[cure-news] Slavery Disclosure - City of Chicago ex rel. Bob Brown v. Archdiocese of Chicago

[Ida Hakim]

For Immediate Release!
Please Forward!
 
Oral Arguments in the historic and precedent-setting qui tam and slavery 
disclosure lawsuit, which is captioned City of Chicago ex rel. Bob Brown 
v. Archdiocese of Chicago, et al.
will be heard at 10:00 am, on Friday, November 9, 2007, in Courtroom 
2607 at the Daley Center, 45 West Washington Street, in Chicago. Judge 
Rita M. Novak presiding.
 
As you are perhaps aware, Defendants, the Archdiocese of Chicago, Willis 
of Illinois (Lloyd's of London's partner), American Airlines (British 
Airlines' partner), United Airlines (Air Canada's and Air Iberia's 
partners), Maximus and Unison-Maximus (managers of airport concessions 
space including Duty Free, McDonalds, etc.), JP Morgan Chase and Bank 
One,  Bank of America, ABN AMRO and LaSalle Bank, and Citigroup are 
accused of (1) commiting hundreds of counts of perjury on their Economic 
Disclosure Statements, which include the Slavery Era Disclosure 
Affidavit, and (2) submitting false claims on almost $5 billion in 
contracts with the City of Chicago. We demand full compliance with the 
Chicago Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance, $15 billion in civil penalties 
and fines, and legal fees.
 
Similar violations of Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinances have also been 
committed by these Defendants, their affiliated entities, and other 
contractors, in Philadelphia, Detroit, Wayne County, Milwaukee, Los 
Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond, California.
 
Defendants submitted a Joint Motion for Dismissal of our lawsuit in 
Chicago. The Court has been fully briefed by all parties, and oral 
arguments on this dismisal motion will be heard on November 9th. You 
will not want to miss this Hearing!
 
We invite all of our supporters and friends to join us at the Daley 
Center on November 9, 2007 and to bear witness to this historic 
encounter in our centuries long and unyielding struggle for 
accountability for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, and 
slave-like practices and conditions, including colonialism and 
settler-colonialism, racism and white supremacy, segregation and apartheid.
 
Without your past and continuing support, we could not have filed this 
lawsuit and pursued it this far. Victory is certain!
 
For those of you who can not come to Chicago, please send us an email, 
no later than 5:00 pm EST on Monday, November 5, 2007, expressing your 
solidarity and support. We will copy all emails received, bind and file 
them with the Court on Tuesday.
 
Email your solidarity and support to:
 
Bob Brown
paroots02 at yahoo.com
 
 
Address your email to:
 
Judge Rita M. Novak
Circuit Court of Cook County
45 West Washington Street, Room 2607
Chicago, IL
 
Re: City of Chicago ex rel. Bob Brown vs Archdiocese of Chicago, et al
>From hakimida at reparationsthecure.org  Thu Nov 22 09:40:06 2007
From: hakimida at reparationsthecure.org (Ida Hakim)
Date: Thu Nov 22 09:40:10 2007
Subject: [cure-news] Rejoicing in a cemetery
Message-ID: <4745A2D6.7050000 at reparationsthecure.org>

The End of American Thanksgivings
excerpt from the article
www.blackcommentator.com

Rejoicing in a cemetery

The English settlers, their ostensibly religious venture backed by a 
trading company, were glad to discover that they had landed in a virtual 
cemetery in 1620. Corn still sprouted in the abandoned fields of the 
Wampanoags, but only a remnant of the local population remained around 
the fabled Rock. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colony 
founder John Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God 
hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them 
are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God 
hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these 
parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."

Ever diligent to claim their own advantages as God?s will, the Pilgrims 
thanked their deity for having ?pursued? the Indians to mass death. 
However, it was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the 
natives around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, 
smallpox-embedded blankets planted during an English visit or slave 
raid. Six years before the Pilgrim landing, a ship sailed into Patuxet?s 
harbor, captained by none other than the famous seaman and mercenary 
soldier John Smith, former leader of the first successful English colony 
in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia. Epidemic and slavery followed 
in his wake, as Debra Glidden described in IMDiversity.com:

In 1614 the Plymouth Company of England, a joint stock company, hired 
Captain John Smith to explore land in its behalf. Along what is now the 
coast of Massachusetts in the territory of the Wampanoag, Smith visited 
the town of Patuxet according to "The Colonial Horizon," a 1969 book 
edited by William Goetzinan. Smith renamed the town Plymouth in honor of 
his employers, but the Wampanoag who inhabited the town continued to 
call it Patuxet.

The following year Captain Hunt, an English slave trader, arrived at 
Patuxet. It was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take 
them to Europe and sell them into slavery for 220 shillings apiece. That 
practice was described in a 1622 account of happenings entitled "A 
Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia," written 
by Edward Waterhouse. True to the explorer tradition, Hunt kidnapped a 
number of Wampanoags to sell into slavery.

Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox 
blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent 
prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any 
natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out 
entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. 
William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American 
villages in his 1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." 
>From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their 
neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their 
population to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent.

Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the 
Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for 
their own. A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry 
Miller, praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was 
"the wonderful preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence 
for his people's abode in the Western world."

Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the 
region resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason 
should have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had 
lived there just five years before.

In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New 
England into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic 
engines of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is 
the place where the nightmare truly began.

The uninvited?

It is not at all clear what happened at the first ? and only ? 
?integrated? Thanksgiving feast. Only two written accounts of the 
three-day event exist, and one of them, by Governor William Bradford, 
was written 20 years after the fact. Was Chief Massasoit invited to 
bring 90 Indians with him to dine with 52 colonists, most of them women 
and children? This seems unlikely. A good harvest had provided the 
settlers with plenty of food, according to their accounts, so the whites 
didn?t really need the Wampanoag?s offering of five deer. What we do 
know is that there had been lots of tension between the two groups that 
fall. John Two-Hawks, who runs the Native Circle web site, gives a 
sketch of the facts:

?Thanksgiving' did not begin as a great loving relationship between the 
pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people. In fact, in 
October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in 
Turtle Island sat down to share the first unofficial 'Thanksgiving' 
meal, the Indians who were there were not even invited! There was no 
turkey, squash, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. A few days before this 
alleged feast took place, a company of 'pilgrims' led by Miles Standish 
actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high 
wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very 
purpose of keeping Indians out!?

It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or 
brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the 
Pilgrims. Dr. Tingba Apidta, in his ?Black Folks? Guide to Understanding 
Thanksgiving,? surmises that the settlers ?brandished their weaponry? 
early and got drunk soon thereafter. He notes that ?each Pilgrim drank 
at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to 
water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to 
comment on his people's ?notorious sin,? which included their 
?drunkenness and uncleanliness? and rampant ?sodomy.??

Soon after the feast the brutish Miles Standish ?got his bloody prize,? 
Dr. Apidta writes:

?He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an 
Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it 
was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. 
Nash, ?as a symbol of white power.? Standish had the Indian man's young 
brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the 
whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name 
?Wotowquenange,? which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.?

What is certain is that the first feast was not called a ?Thanksgiving? 
at the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and 
the first, official all-Pilgrim ?Thanksgiving? had to wait until 1637, 
when the whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the 
Wampanoag?s southern neighbors, the Pequots.

The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre

The Pequots today own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard, 
Connecticut, with gross gaming revenues of over $9 billion in 2000. This 
is truly a (very belated) miracle, since the real first Pilgrim 
Thanksgiving was intended as the Pequot?s epitaph. Sixteen years after 
the problematical Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase 
the Pequots from the face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing.

Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of 
Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward 
the rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot?s sphere of influence. At the 
point where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of 
English and allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set 
ablaze a town full of women, children and old people.

William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the 
chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre 
of 1637:

"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to 
pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly 
dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed 
about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying 
in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory 
seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who 
had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in 
their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and 
insulting an enemy."

The rest of the white folks thought so, too. ?This day forth shall be a 
day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read 
Governor John Winthrop?s proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day 
was born.

Most historians believe about 700 Pequots were slaughtered at Mystic. 
Many prisoners were executed, and surviving women and children sold into 
slavery in the West Indies. Pequot prisoners that escaped execution were 
parceled out to Indian tribes allied with the English. The Pequot were 
thought to have been extinguished as a people. According to IndyMedia, 
?The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease 
had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot ?War? killed 
all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.?

But there were still too many Indians around to suit the whites of New 
England, who bided their time while their own numbers increased to 
critical, murderous mass.

Guest?s head on a pole

By the 1670s the colonists, with 8,000 men under arms, felt strong 
enough to demand that the Pilgrims? former dinner guests the Wampanoags 
disarm and submit to the authority of the Crown. After a series of 
settler provocations in 1675, the Wampanoag struck back, under the 
leadership of Chief Metacomet, son of Massasoit, called King Philip by 
the English. Metacomet/Philip, whose wife and son were captured and sold 
into West Indian slavery, wiped out 13 settlements and killed 600 adult 
white men before the tide of battle turned. A 1996 issue of the 
Revolutionary Worker provides an excellent narrative.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the 
remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 
shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every 
prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to 
enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The 
"Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the 
side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops 
during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other 
"peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or 
seek refuge at trading posts ? and were sold onto slave ships.

It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this 
campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 
12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from 
battle, massacre and starvation.

After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the 
northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York 
colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no 
ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by 
the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts." In 
Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 
1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the 
Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled."

Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had 
destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The 
Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole 
in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.

This is not thought to be a fit Thanksgiving tale for the children of 
today, but it?s the real story, well-known to the settler children of 
New England at the time ? the white kids who saw the Wampanoag head on 
the pole year after year and knew for certain that God loved them best 
of all, and that every atrocity they might ever commit against a 
heathen, non-white was blessed.

There?s a good term for the process thus set in motion: nation-building.

Roots of the slave trade

The British North American colonists? practice of enslaving Indians for 
labor or direct sale to the West Indies preceded the appearance of the 
first chained Africans at the dock in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The 
Jamestown colonists? human transaction with the Dutch vessel was an 
unscheduled occurrence. However, once the African slave trade became 
commercially established, the fates of Indians and Africans in the 
colonies became inextricably entwined. New England, born of 
up-close-and-personal, burn-them-in-the-fires-of-hell genocide, led the 
political and commercial development of the English colonies. The region 
also led the nascent nation?s descent into a slavery-based society and 
economy.

Ironically, an apologist for Virginian slavery made one of the best, 
early cases for the indictment of New England as the engine of the 
American slave trade. Unreconstructed secessionist Lewis Dabney?s 1867 
book ?A Defense of Virginia? traced the slave trade?s origins all the 
way back to Plymouth Rock:

The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the 
colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was 
subsequently enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other trading 
colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New Hampshire (which 
never had an extensive shipping interest), were offshoots of 
Massachusetts. They partook of the same characteristics and pursuits; 
and hence, the example of the parent colony is taken here as a fair 
representation of them.

The first ship from America, which embarked in the African slave trade, 
was the Desire, Captain Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first 
vessels ever built in the colony. The promptitude with which the 
"Puritan Fathers" embarked in this business may be comprehended, when it 
is stated that the Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637. [Note: 
the year they massacred the Pequots.] The first feeble and dubious 
foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than seventeen 
years before; and as is well known, many years were expended by the 
struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it may be 
correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of the slave 
trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon it. The 
Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish and strong 
liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained the negroes 
from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from a Spanish slaver.

Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the 
harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries 
poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no inconsiderable 
number of slaves. Meanwhile, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of 
their elder sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a 
repetition of that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, 
and New Haven became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbor 
of the second, especially, was the favorite starting-place of the slave 
ships; and its commerce rivaled, or even exceeded, that of the present 
commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States, of 
course, became slaveholding.

The Revolution that exploded in 1770s New England was undertaken by men 
thoroughly imbued with the worldview of the Indian-killer and 
slave-holder. How could they not be? The ?country? they claimed as their 
own was fathered by genocide and mothered by slavery ? its true 
distinction among the commercial nations of the world. And these men 
were not ashamed, but proud, with vast ambition to spread their 
exceptional characteristics West and South and wherever their so-far 
successful project in nation-building might take them ? and by the same 
bloody, savage methods that had served them so well in the past.

At the moment of deepest national crisis following the battle of 
Gettysburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the national fable 
that is far more central to the white American personality than 
Lincoln?s battlefield ?Address.? Lincoln seized upon the 1621 feast as 
the historic ?Thanksgiving? ? bypassing the official and authentic 1637 
precedent ? and assigned the dateless, murky event the fourth Thursday 
in November.

Lincoln surveyed a broken nation, and attempted nation-rebuilding, based 
on the purest white myth. The same year that he issued the Emancipation 
Proclamation, he renewed the national commitment to a white manifest 
destiny that began at Plymouth Rock. Lincoln sought to rekindle a shared 
national mission that former Confederates and Unionists and white 
immigrants from Europe could collectively embrace. It was and remains a 
barbaric and racist national unifier, by definition. Only the most 
fantastic lies can sanitize the history of the Plymouth Colony of 
Massachusetts.