The U.S. Roots of the Central American Immigrant Influx

Before dying of pneumonia at a Guatemala hospital in late May, the recently deported 21-year-old Gustavo Antonio Vásquez Chaj told his family that the U.S. Border Patrol had kept him, at some point, wet, stripped of a layer of clothing, and in a cold cell during several days in detention.

The tragic journey of Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché is one story among many of how harmful U.S. political and economic policies in Latin America violently intersect with a hardening and brutal system of U.S. immigration control. In their case, the young men’s voyage was first and foremost one of necessity rather than of choice. Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché were economic migrants fleeing a country of wreck and ruin that decades of harmful U.S. foreign and economic policies have helped to bring about.

It is indisputable that the United States shares significant responsibility for the genocide of tens of thousands of Guatemalans—mainly indigenous Mayans, including members of Gustavo and Maximiliano’s community, who comprised a majority of the (at least) 150,000 killed in the 1980s alone.
Click through for whole article.

Source: nacla.org

U.S. History from a Reparations Perspective

 

Stubborn as a Mule 

This is a MUST SEE internationally award winning film that depicts and explores facts of history that are not whole known or taught in any educational system. It is an eye-open look at the concept that makes the case for why reparations should be open for discussion and the necessity for it to be addressed. -John Wills


AWESOME DOCUMENTARY!

 

Source: thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

Malcolm X and James Baldwin debate on integration and Black rights

 

Click through for a great debate between Malcolm X and James Baldwin.

 

HT Harsha Walia

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Today in 2014 there is STILL massive segregation in the U.S. and there is STILL systemic racism and oppression. Any who are unsure about this can check Michele Alexander’s research on The New Jim Crow.

See on communityvillageus.blogspot.com

Did You Know: US Gov’t Paid Reparations…To Slave Owners

 

Originally posted on News One:

 

Since writer and cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates made his compelling “Case For Reparations” in The Atlantic, it has been a hot-button topic and the questions have come fast and furious.
What is reparations? What should it look like? How has slavery and subsequent systems of oppression had a continuing impact on Black Americans?

Will the United States ever pay reparations for its role in what amounts to domestic terrorism against African Americans?


The truth is: The government has already paid reparations — to slave owners.

 
See on thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

Settlement of Asians in the Deep South (1763 – 1882)

See on Scoop.itCommunity Village World History

 

Governor Powell Clayton of Arkansas observed:

 

Undoubtedly the underlying motive for this effort to bring in Chinese laborers was to punish the negro for having abandoned the control of his old master, and to regulate the conditions of employment and the scale of wages to be paid him.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

U.S. business leaders always want the lowest cost labor.

 

When U.S. unions demanded a living wage with reasonable benefits, instead of complying, businesses moved their manufacturing out of the U.S.

 

Money and manufacturing easily cross borders. However, (im)migration laws make it difficult for people to cross borders.

See on abagond.wordpress.com

Race Basics: The Trouble With White People

 

The whole article is worth reading, but if you don’t have time, here are some highlights:

 

“In this struggle we can’t give up on white people. I know this will disappoint some more militant (or maybe just sick and tired) readers, but unless we can move more whites onto our side, we will never end racism.

But, whites’ relative proximity to power doesn’t make them evil, just more influential.

The white middle class in the U.S. rose from the rubble of the Great Depression as a result of an economic stimulus package of programs and policies that was won by the Roosevelt administration. But winning that package of programs required cutting a deal with racially conservative Southern legislators that made Roosevelt’s stimulus racially exclusive.

Those government programs that created the white middle class were paid for by every worker, including workers of color.

Race is a cage that keeps all but the most powerful among us trapped in perpetual insecurity, fighting against one another for privileges rather than with one another for power. But the bars of that cage are tempered not just by privilege but by fear.

We need to approach the project of winning racial justice as a struggle against fear.

In order to win against racism, we need more than criticism of those who appear to be hoarding the goods. We need solutions that make room in our still far from complete democracy for all of us so that none of us need fear exclusion, exploitation, and the humiliation of being denied basic human dignity. And isn’t that what justice is all about anyway?”

 
See on www.racefiles.com

“Manhattan was sold for $24”

 

“Manhattan was sold for $24″ worth of “trinkets” or “glass beads” by Native Americans to the Dutch. It is something taught to most American schoolchildren by age eight. That was true in 1911, in 1949 and in 2009. The $24 is never adjusted for inflation.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Click through to read the whole article by Abagond, based on “Teaching What Really Happened” (2010) by James Loewen, “The Island at the Center of the World” (2004) by Russell Shorto,newnetherlandinstitute.org (2013), Wikipedia (2014)

 

See on abagond.wordpress.com

J. Marion Sims

 

“Dr J. Marion Sims (1813-1883), a White American surgeon, is widely considered to be the father of American gynaecology. He founded Woman’s Hospital in New York, the first of its kind in the country…”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

If you read this whole article, it will underscore Dr. Cornel West’s quote : “The notion that black people are human beings is a relatively new discovery in the modern west.”

 

See on abagond.wordpress.com