, 'has ruined these Lottsburgh niggers, making them think they are as good as anybody.'

Shortly thereafter, on her annual retreat to New York, Sallie Holley caught a chill, developed pneumonia and died on January 12, 1893. She was 74, and still fighting.

In closing, let me suggest that the greatest contribution Salley Hollie and Caroline Putnam made to this country probably took the form of the thousands of African Americans who passed through the Holley school. Some went North to settle in Baltimore and New York. Others stayed in the area and used what they had learned to make better lives for their families. But many fanned out across the South, like men and women educated at similar schools, taking teaching jobs and ensuring that the white power structure would never again be able to enforce the near-universal illiteracy which had helped keep Black America in slavery's chains.

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Black NJ Organizes Against the War [Part 4]

[I just received this exciting report from a friend who attended the anti-war conference originally announced here two weeks ago.]


It's two-and-a-half days later and I’m still amazed. I can't get over what POP achieved in Newark this past weekend! Scores of community organizations came together for the "People's Peace Conference — The U.S. War in Iraq and Our Communities." This African American-led event drew more than 400 registered participants. The theme of the conference, "Breaking the Silence: The Grassroots Speak" put it clearly in the spirit of the historic, April 4, 1967 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence."

Though the call originated in and was aimed toward the Black community (People's Organization for Progress was the initiator, along with Rev. William Howard of Newark's Bethany Baptist Church), the turnout included folks from the Latina/o community, veterans and military families, gang-bangers, youth and students, as well as white labor union and anti-war activists and a crewl of the usual Left movement types. The organizations signing on as sponsors ran the gamut from the NJ Black Issues Convention, and the Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughter (MOMSAD), to Street Warriors, Inc., and the Almighty Latin Kings & Queens Nation to the Alan Reilly/Gene Glazer Chapter of Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) chapters from Bergen and Essex counties, to several area Black elected officials, and, of course, New Jersey Peace Action, a key early sponsor. Participation was more than half African-American with white activist making up the majority of the rest. There were also representative of the Asian-American, Arab, Latina/o and other communities of color.

The true spirit of this event is best captured in the statements of participants, during and after the fact:

• This is not a one-time event, We've gotta bring this war to an end, we can't have this conference and be satisfied.

• 21 hospitals have been closed across NJ. This is clearly because of money being spent on that war instead of here at home.

• The US wants to divide Iraq into three or four parts. Is this because they want rights for the Kurds, religious freedom for the Shi'ite population? No, the United States want to divide Iraq so it can't stand up to US imperialism!

• It felt like the '60s in here today!

• This conference wasn't just about ending the war (there will be more wars, other wars), the People's Peace Conference became about social transformation.

And this WAS a transformative event! As the chairman of POP's Anti-Street Violence Committee confided to me, "You know I had questions about this peace activism. For me, the real war is the violence our young people are being subjected to, getting hit with, in the streets. But Saturday's conference, I felt the spirit. I saw 400 committed anti-war warriors who knew what time it is, who understood that the money being spent on weapon systems sent to Iraq is precisely the same money that's needed for our hospitals and schools, for after-school activities for our youth, for drug-rehab programs, to rebuild New Orleans!"

Determined that this not be a "one-time" event, participants planned a continuations committee to hold the coalition together to build a massive state-wide march for peace and justice in Newark later this year. A March 27 follow-up meeting is scheduled. This was one among the resolutions passed at the final plenary, that also included 1) Opposition to Troop Increases, 2) Demands to Redirect War Funds to Domestic Needs, 3) Bring the Troops Home Now, 4) Impeach George W. Bush, 5) Prosecute George W. Bush for War Crimes, 6) Cut Funding for Iraq War, 7) Support Gulf Coast Residents Efforts to Rebuild and the Right of Return, and 8) War Monies and Profits to be Immediately Redirected for National Healthcare, Affordable Housing for All, and Jobs with a Living Wage.

One intriguing "after-action" observation reflected the strengths of the People's Peace Conference and evidence why social transformation has to be the overarching goal. As the conference closed, Nell Sanders, a powerful young African-American musician, drummed us out of the final "speak-out" session. A comment, "People were in awe of little sister Nell… folks are not used to seeing women drummers, powerful women drumming," pointed out both the broadness of the gathering and unfinished issues like male-supremacy and patriarchy that need to be to be addressed in the future.

To a considerable extent, this was a "stealth conference". The organizing committee did plenty of media outreach but newspapers like the Star Ledger (Newark and Essex County's primary daily) and almost all broadcast media decided it was a non-event. They all received multiple press releases and it was definitely in their day-book. No one covered it, except for the local CBS affiliate. To put this in context, two weeks or so back the Star Ledger felt that Larry Hamm was an important enough political figure to warrant two pages of copy. Though Larry repeatedly mentioned The People's Peace Conference during the interviews, it never made it to the paper, either in that article or in news coverage. Apparently an African American-led anti-war effort is such a non-sequitur that the editors at the Ledger neither heard nor understood what Larry was telling them.

There are other lessons to be drawn and contradictions to be addressed by POP and others who aim to move forward from this event. A number of "foreign student" organizations, as well as the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association from Rutgers-Newark and The Almighty Latin King Nation took active part, a first step in reaching out and including Latina/o and immigrant communities. Given the increasing reliance of the Pentagon on recruitment from these communities, we must build on this foundation.

Amiri Baraka was one of the final speakers at the afternoon session. He urged representatives to build similar events and activism throughout the state. As POP chairman Larry Hamm put it, "When we can build not just conferences throughout NJ, but weekly picketlines of 1,000 at military recruitment centers in every major municipality of the state, then we will have a movement that can't be ignored."

Similarly, we need to be able to replicate this Newark conference in Raleigh-Durham and Rocky Mount, in Detroit and Chicago, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in Kansas City and Saint Louis, in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Antonio, in every urban center with a non-white majority.

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Take Five--James Brown Cuts

[Take Five. Every Friday, Fire on the Mountain picks a category and lists five cool things in it. It's up to you, dear reader, to add your own in the Comments section. Just click on the word "comments" at the bottom of the piece and you're off to the races.]

This week's category is a no-brainer--James Brown tunes with political themes or implications. I was inspired to do it, and to keep things on the positive tip, by a memorial post for James on Ajamu Dillahunt's blog, Sankofa Meets the Future:

In 1980 i heard revolutionary activist Muhammad Ahmad/Max Stanford give a talk about how culture does not and cannot lead a movement. His point was that a mass movement creates conditions under which artist generate products that reflect the level of struggle and consciousness of the movement and even push it further. His example was James Brown and the creation of the inspiring and challenging lyrics of "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." With the movement on the wane, James Brown could issue patriotic songs like Living in America from Rocky fame and even endorse Nixon in 1972.

TAKE FIVE

I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door, I'll Get It Myself) [1969]
Old James was a do-for-self kind of guy, and this is an ideological follow-on to that current in "Say It Loud." It's all the more powerful for its bluntness--just get your foot off our neck and we'll do fine.

Blackenized--Hank Ballard [1969?]
This is here because somebody stole my copy of "How You Gonna Get Respect (If You Haven't Cut Your Process Yet?)" about 30 years ago, and my memory being what it is (or isn't), I don't want to fake it. Hank Ballard & The Midnighters cut a bunch of great rockers in the '50s ("Work With Me, Annie" and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go," for instance) with a gospel flavor that was an influence on James. In the late '60s he paid his debt back by incorporating Ballard into his entourage, and producing several very James-flavored songs for him. This one is in the "Say It Loud" tradition lyrically, though not as funky, a flute-driven quasi-shuffle.

Now I don't know whether you realize
Before you get some respect
You got to be Blackenized
You been leanin' on others to be your keeper
That's why they call you Negroes and colored peoples

Rockin' Funky Watergate--The JBs [1973?]
A couple days ago, I blogged about "I Don't Care About Watergate, Just Give Me Some Bucks And I'll Get Straight" and the need to come to grips with its anti-politics message. This one doesn't even bother to make a value judgement--just turns "Rocking Watergate" into an intermittent party chant in one of those live (or "live") jams James excelled at.

King Heroin [1972]
Some of the most powerfully "conscious" Black songs have been anti-drug ones from Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead" to "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" by Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel. James's spoken entry in the field is kinda weird, because he recites it from the point of view of the drug itself.

Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto [Jeez, late '60s I guess]
Here not for really political lyrics (though I like the fade-out appeal "Santa Claus, a soul brother needs you so") but because it shows Brown's lifelong identification with the Inner City. Let's not forget James collapsed after his annual Christmas toy give-away in Augusta, GA. It's not the hard funk of the day, but an almost boppy rhythm wound just a half turn too tight to be relaxing.

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SomeThoughts on Repression

On December 4, 1969, Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down in their sleep in a massive military-style raid executed by Chicago cops. I only heard about it a couple of days later, as I had just arrived in Cuba with the first Venceremos Brigade. Some of us talked regretfully about being stuck in the Caribbean for the next two months when stuff was starting to break loose back in the belly of the beast. Hey, we were young.

Every December 4, thousands of us of a certain age think of Brother Fred and of how the pigs murdered him because he was a dynamic leader of the oppressed.

I’ve been thinking about him today with Oaxaca in mind. Last night I heard filmmaker Tami Gold and some very recently returned global justice activists report. The situation is dire. 17 activists and bystanders have been killed and more than 150 arrested or disappeared in the last 10 days. Teachers union leaders, back at work, are being grabbed in the classroom and carted off. Bloody reaction is gaining the upper hand.

While it is true that the Mexican government would rather not suffer international attention or even anger, there are alternatives that the Mexican ruling class finds far less acceptable. I’ve spent the last few months being irked as hell at some here in the US who celebrated the popular uprising led by APPO as an invincible revolutionary upsurge. Wake up—they are in one city and armed, as the showdown with the Federal Preventive Police and PAN vigilantes unfolded, with slings, molotovs and some cheap handguns! I fear many more may die as Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and the Federales crack down and take revenge, and the movement begins the difficult task of adjusting and consolidating under conditions of “normalcy” and fearsome repression.

And if they think their interests demand it, the rich and powerful here will gun down as many as they need to—and jail more. The BPP lost many more cadre to the criminal “justice” system than police bullets. Some are still in jail. Today, with far less attention from liberals or the left, dozens of young activists in the ecology movement and the animal rights movement are facing—and serving!--fearsome sentences. Check out the Day in Support of the Green Scare Indictees slated for December 7. There’s probably an event happening near you.

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