Mother’s Day Proclamation
Written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870

“Arise then ….. women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether thy baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: we will not have questions answered by irregular agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us reeking of carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the voice of a devastated earth a voice goes up with

Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor,

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil

At the summons of war,

Let women not leave all that may be left at home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace ……..

www.juliawardhowe.org

TAKING A LOOK AT REPARATIONS

By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

Like Americans everywhere, I too, was shocked, saddened and outraged when the World Trade Center was obliterated by terrorists who wanted to destroy the United States of America. I was overwhelmed with empathy and compassion for the wives whose husbands would not come home that night, the husbands whose wives would not come home that night, the children whose lives would be shattered and the parents who had the most horrendous task imaginable, burying their child/children.

I felt that a memorial to those Americans was appropriate because seldom had the United States been attacked by outside forces since the advent of Pearl Harbor.

When I heard that the survivors were demanding rhestitution or reparations for the lives lost, I was not only puzzled, but I felt a sense of outrage. Never had I heard of anyone suggesting that the families of the sailors who lost their lives on the ships in Pearl Harbor, nor had I ever heard of the families of all military personnel killed in service for their country being adequately compensated for their loss. I reflected back to the bombing in Oklahoma City of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and other internal acts of terrorism where no one in the body politic or the public demanded compensation for the lives lost in such tragedies.

Now, I’m going to apply some logic to the slavery of Africans in America. I know there are arguments that the United States was not the sole perpetrator of forcing people against their will to leave their homeland to work in servitude with no compensation as Professor Henry Louis Gates attests. It does not matter that some African leaders helped to facilitate the capture and enslavement of their fellow man. What does matter is that the slaves who survived the Middle Passage and those that endured the ever perpetual humiliation, torture, brutality, the castration, the rape, and the lynchings carried out by their slave owners were forced to work without compensation.

The survivors were forced to labor under the most inhumane conditions with no benefit accrued to themselves or their families. Instead, this labor fattened the coffers of the landowners. Much of the wealth of the United States of America was built on the backs of these unpaid workers who were devalued, dehumanized, devastated and emotionally destroyed. These are the people who did not volunteer for this forced service or labor; they had no choice. Their fate was either comply or die!

The descendants of these African slaves should be adequately compensated for the loss of lives of their ancestors just as the survivors of the families of people who lost their lives in the World Trade Center. The two situations are not even equal or parallel. The WTC workers went to work voluntarily in order to support themselves and their families. The African slaves were forced to work without any pay to sustain themselves or their families. Their ancestors inherited nothing because the slaves had nothing to leave to their progeny. Many white families in America are wealthy because of the wealth inherited from their ancestors, who as free people were able to accumulate wealth, in many instances the wealth was gained because of the free labor rendered by their enslaved workers.

Fairness and decency compel America to address these grievances. Just as veterans, under the G. I. Bill, were given points in qualifying for tests for employment to help to compensate for their service, Americans of African descent deserve to be compensated in money for the service of their ancestors.

There is no justification for denying Americans of African descent the chance to catch up. Starting out of the gate miles behind the rest of Americans, they start out with this distinct disadvantage of starting from scratch with NO BOOTS and no straps to pull them up.

See this article from the Denver Post for some important information: http://www.denverpost.com/frontpage/ci_15000269

Glory to the minstrel who sings and plays the mandolin. Glory to the harmony of the chorus that are harbingers for both the tragedy and the comedy. Glory to the aria and the fullness of the voice, the most versatile and moving instrument, that sings, chants, yodels, warbles, like a nightingale entrancing and captivating, while quieting the troubled spirit, while quelling the heart beating passionately at love's lost requiem. Music carries us away and dribbles on our panting chest the cadence, the rhythm of life. How droll the spirit of the bard and the gift of prophesy that has such a tongue and breath to sweep away all misery and leave us for a moment in a place that is sacred and profane.

At the close of life, when the veil is drawn I hope that someone will play the cello as in St. Colomb's magical music from a place beyond this; for music that soothes the spirit and lifts the fires of light to the divine is not for mortal ears and lips. We hear from a place that is profound and distant like a brilliant novena that bursts our hearts.

Thank you for the drummers rhythm, that has played out a powerful beat that drove us dizzy and feet that traced the pattern of the hands and sticks pounding out the beat. The rhythm of life is a powerful beat that shakes the hands and feet and melts the heart. Without the pounding of the rhythm there would be a cacophony of rude noise.

Thank you for the rush of nascent chimes blowing in the wind that make us realize that there is more than stirring air in the refrain, deep inside the seed of life.

Gongs, cymbals, syncopating rhythms of castanets and congas carry us back, back across the waves and the clatter of centuries to the primordial ancestry of life emerging from the shadows of the sea. Listen to the conch and blow out the concordant echo in our eyes and ears. Our nostrils can feel the breezes blowing inland lifting us up above the din.

What first promoted the pipes of Pam to play how lightly and magically we were transformed and in that instant the immortal was created forever as a siren drawing us to be laid to waste on the shores of beauty and transcendent rhapsody. Thank you all madrigals and voices of the chorale for making us remember that what is inside is the joy of creative sparks that fly up to heaven and then disappear.

Time to take the worm box with the red wrigglers out and separate the worm castings or skat from the brood, like harvesting the capped honey from the hive, rich and savory, and full of promise. Honey and skat have a lot of similarities, they are the result of the work of the insects without which the world would be flavorless, and drab.

Gardening at this time of the year is a fond memory that goes back all the way to the earliest memories of life. No matter how daunting the task of pulling out those weeds with long, massive and tenacious fibrous root, the feeling of unexplained satisfaction that the muscles have in clutching those invasive mallow, the bindweed, both which multiply incessantly is satisfying. Building a new compost pile with the prize, while making a green mulch helps stir the fires of expectation. Already the carpet of blue bearded irises have overtaken the ramp. The hollyhock on the other side have mushroomed out of the mulch and the leaves that were laid last fall. The locust saplings, aromatic herbs, chives, tulips, dandelions and grape hyacinth have come and the lilies are beginning their summer blooms. The air is pungent with scents of flowering crab-apples and mint is popping up all over the front plot.

More satisfying than all of this is the feeling of your aching fingers, covered with brown and green stains from tugging the roots and the sway of your back as you tenderly pull out as much of the root as possible. For the gardener who bends down and sniffs the earth, looks longingly and deeply on the beds and the soil structure lives in paradise. There is nothing remotely like the experience of the first tugs and tussles with nature's mantle. There is no where else I would rather be early in the morning. I long for hot summer nights of watering the roots and slowly shaping the beds to hold moisture through drought and heat until the summer sun angles downward toward the southern horizon.

A Rhapsody in the Hues of the Rainbow

Aboriginals from north of the false borders; from the clans across the Americas of Turtle Island; from the continent of Native-Americans Who dwell here from time memorial have stirred the consciousness of a world forgotten.

Dark Crude is washing ashore all up and down the coasts, and in the byways and along the lanes of commercial interests. We believe that we must abide by a tougher standard to protect our lands in the exact same way as the apartheid in South Africa protected the interests of the Boors.

Only to our peril do we sew the seeds of indifference and subjugate the peoples of the Western Hemisphere. This land that we dominate was never our's to pillage and plunder.

Let the word go out that the world is not long going to uphold this imbalance of natural law. We need to be more prudent and accessible to sharing the world or lose everything.

April 26, 2010

“While the power of the Europeans has continued, I see the other part of
the Ghost Dance prophecy coming true today. So-called ‘Hispanics,’ with
faces that sure look like Indians to me, are returning to repopulate North
America. We cannot always speak to each other because we have learned the
languages of different colonial powers. But these Indians have as much
right to come and go on our land as the geese when they migrate north and
south. No one would dare to ask them for their passports and visas as they
cross manmade borders.

Instead of seeing ‘Hispanics’ as outsiders who do not belong here, we need
to start seeing them as ancestors of the original inhabitants of these
lands. They are the living fulfillment of the Ghost Dance prophecy.”

-Chief Billy Redwing Tayac, Piscataway Nation

"First Nations United, an Indigenous organization largely made up of
members of the Red Lake/Ojibwe Nation and the Dakota/Crow Creek Nation,
would like to formally express its outrage and disagreement with the SB
1070 (“Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods”) Bill passed
last week by the state of Arizona. This bill is extremely detrimental to
the indigenous communities (including indigenous peoples of Latin American
origin), which reside in the state of Arizona as well as those who live
throughout the country. The language of the bill states that if there is
"reasonable suspicion" that a person is an illegal immigrant, a
"reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable" to check for
documents. Such language purposefully promotes the racial profiling of
brown-skinned people, and in particular, of people of American indigenous
background. As an indigenous organization, which stands for the civil and
human rights of indigenous peoples throughout the continent, we are
concerned that this bill will promote the unfair and discriminatory
arrests, prosecution, and deportation of people of American indigenous
descent—not only of those who belong to federally recognized tribes, but
also of the hundreds of thousands of indigenous people who have migrated
from South/Central America and Mexico to what is now called “the United
States.” Indigenous peoples across the continent do not recognize the
borders established by the settler colonialist state on our lands, and, we
do not agree with the malicious and dehumanizing way in which the settler
colonialist government wants to enforce them.

As an Indigenous organization, we recognize that indigenous peoples from
Latin America have every right to migrate up and down the continent as
they please and as they have done through trade and communication routes
since time immemorial. The native peoples of the continent should be the
ones establishing immigration laws and enforcing them. However, because we
were disempowered through genocide and colonization, and because we have
consistently treated “foreigners” in a more humane and hospitable way, we
respect peoples’ rights to migrate. If we did enforce such power, only
tribal identifications from throughout the continent (including
documentation identifying peoples from Latin American indigenous ancestry)
would be recognized as legitimate, and we could very well racially profile
people of Caucasian descent as the true and eternal foreigners.

As the first peoples of this continent, we pose this question to Governor
Brewer, Senator Russell Pearce, and law enforcement in the state of
Arizona, “Who are you to check for documents?” We remind them that the
power they have taken to legislate was established by an immigrant and
illegal settler colonialist government, which has consistently relied on
the genocide and mistreatment of the original peoples of this continent.

First Nations United greatly objects to SB 1070 and denounces Governor
Brewer, Senator Pearce, and the State of Arizona as anti-Indigenous,
cruel, and racist. We call for an Indigenous boycott of the State of
Arizona until this bill is repealed or found unconstitutional as it will
gravely violate the civil and human rights of indigenous people in the
state and throughout the country."

FIRST NATIONS UNITED

--
Gabriela Spears-Rico
Doctoral Candidate
Dep't of Comparative Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley
506 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 643-0796 [Tel]
(510) 642-6456 [Fax]

An Alien’s Psalm
by Ed Hays

I wear the mark of your disapproval
and your often unspoken words
pierce straight to my soul,
“Why didn’t you stay where you belong?”

I feel the icy stare that says,
“Keep your distance, you foreigner,
with your different-colored skin
and your strange-sounding speech,
with your culture, food, religion, and clothing
that are inferior to my own.”

I’m an immigrant, a wetback, an alien,
an outsider operating a sweatshop sewing machine;
cheap labor; unwanted or dirty jobs
are mine for the taking;
I’m one of the countless invisible ones
who puts vegetables on your plate
or stitches the fashion dresses and shirts
that you buy in your stylish stores.

As Moses of old once said,
“Remember, you were once aliens
in the land of Egypt.”
Remember that your grandfathers and grandmothers
were immigrant-unwanteds,
were exploited cheap labor,
second-class citizens,
uneducated and poor,
used and abused,
ignored or looked down upon
for their foreign religion, speech and food.

The White House,
first house of this great land,
says it well:
white is the land of promise;
no room for other colors or creeds.

Someday we’ll paint the first house
in rainbow colors-
someday, not long from now.

Comment: What strikes me about this is that we all have to rise and say enough, or "Ya Basta." It is enough, that our ancestors have been victimized by feeling afraid coming here to live, work and raise their families. It is enough that we have generations of people who feel as though no one is listening to them. It is enough that we have no room for the stranger in our midst. It is enough that we have a legacy of subjecting citizens to abuse and taking away what is rightfully everyone's, the land, the freedom, the rights, dignity and worth of everyone.

Many of you have sponsored our team and have joined us, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. It is inspiring to hear the stories of those who have contributed as to their reasons and motivation. These arms and legs and hearts will sustain me over the miles that we ride whether foul or fair weather this June 26 and 27. The routes are posted for you to follow us and come out and cheer us on as we near the Horse Tooth Reservoir outside of Ft. Collins. That Saturday night we will be in the valley in Fort Collins. The following morning we set out at dawn on the way back across the hills and down into Front Range Community College.

Numb and exhausted the feeling mirrors the ordeal suffered by many people with Multiple Sclerosis. Please contribute to our team and my campaign here on line. We will need all of you to ride together with me this summer and take the sting out of people like my son's friend Joe, who courageously wages a daily struggle for survival. To all of you who ride with us go well stay well always.

Randle Loeb
Captain of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Team

THIS IS THE 25 ANNIVERSARY of the Bike MS Great Western Ride
www.bikemscolorado.org June 25 and 26 Come Out and Cheer us On