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Prioritize Civil Rights

Democrats need to redress the social and economic inequalities expressed in the United States’ foreign and domestic policies

By Salim Muwakkil

When Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry spoke at the Rainbow/PUSH coalition convention last month, he made few specific references to issues of racial justice: “We can’t rest until all Americans, black and white, rich and poor, people of all colors and all backgrounds, truly have the opportunity they need to make the American dream real.” Those generalities and “people of… return to article

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    The sharp, insightful journalism of Mr. Salim Muwakkil, with whom I was blessed to work at Muhammad Speaks in the 1970s, is one of the main reasons I regularly read In These Times.  However, as one who attended college in Massachusetts from 1967 to 1971 and as one who has lived and worked in Boston for the past decade, I know that there is no proof or evidence that Senator John Kerry is doing anything to reverse the forces of destruction which are overwhelming the masses of Afro-Descendant youth who live in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan.  Those forces include long-term mal-education, skyrocketing unemployment, widespread drug addiction, increasing police brutality and intensifying Black-on-Black violence.  In mid-April Senator Kerry denounced Reparations for African-Americans at a Howard University forum.  So, like President Bush, Mr. Kerry opposes Reparations for us while endorsing both Reparations and massive military aid for white Israel.  When push comes to shove, Mr. Kerry cannot serve both the interests of the white American ruling class and the masses of Afro-Descendants.  Our problems are rooted in centuries of U.S. government imposed ethnocide and forced assimilation and the solutions must be as broad and deep as the problems.  We demand Reparations and Self-Determination.
    Sincerely,
    Malik Al-Arkam
    www.AllForReparations.org

    United States Posted by Malik Al-Arkam on Jul 22, 2004 at 5:19 AM

    Demand reparations all you want, Malik, but don’t hold your breath.  Do you think posting a desperate plea for reparations after every Muwakkil article is going to serve any purpose other than annoy people?

    Blaming whites for your peoples’ problems is going to get you nowhere.  Black on black violence is caused by blacks, not by long-dead whites who enslaved the perpetrators’ ancestors.  Police brutality is only a problem if you get arrested.  Staying out of trouble with the cops is not that hard.  As for drug addiction, that’s nobody’s fault but the addict’s. 

    Trying to blame these problems on whites is laughable and is not helping your people at all.  America’s black population is already a massive tax drain.  If you think the government is going to pay them for the problems they cause then you’ve got another thing coming.

    United States Posted by Ted on Aug 31, 2004 at 9:28 PM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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