Holiday Cheer for the Children of Pine Ridge

Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner who has been incarcerated since 1977 on the charges of killing two F.B.I. agents (see Unthanksgiving article for further information). The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee holds an annual holiday gift drive for the children on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. They encourage people to give to those less fortunate. Clothing, toys, etc. are all accepted.
This year The Righteous Griots were able to put two boxes of gifts together and send them to these children. Within these boxes were donated and purchased gifts. Inside were: clothing, educational coloring books, flashcards (multiplication, subtraction, and division), pens, pencils, markers, crayons and paint kits.
The Righteous Griots want to make sure all children will have a happy holiday and also educate themselves in the process. If anyone wants to still donate gifts please contact, Calvin-Chairman of the Griots, or you can directly send gifts to this address:

Leonard Peltier Holiday Gift DriveC/O Eileen JanisPo Box 525Pine Ridge South Dakota 57770(For Fedex or UPS please include Highway 18 Crazy Horse Drive)

Or

Leonard Peltier Holiday Gift DriveC/O Roselyn Jumping BullBox 207Oglala, South Dakota 57764

The N-Word connection

Anyone that is an internet user has most likely heard of Myspace. Myspace is a networking website where people, organizations, etc. can create and personalize their own webpage for other users to visit. And with over 77 million users I feel it is safe to say most probably reading this article have their own Myspace account. What many of you don’t probably know is there is another website with many similar features as Myspace and even set-up like Myspace. This site is called Niggaspace! Yes, that is correct. I am not making this up, the site is Niggaspace! Check it out for yourself: http://www.niggaspace.com/.
This site was created by a mystery man by the name of simply: Tyrone (how fitting). On the main page is the Ludacris video “Money Maker” which objectifies women, specifically black women.

Here is the mission statement on the front page of the site:
This site is in no way meant to be racist. A common endearing term used by many black people is, "nigga" not to be confused with a different and offensive term, "nigger". The word, "nigga" is in rap songs, daily conversations, on TV, etc. yet the word still has so much mixed emotions attached. One of my intentions is for this word to no longer have such mixed emotions. Part of my intention for this site is for the word nigga to embody images of brotherhood, and fraternity rather than images of ignorance and hate. How great would it be, if the mixed emotions that this word carries along with it, were stripped down to something more positive? Only positive. Of course there are going to be two sides to this, but just know that intentions are noble. So create an account, and start the revolution! -Tyrone

What does Tyrone mean this is not suppose to be racist?! The entire making of this page is racist. There is nothing empowering about this site. Why couldn’t it be called brothaspace.com or blackpowerspace.com if he was trying to make something positive? By using the term “nigga” Tyrone not only brings himself down but black people as well. What does he mean start the Revolution? Does he really feel by making an account that states if you’re single or in a relationship is going to create revolution? Who will be fighting this so-called revolution? This term has been around since slavery and no one has fought a war specifically over a word. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movement were not fighting for the use of the word “nigga/nigger” but for political and economic equality. Tyrone needs to read some history.
Neither I nor any member of The Righteous Griots is a racist or allies themselves with racists but I thought if this were Niggaspace then shouldn’t it be exclusive to African Americans? Well I was wrong because white people and other minorities can join Niggaspace. Does this mean that Tyrone and those who join feel that whites and other minorities have felt the same oppression as black people?! I think not, but people like Tyrone want us to forget about American History and that this word is always going to be NEGATIVE, regardless of how much he wants to downplay it. All he is doing is disrespecting his ancestors, if he is black.
It has now been over a month since Michael Richards made his horrible statements in a L.A. comedy club and I think many people have already forgotten or dismissed it. This was something that is inexcusable. The fact that in 2006, a white man can still say those things and get away with it shows that African Americans have only made progress on paper in this country. Mr. Richards went to a few “black leaders” and apologizes and that lets him off the hook? No way! Why doesn’t Mr. Richards apologize to the people who he directly called “Niggers!”? And unfortunately, because of the killing of Sean Bell in NYC most of these black leaders have been heavily involved with that case, so Mr. Richards has fallen off from media attention.
One of the inequalities that the Black Community faces is self-inflicted. The overuse of the word “nigger/nigga” does nothing but make modern black men look like the minstrels from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Minstrel shows were white men who painted their faces black and acted like buffoons. There is no way around this word and no way to desensitize it. If that were the case it would have happened by now. The idea of it being a “term of endearment” is a huge inequality because as soon as it is said to a person regardless of how the individual views it, the greater community can see it in a much different light. Conversely, by calling a black person “brother/sister” no one can confuse that for a racial slur regardless of its context. The Black community needs to step up and realize we oppress ourselves with the use of “nigger/nigga” and must liberate ourselves. It is this word that continually keeps black people down and white people with the control. By using the word it does not take the “control” away from whites but reinforces their stereotype of what the black community is. It continues to degrade the black community and perpetuate feelings of ignorance and self-hate. The Black community must stop using it towards each other and self-educate themselves of the historical context of the word and not allow the word to oppress them any longer. No other racial groups have allowed racist terms to become “terms of endearment”. To give any meaning to this word is to erase the history of the African-American people. The start of true liberation for African-Americans will be the eradication of this word and the embracing of terms that will lift African-Americans to a higher level living in a country that still has racist elements.

Here is a website that is petitioning to shut down Niggaspace.com. Please sign the petition if you feel that it is the correct thing to do. http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?SDN

Freedom Fighter or Fraud!?

The celebration of Kwanzaa is a seven day festival commemorating African Americans lasting from December 26- January 1. Its sole purpose is to strengthen African cultural identity and community values. Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, which are explained by Karenga as follows:
· Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
· Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
· Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
· Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
· Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
· Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
· Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
These principles correspond to Karenga's notion that "the seven-fold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.

Although all this looks good there is another side to Dr. Ron Karenga. I do not want anyone to feel that The Righteous Griots are against this holiday but we would like to show the contradictory life Dr. Karenga leads.

Ron Karenga is most famously known as the founder of the seven day celebration Kwanza. However, Karenga has been involved in the Black Power struggle since the mid -1960’s. After meeting Malcolm X, Karenga embraced the idea of Black Nationalism. In 1965 he started the United Slaves Organization which was shortened to US Organization and gave himself the name of "maulana", Swahili for "master teacher.”

The US Organization became rivals with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense which was founded by Dr. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966. US had different aims and tactics then the Panthers. The F.B.I. split the two groups even further apart by sending forged letters so that each would believe that the other was publicly humiliating them. Yet, at the same time there are alleged accusations that the US Organization helped the F.B.I. in countering the Black Panthers.

In 1969, the two organizations disagreed over who should head the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. Each supported a different candidate. This disagreement came to a head when on January 17, 1969 Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, two BPP members, were shot dead by George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner, US members, after a Black Student Union meeting at UCLA.

The LAPD responded to the attack by raiding an apartment used by the Black Panthers and arresting 75 members, including all remaining leadership of the chapter, on charges of conspiring to murder United Slaves members in retaliation. (These charges were later dropped.) This reaction fueled claims that United Slaves was being used by the FBI to target the Black Panthers. Later in 1969, two other Black Panther members were killed and one other was wounded by United Slaves members.

Excerpt from Seize the Time by Bobby Seale: Mr. Seale recounts the incident in his book and gives his interpretation of the event and the US organization.

“Alprentice ‘Bunchy’ Carter was killed because a group of blacks—black racists and cultural nationalist from Ron Karenga’s US organization—became enemies of the people and, in essence, sided with the capitalist power structure. These pig, black racists really work with the power structure against their own people, and do it out of a psychological need to hate white people just because of the color of their skin…Bunchy was concerned about the fact that the US organization had been running around intimidating, threatening, and beating up a number of the people in the community, in the B.S.U., and other small factionalized black organizations…From his [Karenga] past record and his meeting behind the scenes with the Rockefellers, we know that he got those little jive businesses as a handout, to trick the community on the concept of blackness and black is beautiful. Ron Karenga had no intention before and has no intention now of working in opposition to the power structure to change the system for the needs of Black America.”

Dr. Karenga was sent to prison in 1971 for assaulting and torturing two women from the US organization. In 1975 he was released from prison and embraced the idea of Marxism. He became the chairman of the Black Studies department at California State University, Long Beach a position he held from 1989 to 2002.

I have now showed the two different sides of an individual: On one side Karenga is liberator of black people, on the other side he can be seen as a fraud who only exploited the black community.