Brother Zinn died today due to a heart attack in Santa Monica, California at age 87.
He will be sorely missed.
If you haven't already bought The People's History of the United States, please buy it today. In fact, buy multiple copies and share them widely.
For news stories on Howard Zinn's life and death, click here.
To see Part 2/6, click here.By Malkia Cyril, Chris Rabb and Joseph Torres
Originally published on The Huffington Post and cross-posted elsewhere
When Fox News’ Glenn Beck called President Barack Obama a racist this past July, the online advocacy group ColorOfChange.org launched a campaign to convince advertisers to boycott the show. To date, some 280,000 people have joined the effort, and more than 60 companies have pulled their ads.
CNN parted ways with Lou Dobbs last month after civil rights groups and Presente.org mobilized thousands of Latinos online to call on CNN to dump the talk show host for spewing hate against immigrants for years.None of this — not these advocacy efforts, not countless small business success stories, not even the election of President Barack Obama — would have happened without a free and open Internet. For communities of color, the Internet provides us with a unique opportunity to speak for ourselves without first seeking the approval of gatekeepers or having to secure major funds to do so. But the big telecommunications companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast want to create an effectively segregated online community where they will act as our gatekeepers.
[T]he big telecommunications companies
like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast
want to create an effectively segregated online community
where they will act as our gatekeepers.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now considering new rules that could protect the fundamental principle of “Network Neutrality” once and for all. Net Neutrality prohibits Internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking, discriminating against or deterring Internet users from accessing online content and applications of their choice — such as e-newsletters, blogs, social networking sites, online videos, podcasts and smart-phone apps. It is not that network owners are secretly plotting to stifle free speech – at least not usually. But they have an undeniable, rational interest in creating a pay-for-play model for the treatment of communication on the Internet. Commercial websites that pay will get speed and quality and the non-commercial uses of the Net will be collateral damage – relegated to the slow lane. It’s not necessarily that they want to block our speech for political reasons; it’s that our speech is not important to them because it’s not going to make them money.
Many of the most valuable things we do online
are non-commercial; they
exist because the Internet is
the first mass media system with no
gatekeepers
to dole out privilege to the highest bidder.
The Internet provides our communities with a medium to access services, find jobs, connect to friends, make inexpensive international phone calls to family members, and to advocate for social change. Many of the most valuable things we do online are non-commercial; they exist because the Internet is the first mass media system with no gatekeepers to dole out privilege to the highest bidder. That freedom and openness is what makes the Internet different from broadcasting and cable. It makes it valuable to our communities. We can’t allow Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other broadband providers to deliver substandard Internet service to our communities.
But the big phone and cable companies want to get rid of Net Neutrality and control how the public accesses the Internet. These companies want to charge websites extra tolls to secure the fastest speeds online, while favoring their own content and services over their competition’s. Those unable to pay will be banished to the slow lane online, becoming second-class “netizens” without the same freedoms given to those with more money and influence.
This threat to Internet freedom isn’t hypothetical. Verizon got caught blocking text messages sent by the pro-choice group NARAL to its own members – though they backed down immediately under public pressure. Comcast has also illegally interfered with file-sharing on its network, a practice that earned them a rebuke from the FCC.
Who will protect the online rights of marginalized communities against the raw profit motive of big business? We urge leaders in our community not to yield to the underhanded scare tactics that corporations like AT&T have used on our communities.
We Must Reject a Separate but Unequal Online WorldOne of those scare tactics is the claim, pushed by phone and cable companies, that Network Neutrality poses a threat to digital inclusion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only does Net Neutrality expand media diversity and access by ensuring fairness and nondiscrimination by big corporations, it will prevent the kind of media consolidation that has happened in the broadcast industry by helping our communities develop a diversity of civic and commercial online enterprises on a scale that represents our growing online numbers.
It’s not necessarily that they want to block our speech for political
reasons;
it’s that our speech is not important to them
because it’s not going to make them money.
A primary reason for the digital divide is that the cost of fully engaging in the online world is just too expensive for many in our community. Broadband in the United States is among the slowest but most expensive of any industrialized nation. After years of consolidation, the largest telecom companies have gotten away with price-gouging our communities because of a lack of competition in the broadband market. More choices for broadband service – not permitting more discrimination – are the key to bringing down costs. Scrapping Net Neutrality in order to consolidate control over the Internet by cable and phone companies is not the answer. More market control won’t give them more incentive to sell low-cost high-quality services to low-income communities. Our communities will still be subject to the same business case that have marginalized us in the first place –households that don’t have a lot of money to spend. Shareholders aren’t charities, and we are foolish to expect otherwise.
But more importantly, we should not be sacrificing an open Internet to bribe phone and cable companies not to practice forms of red-lining. The answer to the digital divide cannot be to deliver a second-class, closed Internet to our communities.
The historic fight against discrimination by groups like the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens has led to great societal change, laying the groundwork for the election of a president of color. We urge our colleagues in the civil rights community to fight with us to ensure that telecom and cable companies are not allowed to discriminate against our communities or interfere with our capacity to speak for ourselves without first asking AT&T, Verizon or Comcast for permission.
Several civil rights groups have spoken out in favor of passing Net Neutrality regulations, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, UNITY: Journalists of Color, and ColorOfChange.org.
[W]e should not be sacrificing an open Internet
to bribe phone and cable companies not to practice forms of red-lining.
We are living through a critical moment in our nation’s history. The FCC is going to decide whether the Internet will remain an open platform that allows for the greatest number of voices to participate in our democratic society, or whether it will be a closed network controlled by the big telecom companies.
We are concerned about the dire consequences of living without Internet freedom. It would create a separate but unequal online world where our communities are unable to use the Internet to compete or to advocate for justice when we have been wronged.
We need civil rights, media justice, community-oriented and grassroots organizations to stand together to make sure effective Net Neutrality regulation will protect our communities from the predatory practices of the phone and cable industries.
[L]iving without Internet freedom . . . would create a separate but unequal
online world
where our communities are unable to use the Internet
to
compete or to advocate for justice
when we have been wronged.
As with past civil rights struggles that successfully expanded access, thwarted discrimination, destroyed legalized segregation, and created broad opportunity, so too will the cause for Internet freedom.
Malkia Cyril is the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. Chris Rabb is the founder of the online community Afro-Netizen and is a visiting researcher at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joseph Torres is the government relations manager of Free Press and former deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Five days ago in economically distressed Rockford, Illinois, a 23-year old Black man named Mark Anthony Barmore was shot to death in a church-run daycare filled with children, as reported by the Associated Press.
Witness claim Barmore who tried to evade police, emerged to surrender from a closet in the church, but police officers shot him anyway.
Though this case is unfolding, and all the facts are not known at this time, the refrain in Black America and beyond is, "Would this have likely happened to a white person?"
Increasingly, Afro-Netizen has noticed clear acknowledgment of racism from white people about other white people's motivations -- even within mainstream media. This new, seemingly unprecedented phenomenon is a good and important trend that is not nearly as comprehensive or rigorous as it should be. However, the extent to which race and racism can be brought up appropriately at the urging of white allies may influence America's tolerance for having such meaningful public discussions that have rarely occurred heretofore.
Meanwhile, the national NAACP is calling for federal legislation to address and curtail future acts of police brutality.
Post-racial in this context suggests that "getting beyond race" is the task and ultimate goal. For progressive-minded Americans, however, the goal is in acknowledging that race and racism are all too real social constructions that will endure until we embrace racial justice as a core component of the fight for universal human rights.
Rockford activists and concerned residents understand this in a blighted city north of Chicago with rampant unemployment, crime and urban blight.
They know these ills are all related, and that these socio-economic disparities highly correlate to race in ways that America's first Black president will not (and perhaps cannot politically) affirm, unlike his elderly, white Southern predecessor, former president Jimmy Carter, leveraging the white privilege he has towards shedding light on the truth too powerful for a sitting president in this day and age to co-sign -- irrespective of his race or political party.
Whatever level of culpability the two white Rockford police officers and the deceased Barmore had for what quickly escalated to a man's death -- as witnessed in a church by young children -- this much is true: a crime took place on that fateful day that is as political and resonant as the election of a Black president.
The questions remain in the aftermath of such symptomatic violence: Do we know what's on the referendum? When and where we must vote, and how to cast our ballots?
We all mourn on this anniversary.
We mourn in different ways and for different reasons.
Some mourn for the Americans who were killed in the Attacks of September 11th. Many like me mourn the tragic deaths of all who were killed in the attacks in New York City, Washington, DC and Shanksville, PA and the related deaths that preceded the Attacks here and abroad.
Others also mourn the soldiers and civilians killed in the military aftermath of the Attacks.
Peace-loving Muslims and other enlightened people of faith around the world mourn the seemingly indelible stain they fear those 19 assassins put on Islam when they weaponized those hijacked planes on September 11th.
Many mourn the theft of civil liberties and the shunning of humanitarianism in pursuit of an instant balm that still scars instead of heals our small, imperiled planet.
Still more mourn the narrowing of what once was a broad-shouldered patriotism that could not be confused with jingoistic rhetoric, obsequious complicity with the war-mongers, and conspicuous ornamentation that for too many in positions of influence has been a derelict proxy for moral courage and humanitarian leadership.
On September 11th, I watched in stunned silence evil strike where Ground Zero now remains.
Silence is how many have chosen to honor the lives -- not lost -- but stolen from this physical world, by what happens when festering rage turns to terror.
Indeed, we mourn in different ways.
But silence is not always reverence. And as we have seen in the aftermath of the Attacks, silence can also be the enemy.
Nationalistic pageantry has little meaning to me either as we memorialize the dead who hailed from more places far beyond American borders -- from more nations than most of us can identify on a map.
No, today, Afro-Netizen will memorialize this infamous day of terror by sharing a song whose lyrics were borne out of a centuries-long tradition of coping with terror called, "We Shall Overcome", a protest song whose simple, but moving melody comes in part from "No More Auction Block For Me also known as "Many Thousands Gone", 19th century spirituals deeply rooted in the scourge of America's domestic terrorism of slavery and Jim Crow.
So, in some ways "We Shall Overcome" is indeed a mourning song, yet one that is anything but mournful.
Its lyrics, gravitas, cultural resonance -- and its history of how, why and where it has been sung all represent the hope, humility and humanity that to me provide the balm so missing from the often cynical marketing of this important anniversary.
We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday;
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.
By Zachary Roth
Republished courtesy of Talking Points Memo
The election of our first black president has brought with it a strange proliferation of online racism among conservatives. And we've got the latest example. On Sunday night, Dr. David McKalip forwarded to fellow members of a Google listserv affiliated with the Tea Party movement the image below. Above it, he wrote: "Funny stuff."
Let's cut to the chase . . .
A White female neighbor of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. called the police on the night of July 20, 2009 to report a possible break-in at the home of Prof. Gates.
She reported seeing two Black men on his porch. That much is undisputed.
Here is the actual (redacted) police report (PDF) documenting the incident from the arresting officer's perspective.
And here is Prof. Gates' lawyer's statement on his arrest, courtesy of TheRoot.com of which Prof. Gates is the Editor-in-Chief.
Here's a taste:
Colorlines: State of Whose Union?: Obama and Race at One Year (VIDEO)
Afro-Netizen on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:23 PM in Commentary/Opinion, Current Affairs, Interviews, ObamaWatch, Politics, Public Policy, Publisher's blog, Race, Culture & History, Television | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Colorlines, Congress, great recession, meltdown, Obama, recovery, SOTU, speeches
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