North America

Three weeks after Hurricane Maria’s September 16, 2017 devastating landing on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, causing the destruction of its fragile colonialist infrastructure, the people are still dying, there is no electrical grid, and food, water and medicine are trickling down to the people at a snail’s pace.

St. Petersburg, Florida—A plane crashed less than a block away from the Uhuru House on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at 3:45pm. A total of 5 people were injured and 3 cars totaled. Amongst the three injured was an African woman and her grandson.

Do a google image search for “pimp” and your results will turn up hundreds of pictures of black men, two pictures of Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, and a few of white men dressed in the pimp costume synonymous with what black men wore in 1970’s blaxploitation films.

The pimp, in capitalist society, is often glamorized and held in high esteem for his ability to control women.

Rappers like Snoop Dog, Pimp C, 50 Cent and Ice T (a former pimp), have claimed to reinvent the term to mean someone who dresses luxuriously, hustles and gets money (without selling the sex of women).

This reinvention, however, has not reached the back alleys and dark rooms where, to be a pimp still means to abuse, coerce and steal from women who have sex for money.

Similarly, if you did a google search for “whore” or its slang “hoe,” the results are a lot less black and more white, lots and lots of white women...and garden tools.

At first your response could be “good, black women are not seen as whores,” but seconds later you realize that is not the case as you recall the historical perception of African women as oversexed harlots and white power’s practice of forcibly using our bodies for sexual gratification and the production of workers.

HOUSTON—Hurricane Harvey made landfall upon Rockport Texas on Friday, August 25th at 11pm local time as a Category 4 hurricane. The storm, which is expected to last for a next few days, is déjà vu for African (black) people, reminding us of Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans 12 years ago.

This familiarity which one may feel about Hurricane Katrina when looking at Hurricane Harvey is the yet another slap-in-the-face evidence that the State does not care about African people.

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA—Today is a historic day for the people of St. Petersburg as they gear up excitedly, ready to make real change in the city by voting in two of the most radical elections that the city has ever seen.

The race for District 6 City Council and Mayor of St. Petersburg has reached its climax as the masses head to the polls to cast their votes for the candidates with the best plans to bring real, material change to the city.

CHICAGO—The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) held their annual national conference at Chicago State University in Chicago, Illinois on Saturday and Sunday, August 12-13, 2017.  The theme of the conference was “The Ballot and the Bullet: Elections, War and Peace in the Era of Trump.”

The conference was attended by African people from throughout the U.S. including Philadelphia, Texas, Washington D.C., Florida and Chicago itself.

The program was filled with important reports from the coalition working groups, resolutions for action and cutting edge analysis.

As the theme stated, the focus of the program was on raising up strategy for African people to engage in resistance for self-determination through the electoral process, while also recognizing that doing so cannot serve as a substitute for anti-colonial resistance through armed struggle.

“Millennials” is a generalized and imprecise term used to describe people born between the years of 1981 and 1997. This generation lives in a time where access to information is both endless and extremely suppressed. A time when paid leave is the system’s response to videos of police shootings that have live coverage, millions of views and instant commentary. A time where hashtags can start movements and end careers.

We are a generation that demands an immediate stance in response to the world and its developments. We are a generation that was sold a message of hope and change only to be betrayed by the status quo of a corrupt system that had been turned against the interests of the people.

Presented one piece of evidence after the other, millennials are suspicious, looking to differentiate between genuine representatives of progress and those who would sell out at the expense of the people.

Despite what corporate media would have you think who millennials are, we are invested and often participate in politics. Locally this is evident from the huge millennial support of Eritha Akilé Cainion’s campaign for District 6 and Jesse Nevel’s campaign for Mayor.

With the discussion of Donald Trump and his defense of white nationalism, our people are focusing on neo-nazis, the KKK and alt-right but the real face of white nationalism are right in front of us from the politicians that set policies to criminalize and occupy black communities, to the police who murder us in the streets, and to the media who depict us as criminals and subhuman.

Lisa Gartner (@lisagartner) and Zachary T. Sampson (@zackthompson) of the Tampa Bay Times @tampabaytimes wrote an article entitled “Wrong Way: At 15 Isaiah Battle was the County’s No. 1 car thief. He had every reason to stop.”

It is a defamatory article centered around a 16-year-old child, Isaiah whose sister, Dominique Battle, was drowned to death after being chased by the Pinellas County Sheriff's office. Over 19 Pinellas county sheriff deputies watched them drown, all caught on video while deputies laughed and joked.

The Tampa Bay Times called Isaiah the “No. 1 car thief” in Pinellas County despite the fact that these were arrests not convictions. Theft is a legal conclusion that a judge or jury makes, everyone has a presumption of innocent until proven guilty, there statements are blatant libel.

This article is part of a special Black August series on TheBurningSpear.com. We encourage all our readers to help “Keep The Spear Burning” during our Black August Fund Drive. Support your black power newspaper! Sponsor a prisoner or donate today at Burningspearmarketplace.com

Black August is a commemoration begun in 1979 by Africans in prison to raise up those who have died struggling for African liberation from within prison walls or in attempts to liberate Africans from the colonial prisons like George and Jonathan Jackson.