Samantha Power

 

Samantha Power (1970- ) has been the US ambassador to the United Nations since 2013, succeeding Susan Rice. She has long been a top adviser to Barack Obama on foreign policy. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” (2002). She was a professor at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights.

 

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Source: abagond.wordpress.com

 

Interesting article on the complexities of mixing real world politics and self interest with real world human rights.

 

Reminds me of Dr. MLK’s quote of each of us having both good and bad qualities.

 

settler colonialism

 

Settler colonialism is the process where a country or people creates an offshoot of itself in a new land. Countries like the United States, Australia, Liberia and Israel were created by settler colonialism. Countries like Haiti, Nigeria and Iraq, on the other hand, were created by extractive colonialism.

Settler colonialism, says Andrea Smith, is one of the three pillars of White supremacy in the US, the other two being anti-Black racism and Orientalism.


In extractive colonialism
 there are two main parts:

  • metropole – the country that rules an empire;
  • periphery – the countries it has power over.

Metropolitans extract wealth from the native peoples and lands of the periphery. Wealth flows from the periphery to the metropole. Metropolitans may work for a time in the periphery – as soldiers, slave traders, priests or plantation owners, for example – but consider the metropole their homeland.


In settler colonialism
 a third element is added: settlers. They move from the metropole to the periphery to create a new homeland. The Pilgrims are a good example. In the long run they cause trouble for both natives and the metropole as they gain land, wealth and sovereignty.


Settlers and natives:
 Settlers are not mainly interested in ruling over natives or joining their society or even in making them slaves. They want their land and therefore want them to disappear by any means necessary, even genocide. To replace natives they bring in:


Cheap labour:
 Convicts, slaves, refugees, immigrants, contract labourers, etc. These people serve settler society, becoming part of it in time, sometimes a racialized part. Unlike settlers, they do not create homelands of their own. Sometimes they are forced out.

 

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Source: abagond.wordpress.com

Flabbergasted!!!

 

During the last several days, the release of a Senate report on torture at the hands of the American government was not too much of a surprise. However, I will say, I was dumbfounded by the response from the talking heads on television and much of white America for the most part.
One of my followers, who is a white woman, commented on a piece I wrote with the comment “I can’t believe my country did such things. I am ashamed to be an American.” To her comment and other likeminded folk – I will use a word white folk’s use, I am “flabbergasted”.
When you consider this country’s shameful history with regard to human rights abuses, its brutal past, and racism – really! How could anyone be shocked? I know, they tell us this is the great country on earth, God-fearing and Christian – yada – yada. But, if you ask a person of of any other cultural group that is non-white I guarantee you will get a different answer! They might use another word white folk’s use – ludicrous! It is only His-Story and the Bible that makes them believe such a notion to warrant such reactions.
First of all, America is a land stolen from its native people, who were massacred, infected with disease, and put on reservations to accomplish this theft from the country from which they came. The Chinese were used and abused in many ways like today’s Latin people but the most wretchedly brutalized people were those taken from Africa and enslaved. To be clear, each group was used as a beast of burden to build a nation and wealth for non-whites; all the while claiming “all men are created equal”.

 

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Source: thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

Pay Reparations 2.0

 

Every penny donated here will be paid straight back as reparations.

Who whould collect reparations?

  • African Americans
  • Native Americans
  • Latinos of Amerindian heritage

Thank you to Thank you to Damali Ayo for her genius workReparations Day.

Source: www.youcaring.com

Sand Creek Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre (November 29th 1864) took place in Colorado, then a western territory of the US, now a state. US Army Colonel John Chivington had at least 105 women and children and 28 men …

Source: abagond.wordpress.com

 

Connecting the dots between historic oppression, and murder to modern day oppression,  and murder.

 

What’s in common: Euro-Americans oppressing in the past and now. Euro-Americans not punished for murdering in the past and now.

 

Xicana Nican Tlaca Rising

 

I come from Texas. I am indigenous. I am Xicana. I am Nican Tlaca. We might not remember her indian names any more but Texas was and is holy land.

 

 

The version of American “history” that is socially programmed is one of the most powerful tools of colonialism that persists today. Labels like “immigrant” to describe indigenous peoples across Cemanahuac (the “Americas”) are a great example of the great wasichu crime against our humanity and connection to the earth.

 

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Source: xicanachronicles.com

Making Light of Slavery?

 

Recently in the Texas History class I am teaching a student shared an example of how two friends would quasi reenact an enslaved, enslaver situation at the place where they work. The White person would tell the Black person “get to work” and so on.
This student followed up in an email asking my thoughts: “How do you feel about that though, specifically, making a joke out of slavery? Do you think it’s offensive, ignores the plight of the enslaved, or perhaps something I/we haven’t considered? Or is it okay, diminishing the detrimental effects on the psyche of the African Americans by satirizing it?”
I asked if I could have time to think about it and “reply” here. This student said yes, so here goes.

 

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Source: andrewpegoda.com

Does race shape Americans’ passion for guns?

 

You can’t talk about guns in America without talking about race, scholars say

 

Source: www.cnn.com

 

The fear of men of color with guns started early in America with the slaughter of Native-Americans and the oppression of enslaved Africans.

 

Click here to Receive Reparations or Pay Reparations for Oppression, Stolen Land, or 246 Years of Enslavement

 

Hi,

My name is Glenn Robinson and I have been inspired by Damali Ayo’s National Day of Panhandling for Reparations .

I run a blog called Community Village and another called Oppression Monitor. I thought these would be perfect places to ‘panhandle’ for donations that can be paid right back out.

I will use these funds to pay out reparations and use 33 cents from each transaction to maintain the payment system.

You can test our beta versions here:

Reparations through Oppression Monitor

Reparations through Community Village

You can also check the accounting

Thank you!

 

Source: www.gofundme.com

National Day of Panhandling for Reparations

 

Click through for whole story and a lot more photos.

 

Source: reparationsday.com

 

Genius damali ayo does it again.

 

I suggest a team of two. One for each sign.

 

REPARATIONS

for

ENSLAVEMENT

ACCEPTED HERE

 

and

 

REPARATIONS PAID HERE