The documentary: Negroes With Guns: Rob Williams & Black Power

An International Action Center Black History Month Forum
Los Angeles Premiere Film Showing
7:30 pm, Friday, Feb. 27th
422 S Western Ave, Rm 114, L.A.

Dinner at 6:30 pm. $5 donations
No one turned away for lack of funds
213-487-2368

This documentary by the University of Florida’s noted College of Journalism & Communications details the extraordinary life of Robert Williams.

Robert Williams, a NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina in 1958, played a pivotal role in the struggle for respect, dignity & equality by advocating an oppressed people’s right to defend themselves against Klan & police terror. He believed in & practiced armed resistance in opposing the Ku Klux Klan who routinely drove into Black communities and opened fire. The attacks stopped when Williams, and those he trained, returned the fire.

He played a major role in making an international cause of the 1958 “Kissing Case”. The case involved two Black boys, 7 & 9-years old, accused of rape for the “crime” of kissing a 9-year-old white girl. (Yes, that’s how insane things were then.)

In 1962, Williams wrote his now famous book, “Negroes With Guns”, which had a major influence on Huey Newton & the Black Panthers.

To escape an FBI frameup, Williams moved to Cuba. From Cuba, he broadcast progressive programs into the U.S. on a radio station he started & named, “Radio Free Dixie”. From there he went to China, where he was a honored guest of the government.

He returned to the US in 1969, and worked as a China scholar. In that rarest of all occurrences for a revolutionary and freedom fighter, he died peacefully and in his retirement years - in 1996 at age 71 holding hands with his wife of forty nine years.

He was buried in a suit given to him by Mao Zedong. Rosa Parks spoke at the funeral, saying she and those who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama “always admired Robert Williams for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work he did should go down in history and never be forgotten”.

Indeed.

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Settlement near in grocery strike

Looks like it’ll be two-tiered. New workers get less pay, and benefits will be cut. We shall see.

Whether the grocery companies can get back their previous business is an open question. I’ve found I don’t need Ralph’s, where I used to do quite a lot of shopping. Nor am I inclined to return after the strike is over.

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Microsoft monoculture

I’m taking those monoculture warnings about Microsoft products seriously. If everyone runs the same software, especially software notorious for having security holes, then a serious virus could take everyone out. Everyone, that is, except those not running Internet Explorer and Outlook.

Because via IE and Outlook are the ways most viruses and malware attack Windows users.
 
So, on my new computer I’m running Firefox as the default browser and playing with converting my six email accounts from Outlook to Eudora. So far, I’ve got two accounts in Eudora, and am testing it to see how I like it. (The other email accounts are in Outlook on the other computer). Firefox is open source and free. Eudora has a free sponsored version with unobtrusive ads.

My primary reason for using Outlook had been the calendar, but I now do calendaring online with Yahoo Calendar, which can notify me via email and/or cell phone text message of upcoming meetings - an amazingly useful feature.

Anyone out there using Eudora? Or have ideas for other email programs? And yes, I may get a Mac or a Linux box one day!

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Fuck you, Alan!

Greenspan urges future Social Security cuts.

Well, that won’t affect him, now will it? He’s wealthy and already of retirement age. Maybe it’s time he did just that.

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Tenet spouts the old and obvious as news

CIA Director George J. Tenet warned Tuesday that a wave of smaller, scattered terrorist organizations was eclipsing Al Qaeda as the most serious threat to the United States and its allies, and that Iraq was increasingly seen as a “golden opportunity” for jihadist groups to rally their cause.

None of which is news. Al Qaeda said months ago they deliberately were morphing into new unrecognizable forms.

All three intelligence officials said economic stagnation, repression and exploding youth populations in Islamic countries could fuel the terrorist threat for years. Jacoby cited polling numbers showing that anti-American sentiment is soaring in countries including Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Note how nothing is said about the quite possibly legitimate grievances people in those countries may have against US occupations.

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Beyond tacky…

Mel Gibson’s “official licensed products” website for The Passion of Christ is selling nail pendants - as in crucifixion nail pendants.

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