Newsweek Misleads on Who the World’s Arms Merchant Is
(This is a piece by Jim Naureckas, reposted from www.fair.org)
Mac Margolis, Newsweek‘s right-wing Latin America correspondent (Extra!, 1/10) has a small piece in the latest issue (3/1/10) that misleads in a big way. Under the headline “A Killer Deal for Russia,” Margolis declares:
Russia’s campaign to balance U.S. power and prestige around the globe has found a new and willing partner–Latin America–and Washington may be the unwitting facilitator…. Moscow is cutting deals across the region, selling the latest hardware, from rifles to fighter jets, in exchange for influence and access to the area’s plentiful oil and gas reserves.
And the United States has only itself and its pesky ethics to blame:
Ironically, one reason for the budding East/West axis may be Washington’s own rigid security agenda. The U.S. has imposed restrictions on arms sales to many nations suspected of being soft on terrorism or roiled by internal conflict. So, many on that watch list have turned to Moscow, which asks no questions. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, for example, has snapped up some $4 billion in Russian weapons in recent years.
Reality check: The United States is by far the world’s largest arms dealer, making $37.8 billion in arms deals in 2008–68 percent of the world’s arms traffic for that year, according to the Congressional Research Service (New York Times, 9/6/09). Russia was a distant third with $3.5 billion.
And the United States did not actually limit its weapon sales to peaceful nations. Among countries “roiled by internal conflicts” that have bought U.S. arms in recent years are Colombia, Morocco, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Yemen, Armenia, Azerbaijan…. The list goes on. Apparently unlike Moscow, Washington does ask questions–like, “Is your credit good?”
How a Bill becomes a Law: Green Businesses write Legislation
In the early 1980s you may remember that during Saturday morning cartoons, there were animated informational spots called Schoolhouse Rock. One of my favorites from that series was called, “How a Bill becomes a Law.” Yesterday, a reporter wrote an article that may contradict what we were taught as kids about how government works.
On Wednesday, the Grand Rapids Press ran an article by reporter Matt Vande Bunte about proposed Michigan legislation that would provide “tax breaks for new construction and building rehabilitations that achieve certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.”
The article states that Michigan Senators Jason Allen, Wayne Kuipers and Patty Birkholz have introduced a package of bills this month that “would give a tax abatement of up to 50 percent on LEED-certified construction and allow upfront costs for certain “green” items such as wind turbines, geothermal energy systems and underground parking to be paid with future tax revenue.”
The reporter also mentions that the “package of bills has been referred to the Senate’s Tourism and Commerce Committee. Committee Chairman Jason Allen, R-Traverse City, was in Grand Rapids earlier this month to vet the bills at a Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce forum.” This basically means that Senator Allen was seeking the approval of the GR Chamber of Commerce, which begs the question if Senator Allen sought the approval from the general public?
However, the main focus of the story had to do with who benefits from the proposed legislation. The story leads off by having local businessman Guy Bazzani saying he would probably wait on plans to build another new building in Grand Rapids if it meant that his company would receive the benefits of tax breaks as proposed in the legislation.
In addition, the article states that Bazzani helped write the legislation that the Michigan senators are expected to introduce. Therefore, it would appear that legislation that will benefit people in the construction business was written people someone in the construction business. How is this possible and what does this say about how democracy works in this state?
He online version of the story includes an addition information box with some details on what tax benefits there would be. The source of information on the details on the tax breaks in the article were provided by the law firm Warner, Norcross & Judd. Interestingly enough Warner, Norcross & Judd has several areas in which their law form practices, one of them being construction.
In early February, one of the lawyers with Warner, Norcross & Judd wrote a short piece announcing that some legislators would be in Grand Rapids to discuss the proposed legislation. The same lawyer, John V. Byl, had written a longer piece last year discussing the benefits to legislation that would provide incentives to “green” construction.
The document states that numerous groups had been meeting to discuss the benefits and that “the Michigan chapter of the National Brownfield Association (NBA) organized a stakeholders group in spring 2008 to develop legislation that would promote green construction through financial incentives.” Some of these stakeholders were banks, government agencies, the Michigan Municipal League and members of the US Green Building Council.
Clearly, Warner, Norcross & Judd has a stake in promoting such legislation since their clients will be the beneficiaries of such policies. It is also worth mentioning that this law firm was the 144th largest entity to lobby Michigan legislators in 2009, according to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network (MCFN). MCFN records show that Warner, Norcross & Judd had spent $44,812 in 2009 lobbying Michigan legislators, which was up 18% from what they spent in 2008. However, we don’t know who were the recipients of the law firm’s lobby funds.
It is unfortunate that the Grand Rapids Press did not further investigate these dynamics, especially when they reported that those who will benefit most from this legislation had a hand in writing it.
Blackwater Took Hundreds of Guns From U.S. Military, Afghan Police
(The article is reposted from the Washington Independent)
Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military.
A Blackwater subsidiary known as Paravant that until recently operated in Afghanistan acquired the weapons for its employees’ “personal use,” according to committee staffers, as did other non-Paravant employees of Blackwater. Yet contractors in Afghanistan are not permitted to operate weapons without explicit permission from U.S. Central Command, something Blackwater never obtained. A November 2008 email from a Paravant vice president named Brian McCracken, obtained by the committee, nevertheless reads: “We have not received formal permission from the Army to carry weapons yet but I will take my chances.”
As a result of Blackwater’s disregard for U.S. military restrictions on contractor firearms, four employees of Paravant — which held a subcontract from defense giant Raytheon to train Afghan soldiers — under the influence of alcohol opened fire on a car carrying four Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009, wounding two. That incident, occurring less than two years after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, prompted the committee’s investigation.
“In the fight against the Taliban, the perception that the Afghans have of us is critical,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s clear to me that if we’re going to win that struggle, we need to know that contractor personnel are adequately screened, they’re adequately supervised and they’re adequately held accountable.” Levin will hold a hearing on Blackwater’s Afghanistan contracts Wednesday morning.
The committee’s investigation points to the contrary. Blackwater personnel appear to have gone to exceptional lengths to obtain weapons from U.S. military weapons storehouses intended for use by the Afghan police. According to the committee, at the behest of the company’s Afghanistan country manager, Ricky Chambers, Blackwater on at least two occasions acquired hundreds of rifles and pistols from a U.S. military facility near Kabul called 22 Bunkers by the military and Pol-e Charki by the Afghans. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East and South Asia, wrote to the committee to explain that “there is no current or past written policy, order, directive, or instruction that allows U.S. Military contractors or subcontractors in Afghanistan to use weapons stored at 22 Bunkers.”
On one of those occasions, in September 2008, Chief Warrant Officer Greg Sailer, who worked at 22 Bunkers and is a friend of a Blackwater officer working in Afghanistan, signed over more than 200 AK-47s to an individual identified as “Eric Cartman” or possibly “Carjman” from Blackwater’s Counter Narcotics Training Unit. A Blackwater lawyer told committee staff that no one by those names has ever been employed by the company. Eric Cartman is the name of an obnoxious character from Comedy Central’s popular “South Park” cartoon.
Blackwater personnel invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when approached by the committee to explain the weapons acquisitions from 22 Bunkers, according to committee staff. Sailer, who is still deployed to Afghanistan, told the committee that he thought Blackwater was signing for the weapons to train Afghan police, a task it has never conducted.
Not all of the guns received from Blackwater have been returned to the Afghan government — and, according to committee staff, many only began to be returned after staff approached the company for an explanation. “It was represented to us that all the weapons had been returned” to 22 Bunkers, Levin said. “That is not true. Hundreds of them were not returned.” Asked if that meant Blackwater lied to Congress, Levin replied, “They misrepresented the facts, and I’d like to leave it at that.”
Raytheon did not renew Paravant’s contract for training the Afghan army, which expired in September. Blackwater still holds a contract with the State Department worth millions of dollars to protect diplomats in Afghanistan. While that contract expires this year, Politico reported on Tuesday that Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, might acquire a new multimillion-dollar contract from the Defense Department to train Afghan police — the same police force that Blackwater’s weapons diversions from 22 Bunkers deprived of hundreds of pistols and rifles.
This is not the first time Blackwater has faced allegations of diverted weapons. In 2007, company employees came under federal investigation for improperly shipping hundreds of weapons to Iraq, some of which are believed to have been sold on the black market and acquired by a Kurdish terrorist group. A Blackwater statement at the time said allegations that the company was “in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities are baseless.” The New York Times reported in November that the company is negotiating with regulators over “hundreds of millions of dollars in fines” associated with the illicit weapons shipments.
In January, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, confirmed to Vanity Fair that his 12-year-old company — which has earned more than a billion dollars through government contracts in the past decade — was involved in a nascent terrorist assassination program run by the CIA, among other CIA activities. “I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket,” Prince told the magazine. Additionally, The Nation recently reported that Blackwater assists the Joint Special Operations Command with the terrorist manhunt in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including with the operations of JSOC’s armed unmanned drones.
Levin said his inquiry had uncovered “inadequate oversight by the Army over this contract.” The Florida-based Army office supposedly overseeing the contract did not even have a contracting officer representative in Afghanistan when the Paravant employees shot at Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009. Yet as early as December 2008, concerned Raytheon personnel informed that Army office that Paravant personnel were carrying unapproved weapons. An officer in Afghanistan responsible for training Afghan soldiers told the committee, “We should have had better control.”
Additionally, Blackwater personnel in Afghanistan, including those involved in both the May shooting and an earlier improper weapons discharge from December 2008, have been cited for, among other infractions, drug and alcohol abuse and, in one case, an “extensive criminal history.”
Wednesday’s hearing was expected to receive testimony from current and former Blackwater/Paravant officers, including Brian C. McCracken, the former Paravant vice president who now serves as Raytheon’s chief Afghanistan program officer; Fred Roitz, a Blackwater vice president; and John Walker, a former Paravant program officer.
A History of Immigration to Grand Rapids
As the issue of immigration and immigration reform continues to be an extreme point of contention in America, it’s very important to put it into a historical context. Grand Rapids Community College Professor and Grand Rapids Historian Emeritus Gordon Olson did just that on Monday night. Olson gave a talk titled “Fellow Immigrants: Ethnicity, Race, and the Peopling of Grand Rapids”.
Olson set the tone for his talk early on by relating a story about President Franklin Roosevelt addressing the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Daughters believed that the US needed to close its doors to further immigration. The story goes that Roosevelt addressed the group as “fellow immigrants” and reminded them that all of us are the children of immigrants one way or another.
Olson said that much of the immigration history of Grand Rapids began around 1780 when French fur traders and missionaries came here. In order to make room for more settlers, several treaties were signed to remove Native Americans from their indigenous lands. Olson specifically cited the Treaty of Detroit which he said “gave the Odawa a choice: either move north or west to Kansas.” He said the majority moved to an area around what is now Hart, north of Muskegon, where there is still a large Odawa reservation. Olson made it very clear that this was not the Odawa’s idea.
Olson said that during the period of 1865 to 1925 about 35 million people immigrated to the US. He specifically cited many crop diseases, like the infamous potato famine in Ireland as a reason for so many who came to America. He also said many were fleeing various “monarchs, aristocrats, and despots” in Europe. Olson made a point of dispelling the popular myth that all immigrants came through New York’s Ellis Island, which did not open till 1892. He said most actually immigrated through Castle Gardens, also in New York.
Much of Olson’s talk was devoted to many of the patterns that all of the immigrant groups went through. “Exploitation was always part of the immigrant experience” he said. Olson explained how whether you had just gotten off the boat in New York or had arrived here in Grand Rapids by train, there were people waiting for new arrivals offering help to find lodging or work, but always for fees, which could sometimes be crippling. Olsen said that if new immigrants accepted this help, you “were beholden to the company.”
While many new arrivals were farmers, especially amongst the Dutch, several immigrants chose to start their own small businesses, particularly restaurants, and neighborhood grocery stores. Olson said this was due to the fact that you could open for relatively cheap and they were businesses that the whole family could pitch in on.
As more immigrants began arriving in Grand Rapids, one of the clearest patterns that began was the neighborhoods in which people settled. For instance much of the Polish population set up neighborhoods around the Michigan St. and Diamond Ave. areas, as well as West Fulton. Various social clubs and street names in these areas still display much of this history.
Another persistent pattern Olson pointed to was hostility that all new immigrant groups received from those who got here before them. He said there was always a question from the older groups asking, “Will these people be as good a citizen as I am?”
Olson showed some pictures of many of the newer immigrant groups of the time, such as Lithuanians and Italians receiving “citizenship classes” often from earlier Dutch and Germans. He said these were often held in the back of factories, after workers had just finished ten-hour days.
I took a chance to ask Professor Olson about any tactics used through history to combat some of this hostility and racism that is still prevalent today, especially towards Latino immigrants. He said that throughout history, the tactic used most was for the newest group to assimilate into American culture and wait for the next group to show up.
Olson also devoted some time in his talk to the history of African-Americans in Grand Rapids. He said that Michigan was a wanted destination for the Underground Railroad because the state did not cooperate with returning escaped slaves. He also talked about how in 1872, William Hardy was elected to be the Gaines Township supervisor, and is believed to be the first African-American to hold public office in the state. He said that the Hardy family still owns a farm in the Gaines area, but due to construction of M-6 and other development, it has been getting increasingly smaller.
Olson said that as it got to be the 1950s and 60s, De Facto segregation became a problem here just as it did in most of the rest of the country. He said that in the summers of 1967 and 68, there were race riots along Jefferson Ave, in which looting and fires occurred.
Professor Olson finished his talk with a little bit of up to date history, such as immigration to Grand Rapids of Latinos, Vietnamese, and other groups displaced by wars around the world. He said that these groups are pretty much going through the same patterns as other immigrant groups, from forming their own neighborhoods and small businesses, to experiencing hostility and racism from other one time immigrants.
Whether or not America has ever been the Land of Opportunity is a matter of serious debate, but people displaced from all over the world have been immigrating to America for centuries and its pretty clear that the Grand Rapids history of immigration correlates pretty closely to the rest of the country.
Facing foreclosure? Free help is available.
Free film screening: American Casino
The Boardwalk, 940 Monroe NW
7 p.m. Weds. March 3, 2010
Learn how the housing crisis happened and what we can do about it in Kent County. Kym Spring from Foreclosure Response will answer questions and provide help. People can get help before it is too late if they are worried about a foreclosure.
The film, American Casino, lays out how the mortgage industry turned the US into a casino that gambled away millions of American’s homes. Since 2004, 6,773 homes have been lost to foreclosure in the city of Grand Rapids alone.
Locally, free housing counselors, such as those at Home Repair Services, have had an outstanding success rate; 47% of the homeowners HRS has counseled have managed to hold on to their homes. What many homeowners do not realize, housing counseling is available to anyone in foreclosure, no matter what their income.
New Michigan regulations have provided more protections for those renting their homes, as well. A renter in good standing can stay in a foreclosed home. The new owner has to let them sign a new lease, unless the owner occupies the home. In that case, the renter can remain in the home for 90 days. Legal Aid of West Michigan offers assistance for renters in foreclosed properties.
For information, visit the Foreclosure Response Web site.
Race, Race Relations, and Racism: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum
On Tuesday, as part of the Race & Ethnicity conference at GRCC, David Pilgrim with the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University spoke to an audience of 75 people about racism in the US.
Dr. Pilgrim talks about racism by using the artifacts that they have at the Jim Crow Museum. The museum consists of objects and historical examples of media that promote racism and White Supremacy.
The first example he shows the audience is an ad by General Electric selling a stove using a black boy with a piece of chicken in his hand. Another example is a small bank with a black image and the words Greedy Nigger Boy. An additional example was a still picture from the Bugs Bunny cartoon, where a Black man is shown in the cartoon with stereotypical features, particularly disproportionately large lips.
The museum, Dr. Pilgrim said, uses these tactics in order to get people to honestly talk about race and racism. He encourages people to go to ebay or other online auction sites and enter race-baiting terms and you will find that there are a tremendous amount of items for sale. Many of the items being sold use both old and contemporary racist images. He gives the example of a t-shirt that came out on CafePress as a result of the Don Imus statement directed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team. I went to CafePress and typed in Nappy Headed Ho and there were pages of items for sale.
Another example that Dr. Pilgrim gave was from when Obama was Senator and he called a news reporter sweetie, which led to items online calling Obama a pimp. The speaker then went on to ask how many people in the audience have been to a Pimp & Ho Party? Lots of people raised their hands. Then he asked, from whom did people learn pimp behavior from? One person yelled out Snoop Doggy Dogg. Dr. Pilgrim said that most of us have a clear association with the word pimp to that of a Black man.
Sticking to the discussion about racist representation as it relates to President Obama, Dr.Pilgrim say that some of the criticism of Obama is often framed in racialized language. He gives a list of anti-Black male caricatures over the past 200 years that are still used today, such as Tom, Brute, Sambo, Buck, Coon, Savage, Nat and Magic Negro. He then talks about how these caricatures are manifested today – in the news, movies, video games and music videos.
He then looks at examples of images using President Obama that continue these caricatures. One has Obama shining Sarah Palin’s shoes. He also shows a Tea Party sign of Obama bowing to the Saudi King sucking his jewels. In another image Obama was presented as a buffoon. A website called Chimpout.com has Obama as a thug.
Other examples with the President are a cartoon of Obama eating chicken, which is an image in the film Birth of a Nation. One image was a poster a woman had that said, “The Zoo has an African and the White House has a Lyin’ African.” Another sign Dr. Pilgrim shows the audience says, “Obama’s Plan = White Slavery.” This fits in with what Glen Beck said on his TV show last year, which was that Obama has a deep-seated hatred of White people and White culture.
The same kind of analysis was presented about traditional Anti-Black female caricatures like Mammy and Aunt Jemima. Dr. Pilgrim then looked at these caricatures as it relates to Michele Obama. One example was a T-shirt comparing Cindy McCain and Michele Obama, called Beauty and the Beast. There was another image of the First Lady as a Hoochee-Mama. Another image was a tote bag you could buy with a picture of Michele Obama and the phrase, “We’re planting melons in the White House garden.” In fact, Dr. Pilgrim said if you Google Michele Obama the first image was of Michele as a chimp.
At this point Dr. Pilgrim asks the audience if they thought that since the election of President Obama has the country moved into a post-racial society. His response to the question was to tell a story about a recent visit he had to a gun show at the Deltaplex in Grand Rapids. He asked one vendor if he could buy the most popular paper shooting target the guy sold. The man showed him this one called the “Official Running Nigger target.”
At the very end of his talk, Dr. Pilgrim stressed that these kinds of racist images were “not only a black thing.” He showed the audience a Halloween costume called Kung Fool that was sold at WalMart. He also had an image of Hillary Clinton as a man, standing at a men’s urinal. Then there was a whole series of Anti-immigrant images. Dr. Pilgrim even said there is a Border Patrol video game where Mexicans are presented as violent nationalists, drug smugglers and breeders.
By way of concluding, Dr. Pilgrim just wanted to reiterate that the purpose of looking at these images and the purpose of the Jim Crow Museum was to try to get Americans to have open and honest discussion about how pervasive racism still is in this country.
Obama says Public Option off the table before Health Care Summit
The Huffington Post is reporting that President Barack Obama, despite growing support in the Senate for the Public Option to be included in the Health Care plan, has decided to exclude it from the latest proposal from the White House.
“Obama’s decision not to push for the public option does not preclude it from being included. Indeed, any member of the Senate can introduce it as an amendment to a package moving through under the rules of reconciliation, a parliamentary process that precludes a filibuster.”
Some polling suggests that Americans still support a public option and many progressive Democrats would rather see the public option included even if the proposed legislation did not have bipartisan support.
However, one aspect of the health care debate that is being overlooked before Thursday’s “Health Care Summit,” is how much the health care industry is lobbying the government.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), “health care-related companies and special interest groups spent more than $544 million on federal lobbying efforts — obliterating their previous high from the year before.”
The CRP also notes that the entities which have lobbied the most – “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, AARP, Pfizer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the American Medical Association — all rank within the United States’ top 10 federal lobbying clients of 2009.” It should also be mentioned that the data for the first quarter of 2010 lobbying will not be in until mid-April, but as of last week the Democrats had received over $20 million from health care lobbyists compared to just over $13 million for Republicans.
Lastly, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), which represents 17,000 physicians who support a Single Payer health care plan, sent a request to the White House to be invited to Thursday’s Summit. The White House declined their request.
Comparing Coverage of the US “Surge” in Afghanistan
It has been a little more than a week since the new US military offensive began in the city of Marjah, Afghanistan. US military planners have hot the news circuit to discuss these plans and the mainstream media has tended to follow the script.
In yesterdays Grand Rapids Press there were two articles from the Associated Press that illustrated how the mainstream media often reflects the position of the US Department of Defense, much like the DOD’s blog 30 Days Through Afghanistan.
The first story appeared on page A10 and was headlined, “Taliban town skeptical of allies’ promises.” In some ways the article was better than the typical AP story in that readers do get to hear from Afghani civilians, some of which have bigger problems with the US/NATO occupation than they do with the Taliban.
The article does present general skepticism from Afghani villagers but the US military campaign is not questioned or presented in terms of a violation of international law or as an imperialist campaign. On top of these omissions, the article comes with a picture of US Marines shaking hands with people from the village, thus presenting a benign view of the US military campaign in Marjah.
The second AP article is actually presented as an “analysis” piece. In this piece, the AP writers follow the US script in the new military campaign. The article asks questions about whether or not the Taliban will retake Marjah and the role that Afghan soldiers are playing in this campaign, but it is still presented through a lens that accepts the US premise.
This second AP article also includes comments from Richard Nelson, whom the story identifies as a “former White House counter-terrorism expert.” Nelson is actually with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Pro-US think tank that includes on its board of directors Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and Brent Scowcroft.
News and Analysis from the Independent and International Press
Comparatively, when reading news media that doesn’t follow the US script, one is presented with a significantly different point of view. Jason Ditz, writing on Antiwar.com, says that the US campaign in Marjah is causing serious humanitarian concerns. Villagers have been forced to stay in doors for over a week due to the fighting and cannot get access to food and medicine. Farmers are also frustrated that they cannot gain access to their fields in order to tend to crops.
Author Juan Cole, who writes the Informed Comment blog, has his own analysis piece after the first week of the US campaign in Marjah. Cole has his own set of questions about whether or not the “Afghan Surge” will work.
Cole asks questions like will the US be able to secure and hold villages in predominantly Pashtun areas of Afghanistan? Cole doesn’t think this is possible and says that even in Marjah the community members are not showing much support for the US military presence. Another question Cole explores is whether or not the Afghan military will be effective in the long run? Again, the writer thinks that this is not likely. First, many of those in the Afghan army are not literate and have not shown much initiative in fighting. Second, the majority of those in the military are Tajiks, which leads Cole to conclude that since there are serious tensions between Pashtuns and Tajiks the Afghan army will not be successful in the areas, which are now controlled by the Taliban, which are predominantly Pashtun.
Another news that doesn’t fir into the US script on Afghanistan is what was presented on Democracy Now today. The independent news organization reported that the Dutch government is pulling its troops out of Afghanistan, that there is growing anti-war sentiment in Germany and that another US/NATO air strike killed 33 Afghan civilians yesterday.
Lastly, it is worth hearing directly from Afghanis in this video provided by Al Jazeera. In this video civilians fleeing Marjah express their fears about the US military campaign.
Bloom Movie Night – Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power
Robert F. Williams was the forefather of the Black Power movement and broke dramatic new ground by internationalizing the African American struggle. Negroes with Guns is not only an electrifying look at an historically erased leader, but also provides a thought-provoking examination of Black radicalism and resistance and serves as a launching pad for the study of Black liberation philosophies. Insightful interviews with historian Clayborne Carson, biographer Timothy Tyson, Julian Bond, and a first person account by Mabel Williams, Robert’s wife, bring the story to life.
The Bloom Collective will be screening Negroes With Guns this Thursday, February 25. This California Newsreel film is a powerful, which will be followed by discussion.
Negroes with Guns
Thursday, February 25
7pm
Bloom Collective – 1134 Wealthy
$3 suggested donation
