Groundbreaking anchor Simpson honored at UNITY

By Talia Whyte

Originally published in the Bay State Banner

CHICAGO — Former television anchor Carole Simpson was honored last week by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) for her pioneering career and support of women journalists worldwide.

The ceremony was part of the annual UNITY: Journalists of Color convention. More than 6,000 journalists attended the convention to discuss ways to increase diversity in the newsroom.

Maureen Bunyan is a founding member of both the IWMF and the National Association of Black Journalists, one of the four associations that make up UNITY. She started her broadcast career in Boston at WGBH in 1970. She said she has been inspired over the years by Simpson’s work.

“She is the reason we are all here,” Bunyan said. “She has put herself on the line to fight for women in the newsroom.”

Simpson spent her broadcast career breaking down both racial and gender barriers in the industry. When she took over hosting duties on the Sunday edition of ABC’s “World News Tonight” in 1988, she became the first black woman to anchor a national news program.

During her time at ABC, Simpson co-anchored ABC’s live coverage of Nelson Mandela’s release from his 27-year imprisonment and moderated the second presidential debate between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Today, she teaches journalism at Emerson College and also runs the Carole Simpson Leadership Institute at the African Women’s Media Center in Senegal. She created in the institute in 1998 to help African women journalists gain the necessary skills to stay competitive in the media world.

“I am so touched by the African women,” Simpson said after receiving her honor. “We talk about satellites here, but some of them don’t even have typewriters, and yet they do such incredible work.”

Simpson has also set up several high school and college scholarships for women and minorities pursuing careers in broadcast journalism.

Simpson’s career has opened doors for other well-known journalists of color, including CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien, who was also present at the ceremony.

O’Brien, a Harvard graduate who started her broadcast career as a news writer for WBZ-TV, said she works tirelessly to bring more diverse programming to the cable news network.

During a diversity workshop for CNN employees last year, O’Brien said she was disturbed that all the panelists were white men. After the workshop, she had many discussions with CNN executives about how to increase the network’s diversity, both in front of and behind the camera.

Those discussions led to the highly publicized four-hour documentary series “Black in America,” a look at multiple aspects of contemporary African American life that premiered last week. O’Brien said “Black in America” is the highest-rated documentary series in CNN’s history, and there is potential to produce more programs in the series.

“You have to have good grounding in this business,” O’Brien said. “We have to take every opportunity to make sure everyone’s voice is being represented.”

While many of the ceremony’s attendees were excited to talk to O’Brien about the series and her career, the focus remained on Simpson. Many said they were inspired by her call to help all women journalists, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

“We need to work for women all over the world,” Simpson said. “There is much more work to be done, and I am happy to lead women in the future.”

Through honey deal, Hub J'cans give back

By Talia Whyte
Originally Published in The Bay State Banner

A group of enterprising Jamaican Americans living in Boston has taken the old maxim “charity begins at home” to heart — and they are using their resources to serve those less fortunate in their homeland.

The Boston Diaspora Ventures LLC entered into a collaborative agreement with the All Island Bee Farmers Association (AIBFA) last month to help reinvigorate honey production in the Caribbean nation for international distribution. The idea for the venture came from a number of Jamaicans living here who felt they need to give back.

“Many of us in the Jamaican Diaspora came together about eight years ago and wanted to do something back home,” said Kenneth Guscott, honorary consul to Jamaica for Massachusetts. “Jamaica is rich in resources, but it doesn’t have the resources and the connections to get things done. This is where we came in.”

Guscott first traveled with a group of other Bostonians to the Jamaican parish of Manchester to help build wind farms. With a background in nuclear engineering, Guscott acted as a pro bono consultant on making the windmills a success.

The windmill project proved to be so successful that the group decided to form the Boston Diaspora Ventures two years later and work on more projects designed to benefit the whole island, including opportunities to utilize Jamaica’s vast agricultural resources.

Guscott said that while Jamaica’s abundance of natural resources give it the chance to compete in the global market, backlogged loans to financial institutions like World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have stifled the island’s economy.

Guscott’s group met with Jamaican officials about refurbishing a honey-processing factory that was already being run by an Argentine company. Since that company didn’t have anyone to run the factory, the Boston Diaspora group stepped in and hired its own crew, including Ivy Lawson, a Jamaican-born industrial engineer living in Boston, who was tapped to run the factory.

“[Lawson] moved down to Jamaica in January and she is working to bring the plant up to international standards for distribution,” Guscott said. “We hope to start selling honey in the United States and Europe around Thanksgiving.”

Nearly 100 bee farmers who are already part of the association will benefit from the partnership, according to Guscott. At first, however, some worried that an alliance with American business would create anxiety about possible exploitation of workers in the developing world by those in power in an industrialized country. To quell these fears, an agreement was reached that enables the association to earn 50 percent of revenues, while the Boston Diaspora group gets the other 50 percent. In addition, a school will be built to train bee farmers, who will be given a stipend upon graduation to start farming themselves.

Guscott hopes the bee farming project will help stimulate employment in Jamaica, where many areas are experiencing increased violence and crime due to a lack of stable employment for young people.

“This program will give opportunities to those youth,” he said. “I want to help them, just like people helped me when I was younger.”

S. African authors speak out on Africa's woes, triumphs

By Talia Whyte

Originally published in The Bay State Banner

South African activists and writers Elinor Sisulu and Sindiwe Magona came to Boston last week to participate in a series of seminars to celebrate the children’s literature of their home country. The seminars were part of the 10th anniversary festivities for South Africa Partners, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that supports relations between the U.S. and South Africa through education and health initiatives.

In one of those initiatives, according to Sisulu, for every book donated to South Africa Partners, the organization will purchase an additional book written by a South African author, which will then be distributed to children throughout South Africa. Sisulu said she supports the effort because it aims both to support the South African economy and enable children in her country to read more books written by native authors.

“Many well-meaning people send books to Africa, but most of them are not culturally appropriate for our children,” Sisulu said. “Children should read about their own culture and see themselves.”

Sisulu is the author of “The Day Gogo Went to Vote,” a children’s book about a grandmother who is determined to go to her local polling place in the first election allowing black South Africans to vote. Magona is the author of 18 children’s books, including “The Best Meal Ever!” and “Life is a Hard but Beautiful Thing.”

Magona said that South Africa’s education system is suffering because the government doesn’t provide equal support for students at all age levels or those learning in different languages. She also said she finds it discouraging that today’s youth use the Internet, instead of traditional storytelling from their elders, to gain information about their culture.

“During apartheid, we had our languages and storytelling,” she said. “Now that we are free, South Africa is like America during slavery. Our children are being prevented from an education and their history.”

Education in South Africa garnered international attention last year when the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened outside of Johannesburg. The boarding school was established to increase opportunity for South African girls who had shown academic talent and leadership skills, but came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

The school has received praise from some, including former South African President Nelson Mandela, but has also been criticized by many who say they are displeased that it only caters to the needs of a small number of children.

“Oprah’s school is great, but doesn’t make a dent,” Sisulu said. “It doesn’t begin to address the problems in South Africa. No one can really say that education in South Africa will be improved by Oprah.”

The educational and social problems in South Africa have been compounded recently by woes throughout the continent, especially in neighboring Zimbabwe.

As the official mediator appointed to deal with Zimbabwe by the Southern African Development Community, South African President Thabo Mbeki has faced heavy criticism for taking what many believe to be a soft stance against the actions of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who was declared the winner of the nation’s runoff election last month. Many in the international community have questioned the legitimacy of Mugabe’s victory, calling the June 27 runoff neither free nor fair.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the most votes in the March presidential election, but not the majority required to avoid a runoff. He withdrew from the second contest after weeks of military-orchestrated violence left dozens of his supporters dead, thousands severely beaten and thousands more homeless as they were chased from villages, fled attacks or had their houses burned down.

Sisulu was in Zimbabwe last April and said she was disturbed by the poverty and political corruption that have taken over the country.

“As a human rights activist, I believe in speaking out against injustice,” Sisulu said. “Not speaking out against Mugabe goes against everything the anti-apartheid movement stood for.”
Magona said she is particularly concerned about the silence from many African leaders and African Americans on the problems in Zimbabwe. While she is happy that the African Union (AU) strongly opposed the establishment of the United States African Command (AFRICOM) military base, Magona is disappointed that the same anger has not also been directed toward Mugabe, saying that the AU has evolved into a “friendship club.”

“There are no standards in the AU anymore,” Magona said. “Mugabe gets support from them because he skillfully talks about himself as anti-Western and anti-imperialist. As an individual, do I want Mugabe as a leader? No, I do not. What does he stand for?”

As the political and economic problems worsen in Africa, Magona feels good that change is in the air in the White House, and hopes Africa can have a better relationship with the United States in the near future.

“We are excited about [Democratic presidential contender Barack] Obama, not because he is black, but there is a chance that he would want to have a better engagement with the world,” Magona said. “He is a good role model, and he makes us feel proud to be black.”
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

'AfroPop" brings African Diaspora together through film and Internet

By Talia Whyte

Originally published in The Bay State Banner

The advent of new media tools have made the world a smaller place, and the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) is taking advantage of what it considers an opportunity with its new series, “AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange Program.”

The three-week program, premiering for Boston audiences Sunday night on WGBX Channel 44, shows documentary films that examine and celebrate different aspects of black identity as they are expressed around the world. The films also provide an alternative view of the African Diaspora rarely seen in the mainstream media.

Filmmaker Regi Allen was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University when he traveled five years ago with a group of other African Americans from Pittsburgh to Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast to make “10 Days in Africa,” the premiere film in the “AfroPoP” series. The trip, he says, was a soul-searching experience not only for himself, but also for the people he met.

“It was a personal journey for me,” Allen said. “The trip brought down barriers … Connecting with Africa is important to me because the only thing I saw about Africa before the trip was AIDS and war.”

Misperceptions were on both sides.

“… And many Africans think African Americans are rich and didn’t have any connection with the continent,” he said.

“AfroPoP” will be hosted by someone who knows a little something about transcending identities — actor Idris Elba. Born to West African parents in London, Elba now lives in the United States, where he is one of Hollywood’s rising stars and perhaps best known for his role as Stringer Bell on the critically acclaimed HBO series “The Wire.” He says he was ecstatic when he was asked to take on hosting duties.

“I loved the idea of cultural exposure,” Elba said in a recent interview with the Banner. “I love truth. Many of the images we get are so slanted. I relished the opportunity to give accurate accounts of African life and true African interests.”

The NBPC sees “AfroPoP” as not only an opportunity to share some of the best documentaries being produced by the industry’s young black filmmakers, but also a chance for those displaced in the African Diaspora to talk to each other about commonalities.

“Hip Hop Revolution,” another “AfroPoP” film, examines how hip-hop culture has become a worldwide phenomenon, transcending black and colored communities in Cape Town, South Africa. South African filmmaker Weaam Williams says she wanted to show that just as black and Latino youth used hip-hop to speak out about urban blight during the 1980s, young South Africans also rhymed about the detrimental effects of apartheid during that same time period.

“I was inspired by the hip-hop artists in my community,” Williams said. “I wanted to show in my film that hip-hop is international. I also think there is a creative resurgence in Africa, and I wanted to tap into that.”

Elba agreed that hip-hop is universal, as well as infectious. When he is not acting in film and television he finds time to put on his other hat as DJ Driss to spin records at night clubs all around the country.

He actually started out as a DJ when he came to the United States in order to pay the bills while auditioning for acting roles. Now that his acting career has taken off, he continues to DJ for fun these days.

“I fell in love with hip-hop during the mid-80s,” he said. “There was this radio DJ in London, Dave Pierce, who had started an on-air freestyle battle. It became really popular and hard to call into. I got through and didn’t win, but was hooked on the music and making the music ever since.”

The NBPC is the leading provider of black-oriented programming on PBS. It has also been on the forefront of using new media to reach the public.

The organization hosted a new media training session last year working with WGBH in Jackson, Miss., where filmmakers could learn about implementing digital technology into their projects.

“AfroPoP” viewers can view segments of the films and interviews with the filmmakers online at www.blackpublicmedia.org, and can also leave comments and start conversations about them as well.

The series is just one example of how blacks around the world are connecting with each other.

Such discussions have seen an unprecedented spike this year due in part to the presidential aspirations of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, whom many members of the African Diaspora find inspiring and have embraced.

“First off, I want to say he’s a good leader who happens to be black, rather than a black leader who happens to be good,” Elba said. ”I feel politics is politics — it really has no color. He’s a dynamic person who is bringing a wind of change and happens to identify with who I am.”

“AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange Program” premieres Sunday, July 13 at 7 p.m. on WGBX Channel 44.

For more information, visit www.blackpublicmedia.org, or www.wgbh.org

Traces of the Trade

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in The Bay State Banner

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the U.S. abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, a bicentennial that has some blacks and whites trying to reconcile their respective places in American society.

Katrina Browne is one of them.

The filmmaker, who is white, thought that because her family was from Rhode Island, there was no way that her ancestors could have been involved in slavery. But when she read a book given to her by her grandmother, Browne learned that her family was not only involved, but were the largest slave trading family in the United States.

Her latest film, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” premieres Sunday on WGBX as the opening entry in the 21st season of the documentary series “P.O.V.” In it, Browne documents her struggle to understand her family’s past and how it relates to race relations in today’s America.

To better grasp that past, Browne — a direct descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the family’s first slaver — invited 200 other family members to retrace the triangular trade route from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back.

However, she said, most of her family didn’t support the trip.

“There was one relative who was particularly against the concept of the trip,” Browne told the Banner in a recent telephone interview. “He was concerned about how his black co-workers would treat him. He was also concerned about the usefulness of rehashing history.”

In 2001, Browne and nine relatives embarked on their journey from their hometown of Bristol, R.I., to look at the various business ventures that made the DeWolfs successful in the community. The DeWolfs conducted slave trading over three generations, beginning in 1769 and continuing until well after the U.S. banned the practice in 1808. The family brought over 10,000 African slaves to the Americas; it is believed that half a million of their descendants are alive today.

“My family has inherited the privileges they have, and we have also brought a lot of misery to other black people in this country,” said Browne. “I think as a family, we are obligated to address our past grievances.”

While traveling in Ghana, the DeWolf descendants attended Panafest, a biennial celebration that promotes Pan-Africanism through arts and culture. However, the family was not welcomed with open arms by some African American participants. One black woman shown in the film is distraught at the presence of white people in a sacred space at a time specifically designed to bring together members of the African Diaspora.

Following both the festival and the trip to Havana, the family participated in discussions with other blacks and whites about the uncomfortable subject of race in America, and especially the topic of reparations for African Americans. For Browne, these conversations were a “cleansing experience.”

According to Browne, the recent controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s blunt statements about America’s racial past illustrates why Americans need to have more honest discussions with each other.

“With the Jeremiah Wright case, it really opened me up to the distrust in the black community,” she said. “As white Americans, we have a lot of baggage from slavery. I am a strong believer in addressing what separates us to bring us together.”

Browne says she supports reparations for African Americans, and wants to use her life as an example of racial reconciliation. She has spent most of her career in activism focusing on eliminating racism. Before making her film, Browne served as an outreach planning coordinator for the film adaptation of “Twilight: Los Angeles,” Anna Deavere Smith’s play about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. She also founded Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program to recruit young people of color into careers in the nonprofit sector.

Some of Browne’s family members have also made strides to reconcile their ancestors’ sins. Browne’s cousin, Thomas Norman DeWolf, wrote a memoir about his experience on the triangular trade journey called “Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty.”

In the book he writes about his ancestor, U.S. Sen. James DeWolf, at his death in 1837 reportedly the second richest man in the U.S., thanks in part to his three sugar plantations in Cuba. The senator was best known in history as a ship captain on several slave trading vessels throughout the West Indies, who allegedly had a sick female slave thrown overboard while gagged and tied to a chair.

Browne wants her film to help begin healing the nation’s racial wounds.

“We hope the film will lead to more discussion about reconciliation,” she said. “We need more of that today.”

“Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North” premieres on June 29 on WGBX Channel 44 at 9 p.m., with a second showing on June 30 on WGBH Channel 2 at 10 p.m. For more information about the film, visit www.tracesofthetrade.org

American caravan seeks to improve U.S.-Cuban relations

Caption: Lisa Valanti (left) and Maribou Latour explain US-Cuban relations.

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in The Bay State Banner

Where the United States government sees danger, some American activists see opportunity.

For nearly the last five decades, the relationship between Cuba and America has been contentious. But now that an ailing Fidel Castro has ceded power to his brother Raúl, American activists say they want to change the dynamic between the two countries, largely by denouncing what they believe to be outdated U.S. policies toward the communist-aligned nation.

Nearly 100 people plan to spend the next month traveling across the United States and Canada as part of the 19th annual U.S. Cuban Friendshipment Caravan. Last week, the caravan made a stop at a packed Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain.

The goal of the caravan is to educate Americans about what those onboard say are the detrimental effects that U.S. policies have on Cuban society.

Leading the charge was Lisa Valanti, the founder and president of the national U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association and founder of the Pittsburgh Cuba Coalition. She has traveled to Cuba 20 times without applying for or accepting a license from the U.S. Treasury Department.

Valanti first traveled to Cuba in 1971 as a college student. She said she felt strongly then — as she does now — that the U.S. shouldn’t prohibit Americans from going there and seeing firsthand how U.S. policies are impacting the island.

Having grown up in a privileged, white community in the Midwest, Valanti says she became instantly radicalized after seeing Cuba’s extreme poverty and class warfare. For the first time, she said, she began to look at ways to not only bring social justice to Cubans, but also to marginalized Americans.

“As someone from the First World, it was unfathomable to see the poverty in Cuba,” Valanti said. “When I came back from Cuba, I realized that I lived in my own little world. I didn’t think about these issues before. I began to see class inequities and racism in a different light.”

In 1992, Valanti went back to Cuba, this time with Pastors for Peace, a ministry of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization and the organizers of the caravan. The objective of the trip was the same then as it is today: to help communities caught up in the crossfire of world politics.

Valanti contends that current U.S. trade policies victimize both those Cubans living on the island and those in America.

As evidence, she cites the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, which prohibits foreign companies that trade with the U.S. from also trading with Cuba. The law also prevents travel to Cuba by American citizens and imposes limits on how many times Cubans living in America can travel to their homeland to visit family. In 1996, the U.S. enacted a penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine for violators of the embargo.

As Valanti sees it, such restrictions are too harsh.

“Americans don’t realize how egregious this Cuba law is,” she said. “When the U.S. government tells you when you can visit your family, how free is our country?”

After their North American tour, the caravan will head to McAllen, Texas, which is located five miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, and then drive to the coastal town of Tampico, Mexico. There, the caravan will meet up with a Mexican union group that will help them load a ship with donated aid and supplies for delivery to Cuba. The group will then fly into Havana.

Maribou Latour, a Cuban American living in Leverett, will be joining the caravan for the first time on this trip. Word of her trip would likely dismay her parents — both of whom back U.S. trade restrictions against Cuba. She hasn’t yet told them that she is going.

Latour said she is joining the caravan because she wants to know what is really going on in her family’s homeland.

“I need to see Cuba for myself,” she said. “I have been told a lot of things about it by my parents that now I am realizing are not true. I need to see it for myself and tell my family what I saw.”

Valanti said that the hallmark of the trip is the “people to people” exchange between the caravan members and the Cuban civil society activists working to improve life on the island.

“The Cubans love this project,” she said. “They warmly welcome us, and genuinely want to learn more about us.”

Valanti said that the Cubans she meets are particularly concerned about the plight of African Americans. The rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans and the possibility that Barack Obama will be elected the first African American U.S. president are regular topics of discussion all over the island, she said.

As far as the future of U.S.-Cuban relations is concerned, Valanti said there is a slight chance that an Obama administration would eliminate the Cuban Democracy Act. There is no such chance if presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is elected, she said, because he has stated before that he will not negotiate with the communist state.

However, Valanti thinks that the American people, not politicians, are the ones who can really be agents of change.

“Most Americans favor ending this embargo,” she said. “What kind of people are we if we don’t demand this?”

Zimbabwe's Bongo Love, out of Africa and into Boston

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in The Bay State Banner

Thanks to the instant, worldwide connections made possible by the new frontier of online social networking, more musicians than ever are finding audiences in far-flung places.

Case in point: the Zimbabwean quartet Bongo Love, who are now traveling the U.S. on a tour that has featured a number of Boston-area stops, including a date this coming Tuesday at the South End nightspot 28 Degrees. The tour is the result in part of a growing fanbase that used a combination of new technology and old-fashioned word of mouth to get them here.

After finishing high school in 2001, group members John Mambira, Themba Mawoko, Trymore Jombo and Mpho Mambira moved from the small Zimbabwean town of Bulawayo to capital city Harare. There, they began to perfect their style, a mix of African folk music and American R&B beats played on traditional African instruments that bandleader John Mambira said they taught themselves to use.

“We call our music ‘Afrocoustic,’” he told the Banner in a recent interview. “We are music-influenced. We based our music on listening to Africans like Salif Keita, Baaba Maal and Angélique Kidjo, but we also like Tracy Chapman, Bob Marley and Seal. Paul Simon, especially, has a African feel to his music.”

In 2005, the band entered and won a contest that allowed them to travel to Mozambique, Sweden and the Dominican Republic to perform and teach their music. The overseas audiences really took to Bongo Love’s sound and began heading online to tell their friends in America about it.

The electronic promotion opened the door for the band to launch its first U.S. tour last year, a trip that saw them not only play shows, but also offer private lessons to aspiring young musicians.

Needham resident Bette Hoffman first learned about Bongo Love when they were invited to teach at Plugged In, a nonprofit youth-oriented music program that her son, Aaron, participates in after school. After seeing them perform, Hoffman wrote a post about the band on her blog to promote their music to her friends.

“I just got hooked on their music immediately,” she said. “I think they are wonderful, and I want to help them be even more successful.”

Hoffman invited Bongo Love back a few months later to surprise Aaron at his bar mitzvah. As luck would have it, on the day that they performed at Aaron’s party, the band was invited to perform at another concert in Acton a couple of weeks later.

Chad Urmston, formerly of the popular folk act Dispatch, who disbanded in 2002, also performed at the Acton show. A social activist committed to improving the quality of life in Zimbabwe, Urmston was entranced by Bongo Love’s sound, and invited them to perform with his band’s reunion concert — at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Originally slated to be a one-night-only reunion to raise funds for charities benefitting Zimbabweans worldwide, an additional two nights were added after the “Dispatch: Zimbabwe” concert sold out during the first half-hour of an exclusive presale available only to fans on the band’s MySpace page.

Two extra nights meant thousands more listeners exposed to Bongo Love’s music, and the exposure has translated into a swell of fan support. Viewer reception to Bongo Love’s Madison Square Garden performances and their live videos available on YouTube helped increase the demand that led to their current return engagement in the States.

“People really get into our music,” said Mpho Mambira. “People are amazed because they have never heard African music like ours before. Everyone has a good time when we perform.”

Bette Hoffman knows Boston public relations specialist Colette Philips through a mutual friend, who introduced Philips to Bongo Love. Also entranced by the band’s sound, Philips invited them to perform at the next “Get Konnected” networking cocktail reception she is hosting for Boston’s professionals of color.

“They represent … bringing multicultural people together,” said Philips.

As their American fanbase expands and their profile continues to rise, the band’s members said they are enjoying the ride.

“Our American fans have been really good to us,” said Jombo. “I get to perform, and so I am happy.”

Bongo Love will perform at the Get Konnected reception on June 24 at 28 Degrees, 1 Appleton Street, Boston. The band is scheduled to play at at 6:30 p.m.

For more information, visit www.bongolovemusic.com, www.myspace.com/bongolovemusic, or www.28degrees-boston.com.

Pride, family values shine in Hub's gay black culture

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in The Bay State Banner

The recent decision by Gov. Deval Patrick’s daughter to come out of the closet marked a significant milestone in what has been a productive year for Boston’s black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, as it makes strides in the struggle for acceptance and forges stronger allegiances with the larger black community.

In the middle of Boston Pride Week 2008 and on the eve of the city’s annual gay pride parade, Katherine Patrick revealed in an exclusive interview published in the June 12 edition of Bay Windows, a Boston-based weekly newspaper for LGBT readers, that she decided to tell her parents last summer following the state Legislature’s defeat of a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have put the issue of gay marriage up to a vote by Massachusetts residents.

Because of her dad’s strong support for defeating the ballot proposal and his backing of gay rights in general, Katherine Patrick said she felt confident that her coming out would be welcomed and accepted by her parents.

The governor and his wife, Diane Patrick, showed their acceptance and solidarity last Saturday as they marched alongside Katherine and their other daughter Sarah during the parade at that highlighted Pride Week. Black parade attendees expressed excitement about Katherine’s announcement.

“It’s good because [Katherine] has the backing of her father, which makes it easier for her in the long run,” said participant Roe Robinson.

The media attention that followed the Bay Windows interview underscored an issue that is often overlooked, but always present.

“Black gays and lesbians have always been a part of the black community,” said the Rev. Irene Monroe, a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School who is also an openly lesbian community activist and a nationally syndicated religion columnist. “We care about the same issues that straight people care about, especially around family issues. The gay community is lucky to have affirming, straight black allies who work with us.”

In addition to the governor, other allies like state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson and state Reps. Linda Dorcena Forry and Byron Rushing have played key roles in supporting marriage equality and embracing the gay community.

Greater Boston area has also seen its share of openly gay public officials. Former Cambridge Mayor Kenneth Reeves and his successor, E. Denise Simmons — the first openly gay black man and woman to be mayors of an American city — have been community activists in Boston and Cambridge for many years.

But despite the inroads made by public figures like Simmons and Reeves, some obstacles to widespread tolerance remain. According to Monroe, greater acceptance of gays in the black community has to start in the black church.

“We certainly need more gay-friendly churches, and … ministers who are accepting of gays,” said Monroe. “The media focuses so much on gay-bashing ministers that they don’t ever talk about the few ministers who are affirming.”

One of those gay-friendly black ministers is the Rev. Martin McLee, the outgoing minister of the South End’s Union United Methodist Church. When he arrived at Union eight years ago, it had just become one of the very few black churches in the country to adopt a welcoming and affirming approach to its gay congregants. Last year, Union hosted the city’s annual gay pride interfaith prayer service, a first for a predominantly black church.

Next month, McLee will transition to his new position as district superintendent for the Metro Boston Hope District of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. He says he hopes to continue his social justice work in his new role and serve as a voice for the gay community, which he says was a hallmark during his tenure at Union.

“What we have done at Union was move away from demonizing gays,” McLee said. “We look at the gay community as God’s children, and we should respect them as our brothers and sisters.”

McLee also hopes Union can serve as an example for other black churches on how to talk to the black community about homosexuality.

“We need to have a serious conversation about sexuality in our community,” he said. “If we continue to marginalize our gay brothers and sisters, we are going to isolate them. It’s not holy.”

The Massachusetts gay marriage debate sharply divided the black community, and community activist David Wilson got caught in the middle of it.

Wilson and his partner, Robert Compton, were one of the seven couples named as appellants in the landmark Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage. In October, Wilson became chairman of the board of directors for MassEquality, Massachusetts’ leading marriage equality advocacy group. These days, he spends much of his time speaking to black community groups about why he views gay marriage not as a religious issue, but rather as a civil rights issue.

Wilson and Compton had been partners for seven years prior to their 2004 wedding. Before getting married, Compton’s personal health problems sometimes required long stays in the hospital. But because Wilson wasn’t legally a member of Compton’s family, hospitals denied him visitation access.

“After we got married, these hospital visitation problems simply went away,” Wilson said. “Now I don’t have to worry about whether Rob is getting the proper care.”

Around the time Wilson took up his new position, MassEquality also rolled out a brochure specifically targeting the black community. Entitled “Jumping the Broom,” the brochure provides stories of real black gay couples and their allies, intending to illustrate why marriage equality is also a family values issue.

Wilson and Compton were both previously married to women, and have a combined family of five adult children and six grandchildren. The couple lives in Jamaica Plain, and Wilson says that his marriage has only made the family stronger.

Wilson also stressed that when he goes to community meetings to discuss gay marriage, he discusses it in relation to other problems affecting the larger black community, such as health care, unemployment and poverty. He is particularly focused on the black community providing support for gay youth, like Katherine Patrick, so that vulnerable young people are better equipped to deal with both homophobia and racism as adults.

“More time is needed on our youth,” he said. “The more we can give them, the better they will be. They are the next generation.”

Wal-Mart raises funds, questions in black Hub

By Talia Whyte
Originally Published in The Bay State Banner


Retail giant Wal-Mart is the world’s largest private employer, with estimated net revenues of $378.8 billion for 2008. It is also one of the world’s most generous companies. Last year, its philanthropic arm, the Wal-Mart Foundation, donated $296 million to charities around the world — including many organizations geared towards African Americans.

Over the past few months, the foundation has turned its charitable gaze toward the Boston area. In February, the Museum of African American History received $250,000 from the Wal-Mart Foundation to help restore the African Meeting House. While the donation was made during Black History Month, a press release accompanying its announcement noted that “Wal-Mart has a long tradition of supporting diverse communities throughout the year.”

A few weeks later, the foundation made another donation, this one to the Grove Hall Youth Outreach Connection (GHYOC), a program of the faith-based Boston Ten Point Coalition that helps local at-risk youth through one-on-one mentoring, exploratory trips, peer leadership counsels, court advocacy and social activities held at the Roxbury YMCA. According to the coalition, the donation will be used specifically to purchase bicycles for GHYOC youth workers, allowing them to be more accessible and visible to those in community who need their help.

“I think this is a wonderful donation,” said GHYOC Director Emmanuel Tikili, who is also director of programs for the Boston Urban Youth Foundation. “We are trying to figure out how to better serve the youth in our community, and the donation put us in a better position to deal with youth violence.”

But for all the good Wal-Mart’s money appears to be doing in Boston, and all the good will it seems to engender, there are those in the black community who feel that the corporation is being deceitful, arguing that the company’s claims of charity ring hollow as it treats its own employees poorly.

Wal-Mart has for years faced criticism about its business practices. Some argue that the scores of massive retail outlet stores it has built around the country put “Mom and Pop” stores out of business.

Others decry company practices that they claim provide irresponsibly low wages and poor benefits to Wal-Mart’s U.S. employees, many of whom are low-income people and people of color, at the same time as it exploits sweatshop workers for their cheap labor in the developing world. It has been previously reported that some American Wal-Mart employees receive such low pay that they qualify for government assistance programs like food stamps.

When contacted by the Banner for this article, Wal-Mart spokesperson Christi Gallagher said that she was “not aware of any criticisms.” She said that Wal-Mart has listened to the opinions of its employees, and has made changes to its health care plan options to better serve their needs.

“Associates now have more than 50 ways of customizing their health care coverage options, which will allow them to select among various deductibles, health care credits, and premiums, depending on their needs,” Gallagher said in a recent e-mail. “The plans also give them access to more than 2,000 generic prescriptions for $4, and have no lifetime maximums. Our goal is to be their employer of choice, offering competitive wages and benefit packages for all associates.”

Nonetheless, black community leaders have organized against the corporate giant in recent years, specifically in opposition to Wal-Mart’s attempts to build stores in Chicago and Los Angeles and what they claim is a continuing adversarial stance toward workers’ rights.

Black leadership and Wal-Mart briefly became strange bedfellows in 2006, when Civil rights leader and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young was roundly criticized for agreeing to become chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group The New York Times said was “created and financed by the company to trumpet its accomplishments” and “improve [the corporation’s] public image.”

Young abruptly resigned that position, after just six months on the job, following the publication of an interview in the weekly Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper in which he offered a controversial response to a question about whether it was good that Wal-Mart may drive small businesses out of the market.

“Well, I think they should,” Young told the Sentinel. “Those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped our communities off enough. First it was the Jews, then it was the Koreans and now it’s the Arabs. Very few black people own these stores.”

In Boston, community leaders are also speaking out about Wal-Mart’s practices.

“Wal-Mart provides slave wage jobs,” said City Councilor Chuck Turner. “They exploit people. Wal-Mart comes into communities and takes away livelihoods, and turns around and gives back the money in donations.”

Tufts University professor and urban policy analyst James Jennings wonders if the Wal-Mart donations are a result of vacuum that is not being filled through other vehicles.

“This development in large donations by corporations like Wal-Mart could be a result of the government pulling back funds to the black community,” Jennings said. “The smaller the nonprofit is, the more attractive Wal-Mart’s money looks. If Wal-Mart is doing this as a purely altruistic effort, that’s fine. But if there is something else going on, that’s another issue. If Wal-Mart really cared about the community, it would provide better health care and wages to its employees.”

The discussion over Wal-Mart’s place in the black community does not appear to be one that will end any time soon. While Tikili, of the Grove Hall Youth Outreach Connection, said he is very aware of the controversy, he also said he hopes that the Wal-Mart Foundation’s donation to the GHYOC will provide an opportunity for community stakeholders to have a discussion with Wal-Mart over many of these issues.

“We need to look at the quality of life in our community,” he said. “We need to figure out what is in the best interest of the black community.”

‘Wire’ creator talks urban decline in Hub

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in the Bay State Banner

Few television shows impact the way viewers think about their place in society; the critically acclaimed HBO drama “The Wire,” which ended its five-season run last month, was one.

Although the series never found the high ratings enjoyed by some of the cable network’s other flagship programming, the multifaceted drama developed a devoted audience that included many critics, who frequently called it “the best show on television no one is watching.”

“The Wire” gained its notoriety for its realistic portrayals of the major players in the war on drugs. While the show took place in Baltimore, many of its recurring themes — substance abuse, poverty, crime, unemployment and the declining state of education in the black community — sounded a familiar note to residents of inner cities around the country.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, community leaders, activists and academics joined “Wire” creator David Simon at Harvard University last Friday for a panel discussion about how much — or how little — social and economic injustices among African Americans have changed since King’s death.

Before a packed house at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Simon said that the inspiration for the show came from his years working as a crime reporter at The Baltimore Sun, a position that gave him a first-hand look at these complex problems.

“It was hard to sell this show to HBO at first because the media doesn’t talk about these issues,” he said. “Eventually, HBO signed us on and we went about spending each season slicing off a different part of the city. We got the ball rolling, and here we are today.”

During its five-year run, the show explored the roles that the drug dealers, police authorities, politicians, educators and the media play in the seemingly endless drug cycle.

“The show treated the characters as human beings,” said Columbia University Professor Sudhir Venkatesh, and author of the new book, “Gang Leader for a Day.” “There is decency in these characters, and in a way, there is inspiration.”

Venkatesh compared the show’s true-to-life depictions to the experiences he wrote about in his book, drawn from seven years spent tagging along with gang leaders in Chicago. One comparison he said he noticed was how black gang leaders who wanted the respect of the corporate world wore business suits. This phenomenon was exemplified on “The Wire” in the character of Stringer Bell, played by actor Idris Elba, who tried unsuccessfully to reform the “drug game” by getting involved in Baltimore’s development projects.

Another member of the panel, Harlem Children’s Zone President and CEO Geoffrey Canada, agreed with Venkatesh’s assessment that a dysfunctional educational system and a dearth of job opportunities in American inner cities have led black youth to a point where they can’t see a better life for themselves beyond the drug world.

In Boston, the statistics are grim. Nearly 50 percent of high school students in the Boston Public Schools system don’t graduate in four years, and black and Latino males drop out of school at higher rates than any other ethnic or demographic group. Unemployment rates among black men in Boston are comparable to national rates, as 40 percent of black men in Boston are without jobs — in fact, the joblessness rate is higher now than it was at the time of Dr. King’s death.

The sense of desperation permeating “The Wire” was palpable for many viewers, including Canada.

“The show was too real,” Canada said. “I felt like the kids had no chance. A lot of people watched this show to see a happy ending, but it didn’t happen.”

Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Nora Baston agreed that sometimes life on the streets doesn’t have a happy ending. She said that the Boston Police Department is working with community leaders to address problems stemming from drugs and violence in Boston streets, with particular attention to the issue of reform to the state’s Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws.

“The Boston Police realizes that CORI is a problem when it comes to people who want to change their lives,” she said. “Everyone needs a job. We are trying to work with community groups on this issue.”

However, Simon has serious doubts that socioeconomic problems in the inner city are ever going to change — particularly if political and business leaders fail to realize how they are contributing to the problem, he said, citing the number of American jobs going overseas due to free trade agreements and the government’s recent bailout of Wall Street giant Bear Stearns.

With opportunities dwindling and the number of black men in prison growing, Simon added, the system is now designed to hold African Americans back.

“The drug war has accomplished nothing, but no one says anything about it,” he said. “The drug war destroyed quality police work. Many of the drug laws restrict police from doing their jobs right. If we wanted to figure out a way to drive kids into drugs, put less money into education. People who control the budgets don’t care about these problems. This is not a democracy, it’s an oligarchy.”

As for the lasting impact of “The Wire,” Simon said he believes there probably will not be another show like it because network executives want to “appease and entertain” audiences, rather than bog them down with the kinds of serious topics “The Wire” covered. However, he is happy with what he and his colleagues accomplished, and hopes a conversation will continue on the subjects brought up in the show.

“It’s a show about something,” he said. “We may have gotten some things wrong, but I think we were doing something right.”

Zangana slams Bush Administration on Iraq

By Talia Whyte

Iraqi journalist Haifa Zangana says that the Bush administration has made life in Iraq worse than it was before the war began in 2003. Upon the fifth anniversary of the US invasion, Zangana spoke to over 500 progressive women media professionals at the 2008 Women, Action and the Media Conference yesterday about life in Iraq under the occupation and why Americans and Iraqis should join forces to end the war.

Zangana has spent her whole life being a political agitator. When Zangana was only eight years old, she witnessed Iraqis flooding the streets of Baghdad to celebrate independence from British colonial rule. However, this celebration was short-lived when Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party set up house in the late 1970s. Because of her outspokenness against the regime, Zangana was imprisoned and tortured in Abu Ghraib prison. When she was released from prison, she was forced into exile and has live in London ever since, where she is a regular contributor for the Guardian and Al-Ahram Weekly.

She has only been back to Iraq twice since the war began, and is very displeased with the state of all Iraqis, particularly Iraqi women.

“After five years there is complete mayhem,” Zangana said. “What Bush chooses to ignore is to tell Americans about the real cost of the surge.”

Zangana described an Iraq that is largely ignored by the US media, including the approximate 50,000 Iraqis that have left the country every month since the war began, and that only 20 percent of Iraqi children go to school now. Zangana said that 300,000 Iraqis went missing under the Hussein regime, but over one million Iraqis have gone unaccounted for since the war began.

She was also very critical of Basra Children’s Hospital, a failed project sponsored by First Lady Laura Bush and State Secretary Condoleezza Rice to care for cancer-stricken Iraqi children. In 2004 the contract was given to the embattled American construction giant, Bechtel. However, the company was taken off the project after news broke of construction delays, overspending and mismanagement. David Snider, a spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department agency in charge of the project, said to the New York Times that technically, Bechtel's contract wasn’t contractually required to complete the hospital.

“And now the hospital sits there unfinished, and no child is being helped,” Zangana said.

Zangana is also disgusted that the Bush administration portrays Iraq as having a long history of violence; when, in fact, she says that sectarian violence in Iraq only started in 2003. Most of all Zangana is none to pleased with the US media’s portrayals of Iraqi women as helpless and weak.

“The sectarian government with the support of the US government has no regard for women,” she said. “The US government said it came to Iraq to liberate women. But the lives of women during the war have only gotten worse. Women are raped in Iraqi, American and British camps to degrade their families.”

According to Zangana more Iraqi women have become the heads of households since the war began, and many more of them have become politically active. Before the war one third of Iraqi journalists were women; however, because of the violence, it is very unsafe for them go out and report the news, especially after dark. Nonetheless, there are a growing number of Iraqi women using blogs to talk about their lives, despite lacking electricity and internet access in many areas in Iraq. Zangana requested that the audience of women before her make efforts to unite with their sisters in Iraq to bring the war to a conclusion.

“We need to do more,” she said. “There will be no peace around the world until there is justice.”

Thomas on Hillary, Bush and the Future of Journalism

By Talia Whyte

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas thinks Hillary Clinton is getting worse treatment by the media than Barack Obama. During her keynote speech last night at the 2008 Women, Action and the Media Conference, Thomas said Clinton’s bad treatment is due to still lingering sexism in the press.

“Hillary is being demonized by the media because of her gender,” Thomas said. “Every time either Hillary or her husband tries to say something, they get shut up by the media.”

Contrast to his opponent, Thomas says Obama “is walking on water,” as she believes the media is easier on him simply because he is an unknown commodity with a large “fan base.”

Thomas is no stranger to gender discrimination herself. She recalled to an audience of over 500 progressive women media professionals at the conference her experiences of sex politics in the newsroom over the last six decades, how much – or little – things have changed for women journalists, and the future of responsible journalism.

When Thomas started out as a reporter with United Press International in 1943, like other women at the time, she was only allowed to cover women’s issues. She would later go on to cover more serious topics at federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Thomas would become the president of the Women’s National Press Club in the late 1950s, as well as the first woman member of the White House Correspondents Association and the Gridiron Club.

“It is much better for women journalists today,” she said. “There are more women pursuing journalism in college today than men. “Journalism has become a woman’s field.”

Thomas has also gained the reputation of being the “patron saint of not shutting up,” and she was not going to give her title anytime soon. As she has covered every president since John F Kennedy, who she said was her favorite Commander-In-Chief, Thomas gave an impression of each administration. While Lyndon Johnson was “bigger than life” and “knew where all the bodies were buried,” Bill Clinton was the “consummate politician but ruined his reputation with an affair and definitely will not be on Mount Rushmore.”

However, Thomas’ harshest words were for the current occupant in the White House. She calls the Bush administration the worst and most secretive yet. During Watergate she said that the media was more willing to question authority. However, since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks the press worry more about not gaining access to the president, and have instead become “stenographers rather than watchdogs of the President.”

“There are no pictures of coffins coming back from Iraq in the news,” she continues, “It seems like if you criticize [the Bush Administration], you will be seen as unpatriotic.”

As for the current presidential election, Thomas says that none of the three leading candidates have any idea how to deal with the war in Iraq.

However, she did say that Clinton would be the best candidate for the job because of her experience in the political arena. Thomas went on to say that the racial and sexual politics between the two Democratic candidates are what’s making the election the most interesting to watch.

“What’s wrong with divisiveness?” she said. “That is how politics is played.”

Following her talk, a few African American attendes had a lukewarm reception to Thomas’ remarks.

“I agree and disagree with [Thomas],” said filmmaker Faith Pennick. “I agree that there has been some sexism against Hillary, but I also think Hillary has played the race card many times herself against Obama.”

Nonetheless, the audience was enthused to be in the presence of a woman who has opened up doors in the newsroom for them.

“She is the kind of feminist that motivated me to become a better woman,” said Boston University student Denise Crooks.

UMass-Boston prof critical of South African leaders

By Talia Whyte
Originally Published in the Bay State Banner

Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa has emerged as one of the continent’s premier powers. But it is still a country in transition. Racial strife between the country’s white minority and the black majority is still a problem, and new challenges, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and widespread violent crime, are draining the country’s resources.

In fact, there are some critics who believe the new South Africa may actually be in worse shape than it was under the apartheid regime.

Padraig O’Malley, an activist, author and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, is one of those critics. During a lecture last Wednesday at the University of Massachusetts Club, O’Malley discussed how corruption within the African National Congress (ANC) has ruined the country.

One of the world’s leading experts on conflict resolution, O’Malley has written extensively on promoting dialogue in divided societies, including South Africa. In 1992, he invited prominent South African officials to Boston for a meeting with representatives of the factions in Northern Ireland. Four years later, he helped arrange a second meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended by South Africans Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC and Roelf Meyer of the white National Party.

But for all his work over the past two decades to unite the “Rainbow Nation,” O’Malley now says he feels that his labors have been fruitless, and he has all but given up trying to deal with the new leaders running South Africa.

“The new South Africa has no moral compass,” he said.

During his 40-minute talk, O’Malley blasted individual South African politicians and their supporters for the allowing their country to free fall into an abyss of black-on-white racism and “crony capitalism.” He also decried most of South Africa’s new black elite for failing to criticize the problems caused by government officials.

O’Malley’s first victim was current South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, whom the professor claims is out of touch with the realities of the country, largely because Mbeki did not live in South Africa during most of the apartheid era and was educated in the United Kingdom. Thus, O’Malley concludes, Mbeki only cares about the interests of upper middle class blacks.

But what really infuriates O’Malley are Mbeki’s unorthodox views about HIV/AIDS.

Though he was once an ardent HIV/AIDS advocate, upon assuming the presidency in 1999, Mbeki declared that HIV did not cause AIDS. Instead, he said he believed the illness was a “disease of poverty,” a belief allegedly based on Internet research and discussions with dissident scientists.

Because of the president’s views, South Africa’s health ministry was reluctant to provide antiretroviral drugs to treat those living with HIV. Instead, it tried to promote healthy eating as a way to fight the epidemic.

In July 2002, however, the South African AIDS activist organization Treatment Action Campaign won a case against the nation’s government. The Constitutional Court of South Africa ordered Mbeki’s government to make the antiretroviral drug nevirapine available to pregnant women to help prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV.

Despite the presence of free medication being provided by many international drug companies to South Africans in need, the health ministry is still reluctant to make antiretrovirals available to all.

But the blame extends beyond Mbeki, according to O’Malley.

“More pathetic than Mbeki was the ANC,” the country’s ruling political party, he said. “Not one ANC member questioned Mbeki or were prepared to sacrifice their seat. They all share responsibility in allowing the suffering of South Africans with AIDS. Their silence stole the revolution.”

Under the Mbeki administration, O’Malley said that South Africa tolerated political corruption, a tendency embodied in the recent career of Jacob Zuma.

In June 2005, Mbeki relieved Zuma, then deputy president of the ANC, of his post due to allegations that Zuma accepted bribes in a $4.8 billion 1999 strategic arms deal. Six months later, in December 2005, Zuma was charged with raping a 31-year-old woman that he knew was HIV-positive. During his trial, Zuma admitted to having unprotected sex with the woman, but claimed the encounter was consensual. He also said he took a shower after the encounter to “cut the risk of contracting HIV.”

Despite these highly public situations, Zuma was elected the new president of the ANC in December, putting him in line to become the next president of the country when elections come in 2009.

Mere days after his ascension to the party’s leadership position, however, Zuma was charged with racketeering, money laundering, fraud and corruption stemming from the 1999 arms deal. His trial is scheduled to begin in August. If Zuma is convicted, he will be ineligible to become president.

O’Malley also said he is disappointed, but not surprised, that both Mbeki and Zuma continue to support Robert Mugabe’s controversial reign in Zimbabwe. Many Africans feel obligated to support Mugabe because of his history of being a staunch anti-colonial leader, O’Malley said, and those who criticize Mugabe are considered racist. Even Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was labeled an “icon of white elites” by Mbeki after he spoke out against the ANC not taking a stand against Mugabe.

“Mugabe is one of the worst people to come out of Africa,” O’Malley said. “He lacks respect for his fellow Africans. He has destroyed his country, and South Africa allows it to happen.”

Peter Kovac, a UMass-Boston junior who traveled to South Africa in January, agreed with the thrust of O’Malley’s lecture.

“There is a disconnect between the government and the people who elect them,” Kovac said. “It seems like the voice of most South Africans are being muffled.”

O’Malley said he didn’t have any solutions for the country’s problems. But, he said, he is certain this is not the “new South Africa” many people wanted.

“Never did South Africans believe in so much, but get so little,” he said.

‘Iron Ladies’ doc showcases Liberia’s strong female voices

By Talia Whyte
Originally Published in the Bay State Banner

When Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf assumed the presidency of Liberia in 2006, she had to hit the ground running. As if becoming Africa’s first elected female head of state was not daunting enough, it fell to her to fix many of the problems left over from nearly two decades of civil war, ethnic conflict and social strife.

The PBS documentary “Iron Ladies of Liberia,” which debuts on WGBH 44 today and will be re-aired Sunday night at 9 p.m., follows both the turbulent first year of Johnson-Sirleaf’s administration and the many talented female politicians and ministers helping her turn the country around.

Filmmaker Daniel Junge and Liberian media activist Siatta Scott Johnson were given full access to Johnson-Sirleaf’s day-to-day affairs prior to her inauguration in January 2006.

“She was reluctant at first, but she finally agreed to be a part of this,” Junge said during a recent telephone interview. “I felt it was important to document her administration for historical purposes.”

Johnson-Sirleaf accomplished much during that first year. Highlights include the restoration of electricity to the Liberian capital of Monrovia for the first time in years, as well as the negotiation of a debt relief agreement with the United States.

But there were stumbling blocks, as well. Johnson-Sirleaf came into office without much support from the nation’s male politicians, including then-Speaker of the House Edwin Snowe, former son-in-law of Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor.

To counter the patriarchal opposition, the president surrounded herself with a cabinet comprised mostly of capable women, including police chief Beatrice Munah Sieh, a former Trenton, N.J., middle school teacher, and Minister of Finance Dr. Antoinette Sayeh.

Sayeh and Johnson-Sirleaf work closely together in “Iron Ladies” to bring down the culture of corruption that has festered in Liberia for many years.

Sayeh says her ministry operated like a “mafia” during the Taylor years, noting that she had to fire most senior officials to start off with a clean slate. Throughout the documentary, she spends most of her days working to clean out corruption and dealing with the national debt, while at the same time trying to convince international donors that Liberia is a viable country to support.

“Women have not been, to the same extent as men, party to all of the bad things of the past,” Sayeh said in the film. “They certainly were very strong voices against the atrocities in Liberia in the war, and they fought very, very hard to make sure that the democratic process worked this time around. And so, this is our biggest opportunity to change Liberia.”

Liberia has a longstanding relationship with the United States. Freed African American slaves immigrated to the West African nation in the early 19th century, declaring it an independent republic in 1847. In 1926, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company opened one of the world’s largest rubber plantations in the country.
For years, Firestone has been criticized for human rights violations against Liberian workers. In “Iron Ladies,” Johnson-Sirleaf takes a stand for the plantation’s employees, getting Firestone to increase salaries.

However, the problems with Firestone have increased Liberian interest in another superpower eager to do business in Africa — the Chinese government.

Johnson-Sirleaf and her cabinet are seen in the film having multiple meetings with Chinese officials, much to the dismay of the White House.

“Ellen is a really adept person,” Junge said. “She is loyal to the United States, but she needs help for her country where she can get it and that option might be China.”

Junge said Johnson-Sirleaf saw the first cut of the film last year. The president, he said, was highly impressed with her portrayal. Her only complaint? It did not include enough voices from women. The filmmakers happily compiled more.

The film also follows Scott Johnson, the Liberian media activist, as she deals with being a female filmmaker living in a male-dominated society in transition.

At last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Scott Johnson was surprised to get a standing ovation after the “Iron Ladies” screening — Junge said he pulled her aside afterwards and told her that not all filmmakers get applause like that after their first film.

At a time when New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is involved in a hotly contested race for the chance to become America’s first female president, Junge believes that “Iron Ladies” has the potential to change Americans’ views about women in leadership roles around the world.

“I hope this film will [lead viewers to] question [America’s] relationship with Liberia, the developing world and women in Liberia,” he said. I especially want people to have a positive view of women in Africa.”

‘Africa Unite’ delivers Marley’s message

By Talia Whyte
Originally published in the Bay State Banner

Each year, on Feb. 6, music fans around the world gather to celebrate the birthday, life and legacy of reggae legend and social critic Bob Marley. Now, fans can relive possibly the biggest Marley celebration of all time in the comfort of their own homes.

Director Stephanie Black’s film “Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley’s Vision,” recently released on DVD, documents the 2005 concert and commemorations to celebrate Marley’s 60th birthday, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and attended by over 300,000 people.

The weeklong celebration represented a realization of Marley’s dream to promote pan-Africanism and social justice around the world. Those who gathered in Addis Ababa to continue pursuing that dream included all of Marley’s children; his widow, Rita; his mother, Cedella Booker; and a host of celebrities, including singers Lauryn Hill and Angélique Kidjo, among others.

“Bob Marley expressed his passion for Africa through his music,” says actor Danny Glover in the film. “The fact that we are here is very important.”

It was no coincidence that the commemorations took place in the East African nation. Black does an excellent job of explaining the relationship between Haile Selassie I and the Rastafarian culture of Marley’s Jamaica, a movement founded in the 1930s to pay homage to the Ethiopian emperor, whom Rastafarians accept as God incarnate; the lyrics from Marley’s famed song “War” were derived from Haile Selassie’s 1963 speech before the United Nations General Assembly on racial injustice and anti-colonial struggles.

The film follows Ras Bongo Tawney, a 73-year-old Jamaican Rastafarian who travels to Ethiopia for the birthday observances. During his journey, Tawney tells his own tale of being discriminated against and physically harassed for his Rasta lifestyle in Jamaica, providing some of the film’s most absorbing moments.

Tawney’s story culminates when he visits Shashamane, a small town outside of Addis Ababa that gained international attention in 1948 when Haile Selassie granted the land as a gift to allow those displaced in the African Diaspora to return to the continent, and Addis Ababa’s majestic Cathedral of St. George, where Haile Selassie was crowned emperor in 1930.

Keeping true to Marley’s vision of social activism, the commemorations also brought together 40 youth delegates from all over Africa to participate in a symposium to discuss how to improve the continent politically, socially and economically.

According to the United Nations, nearly 40 percent of Africans are under the age of 22, so youth participation in such a discussion is vital because, as one delegate says in the film, “we are the future of Africa.” From HIV/AIDS to women’s empowerment, there was no shortage of opinions from this group of African teens, but trade justice was the top issue for this group.

During the discussion, Jimmy, a Ugandan peasant’s son who had to pay his own way to the birthday observances because his government couldn’t afford to send him, called for Africans to unite against global militarism and focus on the real issues affecting Africa, such as fair trade on agricultural products.

“We don’t want millions of dollars from the World Bank,” he says in the film. “We can make our own money. Let’s buy more seeds, not weapons.”

With “Africa Unite,” documentarian Black continues to shine a light on economic disparities in the developing world. Her first film, 1990’s “H-2 Worker,” deals with the exploitation by U.S. corporations of Caribbean men who migrate to work in Florida’s sugar cane fields, and her widely acclaimed 2001 documentary “Life and Debt” examines how the economic policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank affect the social and political fabric of Jamaica.

But for all the discussion of economic justice, “Africa Unite” is really about the power and quality of Marley’s music, and there’s no shortage of that in the film, either. Viewers get a chance to see Ziggy Marley and family, all on the same stage, set the audience to swooning with a stirring version of the song that gives the documentary its title.

Black hopes that viewers of “Africa Unite” will be inspired, as Bob Marley was, to do what they could to become agents for change in the world.

“There’s not an artist in the world who was both the commercial success and the inspiration that Bob was,” Black says in an article on the film’s Web site (www.bobmarley.com/africaunite). “We approached this film not as a way to gaze upon Bob, but to direct the viewer’s gaze on the things that were important to Bob: His Majesty [Haile Selassie], Ethiopia, a united Diasporic movement.”

Fi Wi Sinting, Jamaica!!!

By Talia Whyte
February 18, 2008

Port Antonio, Jamaica - I have to admit that I used to be a typical tourist when I traveled to Jamaica. In the past I have climbed the world famous Dunns River Falls and danced to Bob Marley sounds during limbo parties in exclusive beach resorts in Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. I have even had the pleasure of a persuasive Jamaican man take a romantic interest in me.

However, a meeting with a conscientious Jamaican two years ago gave me an opportunity to get a different perspective of the island.

In 2006 I went on an educational tour of Jamaica led by Pauline “Sista P” Petinaud, a colorful businesswoman and community activist from Port Antonio. A longtime Rastafarian who dons dreadlocks traditional African garb full time, Sista P has dedicated her life to teaching both Jamaicans and tourists about the island’s true cultural heritage. She says that the rise of corporate tourism in Jamaica has had a damaging effect on the Jamaican psyche. While it is true that the tourism industry generates millions of dollars for the Jamaican economy, Sista P maintains that most of that money not only doesn’t reach the majority of the island’s poor population, but tourism has reduced the island’s history and traditions to just reggae, rum and fun in the sun.

“I wish more people would see what my country really looks like,” she said in 2006.

Like most American tourists, my knowledge of Jamaica was very limited to “herb” smoking and Bob Marley music. Being a Jamaican-American, I started to feel embarrassed that I had such a superficial understanding of my family’s homeland.

So, when I got an arousing email from Sista P last November announcing an event she hosts during President’s Day weekend that will “celebrate Jamaica’s African heritage and the Rasta movement,” I didn’t hesitate to purchase my airline ticket to attend this.

Fi Wi Sinting, Sista P’s brainchild, is an annual, outdoor festival of arts, crafts, food and entertainment that takes place near the lush mountainside in Buffs Bay, Portland. It started 18 years ago as a fundraiser for the Content Model School, which provided alternative educational skills for kindergarten-age students in nearby Hope Bay. The first Fi Wi Sinting was a small gathering of 30 attendees. In the ensuing years the festival has grown into a must-attend event attracting over 3,000 people from around the world who want to support sustainable tourism.

The festival’s name is Jamaican patois for “it is ours,” as Sista P tries to convey to Jamaica’s African heritage is something to be embraced by all people of every stripe. The growing grassroots movement behind the festival is largely due to those in the community who value its contribution to the island. One key fact is that almost all the money made during the festival stays in the community. Sista P employs an army of locals to do everything from selling tickets to landscaping at the festival site.

Despite the manpower, by the way Sista P was moving around with a cell phone semi-attached to her ear days before the event, I would have guess she was doing all the preparations herself. On the eve of the festival I drove around Port Antonio with Sista P, her daughter Subira, and her cousins from New York purchasing food from local farmers to prepare for the festival performers. While assiduous planning for Fi Wi Sinting begins in May every year, for Sista P, nonetheless, all the hard work is a labor of love that is worth the time.

“Jamaica is a black country,” she said while walking the festival grounds for any last minute problems, “but people here don’t know about their African heritage. I want people to learn something besides dancehall and reggae.”

An education is certainly what attendees get at Fi Wi Sinting. When I entered the site the day the festival opened, I had a choice of “classrooms” to go to, as the site grounds were divided up into different sections to learn about the black experience. In one classroom I listen to a band play the sounds of Mento, a type of folk music Jamaicans created during slavery using their own handmade instruments. Across the field I hear in another classroom three elder Rasta men perform a Nyabinghi chant. My fellow pupils were equally immersed in the atmosphere as I was. Many of them swooning to the sounds were also dressed in colorful West African clothing or wearing the Rasta colors of red, black and yellow.

The festival edges were lined with vendors, many of whom had traveled from all over the island to be there. For many of them sales from the festival is the only revenue they will receive for the month. While some of the vendors sold Bob Marley t-shirts, what I did find in abundance were books and posters about other Jamaican heros, like Marcus Garvey, Michael Manley and the Maroons, runaway slaves who fought off British colonists during the 18th century. Fi Wi Sinting is also a vegetarian’s paradise, with natural fruit juices and callaloo rotis to soothe the palate.

“I am having a lovely time,” said Mary Turner, a second generation Jamaican-American from Chicago as she wolfed down vegan chocolate cupcake. “Everyone here is friendly and loving to one another.”

The friendly environment is also due to the fact that this festival gives tourists to the island the opportunity to directly interact with other Jamaicans on a personal level, an opportunity rarely seen at the exclusive beach hotels. Whether it was a conversation about the Barack Obama phenomenon or the new World Trade Organization’s decision against the EU’s import tariffs on Jamaican bananas, it seems like Sista P’s dream has finally come true.

As everyone grooved the night away to Senegalese pop music at the African dance party, led by none other than the international renowned dub poet Mutabaruka, I thought about if I actually finally saw this island in a different way. And then I quickly said to myself, “Of course, it is mine. It is ours.”

Fi Wi Sinting is generally held every year during President’s Day weekend in Buffs Bay, an hour’s drive outside of Port Antonio. For more information, go to www.fiwisinting.com.

Talia Whyte is a Boston-based freelance journalist

Copyright 2008 Talia Whyte