March and Rally Set for June 10

Twenty-two African American notables have issued on
open letter demanding that Blacks break the silence "on the injustices faced by
the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation." This "40 year
travesty of justice" - the post-1967 seizure of control over Arab lands in
Palestine - has continued "in open defiance of international law and
overwhelming international condemnation." African Americans have historically
defended the rights of the Palestinian people, and must do so again, despite
the pro-Israel lobby's massive efforts to shut down legitimate discussion

by Malcolm X

Malcolm's "The Bullet or the Ballot" speech, delivered during the interval between his separation from the Nation of Islam and his pilgrimage to Mecca, in April, 1964, lays out the new direction he envisioned for the Black Freedom Movement. It was also prescient, forecasting the explosive growth of Black Nationalism and militancy, and the Democratic Party's decline once the Dixiecrats switched allegiances to the Republicans. "When you see the amount of power that would be lost by the Democratic Party if it were to lose the Dixiecrat wing...you can see where it's against the interests of the Democrats to give voting rights to Negroes in states where the Democrats have been in complete power and authority ever since the Civil War."

by Joseph Jordan, PhD

The author, who as a youth was among the millions of
African Americans that hailed revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe as a hero,
says Blacks are now required "to speak out directly
against the violations of human rights that have marked the rule of President
Robert Mugabe over the past few years." 
The covenant made by African Americans more than a generation ago was
with the people of Zimbabwe. Silence in the face of "clear and
unequivocal" evidence of Mugabe's abuses of power would violate that covenant.
The "the rights of Zimbabwe's people" are paramount.

Three congresspersons, two of them Black, have joined Democratic
presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich in calling for impeachment of Vice
President Dick Cheney. However, massive deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
insistence that impeachment is "off the table" has divided and diminished what
once appeared to be a growing movement to bring charges against either or both
the top Criminals-in-Chief: Cheney and George Bush. On this issue, many
formerly vocal Members have gone "missing in action."

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

African American unionists gather in Chicago later this month to devise strategies to halt the corporate juggernaut that is wiping out decent-paying Black jobs and dragooning the entire planet into a Race to the Bottom. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists' annual convention confronts a dismal landscape left by six years of relentless social destruction wreaked by the Bush regime and the corporations it serves. As the most stalwart and militant elements of labor, Black men and women are most prepared to fight this twilight battle against the super-aggressive rich. For African Americans, it's always been that way.

by
Paul Street

For what it's worth, Russell Simmons doesn't think
much of Barack Obama. The hip hop businessman prefers former Senator John
Edwards, who "has said more things about the conditions we need to think
about."  Hordes of Simmons' fellow
multi-millionaires have flocked to the Obama camp, where big donors account for
more than two-thirds of the campaign treasury. Obama, who claims Blacks have
already progressed "90 percent of the way" to racial equality, is a "Black"
candidate only in cosmetic terms.

by Charlene Muhammad

The Prison Industrial Complex is rapidly
becoming a private enterprise gulag, "a modern-day slave system" in which the
bulk of toilers are Black. Huge corporations fatten their bottom lines by
paying prison inmates "less than you would in third world countries." Some of
these same companies refuse to hire ex-inmates to do the same jobs on the
outside. Immense profits from cheap prison labor fuel policies for
ever-escalating mass incarceration, while creating a disincentive for genuine
training, education, rehabilitation and early release.