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LEGIT YOUTH ENTREPRENEURS

Editor, Our Time Press
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LEGIT, a five-year-old program of the Osborne Association, is an alternative-to-incarceration program which first-time offender teens are mandated by the court or probation, to attend.  Sharon Content is a former Wall Street analyst for Solomon Brothers,  and LeeRoy Jordan, Jr. is a Qualified Health Professional, who has been with Osborne Associates for eleven years working as a chemical dependency and criminal justice professional.   Ms. Content and Mr. Jordan describe the LEGIT program.

Sharon Content, Program Director
We’re budgeted at about $12,000 a year for each participant who otherwise would be costing the state $45,000 a year to imprison.   But when you lockup these young people, wait a few years and let them out, you have not given them any new options or new skills.  That’s what we do, we’re in the option business.  We channel the energy they were using in a negative way into positive areas- the energy to hustle drugs, the energy they were using to steal cars, or any bad choices they may have made.  We show them they have another option. We show them they can still earn money and use their entrepreneur’s spirit, without having to deal with the police, rival drug dealers, and the like.   These are young people who may feel, “I’m not doing well in school.  My community’s not giving me a whole bunch of choices, my family life isn’t going too well.  So these are the only choices I have.”    They make poor choices because they believe they don’t have other options to make a dollar.

We have three micro enterprises going on.  Those are three businesses, Legit Teen Contractors, Legit Webmasters and Legit Teen Care Packages.   I interview each teen and find out their interests.  We don’t classify them by educational level, mathematical skills or reading skills.  We group the teens by interests.  What do you have an interest in?   LEGIT Teen Contractors is a contractor’s business where they do small home repairs, painting, tiling, sheet-rocking, sanding floors, painting, all those types of things, refurbishing-taking garbage out of old buildings.   If someone has an interest in that, they can go into that business.    We tell them, “When you first come into the business, you come in as an employee.  You’re paid $7.00 and hour.   After you show your commitment and you show your interest level, then you can be promoted to a partner, where you get a share of the net profits.”

LEGIT Teens Website is a website design business.  We target small businesses in the community who have heard about the Internet, the World-Wide-Web, but are not sure how they can become involved in it.  We show business owners how we can create a website for them on the internet and avoid paying those high costs of creating a website.   We also have LEGIT Teen Care Package, a business that will be sending care packages to state correctional facilities.   For example you may want to send a package to a family member in Sing Sing, –you have to buy regulation products, properly box them and mail.  Instead, you can come to us and chose from a catalogue of food items, toiletries, educational supplies, and other items that you select, and  we will package and ship at a reasonable cost.

Also the teens prepare their income statements.  For example, Legit Contractors just finished a $1,500 job, and they didn’t come to me and ask “Ms. Content, how do we get paid?”   They told me after completing the appropriate financial statements.  Each teen prepares an income statement telling what each partner receives and what each employee receives.    They write their own checks and make their own deposits.   The teens do all the work for the business.  I teach them twice a week.  The curriculum is divided into four areas:  Marketing, Customer Service, Production, Finance and Record-keeping.   I tell them, “There’s a business jargon you use and it works the same way as the jargon on the corner.  If someone comes to your corner or your neighborhood and is not using the right language, you’re going to think they’re out of place, they don’t belong there.    So if you don’t use the right jargon in the business community, they won’t believe you belong there as well.  The terms are revenue, gross profit, net profit, and your bottom line.  I go through each area.  They design the flyers we use.  When they think they’re finished they come to me and we proofread and check every word.   If there are fifty words on the flyer and one is spelled wrong, I let them know about excellence and hand it back a thousand times if necessary to insure it’s perfect.  I tell them that their flyer is a reflection of their work. “If you have one error there, someone who wants the house painted may think you’ll leave one door unpainted.”  We visit each job site to ensure that the work is at professional standards.

The teens do all they work for the business and they have a very high energy level.   They want to make money in a legitimate legal way. The media has given them a shoddy deal.  Their communities, their schools, sometimes their family structures have disappointed them with a shoddy deal.  How do you expect these teens to be role model citizens when everything else has failed them?  Where will they get the components of being a positive person?  How will they make choices that are positive when everything around them is negative?    LEGIT attempts to be that positive outlet.  LEGIT is a safe place with high expectations, discipline and lots of love.  We give them options.

.
LeeRoy Jordan, Counselor
LEGIT targets teenaged boys from fourteen to seventeen, from Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Bushwick, Crown Heights.  This is in line with the fact that 75% of prisoners in the state prisons in New York State come from seven neighborhoods in our city.   We target young kids who have been arrested for drug sale or possession.

LEGIT takes a holistic view of the young person and his or her situation.   We have family consultations, group meetings and one-on-one counseling.  As one example of what we do, let me tell you about some of our health concerns.

When you talk statistically, the rates of HIV among teenagers, and particularly among African-American and Latino teenagers, have gone up significantly.  The majority of young men between the ages of fourteen and seventeen years old, say they are sexually active.  Everyone says they use condoms, but then we get into the conversation.  Part of our curriculum is called “Cap it and Wrap it.”  There is a picture of a gun, with a condom over the barrel.  We address the issue of violence as well as HIV and STD’s (sexually transmitted diseases) at the same time. We’re talking about fighting these two ills, homicide and HIV.  We’re saying put a cap over your penis, put a cap over your gun.

We define success in several ways.   First, that a teen completes the program.  This takes from nine months to a year.   That a teen has no more arrests and is enrolled in school. Over the course of five years, no young person attending this program has been lost to violence.  This is in a group where 4 or 5 out of every 10 knows someone who has been murdered in the last twelve months. We also look to see if they are improving scholastically and that they are adhering to probation requirements.  The core effort is first of all to get these young people stabilized.   Nearly every kid has some kind of school-based  problem. We are successful with a little more than 50% of the kids who come to us.  This number is much better than the recidivism rate of the prison system.  Our greatest success happens when we bring the young person back into the education process.  That’s the bottom line.

LEGIT,Is An Alternative-to-incarceration Program Which First-time Offender Teens Are Mandated By The Court Or Probation, To Attend.

Editor, Our Time Press
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4

Sharon Content is a former Wall Street analyst for Solomon Brothers,  and LeeRoy Jordan, Jr. is a Qualified Health Professional, who has been with Osborne Associates for eleven years working as a chemical dependency and criminal justice professional.   Ms. Content and Mr. Jordan describe the LEGIT program.

 

Sharon Content, Program Director
We’re budgeted at about $12,000 a year for each participant who otherwise would be costing the state $45,000 a year to imprison.   But when you lockup these young people, wait a few years and let them out, you have not given them any new options or new skills.  That’s what we do, we’re in the option business.  We channel the energy they were using in a negative way into positive areas- the energy to hustle drugs, the energy they were using to steal cars, or any bad choices they may have made.  We show them they have another option. We show them they can still earn money and use their entrepreneur’s spirit, without having to deal with the police, rival drug dealers, and the like.   These are young people who may feel, “I’m not doing well in school.  My community’s not giving me a whole bunch of choices, my family life isn’t going too well.  So these are the only choices I have.”    They make poor choices because they believe they don’t have other options to make a dollar.
We have three micro enterprises going on.  Those are three businesses, Legit Teen Contractors, Legit Webmasters and Legit Teen Care Packages.   I interview each teen and find out their interests.  We don’t classify them by educational level, mathematical skills or reading skills.  We group the teens by interests.  What do you have an interest in?   LEGIT Teen Contractors is a contractor’s business where they do small home repairs, painting, tiling, sheet-rocking, sanding floors, painting, all those types of things, refurbishing-taking garbage out of old buildings.   If someone has an interest in that, they can go into that business.    We tell them, “When you first come into the business, you come in as an employee.  You’re paid $7.00 and hour.   After you show your commitment and you show your interest level, then you can be promoted to a partner, where you get a share of the net profits.”
LEGIT Teens Website is a website design business.  We target small businesses in the community who have heard about the Internet, the World-Wide-Web, but are not sure how they can become involved in it.  We show business owners how we can create a website for them on the internet and avoid paying those high costs of creating a website.   We also have LEGIT Teen Care Package, a business that will be sending care packages to state correctional facilities.   For example you may want to send a package to a family member in Sing Sing, –you have to buy regulation products, properly box them and mail.  Instead, you can come to us and chose from a catalogue of food items, toiletries, educational supplies, and other items that you select, and  we will package and ship at a reasonable cost.

Also the teens prepare their income statements.  For example, Legit Contractors just finished a $1,500 job, and they didn’t come to me and ask “Ms. Content, how do we get paid?”   They told me after completing the appropriate financial statements.  Each teen prepares an income statement telling what each partner receives and what each employee receives.    They write their own checks and make their own deposits.   The teens do all the work for the business.  I teach them twice a week.  The curriculum is divided into four areas:  Marketing, Customer Service, Production, Finance and Record-keeping.   I tell them, “There’s a business jargon you use and it works the same way as the jargon on the corner.  If someone comes to your corner or your neighborhood and is not using the right language, you’re going to think they’re out of place, they don’t belong there.    So if you don’t use the right jargon in the business community, they won’t believe you belong there as well.  The terms are revenue, gross profit, net profit, and your bottom line.  I go through each area.  They design the flyers we use.  When they think they’re finished they come to me and we proofread and check every word.   If there are fifty words on the flyer and one is spelled wrong, I let them know about excellence and hand it back a thousand times if necessary to insure it’s perfect.  I tell them that their flyer is a reflection of their work. “If you have one error there, someone who wants the house painted may think you’ll leave one door unpainted.”  We visit each job site to ensure that the work is at professional standards.

The teens do all they work for the business and they have a very high energy level.   They want to make money in a legitimate legal way. The media has given them a shoddy deal.  Their communities, their schools, sometimes their family structures have disappointed them with a shoddy deal.  How do you expect these teens to be role model citizens when everything else has failed them?  Where will they get the components of being a positive person?  How will they make choices that are positive when everything around them is negative?    LEGIT attempts to be that positive outlet.  LEGIT is a safe place with high expectations, discipline and lots of love.  We give them options.
.

LeeRoy Jordan, Counselor
LEGIT targets teenaged boys from fourteen to seventeen, from Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Bushwick, Crown Heights.  This is in line with the fact that 75% of prisoners in the state prisons in New York State come from seven neighborhoods in our city.   We target young kids who have been arrested for drug sale or possession.
LEGIT takes a holistic view of the young person and his or her situation.   We have family consultations, group meetings and one-on-one counseling.  As one example of what we do, let me tell you about some of our health concerns.

When you talk statistically, the rates of HIV among teenagers, and particularly among African-American and Latino teenagers, have gone up significantly.  The majority of young men between the ages of fourteen and seventeen years old, say they are sexually active.  Everyone says they use condoms, but then we get into the conversation.  Part of our curriculum is called “Cap it and Wrap it.”  There is a picture of a gun, with a condom over the barrel.  We address the issue of violence as well as HIV and STD’s (sexually transmitted diseases) at the same time. We’re talking about fighting these two ills, homicide and HIV.  We’re saying put a cap over your penis, put a cap over your gun.
We define success in several ways.   First, that a teen completes the program.  This takes from nine months to a year.   That a teen has no more arrests and is enrolled in school. Over the course of five years, no young person attending this program has been lost to violence.  This is in a group where 4 or 5 out of every 10 knows someone who has been murdered in the last twelve months. We also look to see if they are improving scholastically and that they are adhering to probation requirements.  The core effort is first of all to get these young people stabilized.   Nearly every kid has some kind of school-based  problem. We are successful with a little more than 50% of the kids who come to us.  This number is much better than the recidivism rate of the prison system.  Our greatest success happens when we bring the young person back into the education process.  That’s the bottom line.

-The LEGIT Youth Entrepreneurship Program

Damian

Editor, Our Time Press
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22

Million Youth March High School Representative

“There is an old Negro proverb: It takes a Village to  Raise a Child.  Well, we are the Village.  We are the Hands.  And the nation is our child.  And, as younger people in our society, we often hear the words, “The youth are our future.”  Well, you know what, youth?  We need to begin the future now, and stop waiting for the future to come tomorrow.  Going into the New Millennium, we make history.  Well, we are history.  As we stand here today, we are making tomorrow’s history today.  As I walk down the historical landmarks here in our Village,  I often dream that officials will one day name one of our streets in our Village – name it after us and call it The New Millennium Blvd.  I hope that we can one day come together as a people, as youth and as adults, to come together and move forward.   The New Millennium is here.   People categorize some of the older folks as hippies and baby boomers.  What do they call us?  Generation X.  What does that mean?  X has no meaning, X stands for no brand.  Well, I’ve been doing some homework.  X stands for New Millennium, and We are the New Millennium.   It was five-years-ago that my cousin had the opportunity to go directly into the NBA or to any college he wanted to.  He was robbed of that chance, robbed of that dream over whose first in line at a White Castle in the South Bronx.  He was shot dead over a -burger.  The New Millennium.   I can’t really say what I wrote because I don’t have the time.  But I’m going to just tell you how I feel.  We hear the words “No Justice, No Peace.”  What does that mean?  It doesn’t mean that if we don’t get justice we going pick up a gun and shoot ya.  “No Justice, No Peace” means if we don’t get justice, you won’t get peace of mind.  It means we will walk a hundred miles if we gotta.  By all means necessary.  It means we’ll stop wearing those fancy sneakers because it has the brothers and sisters killing each other for ’em.  I can go on and on but I don’t’ have the time… Like I said we ain’t out to kill nobody.   We’re the most passive people out here.  We’ve been working hard and we continue to strive and we continue to get knocked down.  I’m tryin’ to shake you.  I’m gonna be honest with you.  (A sign is handed to Damian.)  I gotta big old sign here that says Time.   Well, the time is now.  We need to get ready. We’re going into the New Millennium.  There’s no reason we should go into the New Millennium like this and I mean not only to find the ways we portray ourselves in our Village – we got to get that straight; this is a Village.  When you hear Village, what do you hear?  You hear peace.  You here love, Encouragement.  Well, I’m ready to go, but there’s one thing I’ve got to say: We’ve got to change the ways we treat our Mothers and Fathers and the way Mothers and Fathers treat their sons and daughters.  We got to change the way sons and daughters treat their brothers and sisters.  We need to get in it to win it.  And the time is now, I tell you.  And I beg and plead that we will all come together as one.   As we rob and steal from each other, there’s someone at home right now laughing at us.  Why give them the satisfaction?  We’re the only group that kills and fight each other – Why?  We’re the only group that had to get permission to be here today – Why?  And I will no longer tolerate it.  Now, time is an issue here but I encourage you all to hold each other’s hands, give each other a hug. Tell each other that we love each other.  And we need to move on.  The time is now.”

Delois Blakely,
Sister-Queen, Honorary Mayor of Harlem
“The Black Mother of civilization is who I am.  I am on the Sphinx in Egypt and I walk the streets of Harlem. I went with Queen Mother Moore to the Million Man March.  (I brought) the warrior queen, sister  Winnie Mandela, to the Million Woman March. I am now standing in an historic spot in time at the Million Youth March.  I say to you, youth.   I say to you, my children: You come from a Mother of civilization.  You come out of my womb, and I want you to listen to me very carefully.  You have a right, you have a right – you’re hearing this from the Mother of civilization – to come home.  Harlem is home.  You can always come home.  I come to say to you that we want to hear what you have to say.  We’re here.   We rocked civilization.  500 million plus came out of the dungeons and the slave trafficking and through The Door of No Return.  I say to you, you come from my wombs and you will return to the continent of Mother Africa to inherent everything that you own, and your rightful place in history.   As the Mother of civilization I say to you, I will listen, I will listen, I will listen and hear from you today.  We love you.  We bring peace to you.  We bring our higher forces to you.  The God force of all life, we bring to you.

The Five Percent Nation
“(Giuliani) wants us to fight and kill each other.  But we’re not having it, Black people.  We’re not having it. Everybody say, “Peace.”  You tried to stop our fathers, you tried to stop our mothers.  You had a problem trying to stop their babies.  Here we are America.   Everybody who is about to enter back into this wicked educational system, I want you to say, “Knowledge of self to better yourself.”  We are here in the spirit and essence of Christopher Wallace — the Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur.”

The Reverend Al Sharpton President,
The National Action Network
First, let me say I’m happy to have with me today to welcome youth from around the nation to the Million Youth March in Harlem,  Senator Ephraim Gonzalez who works with us in coalition.  You might have heard on the news that some people didn’t want you here.  But we come Black and Latino as a coalition to say, as the Mayor in Exile in New York, Welcome to Harlem.  As we talk about Black Power , we’re standing on Malcolm X Blvd.,  the convener of this march, Brother Khalid Muhammad, comes out of a movement started by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.  Then the movement was represented by Malcolm X the man they named this boulevard after. Now there is Minister Farrakhan.  There have always been different roads in our community, but we have not until late let people tell us when we could debate and dialogue on those roads.  One block over is Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.  Powell was a man who helped create the phrase Black Power. Even though he disagreed with Malcolm on some things, even though Malcolm disagreed with him on some things, they would stand on the corners of Harlem and speak together and debate together and work it out in front of the people.  And if Adam can stand with Malcolm, then Al Sharpton can come to the Million Youth March and stand up and not apologize to nobody.  Minister Khalid and I have had our differences, but I’m no boy and I’m not instructed by nobody, where to go and when to go, how far to go and how long to stay. Unequivocally, I’m against hate. I fought all my life against hate.   I get up every morning and see a scar from hate on my chest where a man stabbed me in Bensonhurst and I forgave him.  I unequivocally am against any form of anti-anything white, anti-Semitism, homophobia … any of that.  I ran for Mayor because of a coalition and I will continue to stand up and tell you we must make alliances.  But we can not be boys and we can not be told what to say whenever we go forward.

Let’s be clear that if you got something to say, you don’t run from your children, you come to your children and you tell them,  “Let’s build together.”   Lastly, there are a lot of problems, and we have talked about everything in the media but the youth problem.   The problems are there is a surplus budget and they are building jails rather than schools.   We are 12 to 15 per cent of the population, but 55 percent of those who are in jail.  We are those that are now being put on workfare programs and they are closing open admissions to schools in New York, and they’re doing Proposition 209 in California.  That’s why we need to march.  Today there is a young man 16 years old laying on critical in Kings County Hospital shot at 17 times because he had a water gun. That’s why we March.  We don’t march out of hate; we march because we love ourselves and we love our children and we don’t want to see our children subjected to police brutality and a bad educational system and an unfair criminal justice system.  I am clear that the alliance of Goodman and Schwerner and Chaney died so I could run for Mayor.  I am clear on Abner Loiuma.  I am clear on what we did in the Civil Rights Era and  I’m also clear that today we must address the youth and not be intimidated by others to run us away.   And you must be clear as you come to Harlem, don’t let them defame Harlem.

This is not a Village of hate; this is a village of hope.  In this Village, grandmamas raised their grandbabies on subsidized income.  This is a Village of hope, not hate.  In this Village, young people get up everyday facing the odds, trying to seek a better and fairer way of existing, This is not a Village of hate, this is a Village of hope.  This is where we have had some of the best minds, best entertainers, best athletes in the world.  So I welcome you to the Land of Giants.  John Henrik Clarke who recently made his transition lived in Harlem.  Adam Powell lived in Harlem. Welcome to the Land of Giants.  This is where Paul Robeson was.  This is where Malcolm was.  This is where Queen Mother Moore was.  Welcome to the Land of Giants. This is where we raised some of the greatest entertainers on the Apollo stage.  Welcome to the Land of Giants.  This is where Mr. Michaux’s bookstore was.  Welcome to the Land of Giants.  Don’t let no midgets give us a bad name.  There’s still some giants in Harlem, and we’re going to stand up for our Black people.

Min. Conrad Muhammad
C. H. H.A N. G. E.

We need a change.  This has to be the first minute of a new day.  This generation has got to stand up.   I’m standing here with Brother Yusef Salaam who was falsely accused a few years ago with the rape of a woman in Central Park. The police department not only arrested the confessed brother, but everybody who was associated with that day.  But look at California.   A degenerate killed and raped a nine-year-old black girl, and his partner — his accomplice in the act — is now a freshman at the University of California at Berkeley while Yusef  Salaam spent time in jail. That’s why we need a change.  That’s why the hip hop generation must stand up.  Now more than ever we’ve got to stand.  We’ve lost a generation to death, black on black violence. We’re killing more of each other than the Ku Klux Klan ever did.  We need a change.  Tupac Shakur was shot down in Las Vegas.  Two years later, Tupac is dead, Biggie is dead, Orlando Anderson  who they said killed Tupac is dead.  Suge Knight is in jail. We’ve lost a generation of black men to death and jail.  We need a change.  Stand up and let’s make a change.  Stand up strong and we can change America and change the world.”
Brother Ayimbe
Youth Representative,
The All-African People’s
Revolutionary Party
“My comments are directed specifically to our youth and the students amongst us.   The primary task ahead of us as we look to achieving our revolution, is to transform our struggle for liberation from a spontaneous, mobilized action-oriented activity to an organized, coordinated activity.  This has been our fundamental problem, and this is what continues to plague us.  Mobilization speaks only to influencing power.  Organization speaks to seizing and wielding power.  This is our problem: we are politically powerless.  We must bring conscious coordination to our struggle by joining permanent organizations.  The greatest contribution youth and students can make to our process is by joining and building permanent organizations. This is where the problem has been.  This is the solution to our problems.  Without revolutionary consciousness, there is no revolution.  Our students, in particular, must bring concrete, scientific ideas to the liberation struggle.  The problem we face is the problem of abysmal political ignorance.   The only way we can correct that is with mass political revolutionary consciousness within an organization.  So I’m calling on everyone who is serious about our problem to get organized.  If you look ahead and above, you will see the police on buildings – very strategic.  That’s organization.  That is not haphazard.  That’s not shuck and jive.  Our solution is Pan- Africanism, the total liberation and unification of Africa under one continental union Socialist government for Africa.  It is only this action which will be able to safeguard and protect the African masses wherever they are, scattered and suffering throughout the world.  Africans, please get organized.  This is our solution.”

Chief Long Walker
of the Ocala Tribe in California
“It’s hard for me to come into the city.  Where I live on the mountain, we are in charge of creation.  We have enough power here today. We are the majority. When the slave escaped, he was taken in by my ancestors.  From that day forward we became true blood brothers.  We are one people today, we are no longer separated. We are the landlords of this western hemisphere and you are the only people we welcomed. (The crowd roars.)  One more thing.  I am tired of speaking.  It seems like all of us – and I hate to say this -we have constipation of the minds and diarrhea of the mouth.  I am not a violent man, but I am tired of what they have been doing to us for over 500 winters…  All I have to say is we are our own worst enemies because we have allowed them to do that to us.  They do not have the power.  We do.  In closing we say, Red and Black Power.”

Voices From the Crowd

DJ SUPREME
Record Producer

“I seen the cops go into the middle section where the money was coming through.  I was right there with the press.  And after the money went through, they started assembling in the middle of the block in the back of the stage.  They acted like we were in the 1960’s when they used to use hoses and dogs on Black people.  But some of the Black officers, male and female, were breaking.  They didn’t want to be down with this.   They were saying, “This is bullshit.”  You should have heard some of their responses.  They felt bad about being there, and they walked away.  This day, the black community tried to be united and Giuliani was saying he had an Army.  And he had his boys out there acting up.  No other marches and parades are treated like this.  He don’t do that to any of them.  Why he have to do it to Black folks?  (Some people) wanted to get their kids out of there.  When they started moving in, you saw people grabbing their kids and leaving.  So the majority of the youth were out of there by the time the riot police started their thing.  When it jumped off, I moved out the way. I couldn’t understand it.

“Then when I got punched in the chest.  All I wanted to do was get to my car.  This cop looked at me in my face, snatched his badge off and punched me in the chest.  I wasn’t having it, but I started to leave.  He punched me kinda hard but it was just something to laugh it.  It was kinda funny.  Here, you have some cops trying to do the right thing.  But this one, he was off his rocker.

“He took his badge off, then punched me dead in the chest.  Then he put his hand on my stomach to push me back.  But he couldn’t move me. He was standing there frightened.  His hands were shaking like a little girl’s.  I gave him that look.   They the ones trying to oppress people.  He was so scared after what he did because the reaction from my face was not valid.  He felt bad because I didn’t react.   All I wanted to do was get my ride because if I lost it I would have to take a train.  The reason I didn’t react the way he wanted me, had I made a funny move, he would have pulled out a gun.  But I felt his fear.  That’s why I played it cool.

“So when I left you (OTP had interceded when an enraged DJ started yelling at a police officer), “Mouse” and I went and found the cop that did it and Mouse starts to videotape the guy, the cop, and he’s laughing in my face. Just laughing.  We have him on videotape laughing.  I had to be in control.  That discipline comes from a lot of martial arts training.  A lot of  Kung Fu and Karate.  I am a third degree black belt.   I trained under Earnest Hightower.  It shows you how to hold your head even more.
“While the rest of his boys cheered him on, I did the right thing. So my friend, “Mouse” got this guy, the cop, on camera and me asking him why he punched me.  He was smirking and smiling.  I went over to the captain.  Now the captain is supposed to give a different response.  His response wasn’t correct with me.  I asked the captain, “Yo, all I wanted to do was go with my friend.  The officer had no right…”He interrupts me.  He tells, “You wanta make a complaint, go to 666 Broadway.”   When he laughed, I sort of laughed.  I felt his fear.  I had no choice but to laugh because he wanted a reaction and he didn’t get it. And what scared him the most was my reaction. Those cops come from a different area.  They take them out the suburbs and out them right smack in the middle of Harlem.

“I got to give my people a whole lot of credit for holding their heads cause they did it real slick.  They did it behind the stage.   They came there for a riot.  Nothing more. Nothing less. Everything was beautiful. All day long. No problems.  How could they do it with kids there.  How could they bumrush the stage after a couple of minutes after the hour.”
We arrived at the Million Youth March at about 1pm.  When I heard the voice of a woman who sounded like Sister Soljah, I started moving through the crowd, down Malcolm X Blvd.,  closer to the stage.   Barriers were placed all around to discourage us; we just kept moving. Around, over and under.

I was with four people, Melissa, Brian and Rasheed.  We came to a barricade a woman said was locked and couldn’t get through. Her child sat on the ground nearby.  I examined the barrier and saw it wasn’t locked, so I started pulling it up.  The woman said, “Watch my son! Watch my son!”   I replied, “Yes, Mam.  I see your son.  He’s all our children.”  Then two men who heard me came over and helped us lift the barricade.

A Celebration
Queen Afua, the speaker who I thought was Sister Soljah, had finished  by the time we reached the front of the stage. There,  I saw more people I knew from Brooklyn.  On stage,  a warrior woman began to sing to a Reggae beat.  Everyone swayed and danced in their spaces.  I saw a teacher-friend Ms. Nzingha dancing and called her to come over.   At that point, everybody was so happy; it was a celebration.  An older gentleman told someone how the City didn’t want to let us have any sort of music like that because they thought it would prompt a riot or negative actions.   But that was a real moment.  The  people who lived on Malcolm X Blvd. were looking out of the windows, they were on the terraces, the fire escapes.  It was beautiful.  Except for all the law enforcement people present.  They, too, were on the terraces and the fire escapes and at the windows.

Anything Could Happen
Ms. Nzingha went back into the stage area, and we didn’t see each other again. Meanwhile, I started taking pictures.  After a while,   I looked up and saw what I thought were sharpshooters on the roof of the building.  We thought he was an assassin because we were looking for all those kinds of things. Anything could happen.  A black female camera operator got another cameraman to come over.  She, too, thought the figure on the roof  looked strange. The man’s head was half hidden; he was looking sideways as if he was looking through the lens of a sharpshooter’s gun. That’s why we were suspicious.   We couldn’t be sure what the man on the roof was doing, and that he wasn’t aiming at us.   But that sister got someone right on it, and she confirmed right away, looking through the camera lens, that there was no obvious weapon.

I was not too faraway from Reggie Harris, the reporter for a local New York station.  I observed him reporting. He too had been watching for a long time.
For The Ancestors, Tears
The actress who starred in “Sankofa” moved me. She poured libations and spoke in one of Africa’s mother tongues. I have never seen anything like it before; old people cried when she encouraged us to “Call out the names of your ancestors you know were in bondage.”  The elders broke down.  Young people helped a woman who collapsed from weeping.   She may have had a family member close to that time who was in bondage and she was remembering.

I was impressed with the Native American elder’s speech.  I look up to our Native American brothers just as I look up to Black leaders. As the Native American woman spoke, at first I could not see her. I heard her voice, and thought she was a Black woman talking about the struggles of Black people.  She said: we’re all in the same struggle, it’s not a black thing, it’s a red, yellow, brown and black thing.  March organizers asked permission of the Native Americans to use the land, to use the space in Harlem, along Malcolm X Blvd. for the March. I respect that very much. When Chief Long Walker spoke,  he commanded power and attention.  He was so strong yet he was so peaceful.  I have never before seen Native Americans  like this, up close. Real, strong Native Americans.

When organizers asked for donations, they said, “Give whatever you can”.  Red buckets were distributed, and people passed 20s, 10s, fives, hundreds, checks.  One brother next to me said, “This is beautiful. This is really beautiful.” No one took any of the money.  I saw young people you  see around the way who do certain things in the hood.  They behaved and  passed the money.  Those brothers were in control, listening.  That was brotherhood working right there.

Like Vietnam

I don’t believe March organizers purposely went over four o’clock.  It’s just that everyone had something to say.  They knew how many speakers they were going to have, and there were several more at the last minute. Time was measured, but when Brother Khalid began to speak, it was a couple of minutes to four.  My friend was  like, “It’s almost four o’clock.  Dag, we got to be gettin’ out of here.”  Brother Khalid  said that the police were going to provoke a riot.  It was almost like he was predicting  what was going to happen.  A few minutes after that he said some things  – and that part was wrong.  Some people spontaneously started shouting, but what really revved up some people had to do with the police helicopter zooming down to within a few hundred feet of the crowd.  They may have zoomed over the crowd in reaction to what he said, but I think it was mostly to make the crowd go crazy. Then, a second one swooped over.  These were like fighter planes in Vietnam – swooping down to drop bombs.  The only time I’ve ever seen that is in war movies.  That’s what scared me, and that’s what angered me.   I’m sure they were taking pictures of the crowd, and I think that’s illegal.

“Slow Down. Don’t Run”
The crowd had begun to disperse even before Khalid spoke.  Others were leaving as he was speaking.  I was momentarily enraged.  I was angry because I did not understand why the police were acting this way, what was going on.  At that point, we were in the back of the stage facing the police in riot gear.  We were trying to figure out real fast what direction to go.  Someone said let’s go towards the podium, away from the crowd. We didn’t want to go into the crowd because more people were moving away from the stage than toward it.  I said, “Let’s go that way (pointing to the eastside of the stage area).”  I thought we could get away quicker.

As I turned around to head to the side of the stage, I saw objects fly into the air.  I saw police in riot gear – shields – sticks, pushing people back.  Some police were moving towards the stage, but some were moving towards the crowd sort of like they were closing in on whoever was over there.  I saw people screaming.  It was so instantaneous.  As the riot police moved in, someone grabbed me out of their way, and we all started running.  Then Rasheed says, “Slow down. Don’t run!” We all stopped running.  We told each other not to panic.  We started walking in haste down a side street.  We passed more police officers, and continued down the side street.  Although I felt safer, there were people running still.  A lady was saying, “My heart, my heart.  I have heart problems.  I can’t take this.”  There were women with small children trying to get out of there.

Blessings
Once we got down the street, we stopped at a fruit stand run by some elderly Black people outside their house. We bought oranges.  And the lady was like, “God Bless you. God Bless you.” She was giving us her blessing, but it didn’t end there for us.

We continued walking up to Marcus Garvey Park. As we approached the park, we saw a chilling sight. There were 25 police officers lined up on horse back – we know because my friend counted them – 25.  They were blocking us. They were standing their on horseback with riot gear.  There were only two black officers in the bunch. And there was a captain, on the first horse.  It was scary because these police officers were positioned on horseback, just standing there, positioned. There also were women with children who were passing by these men on horseback. There was one little girl passing with her mother.  She said, “Ooh, mommy, can I touch the horses?” And the mother said, “No, I don’t think so.”

We got up to 125th Street.  All was calm. Vendors from all parts of the country were out there selling books and tee shirts.  It was crowded with shoppers because it was Saturday and it was no-tax day.  I saw one of my friends who used to be in the dance department at Harlem School of the Arts.  Her mother owns a fabric store where she sells African cloth and she is a seamstress. That’s where I will buy my fabric from now on.  As a matter of fact, Blockbusters was closed.  They either didn’t want our business or they didn’t want to be a part of this day. They were not supporting whatever was going on.  There could be another reason why they were closed: some of the businesses were probably notified there would be looting and rioting.

Awakening
We walked down 125th Street looking for a bathroom.  We went in all these places – Burger King, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Popeye’s – looking for a bathroom.  The places were packed. We finally went to a McDonald’s on 124th Street.  As we waited on the line, a brother asked, “You just come from the March?” I said, “Yeah. You?” He said,”Yeah.” Then he was telling me how he was up close. He told me that the police officers in riot gear were pushing and beating people and someone was fighting one of the officers back, trying to defend himself.   He said the police officer took the brother, picked him up and threw him over the barricade.  He told me it was seven minutes after four when Brother Khalid’s speech ended.  He said the police started moving at four. They didn’t give the people a chance.  He said the people were peacefully retreating and the police started coming in like they wanted to beat those people down. I wasn’t fearful of the police.

To tell you the truth that’s when I realized the police really started the whole thing. That’s when I realized it.  The police are supposed to protect and serve us.  And they were supposed to protect us not attack us.  I was not afraid of men and women  in uniforms authorized to carry guns. I was afraid of getting hurt.  I was afraid that a lot of people with kids and a lot of women would get hurt.

Preparations
To prepare for this day, I told all my friends to not bring anything that resembles a weapon. I said if something happens, they will bring us all down to jail, bring us all on charges.  I told them we can’t give them any excuse to arrest us.  I told them that was their way of making money.  As one young man from Los Angeles said at the March, more than two dozen new jails have been built in Los Angeles alone.  Although he talked about Los Angeles, in New York, it’s also a business.  Whether they take us into jail or kill us, it’s making money.  If they kill us it would be called justifiable murder, justifiable homicide. Both ways, they are getting rid of us.

I had on my long army camouflage skirt.  But I had shorts on underneath just in case I would have to get out of  there. I wore sneakers and my Million Youth March shirt from Sista’s Cafe. We had two bookbags filled with expendables,  water and fruit. The only thing of importance were my keys and my student ID. If I were to lose them, they could be replaced.

Love for the People vs Hate for the enemy
Personally, I think Brother Khalid’s anger was over everything that happened the last few months with the courts and everything. It was pent-up anger over everything that he’s experienced.

Chapter 15 of Frances Cress Welsing’s book,  “The Isis Papers” speaks to Brother Khalid and why he said the things he said.  Ms. Welsing writes that getting angry should have nothing to do with what you want to do.   She writes that when  you are a soldier or a warrior you can’t let your emotions cloud your mind or get the best of you.  I think what has to happen is  you have to have the love for your people guide you as a soldier.  That’s the passion that should get you passionate – not the anger.   Anger can get the best of you.  Love for your people overpowers the anger.  Let me read from Welsing’s book: “In our powerlessness and our frustration, we get mad…. (yet)  we prepare again to vote for (people) …  who will take us nowhere.”

What Now?
On September 5, they paraded us like cows. Let’s move, they said. Let’s keep moving, they told us.  Now everyone regrets not voting for Sharpton – that’s the word on the street.   The young people who could have voted, didn’t.  So this is what we get.

Now there’s a sense of urgency.  Young people are saying,”Okay. Now what do we do next?”  And they are saying,  “It’s about voting and getting involved in some group.” But some youth don’t really know what groups to get involved in. We really don’t know what groups to join. A few of the young speakers at the March said what we should do. Some of the older speakers told us why we should do what we have to do.  But no one said where we should go?   Erica Ford said a good thing; young people should join in the boycott of white-owned businesses for three months, especially in December.  Minister Conrad Muhammad, the Hip Hop minister,  is organizing a new youth empowerment organization, C.H.H.A.N.G.E.  He is calling for change which we desperately need.

I think marching into the millennium rappers are powerful, they should devise a plank, organize a permanent organization, a union, and be involved. That’s also what young people need to do in their communities – be involved.  Rappers need to get educated about our culture. Although Rap is so many streams, all they would have to do is put the positive messages  about education, self-love, self-empowerment in their rap.  If they did, that message would be sent to millions of youth around the world.  The Million Youth March shows we need a code, a plan as we  move into the new Millennium.

CIA, Drugs, Social Control & Black Folks

Editor, Our Time Press
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Over twenty-five years ago, Marvin Gaye, commenting on the direction of the country said, “It makes you want to hollar and throw up both your hands.”   Marvin was right, and it’s  the natural response to what passes for democracy in the United States.   The newly published  “Whiteout – The CIA, Drugs and the Press” Written by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair,  lays out the connection between drugs, the CIA and social control and how this complex of interests is aided and abetted by the major media.

In the December 1996 issue of Our Time Press, we called the CIA Headquarters in Langley Virginia, the “Mother crack house of them all.”   We realize now that we were being naive with this understatement.  The involvement of the CIA and the drug trade goes far beyond comparison to a crack house or drug dealer.  As revealed in the exhaustively researched “Whiteout”, the CIA is the Mother of all Drug Lords.  The work of the Agency–the Company– the Boys– can more accurately be compared to the gangland muscle for a covert government funded partially by taxes, and partially by drug sales.   Illegal drugs are useful in that they enable control of populations both where they are grown and where they are sold.  And the business of social control is the prime mission of the CIA, and they use any means to attain that end.  After reading “Whiteout”, it is possible to see that recent terrorism has only a couple of degrees of separation between the acts and the CIA. For example, people from the Afghan areas where the CIA used to arm, support and train the Mujahadin, were reportedly connected with the bombings in Kenya and and the Sudan.

Another terrorist attack with a possible CIA pedigree, would be the recent arrest of seven exiled Cubans with a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro.  “Whiteout” gives background to the history of the CIA plotting against President Castro; a history that is long, comic and perverse.   The CIA relationship with aggressive elements within the Cuban expatriate community is well known to be as close as kittens at a nipple.   And while they may not be directly involved in this latest fiasco, they certainly created an environment friendly to the plotters.
When the bombs first went off in Africa, my first thoughts idled on the CIA,   but then I thought  not even the CIA would bomb that many people for no apparent reason,  So I said let’s see what happens.   Well, what’s happened is “heightened security”.   This appears to be perfectly proper.  The barricading of government facilities and the long lines where people are asked to show their papers before they can “move along”.   These are reported as unavoidable but cautious responses to a world wide terrorist threat.   So it seems that the only thing that has actually happened is the increasing deployment of security forces and their apparatus home, and a one day airstrike by the U.S. at what are reported to be former CIA training camps in Aghanistan and a pharmeceutical company in the Sudan.   Then there is the labeling of Khalid Muhammad, an African American leader well outside the mainstream, as a “terrorist”, and a convocation of Black youth as a “hate march.”   The history of United States government in general and the CIA in particular as outlined in “Whiteout” suggests that these are not necessarily unrelated topics.   To the kind of people you read about in “Whiteout”, people receiving US government checks, the 12 Americans who died in the bombing in Kenya could easily be considered “unavoidable collateral damage,” and the thought of a million black youth united behind an agenda for changing their lives would be considered totally unacceptable.

After recapping Gary Webbs’ “Dark Alliance” series and the CIA orchestrated media firestorm of denial of the evidence and destruction of Mr. Webb’s journalism career,  “Whiteout” takes a look at some of the basis, of what the major media calls “Black paranoia.”   That is, African Americans, after looking at the evidence revealed by Webb and the empirical evidence on the corner and in their lives, are left with a feeling that yes, “they” are out to get us.  Well if you’re Black and  weren’t paranoid before reading “Whiteout”, it’s only because you didn’t know enough.    Check out the following excerpts from chapter three, “The History of Black ‘Paranoia’.”

“In the early years of the century, Lieut. Col. Ralph Van Deman created an Army Intelligence network targeting four prime foes: the Industrial Workers of the World, opponents of the draft, Socialists, and ‘Negro unrest.”  Fear that the Germans would take advantage of black grievances was great, and Van Deman was much preoccupied with the role of black churches as possible centers of sedition.

“By the end of 1917 the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division had opened a file on Martin Luther King Jr.’s maternal grandfather, the Rev. A. D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and first president of the Atlanta NAACP.  King’s father, Martin Sr., William’s successor at Ebenezer Baptist also entered the army files….By 1963, so Tennessee journalist Stephen Tompkins reported in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, U-2 planes were photographing disturbances in Birmingham, Alabama, capping a multilayered spy system that by 1968 included 304 intelligence offices across the country, “subversive national security dossiers” on 80,731 Americans, plus 19 million personnel dossiers lodged at the Defense Department’s Central Index of Investigations.

A more sinister thread derives from the anger and fear with which the army high command greeted King’s denunciation of the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in 1967.  Army spies recorded Stokely Carmichael telling King, ‘The Man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got trouble.’
“After the 1967 Detroit riots, 496 black men under arrest were interviewed by agents of the army’s Psychological Operations group, dressed as civilians.  It turned out King was by far the most popular black leader.  That same year Maj. General William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for intelligence, observing the great antiwar march on Washington from the roof of the Pentagon, concluded that the empire was coming apart at the seams.  There were, Yarborough reckoned, too few reliable troops to fight in Vietnam  and hold the line at home.
“In response, the army increased its surveillance of  King.  Green Berets and other Special Forces veterans from Vietnam began making street maps and identifying landing zones and potential sniper sites in major US cities.   The Klu Klux Klan was recruited by the 20th Special Forces Group, headquartered in Alabama as a subsidiary intelligence network.   The army began offering 30.06 sniper rifles to police departments, including that of Memphis.

“In his fine investigation, Tompkins detailed the increasing hysteria of Army intelligence chief’s over the threat they considered King to pose to national stability.  The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover was similarly obsessed, and King was dogged by spy units through early 1967.  A Green Beret special unit was operating in Memphis on the day he was shot.  He died from a bullet from a 30.06 rifled purchased in a Memphis store, a murder for which James Earl Ray was given a 99-year sentence in a Tennessee prison.  A court-ordered test of James Earl Ray’s rifle raised questions as to whether it in fact had fired the bullet that killed King.”

COINTELPRO & Political Prisoners
One of the items on the agenda for the Million Youth March is that of political prisoners.   Some people, even black people, may think this involves some drug dealer or violent criminal who got “caught up in the system by the man”, yada, yada yada.  Actually, in recent history, the term “political prisoners”  grew out of the FBI’s  Counter Intelligence Program.   COINTELPRO as it was known began in 1956.  Cockburn and St. Clair write, “A memo from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described the program as it stood in August 1967; the purpose of COINTELPRO was to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize’ black organizations the FBI didn’t care for.  And if any black leader emerged, Hoover’s order was that the Bureau should “pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercised their potential for violence.’
“‘Neutralize’ has long been government-speak for assassination.  At least six or seven Black Panther leaders were killed at the instigation of the FBI, the most infamous episode being the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark  Clark in Chicago.  These two Panther leaders were shot in their beds while asleep, by Chicago police who had been given a detailed floor plan of the house by an FBI informant who had also drugged Hampton and Clark.”

In jail right now there are men and women for whom this is not history.  It is a life held in a prison cell because that person stood up when others did not, and said “No”.    They will not be forgotten at the  million youth march, and they must not be forgotten at the ballot box either.
When you think of cocaine you may think of the CIA.  But the use of cocaine as an excuse to attack black people is not new.   “In 1900 the Journal of the American Medical Association printed an editorial alerting its leaders to a new peril: ‘Negroes in the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of ‘cocaine sniffing or the ‘coke habit.”   One of the authorities of the time, Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania, in testimony before Congress in 1914, said, “Most of the attacks upon the white women of the south are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain.'”
This is the kind of thinking that guided the war on drugs in the early years, and the linking of cocaine and blacks continued unabated through the decades.   “Whiteout” reports that, “After a Nixon briefing in 1969, his top aide, H.R. Haldeman noted in his diary:  ‘Nixon emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks.  The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.'”    Nixon was at least respecting black sensibilities.  “Whiteout” shows that appearances were tossed aside during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years when black people were seriously dissed in the War on Drugs.   This war has many components.  One that is explored by Cockburn and St. Clair, is the forfeiture program.  “Even if only a small amount of drugs is found inside,” and Orange County narcotics detective explained, “the law permits seized vehicles to be sold by law enforcement agencies to finance anti-drug law enforcement programs.’

“In fact, the forfeiture program became a tremendous revenue stream for the police.  From 1982 to 1991 the US Department of Justice seized more than $2.5 billion in assets.  The Justice Department confiscated $500 million in property in 1991 alone, and 80 percent of these seizures were from people who were never charged with a crime.”
In 1986 the Ant-Drug Abuse Act was passed.  “It contained twenty-nine new minimum mandatory sentences….In 1995 the US Sentencing Commission reviewed eight years of application of this provision and found it to be undeniably racist in practice:  84 percent of those arrested for crack possession were black, while only 10 percent were white and 5 percent Hispanic.  The disparity for crack-trafficking prosecutions were even wider: 88 percent blacks, 7 percent Hispanics, 4 percent whites.   By comparison, defendants arrested for powder cocaine possession were 58 percent white, 26 percent black and 15 percent Hispanic…..Between 1986 and 1991 the incarceration rate for white males convicted on drug crimes increased by 106 percent.  But the number of black males in prison for kindred offenses soared by a factor of 429 percent, and the rate for black women went up by an incredible 828 percent.”

Using drugs as a weapon to attack blacks extends well beyond “illegal substances”.   In “Whiteout”, we are introduced to “Jolly” West, a UCLA psychiatrist and Government researcher.   Mr. West put it this way, “‘The role of drugs in the exercise of political control is also coming under increasing discussion,’ he wrote in Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience and theory, a book he edited in 1975.  ‘Control can be impose either through prohibition or supply.  The total or even partial prohibition of drugs gives government considerable leverage for other types of control.  An example would be the selective application of drug laws…against selected components of the population such as members of certain minority groups or political organizations.’  As we have seen, sentencing patterns vindicate West’s analysis.”
Sterilization and the history of bio-chemical warfare here in the US is also instructive.  One of the most frightening possibilities should be of interest to anyone who has heard of the Human Genome Project, the world-wide search to map every human gene.  “In a 1970 article in Military Review, a journal published by the US Army Command and General Staff College, a    Swedish geneticist at the university of Lund  named Carl Larson discussed genetically selective weapons.  Larson stated that though the study of drug metabolizing enzymes was in its infancy, ‘observed variations in drug responses have pointed to the possibility of great innate differences in vulnerability to chemical agents between different populations.’ Larson went on to speculate that in a process similar to mapping the world’s blood groups, ‘we may soon have a grid where new observations on this can be pinpointed.’  In the same vein, a January 1975 US Army report noted in its conclusion that “it is theoretically possible to develop so-called ‘ethnic weapons’ which would be designed to exploit naturally occurring differences in vulnerability among specific population groups.'”

With all of that and more as prelude, Cockburn and St. Clair then begin to tell the murderous, torturous, system controlling, drug running saga of the CIA.   In spite of recent reports that they no longer assassinate people, assassination has always been one of their options.   Well known is the case of Patrice Lumumba, leader of the Congo.  CIA director Allen Dulles had decided that his removal was “an urgent and prime objective.”    First they tried a bio-poison created by the CIA’s Technical Services Division.   The poison was to be applied to Lummaba’s toothbrush and food.   “However, the CIA’s bio-assassins couldn’t get close enough to Lumumba, so the ‘executive action’ proceeded by a more traditional route.  Lumumba was seized, tortured and murdered by soldiers of the CIA’s selected replacement, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Lumumba’s body ended up in the trunk of a CIA officer who drove around Lumumbashi trying to decide how to dispose of it.”

Looking at the Congo today, with all her minerals and boardering countries, we see the results of the CIA’s work then, and probably the work they’re doing right now.  The chapter dealing with the connections between the CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with Nazis after WW2 is instructive in the kinds of people the CIA is willing and even eager to work with.

Their exploits in the realms of torture and human experimentation are detailed at length and the relationship of the CIA with people such as the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbi extended into the 1970’s.    But we don’t have to tar the CIA with the Nazi brush.  It is revealed that the CIA is quite capable of creating its own horrors.  Take the effort to interrogate Vietnamese prisoners in July of 1968.  “In one such experiment, three prisoners were anaesthetized, their skulls were then opened and electrodes were implanted by CIA doctors into different parts of their brains.  The prisoners were revived, placed in a room with knives and the electrodes in the brains activated by the CIA psychiatrist who were covertly observing them.  The hope was that they could be prompted in this manner to attack each other.  The experiment failed.  The electrodes were removed, the patients were shot and their bodies burned.  This rivaled anything in Dachau.”

“By the early 1950’s the CIA’s relationship with drugs stretched from alliances with criminal smugglers of heroin to research in, and application of, lethal or mind-altering chemical agents.”

After reading about the blatant drug running, the plane buying, the court fixing, the coups, the third-party slaughtering, the creation of deniable hight ground, once again we see that the people in the barbershops, beauty parlors, and on the street corner are right: The volume of guns and drugs that are in the Black communities would not arrive without the active aid and assistance of a government authority. The evidence has been compiled again; it’s the Central Intelligence Agency.  Once again there are hundreds of pages of documentation, interviews, sworn testimony, eyewitnesses, etc., all compiled from a wealth or sources.  And once again there is a collective shrug.    There was a brief flurry of activity last December, when “news” of the results of the CIA internal investigation of drugs charges was leaked.  The actual report was due out the following January but has not been issued yet.  The Amsterdam News reports Maxine Waters charging that “the leaked CIA report remains classified, sitting at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.”   The December 16th issue of CounterPunch anticipated the non-release.  “As for the January release, don’t hold your breath.  This is not the first CIA Inspector General’s report that’s been laggard in appearing.  In 1988 the Agency conducted an IG’s report on Contra-CIA drug running.  We’re still waiting.  In 1973 the Agency promised an IG report on CIA relations with opium smuggling in Southeast Asia (this was after McCoy’s book raised a storm and was duly denounced in the mainstream press.)  We’re still waiting for full publication of that one.  In 1953 and in 1963 the Agency undertook self-examinations of its role in drug experimentation, with reference to LSD.  We’re still waiting for complete disclosure of those reports as well.”
People had better start caring about this, and not leave it up to Congresswoman Maxine Waters to fight this battle with thin troops.   Africa risks being depopulated, and black people here in the states are employed as company labor or as product for the criminal justice system and social service agencies.
The solution that worries the ruling elite,and their operatives the most, is the prospect of a black voter turnout in the 80% range.  At that level, we would leverage a movement that would fundamentally reform the political system and the exercise of power around the world.   That is why so much time and energy is spent trying to keep black folks down, and why the fate of the nation depends on our rising up.

-DG
(“Whiteout – The CIA, Drugs and the Press” is published by Verso 212-807-9680)
CounterPunch is published by Ken Silverstein and Alexander Cockkburn.  For subscription info: CounterPunch, P.O. Box 18675, Washington, D.C.

Charles Barron – What it Takes to Win the Political Game

Editor, Our Time Press
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OTP:  The recent primary election only had about 15% of the electorate coming out.  What’s going on and how can we change it?

Charles Barron:  Number one, I think that a lot of voters feel they don’t have a reason to vote. They’ve been lied to so much by elected officials that there is a fair amount of despair and hopelessness vis a vis the electoral process, and we can’t blame it all on voter apathy.   The other part is the candidate.  There is a lack of sincere, down-to-earth, grassroots, for the people, candidates.  So when you have candidates that are not committed to the people, and you have incumbents who have sold out the people, it’s very, very difficult to convince people to come out and vote because Rosa Parks, and Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled for you to have that right.   We ran that one down for a little while and it’s worked to an extent.  Now people want to see some concrete changes in their daily living.  They want to see things delivered and promises kept.

OTP:  How do we convince people that there is a reason?   I see folks out here who simply have no inclination whatsoever to go and vote.

CB:  I think you have to do several things.  Number one, as we’re doing with the Unity Party and the Mary France campaign, is to give people a reason to vote,   to develop a new electoral movement.  To revolutionize the electoral movement with people who are connected with grassroots people.  I think once they see candidates from the community who have worked in the community, candidates they believe in, then I think we’ll have a better chance. Even though this last turnout was dismally low, I look at things like Barry Ford running against Ed Towns in the 10th Congressional District.  Ed Towns got 17,000 votes and Barry Ford got 12,000 votes.  That’s a lot for a person who was not known before this race.  And when you add in the other guy, Ken Diamondstone, he got 4,000 votes.   So there were 16,000 votes against Ed Towns.   48% of the district went against Ed Towns, a longtime incumbent.   Well that’s a signal that people are dissatisfied with the kind of leadership Towns is offering and want a change.

OTP:  What are the nuts and bolts of grabbing people and getting them down to the ballot boxes.  How is that done?

CB:  First it has to take place long before the election.  I think that’s a mistake that a lot of grassroot candidates, insurgent candidates make.  They take too long to run.  They wait until the last minute to make that decision.  To run, you need an expert team to get the signatures to get on the ballot.  You need to raise enough money, and you have to be connected to the people.  People are tired of folks coming around just on election day.
We have an election coming up in 2001 and we’re out here now, three and four years before the election, getting connected with our people.   We have to see our folks where they are.  We have to go into the barbershops when there are no elections and find out what is on folk’s minds.   We have to go to tenant association meetings, block association meetings, churches, when there are no elections.  Just to get involved in the everyday life of our folks and work on issues they care about.  Rent control issues, issues in the housing developments, income caps.  People are looking at subsistence education of their children and we have to address those basic issues.  When people know that you are going to address the issues that impact their daily lives, and do it on a consistent basis, even before the election, then I think we have a better chance of getting them out to vote.
Just last night I was talking to five or six brothers on the corner, and one of them said, “I’m glad you stopped to talk.  We saw your picture on the poster, but I’ve never met you.    Now that we’ve met, you can rest assured you’ve got my vote.”  I invited them to an organizing committee, Operation POWER.  It’s an organization that came out of our campaign.  So that’ll be four or five more people.  I’ve got to do more of that.  So do other people who are serious about transforming our communities and our people.

OTP:  It’s not just the picture on the poster that gets the job done?

CB:   No, you can’t just put the picture on the poster up a few months before election day, get the New York Times and the Amsterdam News to endorse you, some big name people to endorse you.  You have to work hard everyday.   You have to walk through the housing developments.  See the folks sitting on the benches, introduce yourself and see what is on their minds.  What do the people want?  Of course they’re going to tell you “I need a job.”  Of course they’re going to tell you they want the drugs out of the community.   Then you have to see what level of commitment they’re willing to make, to cause that kind of stuff to happen.   It takes leadership. There are two kinds of leadership, A transformative leader who is a change individual, trying to change the system so that a greater amount of goods and services are delivered to the greatest number.  Then there are the other types of leaders who are into transactions.   They cut deals.  They make transactions.  They get a small group of loyalists some jobs to keep them in office.  I believe we need to move toward a transformative leadership for change, and away from transactional so that we can create a political movement.

OTP:  There is always talk about how the incumbents have a built-in advantage.  What are the mechanisms they use to enhance their reelections?

CB:  There are three main things they do to get reelected.  The first is mass mailing.   Take my 42nd Council District.   We have 54,000 registered voters.  The incumbent, with the money in her city council budget, can mail to those 54,000 voters two or three times right before the election.   So she’s already started off with three mailings to 54,000 people.

OTP:  These are mailing paid for by the city?

CB:  Out of the city council budget.  It’s illegal to use the city council budget for a campaign and there is a law that you’re not supposed to do a mailing within ninety days of an election, but not many people adhere to that law.   So what they’ll do is say they are just sending out a council report to the district thirty days before the election.   So they get to do that three times.  Then when it comes to the campaign, the incumbents are connected to powerful people, like the mayor in the case of Priscella Wooten in my district or the mayor and Ed Towns, so they get support from these power associations and developers, and corporations, so they have a lot of funds.   So they take those funds and do two or three more mailings and add to the three they’ve already done.   So now you have five different mailings to 54,000 people.   Secondly, they do phone banking.  The day of the election or a week before the election, they get the unions to give them access to very sophisticated phone banks.  They are able have people work the phones.    So now the voters are getting phone calls.   Thirdly, most voters make up their minds the day of the election and the incumbents have the money to pay people to go out there with palm cards.  They have the financing to put teams of people at each polling site.  Priscella Wooten had five hundred people out to my one hundred.   So it’s mailing, phone banking and election day operations with palm cards.  That’s how the incumbent stays in office.  And they already have the name recognition.

OTP:  Now what does an insurgent have to do to overcome that?

CB:  That’s why we have to start very, very early.   For example, I ran once, we got four thousand votes.  So even though Wooten is the incumbent and did all that I just said, and then some, she only got six thousand votes.   So four thousand to six thousand.  Now I have to work these next three years, to build an army for election day.  To raise more money so that I can do more mailing and to get a phone bank going.   I’ve got to spend the time expanding my base.  You have to build a base.  After the election, I didn’t go away.  We’re going to work out there to expand our base.  We’re going to go into the churches.  We had several ministers working with us this time, and we’re going to increase that number.   We are getting more into our youth.  There are a lot of young people who are politically conscious, the Hip Hop Nation.  Hip Hop culture is looking more toward politics.  I’ve spoken with young people in the district who are looking to get involved as well.  And then we are going to look more to expand toward some community-based organizations that were more fearful to get involved last time because there were purse strings attached.  But with no incumbent in the next election, even though they will still have a machine coming at me, these organizations will have more courage to get involved.  And then looking at the Tenant Associations and Block Associations Presidents.  These are real local leaders.  In our district we have about eleven housing developments.   We had three or four tenant association leaders from those housing developments involved.   We’re going to shoot for more and expand that.   Then we are working with the Black Political Free Agents organization, the Unity Party, and Operation POWER which is a group we put together.  And then we’ve been assisting other campaigns.   In this past election we worked with three or four different campaigns and that gave us relationships with other political forces.   That’s what we mean by expanding our base.

OTP:  In this upcoming election for governor, what’s the lay of the land and what’s the role of the Unity Party and Mary France?

CB:  We’ve really got to build an independent political movement, a progressive political movement.   That is a major objective.  We want to get 50,000 votes under the Unity Party banner, so we can build an independent political movement.   Right now the two major parties either take us for granted like the Democrats, ignore us like the Republicans or use us like progressive white efforts.   So we’re either ignored, taken for granted or used.  The Unity Party brings us power, leverage and respect.   Instead of an individual voting for Twiddle Dee Dee or Twiddle Dee Dum, that is Peter Vallone or George Pataki, they’ll have a real choice.  Because those two are both so conservative their politics are very similar, it’s not going to make a huge difference who wins.  The difference will be so marginal, you’ll be better off voting for Mary Alice France, with the Unity Party, so that you’ll have 50,000 people representing you.   Because you need 50,000 votes to get an independent party line, when people seek elections with these major parties, they will look at you differently now because they are looking at 50,000 people instead of one person.   Or instead of black people who are controlled by certain black leaders who the power structure is comfortable with, we’ll have an independent party that will give us more leverage.   Having a Unity Party means that we can run our own candidates locally.  So if I run in 2001 as a registered Democrat, I’m also going to be on the Unity Party line. So it really increases our opportunities on a local level, as well as gives us more leverage and power and negotiating power on the broader level.

OTP:  Running on two party lines, how does that work?

CB:  you can be endorsed by many parties.   Peter Vallone is on the Working Families Party line in November, and the Democratic.   In New York City, the Liberal Party, the so-called Liberal Party that’s actually very conservative under the leadership of Ray Harding, they wield a lot of power now because they support Giuliani.  If that white vote is split, then the Liberal Party endorsement really means something.    We can play that same kind of power politics if we had a Unity Party and continued to build it.   There may come a time where we’ll run our own candidates for statewide office and keep building.  But in the meantime, as we win local elections and become powerful, we can still make a difference in the gubernatorial election if the two main candidates are neck and neck, if we can come in with a hundred thousand, hundred and fifty thousand votes, it can make a difference.  If you look at this last race for the Democratic Primary, Peter Vallone got 296,000 votes.   Chuck Schumer won the nomination for Senate with 252,000 votes.   That may seem like a lot, but you’re talking about millions of voters in the state.   Remember that Al Sharpton got 187,000 votes when he ran statewide with little or no money.   These other guys have millions of dollars.  Sharpton got more votes than everybody else in those races but the two winners.   Now that’s something to think about.  He got more votes than Mark Green, more votes than Geraldine Ferraro, more votes than Betsy McCaughey Ross.  When you look at the governor’s race, Peter Vallone got 296,000 votes.  Betsy McCaughey Ross 112,000, James LaRocca, 41,000, and Charles Hynes, 84,000.  Sharpton, with 187,00 votes in his senate race in 1994 got more votes than Hynes and LaRocca put together.

OTP: How much did Sharpton spend on that race?

CB:  About $70,000.

OTP:  How much money do these other guys spend?

CB:  Millions.  I know Betsy McCaughey Ross spent about $2.5 million and she only got 112,000 votes.

OTP:  Unbelievable.

CB;  So Sharpton spent $60-70,000 in that Senate race and he got 187,000 votes.   Look at it this way.  In his citywide run for mayor, he got 132,000 votes.   That was more than Betsy McCaughey Ross got statewide.

OTP:  Gotcha.

CB:  Her 112,000 with her millions.  Look at the Senate race.  Charles Schumer got 252,000 votes with over ten million dollars.  That’s not cost-effective with Sharpton getting 187,000 votes for $70,000.  [ed. Note: These figures work out to approx. .37 cents a vote for Sharpton, $22.32 a vote for Ross, and $39.68 a vote for Schumer].   Mark Green had 93,000 votes.  Sharpton had 187,000.  Geraldine Ferraro, the woman icon, vice-presidential candidate, she had a few million, 132,000 votes.  The Geraldine Ferraro vote statewide was only as much as Sharpton got citywide, 132,000.  So we have the potential to really build a party, an alternative to the two party system, and really have a major impact.  And then look at some of the local stuff.   The local races.  When I ran against Priscella Wooten, I got 3,990 plus votes.  Four thousand.   Clarence Norman, Jr., the most powerful black Democrat in the State.  He received 3,313 votes.   Do you hear me?  We got four thousand.

OTP:  And the populations are the same?

CB:  We have a larger district.  There are several assembly district in the council district.  But look at it this way, I got three thousand votes from just the 40th Assembly District.  That covers East New York, the other thousand came outside of East New York.

OTP:  Alright.

CB:  He got three thousand three hundred.  I got three thousand in the 40th , one Assembly District.   I probably could have beaten Assemblyman Griffith if I would have wanted that seat, because he’s vulnerable and we’re building a machine out here.  Take the case of James E. Davis, Officer Davis.

OTP:  Oh yes.

CB:  He doesn’t have any real solid base.  Two thousand seven hundred and thirty-three votes against Clarence.  He got 45% of the vote against Clarence.   Look at Ed Towns with millions of dollars and out here for sixteen years, he got a total of 17,990 votes.   Barry Ford, a virtual unknown, 12,610 votes, 36% of the vote.  Kenneth Diamondstone, 4,000 votes.  If you total Kenneth’s and Barry’s votes, which is an anti-Towns vote, it’s 16,610 to Towns’ 17,990.  48% to Towns’ 52%.  What message is the electorate giving to us?   They want these guys out.   They will go with anybody to get them out.   But we have to build our bases more, and build our relationships more.
OTP:  What can the individual person do who says, “Hey, I want to make something happen.”  What can they do?

CB:  I don’t think there should be an individual black person in this city that is not a part of some organization.   The first thing all of us have to do with our families is join an organization.   We cannot do this thing alone.   Then once you get involved with an organization, you have to push that organization to be progressive.   To link with other organizations that have similar goals, so that we can build progressive and independent coalitions to launch an electoral movement.  Movements change things.   Campaigns put individuals in office.  Movements change things systemically.  Movements build platforms.   Campaigns build a person.  We have to get beyond the idea of running campaigns as individuals and look at building movements and coalitions for independent progressive policy that will be more issue-based and platform-based, organizational-based, and system fighters.  We can’t just look at somebody with a name, and put them in office.  They have to be committed to an agenda, an organization, and be system fighters.  Not afraid to fight against white supremacy.   That’s one of our major problems.  White male supremacy.  Most of the parties in this state, if not all, are lead by white males.   Whether they’re progressive parties or liberal parties, or conservative parties, they’re lead by white males.

OTP:  Conrad Muhammad has an interesting group called A Movement for CHHANGE that he is developing.

CB:   Yes.  I think that’s an excellent group that has a world of potential.  Conrad Muhammad has a real challenge before him.  He’s going to have to sustain a movement, and develop the resources.  But we need training.  Groups like that need training.  Not only young people, but all of us need training.  I’ve put out a call to Conrad already.  We at Dynamics of Leadership, are certainly willing to provide that kind of training.  People will gather with you early, but to sustain a movement like that, you’re going to have to obtain some power real soon, and obtain resources in order to do fundamental things.  You have to find a building, a base, that you can organize in and have people come to.  In addition to the money, you have to have the training to go along with that so that you’ll know what the political landscape is in New York.

OTP:  When we were speaking at the meeting, I was lamenting on the poor turnout and you said words to the effect, “Do not despair.”   Do you remember that?

CB:   Yes.  You know, I’m an eternal optimist and a realist.  I’m not one who is an idealistic optimistic in an unreal way.  But I’m certain that during slavery days somebody told Harriet Tubman that she was out of her mind.  That slavery was here forever, so why would she try and do something about it.  But Harriet did it, despite of all that was around her.  And slavery doesn’t exist anymore in that form.  I’m sure somebody told Marcus Garvey that he couldn’t build the things he wanted to build.  A steamship company in 1920.  Black people would never give him enough money to build the Phyliss Wheatley Hotel, and the Universal Grocery Store, and the Universal Restaurant.   But Marcus Garvey said, “Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will.”  And he did it.  I’m sure people thought that Jim Crow would be around forever.  George Wallace said, “Segregation now, segregation forever.”   He just died himself, as did segregation.   I’m sure someone told Nelson Mandela, “well you might as well just give it up.  You’re going to be in jail forever.   He sat in there for twenty-seven years.  Never giving up hope, always having a vision for a new South Africa.  Apartheid is dead and Mandela went from the prison to the presidency.   If that could happen in South Africa, if that could happen on the plantations, then we who have so much more, should do equally as well, if not better.  And any leader who comes before us and tells us that any form of our oppression is permanent, that’s a leader not fit to lead.

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