Africa – RI Future

February 28, 2016February 28, 2016

What anti-war activists should protest for: Eric Draitser explains China’s role in Africa and Syria

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In part two of our interview with Eric Draitser, geopolitical analyst and commentator, he explains the role of China in the African continent and Syria. These two locations demonstrate the meaning of the multi-polar world theory and repudiate a good deal of the propaganda generated by the mainstream media.

It is worth noting here that these geo-political concerns are not perfect but they do stand as tenable strategies. There are essentially two choices in this case. Either one accedes to the destructive imperial behavior of the American-led NATO bloc, which has produced nothing but war since the end of the Cold War that every America supports daily with their taxes, or one shows solidarity with the geopolitical effort working to counter this. Is it perfect? Of course not. But the history of solidarity movements which have been successful always included an alternative and viable power structure, be it supporting the North Vietnamese or the Sandinistas or the Second Spanish Republic. And the instance in recent memory where a power vacuum did in fact exist, as was the case in Cambodia, terrible things can and do happen. Geopolitics is not morality, it is power relationships and being forced to choose between the least awful of choices. And in understanding the way that the Western imperial project and its weaponized debt programs under the auspices of foreign aide have pillaged country after country, one quickly grasps the dynamics of this question.

July 6, 2015July 6, 2015

The other July Independence Day celebration: Vive Cabo Verde!

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While the celebrations have passed for American Independence Day, in Cape Verde and its diaspora, which has a significant representation in Rhode Island, the party has just begun. July 5th and 6th mark the fortieth anniversary of the independence of Cape Verde from Portuguese colonialism and the foundation of the Republic. This anniversary is particularly impressive because it occurs in close temporal proximity to the end of the American presence in Vietnam, symbolic of what was a series of major victories for the anti-colonialist struggle in the developing world and a high point in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the People’s Republic of China.

The islands, called Cabo Verde in Lusophone dialect, were discovered by Portuguese colonist Alvise Cadamosto and established as a permanent holding of the Empire in 1462. As an archipelago off the western coast of continental Africa, it was a major hub in the transport of human beings captured in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. After the Portuguese abolished slavery in 1869, Cape Verde continued to be held as a colony by the Empire and an exodus of immigrants began, creating a diaspora with population centers in New England.

Beginning in 1956 with the foundation of the PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde/African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) by Amílcar Cabral, his brother Luís, Aristides Pereira, Fernando Fortes, Júlio Almeida and Elisée Turpin, the colonized peoples engaged in a multi-decade anti-colonialist struggle that included the fight for Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau but also embraced a continent-wide struggle for freedom, such support for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. After Amílcar Cabral visited Cuba in 1966, Fidel Castro volunteered military advisors and doctors, while the USSR and China provided rifles and military training. This chain of events coincided with American efforts in Indochina, so the military support given the Portuguese, led by the Fascist junta of Antonio Salazar, was particularly brutal and featured napalm and other materiel being used in Asia. It was the philosopher Frantz Fanon who wrote in his classic THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH:

National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon… Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content. Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantification which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies. Their first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together—that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler—was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons.

Amílcar Cabral was assassinated in 1973 by the Portuguese in an effort that was attempting to ultimately foil the resistance movement. But despite this setback, it proved to be impossible to hold back the forces of change. Following a revolt in Portugal that unseated the Salazar regime, the new government engaged in direct negotiations with the anti-colonial militias, resulting in the foundation of an independent Cabo Verde in July 1975, just several months after the fall of Saigon and America’s evacuation from Vietnam.

Every commemoration, however, must contain within it a lesson for today. It is very simplistic to merely re-tell a history and not include some lessons. First, of course, there is a great deal of inspiration to be gleaned from the achievements of Cape Verdeans in our midst. The diaspora has provided us with a slew of notable figures who have made great strides despite the power of racism and structural discrimination in out society. Second, there is the demonstration that the people, united, will never be defeated. Today we face struggles that, in many ways, are much more astounding than the challenge of twentieth century decolonization, be it at home or abroad. But despite these challenges, it seems apparent that they can and ultimately always will fall to the power of the people. It might take time, but it does happen. And finally, consider one of the famous line of Amílcar Cabral: “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” It is very easy to do what is acceptable and serves the powerful. It is much more difficult to take the road of genuine scholarship, speaking truth to power, and challenging those who would exchange you riches for your soul. Only with adherence to the truth and solidarity with the facts will true change come in the world.

7/6, 4:35 PM: I could not resist adding this stellar hip-hop single by Agent of Change, truly great music.

September 3, 2014

Monday Night: Adia Benton addresses West African ebola crisis

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The Humanists of Rhode Island are proud to host medical anthropologist Adia Benton, delivering a presentation, “Addressing the Ebola Crisis in West Africa” in the auditorium of the Knight Memorial Library on 275 Elmwood Av, Providence, RI 02907 at 6pm on Monday, September 8, 2014.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has reached crisis proportions, and the world response has so far been inadequate.

“In this talk,” says Adia Benton, “I will provide an overview of the factors that have helped to propel the Ebola crisis in West Africa. I will also address some of the important social, economic, political and cultural consequences of a delayed and inadequate response, as well as the concerted efforts occurring worldwide to control the spread of the disease.”

Adia Benton is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University. As a public health specialist, she has worked and lived in various parts of Africa, with long-term experience in Sierra Leone. As an anthropologist, she studies the impact of public health, humanitarian and medical interventions on communities.

This presentation is open to the public and there will be time for questions and answers. Time will also be made for questions from the press.

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014

Fiction: A personal story of slavery in Rhode Island

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His name was John Harding. It must have been tough for a little white boy growing up in Newport, Rhode Island in 1805. Perhaps his mother and the other crewmen called him “Little John.” After all, he was only 4ft, 3 1/2 in. when he enlisted as a seaman on board a Rhode Island-based slave ship called Charles and Harriot. Little John was 11 years old.

The vessel was bound for what is to today the southeast African nation of Mozambique. Upon arrival Little John’s menial duties as a seaman expanded to that of a jailer of captive Africans. Indeed, all crew on board slave ships where jailers of a sort. How trying it must have been for Little John to maintain vigilant surveillance over a desperate human cargo after the long weeks at sea.

I wonder what Little John thought as he gazed into the lamenting eyes of captive Africans, as their shackled feet pressed their way onto the blood-stained sailing vessel of death. One can only imagine Little John fears as he beheld those humans — some of whom were his same age. “Will they kill me? Will I return home to my mother and father and brothers and sisters?” he must have speculated to himself.”

And even still I wonder what Africans thought when they witnessed Little John, a mere child given charge to be the eyes and ears securing their captivity. As the beautiful African souls plotted their revolt, surely they imagined that Little John would have to be the first to die. He was the smallest, and thus, most vulnerable. “Yeah, we will change his fate and thereby change our ownt!” they thought to themselves.

Alas, it was not to be so. For Little John completed his first voyage as a seaman aboard this Rhode Island slave ship. The following year (1806) Little John returned to the seas where he celebrated his 12th birthday on board another “slaver.” And no doubt the Africans who boarded this floating prison would attempt to make sure Little John never sailed again.

My semi-fictional narrative based on true events from the book The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807, by Jay Coughtry

February 9, 2012March 7, 2012

It’s Black History Month and the Sankofa Bird Speaks

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History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they’ve been and what they’ve been; where they are and what they are. History tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child.
~ Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Conscious memory is the prerequisite for human behavior.
~ Professor Greg Carr

As we sit in the middle of Black History Month I confess that I’ve spent the entirety of it thinking about the possibilities of how we might enter into a more progressive conversation on the topic of Black History. But please realize this month is not merely about the recognition of the achievements of African Americans, or a perfunctory gesture to insert Black faces in as missing chapters of American history. To be clear, most people, African Americans and people of non-color alike, tend to engage the month at equal levels of indifference. That said, for many, Black history in a US context, typically begins with the usual slavery narrative:

Once upon a time Black people were slaves…
Civil War, blah-blah…
Civil Rights, blah-blah…
Now we finally have a Black president.
The End.

My claim is a small one: the moment you initiate a conversation on Black history with chattel slavery as the port of origin you are always already affirming a short range historical position which ensures that you will (re)fabricate a limiting (and limited) scope from which to view Black (African) history and future. I can best liken it to walking into a football game after halftime and thinking the third quarter kickoff was the beginning of the game.

Professor Greg Carr stresses three critical indexes rendered in the work of Dr. Theophile Obenga which assert that in order to exist with agency in the world a people must be skilled practitioners of their own history, historiography and historicity.

– History: meaning memory; how do you remember your identity as an individual and as a part of a group.

– Historiography: how do you write that memory; how do you construct it and pass it on from generation to generation.

– Historicity: a sense of yourself in time and space; what’s your vision for the future.

If we, as people of African ancestry, only remember ourselves as former slaves and never recall ourselves as the first constructors of highly advanced civilizations with great centers of learning (philosophy, science, mathematics, agriculture and medicine), then we are condemned to remain a people who are only free due to the so-called benevolence of an American president.

Hubert Harrison, a brilliant early twentieth century West Indian writer whose political work influenced figures such as Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph, penned these words in an article from December of 1920…

When white people today talk of civilizing Africa and assert that the Africans are uncivilized [they] awaken in the minds of well-informed Africans a doubt as to whether white people know what is meant by the term. For, no matter how it may be defined, it is clear to the instructed that various “civilizations” not only have existed in Africa, but do exist there today, independently of that particular brand which white people are taking there in exchange for the untold millions of dollars which they are taking from there.

If by civilization we mean a stable society which supports itself and maintains a system of government and laws, industry and commerce, then the Hausas and Mandingoes, the people of the Ashanti and Dahomey, and the Yorubas of the Gold Coast had and have all these, and they are consequently civilized.”

What America means to an individual depends in large part on the historical perspective from which it has been introduced to them. And perhaps by now you’ve heard it mentioned in various mainstream media sources and talked about in numerous context, that is, Arizona’s new education law banning Ethnic Studies which went into effect this January, but will apparently be enforced as of 1 February. In this case, we see the deployment of a political, legal, and economic structure controlled by white political elites. But the fact that it is controlled by this political cohort should be subordinated to the fact that it exist and is maintained by thought norms which are American exceptionalist — that is to say, they are ideas which imagine the nation in a particularly narrow and ahistorical conception. The danger of this perception is not that it is reductionist, for clearly it is, but that it rebuffs attempts at expanding a democratic ethos. No proper understanding of our contemporary moment as a nation can be had unless we are willing to dig through the archives unafraid of what we shall find.

September 7, 2011February 20, 2012

They Are Not Starving, They Are BEING Starved!

Like a banal refrain in American discourse on Africa they ring out: death, disease, war torn, drought, famine, starvation, etc. The list could go on but it would not matter. Like the white noise of a humming fan on a hot summer day, we hear the Western refrain on Africa, yet, somehow we do not. That Africans starve, that they experience famine is common “knowledge”. But what if something is true at the very moment that it is untrue?

This is exactly the case with current mainstream reporting on the so-called drought induced famine in the Horn of Africa, which is threatening the starvation of millions of Africans. We are led to believe that the current drought (which many specialist attribute to climate change) and enduring “tribal” [“ethnic” is the appropriate term] conflicts are the root causes of food shortages in the horn of Africa. Nothing could farther from the truth!

There is a single country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has enough arable land to feed the entire rest of the Continent with food left to spare. Africa is the most resource rich land mass on the planet. Western nations (and increasingly China) have thrived off of the stolen natural and human resources of Africa for Centuries. From the extraction of coltan (a metallic mineral which allows cell phone batteries to retain a charge), to the displacement of Africa’s best prepared minds (brain drain) through Western neo/colonialism; from the guinea pig testing ground for pharmaceutical companies, to the dumping ground for weapons manufactures; from the illegal fishing off the Somali coast, to the unethical influence peddling of Uncle Tom African leaders, Africa is exploited, and that, unabated and without interruption.

Foreign nations, US colleges (Harvard, Vanderbilt, and many others), and private corporations are partnering with so-called African leaders in parasitic relationships to lease or buy vast areas (more than twice the size of Montana and counting) of the most fertile farmland throughout the African Continent. This land is being used to grow food and ship it back to their respective countries. Nikhil Aziz, executive director of Grassroots International, a human rights and international development organization that supports community-led sustainable development projects, sums it up this way:

African land is being sought in 90-year leases either to grow food crops for export to those countries with scarce arable land or to grow fuel crops like jatropha and palm oil for ethanol, even as almost 300 million Africans are hungry. Or, the land is sometimes being snapped up simply for speculative purposes.

We must come to understand that, technically, there is no actual food shortage in Africa. The Continent is producing sufficient quantities of food, even in the midst of drought stricken regions. But the food is not used to feed Africans. This is why we need to complete the revolutionary struggles that began so many years ago by the likes of Cabral, Biko, and Lumumba. Africa is not yet free.

What we find is that many of the nations which experience food shortages actually produce large amounts of food on land which they’ve either leased or sold to foreign nations or US and Indian corporations. The shocking irony is that many of these African countries have come to rely on food aid imports from Western NGOs at the precise moment that they’re exporting food grown on their own soil for other wealthier nations — indeed, some of the very same nations which run those NGO’s. It’s quite appalling!

Imagine that you discovered that a family whom you firmly believed was starving, actually owned many acres of prime farmland, but had leased it out to an out-of-state food corporation. You then learned that the food corp. was growing food on this SAME land and shipping it back to their home state to sell to others. What advise could be offered to this family? Should they expect to survive they’d do well to terminate the suicidal lease they’ve signed with the food corp, take their land back, and grow food to feed THEMSELVES.

This is the context of the so-called food shortages experienced in Africa. The “drought” argument is a red herring, a mass mediated perspective tendentious in its ignoring of the political economy of famine in Africa. Actual shortages of rainfall are clearly realities, but rainfall has less to do with the relationship of crop production to feeding hungry people as does intelligent economic and political decisions by the people’s alleged political leaders which ensure self-preservation.