The Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the United Nations along with Permanent Memorial Committee unveiled an online community developed to foster the committee’s effort to raise awareness and funds for the design, construction and erection of a permanent memorial to and in remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

The website will serve as an interactive platform through which the general public, committee members and other interested parties can keep abreast of the committee’s schedule of events, issues, history and impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and make donations.

The Permanent Memorial will serve as a reminder of the legacy of the slave trade. It will provide future generations an understanding of the history and consequences of slavery and serves as an educational tool to raise awareness about the current dangers of racism, prejudice and the lingering consequences that continue to impact the descendants of the victims.

To date, the committee has raised just less than $1 million dollars, with the bulk of the donations coming from member countries such as, Australia ($100,000), India ($260,000) and Finland ($50,000). In 2009, US entrepreneur and philanthropist Russell Simmons was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the Memorial.

The Members of the Committee are: Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, Senegal, Suriname, the United Kingdom, the African Union, the Chair of CARICOM, the Chair of the African Group of Ambassadors, the United Nations Office for Partnerships (UNOP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Chairperson of the Sub-Committee for the Elimination of Racism of the NGO Committee on Human Rights.

Not only are veterans more likely to become homeless and than other Americans, Non-White veterans are even more likely to be homeless. Of the veterans in shelters:

34% were African-American vs. 10.5% of all veterans being African-American

11% were Hispanic vs. 5.2% of all veterans being Hispanic

 

 

A Maryland Senate Committee has decided to replace a statue of John Hanson, an owner of enslaved Africans and a leading advocate of American independence, with that of Harriet Tubman in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol. If the proposal goes through, Tubman will join Sojourner Truth, who the country finally honored with the first sculpture to honor an African-American woman in the U.S. Capitol. Truths’s bust is in Emancipation Hall, the new U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center that the county named in honor of the enslaved Africans who helped build the U.S. Capitol.

Delegate Susan C. Lee, who is the President of the Maryland General Assembly’s Women’s Caucus, is sponsoring HB455 in the General Assembly, while Senator Catherine Pugh (D-40) is the lead sponsor of the corresponding bill, SB351, in the Senate. Currently, there are only nine women in the National Statuary Hall. Hearings are expected Wednesday, March 23 in Annapolis, MD.

A Maryland Senate Committee has decided to replace a statue of John Hanson, an owner of enslaved Africans and a leading advocate of American independence, with that of Harriet Tubman in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol. If the proposal goes through, Tubman will join Sojourner Truth, who the country finally honored with the first sculpture to honor an African-American woman in the U.S. Capitol. Truths’s bust is in Emancipation Hall, the new U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center that the county named in honor of the enslaved Africans who helped build the U.S. Capitol.

Delegate Susan C. Lee, who is the President of the Maryland General Assembly’s Women’s Caucus, is sponsoring HB455 in the General Assembly, while Senator Catherine Pugh (D-40) is the lead sponsor of the corresponding bill, SB351, in the Senate. Currently, there are only nine women in the National Statuary Hall. Hearings are expected Wednesday, March 23 in Annapolis, MD.

Aljazeera featured Omoyele Sowore, who is publishing his controversial online Nigerian newspaper, Sahara Reporters, in the United States. Sowore gathers his news from the average “Joe” or should we say “Abasiekeme.”

Howard (University) Magazine (Winter 2011 edition page 28) featured Robtel Neajai Pailey and her work in her native Liberia. The Howard and Oxford University graduate’s works include serving Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to a hold a presidential post in Africa.

 

The notion that many White Americans feel anxious about their race is not new. Today, however, economic anxieties are feeding those racial fears, say Tim Wise, the author of "White Like Me."

Wise told CNN that the recession hit blue-collar, White Americans hard, financially and psychologically.

Many White Americans have lived under the assumption that if they worked hard, they would be rewarded. Now more White Americans are sharing unemployment lines with "those people" -- Black and Brown, Wise says.

MSNBC reported that the 2000 U.S. Census counted 163,036 people with the surname Washington, 9 of 10 of them were Black.

 

Ida Jones, POH Book Reviewer, releases her first book, “The Heart of the Race Problem: The Life of Kelly Miller,” Saturday, April 2, at the new The B Spot, 1123-B Pennsylvania Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003. The event opens to the public from 3:30p to 5p.

Signed

copies of the book are $25.