DEMAND REPARATIONS NOW!
National Reparations Rally Saturday, September 13, 2003 United Nations * New York City ________________________________
Bush: Voice of hope and conscience will not be silenced
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (CNN) --President Bush visited an infamous former slave-trading outpost Tuesday on an island off the West African nation of Senegal, the first stop on his five-nation tour of Africa.
The following is a transcript of Bush's remarks during a ceremony on Goree Island:
BUSH: Mr. President and Madam first lady, distinguished guests, and residents of
Goree Island, citizens of Senegal, I'm honored to begin my
visit to Africa in your beautiful country.
For hundreds of years on this island, peoples of different continents met in
fear and cruelty. Today, we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of
past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.
At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted and weighed and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return.
One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of
history. Below the decks, the middle passage was a hot, narrow, sunless
nightmare; weeks and months of confinement and abuse and confusion on a strange
and lonely sea.
Some refused to eat, preferring death to any future their captors might prefer
for them. Some who were sick were thrown over the side. Some rose up
in violent rebellion, delivering the closest thing to justice on a slave ship.
Many acts of defiance and bravery are recorded. Countless others we
will never know.
Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined and sold at auctions
across nations in the Western Hemisphere. They entered society indifferent to
their anguish and made prosperous by their unpaid labor.
There was a time in my country's history where one in every seven human beings
was the property of another. In law, they were regarded only as
articles of commerce, having no right to travel or to marry or to own
possessions.
Because families were often separated, many were denied even the comfort of
suffering together.
For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break.
Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and
airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying
and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women
became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added
hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison
for millions.
And yet in the words of the African proverb, no fist is big enough to hide the
sky. All of the generations oppressed under the laws of man could not
crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.
In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set
their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans
discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their
masters.
Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence
and asked the self-evident question, " Then why not me?"
In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in
bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the
ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a time to
a higher standard of humanity.
"God tells us," wrote Equiano, "that the oppressor and the oppressed are both in
his hands. And if these are not the poor, the broken-hearted, the
blind, the captive, the bruised which our Savior speaks of, who are they?"
Down through the years, African-Americans have upheld the ideals of America by
exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of
African-Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were
granted by the author of life and regained by the persistence and courage of
African-Americans themselves. Among those Americans was Phillis Wheatley, who
was dragged from her home here in West Africa in 1761 at the age of 7. In my
country she became a poet and the first noted black author in our nation's
history. Phillis Wheatley said, "In every human breast God has implanted a
principle which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants
for deliverance."
That deliverance was demanded by escaped slaves named Frederick Douglass and
Sojourner Truth, educators named Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DeBois and
ministers of the Gospel named Leon Sullivan and Martin Luther King Jr.
At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the powerful.
And some have said we should not judge their failures by the
standards of a later time, yet in every time there were men and women who
clearly saw this sin and called it by name.
We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who
called slavery "an evil of colossal magnitude." We can discern eternal
standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams and Harriet
Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln.
These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom and they
left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused
Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution and to teach our
children the dignity and equality of every person of every race.
By a plan known over to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa
helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into
slavery helped to set America free.
My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The
racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation,
and many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter
experience of other times.
But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for
all.
In the struggle of the centuries, America learned that freedom is not the
possession of one race. We know with equal certainty that freedom is not the
possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this
conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes, leads America
into the world.
With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace
where there is conflict, hope where there's suffering, and liberty where there's
tyranny. And these commitments bring me and other distinguished leaders of my
government across the Atlantic to Africa.
African peoples are now writing your own story of liberty. Africans have
overcome the arrogance of colonial powers, overcome the cruelty of apartheid,
and made it clear that dictatorship is not the future of any nation on this
continent.
In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation, leaders like Mandela,
Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat. And many visionary
African leaders, such asmy friend, have grasped the power of economic and
political freedom to lift whole nations and put forth bold plans for
Africa's development.
Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and
dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of
growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa are
full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world.
Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace.
Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will
wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger, we
will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology. In
the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tides
against AIDS in Africa.
We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice.
The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries, yet eventually
the human heart would not abide them.
There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be
silenced, what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no
water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham
(Alabama) jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island (South
Africa)prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain
could bind the soul.
This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it
lights the way before us.
May God bless you all. _______________________________________________
PLEASE POST & SPREAD THE WORD
New York City Pan African Forum ON REPARATIONS Friday, July 18, 2003 at 6:3pm York College - Theater, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd Jamaica, Queens NY
The international criminal enterprise, the trans Atlantic slave trade and
colonialism, is finally being examined in the sphere of reparations for
Africans peoples and nations. An international reparations movement is rapidly
gaining momentum in the United States around the world. The reparations issue
may prove to be the catalyst of change in the African struggle for human rights,
in the 21st century.
The Millions for Reparations NYC Coordinating Committee will host a NYC Pan
African Forum On Reparations on Friday, July 18, 2003 at 6:30pm, at York College
Theater, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, Queens NY. The forum will sever as
an opportunity to make an assessment, exchange ideas, and develop a common
vision for the reparations movement.
Invited panelists include:
Dr. Ronald Walters Political Analyst, Scholar, Columnist, and Director of African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.
Viola Plummer Political Scientist, Chair of the December 12th Movement International Secretariat (United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO), and National Co-Chair of Millions for Reparations.
John Watusi Branch
Executive Director of the Center for Culture, The Afrikan Poetry Theatre, Inc.,
a 23 year old cultural and educational center. Founder of Watusi
Enterprise, a cultural consultant, import/export, travel, publishing and
investment company. John Watusi Branch is also a poet and author.
Elombe Brath Historian, Journalist, and Chairman of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition.
Roger S. Wareham, Esq.
Political Activist and Lead attorney in the Reparations class action lawsuit
against U.S. Corporations.
In addition, brief presentations by
New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie,
Donald Whitehead of the United Black Men of Queens Mentoring Program and a very
special cultural performance.
Millions for Reparations 456 Nostrand Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11216 Phone 718-398-1766 * Fax 718-623-1855 [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.millionsforreparations.com> www.millionsforreparations.com
NATIONAL REPARATIONS RALLY UNITED NATIONS, NYC SATURDAY, SEPT 13, 2003
Mitayo Potosi
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