On August 23, 1917, a riot erupted in Houston. Near noon, two policemen arrested a black soldier for interfering with their arrest of a black woman in the Fourth Ward. Early in the afternoon, when Cpl. Charles Baltimore, one of the twelve black military policemen with the battalion, inquired about the soldier's arrest, words were exchanged and the policeman hit Baltimore over the head. The MPs fled. The police fired at Baltimore three times, chased him into an unoccupied house, and took him to police headquarters. Though he was soon released, a rumor quickly reached Camp Logan that he had been shot and killed. A group of soldiers decided to march on the police station in the Fourth Ward and secure his release. If the police could assault a model soldier like Baltimore, they reasoned, none of them was safe from abuse. Maj. Kneeland S. Snow, battalion commander, initially discounted the news of impending trouble. Around 8 P.M. Sgt. Vida Henry of I Company confirmed the rumors, and Kneeland ordered the first sergeants to collect all rifles and search the camp for loose ammunition. During this process, a soldier suddenly screamed that a white mob was approaching the camp. Black soldiers rushed into the supply tents, grabbed rifles, and began firing wildly in the direction of supposed mob. The white officers found it impossible to restore order. Sergeant Henry led over 100 armed soldiers toward downtown Houston by way of Brunner Avenue and San Felipe Street and into the Fourth Ward. In their two-hour march on the city, the mutinous blacks killed fifteen whites, including four policemen, and seriously wounded twelve others, one of whom, a policeman, subsequently died. Four black soldiers also died. Two were accidentally shot by their own men, one in camp and the other on San Felipe Street. After they had killed Capt. Joseph Mattes of the Illinois National Guard, obviously mistaking him for a policeman, the blacks began quarreling over a course of action. After two hours, Henry advised the men to slip back into camp in the darkness—and shot himself in the head.

Early next morning, August 24, civil authorities imposed a curfew in Houston. On the twenty-fifth, the army hustled the Third Battalion aboard a train to Columbus, New Mexico. There, seven black mutineers agreed to testify against the others in exchange for clemency. Between November 1, 1917, and March 26, 1918, the army held three separate courts-martial in the chapel at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The military tribunals indicted 118 enlisted men of I Company for participating in the mutiny and riot, and found 110 guilty. It was wartime, and the sentences were harsh. Nineteen mutinous soldiers were hanged and sixty-three received life sentences in federal prison. One was judged incompetent to stand trial. Two white officers faced courts-martial, but they were released. No white civilians were brought to trial. The Houston Riot of 1917 was one of the saddest chapters in the history of American race relations. It vividly illustrated the problems that the nation struggled with on the home front during wartime.

http://www.stcl.edu/library/19.....ogram.html

WILL OF GEORGE H. HERMANN to HIS SON,George Hermann GETCHELL

I will and bequeath to GEORGE HERMANNGetchell,

the son of Ellen Getchell, a life estate in and to lot No. Nine (9),
in block Fifty-Seven (57), on the southside of Buffalo Bayou in the City of
Houston also in 909 acres more or less in Fort Bend County, Texas, out of the
Barnett & Shipman survey, know as the Mulbery and White Fields, now rented
to E. J. Williams, being all of the land owned by me in said survey; also my
GOLD WATCH, the one usually worn by be, together with all the rents and
revenues to be derived from said lands during his natural life. At his death,
should he leave children surviving him, the fee simple title of said lot and
lands to vest in his said children, but in the event he leaves no children
surviving him then said lot and lands above described shall become vested in
the Hermann Haspital hereinafter provided for in the nineth paragraph.

http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false

Frank Mann once recalled, “Hermann owned a lot of land in what is today Hermann park, but back then it was outside of Houston.  He sold lumber of the land to Houston, which is how he made a lot of his money.  Well, he had woodcutters who would work all week out there cutting wood, and would come to Houston on the weekends to get drunk.”

The woodcutters would stagger up and down West Dallas and Milam Street (Fourth Ward).  Then the police would round them up every Saturday night and toss them in jail.  But Hermann couldn’t get them out until Monday morning, when he would send a couple of wagons to pick up the hungover crew and haul them back to the woods.  He would lose half a day’s work. 

“Well, he finally got an idea,” Frank Mann remembers. “He bought this lot, or maybe he already had it.  And he sent his foreman into town late each Saturday with them ---.”

The foremen would take the drunks over to the lot (now Hermann Square) and just dump them there to sober up.  The woodcutter’s would sleep it off every Saturday night, and Hermann could send his wagons in on Sunday. That way his workers were all ready for action bright and early on Monday morning…..

Frank Mann says, “The firm understanding was that vagrants or wayfarers, the homeless, could come to Herman Square and rest without being molested by the authorities. There is also a reversion clause stipulating that if the land is ever used for anything else, it will go back to the Hermann estate.”

When the City of Houston was looking for a site for the City Hall Annex, some architects thought of putting it where the reflecting pond is, but the City Legal Department checked into it and said no because if they put the Annex there, the City would lose the land.  They preferred not to have to defend a reverter allegation for alleged violation of the provisions of the Hermann will and be subjected to a lawsuit by the Hermann Estate to sue for recovery of the property because the city has not abided with the intent of the will.

Hind-sight is 20/20

Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial minorities to be victims of police brutality. Yet, Loitering ordinances have historically been used to discriminate against minorities. Use of the words such as 'loitering' and 'vagrancy' carry that risk.  Those words are every bit as dated as ‘Reconstruction’, 'Jim Crow' and 'segregation.'  We must guard against laws that promote discrimination more than justice.  Loitering ordinances are an outgrowth of vagrancy laws enacted five centuries ago as a rather barbaric means by which the upper classes of England exercised social control over the landless poor.

On the local level, most southern towns and municipalities (like Houston) passed strict vagrancy laws to control the influx of black migrants and homeless people who poured into these rural and urban communities in the years after the Civil War. In Mississippi, for example, whites passed the notorious "Pig Law" of 1876, designed to control vagrant blacks at loose in the community. This law made stealing a pig an act of grand larceny subject to punishment of up to five years in prison. Within two years, the number of convicts in the state penitentiary increased from under three hundred people to over one thousand.

It was this law in Mississippi that turned the convict lease system into a profitable business, whereby convicts were leased to contractors who sub-leased them to planters, railroads, levee contractors, and timber jobbers. Almost all of the convicts in this situation were blacks, including women, and the conditions in the camps were horrible in the extreme. It was not uncommon to have a death rate of blacks in the camps at between 8 to 18 percent.

One additional fact that needs to be underscored, especially as we consider what has been happening in recent years, namely that convict leasing received wide support in the South because of its alleged success in controlling the so-called “black crime problem.” The fact that there was no “black crime problem” is irrelevant, since this was largely an invention and the vast majority of black prisoners had been convicted of rather petty crimes, such as “loitering,” “vagrancy” and “trespassing.”

Convict Lease System: (1880-1948 USA) An arrangement in many southern states, under which prisoners were leased out to planters who used them as convict labor on plantations, in tobacco factories, and in coal mines. Eighty to 90 percent of these prisoners were African Americans.

The Sobering Reality of Houston’s Hermann Square

Again, Loitering ordinances have historically been used to discriminate against minorities.  The Fourth Ward was established as one of four wards by the City of Houston in 1839.  There's a neighborhood in Houston's Fourth Ward named "Freedmen's Town" with narrow, brick-paved streets, and people still living in shotgun shacks. Shotgun houses were actually an architectural innovation brought to America from Africa via Haiti and New Orleans. The area was the site of Freedman's Town, composed of recently freed slaves. The neighborhood became the center of Houston's African-American community in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The 1,000 freed slaves who settled the community selected the site along the southern edge of the Buffalo Bayou since the land was inexpensive and because White Americans did not want to settle on the land, which was swampy and prone to flooding. The settlers of Freedmen's Town paved the streets with bricks that they hand-made themselves. They provided their own services and utilities.  By 1906, the Fourth Ward included much of what is, as of 2008, Downtown and Neartown; at that point the city stopped using the ‘ward’ system.

The parents of George Henry Hermann arrived in the city to seek their fortune in 1838. George was born on August 6, 1843 in a two-story house at Smith and Walker Streets which is the site of Houston City Hall’s Hermann Square.  George H. Hermann died on Oct. 21, 1914, and left a fortune of $2.5 million to be handled by a board of trustees who later accused Hermann’s illegitimate son (with Mary Ellen Getchell), George Hermann Getchell, of being a Negro. In 1922, George Hermann Getchell was murdered while suing the board of trustees of the Hermann Hospital estate for $500,000 for slander and defamation after receiving the next to the largest share of his ‘alleged’ father’s fortune estimated at $200,000 then and George Henry Hermann’s gold timepiece.  George Hermann Getchell’s newly aquired wealth reverted back to the Hermann Hospital Trust after his death since he did not leave children who could receive the smaller fortune left by his father.  George H. Getchell, that illegitimate son who inherited what today would be considered millions is buried in an unmarked grave. Most people are unaware of the history and the significance of these events today.

The close relationship of George Henry Hermann with the Freedmen’s Town area did not engender any specific plans for a “sobering up lot/park”.  In the light of day, the so-called  “Urban Myth Of  Sleeping off Drunkenness at Hermann Square” is errily racist and reminiscent of  the “We Buy Ugly Houses” campaign for ‘urban’ renewal or gentrification.  Are the people of Freedmen’s Town left to believe that in order to protect a couple of wagon loads of  ‘drunken woodsmen’ that a very frugal, intelligent and industrious man like Hermann did not understand the racial underpinnings of his day regarding “loitering”, “vagrancy” and “trespassing” which the predominately normal SOBER African American and other poor members of  Freedmen’s Town faced on a daily basis, including George H. Hermann’s mistress/maid Mary (Martha) Ellen  and their son George Hermann (Jr) Getchell, his sole heir?  

A sensible man like George Henry Hermann would have had specific plans for his “sobering-up” the White Supremacist and racist Houston community that his parents immigrated to but obviously taught their children the otherwise.  He assisted others in living, in existing, and in imparting knowledge to others by just allowing for proper ventilation (providing a space for public discussion without the authoritarian constraints of time and space,  a means of airing out or examination of public affairs) * by allowing his neighbors to “OCCUPY” his own property on the border of Freedmen’s Town.  It is possible that at times the ‘promised land’ for thoses being harassed by corrupted officials might have been found a Hermann Square. Ed Cazares, first senior assistant city attorney, read from the will:  “I will and bequeath to the City Of Houston Block 146 on the south side of Buffalo Bayou, the same to be held in trust for the use of the public as a public park or breathing* place and to be known as the “Hermann Square.”

George H. Hermann intended for his Hermann’s Charity Hospital to be built in the Freedmen’s Town Fourth Ward Houston Texas area to serve the poor, indigent and infirm. This act would have had the potential for empowering the citizens of Freedmen’s Town.  The Hermann Hospital board of trustees later departed from the intent of the George H. Hermann’s Will and built Hermann Hospital as a for profit hospital on the then outskirts of Houston. In 1925, the city of Houston and Harris County opened Jefferson Davis Hospital I, a jointly funded public hospital named after the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis.  Less than fifteen years later, a second hospital was built with New Deal funds to replace its overcrowded predecessor. The modern looking Jeff Davis Hospital II served as the city-county hospital from 1938--1963. Jeff Davis Hospital II stood in stark contrast to Houston's prestigious Texas Medical Center located four miles to the south and, for much of its history, it seemed most Houstonians were content to keep it that way.

The Camp Logan Riot

On August 23, 1917, two white policemen arrested a black soldier for interfering with their arrest of a black woman. When a black MP inquired about the soldier's arrest, words were exchanged, and one of the policemen struck the MP. The MP fled and while fleeing, the MP was fired upon. The MP was pursued into an unOCCUPIED house, where he was arrested and brought to police headquarters. Despite a quick and unhindered release, a rumor rapidly reached Camp Logan that the MP had been shot and killed. After several minutes of mounting tension, the rumor mill brought word to camp that the MP was in fact alive but being held unlawfully. After intense debate, a group of soldiers conclude to march onto the police station in Fourth Ward and secure the MP's release. If the police could assault model soldiers like the military police, they reasoned, none of them were safe from abuse. Realizing something foul was afoot, the white officers of the company ordered the collection of all rifles and loose ammunition. During this process, word of an approaching white mob struck fear into the hearts of the men. In a wild scurry to defend themselves, the soldiers rushed into the supply tents, grabbed rifles and ammunition, and then embarked on a two-hour march into the city, hoping to curb the mob. The white officers found it impossible to restore order. Over a 100 armed soldiers marched into the Fourth Ward, where they encountered the mob: members of which consisted of Klansmen and supporters, police officers, and members of Houston's elite white class, who saw armed blacks as a threat to their ruling order. There was an intense exchange of fire, lasting for several minutes, which resulted in the death of many people.

The Camp Logan Riot became historically significant in the United States of America because it is the only riot/uprising where more white people were killed than non-white. The soldiers at Camp Logan had been attacked by the white citizens of Houston. However, over 100 African American men were tried for mutiny and 18 executed by hanging and no one from the white community in Houston was even tried. Similar event around the U.S occurred simultaneously. In Haiti, after their revolution against the French, several European nations were determine to make an example of the people of Haiti by making the people of Haiti suffer by the lack of support and assistance. Haiti is still broken and in recovery even after 200 years of attempting to stand on its own. The history of Freedman's Town, Houston's Fourth Ward shared a fate similar to that of Haiti. For nearly 100 years the Freedmen's Town area has been socio-economically devastated. The Hermann Hospital Trust was required by Hermann’s last Will and Testament specifically to build charity hospital in the Fourth Ward area but corporate greed and corruption took over the trust and development in the Freedmen's Town was by-passed.

*Breathe

1. to take in oxygen from (the surrounding medium, esp air) and give out carbon dioxide; respire

2. (intr) to exist; be alive every animal that breathes on earth

3. (intr) to rest to regain breath, composure, etc. stop your questions, and give me a chance to breathe

4. (intr) (esp of air) to blow lightly the wind breathed through the trees

5. (Engineering / Mechanical Engineering) (intr) Machinery

a. to take in air, esp for combustion the engine breathes through this air filter

b. to equalize the pressure within a container, chamber, etc., with atmospheric pressure the crankcase breathes through this duct

6. (Linguistics / Phonetics & Phonology) (tr) Phonetics to articulate (a speech sound) without vibration of the vocal cords

7. to exhale or emit the dragon breathed fire

8. (tr) to impart; instil to breathe confidence into the actors.

  im•part

     a. To grant a share of; bestow: impart a subtle flavor; impart some advice.

     b. To make known; disclose: persuaded to impart the secret.

     c. To pass on; transmit: imparts forward motion.]

9. (tr) to speak softly; whisper to breathe words of love

10. (tr) to permit to rest to breathe a horse

11. (Clothing, Personal Arts & Crafts / Textiles) (intr) (of a material) to allow air to pass through so that perspiration can evaporate.

breathe again, freely or easily to feel relief

Ventilate* - To expose to public discussion or examination: The students ventilated their grievances.

1. to drive foul air out of (an enclosed area)

2. to provide with a means of airing

3. to expose (a question, grievance, etc.) to public examination or discussion

Ventilation is what you do when you breathe. When Momma said, "In with the good air and out with the bad air," She was right. Ventilation is when the gases are exchanged in the lungs. In with the Oxygen out with the Carbon Dioxide. Unfortunately, some people, when they breathe, do not ventilate well because of some lung disease. People can go through the act of; breathing but not ventilate. This is called agonal breathing. To sum it all up, a person can breathe, but not ventilate because of dysfunctions.  However it is impossible to ventilate without breathing... unless you are on heart lung bypass during open heart surgery.

A safe place for the citizens of the Fourth Ward area to OCCUPY, if they were harassed by Houston Police Dept.

Imagine the tensions evoked when George H. Hermann decided to build a Charity Hospital in Freedman’s Town, 1914, and how those tensions spilled over in the Camp Logan Riots only 3 years later.

Why was the location of the CHARITY hospital  moved from Freedmen's Town area to the now Hermann Park /MedicalCenter area?  Corporate greed and corruption? Of course.

Imagine the economy in Freedmen's Town if the Hermann Hospital Estate used the money in the Fourth

Ward as intended— at Freedmen's Town Fourth Ward Houston Texas.

They will protest at the Federal Reserve Bank in DC and others around the country. Why are they getting involved now? Why protest the Federal Reserve?

Congressman Ron Paul wants to abolish the Federal Reserve, do they support him? What place do they see for the African American community in the Occupy Movement? How can they get other African Americans involved? What is their message to America?

Hythloday has been on many voyages with the noted explorer Amerigo Vespucci, traveling to the New World, south of the Equator, through Asia, and eventually landing on the island of Utopia. He describes the societies through which he travels with such insight that Giles and More become convinced that Hythloday would make a terrific counselor to a king. Hythloday refuses even to consider such a notion. A disagreement follows, in which the three discuss Hythloday's reasons for his position. To make his point, Hythloday describes a dinner he once shared in
England with Cardinal Morton and a number of others. During this dinner, Hythloday proposed alternatives to the many evil civil practices of England, such as the policy of capital punishment for the crime of theft. His proposals
meet with derision, until they are given legitimate thought by the Cardinal, at which point they meet with great general approval. Hythloday uses this story to show how pointless it is to counsel a king when the king can always expect his other counselors to agree with his own beliefs or policies. Hythloday then goes on to make his point through a number of other examples, finally noting that no matter how good a proposed policy is, it will always look insane to a person used to a different way of seeing the world. Hythloday points out that the policies of the Utopians are clearly superior to those of Europeans, yet adds that Europeans would see as ludicrous the all-important Utopian policy of common property. More and Giles do disagree with the notion that common property is superior to private property, and the three agree that Hythloday should describe the Utopian society in more detail. First, however, they break for lunch.

Back from lunch, Hythloday describes the geography and history of Utopia. He explains how the founder of Utopia, General Utopus, conquered the isthmus on which Utopia now stands and through a great public works effort cut away the land to make an island. Next, Hythloday moves to a discussion of Utopian society, portraying a nation based on rational thought, with communal property, great productivity, no rapacious love of gold, no real class distinctions, no poverty, little crime or immoral behavior, religious tolerance, and little inclination to war. It is a society that Hythloday believes is superior to any in Europe.

Hythloday finishes his description and More explains that after so much talking, Giles, Hythloday, and he were too tired to discuss the particular points of Utopian society. More concludes that many of the Utopian customs described by Hythloday, such as their methods of making war and their belief in communal property, seem absurd. He does admit, however, that he would like to see some aspects of Utopian society put into practice in England, though he does not believe any such thing will happen.

http://www.sparknotes.com/phil.....mmary.html

Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....ighty-Four

Excerpt by Ifi Amadiume

Cheikh Anta Diop’s position is that matriarchy is specific, not general, given the influence of ecology on
social systems. He therefore put forward his hypothesis of a double cradle and went ahead to argue two geographical zones of North and South, using Africa to illustrate his argument, while patriarchy originated in the North, being nomadic.  The middle belt was the Mediterranean basin, where matriarchy preceded patriarchy. Whereas, inWestern Asia, both systems were superimposed on each other.

Comparing these North and South cultures on the basis of the status of women, systems of inheritance, dowry and kinship affiliation, Diop shows how the Northern Indo-European cultures denied women rights and subjugated them under the private institutions of the patriarchal family, as was argued by Engels.  The Northern patriarchs had women under their armpit, confining them to the home and denying them a public role and power. In this system, a husband or father had the right of life and death over a woman.  The traveling out of women for marriage compounded this patriarchal control.  This Northern system was characterized by dowry, fire-worship and
cremation.

In contrast, in the matriarchal culture of the South, typified by the agricultural system and burial system, husbands came to wives. Wives were mistresses of the house and keepers of the food.  Woman was the agriculturalist.  Man was the hunter. Woman’s power was based on her important economic role.  This system was also characterized by brideswealth and the strong tie between brother and sister.  Even in the marriage, where a woman traveled out, this bond was not completely severed. Most of the funeral rules prescribed the return of a wife’s corpse to her natal home.  Funeral exchanges also indicated compensation for the loss of a woman.

This Southern matriarchal system was also marked by the sacredness of the mother and her unlimited authority.
There were oaths invoking the power of the mother, that is, the ritualization of that matricentric, mother and child, ‘closest bond of love’ even in Eumenides.  This is the ‘spirit of common motherhood’, generally symbolized in African religions. 

Thus, Diop was able to present two polar systems of values for his North and South cradles.  Africa, as representative of the Southern cradle of matriarchy, valued the matriarchal family, territorial state, the emancipation of women in domestic life, the ideal of peace and justice, goodness and optimism.  Its favored literatures were novels, tales, fables, and comedy. Its moral ethic was based on social collectivism.

The contrasting Northern cradles, as exemplified by the culture of Aryan Greece and Rome, valued the patriarchal family, the city-state, moral and material solitude.  Its literature was characterized by tragedy, ideals of war, violence, crime and conquests.  Guilt and original sin, pessimism, all pervaded its moral ethic which was based
on individualism.

Diop, having thus contrasted one system with the other, went on to provide a general history of both cradles and their areas of influence. In order to prove his point that African women were already Queens and warriors, participating in public life and politics, while their Indo-European contemporaries were still subordinated and
subjugated under the patriarchal family, Diop presents us with an array of powerful ancient African Queens and their achievements.  In Ethiopia, there were Queen of Sheba and Queen Candace, who fought the invading army of Augustus Caesar. In Egypt, there was Queen Hatshepsut, described as ‘the first queen in the history of humanity’. Cleopatra was titled ‘Queen of Kings’.  Even in the huge and powerful empires of Ghana in the 3^rd century A.D., matriarchal values were the norm.  It was the same in the Mali Empire.

It can however be argued that as a result of the basic matriarchal differences in social values, centralization and feudalism in Africa would throw up ‘Queen Bees’, sitting comfortably on their female selves, while Indo-European patriarchal values and centralization would produce the Boadiceas and iron maidens, generally alienated from their female selves.

This debate was also taken on by Diop, when he deconstructed the classical Amazon myth, showing how it was derived from the Eurasian cradle, where ‘a ferocious patriarchy reigned’.  It is the patriarchal malice against women,
fabricated in the classical Amazon myth, which led Diop to make this statement:

‘Matriarchy is not an absolute and cynical triumph of woman over man; it is a harmonious dualism, an association accepted by both sexes, the better to build a sedentary society where each and everyone could fully develop by following the activity best suited to her/his physiological nature.  A matriarchal regime, far from being imposed on man by circumstances independent of his will, is accepted and defended by him’.

As Diop says correctly of militant or military female contingents in Africa, ‘the hatred of men is foreign to them and they possess the consciousness of being ‘soldiers’ struggling only for the liberation of their country’.

What is important to us today is not the legacy of warrior queens, but a thorough analysis of the primary system of social organization around an economically self-sufficient or self-supporting matricentric cultural unit and a gender free or flexible gender linguistic system, which is the legacy of African matriarchy.  We need to understand its associated goddess-focused religions and culture which helped women organize effectively to fight the subordinating and controlling forces of patriarchy, thereby achieving a kind of system of checks and balances.

This is basically what the so-called monotheistic and abstract religions of Islam and Christianity ruling Africa today subverted and continue to attack. The fundamental question to those proposing these religions as a possible means of achieving a pan- African unity of federation is this:  are these religions able to accept and accommodate our goddesses and matriarchy, that is, African women’s true primordial cultures in the present politics of primordialism, manipulated by nationalists and fundamentalist?

Hinterland Africa proper which had such structures which favored the rule of goddesses, matriarchy, queens, etc., is indeed still present with us today.  But, these systems are facing erosion, as elite African men manipulate the new and borrowed patriarchies to forge a most formidable ‘masculine imperialism’, yet unknown in our history.  How are we every going to subvert this, since the first casualty has been the autonomy and power of the indigenous women’s
organizations?

In contrast to the seeming collusion of present-day African daughters of the establishment, the issue of women’s role and status in society, far from being a 19^th century debate, has since the 60s gathered a new force in Western Feminist literature and scholarship.  In Germany, for example, inquiry into matriarchy is taken very seriously.  In the U.S. and Latin America, women’s search for spirituality predominates.  In Britain, it is a search for ancient goddesses. There is also a revival of witchcraft cults.  The whole Green and Ecological movement derives its concept and ideology from the so-called African animism, which is now being acknowledged as a worship of nature.  In all this, African ethnography serves as a databank, but with little acknowledgement from the users.  Did the history of Greek appropriation of African philosophy and science in the nineteenth century repeat itself at the eve of the 20th Century?  

Because Diop took on the fundamental issue of matriarchy from an Afrocentric perspective and interest, as opposed to a compromised struggle for women’s rights in patriarchal systems, what scholar will match the Feminism of Cheikh Anta Diop?  For him, matriarchy is an ‘ensemble of institutions favorable to womanhood and to mankind in general’.  As he said, male controlled social science has only seen in this ‘dangerous freedom which is almost diabolical’.  One wonders why Western matriarchy theorist do not cite the work of Diop?   

http://www.morehouse.edu/facst.....Africa.pdf

By Kevin ZeeseKevin Zeese- Posted on 17 January 2012

Occupy the Dream Youth Coordinator Farajii Muhammad speaks in front of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC, 01/16/12. (photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

By Scott Galindez
Reader Supported News, January 17, 2012

n 16 cities around the country, ministers from African-American churches offered a unified set of demands as they served notice that they are joining the Occupy movement. The demonstrations took place at Federal Reserve banks because, as the organizers explained, it was the Fed that bailed out the banks and Wall Street while Main Street was left to suffer.

In Washington DC, the Reverend Jamal Bryant of the Empowerment Temple AME Church in Baltimore spelled out the demands in front of the Federal Reserve headquarters.

The first demand is campaign finance reform. Rev. Bryant said elections should not be about who can raise the most money, and for any reform to come out of Washington money has to be removed from the equation.

The second demand is to expand Pell Grants so our youth will no longer be burdened by debt from student loans. Rev. Bryant said, "It is a travesty that there is more student loan debt in this country than there is credit card debt. There are more students struggling to pay their debt than people paying off their flat screen TVs."

Many young people participated in the Occupy the Dream rally in front of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC, 01/16/12.
(photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

Occupy the Dream's third demand is an immediate moratorium on foreclosures. Rev. Bryant said current estimates are that four million families will lose their homes between now and April. The demand is for foreclosures to halt until a plan is put in place to assist the victims of predatory lending.

The fourth demand is for Congress to allocate $100 billion dollars to put people back to work. They are calling for the money to be allocated in three areas: job training, seed money for entrepreneurs, and money to rebuild our infrastructure.

Today's rallies were designed to pick up the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. Many in Dr. King's family believe that one of the reasons he was killed was that he was planning to Occupy the National Mall until the Viet Nam War ended. Rev. Bryant said this year, instead of "... resting and reflecting on the past, we are honoring Dr. King by making history, and beginning a new push to achieve his dream."

Sgt. Shamar Thomas and Reverend Jamal Bryant lead a picket line in front of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC,
as part of an Occupy the Dream rally, 01/16/12. (photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)

Another focus of the Occupy the Dream movement will be to hit the banks where it will hurt. They are calling for everyone to move their money from the big banks to minority-owned or community banks and credit unions. February 14th will be the day of the initial push. They will then extend the effort to professionals in the African-American community - doctors, lawyers and others. The third push will encourage churches to move their money. Rev. Bryant said the goal was to "Let the banks know that it's our money and they need to treat us with respect."

Rev. Bryant is a national co-chair for the Occupy the Dream movement. The other co-chair is former NAACP Director Dr. Ben Chavis. Dr. Chavis led the Occupy the Dream rally in New York City, where hundreds marched and four were arrested.

Occupy the Dream is also building a National Mobilization to Washington DC, which is scheduled for April 4th - 7th.

---

Scott Galindez is the Political Director of Reader Supported News, and the co-founder of Truthout.

http://october2011.org/blogs/k.....ut-demands

Yemen’s Saleh headed to U.S. for medical treatment

The Obama administration has approved Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s request to enter the United States for medical treatment, clearing the way for a transfer of power in the strife-filled country.

Saleh flew out of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, late Sunday and headed for a first stop in Oman, a Yemen spokesman said. It was not clear when he would arrive in the United States or how long he would stay here.

Before leaving, Saleh asked his countrymen for forgiveness in a television address and said he planned to return home after surgery, in time for the swearing in of a presidential successor next month.

He has formally relinquished power to his vice president in anticipation of a presidential election Feb. 21.

The White House has been considering Saleh’s request since December, and a decision to allow him into the United States could be politically risky for President Obama, given Saleh’s repressive 33-year reign and the sustained unrest
in Yemen.

Many Yemenis want Saleh to face trial for the deaths of hundreds of political dissidents over the years, but Yemen’s parliament reportedly approved immunity for him on Saturday.

On Sunday, the State Department said in a statement that “the sole purpose of this travel is for medical treatment and we expect that he will stay for a limited time that corresponds to the duration of this treatment.”

But Saleh suggested last month that the reason for him to come to the United States was to remove him from Yemen to help ensure a peaceful and orderly transfer of power. Demonstrators began demanding his removal from authority a year ago.

Saleh suffered serious wounds in a June attack on the palace, but he said last month that he would go to the United States “not for medical treatment, because I’m fine, but to get away from attention, cameras, and allow the unity government to prepare properly for elections.”

In Sanaa on Sunday, Abdul Hafeeth al-Nihari, the deputy chief of the media department of Yemen’s ruling party, described Saleh’s trip to Oman as “a brotherly visit” to improve the relationship between the two countries.

He stressed that Saleh would return to Yemen after his treatment in the United States.

“He will be back prior to the elections to hand over the presidency, and the presidential palace to his successor,” said Nihari. “He will back to practice his political life as the leader of the General People’s Congress,” Saleh’s ruling party.

Staff writer Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi and special correspondent Ali Almujahed in Sanaa
contributed to this report.

To mark Martin Luther King Day, a US federal holiday commemorating the civil rights leader, protesters in New York held a candlelight vigil before marching on the Federal Reserve. The Occupy the Dream movement is calling for more money for college students, an end to home foreclosures and a $100bn fund from Wall Street for new jobs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....king-video

Black children and white children learn self hatred and racism at a very early age.

This is the Martin Luther King speech we never hear about that we need to hear again today January
15, 2012 on this his 83nd birthday. The positive words he’s telling us here need to be repeated to ourselves and our children when we still see the negative images that so many of our children have about themselves and that to many Black adults have about one another. If Dr. King were alive today, I believe he would say that immediate change must come from us and in doing so it would force others to change.