Ethnicity

2008 Oregon Black Political Convention

18 Apr 2008 - 1:00pm
20 Apr 2008 - 2:00pm

2008 Oregon Black Political Convention

Start: Apr 18 2008 - 1:00pm
End: Apr 20 2008 - 1:59pm

"Recognizing and using Black political action to make political change." For further info, contact oaba@peak.org. What is done at this convention to help Black Oregonians benefits all Oregonians. This non-partisan group is meeting at the Embassy Suites Hotel Portland, to discuss issues and conditions of the Oregon black community and to support candidates running for political office who are responsive to them. Actions and endorsements of this convention are not those of the OABA, Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs.


mole333's picture

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What's with Latinos in CNN's "The Situation Room"?

Why are all the Latino commentators in CNN Republicans, Mexican looking and ... ahem ... botoxed?


liza's picture

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Millennial Eye For the White Guy

What distinguished [Mr. McCain's] posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male.

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.


liza's picture

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The racial politics of Baby Bjorns


That's Thing 1 playing Daddy with my doll Camilla in a Baby Bjorn. Thing 2 looks on from a pram.

Run to the Anti-Racist Parent blog and read Mamita Mala's take on the parenting fad known as 'babywearing'in The Racial and Economic Politics of Babywearing :

Many, if not most indigenous and people of color communities around the globe wear their babies. From the continents of Asia, the Americas and Africa, indigenous women from ancient times wore their babies, mostly so that they could get back to the daily chores of life while taking care of their young. Babywearing was practical. So practical in fact, that on those continents, it is considered an act of the lower, poor classes. After all, wealthy women had people to do their chores for them, including carrying and taking care of their babies.

And it’s that fact that makes the whole babywearing movement in the U.S. so interesting. The babywearing community is mostly white and upper middle class to upper class and they better be. Wearing your baby doesn’t come cheap. Simple pouches can run 70 dollars and up. “Asian” style carriers are in the 80 dollar range and wraps, long pieces of cloth , are 100 dollars plus. On web boards and at meetings, mama’s show off their stashes of different kinds of babywearing gear, which includes special coats, vests, covers and leg-warmers for wearing your baby in the winter.


liza's picture

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Why did Hillary win?

I believe that Hillary Clinton won for 4 very important reasons :

1. The campaign was able to get as many registered Democrats to vote for her as possible.

2. Since most registered Democrats who came to vote were women, the "tear heard around the world" was successful in getting her the last minute sympathy vote from people who ...

3. would have otherwise voted for John Edwards.

I think it is clear that for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race she needs to beat John Edwards, not Barack Obama. Edwards ran a remarkable game in Iowa. Had he had as much money as Clinton, he probably would have beaten her by more than just 1%. I am not sure though that under the voting trends of Iowa, he would have been able to beat Barack Obama.

4. The Obama campaign has insisted in equating their "I am not a black candidate" campaign with a complete disregard for the colored blogosphere. Yesterday was the day that it showed how much that has cost them.

So let's look at the numbers, courtesy of MSNBC.com :


liza's picture

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U2 and the power of creative dissent

So my writing about All Along The Watchtower is taking me down Bonoville. Prepare yourselves for some fangirling.

I don't remember when I fell in love with U2. All I know is that by the time I hooked up with the father of my children, I already was a rabid fan of the quartet.

The 1980s were not just about corporate greed and yuppies. The height of the war of independence was happening in Ireland with bombings everywhere by the IRA. In Spain ETA was not to be left behind. Central America was covered in the blood of the Iran-Contra war. And in Puerto Rico we had the FALN.

I came to take as "normal" a bombing or two of federal buildings or army equipment at least every 3 months. And there was the molotov coktailing of the paramilitary forces of the island whenever there was a political demonstration. By the time I had made the decision to come to the United States, I ironically made it because I felt that being in the belly of the beast would spare me of the violence and craziness. I really wanted to be as far away of all things political as possible.

Of course, if you are a fan of U2, that's absolutely impossible.



liza's picture

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117th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre

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The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that “the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves,” and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we’ll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 117th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Crossposted at Progressive Historians &
Native American Netroots

Black Kettle, his wife, and more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho had just been exterminated, and Custer’s 7th was burning the lodges and all their contents, thus stripping them of all survival means. Sheridan would wait until all their dogs had been eaten before “allowing” them into subjugation, then Custer would rape the women hostages in captivity.

Jerome A. Green. “Washita.” p. 126.
Far across the Washita Valley, warriors observed the killing of the animals, enraged by what they saw.

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What did they see, feel, and think?

QUOTE SOURCE
And so, when the Chiefs gathered to decide what the people should do, Black Kettle took his usual place among them. Everyone agreed Sand Creek must be avenged. But there were questions. Why had the soldiers attacked with such viciousness? Why had they killed and mutilated women and children?

It seemed that the conflict with the whites had somehow changed. No longer was it just a war over land and buffalo. Now, the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves.

See it? Feel it?

They witnessed and felt the Sand Creek Massacre happen, again.

Consequently, a number of Cheyenne who were present at Washita helped defeat Custer at Little Bighorn.

So, let us proceed from the Sand Creek Massacre,

Why does this say Battle Ground after there was a Congressional investigation?
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and from the genocide at the Washita “Battlefield” –

No, it was a massacre.
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Petition to Re-name
The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site toThe Washita National Historic
Site of Genocide

AND WHERE AS:

According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

WE, the undersigned members of the Native American community and the public at large, request that this site of the attack by the United States military against 8,500 Plains Indians camped as prisoners of war along the Washita River in 1868 be designated as the Washita National Historic Site of Genocide.

- to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

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Harjo: Burying the history of Wounded Knee

But Wounded Knee was 14 years after Little Bighorn. Would the soldiers have held a grudge that long and why would they take it out on Big Foot? They blamed Custer's defeat on Sitting Bull, who was killed two weeks before Wounded Knee. The Survivors Association members had the answer: ''Because Big Foot was Sitting Bull's half-brother. That's why Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa people sought sanctuary in Big Foot's Minneconjou camp.''

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890

The first intention of the U.S. Army in part was to detain Chief Big Foot under the pretext that he was a "fomenter of disturbance," remembering that Native Americans did not have equal rights at that time in the Constitution.

In addition, the real intention was doing a "roundup" to a military prison camp, which would have become an internment and concentration camp in Omaha after they were prisoners. Colonel James W. Forsyth had orders to force them into going there.

Speculating, I bet at least part of the rationalization for the massacre was so the soldiers wouldn't have to transport them to the military prison in Omaha. Murdering them would have been easier. Then, they could've had another whiskey keg, like they did the evening right before this massacre, when they celebrated the detainment of Chief Big Foot. The soldiers may have even been hung over, depending on amount consumed and tolerance levels; moreover, if the soldiers were alcoholics, tolerance levels would have been high.

massacre:

n : the wanton killing of many people [syn: mass murder] v : kill a large number of people indiscriminately;

"The Hutus massacred the Tutsis in Rwanda" [syn: slaughter, mow down]


winter rabbit's picture

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Today I will rant away about Tom Tancredo on NPRs News and Notes' Blogger Round Table

Farai Chideya must love my evil laughter because once again I join another episode of NPRs News and Notes' Blogger Roundtable. And grock knows it's going to be difficult not to laugh. One of the topics we may be discussing? Tom Tancredo.

Tom Tancreado refused to appear on Univisión's Foro Republicano because he's against the "balkanization" of the United States. You can find his intellectually weak rationalization on this TV news interview. While watching that piece of genius, I stumbled upon an actual interpretation of his annoucement put together by a group called "Team Tancredo" (which may or may not be affiliated to the candidate) :



I honestly can't believe these guys are serious. Do we need to remind Tom Tancredo, the son-of-immigrant Italians, and his team to never go there? Two can play that game. Worst part? The following is a "real life" clip :


liza's picture

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Ethnic Narcissism

No people, race, or tribe is without ethnocentricity...A certain degree of narcissism is requisite for the survival of an ethnic group.


— Chaim Greenberg, journalist, quoted in Stephen Whitfield's chapter in Cultures of the Jews, edited by David Biale


mole333's picture

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Words to live by

"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."


— -- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul)


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