Anti-Racist Activism

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Permalink Reply by CocoaPuss Zine on March 27, 2009 at 11:04pm

i work at a homeless shelter. It isn't really anti-racist but it does benefit the community.

I'm going to grad school in the fall to study maternal and child health and hopefully learn ways to lower the infant mortality rate of black babies and increase the rate of black women breastfeeding. Again, not anti racist, but the disparities in health care make me angry.

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Permalink Reply by osa on March 28, 2009 at 9:22am

What is the demographic of the homeless shelter? Lots of people of color? Lots of kids? What do you do there and how often do you do it? A friend of mine in Boston started The Prison Birth Project where she provides services for pregnant mamas in prisons. There's always a way that you can radicalize whatever it is you're interested in. Thanks for sharing! And by the way, I would definitely call that anti-racist. The higher death rate of black babies is definitely a symptom of racism in our society. Black health care is such a pressing issue.

CocoaPuss Zine said:

i work at a homeless shelter. It isn't really anti-racist but it does benefit the community.

I'm going to grad school in the fall to study maternal and child health and hopefully learn ways to lower the infant mortality rate of black babies and increase the rate of black women breastfeeding. Again, not anti racist, but the disparities in health care make me angry.

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Permalink Reply by MILK on April 8, 2009 at 1:22pm

I'm an organizer with Socialist Party USA NY local. Currently the local is focused on the NY state & city budget cuts. Basically the city & the state is facing the largest deficit in it's history and poor people are being squeezed for the cash by cuts in health care, public transportation, library closures and education hikes. Were also using the issue to connect with small and isolated community activist groups and encourage them to work on larger city wide scale to increase pressure on the city council.

Are you still working with Anarchist People of Color? I really like that group a lot. The next G20 meeting will be in NY in sept 09. If you or any folks from your group are planing on coming out let me know, we might be able to help with housing.

Below I've pasted some links to our sites.

Peace,

http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/
http://www.spnyc.org/main/
http://socialistparty-usa.org/

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Permalink Reply by CocoaPuss Zine on April 13, 2009 at 12:13pm

i guess most of the people at the homeless shelter are black men. some spanish speakers and some white. maybe 60%-70% men and the rest women. so yeah i guess i am doing some sort of anti racist work even if it's just with my other coworkers and challenging their assumptions about people and their lives.

the prison birth project sounds awesome. we have one of those in WA already, but i think it has a different name. women here who have short sentences and who are pregnant can keep their babies with them after birth for up to maybe three years. they have a daycare and everything in the prison. that is something i would definitely love to get involved in.

osa said:

What is the demographic of the homeless shelter? Lots of people of color? Lots of kids? What do you do there and how often do you do it? A friend of mine in Boston started The Prison Birth Project where she provides services for pregnant mamas in prisons. There's always a way that you can radicalize whatever it is you're interested in. Thanks for sharing! And by the way, I would definitely call that anti-racist. The higher death rate of black babies is definitely a symptom of racism in our society. Black health care is such a pressing issue.

CocoaPuss Zine said:

i work at a homeless shelter. It isn't really anti-racist but it does benefit the community.

I'm going to grad school in the fall to study maternal and child health and hopefully learn ways to lower the infant mortality rate of black babies and increase the rate of black women breastfeeding. Again, not anti racist, but the disparities in health care make me angry.

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Permalink Reply by coollikethat on April 13, 2009 at 7:06pm

This is a cool-ass thread to reply to, because I'm with a group here in Detroit called the Moratorium Now! Coalition,which is an offshoot of MECAWI (Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice). We just got back last Sunday from participating and marching in the anti-Wall Street protests on April 4 & 5 (that was fun as hell, especially when we stood in front of AIG's headquarters hollering at the bankers with well over a couple of hundred people and photographers flashing cameras in front. I'm walking down the sidewalk with everybody screaming, "WHERE'S OUR BAILOUT? When are we gonna get some of that $160 million-dollar bonus kicked back to us?") Our group's main goal is to get a bill passed that would stop all foreclosures in the State of Michigan. I've been with the group for a year and a half, and MECAWI is basically like a cross section of people from different groups who fight different causes, so we're always juggling so many issues on our plate, because we're always pledging to fight racism,sexism,fight for workers and unions,supporting and trying to help political prisoners, fighting to keep people from losing their homes to foreclosure (we actually launched a huge hell-raising (in a good law-abiding way) protest last summer at the Bank of America downtown and was able to help a disabled senior citizen and her disabled daughter from losing their home or 45 years---since Bank of America and the mortgage company Countrywide had just moved to the D, they didn't appreciate the bad publicity, and therefore ended up accepting the lady's reverse mortgage. That was a big triumph for us, and since then we're been able to save at least 2 other people in that same situation.

Sadly, since Detroit has the seventh largest foreclosure problem in the nation (as well as the highest unemployment rate int he nation,period) it's impossible for us to save as many people's homes as we would like---plus we're a small volunteer group (barely 15 of us). We're gonna have a People's Summit this coming June---all other out-of-state activists are invited to come if they can---read all about it on our websites:

www.moratorium-mi.org

www.mecawi.org

Also went to Baltimore, MD for 10 days in March to help organize and mobilize people to attend a foreclosure bill hearing with a mother-and-son organizing team---that was fun!

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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on April 13, 2009 at 7:27pm

Coollikethat, I don't remember if it was you, but were you the one who posted up a story featuring you and your neighbors fighting against abandoned, boarded up buildings that attract crimes in Detroit?

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Permalink Reply by coollikethat on April 13, 2009 at 7:41pm

coollikethat said:

This is a cool-ass thread to reply to, because I'm with a group here in Detroit called the Moratorium Now! Coalition,which is an offshoot of MECAWI (Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice). We just got back last Sunday from participating and marching in the anti-Wall Street protests on April 4 & 5 (that was fun as hell, especially when we stood in front of AIG's headquarters hollering at the bankers with well over a couple of hundred people and photographers flashing cameras in front. I'm walking down the sidewalk with everybody screaming, "WHERE'S OUR BAILOUT? When are we gonna get some of that $160 million-dollar bonus kicked back to us?") Our group's main goal is to get a bill passed that would stop all foreclosures in the State of Michigan. I've been with the group for a year and a half, and MECAWI is basically like a cross section of people from different groups who fight different causes, so we're always juggling so many issues on our plate, because we're always pledging to fight racism,sexism,fight for workers and unions,supporting and trying to help political prisoners, fighting to keep people from losing their homes to foreclosure (we actually launched a huge hell-raising (in a good law-abiding way) protest last summer at the Bank of America downtown and was able to help a disabled senior citizen and her disabled daughter from losing their home or 45 years---since Bank of America and the mortgage company Countrywide had just moved to the D, they didn't appreciate the bad publicity, and therefore ended up accepting the lady's reverse mortgage. That was a big triumph for us, and since then we're been able to save at least 2 other people in that same situation.

We also joined in a huge anti-war protest against Israel with probably half the Arab-American pop. of Dearborn a couple of months back. Sadly, since Detroit has the seventh largest foreclosure problem in the nation (as well as the highest unemployment rate int he nation,period) it's impossible for us to save as many people's homes as we would like---plus we're a small volunteer group (barely 15 of us). We're gonna have a People's Summit this coming June---all other out-of-state activists are invited to come if they can---read all about it on our websites:

www.moratorium-mi.org

www.mecawi.org

Also went to Baltimore, MD for 10 days in March to help organize and mobilize people to attend a foreclosure bill hearing with a mother-and-son organizing team---that was fun!

Basically we got up and ran all over East Baltimore leafleting and asking people to come to the foreclosure hearing to support the bill (which would provide a one-year moratorium (a halt) on all foreclosures in the city. The first Sunday I was there, three other people came to help---a lady from New Jersey, an engineer from Virginia by way of Pennsylvania, and a brother who was a social worker in the B,and a friend of the lady I was staying with. All four of us ran all over West Baltimore wheat-pasting leaflets on what I'd call traffic light boxes (those big silver box things you see at intersections). Two of us had to watch for the police, because apparently wheat pasting anything on the boxes is illegal, 'cause it's city property or whatever---we didn't gave a damn, though, and kept on doing what we had to do. One time at an intersection near a college while two of us were pasting, a crazy white dude dang near jumped out of his truck screaming at us, "Hey! You're defacing city property! I'm calling the police! That's fucking wrong!" We only had enough time to stare at him like, "What the fuck is HIS problem? We're not hurting nobody," before he jumped back in his SUV and drove the hell off. At one bus stop/intersection, a police car pulled up before I even saw it---luckily the engineer peeped it first & yelled out the secret code warning we'd agreed on, and I followed suit. Baltimore, from what my colleagues & hosts while I was staying there told me, has very similar problems as Detroit in terms of having a high rate of foreclosures, unemployment, as well as a majority black population. Of course the first thing I wanted to know was where the heck HOMICIDE & THE WIRE (my two favorite shows of all time) were filmed---in fact, while we were leafleting near a huge church, the social worker pointed out the housing project across the street from us as where some of the WIRE was shot. My hosts' group had a press conference about the foreclosure hearing,which was shown on the news that night (my host said that it was a slow news day and that's the only reason we got covered---hee hee hee--hey, it WAS a Sunday,though.) I had a good time organizing and seeing the city, plus my hosts, who showed up at the Wall Street protest with 10 other people in tow, said that I'd helped to build half their mailing list (I'd helped type as many names as I could from the petitions we'd collected) that felt cool as hell to know I'd been of some help.

Anyway, 2 members of the Moratorium Now Coalition are in this other group called Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality---here's their website:

http://www.detroitcoalition.org/2009/04/

Also, the Moratorium Now Coalition could use more young folks in its ranks---most of the peeps in both groups are old-school civil rights fighters themselves. So any young Detroiters who would like to be active in something positive, go to our websites and call us up,please! Or just anybody that would like to be active and help with anything we're doing.

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Permalink Reply by coollikethat on April 13, 2009 at 7:58pm

LesYpersound said:

Coollikethat, I don't remember if it was you, but were you the one who posted up a story featuring you and your neighbors fighting against abandoned, boarded up buildings that attract crimes in Detroit?

Yeah, that was me---the same 2 groups I just mentioned are involved with that. There have been several groups like ours in states like Ohio, Florida and even California taking a cue from what we're been doing here in the D and have since sprouted up and started their own Moratorium Now groups. If you'd like to start a similar group, or know somebody who does, please refer them to our website--it's got instructions on how to start a group like ours. Actually, we fight to keep people in their homes, which is near a losing battle since due to the huge layoffs and cuts from the Big 3. It's the city's responsibility to do something about the abandoned homes, but the city itself is damn near bankrupt to the tune of $300 million, or something like that. My 'hood is hit with foreclosed homes---you literally cannot walk down a single street where I live that dosen't have at least several empty boarded-up, tore-up homes on it. There's one house that's been getting stripped on the regular for the past year, and if you go down one street, there's at least 3 boarded-up apartments, several empty businesses, and every other house empty, as well as an abandoned school. It dosen't help that there have been abandoned homes/buildings sitting for years in the D because for some stupid reason, the city would never go ofter the owners who moved out of the D and didn't bother to maintain upkeep of their Detroit properties--I guess the city didn't care as long s the tax bill on them was paid---that's changed since then---a couple of years back, the city said all owners with abandoned property had better start doing some upkeep if they didn't pay their property taxes on time, or something like that. But, yeah, that's how bad it is here in terms of foreclosures and the general economy and how it's affecting people/businesses in the worse way possible.

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Permalink Reply by coollikethat on April 14, 2009 at 7:16pm

@Osa:

Thanks for starting this thread! And I like what you said about the Sisters in Action for Power---that's such a great idea---training young folks to organize in their own communities. Good on you for being involved with such an organization---we need more organizations like that here in the D! Keep doing your thing and go for it!

@MILK
So your group was at the Wall Street protests too? Did y'all get rained on during the speeches while standing for nearly 4 hours holding signs/wearing parkas handed out by Bail Out The People? I sure as heck did, but the amazing thing was that I wasn't tired, even after standing for over 4 hours and walking another 2. One of my colleagues in the group, who's also a great speaker and hell-raiser in her own right, actually got interviewed by Al-Jazeera (the CNN of the Middle East). I got to see if can find her interview anywhere on the Net.

So there's gonna be a G20 conference in NY in Sep.? My group might roll up there---that certainly sounds interesting. I'm gonna need to looke up some more info on that--thanks for the tip--there's some old-school Socialists and Communists in our group,too.


Another thing---while I was in New York staying in our host's house for the march/rally, I'm flipping through the cable channels and stopped at a music channel that said, "HOOD HITS--HOOD-TESTED,HOOD APPROVED". The very next morning while me and hell-raising college were discussing ways to get young folks to understand socialism, I suggested that we have a class at our office titled "Socialism in the 'Hood" to show young folks in the ghetto how it could be beneficial for them in terms of learning how to understand and use socialism in their everyday lives. We joked about it, but it would be cool if we could do that--just a thought!

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Permalink Reply by King Leonidas on April 20, 2009 at 5:50pm

ORWEL said:

Brian From ORWEL

I work for an Organization known as Excellent Education for Everyone (E3)

My days are spent fighting in the last great frontier of the civil rights movement. Education Reform. Specifically Urban education reform. Our main headquarters are located in Newark New Jersey and our first priority is destroying the corrupt practices of the NJ governement which seem to be controlled by the New Jersey Teachers Union (NJEA).

E3 feels that if we can take down the Teachers Union and close the achievement-gap in New Jersey, we can do the same with any other state in the country. We operate with a staff under 10 people and are going up against a 300+ thousand strong Union that would honestly like to see us die.

Why New Jersey you may ask. New Jersey is a special case. It is written in their constitution, loosly transalated, that "every child is entitled to a fair and effective education." New Jersey is the richest state in the country and they spend the most money on their education system. And the end result is a state where most black and brown kids can't even get a retail job because their highschool diploma's aren't worth shit. This coming from a state that spends on average $25,000 a year per public school student.

Most of the kids in these urban schools can graduate without even being able to read. The highschool exit exam for everyone in New Jersey Urban and Suburban schools is an EIGHT GRADE skills test that students can fail FOUR times and still receive a diploma. The exact same diploma as the kids who pass the exit exam the first time. Sounds crazy, but guess what... New Jersey IS crazy!

Knowledge is power. Urban Schools in New Jersey turn out a large majority powerless minorities. It is up to us and our constituency to help them take the power back.

I taught my 5 year old to read at home. I spend time with him every night... at least 30 minutes reading him stories or other things, since he was a baby. Now he can read. I did not need the govt or schools to help me with this. I helped myself. I wish more people would help themselves but I do agree that the children should not suffer because of lazy parents so I am okay with govt assistance in schooling or other programs to help the poor. However, these programs need to develop individuals an ability to take care of themselves ultimately. Otherwise we only make the problem worse. What I am saying here is that education reform is one component of a solution that ultimately must include grassroots movements to help parents get involved with their kids. It all starts at home people... we need to collectively start looking INWARD first and then outward to fill our needs.

I am proud to be an American every day because I live in the first nation that abolished slavery. America is always looked down upon for the horrors of slavery and often times blamed as being the worst nation for it... but the reality is that America was the ONE NATION TO END IT under good ole Abe. ALL of EUROPE practiced slavery and were pissed off as hell at America that we ended it and began the long yet unfinished journey to equality in our country. The greatest country. The one that ended slavery when all of Europe... and the rest of the world still embraced it. America, leading the way yet again... but we always take the blame for everything bad.

Peace!

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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on April 20, 2009 at 6:08pm

Re: above tangent ... I'm pretty sure that the British outlawed the slave trade (even destroyed Spanish-owned slave ports in Africa) and then abolished slavery throughout its empire before the American civil war. :/ This of course didn't curb the genocides or brutal exploitation that was, in effect, a process of dehumanizing people to provide cheap if not free labor and little to no resistance to the theft of those ppls' resources and the assault of their homeland.

the only thing that makes me proud of our government in the US is the living constitution--and a lot of the stuff that i really like about our constitution was inspired by the best of enlightenment and the egalitarian American Indian (e.g. iroquois) traditions of governing that served as a model to the "founders". that said, america hasn't lived up to its humanist promise since the get-go--and it reached an all-time low w/ the second Nixon: GWB.

so yay to activism and pushing back on a government that works against us as a marginalized people, but bleah to "revolutionary" work that wants to see the complete and utter demise of the US constitution and liberalism.

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Permalink Reply by Sekou on April 20, 2009 at 7:26pm

Peace and Freedom Party Member (San Diego branch)

Mumia Abu Jamal Friends and Family (San Diego branch)

Free Leonard Peltier (San Diego branch)

San Diego COPWATCH!!! (anti-police misconduct organization)

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