Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 June 2000 — Page 6

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

FRIDAY, JUNE 30,2000

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National News

NAACP urges House of Representatives to support hate crimes legislation BALTIMORE (NNPA) — National NAACP head Kweisi Mfume urged the U S. House of Representatives to quickly follow the Senate’s lead in passing legislation to make it easier for federal prosecutors to try hate crimes and to increase penalties for such crimes. “The Senate's bipartisan support for the hate crimes bill should encourage our allies in the House to work harder to pass similar legislation introduced by US. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich .” said

Mfume, the group's president and CEO. "We hope the Clinton administration will also join us in the battle to have Congress pass a new federal hate crimes law.” he added. The Senate bill would add offenses motivated by sexual orientation, sex or disability to the list of hate crimes already covered under a 1968 federal law. It also would give federal prosecutors the option of a pursuing a hate crime case if local authorities refused to press charges. FBI statistics show about 8,000 hate crimes were reported in 1998, the latest year available. Of those

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incidents, 3,573 were committed against Blacks. Whites committed 2,084 of those 3,573 acts. Overall, 66 percent, the majority of offenders, were whites. Mfume said more comprehensive hate crime laws are needed because bias crimes are still pan of American life. “The 1998 death in Jasper, Texas, of James. Byrd, a 49-year-old Black man, who was dragged behind a pick-up truck and the death, also in 1998, of Matthew Shepard, a 21 -year-old white homosexual University of Wyoming student, who died after being beaten into a cpma and tied to a fence, serve as stark reminders that hate is still a destructive force in America,” said Mfume. Reparations conference looks for alleviation in lawsuit WASHINGTON (NNPA) — The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) held its 11 th Annual Reparations Conference with an endorsement from the AfricanAmerican Holiday Association (A AH A). Itwasaweeklongevent that ended on Juneteenth (June 19). The conference included a reparations compensation rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and a march from the Frederick Douglass Center to the U.S. Capitol. “The movement toward apologizing for the enslavement holocaust period is growing,” explains co-creator and founder/ director of AAHA Handi Kendi. He notes the uniting of the Chiefs and Queen Mother’s houses of Skins and Stools (both symbols of leadership) in 1994 in a ritual ofempowerment, the spring 1995 apology of the Southern Baptist

Convention that requested forgiveness of their racism, the 19% Holy Day of Atonement represented in the Million Man March, the recent apology of Benin (formerly Dahomy during the 17th century slave era) for its part as a major supplier of Africans to white exporters, and the forthcoming apology by U.S. Rep. Tony Hall, DOhio, for enslavement as examples of the rising momentum of the reparations movement. “The collective efforts towards atonement will then make us all a whole people again,” says Kendi. At the conference, NCOBRA’s leaders discussed rationale for action, and brought attention to HR 40, reintroduced to Congress by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., a bill that would make reparations and atonement reality. NCOBRA developed strategies for filing a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government, while building a stronger backbone with the election of 62 economic development commissioners, representing nine states and 23 cities across the nation to assist in the push for atonement and reparations. “The 13th Amendment says they must abolish slavery and all of its vestiges,” said Adjoa Alyetoro, chair of NCOBRA’s legal strategies. “The federal government has yet to complete this task.” NCOBRA will utilize the amendment as leverage to not only sue for capital but also community improvements, and bring changes to the federal government. “We are poised to conduct hearings throughout the country,” according to NCOBRA co-chair Hannibal Afrika. “We will not only discuss the quantity and quality of the disbursement, but also the mechanism.”

Black group questions conciliation toward Cuba

Special to The Recorder Citing government-sponsored discrimination, military aggression on the African continent and a poor human rights record, members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 question the support liberal Black politicians provide to the communist dictatorship of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., James E. Clybum, D-S.C, and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., recently returned from a trip to Cuba, urging the U.S. government to ease the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on the island. Another CBC member, Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., praised the Cuban government in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on April 13. Support for returning Elian Gonzalez not just to his father but back to Cuba itself is also very strong among African-American leaders. “Those members of the Black political establishment, in all of their praise of Cuba and Fidel Castro, they fail to explain one thing,” said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. “If life is so good in Cuba, why are so many people leaving Cuba in rubber rafts or things less seaworthy? From hearing them talk, it should be the other way around!” Many of the assertions about Cuba made by these Black leaders con flict with other reports and contradict civil rights goals here in the U.S. In her speech, McKinney claimed Cubans enjoy “free and universal health care for all citizens." The U.S. State Department, however, described Cuba’s health care system .in 1997 as “medical apartheid... ftmneling money into services for a privileged few, while depriving the health care system used by the vast majority of Cubans of adequate funding.” V

Cuban health care expenditures are actually smaller than other Caribbean nations like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and ordinary citizens must sometimes bring their own bedding to hospitals. Similar preferences for the Cuban elite also extend to education and housing. In addition, the Cuban government implemented Decree 217 in 1997 to control migration into the Cuban capital of Havana. According to the State Department, “Human rights observers noted that while the decree affected migration countrywide, the decree was targeted at individuals and families from the poor, predominantly Black and mulatto eastern provinces.” Instances of police brutality are also reportedly directed predominantly at young Blacks. Cuba has also sent military forces abroad to support communist regimes on the African continent. Tens of thousands of Cuban troops have been stationed in countries like Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Countless numbers of innocent Africans have lost their lives in guerrilla wars there to support Cu-ban-backed regimes. “Congressional Black Caucus support for Castro only emphasizes the fact that CBC members are truly the house slaves of the political left by supporting things at the expense of the Black masses out in the fields.” said Project 21 member Reginald Jones. Project 21 has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 371-1400, Ext. 106 or Project! I @ nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 2! 's Web site at http:/ /www.project! I . o r g / P2llndex.html.

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