Posted on 07/30/2002 4:50:53 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist
HOUSTON (KHOU) -- Slavery was outlawed in America 137 years ago. But some African-Americans now want monetary compensation for years of slavery endured by their ancestors. A united group asked the Houston City Council for support.
They carried signs, waved flags and chanted loudly, "We are not here asking for anything," the group said. "We are demanding reparations."
This group of descendants of slaves is fighting for compensation that they say their ancestors never got.
"We are a people that have lost our culture," said activist Quannell X. "We have lost our religion. We have lost our mores and forays. We are a people that have been robbed."
"Reparations now" is their battle cry. It was aimed at the Houston City Council. They were asking members for their help, and reminded them symbolically just why they should. "Mothers and fathers, men and women, children hung from these ropes," said Quannell X. "How could you not support reparations?"
Mayor Lee Brown said that a resolution might be in order. "And that's what it's all about," he said. "To look at the issue and then come up with some determination as to what this country should do in respect to slavery."
But councilman Bruce Tatro disagreed. "I just believe it's inappropriate for the city to be weighing in on," he said. "A vote by the city means we support the entire reparations."
For the next generation it's a lesson for future legacies. African historian Alafia Gaidi explained, "There's a reason why millions of Africans who've come to this country before us was never able to leave any kind of inheritance for their children, they were never paid."
This local push is part of a national effort to support a Slave Reparations Bill recently introduced in Congress. Thousands plan to march on Washington on August 17 to lobby for the bill's passage.
It's also rather difficult to be able to leave any kind of inheritance for your children if you spend your whole life on welfare.
HA! Quanell the tenth.....
Bless his heart.......
1000.00 suit.....no job
He's somebodies B!tch!
Why? You thinking about shopping for a transfusion in Bed-Stuy?
Watch out!
But I am told the child actor in the 1930's who played "Buckwheat," late in life joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to ...
Kareema Wheat
;^)
Ah-ha! I heard about that flap from afar.....I had lived in Atlanta for two years or so, before coming to Houston by way of New Orleans, and my Atlanta friends told me about the examination scandal. I didn't know that Brown was the point man in stealing those non-black officers' promotions.
Here in Houston, as police chief his major initiative was the implementation of storefront police stations and using big traffic-ticket mills (certain problem intersections) to help the liberal mayor, Kathryn J. Whitmire, raise revenues without going to the Council to ask for more taxes, even while total police strength declined year-on-year, even as the city's population was exploding.
Since returning to Houston, he's been busy mostly taking lavish out-of-town trips, refereeing staff fights and embarrassments (one of his staffers referred to a very short, white Republican as a "midget", at a convention of minoritarian officeholders and hangers-on), feuding and plotting tawdry little revenges, and beating up on white police officers who initiate contacts with minority thugs casing white neighborhoods. Since Brown's "anti-profiling" decrees (backed up by the police chief and minority Council members), incidents of daylight burglary and "follow-home" robbery by gun- or knife-wielding minorities have zoomed in my close-in Houston neighborhood. And we're going to spend $1.3 billion on light-rail lines connecting not commuter destinations, but tying the downtown convention center and hotels to sports venues and airports -- all without discussion (unless you count executive discussions behind closed doors) and without a vote, after having spent a billion on sports palaces for Houston millionaires.
The source of the info was George DeMontrond, chairman of the blue-ribbon millionaires' committee that is calling the shots, in a televised Sunday interview a week or so ago.
You have to join the Stupid Name Club.
Well, you could start by having a completely illiterate mother...
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