AfroSpear Milestone - May 2008

The AfroSpear

In April 2007, plezWorld wrote: "...the AfroSpear is the realization of a think tank of Black (African-American) progressives to discuss, muse, and ruminate issues that affect our communities. Inasmuch, we are not a monolithic entity, the AfroSpear will encourage lively debate, discourse, and an occasional disagreement as we hone a thought or platform on a particular issue. With the power of the current bloggers on the AfroSpear list, I'm encouraged that positive and actionable results will become self-evident."

The Milestone

On yesterday, plezWorld added the 150th member to the AfroSpear Blog Roll (yeah, i'm the blog roll administrator). I joined this little group alittle over one year ago with about two dozen other Black bloggers from around the world. since that time, the membership has grown by leaps and bounds; and we may finally be suffering from growing pains. With power comes responsibility to use it wisely. The AfroSpear has become such a daunting force in the blogosphere that we have had to institute stringent rules for membership and a number of Black bloggers have been turned away. AfroSpear authors are being booked on television and radio shows, the bloggers have found their way into a number of articles of top newspapers around the country, and some members are finding celebrity and a great following for their blogs.

It is my hope that this very important milestone gives the collective AfroSpear membership a reason to pause and consciously deliberate on how we will continue to grow within this vast medium.

I remain optimistic about the future of the AfroSpear!

The AfroSpear BlogRoll

plezWorld on The AfroSpear

The AfroSpear

plezWorld joined this little group about 6 months ago with about two dozen other erstwhile Black bloggers from around the world. since that time, the membership has swelled to close to 100 member blogs.

i've virtually met some very interesting folk (and i ain't gonna name 'em here because i know i'll leave someone off) and have had a great time honing my writing skills, debate chops, and reasoning skills as a result of communicating with some of the brightest minds of the blogosphere.

a few things i've learned as a result of my affiliation with the AfroSpear:

i am a damn good husband and father - i love my family and they love me... and i'm so fortunate because there a lot of people out there who would love to be in my shoes.

i am not a Liberal - if anything, i have a growing disdain for those who spout a Liberal dogma... it does nothing for me... i'm a straight up Moderate - as shown here and here.

i am not very Religious - kinda spiritual, maybe even agnostic... all those chilly mornings that my older brothers dragged me out of my warm bed to attend Sunday School and sing in the church choir are all for naught at this point. but i better stop there before i offend one of my readers.

i am not a very good writer - i started and sputtered to a stop with my Great American Novel so many times in my youth, i think i'll stick to short 5 or 6 line blurbs so that i don't get in trouble (i have an over-reliance on the ellipsis...)

i am an attention whore - i won't be satisfied until i have 1,000 people stopping by plezWorld on a daily basis... and i happen to know it ain't gonna happen, because i don't write half as good as Field Negro or Dave J.

i am growing increasingly tired of the Race Card - something tells me that white folk start to think we're "crying wolf" because that damn thing gets played just about every other day... note to the AfroSpear, use it sparingly!

i still find that that KFC commercial to be offensive!

the AfroSpear ain't nothing like i thought it would be, but it has been fun watching it grow and evolve in the short time that i have been a member... and i feel privileged to be a part of it.

in April 2007, plezWorld wrote: "...the AfroSpear is the realization of a think tank of Black (African-American) progressives to discuss, muse, and ruminate issues that affect our communities. Inasmuch, we are not a monolithic entity, the AfroSpear will encourage lively debate, discourse, and an occasional disagreement as we hone a thought or platform on a particular issue. With the power of the current bloggers on the AfroSpear list, I'm encouraged that positive and actionable results will become self-evident."

BLOG ON!

The AfroSpear BlogRoll

Black Bloggers Fuel Jena 6 Protest

It is rare that I turn plezWorld over to an entire news article, but this one is so important, its presence cannot be denied. Two days ago, a story ran in the Chicago Tribune that correctly identified a cosmic shift in direction for the slowing Civil Rights Movement. As evidenced by the Shaquanda Cotton incident in Texas, the Genarlow Wilson sentence in Georgia, and now the Jena 6 Ordeal in Louisiana, the Blackosphere (Black Bloggers) have taken a leadership position normally reserved for "race baiting" reverends to enlighten the country about wrongs being perpetrated against Black people. Black Bloggers such as plezWorld, others associated with the AfroSphere, and hundreds of others, established a clarion call to the world to shine a light on the dark and miserable existence that is Jena, Louisiana... and its cold and racist underbelly.

I am privileged to have been a part of what the article calls the "viral civil rights movement." But moreso, I take solice in the fact that the AfroSphere, after only a year or so of existence, can take the credit for being a catalyst for change in this country: read the article about today's March on Jena.

The Chicago Tribune article follows (in its entirety):

Blogs help drive Jena protest
By Howard Witt Tribune senior correspondent
5:14 PM CDT, September 18, 2007

JENA, La. - There is no single leader. There is no agreed schedule. Organizers aren't even certain where everyone is supposed to gather, let alone use the restroom. The only thing that is known for sure is that thousands of protesters are boarding buses at churches, colleges and community centers across the country this week, headed for this tiny dot on the map of central Louisiana.

What could turn out to be one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in years is set to take place here Thursday, when Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, popular black radio talk show hosts and other celebrities converge in Jena to protest what they regard as unequal treatment of African-Americans in this racially fractured Deep South town.

Yet this will be a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the ether of cyberspace, of a type that has never happened before in America—a collective national mass action grown from a grassroots word-of-mouth movement spread via Internet blogs, e-mails, message boards and talk radio.

Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.

As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures—and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees—in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.

"Ten years ago this couldn't have happened," said Sharpton, who said he first heard about the Jena case on the Internet. "You didn't have the Internet and you didn't have black blogs and you didn't have national radio shows. Now we can talk to all of black America every day. We've been able to form our own underground railroad of information, and when everybody else looks up, it's already done."

Hotels are booked up for miles around Jena, the Louisiana State Police are drawing officers from across the state to help control the crowds and schools and many businesses in the town of 3,000 will close Thursday in anticipation of 10,000 or more demonstrators who are expected, organizers predicted.

The momentum for the protest did not slow even when the original reason for the event—the scheduled sentencing of Mychal Bell, 17, the first of the "Jena 6" defendants to be tried and convicted of aggravated second-degree battery—evaporated.

Last week, a state appellate court abruptly vacated Bell's June 28 conviction, ruling that he had been improperly tried as an adult rather than a juvenile. The local district attorney, Reed Walters, has vowed to challenge that decision, and Bell remains jailed in lieu of $90,000 bond.

What's animating the protesters is not merely Bell's legal predicament but the larger perception that blacks in Jena, who make up 12 percent of the population, are still subjected to the kind of persistent racial inequality that once predominated across the Old South.

In a town where whites voted overwhelmingly for former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when he ran for Louisiana governor in 1991, one local barber shop still refuses to cut black men's hair.

And the trouble in Jena (pronounced Jee-na) started a year ago with a resonant symbol from the Jim Crow past: After black students asked administrators at the local high school for permission to sit beneath a shade tree traditionally used only by whites, white students hung three nooses from the tree. The incident outraged black students and their parents, but was dismissed by the school superintendent as a youthful prank; he punished the white students with three-day suspensions.

A series of fights between whites and blacks ensued, both on and off the campus. Whites implicated in the fights were charged with misdemeanors or not at all, while the blacks were charged with felonies.

In November, someone burned down the central wing of the high school—an arson for which no one has been arrested.

And then in early December, Bell and five other black students at the high school were charged after a white student was jumped and beaten while he lay unconscious.

Although the white student was treated and released at a local hospital, Walters initially charged the six black youths with attempted murder—charges that he later reduced to aggravated second-degree battery after black bloggers and civil rights leaders from across the country raised complaints that the charges were excessive.

Besides Sharpton, King and Jackson, the NAACP and the ACLU will have contingents here Thursday, as will the Millions More Movement led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

But many black bloggers say the Jena demonstration is really more about a new generation of civil rights activists who learned about the Jena case not from Operation Push but from hip-hop music blogs that featured the story or popular black entertainers such as Mos Def who have turned it into a crusade.

"In traditional civil rights groups, there's a pattern—you call a meeting, you see when everybody can get together, you have to decide where to meet," said Shawn Williams, 33, a pharmaceutical salesman and former college NAACP leader who runs the popular Dallas South Blog.

"All that takes time," Williams added. "When you look at how this civil rights movement is working, once something gets out there, the action is immediate—here's what we're going to write about, here's the petition, here's the protest. It takes place within minutes, hours and days, not weeks or months."

This new, "viral" civil rights movement now taking shape still benefits from the participation of well-known leaders like Jackson or Sharpton—it just doesn't depend on them, bloggers say.

It was black bloggers, for example, who first picked up the story of Shaquanda Cotton, a 14-year-old black girl from the east Texas town of Paris who was sentenced to up to 7 years in youth prison for shoving a hall monitor at her high school. The judge who heard her case had given probation to a 14-year-old white girl charged with the more serious crime of arson.

After the bloggers and their readers bombarded the Texas governor with protest letters and petitions, Texas authorities freed Cotton—days before Sharpton had scheduled a rally on her behalf.

"When Rev. Jackson or Rev. Sharpton or other recognized leaders get involved, that's helpful, and it helps them—they can see where momentum is building around an issue," said James Rucker, the 38-year-old founder of Color of Change, an Internet-based civil rights group that has more than 280,000 subscribers. "You can argue they came late to Jena, but they are here now, which is good."

The blogs also serve as watchdogs over more traditional civil rights groups. When the NAACP first began featuring the Jena case on its Web site and claimed to be soliciting contributions for the teens' legal defense, it was a black blogger who quickly pointed out that the donation link directed visitors to the generic NAACP fundraising page, with no way for donors to direct their funds to the Jena defendants.

Within days, the link was redirected to a bona fide Jena 6 fundraising site.

I'm not physically in Jena, Louisiana today, but I'm there in spirit!

Bloggers' Roundtable: The Coretta Files

On Wednesday, September 5, 2007, Farai Chideya (NPR Radio host) and a panel of Black bloggers broke down why the FBI kept surveillance on Coretta Scott King after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, Fred Thompson entering the presidential campaign, Ireland's opening of an all-black school, and what's on Congress' plate as it returns from summer recess.

The bloggers are Shay Riley of the blog Booker Rising; Brandon Whitney, who writes the blog Homeland Colors; and Earl Dunovant, who runs the Websites Prometheus 6.

You can listen to the September 5th NPR segment here.

plez sez: i have been cross-posted numerous times on Booker Rising, and Brandon is a frequent visitor/contributor to this site from Homeland Colors; so it was nice to finally be able to put a voice with the blogs.

Blogging for Justice - The Jena 6

Bill Quigley wrote the following in his blog entry:

All White Jury sitting before White Judge agrees with White Prosecutor and All White Witnesses and Convicts Black Youth in Racially Charged High School Criminal Case

Catch up with me on this story:

A Black student asks for and is granted permission by school authorities to sit with white students under the "white tree" where a majority of the 80% white student body sits during lunch.

The next day, three nooses were hanging from the "white tree"... the message was pretty clear.

The principal found the 3 white students who were responsible for the nooses and had them expelled.

The white superintendent overruled the principal and gave the students a 3 day suspension, saying that the nooses were a "youthful stunt."

Black students organized a sit-in under the "white tree" to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging students

The white DA threatens the Black students by saying "I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."

Later that fall, a fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School.

A few days later, a black student who showed up at a white student's party is beaten by whites.

The next day, a young white man pulled out a shotgun and threatened a group of Blacks at a local convenience store... they succeed in wrestling the gun from him. The Black men who took the shotgun away were arrested and no charges were filed against the white man.

A few days later at the high school, a white student - who had been making racial taunts (including the n-word) while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the Black student at the off-campus party - got the dogshit kicked out of him by Black students... he was taken to the hospital where he was treated and released.

Six Black Jena High School students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder!

All six students were expelled from Jena High School.

All six students remain in jail unable to raise the $90,000 bond money.

Please read Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang from the "White Tree" by Bill Quigley on The Smirking Chimp for all of the details of the case.

plez sez: i tried my best to resist the urge to write a post about the injustice that occurs to this day in Jena, Louisiana: everything had already been written, i didn't know all of the facts, or this was just the "flavor of the month" in the victimology department. after being spurred on by August 30th being "Day of Blogging for Justice," i decided to do some reading and if need be, write my thoughts on this volatile situation.

as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

i cannot see or fathom why this case hasn't garnered more national ink or press. where are the reverends (al and jesse)? i would expect them to be camped out on the Jena Courthouse steps! instead of lending token support to michael vick, where is the NAACP? shouldn't they be down there with their lawyers getting these boys out of jail and getting those bogus charges dropped? i know alberto gonzalez has other things on his mind, but since this looks like a hate crime being perpetrated by the authorities in Jena, shouldn't the justice department be all over this? are our Black lives worth less than that of some stinking pit bulls? if not, why have i seen PETA protests for the past 3 weeks, but not a DAMN thing about this injustice?

oh ok... i get it... even if you reduce yourself to a shucking and jiving, skinnin' and grinnin', yes massa, coonin' Black man, your life still ain't worth ___ YOUR FAVORITE EXPLETIVE HERE ___!

use this MEDIA LINK to talk back to the media
read the JENA 6 PRESS RELEASE

plezWorld on the AfroSpear

What is the AfroSpear?

I've seen the term "AfroSpear," "AfroSphere," and "Blackosphere." I guess I'm partial to the title and associated logo! To my way of thinking, the AfroSpear is the realization of a think tank (and forum) for Black (African-American) progressives to discuss, muse, and ruminate issues that affect our communities. Inasmuch, we are not a monolithic entity, the AfroSpear will encourage lively debate, discourse, and an occasional disagreement as we hone a thought or platform on a particular issue. With the power of the current bloggers on the AfroSpear list, I'm encouraged that positive and actionable results will become self-evident.

plezWorld is anxious to participate in the given topics that will foster some genuine conversation. But the real power and effectiveness of such an AfroSpear will be borne out of its ability to affect change in our way of life and in a broader sense, that of America. Let's see if our collective foray into the great abyss of the blogosphere will be a call to those who need our votes or to those who seek our approval.

As thefreeslave wrote in his blog on this subject: "The ‘AfroSphere’ (Asabagna’s invention) must become an Afro-Spear, carving a path for our people into this 21st Century."

Who is the AfroSpear?



How to AfroSpear?

• Create an AfroSpear List for your blog
  
• Visit and contribute to blogs in the AfroSpear on a regular basis
  
• Join the AfroSpear Forum
  
• Occasionally develop posts and invite (tag) the AfroSpear to participate