[cure-news] LA CITY COUNCIL APPROVES MOTION TO SUPPORT STUDY OF REPARATIONS

[Ida Hakim]

CITY COUNCIL APPROVES MOTION TO SUPPORT STUDY OF REPARATIONS
 
Parks, Perry and Wesson push for study on impact of slavery
 
by Lee Jackson, Our Weekly Staff Writer
 
Los Angeles: The 13-member City Council voted unanimously Tuesday 
(February 27, 2007) in support of Councilmembers' Bernard Park's, Jan 
Perry's and Herb Wesson's resolution to support Federal Bill H.R. 40, 
the "Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act."

Congressman John Conyers is credited for bringing the issue of 
reparations to the legislative forefront and the three councilpersons 
felt that it was time for the Los Angeles City Council to enact a study 
on the impact of slavery on African Americans.

Natalie Cole, publisher and CEO of Our Weekly Newspaper, supported the 
resolution and told the council, "Isn't it possible that the institution 
of slavery, in effect, altered the 'normal' course of evolution of the 
institution of the black family? Isn't it also possible that due to the 
brutality of slavery, descendants continue to struggle to recover from 
what has been coined as a 'slave mentality' which is characterized by 
post traumatic stress syndrome, among many things, which has ultimately 
been a burden to society?"

Parks said, "We must bear the burden or responsibility by conducting a 
study of one of the most horrific times in the history of this great 
nation. The slavery of Africans created a genocide that transcends the 
amount inflicted on all other groups in this country, and this City must 
take a leadership role on the subject." Others speaking before the 
council and supporting the resolution included Jackie Ryan, co-owner of 
Zambezi Bazaar, community activist Morris Griffin, Opal Young and Thalia 
Clark of the Reparations United Front, and Los Angeles Sentinel 
Publisher, Danny Bakewell.
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Tue Mar 13 14:44:20 2007
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Tue Mar 13 14:38:53 2007
Subject: [cure-news] Whitewashing the Slave Trade
Message-ID: <45F70D24.4060307 at reparationsthecure.org>

Whitewashing the Slave Trade
-- An Amazing Disgrace
by Peter Linebaugh

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 -- W.E.B. DuBois taught us that the slave 
trade and the struggle against it were magnificent dramas superior even 
to the Greek tragedies.  This year is the 200th anniversary of the 
abolition of the British slave trade by the English Parliament, and the 
bicentennial is celebrated in the movie 'Amazing Grace'.  Far from being 
a majestic human drama involving millions of human beings on three 
continents in the protracted and mighty struggle of greed and cruelty 
against liberation and dignity, Amazing Grace presents an English story 
of pretty people either having tedious tea-parties at various country 
estates or compromising with one another in boring rhetoric in that 
exclusive British men's club, the House of Commons.

Greek drama depended on the protagonist challenging the cosmic laws of 
the gods.  His pride teased a fate beyond his control.  The masses were 
represented by the chorus which witnessed and recorded what transpired.  
This movie omits drama because it avoids the historical conflicts: the 
primary conflict was between the slave in the plantations and the 
master, the secondary conflict was between the worker in the factory and 
the boss.  You wouldn't know that from this whitewash.

The two historical faults with the movie are first it does not show us 
that the English abolitionist movement owed its beginning, its thrust, 
and its ending to the activity of the slaves themselves.  The second 
fault is that it does not consider the historical proposition that the 
abolition of the slave trade could only succeed at the moment in 
economic development when other sources of exploitation became available 
to English capital, namely, the working class in England.  Now, those 
are themes of tragedy.

The steel workers of Sheffield opposed the slave trade in the 1790s; the 
United Irishmen did likewise.  These were the allies of the Jamaicans, 
the vast number of Afro-Americans, and above all the Haitian slaves.  
These men and women waged near constant struggle in rebellion (1760s), 
in the War of Independence (1776), and in the Haitian revolution against 
slavery (1791-1803).  The drama of the time arose from the possibility 
of revolutionary combinations of proletarians -- Irish, African, English 
even against the lords of humankind.  But not a word, not a whisper, 
about them in Amazing Grace.

This was the decade when English humanitarianism became warped by 
racialism beyond recognition.  Wilberforce was a leader of both a 
political and a cultural counter-revolution.  As the head of Society for 
the Suppression of Vice, he opposed stage dancers, ballad singers, 
gingerbread fairs, nude swimming, and favored imprisonment for 
adultery.  In 1802 alone, the Society clocked 623 prosecutions for 
Sabbath-breaking.  Wilberforce had a direct hand in the suppression also 
of the Constitutional Society of Sheffield, where the graffiti writing 
on the walls were Liberty, Equality, and No King.  A government spy 
noted "thousands of Pittmen, Keelmen, Waggonmen and other labouring men, 
hardy fellows strongly impressed with the new doctrine of equality".

Wilberforce was their magistrate in Yorkshire as well as Member of 
Parliament.  He approved of the burning in effigy of Tom Paine, and to 
suppress democratic urges he proposed a national day of fasting and 
humiliation.  He helped to draft the Sedition Act in 1795, making it 
treason to write or speak against the King or government.  In 1799 
William Pitt brought in a bill against the millwrights of London, the 
machine designers and makers, which Wilberforce promptly extended to all 
working people.  This was the Combination Act, which forbade the workers 
of England from combining to reduce the hours of toil or to increase the 
remuneration of labor.  He wrote on the management of the poor 
suggesting that they console themselves for the inconveniences of 
poverty with the thought that life is "very short."

What passes for 'the civilization of the west', to use the traditional 
but absurd phrase, is the direct result of the unpaid labors of millions 
of African proletarians, a fact so fundamental that it is the beginning 
of all modern history as Franz Fanon taught us long ago, and hence of 
our understanding of the world.  The movie reduces this fact to the 
sugar cube.  However, this historical premise of modernity applied to 
all European wealth and treasure because wealth in one form quickly 
turned to other forms by the alchemy of trade and money.  Thus that 
sugar and rum, that tobacco and coffee, the staple products of the 
slave's labor on plantations, was transmuted into the infrastructure -- 
the bricks and mortar, the bridges and roads, the ports and factories of 
the industrial revolution, and these in turn were represented by stocks 
and bonds, by paper and debentures, and the chits of the gambling table.

The movie shows us the young William Wilberforce gambling against the 
Duke of Clarence, a royal pipsqueak, who runs out of cash and must play 
by the rules of the club which say that, even if at a loss for money, he 
may wager any other possession he might have with him.  "Bring me my 
nigger," he commands.  The illusion of the entire social system shatters 
at this point as the Afro-British coachman enters to be traded at the 
gaming table of White's (one of the exclusive clubs of Pall Mall). 
Wilberforce in shocked naivet? concedes his hand and withdraws in a 
huff.  Where did he think money came from?  The trees?

William Wilberforce is the protagonist whose dogged determination and 
persistence in Parliament is attributed to either his saintliness or to 
the sweet support of his wife.  As a hero he is handsome, romantic, with 
a sonorous singing voice, and rides a white horse whenever possible.  He 
suffers from colitis and sometimes we see him jonesing from an opium 
habit which began as medicine.  In the first scene, we see him stopping 
his coach in the rain in order to relieve the suffering of a wounded 
horse being beaten by two teamsters.  The film depicts sympathy towards 
animals and antagonism towards workers, unless they are beggars, in 
which case he offers them a seat at his bountiful table.  (But where is 
that bounty from?)

His friend is William Pitt, the young prime minister of England, himself 
every bit as pretty and reactionary as Tony Blair.  We see these guys 
gallivanting about the English countryside, a place of fenced-in beauty, 
spiritual spider webs, and golf courses but not of labor or production, 
because its greenery depended upon that enclosure movement which sent 
the commoners into the cities and factories.  And where are they in this 
movie?  Nowhere, apart from nearly formless gray and brown tones in the 
background.

One of the powerful scenes in the movie is the unrolling on the floor of 
the House of Commons of a petition of hundreds of thousands of 
signatures for the abolition of the inhuman trade.  Another historic 
scene was the insertion into the bill to abolish the trade of the word 
"gradually."  The same prevarication was employed by the white power 
structure against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Montgomery bus 
boycott of 1955 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  'Gradually, 
gradually,' murmured the authorities, meanwhile doing nothing, or 
letting loose their tools of violence the lash in the 19th century or 
the water cannon in the 20th.

This movie is part of the self-congratulation of the English ruling 
class excusing itself for the most odious and reprehensible crimes in 
history.  This self-congratulation is accomplished with all the charm 
that money can buy, with cute production values of costume, scenery, 
English character acting, and camera work.  If you want to see how that 
self-congratulation works, go to the movie and watch the gentry and the 
politicians, row upon row of them, wearing their powdered, white wigs 
clapping their fair, uncalloused hands: you'll hear the sound of 
humanitarian hypocrisy.  The name of William Wilberforce became a 
by-word for liberation in the Caribbean islands thousands of miles away, 
but at home in industrial Yorkshire his name was a synonym for prudery 
and political repression.  Say his name with a West Indian intonation -- 
William Wilberfarce.

Meanwhile the intelligent movie-goer will go read about Toussaint 
L'Ouverture and the Haitian war of independence, or will read the 
autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, which belongs on the shelf next to 
Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, or the classic discussions of 
abolition by C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, or W.E.B. DuBois.  Adam 
Hochschild's 'Bury the Chains' is the best current study of the British 
abolitionists.  In it you can learn about some of the movie's secondary 
characters -- Hannah More, Thomas Clarkson, Charles James Fox, Olaudah 
Equiano, and John Newton, the slave dealer who composed the lyrics but 
not the music to the song "Amazing Grace."  The movie, far from 
expressing the truth about the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, 
is a whitewash and a disgrace, fit only for an anglo-american ruling 
class still robbing us blind and than offering to help us see!

<>
Peter Linebaugh is the author of two of CounterPunch's favorite books, 
'The London Hanged' (with Marcus Rediker) and 'The Many-Headed Hydra: 
the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic'.  His essay on the 
history of May Day is included in Serpents in the Garden. 
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Fri Mar 30 07:52:55 2007
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Fri Mar 30 06:46:39 2007
Subject: [cure-news] Security scare as slavery protester is just 10ft from
	the Queen
Message-ID: <460D1637.3050903 at reparationsthecure.org>

Security scare as slavery protester is just 10ft from the Queen
27.03.07
www.thisislondon.co.uk

Another embarrassing breach in royal security was exposed when a 
screaming protestor got within feet of the Queen. The lone demonstrator 
spent several seconds unchallenged in front of her before police and 
security staff restrained him.

The protest momentarily startled the Queen and dramatically disrupted 
the Westminster Abbey slave trade abolition service, which she and 
Prince Philip were attending alongside VIPs including Tony Blair and 
Gordon Brown.

Toyin Agbetu, wearing an Africanstyle tunic and carrying a shoulder bag, 
simply strode from his seat in the abbey and began to shout and 
gesticulate in full view of the royal couple and a congregation of 2,000.

He walked towards the altar and screamed: "This is an insult to us. You 
should be ashamed."

Later he demanded that the Queen should apologise for her ancestors' 
role in supporting the slave trade.

The protest - which Mr Agbetu was allowed to sustain for several minutes 
before he was escorted out - interrupted Absolution prayers but only 
temporarily halted the service, held to mark the 200th anniversary of 
the Act that abolished the slave trade.

An urgent review was launched to discover how such a glaring security 
lapse could blight such a high profile event, at the height of the 
capital's current state of alert.

One guest told the Daily Mail: "If this guy had had a bomb in his bag or 
a gun in his belt it would have been a catastrophe. The way he was 
allowed to spring up unchallenged was incredible.

"Because of how he was dressed, we all started checking our order of 
service to see if it was part of the proceedings. It soon became clear 
it was not.

"The most worrying thing was the space everyone seemed to give him. At 
the closest point he must only have been ten feet from the Queen. He was 
on his own for maybe five or six seconds before they got to him."

Mr Agbetu, 39, was still shouting and pointing at the Queen as he was 
shunted down the aisle by plain clothes police officers and abbey 
ushers. He was handcuffed outside and led away by police, some armed.

Apart from her initial start, the Queen appeared calm and untroubled by 
the interruption.

Agbetu demanded that the Queen apologise for slavery.

Mr Agbetu, who said he planned the protest in advance, is believed to 
have got a ticket for the service through the Ligali Organisation, which 
fights for equality for African people. He is the group's head of social 
and education policy and a long-time campaigner for black people's rights.

Outside the abbey he told me: "It was an insult to us. There was no 
mention in there of African freedom fighters. What about my ancestors? 
Where were the Africans talking about how they feel?
"The Queen needs to say she is sorry. Elizabeth I commissioned John 
Hawkins, financed him, and funded him to go to my continent and enslave 
my people."

Stabbing his finger towards the abbey doors, he added: "The three major 
institutions involved in slavery - the monarchy, the government and the 
church - are all inside there, patting each other on the back. No one 
has had the decency to say the word Sorry."

Radio presenter Henry Bonsu, a friend of Mr Agbetu, described him as 
'always law-abiding', adding: "In the cold light of day, people will see 
that he wasn't threatening the Queen. He just wanted to make his point 
at the moment the cameras of the world were on the abbey."

The royal security lapse was one of a series in recent years.

These have included a selfstyled 'comedy terrorist' gatecrashing Prince 
William's birthday party at Windsor in 2003, plus two instances of 
reporters smuggling fake bombs past security checks.

Although security checks were in place yesterday at the main abbey 
entrance, and included scanners and occasional body searches, they were 
not universal.

Carrying a shoulder bag packed with wires and computer equipment, for 
example, I walked through an archway behind the abbey and directly 
inside, simply by flashing a pink cardboard ticket and announcing that I 
was from the Press.

The congregation at the service boasted descendants of slaves and of 
William Wilberforce, who campaigned two centuries ago to abolish slavery.

In a sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said that 
even 200 years on, slavery in various forms remained 'hideously 
persistent' around the world.