Articles 2011-2015

The Maroon Conference

November 12, 2015

One of the founding myths of this country is that world liberty began in 1776 with the Minute Men at Concord bridge, the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson. This neglects the history of maroon resistance by African and Native Americans that ranged from Canada to South America for more than a century before 1776 […]

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Tearing Down the Flags of Hatred and Oppression

July 9, 2015

1935 was half a century before Bree Newsome was born and 80 years before she climbed that flagpole to pull down a Confederate flag that stood for slaveholders, racial terror and treason. She and James Tyson her spotter were quickly arrested. On July 26, 1935 Bill Bailey, a broad-shouldered Irish American seaman and union organizer, […]

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Congratulations to Phil Pompey Fixico

April 10, 2015

FIRST, Congratulations to Honorable Ambassador Fidelia Graand-Galon of the Republic of Suriname who, speaking for her country’s “Maroon Women’s Network,” invited my dear friend Phil Pompey Fixico, President of the U.S. Semiroon Historical Society to an important international maroon conference in Suriname. Attending as an honored guest for his many activist networks and international reputation, […]

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“The Birth of a Nation”: A Century Later

February 17, 2015

By an odd coincidence the first week of Black History Month this February, Time magazine ran an article on the 100th anniversary of the first public showing of the movie classic The Birth of a Nation. This 22-reel, 3-hour and 10 minute silent film was Hollywood’s first blockbuster, first great historical epic, first full-length film (when […]

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The First National Congress of Black Native American Indians – July 19, 2014

October 9, 2014

Congratulations to the hundreds of delegates and to organizer Jay Winter Nightwolf for assembling the First National Congress of Black Native American Indians. From the sun-splashed islands of the Caribbean to Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp, the marshlands of Florida and towering mountains from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, your heroic ancestors wrote a proud history […]

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The Forgotten Fight Against Fascism

June 19, 2014

In late 1944 as a high school senior I rushed off to a U.S. Navy recruiting station ready to take on world fascism. Cooler heads insisted I wait until my graduation in June. After boot camp I served in “The Pacific Theater”–Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Hawaii, Saipan, Japan, and the China Sea. Anyone who has gone […]

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Dr. King’s Legacy Isn’t Just a Dream. It’s Denouncing War, Poverty, and Injustice

January 18, 2014

This year, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 85-years-old. Since he embraced peace, practiced nonviolent resistance, and sought a loving society, for years the media has cast him as a sincere, avuncular, dreamy leader. This hardly comports with his essence or his fiercely tenacious battles—against war, racism and poverty—found in his writings, speeches, marches, […]

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Rethinking Columbus banned in Arizona: Katz essays included

January 31, 2012

The following is a response to news that Rethinking Columbus, a textbook aimed at critically engaging the legacy of Christopher Columbus in American and Indigenous history, is no longer approved for use in Tuscon public schools. The banning is a result of new laws that have shut down Mexican [American] Studies programs in the area. […]

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Gingrich Confronts History in South Carolina

January 24, 2012

“It’s not that I’m a good debater. It’s that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people,” announced the victorious Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. Republican voters [only 2% were African Americans] saw his tough, angry, racial language as straight talking. He eagerly strummed racial themes—Black urban pupils serve as assistant janitors to learn […]

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November is Native American History Month

November 25, 2011

This October as many Americans celebrated “Columbus Day” men and women from more than half a dozen Native American nations marched to Zuccotti Square to voice support for “Occupy Wall Street.”  Invited to address the famous General Assembly, they linked their original experience with “colonialism and corporate greed” to OWS demands and current struggles of […]

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A Saturday at “Occupy Wall Street”

October 31, 2011

On Saturday October 22nd, my wife and I visited Occupy Wall Street to see history in the making—and to donate two of my relevant books to the OWS library. The entrance point on Broadway of Zuccotti Park, formerly called Liberty Plaza, stops one cold. You face a dozen or so men and women of various […]

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Dr. King: The Monument, The Legacy and Today’s Wars

September 9, 2011

It has taken a hurricane to postpone the dedication of the long-awaited monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington — the first on the Mall for an individual who is not a president, not a white man and not a war leader. King repeatedly proved he was not frightened by hurricanes, and calmly […]

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Are Cruel Years Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?

November 5, 2010

In 2010, with the blessing of a five to four Supreme Court vote, unlimited money from anonymous corporate sources was allowed to select candidates and call the political tune. It is hardly surprising the party best able to tap these funds scored major gains. While suspicious of repentant witches, and candidate that advocate a “Second […]

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“Those Damn Immigrants Again”

May 29, 2010

Immigrants have been a favorite American scapegoat for racists who wish to reach beyond their time-honored target—people of color. Waves of anti-immigration sentiment flooded the country in the 1840s [largely against Irish Catholics], in the l880s [largely against Chinese] and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries [largely against eastern and southern European Catholics […]

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Tortured Reasoning and Tortured Results

June 18, 2009

Almost every day new evidence emerges showing that torture was authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration. Dick Chaney’s flurry of admissions and denials captured media attention, but in ways that only drew more attention to a host of grim crimes carried out in secret and distant places. The evidence is overwhelming. Lawrence […]

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“Kill Him”—A Political Chronicle

June 17, 2009

Two white skinhead believers in “white power” who planned to assassinate candidate Barack Obama in a shooting spree that also targeted African American school children have been arrested by federal authorities in Tennessee. The two men, 20 and 18, are charged with illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun, plans to rob a firearms dealer and […]

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President Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

March 7, 2009

On February 18th Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post published a cartoon showing two policemen identifying the dead chimpanzee they just shot as the author of the stimulus package. The day before President Obama signed his stimulus legislation. In recent memory police in the city shot Amadou Diallo, Shawn Bell and lesser known unarmed African American […]

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The Election of 2008

February 2, 2009

The election of Barack Hussein Obama has been greeted with well-deserved euphoria here and abroad. A country that embraced the duplicity of slavery and democracy until the Civil War, then continued to deny Black citizens unfettered freedom for another century, then fought a civil rights revolution that still did not bring full equality—that Amerca has […]

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Waterboarding and U.S. History

January 6, 2008

Some high U.S. officials claim not be aware of it, and Judge Michael Mukasey, the President’s choice for attorney general, prefers to equivocate, but water boarding has long been a form of torture that causes excruciating pain and can lead to death. It forces water into prisoner’s lungs, usually over and over again. The Spanish […]

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Blood, Race and Cherokee Sovereignty

March 3, 2007

As President Bill Clinton and others arrived in Selma, Alabama for the 42nd anniversary of the “bloody Sunday” march that prodded Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Cherokee Nation chose a lower road. Members voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to their constitution that revokes citizenship rights for 2,800 members because their ancestors […]

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President Hugo Chavez and the Rise of Black Indian Power

January 21, 2007

In early December, 2006 Hugo Chavez won a landslide election as President of Venezuela with more than 61% of the vote, exceeding previous vote totals, and carrying all 23 of Venezuela states. His victory surpasses popular U.S. Presidents. Not only has he won high office twice before, but in 2004 he defeated a recall election by […]

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A Time to Look Over President Wilson’s Shoulder

January 28, 2006

As more US soldiers are buried in the shifting political sands of occupied Iraq, President Bush still claims his invasion and occupation were justified, and that US citizens are now safer. Speaking before a “Protect America” sign, he repeats his “safer” line eight times, clings to flawed rationales and failed policies, admits no deceptions nor […]

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Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson and Israel

January 21, 2006

At a moment when so many people in the world decry the shockingly senseless, destructive militarism of the Israeli state and demand protection of the sacred rights of Palestinian people, the historic relationship between Jewish people and Zionism requires reexamination. Even when most popular immediately after World War II as a rescue effort, Zionist ideas […]

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