Vol. 50 No. 33
December 5, 2019 -December 11, 2019
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
#RolandMartinUnfiltered Is a Black News Platform With The Largest Audience In America Nation's Only Black Digital Show Focuses on News & an Analysis of Politics, Sports & Culture National News
Publisher’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Editor in Chief Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
OPINION: Danger of Historical Amnesia in the Era of Trump POST NEWS GROUP — “To view Trump’s win as the “most volatile” political moment in American history is inaccurate. We are living in volatile and terrifying times, but they are not exceptional political times. We are living in a time of a resurgence and consolidation of power to white supremacist groups. We must vigilantly confront how the evolution of American democracy is not linear.” By Annie “Q” Sajid, Oakland Post News
Roland S. Martin, the founder, host and managing editor of #RolandMartinUnfiltered (far right) with panelists (left to right) Dr. Julianne Malveaux, attorney A. Scott Bolden and attorney Monique Pressley. Washington, D.C. - (November 29, 2019) -- Roland Martin reaches more African Americans each day with news and information using his streaming platform than anyone else in the U.S. Martin, a veteran broadcast journalist who celebrated the oneyear-anniversary of #RolandMartinUnfiltered in September, has over 100.7 million views with almost 435 million minutes viewed across YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in that short timeframe. Martin believes he is providing a service digitally that is long overdue. "I understand that African Americans are tired of mainstream media ignoring the many issues
impacting us on a daily basis. Therefore, I conduct interviews with newsmakers and I produce and stream content related to criminal justice, health, politics and other topics that are extremely important to the Black community," said Martin. "I fill the void left by mainstream media's lack of resources and time to dedicate ongoing coverage of the myriad of issues facing African Americans. In addition, because my news program is streamed, viewers can watch the show anywhere using their tablets, mobile phones and other devices." Many are taking note and understand the significance and
value of Martin's efforts. Says National Urban League President and CEO, Marc Morial, "Roland Martin is one of the most important voices in Black America today. His insight and no-nonsense approach to bringing news and opinion to, for, and about Black America is a welcome alternative to the sameness of many other journalists. His voice is respected, vital and essential." "We would like to congratulate Roland and his team on a successful first year," said Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP. "Communities of color deserve to hear from their voices - journalists
from the community, who are invested in shining a light on the issues that affect the community. Roland Martin has been a steadfast reporter with the utmost integrity, and is an important voice for Black America." Adds Melanie Campbell, President & CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), "Despite the proliferation of sports, entertainment and news networks and channels in America, there is a tremendous void when it comes to Black news and information. Roland Martin has created a (continued on page 6)
PART I: A Quest for Garifuna Visibility in America's Census By Khalil Abdullah/Ethnic Media Services Latina clerk heard me speaking Spanish to my wife and called me back to the counter." For ethnicity, he had checked black. "You checked the wrong box," the clerk said. "You can't check black. You speak Spanish. You have to check Hispanic.'" Today, Amaya is a member of the Census Bureau's National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations Gilberto Amaya (NAC), designed to solicit Washington, D.C. (Ethnic recommendations on ways to Media Services) - Gilberto improve the accuracy of the Amaya's career in international decennial count in determining development has taken him ethnic minorities. He is allied with across more than 30 countries as other Garifuna organizations, he implemented renewable energy scholars and Afro latino systems, agribusiness projects, advocates to document their and poverty alleviation heritage and expand their initiatives. He witnessed postvisibility. independence struggles of The Garifuna, descendants of sovereign states whose names Africans of mixed tribal ancestry, are rarely heard on U.S. nightly were captured and shipped from newscasts -- Burkina Faso, Togo, Africa to the Caribbean islands Zambia, Zimbabwe. A native of of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Honduras, he has memories of Garifuna historians recount onblending into and being board insurrections that ran the welcomed by communities in ships aground. The captives Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central escaped inland, intermarried with and South America. the indigenous Carib and Arawak Yet, near his home in Fairfax, Va., Indians, also prey for forced-labor a bureaucracy momentarily bondage. Sometimes referred to stripped him of his identity. The as the Black Caribs, the Garifuna incident sparked Amaya's quest led and participated in to have "Garifuna" fully unsuccessful revolts, the Carib recognized by the U.S. Census Wars, to overthrow British Bureau. dominion, sometimes with "After conducting some public assistance of France, England's business at a government agency imperial rival. in Virginia," Amaya recalled, "I Though slavery had ceased in was leaving the line, and the England by the late 1700s, the
slave trade continued in the Americas. Given public outrage and the political strength of the abolition movement, the British demurred, in the Caribbean, from wholesale execution of prisoners deemed guilty of armed resistance. Though many Garifuna died after being captured and held in austere privation, others were transported 1,700 miles westward and abandoned to their fate. "They put more than 2,000 people on ships and transported them across the Caribbean to the bay islands of Honduras," Amaya explains, "and that's where the Garifuna people landed in mainland Central America. From their arrival on the coast, they eventually spread northwest to the rest of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and south to Nicaragua. Through migration, some large communities are here, like in the South Bronx, New York." Amaya says New York's Garifuna population is America's largest, between 70,000 to 100,000, "but that is only an estimate because we don't really show up in decennial census data." Garifuna communities are also in Houston, Los Angeles, and elsewhere here and abroad in smaller concentrations. The Garifuna are not entirely new arrivals in America. "Migration is in our people's DNA," Amaya states. "The earliest Garifuna migration to the United States was after World War II, when they were recruited
to work on the merchant marine ships supplying Europe during the war against the Axis powers. They weren't conscripted into the U.S. military, but many chose to remain in America after the war and never returned home. They sent for their families to join them in America." Education was Amaya's path to the United States. He grew up on the Honduran coast, an outstanding student who became the first Garifuna to graduate with a degree in industrial-mechanical engineering from the National University of Honduras in the capital, Tegucigalpa. There he met and married Rachel, a Garifuna, also a student. They have six children. "I went to work for the Honduras government for 10 years until I was offered an opportunity to work for a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor for projects in Latin America," he says. "Later, they decided I would be more useful to their work in Africa." The contractor preferred Amaya be U.S.-based, so the family moved to Philadelphia. He earned his master's degree in international development from the University of Pennsylvania. "Wherever you go -- and I've been around, in all of Latin America, in Europe, and different places -- and I've read about different places -- it doesn't matter (continued on page 3)
This past President’s Day, many anti-Trump rallies were organized in the name of a “Not My President’s Day.” Ironically enough, the “Not My President” refrain began as a racist chant of the Tea Party to delegitimize Barack Obama’s status as the first Black US president. The framing of Trump as “Not My President” perpetuates the idea that his presidency is an outlier in American history. The backbone of the United States is built on the land theft and murder of Indigenous people and the violent enslavement of Black people. Trump’s win exemplifies the cycles of American history in which any perceived racial progress is inevitably followed by white backlash. To present Trump’s presidency as an unexpected crisis, rather than a byproduct of emboldened American white supremacy, erases this nation’s violent past. Adrienne Maree Brown insightfully shared in her postelection reflection, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.” While there is a warranted collective anxiety around Trump’s incendiary and dehumanizing political rhetoric, his policies are not fundamentally different from the xenophobic and profit-driven policy agenda of previous presidents. Many liberals forget Obama was dubbed the deporter-in-chief because his administration oversaw the forcible removal of more than 3 million undocumented immigrants and a significant expansion of private for-profit detention centers. Resistance efforts against such inhumane policies were ongoing in the Obama era, but weren’t as visible as they are now. In the current political moment, we have seen constant direct action, some
with deep strategic movementbuilding such as the collaboration between the Movement for Black Lives and the It Takes Roots Alliance. Others have had a less intersectional understanding of what is at stake, such as the national women’s march which was held accountable for excluding the struggles of women of color, trans women, working-class women, and those whose experiences occupy multiple intersections. To view Trump’s win as the “most volatile” political moment in American history is inaccurate. We are living in volatile and terrifying times, but they are not exceptional political times. We are living in a time of a resurgence and consolidation of power to white supremacist groups. We must vigilantly confront how the evolution of American democracy is not linear. In Robin D.G. Kelley’s oneyear reflection post-Trump, he proposes we move away from “a lack of political imagination beyond crisis recovery and beyond politics as problem management.” We must not just fight back, we must re-imagine and fight for movements that guarantee rights to low-income communities and communities of color including: right to a dignified and stable home, right to accessible and affordable transit, and the right to not just participate in democracy, but democratize power to correct the trajectory of American history. Among other hats, Annie “Q” Sajid is a communications professional based in Oakland, CA. Currently, she works for Urban Habitat, a policy advocacy organization working to advance equitable policies for low-income communities and communities of color in the Bay Area. This article originally appeared in the Oakland Post.
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