WV Torture Victim at Final Call

The following is from Ann's Website. Thanks, Ann for everything you do in keeping this case on my mind. Here's the article:


Final Call Exclusive: One-on-One Interview with West Virginia Race Torture Victim Megan WilliamsBy FinalCall.com NewsOriginally Published Oct. 9, 2007

Updated Oct 14, 2007, 10:37 am

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan sent a delegation consisting of Attorney Abdul Arif Muhammad, editor-in-chief of The Final Call newspaper, Student in the Ministry Abdul Khadir Muhammad of Washington, D.C. and Final Call Contributing Writer Ashahed M. Muhammad to Charleston, West Virginia to determine the facts of the case, and also to minister unto the family of the young woman who was the victim of this heinous and barbaric attack.
Megan Williams (second from right) with her mother Carmen Williams (l); Ashahed Muhammad (r); Abdul Arif Muhammad (l rear).
‘They didn’t feed me, didn’t give me no water, they said when they came back they were going to finish me off.’ —Megan Williams
What follows is an exclusive interview with Megan Williams and her adopted mother, Carmen Williams, conducted on Thursday, October 4, 2007, at their home. For the first time here you will see, in Megan Williams’ own words, the description of this repugnantly vicious assault.
The Final Call (FC): We know this was a difficult experience for you, but in order for the public to know the full truth of what happened, you have agreed to tell us in this interview. We want you to go as slow as you need and if you have any questions, or feel uncomfortable, just let us know. Tell us the story. Tell us what happened.
Megan Williams (MW): When I first went up there, a girl I knew named Christa, she took me up there, she said we were going to a party.
FC: When Christa took you there (the trailer home in Big Creek in Logan County) what did she do?
MW: She said she had to make a run and she would be right back. She didn’t come back.
FC: Do you believe Christa was involved in arranging this?
MW: (Nodding.)
Carmen Williams (CW): Yes, it was a setup, she left her there. When Megan was in the hospital, Christa called and I answered the phone. Christa was asking, ‘how is my friend?’ I told her that she wasn’t a friend of Megan’s because she left her. Christa then hung up the phone. We have not seen or heard from Christa since that time.
The police investigators say they are trying to locate her for an interview, but have not been able to find her.
FC: There were some news reports that you had a relationship with one of the defendants, Bobby Brewster. Is this accurate?
MW: We were just friends. It was nothing like that.
FC: No dating relationship between you and defendant Bobby Brewster?
MW: No. They kicked me in the head with steel toed boots, they hit me in the head with several objects, I remember seeing a knife, and they tried to cut my foot off. They told me that is what they did to Kunta Kinte when they cut his foot off so he couldn’t run and that is what they were going to do to me.
FC: When exactly was this?
MW: It was like in August. When she (Christa) dropped me off up there, that’s when they started beating on me, and calling me names. When they were hitting me and stabbing me, they called me n----r, they said ‘this is what we do to n----rs up here’ and they said they were going to kill me.
They didn’t feed me, didn’t give me no water, they said when they came back they were going to finish me off. They made me eat rat poop, dog poop and human feces. I had to do it to stay alive. They were taking my head and drowning me in a toilet, taking it back out and putting it back in (starting to cry). They were stabbing me in the leg, and I was screaming for my mom, and they would cover my mouth up.
They made me pick green beans out of the garden, they made these switches into a braid and they were whipping me as I was picking the greens. They made me pick weeds out of the garden and they were calling me n----r and said they were going to take me out to a creek and cut my throat and throw me in a river. All I was saying is I wanted to get back to my mom, and they were like, ‘you ain’t ever going to see your mom ever, ever again, never.’ I wanted to get back home so bad.
FC: When they were forcing you to go out into an open field was this a secluded area where no one could see you?
MW: Nobody seen me, nobody knew where I was at; it was a wooded area.
FC: At any time did you try to scream for somebody to help you ?
MW: Yep, they kept kicking me and stuff and saying that if I screamed again they were going to cut me and all kinds of stuff.
FC: Describe what was going through your mind when you first realized that Christa might not be coming back?
MW: I was scared and frightened.
FC: Megan, you went with an associate to this place for a party, did you know where she was taking you?
MW: No.
FC: When you got there, did you know where you were, did you know the house?
MW: No.
FC: After you got to the “party,” how long was it before you realized that Christa was not coming back?
MW: A couple of days. She said ‘I’m going down to my friends house and I’ll be right back’ two days went by and she never came back up, I got worried and then they said she wasn’t going to come back and get me, and that no n----rs were allowed up there, and they were going to kill me.
FC: What kind of party did you see?
MW: They were just up there doing drugs, it was not a party.
FC: What kind of drugs?
MW: They were making Meth. (Methamphetamines)
FC: Anything else besides Meth?
MW: Crack.
FC: They were actually doing these drugs, were they trying to make you do drugs?
MW: No. I wouldn’t.
FC: Did you start praying to God for help?
MW: Yes, I was asking Him to get me out of this. The only thing I was thinking about was my mom.
FC: Did you ever try fighting back?
MW: I did. I fought back when they would cut me, and they had me taped up with duct tape around my neck, my hands and feet, and when they left to get drugs and stuff, they said they were going to finish me off; they were going to take me down to a river, cut my throat and throw me in it, and I would never get to see my family ever again.
FC: There were several people involved. Who was the most vicious?
MW: All of them passed the knife around when they were stabbing me, all I remember is that when they were stabbing me, I passed out, and I guess that’s when they quit because I passed out, because I lost so much blood. I had noticed the stab wounds and they were this big and my meat was hanging out (shows the location on her left thigh). All I can remember was the knife, and I wake up every night now. That’s the only thing I see when I close my eyes is that knife.
FC: Ms. Williams (Megan’s mother), you told me since this happened, she has nightmares?
CW: I sleep with her actually, because if she doesn’t feel me near her, she’ll wake up and scream out in the middle of the night hollering ‘Mom! Mom!’
FC: At the point you realized after one or two days that you didn’t hear from your daughter—is it customary for her to be absent for long periods of time without checking in?
CW: Yes, she’s 20 years old, so she goes when she wants to and comes back when she wants to. At the time, she didn’t live with me. She would call me every now and then, but at the time, she was not living with me.
FC: How did you find out that something had happened to Megan?
CW: Logan Hospital called me and they asked me if I had a daughter named Megan Williams, and I said yes. Then they proceeded to tell me what happened to her, and they asked me how soon we could get up there.
FC: Megan, while you were being held there, can you tell us more about what happened?
MW: Yes. Bobby kicked me in my stomach a few times, kicked me in my back and my face and all I remember is that they hit me with several objects, a cedar stick, a fly swatter handle, a belt, a shoe, and you know the gloves with the lead in them, they were smacking me in the face with those. Both my eyes were black and every night, they made me sleep outside.
FC: While they were doing all of these drugs, what were you doing?
MW: I just wanted to get away. I asked one of them if they could let me go, they said no because ‘ain’t no n----rs allowed up here,’ and they were going to kill me. One day, I was asleep in the room, one of them came in and was kicking me and said ‘hey n----r, we got a noose out there for you, want to come look at it? We’re going to hang you, come on.’ I got really scared. I just wanted to get out of there. I was fighting for my life.
FC: You said that they cut your hair?
MW: As they would cut it, they were literally pulling my hair out, and pulling it out in patches. They were all sitting on the porch drinking beer, and they had that knife out. Bobby made me lick his mom’s bottom at knife point, and then he made me suck her toes. They were laughing and calling me names. One of them held me at gun point with a 9 mm.
FC: Now where did they have you sleeping?
MW: In the shed. They told me there were no n----rs allowed in the trailer.
FC: What male members of the group raped you?
MW: Danny (Combs) and Bobby (Brewster).
FC: Do you know who made the anonymous tip to the police?
MW: Yep, it was a boy named Eddie that was up there. He lived a couple of houses down. He was walking and saw my hands out the window and went for help.
CW: He said he heard her holler for help, he ran back down the street and called police. I spoke to him on the phone and he said ‘ma’am, I’m the one that made the call.’
FC: Since this ordeal have you been harassed or received any threats?
CW: No. We haven’t been staying here. We just came home about a week ago.
FC: Have you received any support from the Religious Community?
CW: Yes, my pastor Bishop James Carter has been to every pretrial hearing that they have had, and he is going there today; and Allen Hill and Emanuel Heyliger.
FC: How are you feeling now Megan?
MW: I feel a lot better.
FC: If there was one thing you could get across to people who hear about this case, what would it be?
MW: There are dangerous people in the world and everybody needs to keep an eye on their kids so that their kids will be safe.
FC: What do you hope happens to the people who did this to you?
MW: I think they need to be put away and never get out again. They should never again see daylight.
CW: I just hope they get what they deserve. I hope they get life. I don’t wish nobody dead, because that’s not my belief, but they should be in prison for the rest of their lives.

YouTube Video: A Black Woman's Smile

Check it out!

Latest News On The WV Torture Victim

Hat tip from Ann. Thank you for keeping the awareness of Miss Williams plight alive. While people and the media have forgotten her, few brave souls such as Rachel Sullivan, Keona Wright, What About Our Daughters, Ann, etc., are keeping her in mind.

Also, there's a fund set up for Meghan Williams at:

http://sundaygazettemail.com/section/News/2007100126

Let's keep her in mind and in our prayers.

A Family's Worst Nightmare 2

If your son or daughter or sibling was murdered or disappeared without a trace, this would be your family's worst nightmare. --- Because several people asked me to I.D. some of the missing or murdered ones on the "A Family's Worst Nightmare" video, I have attempted to do so in this video.. Also, I changed the background music, using a very appropriate song "Don't You Forget About Me" as well as "Wildflower" and "Goodbye Colonel". -- These precious souls should ALWAYS be remembered. ---- KWH

Olamide Adeyooye Remembered

Adeyooye Olamide
1984-2005

Thanks to Rachel's Tavern for keeping her memory alive. Here's my contribution in her memory. Please visit my Olamide Adeyooye's memorial page:

http://www.geocities.com/nun6_99/Olamide.html

Ann also gave a shout-out to her memory on her website. Click here.

May she rests in peace.

Katelyn Kampf Unhappy With Parents' Plea

Katelyn Kampf and her son D'Andre Kampf

Kidnapped Daughter Unhappy With Parents' Plea Deal

PORTLAND, Maine -- A North Yarmouth couple that made national headlines last year when their pregnant daughter claimed they kidnapped her and tried to force her to have an abortion will enter into a plea agreement this week. Now the daughter, Katelyn Kampf, said she is upset by the development and is speaking publicly about her ordeal for the first time.
With her new son, D’Andre, Kampf spoke with News 8’s Michelle Frey.
"I did end up making a run for it,” she said. “At one point, I ran out of the house. My father chased me down our driveway and tackled me, and I had grass stains all over, and I was screaming for help."

Kampf, 20, said her parents, Nick and Lola Kampf, kidnapped her after they learned she was six months pregnant. She said they tied her hands and feet, put her in the back of their car and started driving to New York, where they planned to force her to abort her baby.
According to Katelyn Kampf, "At one point, she (Nola Kampf) said something about making me have the baby and then killing it, and she would do whatever necessary to make sure the baby never came into the world."
Driving through New Hampshire, Katelyn Kampf feigned needing a bathroom break and made her getaway.

Her parents were arrested and arraigned on several charges, including felony kidnapping and misdemeanor assault and terrorizing.

Katelyn Kampf said they’re getting off easy.

"I feel pretty unsatisfied with the way my parents’ case is being handled," she told News 8 of the plea agreement that is expected to be entered into later this week.
In the deal, the Kampfs will plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of assault and disorderly conduct, while the felony kidnapping charge will be dropped.

In a telephone conversation with News 8, Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson said Katelyn Kampf was “intimately involved” in the plea deal and saw everything in the paperwork and that if she’s upset by it, the DA’s office was not aware.
Anderson said, “I have not heard from Katelyn. I guess she’d rather just complain about it.”
Katelyn Kampf explained, "I was really upset, and I just told her, ‘If that's all they're going to get out of it, I don't care. Do whatever you want with it.’"

She said she simply gave up on the justice system and now considers their punishment to be never seeing her -- or their grandson -- again.
When asked if there was any possibility of reconciliation, Katelyn Kampf answered, "I don't think I could ever face them again. Just knowing -- I mean some of the things they said just replay in my mind all the time. My mom spit in my face -- twice. She told me she wished she'd never had me, that I was the biggest mistake of her life."

Previous Articles:

Kampfs Surrender To Maine Authorities

Sheriff: Race Issue In Alleged Kidnapping

Here's another article:

One step at a time
By Ben Bragdon Assistant Editor


WATERBORO (Oct 18): She seems cautiously hopeful as she sits at the kitchen table, her young son in her lap, surrounded by friends.

As Katelyn Kampf wonders about her future, she talks in hours and days. The years and decades seem too far off, an alternate universe where her problems are behind her, her boyfriend at her side, her child safe, her parents’ legal issues and everything leading up to them a distant memory. As she wonders about the time in front of her, and the events of the last year, something grabs her voice. “It’s so overwhelming,” said Kampf, eight month old D’Andre bouncing in her arms. “Losing my parents. Losing my boyfriend. Being a single mother. All at the same time.”

Kampf's parents, Nicholas and Nola Kampf, pleaded guilty Friday in Cumberland County Superior Court to misdemeanor charges of assault and disorderly conduct after Katelyn, now 20 years old, told police her parents tied her up and took her to New Hampshire last year with the intent of forcing her to have an abortion. Her parents have admitted to tying Katelyn’s hands following a fight and driving her to New Hampshire with the hope of convincing her to have an abortion. They knew that could not force Katelyn, then 19, to have an abortion, the parents said.
A "sweet deal?"

Katelyn Kampf, now staying with friends in Waterboro, spoke publicly for the first time last week, out of frustration, she said, on the light sentence handed to her parents. The judge's decision stipulated only counseling and did not include jail time. She felt the deal was made because the incident was seen as more of a family squabble than a crime. “If they were not my parents, I don’t think they would hear of a deal this sweet,” she said.

Kampf is upset at the plea, upset that her parents were let off so easily, and upset with the district attorney, who, Katelyn said, did not involve her in the plea bargain. But she is also trudging forward day-to-day and trying to raise her son. She is also trying to reunite D'Andre with his father, Reme Johnson, who is in federal custody awaiting deportation to his native South Africa.

Kampf said she was not personally involved in the plea bargain discussions and was told by District Attorney Stephanie Anderson that the more serious charge of kidnapping could not be proven in court. “She treated me like a child,” Kampf said of Anderson. Anderson, who has said that Kampf was kept abreast of the plea deal and that Kampf told Anderson she did not want to go to trial, did not return calls for comment.

Kampf also said her parents wanted her to have an abortion because the father, Johnson, is black. Lawyers for the Kampfs said the parents’ dislike for Johnson had nothing to do with his race but rather their own concerns over his ability to raise a child and his criminal record.

Last week, Kampf contacted Portland lawyer Seth Berner, who agreed to represent her for free. On the basis of his talks with Kampf, Berner called the incident between Kampf and her parents a “particularly horrendous hate crime” motivated by racial hatred. Berner said he never questioned the veracity of Kampf’s claims. “She struck me as very articulate and believable, and as the victim,” he said.

Longing for support

At the sentencing, Superior Court Justice William Brodrick reportedly referred to a “bizarre” family relationship as a reason for a plea deal involving no jail time. Said Berner, “I am completely baffled. It is like saying incest is a bizarre family circumstance. This was a crime, not a bizarre family circumstance.” He said the incident should be considered under federal hate crimes statute.

The plea deal stipulates that the Kampfs undergo counseling, both by themselves and with Katelyn. Before Friday’s sentencing, Katelyn Kampf said she wants nothing to do with her parents. “I can’t imagine having any type of relationship with them after what they’ve done,” she said. “I feel like they really took themselves away from me. They just spit in my face. I just can’t get past it.”

Even after all this, Kampf said, she still has times when she wishes she had the support and love of her parents, especially as she tries to raise her son. “I’m still young and they are still my parents, so there are still moments...” she said, her voice trailing off. Kampf said she is not sure how she will feel about the relationship in the future, but “I wouldn’t trust them with my son.”

Her parents have expressed hope that their relationship can be salvaged. "We have all made some bad choices in the past and we will have to live with them, but we must believe with our hearts and soul that time will heal the wounds they have caused," Nola Kampf said in a statement following the sentencing.

Focusing on her family

A lot of Katelyn Kampf's attention is now focused on helping Johnson, who is in federal custody in Connecticut. He has received a 20-year ban from the United States following a short jail stay for possession of stolen property, Kampf said, and will most likely be sent back to his native South Africa in the near future. She has only talked to him on the phone a few times because of the expense, and he has only seen D’Andre once, at a court date.


Friends have contacted the offices of Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe regarding the deportation, but have not heard back. Kampf said Johnson has little connection to South Africa, which he left with the rest of his family when he was 6 years old. “Pretty much his whole life is over here,” she said. If he does get deported, she said, he may try to move to Canada to be closer to her and D’Andre. “The chances of me getting to South Africa are slim,” Kampf said.

The separation is made more difficult by all the problems with her parents, and every time she looks at her son. “He looks just like his father,” she said. Johnson recently wrote her a letter and included a portrait he drew of his son. The last time they talked, she said, “he was really sad, but hopeful at the same time. If we can get through this, we can make it through anything.”

Already there are bigots/misogynists who call Katelyn Kampf hateful names. Especially those at the hate website, American Renaissance. These people called her "stupid", "race traitor", etc. They call her son a hate name that I won't say on this site. The baby's father was called "a criminal". These people have no sympathy whatsoever.

Guest Blogger - Open Letter to Sam Adams « Oh No a WoC PhD

Guest Blogger - Open Letter to Sam Adams « Oh No a WoC PhD: "So my friend tried to post this over at Sam Adam’s blog and it would not let here (even though there are other comments). After trying to help her and getting the same error message, I said . . . Let’s just put it up on my blog and see if good old Sam fixes the issue. (Oh and Sam, despite not being a Portlander myself, I have a lot of Portland readers who happen to vote.) Portland readers, feel free to repost this entire text widely you have both our permissions. All readers, please click at least once on Sam Adam’s blog to drive the traffic from here to there up so he will actually come by and read this message. (While you are there, you may want to note that none of the people who have been able to post are pro-change . . . )"

Panhandling for reparations - OregonLive.com

Panhandling for reparations - OregonLive.com: "Frances Miller's early attempts at starting a conversation Wednesday were a little rough. 'Hey, sister, are you a descendent of slaves?' she called out to a woman who looked African American, scoring a glare. Miller sat on Northeast 15th Avenue at Broadway -- a volunteer in the National Day of Panhandling for Reparations. She and others across the country asked white passers-by to pay reparations for enslaving black people, and then they gave money to black passers-by. Each got a receipt."

The Double Oppression of Black Women in America

The Double Oppression of Black Women in America

BY SOCIALIST ACTION- MARCH 2001

"Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar. Nobody eber helped me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place and ar'n't I a woman?
"Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me-and ar'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well-and ar'n't I a woman?
"I have born 13 chilern and seen em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard-and ar'n't I a woman?"
-Sojourner Truth, at the women's rights convention of 1851 in Akron, Ohio, after being greeted with boos and hisses. According to her 1878 narrative, she used the word "ar'n't" instead of "ain't," as it has appeared in nearly all publications since then.

By TOM SANDERS
The reproductive rights of African American women have been under attack, one way or another, ever since they were first brought to America. The method of assault has changed from time to time, but it has continued without let up to the present day.
"While slave owners profited from encouraging slave women to bear many children, modern-day taxpayers believe they save money by discouraging poor Black women from having children," states Dorothy Roberts in her book "Killing the Black Body" (Pantheon Books, 1997). "But these practices share the common theme of denying a woman's freedom to control her own reproductive life because of her race.
"Poor crack addicts and welfare mothers are punished for having babies because they fail to measure up to the state's ideal of motherhood. These women are not penalized simply because they may harm their unborn children or because their childbearing will cost taxpayers money. They are penalized because the combination of their poverty, race, and marital status is seen to make them unworthy of procreating."
However, Black women were considered to be very worthy of having children when they were slaves-so much so that the white master himself often fathered as many Black babies as he could. We know this to be true not only because history covers it very well, but because some of these babies, in their old age, were interviewed by various government agencies.
In 1934 the Federal Emergency Relief Administration began to collect the testimony of ex-slaves in the Ohio River Valley and in the lower South. In 1936 the Works Progress Administration took charge of the project and broadened it to all of the Southern states as well as Indiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
One elderly ex-slave, whose name was not given, had this to say about her white father: "Well, you know, Uncle Stephen, he kinda overseer for some widow womans. He mama' husband. He come to see my mama any time he gits ready. But I find out he ain't my pappy. I knowed that since I's a little thing.
"I used to go over to Massa Daniels' plantation. They tell me all 'bout it. The folks over there they used to say to me: 'Who's your pappy? Who's your pappy?' I just say: 'Turkey buzzard lay me and the sun hatch me,' and then go on 'bout my business. Course all the time they knows and I knows, too, that Massa Daniels was my pappy" (B.A. Botkin, editor, "Lay my Burden Down," University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958).
During slavery times African American slave women were considered to be very worthy of having babies. In fact, most white men, even Northerners and foreigners thought that Black women were so worthy as willing mothers that a foreign visitor, Johann Schoepf, wrote that "in almost every house there are negresses, slaves, who count it an honor to bring a mulatto into the world." Even the abolitionist James Redpath wrote that mulatto women were gratified by the criminal advances of Saxons (Deborah Gray White, "Ar'n't I a Woman?" W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1987).
Since foreign visitors and northern abolitionists felt this way we can easily imagine how most of the Southern whites must have felt about it.
Research shows that most slave children began work in the fields by the age of 11 and many began work there at the age of six. They were usually placed in the "trash gang" that pulled weeds, cleaned up, hoed, or picked cotton. This means that the ex-slave who helped raise me as a very young child was not as old as I've long thought she was.
Thus, much of the United States wealth was built by child labor-a fact that few people are willing to acknowledge. Most also prefer to ignore the fact that the pace of scientific and technological change destroys the lower rungs of the economic ladder just as most African Americans begin to reach them. This tends to keep most Blacks not much higher in labor skills than the youngest Black slave children in the old plantation fields-by the standards of today's modern "computer revolution."
The rapid changes occurring in society, with the development of a new "educated" elite, has resulted in a new change of attitude on the part of people in various positions of power, even those with very limited power. One example is the effort to control the Black population growth through a form of carefully concealed violence perpetrated upon helpless medical patients.
Dorothy Roberts reports in "Killing the Black Body" that during the 1970s sterilization became the most rapidly growing form of birth control in the United States, rising from 200,000 cases in 1970 to over 700,000 in 1980.
"It was a common belief among Blacks in the South," Roberts writes, "that Black women were routinely sterilized without their informed consent and for no valid medical reason. Teaching hospitals performed. unnecessary hysterectomies on poor Black women as practice for their medical residents. This sort of abuse was so widespread in the South that these operations came to be known as 'Mississippi appendectomies.'
"In 1975, a hysterectomy cost $800 compared to a tubal ligation, giving surgeons, who were reimbursed by Medicaid, a financial incentive to perform the more extensive operation-despite its 20 times greater risk of killing the patient.
"Fannie Lou Hamer, the leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, informed a Washington, D.C., audience in 1965 that 60 percent of the Black women in Sunflower County, Mississippi, were subjected to postpartum sterilizations at Sunflower City Hospital without their permission. Hamer had suffered this violation herself when she went to the hospital for the removal of a small uterine tumor in 1961. The doctor took the liberty of performing a complete hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent. This practice of sterilizing Southern Black women through trickery or deceit was confirmed by a number of physicians who examined these women after the procedure was performed."
"Sterilization abuse was not confined to hospitals in the South," Roberts continues. "In April 1872, the Boston Globe ran a front-page story reporting the complaint by a group of medical students that Boston City Hospital was performing excessive and medically unnecessary hysterectomies on Black patients. Among the charges were: surgeries were performed for 'training purposes'; radical and dangerous procedures were used when alternatives were available; medical records did not reflect what had really been done to patients; patients were pressured into signing consent forms without adequate explanation; and doctors treated patients callously, adding to the women's anguish."
The attitude expressed by these illegal sterilizations is very similar to the distorted attitudes towards Black females in general, regardless of their ages, 150 years ago. For example: When George, a Mississippi slave, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1859 for the rape of a 10-year-old female slave, Judge Harris reversed the decision and released George. According to Harris the original indictment could not be sustained under common law or under the statutes of Mississippi because 'it charges no offense known to either system. ... There is no act which embraces either the attempted or actual commission of a rape by a slave on a female slave.'
A Tennessee judge made this latter point when he remanded a slave named Grandison to jail for attempting to rape a white woman named Mary Douglas. According to Judge Green, what gave 'the offense its enormity' was the fact that Douglass was white. 'Such an act committed on a BLACK WOMAN, would not,' he noted, 'be punished with death'" (Deborah Gray White, "Ar'n't I a Woman?").
Since recorded history, women of all ethnic groups have been have been made victims because of their sex. This has been true even though some women are physically stronger than men, have more endurance than men, and are capable of doing manual labor even better than men.
Such a woman was the slave Susan Mabry of Virginia, who could pick 400 or 500 pounds of cotton a day. However, 150 to 200 pounds was considered respectable for an average worker; when this writer was a teenager I found it very hard to pick 200 pounds in one day and rarely ever did.
Jacqueline Jones in "Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (Vintage Books, 198), writes: "Together with their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, black women spent up to fourteen hours a day toiling out of doors, often under a blazing sun. In the Cotton Belt they plowed fields; dropped seed; and hoed, picked, ginned, sorted, and moted cotton. On farms in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, women hoed tobacco; laid worm fences; and threshed, raked, and bound wheat.
"For those on the Sea Islands and in coastal areas, rice culture included raking and burning the stubble from the previous year's crop; ditching; sowing seed; plowing, listing, and hoeing fields; and harvesting, stacking, and threshing the rice. In the bayou region of Louisiana, women planted sugar cane cuttings, plowed, and helped to harvest and gin the cane.
"During the winter, they performed a myriad of tasks necessary on nineteenth century farms. ... During the busy harvest season, everyone was forced to labor up to sixteen hours at a time-after sunset by the light of candles or burning pine knots. ... It is significant that overseers ordered and supervised much of the punishment in the field, for their disciplinary techniques were calculated to 'get as much work out of the slaves as they can possibly perform' ....
"Consequently, many slave women were driven and beaten mercilessly, and some achieved respite only in return for sexual submission. To a white man, a black women was not only a worker who needed prodding, but also a female capable of fulfilling his sexual or aggressive desires. For this reason, a fine line existed between work-related punishment and rape...."
The mold was already formed when slavery "officially" ended. For many years it was nearly impossible for Black women to assume roles other than those they had held in slavery. Many white Americans, even today, continue to perceive African American women as individuals who can be worked hard, treated rudely, and who desire promiscious relationships.
From the official end of slavery in 1865 through almost all of the 20th century, no southern white male was convicted of raping or attempting to rape a Black woman. And if the perpetrator was Black, the Black woman had no hope for justice either. When a Black man raped a Black woman, police nearly always reported the crime as "unfounded," and in the few cases that reached the courts, the testimony of Black female victims was seldom believed by white juries.
Unbelievable as it may seem, one of the reasons given as proof that Black women in the United States are naturally promiscuous is the fact that prior to the American Revolution the female slave population grew more as a result of natural increase than by importation. Unlike the other Western Hemisphere countries with slavery, the United States achieved a one to one sex ratio-the same number of women as men, although far more men were brought from Africa.
One reason for this was the creation of monogamous families in this country, while in Latin America and the Caribbean Black men were forced to live in barracks-like environments away from the women.
However, this fact did not make the U.S. slaves as well off as it may appear. The North American male slaves were more easily manipulated since their spouses and children could be held hostage and compelled to answer for their "transgressions."
During the 19th century, when "protecting women" was almost a part of the national religion, only slave women were so totally unprotected by men or the law. Only African American women had their womanhood so totally denied.
Yet, in spite of the great gulf between white and Black women at the time, their lives were paradoxically similar. All women were overwhelmed by work. Slave and free women alike had no visible control over reproduction. Both were forced to relinquish control over this highly personal aspect of female life to white males, who made all crucial decisions regarding the future of the children.
They even decided whether or not there would be an abortion. Have the times changed very much today?
"Relative to white men all women were powerless and exploited," says Deborah Gray White. "The powerlessness and exploitation of black women was an extreme form of what all women experienced, because racism, although just as pervasive as sexism, was more virulent. Slave women suffered from the malevolence that flowed from both racism and sexism."
Of all large groupings of people in the United States today, Black women are treated the worst, any way you look at it. There's less respect for them, fewer jobs, less of everything that is needed for an even half-way decent life. An increasing proportion of them, as well as Black men, in future generations will exist outside the world of gainful employment as long as the capitalist system prevails in this country
It is our task today to see to it that this system is replaced by a new society run by and for working people and their allies-by socialism.
History is supposed to give people a sense of identity, a knowledge of who they are and why they are living like they are. It should also act as a springboard for the future. History must replace myths with facts. We Americans of all colors have had enough myths, and especially African American women.
Despite all that she has lived through and accomplished, the Black woman today is still waiting for an affirmative answer to the plaintive question asked 150 years ago: "Ar'n't I a woman?"

Court rules 'Jena 6' defendant to stay behind bars - CNN.com

Court rules 'Jena 6' defendant to stay behind bars - CNN.com: "Also on Friday, the FBI said it was looking into an online posting by a neo-Nazi white supremacist group that published the home addresses of all six of the African-American teenagers, as well as the phone numbers of some. The group said on its Web site it is calling on followers to 'let them know justice is coming.'"

National and Global Liberation « The Blog and the Bullet

National and Global Liberation « The Blog and the Bullet: "Jaguarito writes:

I contend that today, no liberation project can limit itself to the national terrain, and that our struggles must be global if we are to achieve true liberation. Key to this is an understanding that capitalist sovereignty no longer resides at the level of individual nation-states, but rather, at the level of the global. This new form of global sovereignty, which some understand as neo-liberalism, is being administered by such institutions as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. Multinational institutions such as these, along with nation-states, and multinational corporations all comprise this new neo-liberal world order. If we limit our struggles to the national terrain, we are, in effect, leaving the wider problem of the neo-liberal world order unattended to."

Cleveland School Shooting

School Shooting In Cleveland

A 14-year-old gunman opened fire at an Ohio high school Wednesday, wounding at least four people before killing himself in the latest school shooting to rock the United States.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson two students and two adults were wounded in the shooting at SuccessTech Academy.

"The shooter is a 14-year-old student from the school. He has committed suicide," Jackson said at a press conference.

A 17-year-old student who was shot in the elbow was expected to be released from hospital in the evening while a 14-year-old who was shot in the side will likely be held overnight for observation, he said. The two adults are in stable condition.

Local media reported the student, who was described as a loner, was frustrated after being suspended from school for getting into a fight on Tuesday.

He came to school early Wednesday and roamed through the hallways with a gun in each hand and shots were heard on two different floors.

Screams and panic filled the building, witnesses said. Some students and teachers rushed outside at the sound of gunfire while others hid in closets and under desks while police searched the multilevel building for the shooter.

"I know that dude was crazy. We just knew it. You know when people are crazy, come on, man," one student who fled at the sound of gunshots told CNN.

"He was in my class ... He always wore a trench coat."

The boy was described by other students as a loner and devil worshipper who had made jokes about shooting other students in front of teachers.

"I didn't think he meant it," another unidentified student told news station WKYC. "I thought he just said it because he wanted to be popular."

Frantic parents rushed to the school to get news of their children and many were told to wait until police had finished interviewing them. Several complained the school had recently denied requests to hire a security guard.

Cleveland school district head Eugene Sanders said counselors were on hand to help students and administrators were working to reunite students with their parents. A decision had not yet been made on when classes would resume.

It was just the latest in a spate of shootings over the past weeks.

In September, two 17-year-old students were wounded when they were shot by a gunman at Delaware State University.

On Tuesday, two people were killed and two others injured in a shooting at a workshop in Simi Valley, California, police said.

That shooting took place at a tire assembly shop in the city of 120,000 some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Los Angeles often listed among the country's safest communities.

And on Sunday, a gun-toting sheriff's deputy went on a rampage, killing his ex-girlfriend and five other youths at a house party in a small town in Wisconsin, authorities said.

The 20-year-old deputy and all those shot were all part of a close-knit group of friends, sources said.

Wednesday's incident recalled the horrors eight years ago of the Columbine high school shooting in Colorado and a similar bloodbath at Virginia Tech earlier this year.

During the massacre at Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a shooting rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 24 others, before committing suicide.

That shooting led to a period of introspection across the United States as the country briefly contemplated the downside of its celebrated "gun culture" but in the end, failed to pass laws or make other changes that would have made firearms less available.

A similar reaction followed the shooting in April of this year of 32 people by mentally disturbed student Cho Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech University, who also turned his arm on himself.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported last month that more than 1.4 million murders, rapes, robberies and assaults were committed around the United States last year, or a violent crime every 22 seconds.

The number of victims of violent crime in the United States last year was the equivalent of the entire population of European Union member Estonia or the African state of Gabon falling victim to murder, rape, robbery or assault.

The rate of violent crime was up by 1.9 percent compared with 2005, with murders climbing by 1.8 percent to nearly 15,000 cases last year.