On Wednesday May 26, 2021 Haitian American Karine Jean Pierre, principal deputy press secretary for the Biden White House, took the podium to address questions from the press. Because the corporate Democratic Party establishment realizes that showcasing racial diversity is necessary in the face of its almost 30 year history of supporting bone crushing policies like NAFTA, GATT, financial deregulation, and the 1994 Crime Bill, Democrats use demonstrations of neo-liberal diversity as their only talisman to keep the fealty of their more ethnically diverse constituency. . . .
Neo-Colonialism
The Assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse
For Immediate Release Media Contact:(202) 643-1136communications@blackallianceforpeace.com JULY 7, 2021—Unknown assailants overnight assassinating Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a horrific act that should be condemned in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, such violence is unsurprising. As the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) noted in its July 6 press release, Moïse’s actions since usurping power have brought Haiti to a boiling point, with heavily armed gangs being unleashed, both supported by and enabled by the Haitian elite and those international “friends” of Haiti, including the United States, the United Nations, the Core Group and the Organization of American States. What happens now is . . .
The Responsibilities of Caribbean Intellectuals
Aaron Kamugisha is Professor of Caribbean and Africana Thought at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus The tradition of Caribbean intelligentsia insists on a grounding with the masses against the elites. What then are the responsibilities of Caribbean intellectuals? I draw my definition/sense of the intellectual here from figures as diverse as Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, Claudia Jones and Audre Lorde. For the purposes of this essay I am twinning the thought of George Lamming and Walter Rodney – specifically Lamming’s succinct description of an intellectual as someone whose fundamental orientation is a life of the mind, . . .
Black Liberal, Your Time is Up
You are here to translate an uprising. You are here to show your black skin so that you can claim the mantle of authority on anti-Blackness that white liberals have bestowed upon you. You are here to sit at their pundit tables, before their cameras. Your face beaming across the world as it provides the safest possible interpretation of a revolution in order to police its possibilities and pave over the threat of abolition with as mild and ineffective a reform as possible. . . .
Witnessing the Selling Out of Juneteenth Right Before Our Eyes
the militant and uncompromising spirit of the Juneteenth celebrations I grew up with has been replaced by a dominant “can we all get along” party atmosphere that uplifts symbolic progress while hammering the message that the absolute only legitimate form of struggle that is morally acceptable is that waged through the capitalist electoral process on an individual basis. . . .
Don’t Allow Another U.S.-NATO Libya in the Horn of Africa
Given the catastrophic effects of the U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya, the Black Alliance for Peace’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and BAP member organization Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity (HOA PALS), condemn, under no uncertain terms, any and all forms of intervention and meddling in the conflict in Ethiopia. . . .
How Not to Celebrate Juneteenth
Any effort to make Juneteenth a national holiday should be viewed with caution. Such a designation would only continue the telling of false tales. It would allow the bad actors of the present day to get away with cheap theatrics while continuing the legal and economic structures which still oppress Black people. The true story of the past would be kept hidden and the story of the present would be sugar coated. . . .
Kamala Harris and The Americas
In March, the White House announced that Vice President Kamala Harris would take charge of the Biden administration’s “efforts to deter migration to the southwestern border by working to improve conditions in Central America”, comprising the nations of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Harris’ tour of the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) allows her the opportunity to advance on the world stage as a “clean up woman” after the exposure of the Biden administration’s continuation of migrants in cages and child separations at the US-Mexico border. The idea behind the tour is to establish some understanding between leaders on . . .