Millions of Blacks Coming to DC for Reparations Rally

The Millions For Reparations Rally that will be held on August 17, 2002, the 115th birthday of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, in Washington, D.C. promises to be one of the most historic gatherings of African people in America.

Day-by-day, African people in America are becoming more familiar with the concept of reparations and what it means to our continued struggle in America for self-determination, liberation, independence, and freedom. Therefore, we must be clear that reparations means repair for the damages inflicted on a people or a nation.

In pursuit of this repair, we are conscious of the fact we must engage in the process of assuming responsibility for repairing ourselves that includes: changing the way we think, supporting our own institutions, particularly financially, supporting our families, supporting our own Black business enterprises, cleaning up our own communities, and changing the way we relate to, and think of, each other as a people. These are just a few of the internal repairs we must constantly work on.

In this connection, part of our internal repair is to struggle, fight, mobilize, and organize to demand external reparations from those governments, corporations, and institutions that are responsible for our historical and continuing state of oppression. Just as Jewish people proclaim “Never Forget,” African people should do no less.

We should “Never Forget” that “They Owe Us!” Part of our internal repair is to consciously understand that, “We Are Owed” and have a historic responsibility to demand reparations from those forces of white supremacy that continue to benefit from what they did to us that lingers on as part of the vestiges of our enslavement.

As we prepare for our participation in the Millions For Reparations Rally on August 17, 2002, we should be clear that They Owe Us For:

1. The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery - The United Nations World Conference Against Racism declared that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery were Crimes Against Humanity. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations.

2. Expropriation of Our Labor- For more than 250 years, we were forced to work for free. Our free labor was a major ingredient in the building of America and its wealth as a nation. Also, the thousands of white individuals and their families’ accumulated wealth that continues to benefit them as a result of our free labor.

3. Slave Code Laws- The slave owners developed their own codes of what they could do to enslaved African people in America that permeated throughout the emergence of this country. In many ways, informal slave codes exist today (racial profiling).

4. Destruction of the African Family- The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery had a devastating impact on destroying and dismantling African families.

5. Raping of African Women- Our capture and enslavement provided white men with the power to rape African women and girls by the thousands without reprisal.

6. Fugitive Slave Laws- When our enslaved ancestors resisted their enslavement and fled plantations, the government of this country sanctioned laws and policies that supported the capture and return of so-called runaway enslaved Africans. The Dred Scott Decision should be consulted to fully understand the implications of the Fugitive Slave Laws.

7. Colonizing of Our African Culture- Created systems by law and societal practices that forbade African people, in our captured state, to engage in our traditional spiritual cultural practices.

8. KKK Night Riders and Lynchings- The Ku Klux Klan was established in the late 1860s as a secret society whose mission was to exterminate, by any means necessary, African people in America. They were known to have been responsible for the lynching and murdering of thousands of African men, women, and children.

9. The 13th and 14th Constitutional Amendments- The abolishment of slavery was really a constitutional scam and the 14th Amendment that allegedly made African people citizens of America was imposed on us. We were never asked if we wanted to be citizens.

10. Denied Our 40 Acres and a Mule- We didn’t get it! It was sold down the river and the land was given to white confederate soldiers.

11. Jim Crow Laws- The Jim Crow Policies of America became the fabric and foundation of American society after the period of Reconstruction. Jim Crow Laws and Policies reinforced the foundation of white supremacy and Black inferiority in every aspect of American society.

12. Fighting and Dying In Imperialist and White Supremacist Wars- We fought and died for the freedoms of others and were denied our own freedoms and civil rights.

13. Assassination of Black Leaders- Malcolm X, Dr. King, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark to name a few.

14. COINTELPRO- This was a government program, established by the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, designed to destroy the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

15. Crack Epidemic- Research reveals the United States Government, through the CIA, targeted Black communities for the dispensing of Crack Cocaine.

16. Criminalizing Our Youth- It should be obvious that the aim of the Prison Industrial Complex is to Criminalize Our Youth to insure a young and viable work force for this multibillion-dollar industry.

17. Jailing of Freedom Fighters- The incarcerating of our Freedom Fighter thus, making them Political Prisoners.

18. & 19. Centuries of Mis-Education and Mental Atrocities- This has caused serious damage to our people, which continues to cause much mental confusion about our true reality as an African people in America and around the world.

I am sure, as we approach August 17, 2002, you can add to this humble list of why “They Owe Us!”

(Dr. Worrill is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front / NBUF located at 12817 S. Ashland Ave., Fl. 1, Calumet Park, IL, 60827, 708-389-9929, Fax 708-389-9819, E-Mail: nbufchi@allways.net, Website: nbufront.org)

I guess the best way to demonstrate my ignorance is to try to debate a lawyer, who by definition is accustomed to ignoring the facts, personal attacks, misdirection, twisting the truth and defending the indefensible.

I cannot hope to match a lawyer in prose but I wanted to respond to some of your comments, mostly because they were so well written.

Let me recall for you the circumstances under which the four poor little unarmed scum got what was coming to them while nine others were fortunate enough to merely be wounded or crippled. They got a good taste of what their generational moral superiors were up against in Vietnam but only a small taste.

Two of the four unarmed scum that were killed were innocent bystanders not participating in the rally that was being held. I do not mean to concede that exercising your first amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly by attending an anti-war rally is a capital crime.

The National Guardsmen in question had been called up weeks before and were separated from their families dealing with violence associated with a Teamsters' strike in Ohio in which snipers had been shooting at non-union truckers from overpasses.

What is the relevance of this statement? Is there some sort of justification or excuse for shooting unarmed students exercising their first amendment rights in the fact that snipers shot at truckers?

The Scranton Commission and the other fashionable upper class and upper middle class clueless who Monday-morning quarterbacked their way into laying the blame on the guard to spare the feelings of the Americong and their clueless mommies and daddies and whitewashing the punks did what they were expected to do: blame the guys whose backsides were on the line.

Somebody had to take a fall for this obvious travesty. Who better than the shooters?

I will never believe other than that a string of salutes were set off by provacateurs in the crowd, triggering the National Guard to protect themselves by firing into the crowd.

Did Miss Cleo tell you that?
Source please?

I don't care if Alison Krausse or any of the other casualties was your sister or your friend.

I see you're the sensitive type. This statement defines you!

I do notice that the student "revolution" died nationally that day on the field at Kent State so I guess that the campus Cong must have decided therefter that revolutionary role-playing was not worth the price if the adults were going to act like adults for a change.

BS this was the day that the government lost the support of the silent majority and could no longer prosecute the war.

I'll tell you what I really think.

Please don't!

PS: I feel as strong about the criminal shootings at JSU.

You know, there is just so little here of emotional sob sisterhood over a handful of spoiled white middle class campusCong being organized to commit felonies against the Vietnam war effort (arson, felony murder) at taxpayer paid institutions and the justice dispensed to them all too meagerly by the Ohio National Guard three decades ago. You are a bit of historical preservation to exemplify for new generations not fully familiar with the craven evil of the anti-war movement just what addle-brained emotional slop drove many "students" to undermine the efforts of the moral superiors of their generation in the field.

Not now and not ever will I regard the National Guard defending themselves against a brainwashed mob of criminal punks marching against them to be "indefensible." We had an incident like this in the late colonial period at Boston which is now called the Boston Massacre. The British militia (I find it hard to believe that my Irishness allows me to defend them) gunned down Boston revolutionaries who had pelted them with snowballs. The Brits were defended in a Boston jury trial by no less than our future second president John Adams. It was in all the biographies. Adams won the case before an essentially revolutionary jury and the Brits were freed. Of course, like the Ohio National Guard, they should not have been arrested in the first place.

Jim Rhodes, the veteran three-term Ohio governor who ordered the National Guard to Kent State when the punks or their friends burned the ROTC building to the ground in what, I guess, you would regard as an exercise in free speech or assembly. It was no more an exercise in free speech and/or assembly than a mob marching against the National Guard in a physical confrontation the next day. How many Marxist professors and organizers got shot? None. Your vacant-headed stooge of an apparent acquaintance, Alison Krause (How COULD they shoot Alison? She's so pretty, she's so blonde, she's so white, she's so like US!) wound up dead as cannon fodder for the "revolution" that ended that day.

But, but, but, they can't shoot her can they> After all, she was an idealist, and an individualist taking part in a small sea of alleged humanity marching towards the Guardsmen to establish that they had no authority on campus whatever the trustees or the governor might say. The campusCong had to follow up on the arson at the ROTC building and, well, well, the National Guard had some nerve coming on THEIR campus and resisting the forces of Ho Chi Minh and of the self-righteous campus booboisie. That strings of salutes were set off in the crowd is derived from news accounts of interviews with guardsmen as to why they fired. Forgive my poor memory in not having exact cites at my fingertips after only thirty years. Of course, that was only one reason.

A second reason was that the malignant malcontents being organized for the "revolution" on the taxpayers' nickel by Marxist teachers too bored to teach who recognized students often to lazy or ill-equipped to study, was that National Guardsmen called in for law enforcement duty to establish public authority once and for all over the snivelling campusCong (which they most certainly did) do not have to put up with the potential for guard fatalities and injuries posed by birdbrains who allow themselves to be marched into the faces and towards the positions of the armed National Guard (with or without easily available salutes). Traditionally, those who march into the faces and guns of an armed military unit understand that the price is being shot dead. Four were. Nine were substantially wounded.

Which brings us to the innocent bystander claim. I suppose that under the circumstances of the arson the night before and the aggressive tactics (not of an anti-war rally which would tend to stay put or to parade down streets with prior permits) of a mob of those obsessed with their hatred of the military and of anything not pro-communist who had been taught and accepted that National Guardsmen and other military were not only their intellectual inferiors but part of, as Norman Mailer put it, the wad in the pipeline of the "revolution," against National Guardsmen who had homes, jobs, families and better things to do with their lives and weekends than to wetnurse a pack of bed-wetters playing boy and girl revolutionary.

When a criminal mob (or even one individual) engages in felonious acts such as the mob at Kent State and people die (Guardsmen, "Innocent" bystanders, or even the campusCong themselves) those acting feloniously against law enforcement are guilty of what is known as felony murder. This applies, for example to the getaway driver in the bank robbery who is unaware that his confederates even had guns. It applied to the entire mob at Kent State and, as a matter of law, the mob participants were each prosecutable for felony murder for each person killed.

Your planted axiom that these leftist criminal punks were exercising rights of free speech and assembly does not deserve the time of day. They were engaged in a criminal assault on the National Guard which defended itself weakly but effectively.

Do you suppose that the fact that you might have known the bright and shining Alison Krause makes one bit of difference in the logical argument here? All that does is mark you as someone who substitutes emotional slop for rational thinking. IF she was an "innocent" bystander, direct the flapdoodle at the criminal campusCong whose activity caused her death, indict them and convict them and collect damages from them. Indeed, execute them because they deserve it. If she was part of the mob, she deserved it. This is a gathering place for conservative activists. Read the main webpage. It is not a gathering place for Oprah addicts or sobsisters.

Who better than the shooters to take the fall?????? I'll tell you again since you don't really listen through your crocadile tears. The fall should have been taken by the criminal mob responsible for each injury and death that day. They were not the guradsmen. The mob was the campusCong. It was not a rally. It was a felonious mob action and it was dealt with accordingly. No amount of semi-official flapdoodle from millionaire Bill Scranton (oh my, little Muffy and Skipper hate the war and could have been part of the mob and could have been SHOT if they were not attending Bennington and Bryn Mawr instead of that grubby Kent State, but at least the students were sensitive like us and not armen beasts like those guardsmen. Sniffle, sniffle) Gee, do you also agree with the Kerner Commission blaming the race riots of the 60s on "white racism" especuially of blue collar ethnics? (That was issued a year or two before Kerner was federally indicted, convicted and imprisoned himself).

Finally, if you think that the student revolution did not die that day at Kent State and that the silent majority somehow stopped supporting the war because little Alison and friends were drilled by the National Guard in a minimal act of justice, trhat is your defining statement as to your grasp of history. There was a definitive opportunity for the majority (silent and otherwise) to express itself after Kent State. That was known as the election of 1972 in which a fellow named Richard Nixon was running against Comrade McGovern (weeping and sniffling over what happened at Kent State). It is true that Nixon failed to take the People's Demonratic Republic of Taxachusetts (narrowly) and, in a stunning upset that can only be explained by the death of Alison Krause and friends, lost the District of Columbia, but he did take the other 49 states and a then unprecedented electoral/popular majority or very close to it. The only consolation you have is that Vietnam remained under the communist knout largely due to the efforts of CBSNBCABC, Cronkite, the New York Slimes and the Washington Compost. Evben Joan Baez recanted after the fact, having seen the result for the people of Vietnam of the efforts of the antiwar movement in which she had long participated. As Scoop Jackson used to say, in order to be a liberal you don't HAVE to be a damn fool."

Does anyone know where films of the Kent State events might be available without Cronkite (German for sickness as krankheit), CBSNBCABC and other AmeriCong lies. I would like to distribute copies to friends to share in the celebration, hold anniversary parties and what not.

Looking forward to your next fantasy. Try and make it more responsive.

Actually, reparations MAY be a great idea. If the "African American" community was given reparations for years of servitude and oppression, then everything for them should be considered settled. There would then be no need for Rainbow/PUSH, NAACP, and all organizations of that ilk. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Kwiese Mfume could all step down, their jobs finished. Racial quotas, welfare, affirmative action, all other minority programs designed to help African Americans would be abolished. All those who have descendents stolen from Africa would be repatriated back to their homelands. The playing field would be equal for all and no one would ever whine or complain about oppression or racism again! I would even shell out a few bucks for that.

this is such an interesting theorem. I've used this ploy myself, on a much smaller scale.

Once, an employee came to me for a raise. I was the payroll/human resources person at the time. Said others with less time were making more, yada, yada.

I politicked for an across the board raise for all in this job category due to the constant complaints. But one thing all were told....No Coming Back to the Well. To get another raise, it'll be the annual cost of living only and via promotion.

It worked. If nothing else, management, especially me, was emboldened and not hesitant a whit to say a firm NO. People always want more money and if they get it by whining or hey, maybe even pointing a legitimate unfairness, then more power to them.

It's the ones with the power to give the money that often don't hold firm enough. Boom, with one swift decisive action, the ones in control had a righteousness from which to deny.

Think of getting rid of all this extraneous crap like affirmative action, etc. Do the deed and every soccer Mom in American won't fall for the welfare nonsense, poor ghetto kid on drugs boohoo, that sort of propaganda.

It's something to think about.

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