Year 2042 Will Bring Non-White U.S. Majority and Apartheid Economy
Thirty years from now, the United States will have a non-white majority largely mired in poverty under an “apartheid” economy, said Tim Sullivan, co-author of a new report titled “State of the Dream: The Emerging Majority.” By 2042, the report predicts, Blacks will earn 61 cents for every dollar paid to whites – which is about the same racial earnings ratio that has existed since 1980. Hispanic workers will be even worse off, earning just 45 cents on every white dollar. “We simply won’t be able to sustain our standard of living, our place in the world” with such widespread poverty among the non-white majority, said Sullivan, of Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. Black and Latino wealth is projected to shrivel to pennies compared to white household wealth dollars.
MLK Fought Against Rule of the Wealthy
“Dr. King talked about concrete steps to challenge this Darwinian culture that we live in, where the corporations run the government and we are no longer governed by the rule of law,” said South Carolina Black activist and author Kevin Alexander Gray. “If Black folks are content to be quiet while they wait for President Obama” to tackle the multiple oppressions against African Americans, “then they are mad.” Gray is repulsed by “the idea that Black folks are supporting the idea of preventive war and preventive assassination.” Gray is author of The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.
“Phase Two” for Occupy Movement
“The occupy movement is about more than just occupying a tent in a public park,” said Kevin Zeese, an organizer of the Occupy Washington DC encampment at Freedom Plaza. The purpose is “to organize, mobilize and educate people, and start a debate about the wealth divide.” In what Zeese calls “Phase Two” of the movement, in addition to maintaining the encampment on Pennsylvania Avenue, organizers will operate out of two DC area houses. The “Peace House” will focus on mobilization of a national occupation of the nation’s capital, beginning March 30, while another house is dedicated to “occupying the economy” – creating alternative economic solutions so that people can “create their own jobs and their own wealth.”
UN Occupation of Haiti is “Mission Without a Cause”
Two years after a killer earthquake and eight years after the U.S. invaded Haiti, MINUSTAH, the United Nations “peacekeeping” force in the country, is a “mission without a cause,” said Dan Beeton, of the Center for Policy and Economic Research. Why is MINUSTAH still there? “There is no real justification for their presence…except that the international community, especially the United States, doesn’t want to see the Haitian people take control of their own destiny.”
MINUSTAH soldiers from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti, which has killed 6,000 people and sickened half a million. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti sued the UN, but the world body has yet to admit responsibility for the epidemic, blaming Haiti’s poor infrastructure for allowing the disease to spread. “That’s like me going into a field of dry grass and lighting a fire, and when it turns into a forest fire, blaming the wind,” said Institute director Brian ConCannon, Jr.
McKinney: U.S. Troops Lurk Near Libya
Cynthia McKinney, the former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, is alarmed at reports that 12,000 U.S. troops are temporarily stationed at Malta, an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea that has historically been a jumping off point to Libya. McKinney led a number of fact-finding delegations to Libya, before and during the U.S.-NATO bombing campaign that overthrew Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s government. “There is no real control by the National Transitional Council,” which recently signed an agreement allowing foreign troops to be stationed on Libyan soil, said McKinney. “The country has been ripped apart, the people are desperate for jobs, they need work,” in the absence of the Gaddafi government’s generous social welfare structures.
U.S. Guilty of “Ecological Genocide”
Michael Dorsey, a professor of environmental science at Dartmouth University who recently returned from a global climate conference in Durban, South Africa, denounced the Obama administration for refusing to seriously discuss measures to halt planetary warming. “That kind of brinksmanship diplomacy is really best characterized as a kind of apartheid for the planet, and particularly for Africa, where we know the unfolding climate change process will have catastrophic effects. It’s already playing out,” said Dorsey, director of the Climate Justice Research Project.
Lumumba Assassination Anniversary
Friends of Congo hold a rally and teach-in in Washington on Tuesday, January 17, to mark the 51st anniversary of the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the popularly elected prime minister of newly independent Congo. Belgium, the former colonial power, apologized for its role in Lumumba’s death in 2002, but the U.S. “hasn’t even gotten close” to expressing remorse. Formerly classified records show President Dwight Eisenhower ordered a CIA hit on Lumumba in 1960. The murder “stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people,” said Kambale Musavuli, of Friends of Congo, just as U.S. support for last November’s rigged elections that kept President Joseph Kabila in power has stifled those aspirations. “I firmly believe that the United States government is supporting a dictatorial regime in the Congo,” said Musavuli.
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The history and significance of Black August, presidential elections and politics in Kenya, and reflections on the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.
Kalonji Changa is co-founder of Black Power Media and founder of FTP Movement. He joins us from Atlanta to talk about Black August, which has been a fixture of the liberation movement for 43 years.
Irene Asuwa joins us from Nairobi, Kenya. She is co-convener of Ecological Justice and supports outreach at Ukombozi Library. We discuss the recent presidential election in that country.
