Film Screening and Dialogue on the documentary "Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks"

Frantz Fanon, Pan-Afrikanist, revolutionary and political visionary



Time: Friday, December 9, 2011 - 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p..m

Venue: 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Room 5-150 - 5th floor (OISE Building at University of Toronto - right at the St. George subway station).

Free public event - donation will be accepted


December 6, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of the death of Frantz Fanon. His revolutionary ideas are still of relevance to this period in which we live and struggle. We will reflect on his work by screening a film: "Frantz` Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks".

We will also discuss the significance of the 50th anniversary of Fanon's death and the relevance of his work within Afrikan communities across the world. We will have an interactive Inter-generational Dialogue re: Fanon's work. The group discusssion will attempt to centre Fanon's ideas to today's concrete, multifaceted social and economic realities.

The intention of the this forum, in part, is to move away from purely academic approaches to Afrikan liberation. We have to "make it plain" so as to advance the economic, social and political agenda of emancipation in Toronto and elsewhere. There will also be performances by cultural workers (Story-tellers, Spoken Word Artists, Drummers, etc).



Sponsored by the Pan-African Solidarity Network (University of Toronto)

For further information, please contact the Pan-African Solidarity Network (U of T) at panafricansolidarity@gmail.com.

Group wants level employment playing field

Group wants level employment playing field

By Jasminee Sahoye

The local chapter of an organisation that represents Africans around the world wants to see a better and more comprehensive employment equity legislation in Ontario.

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is calling on the three major political parties to support a comprehensive employment equity legislation so as to create a level employment playing field for racialized workers.

It says racialized workers are not experiencing the glass ceiling. “We are faced with the concrete ceiling or steel door.”.......(click the title above to go to the source article).

HARVARD GROUP PUBLISHES WHITE PAPER REVIEWING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES PERPETRATED BY THE UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI, CALLING FOR MINUSTAH WITHDRAWAL

On October 4^th, 2011, Harvard students as part of a group of Canadian and US human rights advocates, doctors, public health experts, and journalists released an extensively researched white paper reviewing and evaluating the record of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH) and recommending the withdrawal of the force from Haiti. The white paper release comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of MINUSTAH due to high profile human rights abuses and widespread anti-MINUSTAH sentiment in Haiti. The United Nations Security Council’s meeting to renew MINUSTAH’s mandate for the next year is scheduled for October 15^th, 2011.

The white paper describes the historical and legal underpinnings of MINUSTAH’s mandate and its political context, while thoroughly reviewing its human rights record since the 2010 earthquake. Human rights violations perpetrated by the force include sexual violence, violent responses to political protests, and the introduction of cholera into Haiti followed by the failure to accept responsibility or offer adequate resources for cholera treatment, prevention, and compensation to victims’ families. Beyond these direct abuses, MINUSTAH has also violated its mandate through failure to protect the internally displaced from forced evictions and gender-based violence, poor security coordination and lack of communication with Haitian groups, and subversion of democratic processes by failing to respond to significant irregularities during the recent presidential elections.

Co-author Deepa Panchang noted, “The white paper project emerged because our Haitian partners were angry and frustrated with MINUSTAH’s widespread human rights violations in Haiti, yet these violations were not being documented in a systematic way and MINUSTAH was not being held accountable for them. Our goal for the white paper was to present an accessible and accurate report to influence decision-making going forward.” Panchang is an alumna of the Harvard School of Public Health.

“The cholera epidemic has been an entirely manmade and preventable disaster for Haiti. Especially given the role of MINUSTAH in bringing this epidemic to Haiti, the significant allocation of funding to MINUSTAH while the cholera response remains underfunded is problematic to say the least,” co-author Rishi Rattan of Physicians for Haiti added.

With this in mind, the white paper seeks to shed light on the current human rights abuses occurring at the hands of MINUSTAH and spark critical debate about whether the international community can continue to justify the increasingly high human cost of the mission.

“With the continuous stream of human rights violations attributed to MINUSTAH, if the international community is serious about helping Haiti they will decide that respect for Haitian sovereignty and human rights is incompatible with an extension of the force’s mandate,” said co-author Kevin Edmonds, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto.

Block building of monument to slaver John Newton

The following letter was written by Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya, who resides in Toronto Canada. It is posted here with his permission and in support of the cause Ajamu and the Network for Pan-African Solidarity are advocating for:

October 4, 2011

Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas

Government Headquarters

Church Street, Basseterre

St. Kitts

Re: Block building of monument to slaver John Newton


Dear Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas,

I write you with grave concern about the plan by private agents in St. Kitts and Nevis to construct a monument to John Newton, a man who traded in the bodies of Afrikan people and was, therefore, an enabler of the Enslavement of our people in the Caribbean. This proposed initiative, which is slated to be built at the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sandy Point, would be an attack on the psyche and dignity of the Afrikan majority in your country.

The effects of the historical trauma from the Enslavement are still with the Afrikan population of St. Kitts and Nevis as well as with those of the other Caribbean islands. The construction of a monument to the memory of a slaver who later became a part of of the abolitionist movement should not even be recorded as a footnote in the history of the people of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is the acts of resistance to the Enslavement by the enslaved Afrikans in your country and other territories of the Caribbean that should be celebrated and memorialized in the landscape and minds of the people. 

Toussaint L'ouverture of Haiti and Sam Sharpe of Jamaica did more to advance the cause of liberty for enslaved Afrikans than that of White abolitionists. Many of of the White abolitionists still wanted Afrikans to remain on the plantations with labour relations which were merely slight improvement of that obtained under chattel slavery. It was the covert and overt acts of resistance by the enslaved Afrikans that led to their freedom.

By honouring John Newton, the agents who are promoting this scheme are unwittingly and subtly suggesting to the Afrikans in St. Kitts and Nevis that a significant act such as their ancestors' emancipation from the Enslavement must be attributed to the work of "enlightened" White abolitionists. White supremacy, in its ideological manifestation, has already domesticated the minds of many of our people with the idea that they are insignificant moral beings, existentially-speaking.

According to this racist ideology, it is Europeans, our intellectual superiors, who are responsible for important and noteworthy economic, social, scientific and political developments within the human family. Therefore, a monument to this peripheral person is a confirmation and perpetuation of the notion that whiteness is responsible for any forward developments made by Afrikans in St. Kitts and Nevis as well as elsewhere in the Americas. St. Kitts and Nevis ought not to be the stage on which "Prospero" and his promoters play out the drama of their civilizing mission on supposedly hapless, island-dwelling "Caliban" and his relatives. Not in our backyard!

Prime Minister Douglas, I am calling upon you to use all available means at your disposal to stop this project. We are counting on you you to do the right thing.

Sincerely,


Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

MINUSTAH preying on Haitians, UN’s occupation force must go now!

TO: Media Outlets and Personnel

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is sharing its press release on the behaviour of the the United Nations' occupation force or MINUSTAH against the people of Haiti. The press release is attached and well as below this message.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 9, 2011

MINUSTAH preying on Haitians, UN’s occupation force must go now!

 Toronto, ON -- The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) stands in solidarity with the Committee for the Research, Development and Organization of Port-Salut’s (CREDOP) denunciation of the United Nations-flagged occupation army’s behaviour. CREDOP described such behaviour as "contemptuous, insulting, disrespectful and dishonest to the citizens and environment of Port-Salut."

 The recent gang-rape allegation of a teenager by members of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is one more case in a litany of physical and sexual abuses that have been experienced by Haitians at the hands of this 12,252-strong occupation force. It is high time for the United Nations’ occupation army to leave Haiti.

 The United Nations’ military personnel have a history of committing rape and sexual abuse of Haitian children and adults. In 2007, the UN deported 108 Sri Lanka soldiers, because of their sexual abuse of minors.

 The military presence of the United Nations in Haiti is quite abnormal. This international body is usually called upon to enforce a peace agreement or to stand between warring parties to a conflict. Haiti does not fit the mould of prior UN interventions. Why is Haiti being singled out for this “special” treatment? In whose interest is it to have Haitians live under the surveillance and iron fist of a foreign occupation force?

 According to the Washington DC-based Center for Economic Policy Research, the UN’s occupation force has “developed a reputation for brutality and human right violations. These include a raid on one of Haiti’s largest poor neighborhoods in July 2005 that left dozens of civilians killed or wounded.”

The United Nations’ occupation army has been linked to the strain of cholera that has killed over 6,000 Haitians and infected over 400,000 individuals. The medical calamity has placed tremendous strain on the already compromised health care infrastructure in the country.

 The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders documented 10,000 new cholera cases in the lower Aribonite Valley over a period of ten weeks during the summer. The United Nations should commit the resources to fix the problem caused by its armed personnel.

 The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is calling upon the United Nations to immediately withdraw its occupation force from Haiti and to provide reparations to the people and the country for the harm that it has done to Haitians.

-30-

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) For further information please contact: Email: network4panafrikansolidarity@gmail.com

Pan-Africanism or imperialism? Unity and struggle towards a new democratic Africa

"Fourth, therefore, Pan-Africanism must be a bottom–up people's ideology putting pressures on their states and monitoring their actions rather than a top–down statist programme or plan. People's Pan-Africanists must be wary of African states and their imperialist backers who wrap up their ‘nepadisms’ in the garb of Pan-Africanism."

By: Issa Shivji

SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS:

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/55473

Haiti's President is demanding answers after an 18-year-old man alleged he was raped by UN soldiers

September 05, 2011 - Haiti's President is demanding answers after an 18-year-old man alleged he was raped by UN soldiers from Uruguay.

Mobile phone footage of the alleged attack has also surfaced, fueling anger in the country.

Please note that Nazanin Sadri's report contains images some viewers may find disturbing.http://youtu.be/akLT9rWGwTU

Continuing to struggle rather than celebrating freedom (Pambazuka News)

‘The leader pacifies the people. For years on end after independence has been won, we see him, incapable of urging on the people to a concrete task, unable really to open the future to them or of flinging them into the path of national reconstruction, that is to say, of their own reconstruction; we see him reassessing the history of independence and recalling the sacred unity of the struggle for liberation.'

By: Reverend Mavuso Mbhekeseni

SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75745

Why It Took Eleven Months Instead of Three Weeks to Show that Haiti’s Cholera Is Nepalese

"When the UN Security Council next considers MINUSTAH's mandate in mid-October of this year, Drs. Renaud Piarroux, Frank Aarestrup, and Paul Keim should stand up and explain why MINUSTAH troops must be immediately removed from Haiti so as to prevent new epidemics. The scientists should additionally propose that MINUSTAH countries make reparations for polluting Haiti's rivers and aquifers."

By Dady Chery, Columnist.
SOURCE: Axis of Logic
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_63656.shtml

Is this Minustah's 'Abu Ghraib moment' in Haiti?

"The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (Minustah), seemingly in the act of raping an 18-year-old Haitian youth. Two have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move. Perhaps the most unnerving part of the video is the constant chorus of laughter from the alleged perpetrators...."

By Mark Weisbrot

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN, UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/03/minustah-un-haiti-abuse

Famine in Somalia caused by imperialism!

Despite the propaganda campaign of constant images of Africans starving, the objective material reality is that Africa can feed itself and the world.

In fact, Africa is so fertile that, in 2009, the U.S. think tank Oakland Institute reported how hedge funds and speculators had acquired farming land in Africa the size of France to grow food for Bio-fuels.

By: Libanga Tika-kongo
SOURCE: UHURU NEWS:
http://uhurunews.com/story?resource_name=famine-in-somalia-caused-by-us

Dr. King's Memorial Is About the Reality, Not the "Dream"

 "He was not about elected positions and presidents; he was about people. Dr. King was not about tax breaks for the wealthiest of us; he was about social programs for the least of us. He was not about a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. He saw "... war as an enemy of the poor ..." and attacked it as such."

by: Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III
SOURCE: http://www.truth-out.org/dr-kings-memorial-about-reality-not-dream/1314383761

Martin Luther King and the fate of the civil rights movement

In his courageous public denunciation of the war in Vietnam, King said, “We are criminals in that war” and “have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.” He also branded the United States government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Martin Luther King and the fate of the civil rights movement

UN to memorialize victims of slavery, slave trade (ShareNews)

""This is an important occasion as we come together to share and disseminate new knowledge that would lead to a better understanding of the causes and consequences of slavery and its impact on society today while addressing other critical social issues such as racism and discrimination," said Robert Hache, York University's vice-president of research and innovation."

By:RON FANFAIR

Source: SHARENEWS:

http://www.sharenews.com/local-news/2011/08/25/un-memorialize-victims-slavery-slave-trade

Crisis In The Congo: Uncovering The Truth (documentary)

Crisis in the Congo: Uncovering The Truth explores the role that the United States allies, Rwanda and Uganda, have played in triggering the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century.
Support the completion of the film: http://congojustice.org/take-action/
Sign The Petition:http://www.change.org/petitions/fully-implement-public-law-109-456
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CrisisInTheCongo
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CongoCrisis
Congo Resources: http://friendsofthecongo.org

ARMED GROUPS AND MINERAL EXPLOITATION IN THE CONGO

"Mineral exploitation, the object of activism and legislation, is but one source of revenue for these armed groups. They literally rule over the territories they control, taxing every economic activity and terrorizing the civilians into submission. Losing access to the mines will marginally affect their capacity to generate funds, considering that weapons and ammunitions are relatively inexpensive."

By: Mvemba Dizolele

SOURCE: Dizolele's Eye on Africa

http://dizolele.com/?p=422

Somalia: Global war on terror and the humanitarian crisis (Pambazuka News)

"The US government’s counterterrorism activities and ‘humanitarian’ assistance in Somalia and the Horn of Africa go a long way towards explaining the region’s entrenched problems, writes Horace Campbell."

By: Horace Campbell

Source: Pambazuka News

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75805

Richard Hart - Caribbean Labour Rebellions

"The labour rebellions of the 1930s increased the self confidence of the workers in these colonies and convinced them of the influence they could exert by united action. The principal immediate benefit that the workers derived from the rebellions....a realisation of the need to bring trade union legislation in all the colonies into line with legislation in Britain." 

SOURCE: SOCIALIST HISTORY SOCIETY:

http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/HART.HTM

The struggle to convert nationalism to Pan-Africanism (Pambazuka News)

"And I have called for a reconstruction of a new Pan-Africanist grand narrative to face the unfinished tasks of national liberation and move forward to the tasks of social emancipation. Throughout the history of humankind, masses have been moved by the grand narrative of liberty, freedom, justice and emancipation to bring about change – sometimes revolutionary changes, at other times not so revolutionary." By Issa Shivji

SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS:

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75620

 

Pambazuka - Thinking and living Fanon

"Frantz Fanon is the relatively unconsidered psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary who dedicated his life to the liberation of the African continent and theorising the racialised black experience. As a philosopher on the experience of being black, he is an extremely relevant and useful entry point into the conversation of race in South Africa today." 

(by Chantelle Malan and Danielle Bowler)
SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS:
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/75775

Labour leadership still mostly White and male (By MURPHY BROWNE)

"Racialized people had been a part of Canada's labour force for centuries, including the contribution of native Canadians to the fur trade which enriched European traders; enslaved Africans who laboured without pay (1628-1834) and the Chinese who built the railroad with massive loss of life....there was blatantly racist exclusion of these workers from the celebration of Labour Day in those early days." (By MURPHY BROWNE)

SOURCE: SHARENEWS:

http://www.sharenews.com/opinion/2010/09/01/labour-leadership-still-mostly-white-and-male

Barrick caught with blood on its hands

"After relaying the details of the corruption and violence near the mine site – including fresh allegations of gang-rape by Barrick security – York expresses skepticism that Barrick’s promises of investigating the matter will bring justice. “In each case, however, the police will be investigating themselves,” he writes, “something that is unlikely to reassure the 68,000 people in the villages around the mine.”

SOURCE: BASICS NEWS:

http://basicsnews.ca/2011/07/barrick-caught-with-blood-on-its-hands/

Pambazuka - Pan-Africanism or imperialism? Unity and struggle towards a new democratic Africa

"Fourth, therefore, Pan-Africanism must be a bottom–up people's ideology putting pressures on their states and monitoring their actions rather than a top–down statist programme or plan. People's Pan-Africanists must be wary of African states and their imperialist backers who wrap up their ‘nepadisms’ in the garb of Pan-Africanism."

SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS:

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/55473

Pan-Africanism in Mwalimu Nyerere’s thought

"Outlining the essential differences between the respective approaches of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, Issa G. Shivji discusses the gradualist and radical positions of two pillars of the Pan-Africanist movement....Shivji stresses that genuine African nationalism can only ever be Pan-Africanism."

SOURCE: PAMBAZUKA NEWS: 

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/56108

African unity: Feeling with Nkrumah, thinking with Nyerere

"Exploring Nyerere’s ‘step by step’ approach to building African unity in relation to Nkrumah’s desire to ‘fast track’ the creation of a Unites States of Africa, Chachage concludes that while Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision remains powerful, his approach is unrealistic even today.’ ‘To that end, I will feel with Nkrumah, yet I shall think with Nyerere’, he writes, ‘Africa must unite, albeit pragmatically’."

See the original article at Pambazuka News:

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/55475