front and center with baba zayid: SPECIAL TO FRONT AND CENTER!
THE MALCOLM XCOMMEMO...: SPECIAL TO FRONT AND CENTER! THE MALCOLM X COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE PO BOX 380-122, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11238 718-512-5008 mxcc51...
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
SPECIAL TO FRONT AND CENTER!
THE MALCOLM X
COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
PO BOX 380-122, BROOKLYN,
NEW YORK 11238
718-512-5008 mxcc519@verizon.net
"Once we all realize that we have a common enemy, then we
unite,
on the basis
of what we have in common…"
Malcolm X—Message
to the Grass Roots
January 25, 2017
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE!
FIDEL HONORED IN NY AT HISTORIC SHABAZZ CENTER!
On Saturday, February 4th, Fidel Castro, the late champion
of the Cuban Revolution, will be saluted in a Memorial Tribute at the historic
Malcolm X /Dr. Betty Shabazz Center!
This moving gathering sponsored by
the NY/NJ Cuba Si’ Committee will
begin at 7pm.
“It is profoundly fitting that we
memorialize this great man where Malcolm rallied our people and where he
ultimately sacrificed his life,” said Zayid Muhammad, people’s artist and press
officer for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee.
Muhammad was referring to the
legendary meeting between Fidel and Malcolm at Harlem’s then famous Hotel
Theresa back in September 1960, when Malcolm invited Fidel to stay there in
Harlem when the city administration and lower Manhattan hotels were hostile to
the young socialist leader because of his political orientation. That landmark
moment, chronicled in Rosemari Mealy’s book Memories
Of A Meeting: Fidel Meets Malcolm X, cemented a bond of solidarity between
African Americans, progressive New Yorkers and the Cuban Revolution at the
height of the Cold War, something the Cuban people have always been deeply
appreciative of.
Fidel came back to Harlem to speak
at Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1995 and at Riverside Church in 2000 to
overflowing crowds reigniting this incredible people to people solidarity.
Fidel Castro, who will go down in
history as one of the most important revolutionaries of the modern era, passed
away at 90 on November 25th.
From critical infrastructure support
to the VietCong during the Vietnam war,
to Operation Carlotta where Cuban troops helped defeat the Apartheid Regime, to
Cuban doctors providing critical care in the aftermath of the Haitian
earthquake, to providing critical care in West Africa to check the dangerous
Ebola epidemic, to free education for young people whose countries had been
destabilized by US sponsored proxy wars, to providing sanctuary to freedom
fighters exiled like Assata Shakur, Guillermo Morales and Nehanda Abiodun, to
the amazing Latin American Medical School in Havana that has already turned out
26,000 doctors from all over the world including 150 from the United States, his
relationship with the international community is well documented and is now the
stuff of legend. His relationship with New York’s progressive community over a
period at least 50 years is very much a part of that legacy.
“Fidel stewarded a proud people from
a poor country on a small island on how to make a lasting and humanizing impact
on the world by being steadfast to principle and willing to share everything,”
Muhammad went on.
“We can not thank him and the great
people of Cuba enough.”
Muhammad, who will close the evening
with a poetic tribute to Fidel, will be among a host of many expressing
profound gratitude to the late revolutionary and to the Cuban people at the
memorial.
Liberation theologian Fr. Luis
Barrios will give salute Fidel on behalf of progressive clergy. Rising
AfroCuban Jazz pianist Dayramiz Gonzalez and violinist Tatiana Ferrer will do a
much anticipated musical tribute. Impact Repertory Theatre, Zenzile Khoisan
from South Africa and Frank Velgara will also do poetic tributes. Representatives
from the UN Missions of Angola, South Africa, Namibia and Venezuela, are
expected to participate. Graduates from ELAM, the international Latin American
Medical School will also express their gratitude. A moving video tribute to
Fidel will close out this amazing evening.
“It will be an evening full with
revolutionary love,” exclaimed Sally O’Brien of WBAI’s Cuba In Focus and Where
We Live…
Monday, January 2, 2017
mothers cry for justice comes to newark!
‘MOTHERS CRY FOR JUSTICE’ TOUR STANDS WITH NEWARK
MOTHER!
by ‘bro. zayid’
Mothers Cry For Justice, a coalition
of mothers who have lost loved ones to police violence, came to Newark last
Friday as apart of their national tour.
They came to stand with Sheila Reid
of Newark, the mother of Jerome Reid, to mark the second anniversary of his
death at the hands of two police officers in Bridgeton, NJ on December 30, 2014.
The case is widely known as ‘New
Jersey’s Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Case’ because Reid’s death was captured on
videotape clearly exhibiting his hands in the surrender position when he was
then shot seven times.
Reid’s mother, along with the People’s
Organization for Progress, has been demanding that the Justice Department take
over the case and federally charge the officers.
Incredibly, to surprise of many
legal observers, Paul Fishman, US Attorney for New Jersey, announced in August,
that no such charges would be brought against the officers.
“We have the videotape of the
police.
“We have medical examiner’s report
who opined that the case was a homicide.
“We have a history of harassment of
Reid by the officer who put six of the seven bullets in his body, but the
Justice Department doesn’t have enough evidence to indict.
“What more do they need?” asked an
angry and incredulous Lawrence Hamm, chairman for the People’s Organization for
Progress.
“We want Attorney General Loretta
Lynch to shake up this investigation the same way they are shaking the
investigation of the videotaped strangulation of Eric Garner in New York,” he
insisted.
Khadijah Shakur, a NY nurse and
activist who valiantly served in an independent mission to Haiti after their
devastating earthquake several years ago, made a point to reveal how the
officers involved in the Reid case each had previous complaints against them,
that Officer Braheme Days, an African American officer, who not only had
previous hostile encounters with Reid before the incident, also had complaints
of him sexually extorting women in that community.
She produced a picture of the
officer with his son and then rhetorically asked Days.
“How would you feel if this happened
to your son?”
NJ Assemblyman John Wisniewski, running
for governor as a Sanders Democrat said that “in a nation that is supposed to
be as progressive and advanced as ours, it is wrong to see these tragedies play
out again and again.”
He said that if he were governor, he
would compel the NJ Attorney General to do the kind of investigations necessary
“so we do not see a continuation of lives lost, of lives stolen from us.”
Among the participants were NY-based
mothers Juanita Young, who lost her son Malcolm Ferguson to police violence in
2000. Young also endured a police assault protesting her son’s death.
Young, who has become a driving
force against police brutality since her son’s death, did not mince words.
She declared that these cases were
all cases of “murder” and that they need to be treated as such.
“Now we live in pain everyday
because some trigger happy cop decided to make our lives miserable,” she said
pointedly.
J.Andree Smith, who lost her son
Justin in 1998 to a horrible police beating while he was handcuffed in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, also participated and pointed to the new challenges facing the
struggle against police brutality in light of the recent election of Donald
Trump.
“We are moving into a facist regime.
“If you never been involved before, now
is the time.
“We have to accelerate our game.
“We are at a crossroads in this
country,” she declared.
Guinean immigrant Hawa Bah, mother
of Mohamed Bah, who endured the ordeal of for an ambulance to get her son emergency
medical help, only to have him shot ten times in their by the responding
officers instead, also participated.
Locally, Regina Ashford, mother of Kashad Ashford, who was shot to death in Lyndhurst, NJ two years ago, his grandmother former labor activist Cecille Hepburn, and Tawanna Graham, mother of Jahqui Graham, viciously beaten to death in East Orange NJ, also participated…
Locally, Regina Ashford, mother of Kashad Ashford, who was shot to death in Lyndhurst, NJ two years ago, his grandmother former labor activist Cecille Hepburn, and Tawanna Graham, mother of Jahqui Graham, viciously beaten to death in East Orange NJ, also participated…
©2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)