Next
week, on February 24, a court in the U.K. will hold a hearing to
determine whether to grant Trump’s request to extradite WikiLeaks
founderJulian Assange to the United States for trial on 18 charges under the Espionage Act carrying
up to 175 years in prison.
Assange’s alleged crimes date back to 2010, when the organization he
founded, WikiLeaks, transmitted documents to media outlets including Le
Monde, The Guardian and The New York Times. The documents, which were
provided to WikiLeaks by whistleblower Chelsea
Manning, included 250,000 US diplomatic cables and US army reports
about military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
exposed cases of torture, abduction and disappearances. The publication of these documents by media outlets was clearly in the public interest, and not an act of espionage. If the legal persecution of Assange continues, investigative journalism
and press freedom will be the victims, since news organizations
regularly rely on and publish classified information to serve the public
interest. Since
his arrest Assange has been locked
up in Belmarsh Prison in London and UN special rapporteur Nils Melzer
reported that he has been deliberately exposed to inhuman and degrading
treatment that could be described as psychological torture. Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray has said “he has all
the symptoms of a torture victim, in terms of disorientation &
difficulty in asserting their will & speaking coherently" Massimo Moratti of Amnesty International has publicly stated on their website that "Were Julian Assange to be extradicted or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, Britain would be in breach of its obligations under international law." Human Rights Watch published an article saying. "The only thing standing between an Assange prosecution and a major threat to global media freedom is Britain. It is urgent that it defend the principles at risk." Assange's arrest and possible extradition to face charges related to an alleged conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to publish documents that exposed corruption and criminality by numerous private businesses, tyrant, and countries worldwide is ultimately an attack on press freedom. The arrest sets a dangerous precedent that could extend to other media organizations. The NUJ has stated "US charges against Assange pose a huge threat, that could criminalise the critical work of investigative journalists and their ability to protect their sources." Assange is now in grave danger. The Trump administration is pressing for
his extradition to the US, where he will be indicted on fabricated
charges and face a heavy jail term or even the death penalty. Assange’s
only “crime” has been to expose to the world the war crimes and
diplomatic intrigues of US imperialism. Rather than being extradited to the U.S to be tried and imprisoned, he should be released
and allowed to return to his home to Australia. With renewed attacks on civil liberties by Boris Johnson and the Conservative Government looking increasingly likely, this fight is part of the same fight to ensure we are not silenced over Palestine and that anti-trade union laws do not become any stricter. Stopping the extradition of Assange is a fight for us all. The risk of an unfair trial is very real given the targeted public campaign against Assange undertaken by US officials at the highest levels. This has severely undermined his right to be presumed innocent. Join in calling on the UK government to respect the principles of freedom of expression and the defence of journalism, and to respect Assange's human rights. If we no longer know what out governments are doing and the criteria they are following if crimes are no longer being investigated, then it represents a grave danger to societal integrity. Please sign the following urgent petition to the UK government. Don't extradite Assange to the U,S. demanding that Assange is released and that he is ensured his safe passage home to Australia. https://www.codepink.org/assange?utm_campaign=assange_alert_feb20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepinkurging There is also a march from Australia House in London on 22 February. Find out more here. https://www.facebook.com/events/931609000567992/
( Dedicated to Caroline Flack and the proud people of Liverpool)
They are destroyers of rationality
They are the myopic voice of unreason,
They lie and smear the dead
They spread hatred and division,
They plague our towns with ignorance
They embrace the politics of misfortune,
They harass ordinary members of the public
They need to hear our condemnation,
They are a shit rag, not a newspaper
They are an insult to journalism,
They are hard right and xenophobic
They are homophobic bigoted scum,
They are poisonous muck rakers
They are cowards, an aberration,
They release nothing of any real value
They simply litter our streets with distortion,
They cause pain and too much sadness
They are shameless and can't be forgiven,
They are heartless, immoral bastards
They provoke outrage and much disgust,
They deserve to be put out of business
So please don't buy the bloody Sun.
"It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and
do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well,
and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet
into the forest of prejudice that besets us." - Anarchism It's Philosophy and Ideal (1898 ) - Peter Kropotkin
13th February 1921, marks the funeral of zoologist, evolutionary theorist, revolutionary and,Anarchist Philosopher Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin (Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин) which took place at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Kropotkin was born on 9 December 1842 into an aristocratic Russian family, and received a privileged education,as a member of the Russian ruling class but became recognised as a brilliant student. At he age of 15,he entered the Corps of Pages in St Petersburg, an elite Court institution attached to the imperial household. In 1862 he was promoted to the army and utilising the privilege that members of the Corps could choose their regiment, he decided to reject the career expected of him by his family and instead joined a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district.In Siberia he saw the horrors of the Tsarist penal system and witnessed the poverty and injustice, caused by it, and became frustrated by the central bureaucracy and local corruption in St Petersburg.
Around this time, he also became aware of anarchist ideas there, when the exiled poet Mikhail Mikhailov gave him a copy of Proudhon's System of Economic Contradictions to read. In 1871, he renounced his aristocratic heritage in 1871,abandoning material success
and would spend his life in the Spirit of Revolt that is the title of one of
his famous essays, he became convinced that the government was
unable as well as unwilling to make meaningful change in the lives of
peasants and workers. Kropotkin turned toward anarchism to find a viable
path to social change. He believed that capitalism and authoritarianism creates
artificial scarcity, which leads to privilege and inequality.
He worked with the Jura workers’ federation in
Switzerland, smuggled forbidden radical literature back to Russia, and
joined a workers’ circle in Russia, his political activities earned him a sentence in a St. Petersburg prison,
which ended in a spectacular and risky escape in June 1876. Prison in
Switzerland and France reinforced his views on repressive authority and
helped forge his belief in the need for non-violent, humane, and less
centralized forms of government. His 1877 plea for decent treatment in
prisons, which he called “universities of crime,” was decades ahead of
its time.
Like many an exile, after extensive travel across Europe, he ended up in
England 1886 in the midst of radical debate across Western Europe. He
moved between London, the south coast of England, and Switzerland,
endlessly torn between debate in the city and clean country air for his
prisonruined health. When not creating revolutionary theory, he wrote
copiously, undertook technical translations, and contributed the definitive treatise on Anarchism for the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
He continued his writing on science in numerous journals at this time as
well as contributing to the anarchist press. An expanded second
English-language edition of Modern Science and Anarchism appeared in December 1912, published to mark Kropotkin’s 70th birthday by the group around Freedom.
Age had not diminished his hopes or activity, and he still stressed
that the task of anarchists was “to aid the people to display in full
its creative powers for working out new institutions, leading to free
Anarchist-Communism” against the “two enemies” of Capital and the State.Through his many writings he attempted to put anarchism on a scientific
basis, and pointed out the economical and social value of the human
being, and the failure of Capitalism to reach this objective.He saw
human co-operation as ultimately being driven not by government, but by
groups of individuals, working together,
in order to make the world a better place. He combined the qualities of a
scientist and moralist with those of a revolutionary organiser and
propogandist. He lived completely by his words and deeds, and was also
known for his kindliness and towering intellect.
Kropotkin was a man of his time, a man of 19th-century science, philosophy, who was one of the great naturalists of his day, a sensibility that
developed in him in congruence not only with his cientific interests
but through lived experience,.In his book Mutual Aid contended on the basis of his own naturalist research in Siberia that cooperation was as much a part of animal and human behavior as conflict. He was also in the forefront of challenging the prevailing Darwinian principle that evolution was strictly about competition and the survival of the nastiest.
Given Kropotkin’s belief that brutality, unbending repression, and
inhumanity were the inevitable products of a centralized state, it is no
coincidence that he was most impressed with commune -based democracy in
Switzerland and with the self-help and cooperative movements in England.With the advent of the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin approved of
soviets as giving the masses a voice but was appalled to see them
subordinated to the direction of the Party. Like most anarchists, he
held that replacing one autocracy with another, monarchy or republic,
solves nothing, and that progress and justice for the working people can
grow only from local power, cooperation, and equality. Returning to Russia
after the 1917 Revolution, he was honored by the new government, who desiring to legitimize Bolshevik authority with the reputation of a
universally respected anarchist, Lenin maintained cordial relations with
Kropotkin; Bolshevik propagandists
took advantage of this to publicize the lie that Kropotkin was more or
less in favor of the Bolshevik program. In fact, Kropotkin opposed their
authoritarian program, as he made clear in a series of statements and
protests. Far from endorsing Lenin’s seizure of state power, Kropotkin
is quoted as saying “Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. He
is a madman, an immolator, wishful of burning, and slaughter, and
sacrificing.”
Kropotkin died of pneumonia on February 8,1921 in the city of Dimitrov in Russia. In the 1920s Roger N. Baldwin summed up Kropotkin this way.
“Kropotkin is referred to by scores of people who knew him in all
walks of life as “the noblest man” they ever knew. Oscar Wilde called
him one of the two really happy men he had ever met…In the anarchist
movement he was held in the deepest affection by thousands–“notre
Pierre” the French workers called him. Never assuming position of
leadership, he nevertheless led by the moral force of his personality
and the breadth of his intellect. He combined in extraordinary measure
high qualities of character with a fine mind and passionate social
feeling. His life made a deep impression on a great range of classes–the
whole scientific world, the Russian revolutionary movement, the radical
movements of all schools, and in the literary world which cared little
or nothing for science or revolution.”
Kropotkin’s funeral, on February 13, 1921, was arguably the last
anarchist demonstration in Russia against Bolshevik tyranny, until the fall of the Soviet Union with thousands in attendance with the tacit approval of Lenin himself,making this funeral ceremony into a demonstration of unmistakable significance.Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman and many other prominent anarchists
from abroad participated. They managed to exert enough pressure on the Bolshevik
authorities to compel them to release seven anarchist prisoners for the
day; the Bolsheviks claimed they that would have released more but the
others supposedly refused to leave prison. Victor Serge recounts how
Aaron Baron, one of the anarchists who was temporarily released, addressed the mourners from Kropotkin’s graveside before vanishing forever into the jaws of the Soviet carceral system.
When Kropotkin died, a few weeks before the Kronstadt rebellion, the
repression of anarchists in Russia had not been completed yet.but in the course of the same year, this movement was to be smothered by the Bolshevik party, its leaders arrested, killed, on the run or deported.
Being the foremost opponents of tyranny, the anarchists were among the
first victims of Soviet prisons and firing squads. Emma Goldman,
Alexander Berkman, and many others tried to warn the world of the
horrors of Lenin and Stalin, but most people only learned about the gulag archipelago much later from Aleksandr Solzenhitsyn.
Deportation befell Grigori Maximov (1893-1950) who had represented the
Russian Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists at Kropotkins burial.
Maximov arranged for a photo report of the ceremony that started at the
home of the deceased in the village of Dmitrov and ended at the
graveyard of the Novodevičy monastery, with an in-state and procession
in Moscow in between. The photo report was meant to become a memorial
album (Berlin 1922) to 'make humanity acquainted with the work of
Kropotkin'.
In the video footage above, the film shows the procession from Kropotkin’s home to his final
burial place. in one of the country’s great monasteries. The subtitles name
the Anarchist great and good attending the funeral, including Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman. There were also delegates from the
Ukrainian Federation of Anarchists, exiled Anarchists from America,
whose banner, in English, can be seen, and even some Mensheviks and, I
think, Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was a truly mass meeting, perhaps the most touching moment of the documentary is at 7:40, which
has footage of anarchist political prisoners temporarily released in
order to attend the funeral. A number of them never had another free day in their lives.
Kropotkin's message that mutual aid and social cohesion should
be encouraged over massive social inequity and the exaltation of the
individual over society is as relevant to the central debates of our time as it was to the debates of his time. His legacy lives on, in the actions of the many who have been inspired by him and in his many writings, all of which are freely available online, a rich source of ideas for libertarians today.
Kropotkin, Emma Goldman summarised, “gave up his title and wealth for
the cause of humanity. He did more: since becoming an anarchist he had
forgone a brilliant scientific career to be better able to devote
himself to the development and interpretation of anarchist philosophy.
He became the most outstanding exponent of anarchist-communism, its
clearest thinker and theoretician. He was recognised by friend and foe
as one of the greatest minds and most unique personalities of the
nineteenth century.”
Further Reading :-
Peter Kropotkin : From
Prince to Rebel" (1996) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, Black
Rose Books, 1996
Cahm, Caroline. 1989. Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism 1871-1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the United Kingdom faces extremely high levels of homelessness, much more than it should face. Almost one in 50 Londoners are now homeless. A crisis that has regretfully been building for years,
Whether
a person is experiencing street homelessness or is living in temporary
shelters, squats, or insecure accommodation, homelessness has a deep
impact on physical and mental health.
Homelessness can bee synonymous with loneliness and isolation. Often experiencing homelessness means facing a breakdown of personal and social relationships, and struggling to connect with a social network that can provide support.
Loneliness has serious negative implications for the health and wellbeing of individuals. Many feel invisible. On top of that people who sleep rough often experience a high level of stigma, physical and verbal abuse. Many people
experiencing homelessness will not see a doctor for long periods of
time, due to difficulties in registering with a GP, travel distance from
the clinic, and fear of stigma. Last year it was found that vulnerable people without a fixed address are being turned away from GP surgeries despite NHS guidelines that say they should receive treatment. Doctors of the World, is an independent humanitarian movement working at home and abroad to empower excluded people to access healthcare. Their volunteer doctors
and nurses provide a first medical assessment, prescribe medicines,
dress wounds, and provide advice. Their caseworkers help patients register
with a GP, supporting them in building up their trust to access
healthcare. They also strive to give a voice to the most marginalised, reporting on violence , injustice and unmet health needs wherever they find them, and campaign to ensure everyone can access the
healthcare they need.
Durga Sivasathiaseelan, GP and coordinator, of Doctors of the World's; mobile clinic which opened on 16th October 2019 and runs on a weekly basis and visit predetermined spots across the city where rough sleepers and homeless people can attend. said: “It is incredibly
hard for people experiencing homelessness and sleeping rough to access
healthcare. And when diseases go untreated, they can worsen dramatically
and affect people’s long-term health.
“This is particularly true for those who are experiencing street
homelessness or live in unstable accommodation, where their lives can be
chaotic, making it more challenging to address health needs.
“Accessing healthcare becomes less of a priority when you are worried
about where you are going to sleep and if it will be safe and warm.
“The mobile nature of this clinic will allow us to reach the most
vulnerable people in the City in a way that is flexible to their needs.”
Doctors of the World's London Clinic is at the heart of what they do in the UK.Volunteer doctors, nurses and caseworker provide essential care and
support to children, women, and men who have fled conflict and
discrimination, or escaped torture, exploitation, and poverty. Many of
them now live under the radar, in unstable accommodation, and struggle
to survive, often homeless and living below the poverty line.
Helping people in need at home and abroad is
central to Doctor's of the World's ethos. As part of the Médecins du Monde international
network, they strive to provide care to the most vulnerable, not only in
emergencies abroad but also on our doorstep.They can count on over
3,000 volunteers working in 80 countries around the world, focusing on
conflict and emergencies, harm reduction, maternal and child’s health,
and migrants.They work both long and short term, through
emergency programmes, support to local healthcare systems, witnessing
and advocacy.
The origins of MdM lay with the Médecins Sans Frontières .During the Vietnam War,
the future founding members of MdM were approached with the idea of
aiding Vietnamese refugees fleeing by ship on the South China Sea.
The majority of the Médecins Sans Frontières were against aiding the
Vietnamese refugees. However, Kouchner, along with volunteer doctors,
journalists, and others organized a hospital boat, L'Île de lumière, to provide medical care and to report the refugees' suffering.
MdM was founded as Bernard Kouchner and 14 others doctors split from the group he previously founded,Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). It has been reported Kouchner felt that MSF was giving up its founding principle of témoignage ("witnessing"), which refers to aid workers making the atrocities they observe known to the public.
They've since provided essential healthcare to Syrian
refugees in the Middle East., and has also worked extensively with refugees in France and
Greece, running both static and mobile clinics providing mental health support to
refugees, migrants and strengthening the local
healthcare system.
Since opening in 1998, Doctor's of the World have
directly helped almost 20,000 people in the UK. Health is a human right. The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one
of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of
race, religion, political belief, economic or social conditions. The right to health for all people means that everyone should
have access to the health services they need, when and where they need
them. Doctors of the World depends on generous donations from individuals who believe no one should suffer or die because they cannot access the health services they need. Please consider supporting people who need healthcare.
£32 could pay for prescriptions for two patients
£49 could pay for a week of travel expenses for a volunteer
£160 could contribute towards the training and recruitment of their medical volunteers
£280 could help toward the running costs and medical supplies for their clinic
Today is Dawood al-Marhoon’s 25th birthday. It’s his sixth on death row in Saudi Arabia. Dawood was just a 17 year old boy when he was arrested for
allegedly participating in an anti-government protest. He was tortured
and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his
‘confession’. Ultimately Dawood was sentenced to death by beheading. He
could be executed at any moment, without prior notification.
As a teenager, Dawood was sociable and popular. He loved playing
football and computer games. He excelled in his studies, and dreamed of
pursuing his love for technology and computers by studying a degree in
engineering. Thousands of young Saudis took to the streets demanding
reform across the Kingdom in Arab Spring protests from February 2011, –
Dawood was allegedly one of them.
He was questioned by Saudi police and asked to “spy” on protesters.
After he refused, Saudi security forces arrested him from the Dammam
Central Hospital, where he was undergoing treatment for an eye injury
sustained in a traffic accident. Saudi forces surrounded the hospital
and arrested him as he prepared for surgery.
Dawood was transferred to a juvenile offenders’ facility, where he
was held incommunicado for nearly two weeks. During this time, he was
tortured and abused. While still a child, he was beaten and kicking,
trampled, and verbally abused. At least one interrogation session lasted
for 18 hours.
The Saudi authorities tortured him for weeks and refused to allow him
to communicate with anyone on the outside world. For two weeks,
Dawood’s family had no idea where Saudi authorities were holding him,
and he was prevented from speaking to a lawyer.
The investigators made him sign a blank document that would later
contain his confession to the crime of attending anti-government
protests, and association with fellow young protester Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr..
He was held for one year and four months before being transferred to
the General Department of Investigations headquarters in Dammam. All
access to legal counsel was denied during this period.
On 21 October 2014, after a total of seven hearings he was sentenced
to death by beheading by Saudi Arabia’s widely criticized Specialized
Criminal Court (SCC).
Throughout his time in detention and during his trial, Saudi
authorities prevented Dawood from speaking with a lawyer. Reprieve
understands that the Public Prosecution requested death by crucifixion.
The decision was appealed but the lawyers were not informed of any
further trial proceedings. On 29 September 2015, the SCC confirmed the
death sentence of death by beheading against Dawood.
In late September 2015, the Saudi authorities transferred Dawood from
Dammam prison to Riyadh’s Al-Hayir prison, where he is being kept in
solitary confinement with other people facing execution. Secrecy
surrounding Saudi’s execution practices prevents the family or the
prisoner from receiving prior notification of when the execution will be
carried out, so Dawood could now be executed at any time.
The human rights crisis in Saudi Arabia is getting worse despite promises of reform.
In 2019,there was a total of 184 executions in the Kingdom. There has
been an exponential rise in executions in the kingdom since 2015.
Saudi
Arabia systematically discriminates against its minority citizens and to
whomever is deemed a threat to the regime. Of those who are targeted by
the Saudi police are political activists, Shia, women’s rights
activists, and critics of the monarchy. More recently, 37 people were executed for allegedly spying for Iran and participating in anti-government demonstrations in the year 2019, including at least three who were children at the time of their alleged
offences, just like Dawood
It is important to condemn the
alarming escalation in the use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and the unjust actions practiced, which clearly violate
international fair trial standards, to extract confessions from their
prisoners. The Saudi government must immediately release Dawood and
provide him compensation for his unjust imprisonment, as well as release
all prisoners on death row arrested and charged on spurious political
charges. Dawood's situation is urgent.Many others, too numerous to be named, have also been sentenced to death
on ambiguous charges and following unfair trials. The reality is, more
and more violations of the right to life will occur without action. Let's not forget them .
Saudi Arabia continues to use
the death penalty as a tool of repression for non-violent and political
activities, with children among the many executed. This
systematic and flagrant disregard for basic human rights and respect for
the rule of law must be addressed by the international community.Global pressure must be applied to convince Saudi Arabia to uphold
international human rights standards, and place a moratorium on any
further death sentences and executions. Such actions , as both Reprieve and Amnesty International /have noted, are a brazen violation of international human rights law. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
Take action here :- https://act.reprieve.org.uk/page/content/saudiexecutions
Poet and educator Melvin Beaunoris who inspired generations of students to stand up for equal rights and dignity. was born in Missouri on 6 February 1898. one of four children of Reverend Alonzo Tolson, a Methodist
minister, and Lera (Hurt) Tolson, a seamstress of African-Creek
ancestry. Alonzo Tolson was also of mixed race, the son of an enslaved
woman and her white master. He served at various churches in the
Missouri and Iowa area until settling longer in Kansas City. Reverend
Tolson studied throughout his life to add to the limited education he
had first received, even taking Latin, Greek and Hebrew by
correspondence courses. Both parents emphasized education for their
children.
In 1924 he
began teaching at the historically black Wiley College in Marshall,
Texas. His students included James Farmer, founder of the Congress of
Racial Equality, and Heman Sweatt, who challenged the segregated
University of Texas Law School. He encouraged his students not only to be well-rounded people but to
also to stand up for their rights.
He not only taught at Wiley College, he coached the junior varsity
football team, directed the theater club, cofounded the black
intercollegiate Southern Association of Dramatic Speech and Arts, and
organized the Wiley Forensic Society, which was the Wiley College
debating club. The debating club earned national acclaim by winning and breaking the color barrier very successfully. A dedicated mentor, Tolson coached
Wiley's debate team through an impressive ten-year winning streak, from 1929 to 1939. Tolson
wrote all of the speeches and the team memorized the speeches and used
them. Tolson became such a master debater, that he would write the
rebuttals for his opponents opposing arguments before the debate. In
1935, they defeated the national champions from the University of
Southern California. Under Jim Crow segregation, African Americans did not often meet elite white schools in
competition, so the team's success symbolized progress and equality. The
film The Great Debaters depicted this David-and-Goliath story with Tolson portrayed by Denzel Washington.
After interviewing significant artists of the Harlem Renaissance for his
Master’s thesis, Tolson was inspired to write poetry exploring the
African American urban experience. His poetry began appearing in African/ American newspapers in the 1930s. In 1939 he published his first significant poem Dark Symphony; celebrating the accomplishments of the African race throughout history,while detailing the challenges they continued to face. it would win a national poetry contest sponsored by the American Negro
Exposition. The poem was later published in Atlantic Monthly; the poem
also got the attention of an editor who published his first collection
of verse, Rendezvous with America, in 1944.
In 1947, Tolson was accused of having been active in organizing farm
laborers and tenant farmers during the late 1930s (though the nature of
his activities is unclear) and of having radical leftist associations, but after maintaining a successful teaching and coaching career at Wiley, Tolson accepted a position at Langston University .in Langston, Oklahoma. During that same year, he was appointed the Poet Laureate of Liberia, which inspired his second poetry book. Published in 1953, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia,
honored the centennial of Liberia’s founding. Tolson's greatest achievement, Liberia had been
founded in 1822 as part of a long-running and controversial debate about
whether to establish an African homeland for former slaves. By the time
Tolson came to write his poem, however, the question he faced was
rather different. What symbolic and cultural meaning did Liberia's
founding now have for blacks here and across the world? In seeking an
answer, reflecting on the history of slavery and writing while the
memory of World War II and of the evil of European fascism was still
fresh, Tolson came to major conclusions about the shape of Western
civilization through the prism's of his dense, allusive poem.
In addition to his
professional work, Tolson served two consecutive terms as Mayor of
Langston, in Langston, Oklahoma from 1954 to 1960. Tolson’s final poetry book, Harlem Gallery, published in 1965, helped establish him as a widely recognized modernist poet, his masterpiece chronicles, as he put it,
black Americans' "New World odyssey, / from chattel to Esquire!
President
Lyndon Johnson invited Tolson to the White House in 1965 to present his
latest poetry, a crowning achievement in his long and remarkable
career. Tolson died the following year in Dallas on Augusr 29 after undergoing surgery for cancer, having left a legacy to be proud of.
The Library of Congress
holds the papers of Melvin B. Tolson, which include correspondence,
drafts of writings, speeches, research notes, and materials relating to
Tolson's literary career, the Harlem Renaissance, and other aspects of
African American art, literature, and culture.
After Tolson's death, Langston University in
Oklahoma began an archive of African American culture and literature
that bore his name. Today, that collection has grown into the Melvin B. Tolson Black Heritage Center.
The Center houses over 7,000 volumes related to African American newspapers and periodicals. With increasing interest in Tolson and his literary period, in 1999 the University of Virginia published a collection of his poetry entitled Harlem Gallery and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson, edited by Raymond Nelson.
In the following poem "A Song for Myself," the narrator discusses the human soul.
Those who are bad men cannot escape the afterlife. In death, there is
truth. If the person is a bad person in life and has a bad soul, they
will be condemned in the afterlife. The narrator hopes he has a good
enough soul to have a good afterlife.
A Song For Myself - Melvin B. Tolson
I judge
My soul
Eagle
Nor mole:
A man
Is what
He saves
From rot.
The corn
Will fat
A hog
Or rat:
Are these
Dry bones
A hut's
Or throne's?
Who filled
The moat
Twixt sheep
And goat?
Let Death,
The twin
of Life,
Slip in?
Prophets
Arise,
Mask-hid,
Unwise,
Divide
The earth
By class
and birth.
Caesars
Without,
The People
Shall rout;
Caesars
Within,
Crush flat
As tin.
Who makes
A noose
Envies
The goose.
Who digs
A pit
Dices
For it.
Shall tears
Be shed
For those
Whose bread
Is thieved
Headlong?
Tears right
No wrong.
Prophets
Shall teach
The meek
To reach.
Leave not
To God
The boot
And rod.
The straight
Lines curve?
Failure
Of nerve?
Blind-spots
Assail?
Times have
Their Braille.
If hue
Of skin
Trademark
A sin,
Blame not
The make
For God's
Mistake.
Since flesh
And bone
Turn dust
And stone,
With life
So brief,
Why add
To grief?
I sift
The chaff
From wheat
and laugh.
No curse
Can stop
The tick
Of clock.
Those who
Wall in
Themselves
And grin
Commit
Incest
And spawn
A pest.
What's writ
In vice
Is writ
In ice.
The truth
Is not
Of fruits
That rot.
A sponge,
The mind
Soaks in
The kind
Of stuff
That fate's
Milieu
Dictates.
Jesus,
Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Descartes,
Lenin,
Chladni,
Have lodged
With me.
I snatch
From hooks
The meat
Of books.
I seek
Frontiers,
Not worlds
On biers.
The snake
Entoils
The pig
With coils.
The pig's
Skewed wail
Does not
Prevail.
Old men
Grow worse
With prayer
Or curse:
Their staffs
Thwack youth
Starved thin
For truth.
Today
The Few
Yield poets
Their due;
Tomorrow
The Mass
Judgment
Shall pass.
I harbor
One fear
If death
Crouch near:
Does my
Creed span
The Gulf
Of Man?
And when
I go
In calm
Or blow
From mice
And men,
Selah!
What . . . then?
The “Mother of the Civil Rights
Movement,” Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott on
December 5, 1955, was born on this day in 1913. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in
Tuskegee, Alabama, her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was
two. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with
her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents
were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality; the family
lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth.
Parks'
childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and
activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather
stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members
marched down the street, and listened in fear as lynchings occurred near her
home.
The family moved to Montgomery;
Parks attended various segregated schools in Montgomery before attending
a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State
Teachers College for Negroes. Shortly after starting secondary school,
Parks left to take care of her grandmother who was sick. She married barber Raymond Parks in 1932, aged 19 and the couple
joined the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Montgomery chapter where she would eventually serve as secretary. Parks is famously known for her refusal to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. standing in the aisle on
December 1, 1955.The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be
segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of
the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying
out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were
required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and
black passengers by assigning seats.
This was accomplished with a
line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in
the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When
an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the
front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the
back door.
As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it
began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and
the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the
aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the
two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their
seats.
The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers
the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone,
regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the
custom of moving back the sign separating black and white passengers
and, if necessary, asking black passengers to give up their seats to
white passengers. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had
the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them
removed.
Three of the other black passengers on the bus complied
with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver
demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't
think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had
her arrested.
The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of
Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to
police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail. Four days later, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and
violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was
found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs. Parks not only
appealed her conviction, she formally challenged the legality of
racial segregation.
Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city
buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 , the day of Parks' trial, in protest
of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school,
take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community
not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be
successful. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/montgomery-bus-boycott.html ,
as it came to be known, was a huge success, lasting for 381 days and
ending with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public
transit systems to be unconstitutional. And Rosa's act of dignified defiance and courage triggered a wave of protest that reverberated
throughout the United States.
Contrary to some reports, Parks wasn’t physically tired and was able to
leave her seat. She refused, on principle, to surrender her seat because
of her race, which was the law in Montgomery at the time.
The
NAACP realized it had the right person to work with, as it battled
against the system of segregation in Montgomery. It also worked with
another group of local leaders to stage a one-day boycott of passenger
buses, when Parks went to court.The
group expanded to include other people, chose a name, the Montgomery
Improvement Association, and planned an extended boycott.
But the MIA also needed a public spokesman with leadership qualities to
make their fight into a wide-ranging cause.Their pick was a little-known
pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery: Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws
(also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery
appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13,
1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring
segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.
With the
transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the
legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice
but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the
boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal
action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American
community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most
successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.
Rosa for many years after would
continue as an activist in the movement for the rights of exploited
people.Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the
boycott,and after losing her tailoring job and receiving death threats.
Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to
Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided.
In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her
support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography,
“Rosa Parks: My Story.”
She remained an active member of the NAACP and became an administrative
aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. a
post she held until her 1988 retirement..
The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute Of Self-Development was established
in 1987 to offer job training for black youth.
In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the
highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also sponsors an annual Rosa
Parks Freedom Award.
Her husband, brother and mother
all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she
became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the
U.S. Capitol. At
the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the
first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque
built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.
Rosa passed away October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. City officials in
Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front
seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor
of Parks until her funeral. Today Rosa Parks’ legacy continues to live
on in honor of her historic acts of courage. Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1,
have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in the U.S. states of
California and Ohio. Her monumental efforts were recognized when she won a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
In 2000, a library and museum in Montgomery were dedicated to Rosa Parks. The Rosa Parks Museum https://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/ houses
a replica of the bus that sparked the civil rights activists to boycott
an important mode of transportation. The library and children's wing
not only tell the story of Parks to its hundreds of visitors, but also
those of Nixon, Gray, and Colvin. There is a "time travel" machine that
transports the visitors from the 1800s to the Jim Crowe era and to 1950s
Montgomery.
Let us remember her today, and acknowledge Rosa's act of quiet
resistance, that still resonates down the corridors of time. She remains
a symbol to all to remain free. It is worth noting that in the same
week President Obama honored Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday, Israel
announced two newly segregated bus lines for Palestinian workers
traveling to Israel from the West Bank. The “Palestinian only” buses
were introduced after Israeli settlers complained that fellow
Palestinian passengers posed a “security risk.”The timing of Israel’s
announcement set the internet abuzz with
moralizing references to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Jim Crow.
Let us also think what would happen if a Palestinian Rosa Parks chose
to sit on a segregated West Bank Bus, Palestinians in the present moment
are unable to travel freely in their own country - they even have to
have permits to enter Jerusalem.
"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that
degrades human personality is unjust," Martin Luther King said "All segregation
statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages
the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority
and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Like Rosa Parks before her, Palestinians are struggling against
unjust laws, in their case the injustice of a 50-year military occupation
that denies Palestinians their land, right to travel and
self-determination. Israel maintains an apartheid system of democracy
for Israeli Jews - and discrimination against Israelis of colour -
second-class citizenship for Israeli citizens of Arab descent, and
dispossession and disenfranchisement for Palestinian Arabs in the
territories.
We need more brave souls like Rosa Parks, because as history has shown.it is possible
for a single person to engage in an act of resistance against
oppression that can park the seed of change. On this day, Parks would have been 107 years old. As Rosa Parks once said, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
The Neville Brothers - Sister Rosa
December 1, 1955
Our freedom movement came alive
And because of Sister Rosa you know
We don’t ride on the back of the bus no more
Sister Rosa she was tired one day
After a hard day on her job
When all she wanted was a well deserved rest
Not a scene from an angry mob
A bus driver said, "Lady, you got to get up
'Cause a white person wants that seat"
But Miss Rosa said, "No, not no more
I’m gonna sit here and rest my feet"
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
Now, the police came without fail
And took Sister Rosa off to jail
And 14 dollars was her fine
Brother Martin Luther King knew it was our time
The people of Montgomery sat down to talk
It was decided all God's children should walk
Until segregation was brought to its knees
And we obtain freedom and equality, yeah
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
So we dedicate this song to thee
For being the symbol of our dignity
Thank you Sister Rosa
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks
