Black, American-born, a woman, and arguably best known for her exotic dancing: Josephine Baker hardly fits the profile of France’s historical heroes. But today, the performer from Saint Louis, Missouri, was granted one of France’s highest honors: A tomb in the Pantheon in Paris, the country’s monument to its heroes. There have been only 80 people granted the honor since the tradition began in Napoleonic times. Baker is the first Black woman honored at the Pantheon, according to the Elysee Palace. She is also only the sixth woman, which includes scientist Marie Curie and politician Simone Veil.
I was fortunately able to be living in Paris and Europe in 1971-72 with all the many other African American’s experiencing the same creative mind/life altering “expatriate” life, with the INCOMPARABLE Josephine Baker and James Baldwin.
Ms. Josephine Baker- Always the Charmer, mannering in such a way as to suggest a playful attraction; flirtatious, with a disarming coquettish smile that melted the coldest of men. Yet she was more seductive with her intelligence, intoxicating with her infinte logic obviously gleaned for her years of unimaginable suffering beneath that gorgeous armoured exterior! A “DEVINE knowledge” I came to realize and call it as that “DIVINUS”– GOD CONSCIOUS/CONSCIENCE DRIVEN MANDATORY PREREQUISITE seemed to guide us all through our universe challenging academic exchanges of enlightenment usually convened by Beauford Delaney! Without it, you had not admission ticket, and ALL privileges were denied!
James Baldwin, “Jimmy” as we called him, was “sub-conscientiously” EVERYWHERE (America and around the World) at ALL of the important events of the Civil Rights Movement – rarely in the background. He ALWAYS presented a vivid drama, intermingling the personal and the political, as one of the most enigmatic figures in 20th-century American history. They both, Josephine Baker and Baldwin, and ALL those in our circle at the time, including and especially Beauford Delaney, were exceptionally intelligent, gregarious and charismatic, artistic in a highly unusual visionary way- but were denied their TRUE place in HISTORY- until after their deaths, but stilled strolled in the limelight denied them for various “excuses” as reason THEN that still exist TODAY- TOO INTELLIGENT, TOO BLACK, TOO POLITICAL, TOO WELLSPOKEN/OUTSPOKEN, and some just “gay”.
Beauford Delaney’s Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, c.1971
I had the DISTINCT HONOR of having my Portrait painted by Beauford Delaney- “Portraitist of the Famous”, the most important African-American artists of the 20th century! He has painted portraits of Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Emperor Halle Selassie of Ethiopia, W.E.B. Du Bois, John F. Kennedy, Salvadore Dalí, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Robert Kennedy, Marian Anderson, Jacob Lawrence, Ella Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Parker, James Jones, Jean Genet, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, W.C. Handy, Countee Cullen, Henry Miller, Jean-Claude Killy, Herb Gentry, Alain Locke, Cy Twombly, Sterling Brown, Georgia O’Keeffe, Augusta Savage, Stuart Davis, Richard A. Long, John Koenig, Jackson Pollock, Vassili Pikoula, Henri Chahine, Lawrence Calcagno, Elaine DeKooning, Palmer C. Hayden, Darthea Speyer, Herbert Gentry, Ed Clark, James Jones. Henry Miller, Richard Wright, Jacob Lawrence, to name a few!
Delaney was a respected elder of the Harlem Renaissance crowd. His intimate portraits from this period show his beliefs of love, respect and equality between all people. In this time he became a “spiritual father” to writer James Baldwin.
Baker — a dancer, singer and wartime spy — is a household name in France. Her scantily-clad dancehall routines — often playing on colonial tropes — are synonymous with the wild reverie of the 1920s. Although less well-known in her American homeland, she was proud of her humble roots in Saint Louis and later in life became a fierce advocate for civil rights, speaking at the 1963 March on Washington.
The coffin with soils from the US, France and Monaco is carried towards the Panthéon monument, France, Tuesday. Credit: Christophe Ena/AP
Baker’s voice resonated through streets of Paris’ famed Left Bank as recordings from her extraordinary career kicked off an elaborate ceremony at the domed Pantheon monument. Baker joined other French luminaries honored at the site, including philosopher Voltaire, scientist Marie Curie and writer Victor Hugo.
Military officers from the Air Force carried her cenotaph along a red carpet that stretched for four blocks of cobblestoned streets from the Luxembourg Gardens to the Pantheon. Baker’s military medals lay atop the cenotaph, which was draped in the French tricolor flag and contained soil from her birthplace in Missouri, from France, and from her final resting place in Monaco. Her body stayed in Monaco at the request of her family.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to “a war hero, fighter, dancer, singer; a Black woman defending Black people but first of all, a woman defending humankind. American and French. Josephine Baker fought so many battles with lightness, freedom, joy.”
On Tuesday afternoon, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke at a ceremony at the Pantheon to mark Baker’s interment. Though her body remains buried in Monaco at the request of her family, a coffin was entombed at the site bearing handfuls of dirt from four important locations in her life — Saint-Louis, Paris, Milandes — the site of her chateau home — and Monaco. This is not the first time that the honor has been bestowed this way, according to the Elysee. French Resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion are represented by caskets with earth. The date of her interment also holds significance, marking the anniversary of when she received French citizenship in 1937. Macron tweeted a video celebrating Baker’s life Tuesday, in which he said she had “all the courage, all the boldness, she’s quite synthetic of what it means to be French.” Hailing her fight for universalism, her war-time acts, and her “absolute freedom,” Macron added in the video that Baker “is quite inspiring.”
“Josephine Baker, you are entering into the Pantheon because, (despite) born American, there is no greater French (woman) than you,” he said.
Baker was also the first American-born citizen and the first performer to be immortalized into the Pantheon.
She is not only praised for her world-renowned artistic career but also for her active role in the French Resistance during World War II, her actions as a civil rights activist and her humanist values, which she displayed through the adoption of her 12 children from all over the world. Nine of them attended Tuesday’s ceremony among the 2,000 guests.
“Mum would have been very happy,” Akio Bouillon, Baker’s son, said after the ceremony. “Mum would not have accepted to enter into the Pantheon if that was not as the symbol of all the forgotten people of history, the minorities.”
Bouillon added that what moved him the most were the people who gathered along the street in front of the Pantheon to watch.
“They were her public, people who really loved her,” he said.
The tribute ceremony started with Baker’s song “Me revoilà Paris” (“Paris, I’m Back”). The French army choir sang the French Resistance song, prompting strong applause from the public. Her signature song “J’ai deux amours” (“Two Loves”) was then played by an orchestra accompanying Baker’s voice on the Pantheon plaza.
During a light show displayed on the monument, Baker could be heard saying “I think I am a person who has been adopted by France. It especially developed my humanist values, and that’s the most important thing in my life.”
The homage included Martin Luther King’s famed “I have a dream” speech. Baker was the only woman to speak before him at the 1963 March on Washington.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker became a megastar in the 1930s, especially in France, where she moved in 1925 as she sought to flee racism and segregation in the United States.
Josephine Baker is the sixth woman to be commemorated in the Panthéon. Credit: Siegfried Modola/Getty Images
“The simple fact to have a Black woman entering the pantheon is historic,” Black French scholar Pap Ndiaye, an expert on U.S. minority rights movements, told The Associated Press.
“When she arrived, she was first surprised like so many African Americans who settled in Paris at the same time … at the absence of institutional racism. There was no segregation … no lynching. (There was) the possibility to sit at a cafe and be served by a white waiter, the possibility to talk to white people, to (have a) romance with white people,” Ndiaye said.
“It does not mean that racism did not exist in France. But French racism has often been more subtle, not as brutal as the American forms of racism,” he added.
Baker was among several prominent Black Americans, especially artists and writers, who found refuge in France after the two World Wars, including famed writer and intellectual James Baldwin.
They were “aware of the French empire and the brutalities of French colonization, for sure. But they were also having a better life overall than the one they had left behind in the United States,” Ndiaye, who also directs France’s state-run immigration museum, told The Associated Press.
Baker quickly became famous for her banana-skirt dance routines and wowed audiences at Paris theater halls. Her shows were controversial, Ndiaye stressed, because many activists believed she was “the propaganda for colonization, singing the song that the French wanted her to sing.”
Baker knew well about “the stereotypes that Black women had to face,” he said. “She also distanced herself from these stereotypes with her facial expressions.”
“But let’s not forget that when she arrived in France she was only 19, she was almost illiterate … She had to build her political and racial consciousness,” he said.
Baker became a French citizen after her marriage to industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. The same year, she settled in southwestern France, in the castle of Castelnaud-la-Chapelle.
“Josephine Baker can be considered to be the first Black superstar. She’s like the Rihanna of the 1920s,” said Rosemary Phillips, a Barbados-born performer and co-owner of Baker’s park in southwestern France.
Phillips said one of the ladies who grew up in the castle and met with Baker said: “Can you imagine a Black woman in the 1930s in a chauffeur-driven car — a white chauffeur — who turns up and says, ‘I’d like to buy the 1,000 acres here?’”
In 1938, Baker joined what is today called LICRA, a prominent antiracist league. The next year, she started to work for France’s counter-intelligence services against Nazis, notably collecting information from German officials who she met at parties. She then joined the French Resistance, using her performances as a cover for spying activities during World War II.
In 1944, Baker became second-lieutenant in a female group in the Air Force of the French Liberation Army of Gen. Charles De Gaulle.
After the war, she got involved in anti-racist politics and the civil rights struggle, both in France and in the United States.
Toward the end of her life, she ran into financial trouble, was evicted and lost her properties. She received support from Princess Grace of Monaco, who offered Baker a place for her and her children to live. Baker died in Paris in 1975 at age 68.
The ceremony bore all the hallmarks of French pomp: A military orchestra, the rousing national anthem, and a choir of children singing one of Baker’s own songs, according to the Elysee. The symbolic, tricolore-draped coffin was carried by six members of France’s air and space force, followed by another member of the Air Force carrying the five decorations that France bestowed upon Baker during her life. These include the World War II Resistance medal and the Knight of the Legion of Honor, one of the country’s highest awards.While she died in 1975, much has been made of the decision by Macron to grant her this honor now. For Macron, the occasion offers a chance to rally France around its pride of those who resisted the Nazi occupation in World War II, as well as address a long-standing deficit in the number of women, and people of color, who rest under the Pantheon dome.As Baker’s coffin was brought to the steps of the Pantheon, a recording of her most famous song was played: “J’ai deux amours” (I have two loves: My country and Paris).
I pray to God you and your Families are well, your health is robust, business is thriving, everything is perfect and stay in God’s Love, Grace, Guidance and Mercy.
“In another religion they honor people who serve like you with Sainthood!” – Economics Professor Adeel Malik,Oxford University, England and World Renowned News Expert Commentator, speaking about Abdul-Jalil and the Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation.
“GOD sent me an ANGEL!” – Hammer, speaking about Abdul-Jalil.
“Jalil, YOU ARE A TZADIK (SAINT)!”– Barry Barkan, Live Oak Institute and
Ashoka Fellow at Ashoka Foundation:Innovators for the Public
“I thank God for you and for bringing you into my life and for the ministry you have been given to help the people of God!”– Pastor L. J. Jennings, Kingdom Builders Christian Fellowship, speaking about Abdul-Jalil and AMWF
“Certificate of Recognition” from CALIFORNIA SATE ASSEMBLY
In 1971, I had the DISTINCT HONOR of having my Portrait painted by Beauford Delaney- “Portraitist of the Famous”, the most important African-American artists of the 20th century! He has painted portraits of Emperor Halle Selassie of Ethiopia, W.E.B. Du Bois, John F. Kennedy, Salvadore Dalí, James Baldwin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Robert Kennedy, Marian Anderson, Jacob Lawrence, Ella Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Parker, James Jones, Jean Genet, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, W.C. Handy, Countee Cullen, Henry Miller, Jean-Claude Killy, Herb Gentry, Alain Locke, Cy Twombly, Sterling Brown, Georgia O’Keeffe, Augusta Savage, Stuart Davis, Richard A. Long, John Koenig, Jackson Pollock, Vassili Pikoula, Henri Chahine, Lawrence Calcagno, Elaine DeKooning, Palmer C. Hayden, Darthea Speyer, Herbert Gentry, Ed Clark, James Jones. Henry Miller, Richard Wright, Jacob Lawrence, to name a few!
As CEO and President of the Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation (AMWF), I want to sincerely “THANK” ALL my/our supporters and I am thankful of the recognition for the work done as a Humanitarian for societal change/advancement with the establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines, in Civil Rights and Social Services addressing: Homelessness; Constitutional Reform; Social Justice Reform; Hunger and Food Insecurity; Police Reform; Climate Justice Reform; Criminal Justice Reform; Gun Violence; Religious Hate, Bias, Islamophobia, Xenaphobia and Bigotry; Immigration/Refugee Crisis; Healthcare; Education Equality; School-to-Prison Pipeline; Wealth Inequality/Poverty and Basic Needs; Voter Rights; COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Response; Sport and Athletes Human Rights and the fight for Judicial Reform to END Grand Systemic and Endemic Corruption, that includes Judicial/Legal Systemic Racism, Bigotry, Persecution, as a subset, that provides for the unlawful, and unconstitutional acts of The “COURTEL”– COURT CORRUPTION CARTEL, the Corruptocrats and Kleptocrat politicians.
I, Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, as a Muslim litigant, in 2005 filed a Federal Corruption Complaint with the United States Attorney General, Department of Justice, of a Hate Crime of Islamophobia, Xenophobia, Bigotry, Racism and Civil/Human Rights Violations committed against him through State sponsored persecutory terror and civil conspiracy by Federal, Sate, County and Local Judicial, Law enforcement, Governmental and Legal entities and agencies!
Federal Corruption Complaint with the United States Attorney General, Department of Justice, also brought charges of criminal extrinsic fraud upon the court of the State of California, spoliation of evidence, and fraud against defendants/hostile intervener AAA Insurance; Ron Cook and the law firm of WILLOUGHBY, STUART & BENING; defense counsel Steve Barber and the law firm of Ropers Majeski; and others. The complaint, drafted and filed by al-Hakim, has broad based support from Democrats and Republicans, was submitted by Congresswoman Barbara Lee with the offices of Congressmen John Conyers, and Charles Rangel, has been review by several legal experts, with advocacy by former Republican Representative J. C. Watts, a client of al-Hakim’s.
The complaint addresses the concern that a Superior Court Judges’ conduct rose to the level of consideration for a Federal Crime and a Civil Rights violation because the bench upon which the judge rules is “under the color of law” and certainly the violation of anyone’s civil rights is a federal crime. “Muslims, just as any other group, can not be afraid to speak up when their rights have been abridged. If one does not speak up, then the transgressions goes unreported and the perpetrator goes on to harm again unchecked, it does not matter whom the transgressor is” said al-Hakim. The complaint, perhaps even more importantly, not only requested Merrily Friedlander, Chief of the Civil Rights Division, to make an investigation of a judicial hate crime, but also the many other civil rights and due process violations of judicial misconduct, and attorney extrinsic fraud upon the court and law that are themselves directly the matters complained. J. C. Watts in asking “What does a supposed terrorist act in Russia have to do with the negligent contamination of a home in America?” posed the argument that there must be consideration of and a response to the many issues in the complaint.
Abdul-Jalil was Honored in June 2011 in Port Au-Prince, Haiti and Miami, Fla. for 2010 Relief Missions to Haiti by The World Conference of Mayors (WCM) and The National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM); and 1997 Awarded national recognition as “Muslim of the Year” from Imam W. D. Mohammed Community.
He has negotiated a series of contracts that included many unprecedented benefits to the individual clients, one of which was interest-free loans that could be forgiven. Upon review by the Internal Revenue Service, the contracts and returns where thrown out and challenged by the IRS as the IRS filed suit. After an 8 year legal battle, he prevailed in Federal Tax Court and established that Interest free Loans where in fact legal. This unprecedented legal ruling was established as a standard in the Tax Laws and was written in several National Law Journals. Cite: “IRS vs Al-Hakim” published by Commerce Clearing House(CCH) Tax Court Memorandum Cases editions KF 6234A 505 and Maxwell McMillian (Prentice Hall) Federal Tax Cases edition KF 6234A 512 Tax Court Memorandum Decisions. Articles and citations available upon request….
The Historic “al-Hakim” Tax Code §7872 [692] Ruling After al-Hakim’s victory in the Federal Tax Courts against the Tax Commissioner, in December 2000 the IRS moved to change the Tax Codes with the historic “al-Hakim” Tax Code §7872 [692] Ruling. The IRS changed the Federal Tax Codes such that it now “prevents no-interest loans” and was instituted to eliminate and close the Federal Income Tax loop-hole created with al-Hakim’s use of interest free loans in sports and entertainment financial transactions. CITE: Tax Notes, Dec. 4, 2000, p. 1311; 89 Tax Notes 1311 (Dec. 4, 2000) “al-Hakim Tax Code” Ruling.
al-Hakim’s victory in the Federal Tax Court over the U. S. Tax Commissioner has the nations foremost academic institutions and academians in the study of Law and Business teaching al-Hakim’s use of interest free loans in Tax Free financial transactions as part of the Law and Business ciriculum in such hallowed halls as Harvard University, Yale University,Washington University, Stanford University, University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University Schools of Law Federal Tax Courses, among others.
Washington University School of Law Federal Tax Course, Professor: Bixby;
Yale University School of Law Federal Tax Course, Professor: Eric M. Zolt Text Authors: William A. Klein, Joseph Bankman, Daniel N. Shaviro;
University of Virginia School of Law Federal Tax Course, Professor: M. Robinson * Federal Income Taxation * L. Dominick Text Authors: William A. Klein, Joseph Bankman, Daniel N. Shaviro;
Washington & Lee University School of Law Federal Tax Course,
Harvard University School of Law Federal Income Taxation Course Outline, Professor: Flusche
al-Hakim’s victory in the Federal Tax Court over the U. S. Tax Commissioner has academians teaching al-Hakim’s use of interest free loans in Tax Free financial transactions as part of a Wake Forest University School of Law Federal Tax Course on “ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PERSPECTIVES ON INTEREST” and al-Hakim’s historic impact on Shariah-Riba Complaint financial transactions in the business world.
Wake Forest University School of Law Tax Course on “ISLAMIC & JEWISH PERSPECTIVES ON INTEREST”,
Author/Professor: Newman, Joel S. al-Hakim’s victory in the Federal Tax Court over the U. S. Tax Commissioner has academians teaching al-Hakim’s use of interest free loans in Tax Free financial transactions as part of the Wake Forest University School of Law Federal Tax Course on “ISLAMIC AND JEWISH PERSPECTIVES ON INTEREST” and al-Hakim’s historic impact on Shariah-Riba Complaint financial transactions in the business world. Joel S. Newman is a professor at Wake Forest Law School, Winston Salem, North Carolina. In this report, Newman discusses financial transactions that allow devout Muslims and Jews to obey religious prohibitions against interest, while giving investors a return on their investments. The tax treatment of these transactions is considered. An integral part is al-Hakim’s case.
ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIPS:
~ National Lawyers Guild, ~ Muslim Bar Association of New York, ~ Houston Muslim Lawyers , ~ National Muslim Law Students Association, ~ Association of Muslim-American Lawyers, ~ Associate Board Member- University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business East Bay Alumni Network
LECTURER AND PRESENTOR IN THE FIELDS OF:
*HIP HOP AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM*
*ISLAM AND MUSIC*
~Music in Islam, University of California, Berkeley, CA 2003~ National Islamic Convention, Seacaucus., NJ 1997,~ Host Evening of Elegance, National Arabic Conference, Oakland, CA. 1997,~ National Islamic Convention, N.Y.C, N.Y. 1996,~ International Islamic Conference, Los Angeles, CA. 1996,~ Oaktown Music Conference, Oakland, CA 1996,~ National Society of Black Engineers Conference-Region 6, San Luis Obispo, CA. 1992,~ CAREER FEST, Oakland, CA. 1986, ~ California State University, Hayward, CA. 1985,~ United States Coast Guard, Oakland, CA. 1982,~ National BALSA Law Conference, Houston, TX 1981,~ National BALSA Law Conference, Philadelphia, PA. 1982,~ National BALSA Law Conference, Oakland, CA. 1979,~ National BALSA Law Conference, N.Y.C., N.Y. 1980,~ Mountain Regional Law Convention, Oklahoma City, OK. 1980,~ College of Alameda, Alameda, CA. 1981,~ Eastern Regional Law Conference, Washington D.C. 1980,~ National Black Media Convention, Oakland, CA. 1972,~ National BALSA Law Conference, Washington D.C. 1976,~ Pacific Coast Law Conference, San Francisco, CA. 1976,~ Stanford Law Society, Palo Alto, CA. 1976,~ National Black History Week Awards, San Francisco, CA, 1974, ~ Golden State Warriors Adonal Foyle’s “Athletics and Academics” Basketball Camp, Oakland, CA. 2006,
March 1979- The Historic BALSA 1979 National Law Convention The historic Black American Law Students Association, 11th Annual National Convention, March 28-April 1, 1979, Hyatt, Oakland, was themed: “The Reconstruction of Black Civilizations.” Dedicated to- Rev. Ben Chavis of the Wilmington Ten, Introduction- Mayor Lionel Wilson, Keynote Speaker- Min. Louis Farrakhan, with veritable “Who’s Who” of nations leading Black presenters: Junius Williams-Pres. NBA, Hon. Ben Travis, Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, Don Warden (Khalid al-Mansour), Dave Wilmont-Georgetown Law Center; Howard Moore, Alfred Slocum- Rutgers School of Law, Angela Davis, Victor Goode- Ex. Dir. NCBL, Hon. Judith Ford, Herb Reed- Howard School of Law, Asa Hilliard, Nathan Hare, Ron Baily- Northwestern University, Michael Ashburne, David Hall- FTC, Denice Carty Bernia- North Eastern University; Moot Court Judges: Hon. Wiley Manuel, Hon. Clinton White, Hon. David Cunningham, Hon. Allen Broussard, with “Thanks” to -John Burris, Peter Cohen, Claude Ames, Robert Harris, Eva Patterson, George Holland.
“The Evening of Elegance” Oakland, CA, 1997-Host with M. C. Hammer;
“1995 Sports Image Awards” Honoring Mohammed Ali
National Footbal League Super Bowl
In 1994 Awarded Silver Cross Pen and Pencil Set for “Distinguished Marketing and Promotional Services” to National Footbal League Super Bowl and “NFL Experience” by NFL Properties.
July 1996- “Community Movement Toward Improvement” Music Conference at Clara Muhammed School & Masjidul Waritheen “Community Movement Toward Improvement” Music Conference at Clara Muhammed School & Masjidul Warithdeen in Oakland, California featuring MC Hammer, Martin Wyatt-KGO TV, Mohammed (MTV Real World-SF),Sway, Imani, Davey D, Raphael Saadiq- Tony Toni Tone, Greg Khalid Peck- Warner Bros,Karen Lee- Warner Bros Music, Eric B, Rico Cassanova, Abdul-Jalil,Tony Collins- Giant Records, Anita Greathouse-Knight, Gene Shelton, Lenny Williams,Thembisa Mshaka, Roy Tesfaye-Death Row Records shown in ABC-TV news clip.
But the REAL recognition comes from the count of the Angels on judgment day!
We’ve ALL been watching the news, horrified, for the last years as the COVID-19 pandemic, political unrest, police brutality, violence, housing crisis, voter rights violations, food and essentials shortages, wild fires, and unemployment runs rampant, uncontrolled through every state, it’s clear that this is what the NEW racism looks like in America TODAY.
AMWF has taken the lead in servicing and protecting the poor, homeless, immigrants, refugees and senoir shut-in residents from COVID-19 extending these various services and programs to the economically, mentally, and physically challenged; the needy; the undereducated and undeserved; people living with symptomatic HIV and AIDS; substance abuse; seniors 55 years and older; prenatal women; at risk youth; and homebound people living with serious illness!
We are and have been heavily involved in the servicing of these communities since the 1970’s that now suddenly the government needs to address as this Deadly agent of the spread of the virus. Providing food IS AN ESSENTIAL service, so we are used for that purpose, we added new food resource donors, we MUST be out to serve and our work has TRIPLED!
We provide FREE groceries, clothing, shoes, hygiene kits, sleeping bags, blankets, medicine, and hot chef’s prepared gourmet meals to the homeless and homeless encampments and habitations of ALL kinds, from the streets to parks, from trees and bushes to alleys, from corners to ditches, from hand built shanties to tents under freeway overpasses!
We provide FREE groceries, bagged and hot chef’s prepared gourmet meals, plus the above, to the Safe Parking Programs, among others, at local senior and community centers, and faith based organizations in an effort to provide families and/or individuals who have been displaced and are temporarily homeless, living in their vehicles and need a safe place to park and sleep overnight, with restrooms and an attendant present throughout the night at all of the locations.
We also provide food to those that had previously obtained necessary items at their Senior Center. But now that they’re closed are vital to the wellness of the community and senior population with our Food Bank program and Free Farmers Market Food Give-Aways.
One Blessing of the pandemic is we have added MORE retail grocery stores pick ups and arranged several other groups programs with the young adults and kids to participate in servicing the poor, homeless, and senoir shut-in’s, since they are out of school and need something to do, AHDL!! This will stick with them for LIFE!
We also recently handed out over 400 Eid gifts/toys to the youth.
The Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation (AMWF), a public services organization based on GIVING AND SHARING, is non-denominational, Multi-Cultural, 100% volunteer financed and operated relief organization that provides FREE charitable assistance to the general public with food, medicine, clothing, educational and employment opportunities, mental and physical health referrals, legal aid, shelter and other necessities to individuals, children, families, and organizations who lack these essentials for any reason. We provide private school and college admissions educational opportunities; assists with referrals for job training and placement; rental assistance; social services assistance; homelessness assistance; mental and physical health assistance; medical assistance and legal aid assistance referrals FREE for ANYONE whom has the need.
AMWF serves and provides more direct and meaningful essential sustenance in the form of food, clothing, educational opportunities, medical and legal aid, social services, housing aid, to Muslims in America, per Allah (SWT), then ALL the Islamic charity groups COMBINED in the United States including Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America ICNA, Islamic Society of North America ISNA, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Community Association, MCA-SFBA, American Muslim Alliance (AMA), Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP), Muslim American Leadership Alliance (MALA), the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), Muslims Facing Tomorrow (MFT), the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), The Mosque Cares, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), American Muslim Alliance (AMA), The Mosque Foundation, American Muslim Task Force (AMTF), American Muslims for Civic Engagement (AMCE), The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), United Muslim Americans Association (UMAA), United Muslims of America (UMA), the UMMA, Inner-City Muslim Action Network, Muslim Advocates, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), MuslimARC, and Zaytuna College!!
We serve the indigent, homeless, needy, under privileged, disadvantaged, disabled persons, underserved, children, many in the Autism Spectrum and other afflictions. We conduct outreach to those living on the streets and offer benefits such as medical and mental health services, substance abuse treatment, social and psychological services, educational support to facilitate homeless student’s transition to school, transitional housing opportunities, and, eventually, permanent housing. We are serving our clients with mobile hot spot access to complete the necessary forms for service to those chronic homeless and those that do not have internet access to get them off the streets and rally support and create stabilized, lasting solutions.
We have massive list of clients that we communicate with daily through the same means that we now provide referrals, mail, email, phone, text and voice mail message service with and for our clients.
By way of our global accessible services, we have pioneered new, disruptive healing solutions that take advantage of each of our unique assets to rally our clients in support of our donors charitable causes.
We have hundreds of daily uniquely distinctive, necessitous, and discrete web visitors to video chat, online chat, text, phone, email, and voice mail messages, to obtain precise information designed to relieve their concerns with confidential information and real help with specific performance in the form of any type of the most effective remedy in protecting the expectation interest of the clients. We are able to notice and communicate with 1,000’s via text message at a moments notice!
Our members, and the people we serve are of different race, faith, culture, age, gender, sexual orientation and income levels. AMWF by providing direct services, including providing nutritious food; edvocating for and participating in many relevant social service programs that promote the self-sufficiency of people in need; educating the general public about these issues, their causes and this partial solution while inspiring a consummate social conscience and honoring the dignity of every person. As part of that principal mission, AMWF works for basic economic survival security for all and the elimination of poverty by providing these services thus effecting societal and governmental policies that regulate the less fortunate to the bottom of the economic, social, health, and opportunity pyramid, with full understanding that any policy which affects the poorest of us affects all of us.
We provide essential services to many inter-faith based organizations with the aim of bettering the condition of the less fortunate. In that spirit of outreach, we have supplied many Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Disabled, Unabled, multi-cultural, inter-faith based businesses and organizations with staples that are in turn distributed to the public, and these events are NOT only fundraisers, BUT MOST are totally free to the public, there is no charge for anything to anyone.
AMWF features high-performing results in the invaluable areas of: youth development; elementary, secondary and college education; poverty alleviation; mental and physical health medical services; social services, as well as other economic-empowerment programs for individuals, families; and small businesses.
AMWF has forged an awareness and sustained an effort to connect those in dire need with service providers, donors, volunteers and nonprofit groups with these causes. We have taken community foundations and moved into social networking, reaching beyond static “bricks and mortar” to interactive Web sites to serve as a “dynamic virtual clearinghouses or town square” that holds conversations between those in NEED and their local charities, citizens, donors, and volunteers.
While hunger in the land of plenty is not a new phenomenon, the last few years of international economic turmoil have worsened matters for the poor in this country. As unemployment has soared, bankruptcies and foreclosures have increased, little to NO opportunities exist for ANY subsistence, with the disappearance of ANY possible pursuit of happiness, the ranks of the poor have swelled in alarming proportions. So we find ourselves in the anomalous situation that one out of every six people in the richest nation on earth, is today living below the poverty line. Prophet Mohammad, Sallalalahu Alayhi wa Sallam, is reported to have said, “He is not a Muslim who goes to bed satiated while his neighbor goes hungry”. So how can YOU sleep contentedly while the person praying next to you, in your own neighborhoods, in your own backyards, in your own towns, counties, state, country, your neighbors go hungry? And if YOU do so, then in light of the above Hadith, can you call yourselves Muslim?
AMWF serve’s over 30,000 people a month from many Religeous Communities and 20 other locations and provide for thousands with the special events we support that are totally free to the public.AMWF expanded last year to accommodate more people at the Masajids, over 300 families weekly per location giveaway, with twice the quantity, a higher quality, much healthier, more expensive and fresher product that was purely the blessings of GOD.
Our annual accounting reveals that AMWF donated over $400,000 worth of food on just the 21 “Jumaah Free Farmers Market Food” Giveaways at the Berkeley Masajid alone in 2019-20!! Mind you this total DOES NOT include the nights of Ramadan, Eid, and every other weekly giveaways that we have had there, AHDL!
Who was Uncle Tom in Stowe’s novel? A Maryland slave, Josiah Henson, was abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s choice to depict in her anti-slavery novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which was influential in starting the Civil War.Josiah Henson used the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom, he protected fugitives, and he made several trips to bring other slaves to freedom. He settled in Canada where he established a school for fugitive slaves and he worked to organize the Afro-Canadian community that emphasized independence from any white patronage.The climax of the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a tearjerker. Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two runaway slave women were hiding. He knew that concealing their whereabouts would bring about his own death. He protected them anyway and Tom was beaten to death Unfortunately, Uncle Tom’s true character is only contained within the pages of the novel. The stage productions omitted Tom’s protective abolitionist attitude because it was not financially profitable regarding ticket sales. Therefore, stage producers “changed” Uncle Tom’s image into a man whose English is poor, and who will sell out black people for any white person’s favor. It is that “distorted” image of him as being a sell out that made “Uncle Tom” a negative connotative term. Josiah Henson, the real Uncle Tom, was an author, abolitionist, and minister. His settlement in Canada was the last station of the Underground Railroad. He died in Canada at the age of 93.We do a disservice to Josiah Henson/Uncle Tom by comparing him to such black people as Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas. They are no Uncle Toms. I shared this with my students throughout my career. Share with your friends, children, and grandchildren. Let’s not distort the images of our Black Abolitionists.
The REAL UNCLE TOM: Josiah Henson
Conflicting narratives were fed to us for generations, negative indoctrination was at the forefront of those self hate teachings from white Americans!!! Josiah Henson was definitely not a SAMBO the likes of white man’s Senator and other so-called Black Republicans!!! There are SAMBOS!!! BUT, HE IS NO UNCLE TOM!!!
Those familiar with actress and social justice activist Amanda Seales, know she presents herself as having a zero-tolerance policy for minimizing topics on the well-being of Black and brown bodies in America. When it comes to the subject of racism, Seales’ tell-it-how-she-thinks-it-is approach applies to anyone regardless of status.
So it came as no surprise that when Vice President Kamala Harris agreed with the only Black Republican in the Senate, Sen. Tim Scott‘s controversial viewpoint following President Joe Biden’s “first address to congress,” Seales had much to say. Following Biden’s speech on Wednesday, April 28, Scott claimed that “America was not a racist country,” setting some quarters of social media ablaze.
(L-R) Amanda Seales and Kamala Harris. Photo by Leon Bennett/WireImage. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“Ok! So, everybody on some bullsh-t. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool,” Seales began her fiery post she uploaded to her Instagram page on Saturday, May 1. “That was dumb and embarrassing and she embarrassed everyone who supported her.”
In the caption of the nearly 30-second clip, the “Insecure” star wrote, “Damn, Kamala. The paradoxical political pandering is TIRED and insulting to the constituency that supported you along with affirming the doubts of those that didn’t,” and added, “Please fix this ASAPtuously.”
During Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign run, Seales had often advocated for the candidate, using her social media platforms to encourage all her supporters to go out and vote despite the hesitancy many reserved for the now-vice president. Harris’ record as the top prosecutor in San Francisco and then California before being elected to the U.S. Senate from that state was one of the issues the Black community had with her as a presidential candidate.
Still, Seales promoted Harris. The 39-year-old even once wrote on Twitter, “STOP SAYING KAMALA HARRIS IS JUST AS BAD DONAL TRUMP” in response to those who did not favor Harris. She added, “JUST STOP. SH-T IS NOT ACCURATE OR HELPFUL AND ANNOYING AF.”
Still, Seales’ remarks garnered mixed reactions from many. While some agreed with the actress and were equally stunned at Harris’ statement, many either condemned Seales’ critique of Harris or reiterated their anti-Harris beliefs.
“What’s dumb and embarrassing, is a BW who claims to advocate for blackness, demeaning this BW based on a spliced 12 second clip.” They added, “If you knew a damn thing about our VP, you’d know she’s been among the loudest to speak on America’s “Achilles Heel”, it’s racism.” The user concluded her post by telling the former “The Real” host to “think next time.”
Sen. Tim Scott offered his thoughts last Wednesday as part of the Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s congressional address, with Scott stating: “Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country. It’s backward to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination and it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”
The following day Harris was interviewed on “Good Morning America,” where she was asked whether she agreed with Scott’s statement. She replied, “No, I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth to the history of racism in our country and its existence today.” The vice president faced harsh criticism following her statement.
When asked by Craig Melvin whether he too thought America was racist, the President Biden responded, “No, I don’t think the American people are racist. But I think after 400 years, African-Americans have been left in a position where they are so far behind the eight ball in terms of education, health in terms of opportunity.” He added, “I don’t think America is racist but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow — and before that, slavery — have had a cost.”
Hassan Bennett, right, pictured with his father in Philadelphia after being acquitted of second-degree murder. (Courtesy of Hassan Bennett)
By Meagan FlynnReporterMay 9, 2019 at 4:13 a.m. PDT
Wearing a suit felt like a sham.
Hassan Bennett had been locked up for nearly 13 years — 4,614 days, he said — and so when he recently stood before the jury in a Philadelphia courtroom, he didn’t want to pretend he had been anywhere else. He dressed for court each day in his powder-blue prison uniform, with “DOC” written on the back in big bold letters, and throughout the 11-day trial, explained to jurors why they could not find him guilty of second-degree murder.
“They told me not to wear a prison uniform. I’m here in front of you in a prison uniform,” the 36-year-old told jurors during his closing argument, as he recounted to The Washington Post. “They told me not to let you see my prison arm band. I show you my prison armband. They told me not to stand in front of you representing myself.”ADVERTISING
And yet there he was — representing himself without the help of any attorneys, with a mandatory life sentence on the line. It was his fourth time on trial for the ambush shooting death of Devon English in 2006, and Bennett’s second time acting as his own lawyer. But on Monday, he made sure it would be the last.
Achieving an exceedingly rare feat, the pro se defendant with no law degree was acquitted of murder.
The jury deliberated for 81 minutes. For Bennett, it was 76 minutes too long.
“I was sitting in the holding cell thinking, after five minutes, what’s taking so long?” he said. “When the jury came in and they called me up, I already knew it was a not-guilty verdict.”
The brash confidence is a product of more than 12 years of preparation from a Pennsylvania prison, studying case law in the library by day and meticulously drafting legal briefs in his cell by night, using a flickering TV as a light source.
He told the story to The Post by phone on Wednesday evening while strolling with his goddaughter through a neighborhood park, periodically hanging up by accident because, he said, he is only just learning how to use a touch screen cellphone. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s my first time. I had to ask the kid what to do.”
His story starts on a September night in 2006, when police accused Bennett of masterminding a plot to kill 19-year-old English after losing $20 to him in a dice game; a second teenager, 18-year-old Corey Ford, was shot in the legs and the buttocks. Lamont Dade, 16, was also arrested in the shooting, to which he pleaded guilty in 2008 and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.
In their original statements to police, both Dade and Ford identified Bennett as the shooter — but later, at Bennett’s trial, they recanted, saying a homicide detective coerced them into making the statements.
Bennett maintained his innocence from the start. He told police he was on the phone with a friend at home when he heard the shots ring out, then ran to the scene to see what happened. But he said his original lawyer failed to introduce the phone records or call the witnesses that he believes would have supported his alibi, saving him years in prison.
His first trial in 2008 resulted in a mistrial, his second in conviction months later. As he petitioned for a third trial, his post-conviction appellate attorney lost appeal after appeal — until finally, in 2014, against the advice of every sane person in the legal system, Bennett told a judge he wanted to do it himself. He said he was tired of losing.
“They told me, if you mess up here, your tail is done,” he said. “Well, I’m not gonna mess up then. There is no room for error. This is the time you rely on yourself. They call it crunchtime in basketball, when the best player in the game gets the ball with five seconds left and it’s his last shot. He wins or loses on this shot. That’s how I felt.”
From then on, Bennett’s casual study of the legal system turned rigorous. To teach himself to write in legalese, he sought the help of his cellmate, nicknamed “Brother Mook” — a legal-savvy mentor who would rip up Bennett’s handwritten draft petitions into tiny shreds if he failed to write them in the proper format. “He was like my Yoda,” Bennett said.
Eventually, after reviewing every trial transcript and police record in his own case, he turned his attention to former Philadelphia homicide detective James Pitts, who interviewed Ford and Dade to obtain their witness statements against Bennett.
In recent years, Pitts has been accused of coercing witness statements in at least 10 cases, and in some murder cases, judges have vacated convictions because of Pitts’s misconduct, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. (Mired in scandal, he is on desk duty while the police department investigates, the Inquirer reported.) Bennett petitioned a court for a new trial on the basis that Pitts had used the same coercive tactics to obtain statements from Ford and Dade identifying him as the shooter.
A judge did not grant that request, but in 2017, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina vacated Bennett’s conviction and granted a new trial on the grounds of ineffective counsel. Bennett’s third trial last September, when he first represented himself, resulted in a hung jury — with all but one juror finding Bennett not guilty. ““If the defendant knew how close he was [to acquittal], he would have been crushed,” juror David Scott, a college professor, told the Inquirer afterward.
But Bennett said he was not crushed. By the time trial No. 4 rolled around, he was feeling more at ease than ever, as though a guilty verdict weren’t a possibility.
In his opening statement last month, he told the jury it was a case about using common sense — and asked jurors to remember a song from “Sesame Street.” He described himself as a suspect who didn’t fit the description, like Oscar the Grouch in a photo array of fruits. “One of these things just doesn’t belong here,” he sang.
“The Commonwealth will try to tell you that Oscar the Grouch belongs because Oscar the Grouch is always seen on the corner. He has a smart mouth. He’s nobody’s favorite on Sesame Street,” Bennett said. “But that doesn’t make him guilty when the evidence shows he’s not guilty.”
His case was that simple, he said. He submitted the phone records. He called the three witnesses he said corroborated his alibi. He cross-examined Ford and Dade, who again maintained Bennett was not at the scene.
And then he called Pitts.
He accused the former homicide detective of coercing statements from Ford and Dade — and questioned why, if Pitts were credible, prosecutors elected not to call him as a witness. Pitts denied the accusations. But the jury, Bennett told The Post, ultimately “saw through his hogwash.”
“Why didn’t the prosecutor call Detective Pitts?” he asked the jury, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported from the courtroom. “He’s the lead detective. He’s the head honcho. Pitts worked the witnesses for hours on end. We can’t tolerate this misconduct. We can’t tolerate these actions.”
Spokespeople for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday, but told the Inquirer the office disagreed with the jury’s verdict. The victim’s family has long believed Bennett was guilty, saying that every new trial is “bringing back the pain of Devon’s death,” the Inquirer reported.
“I’m still trying to cope with it. I think it is wrong. I think the whole process is unfair,” Arturo Alleyne, English’s father, told the Inquirer of Monday’s acquittal. “All of this will be cleared up by God.”
Leaving the courthouse on Monday, Bennett said the first thing he did was go home and have a home-cooked meal with his family. He’s spent his time this week re-acclimating to life on the outside, asking his 10-year-old goddaughter to teach him how to use an Android, remembering to look for cars when crossing the street.
But by Friday, he said, he plans to get back to work. He said the court-appointed attorney who was required to be on “standby” throughout his trial — in case he decided he no longer wanted to represent himself — invited him to his office to discuss how Bennett could assist with briefs or investigations. He plans to study for the bar exam, he said, and to one day have clients of his own.
He said he already knew where he thought he might open his office.
“People from our neighborhood, from low-income neighborhoods, they don’t really know the law,” he said. “But see, there are people from the legal community that don’t know about the low-income neighborhoods. They don’t know about ‘the hood,’ as they call it.
Robinson’s civil rights nonprofit is pushing companies to get on the right side of history—whether or not they’re ready.
Color of Change president Rashad Robinson mobilizes his nonprofit’s 7 million members for change. [Photo: Dee Dwyer]
BY WESLEY LOWERY LONG READADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENT
Rashad Robinson was on a zoom call with his staff in June when he got the news.ADVERTISEMENT
The TV show Cops, a mainstay of American culture for 32 years, the foundation for decades of ride-along-with-the-police programming that deifies law enforcement, was going off the air. It was a major moment in television history, and one that, for many, seemed to have materialized out of thin air—a knee-jerk response to the racial politics of the moment. In reality, it was the culmination of a seven-year-long campaign by Robinson and Color of Change, the civil rights organization that he helms.
Color of Change had long viewed Cops as blatant public relations for law enforcement that reinforced racial stereotypes—and that was beamed directly into millions of living rooms each week. In 2013, in the wake of the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, both unarmed Black teens, and outrage over police stop-and-frisk enforcement in New York City and elsewhere, the nonprofit launched a social media campaign calling on Fox, the show’s then distributor, not to renew it. Next came a petition, targeting Fox executives and advertisers. Then came the meetings with network execs. A protest outside of Fox’s L.A. studios was in the works when the network suddenly announced, in May 2013, that it would no longer air the show. But Cops had staying power, soon landing at Spike TV (now the Paramount Network). It would take another half decade of public and private pressure by Color of Change—along with the racial reckoning brought on this summer by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd—to knock the show off the air in the United States. (Cops is still producing episodes for international markets.)
“Is it canceled canceled?” Robinson recalls asking. He had trouble, at first, believing the news. He had no time to celebrate beyond a quick smile, however. There were more battles to wage.
It should come as no surprise that Color of Change was one of the forces behind the Cops cancellation. What began 15 years ago as a scrappy digital upstart focused on marshaling an online response to stories of racial injustice is now one of the heavy hitters in American civil rights activism. The organization’s presence can be felt in nearly every racial civil rights battle currently taking place in America—from corporate boardrooms to television sets to prosecutors’ offices and judges’ chambers.
Color of Change has launched a political action committee, pouring money into the coffers of progressive prosecutors who vow to bring accountability for police killings and brutality. It’s behind a sustained campaign to change how Black and brown people are represented by Hollywood. And, increasingly, the organization is a player in the business world.
Over the past year, Color of Change has further solidified its role as both lead agitator and diversity adviser for corporate America. It led the recent campaign to demand that Facebook and other social media companies take aggressive action to rid their platforms of hate speech, pressuring hundreds of advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Verizon, to pull their money. Through the “Beyond the Statement” campaign, which launched in June, Color of Change is challenging corporate America to do more than offer empty platitudes in the wake of racial unrest. It has targeted fast-food companies, including McDonald’s and Burger King, along with retailers such as Nike, for talking about racial justice while not paying workers a living wage. And the group has gone after investment firms that release statements about equity but also give money to police unions and foundations.
“It’s a 21st-century approach to issues that date back to 1619,” says Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s senior vice president for global policy and communications. He credits the organization for “holding us accountable” for racism on the platform in 2015. Since then, Airbnb has worked closely with Color of Change on issues of diversity within the company and on the platform.
Robinson, who has led Color of Change since 2011, sees his mission as creating a new infrastructure for civil rights activism, mobilizing online outrage into tangible force that “holds corporations accountable, that pushes for changes to how the media engages, that changes the narrative and the stories that we tell ourselves about change. And that tills the soil for long-term policy change.”
Vice president and chief of campaigns Arisha Hatch oversees Color of Change’s political work. [Photo: Dee Dwyer]
The nonprofit is structured almost like a newsroom or a political campaign, with different staff members clustered around areas of expertise and focus: criminal justice, technology, Hollywood, media representation. They identify opportunities to bend the structure of culture and society and apply what Arisha Hatch, the group’s vice president and chief of campaigns, calls an “inside-out approach”: pressuring decision makers by leveraging Color of Change’s massive reach to flood organizations with calls, emails, and the specter of boycotts.
The organization’s email list ballooned from 1.7 million members in the spring to more than 7 million members in October, and its text-message list grew from around 100,000 people to nearly 6 million. And that digital infrastructure, combined with financial independence—unlike many civil rights groups, Color of Change does not accept corporate donations—has allowed the organization to be seemingly everywhere.
If you’re a newly woke company, wondering how best to devote money and resources to fight racism, the group is likely your first call. And if you’re a corporation or organization besieged by racial controversy, Color of Change is likely leading the digital picket line.
Color of Change was born out of the federal government’s disastrous mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, in 2005. James Rucker, a Black computer scientist working with MoveOn.org, had been interested in finding a way to apply the nonprofit’s digital organizing and fundraising strategy—empowering regular people to work together to apply political pressure through strength in numbers—to issues important to communities of color.
Then the hurricane hit, leaving millions stranded and the news channels playing clips of Black Americans begging for help from rooftops and wading through neck-deep water. “Those in power don’t fear disappointing or neglecting or turning their back on Black folks,” Rucker says, articulating the problem that he saw.
He called a friend, the activist and now CNN host Van Jones, and they soon launched Color of Change. It began with a single email, sent to 1,200 people. Before long, they had 10,000 signatures on a high-profile petition demanding an urgent, robust response from local and federal officials. They had spent more than a year largely focused on the aftermath of Katrina when Rucker learned about six Black teenagers in Louisiana who were facing 20-year sentences after an altercation that left a white high school student hospitalized. The Black teens were being charged with attempted murder for what looked like a schoolyard fight. Color of Change sprang into action in support of the teens, who became known as the Jena 6, raising nearly $300,000 for their legal defense. With the case now in the spotlight, the local prosecutor reduced the charges.
Within a few years, Color of Change had amassed a powerful digital following and an email list of nearly a million people. It began launching even more high-profile campaigns, including a 2009 effort to get Fox News host Glenn Beck, who called President Barack Obama a racist, kicked off the air, by applying pressure to advertisers. The group’s tactics—online boycotts, hashtags, and petitions—raised eyebrows in traditional civil rights spaces, but they filled an important void. “What they were able to do is step into a space where many entities in the social justice community and great society were still figuring it out,” said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP.
When Fox News canceled Beck’s show two years later, Color of Change staffers gathered in the organization’s office to watch the final broadcast. By then, Rucker had realized two things: that his group’s digital activism could deliver results and that it would need new leadership to channel that energy toward even bigger fights—someone with a master’s understanding of power and influence.
Rucker reached out to Robinson, who at the time was second in command at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). In his six years there, Robinson had gained a reputation as a smart strategist, capable of targeting media companies to bend public opinion. But, by 2011, Robinson was ready for a new challenge.
“It was a big deal for a lot of Black folks that had worked inside the movement that I got to drive things,” he recalls of his time at GLAAD, “but I also saw the limitations of my representation.” So in 2011, he took a risk—and a pay cut—to become executive director of Color of Change, which then employed only five people full time. (Today, there are 153 employees.) “I went from having a lot of resources at my disposal to wondering would I have money three months from now to pay folks,” Robinson recalls.
From Presence to Power: How Color of Change has already shaped business and society
He quickly began exploring new directions for the organization. Color of Change continued its media campaigns, applying public pressure to turn TV advertisers against the likes of Bill O’Reilly, but also took the lead on a number of social justice issues, raising awareness of police and vigilante killings and advocating for the prosecution of police misconduct. Following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida, Color of Change was among the first groups to illuminate the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative public policy organization, in the spread of so-called Stand Your Ground laws. After online petitions and a deluge of emails and phone calls from Color of Change members, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Foods announced that they would withdraw their memberships to ALEC. Three months after Martin’s death, with Color of Change members gathered outside Amazon’s annual shareholders meeting in Seattle, attempting to deliver a petition full of signatures, the e-commerce giant became the 16th company to end its ALEC membership.
“Companies invest a lot of effort and resources in managing the way people perceive and feel about their brand. So when you have a group of activists come out and start pointing out the hypocrisy in saying one thing and doing the other, that puts them in the danger zone,” says Nandini Jammi, cofounder of the online activist group Sleeping Giants, which also helped pioneer advertiser boycotts in the digital era. Robinson says that those early fights were not necessarily the organization’s most successful or influential, but they set the stage. “They allowed us to prove to members and those that joined us that investment in working with Color of Change was going to have benefit,” he says. “And it proved to the targets that they couldn’t ignore us.”
Robinson knew how to turn attention into power. He had grown up on eastern Long Island, New York, in a Black family that had landed there after the Great Migration. “When you’re Black [and living] in a community for multiple generations, you have a relationship to not just the Black community but the white people in the community,” Robinson recalls. “You have an idea about power and how you’re seen.” During high school, he produced and hosted a political talk show, Riverhead Teen Talk, on the local public access television channel, where he occasionally debated local callers. While studying political science at Marymount University, in Virginia, he worked as an organizer. A few years later, he appeared as a campaign manager on a short-lived Showtime reality show called American Candidate, in which 10 contestants mounted mock presidential bids.
One of Robinson’s earliest lessons was that “Black faces in high places” politics had its limits. Like most Black Americans of his generation, he’d grown up in a household with Ebony and Jetmagazines on the coffee table. A new wave of Black bankers, businessmen, and police chiefs was celebrated as the key to fundamentally changing a nation that, since its inception, has worked against its Black residents. But as more Black faces ascended—even to the White House—inequity and disparity persisted.
This same realization later powered the Black Lives Matter movement. A new generation of young people became disenchanted as, even during the administration of the nation’s first Black president, it seemed little about the structures and systems under which they lived were changing. Robinson and Hatch, who joined Color of Change in 2012 and is now the group’s second in command, have steered the organization toward addressing these root problems even as they tackle of-the-moment issues that are making headlines.
Color of Change leverages its membership to move from “presence to power,” Robinson says, by forcing decision makers to confront the real people impacted by the choices they make. He says he also hopes to disrupt the “magical thinking” that is too common in activist spaces. “We’re trying to help people recognize that we can’t have charitable solutions to structural problems. You don’t solve the Flint water crisis just by sending water bottles. You don’t solve the crisis of inner-city education and education at Black and brown schools by doing mentorship and service days. Those are ways to help, but those are not ways to undo the inequality,” he explains.
“People have a lot of Schoolhouse Rock theories about how change happens,” Robinson continues. “We’ve done a lot in our movement to talk about systems that hurt Black people. How do we actually change [them]? Otherwise we will get a lot more programs that work to fix Black people, and Black families, as opposed to working to fix the structures that hurt us.”
Perhaps no campaign has taken on more urgency for Color of Change, or been higher profile, than its battle with Facebook. For years, the organization has been among the groups pressuring the social media juggernaut to audit its internal diversity and inclusion efforts and publicly pressing the platform to more aggressively curb users and groups that post hate speech and calls to violence.
Despite periodically agreeing to a call or a meeting with civil rights organizations, Facebook had done frustratingly little in response to their demands, Robinson says. Moments after an hourlong video call with Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials in June, Robinson told The Washington Post: “What was clear coming out of that meeting is Mark has no real understanding of the history or current impact of voter suppression, racism, or discrimination. He lives in a bubble.”
By early summer of 2020, the civil rights community was incensed that Facebook had allowed President Trump to declare “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in response to the George Floyd protests, and infuriated that far-right groups continued to abuse the platform. “It became clear that no amount of bad press affected Facebook,” says Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, a media advocacy group that works closely with Color of Change in the tech sector. “It became clear that going after advertisers was going to be an important strategy.”
Color of Change began organizing an advertiser boycott. Leaning on its membership ranks, it petitioned major companies to refuse to spend money with Facebook until the platform made a serious commitment to addressing the spread of hate speech. A coalition of groups took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times to announce the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, and placed a flurry of phone calls urging corporations to pause any ad buys on Facebook and other social media companies. At the time of Floyd’s death, many advertisers were already reconsidering their financial commitments due to the pandemic. Now, corporate America was scrambling for ways to show its support for racial justice. Once the first few companies signed on, others lined up. Soon, hundreds of companies had pulled or paused their advertising on Facebook and other platforms.
In July, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met with the campaign’s leaders, who demanded she take more seriously the threat created by allowing racism to fester on the platform. The meeting, Robinson said publicly, was a “disappointment.” His sharp comments were yet another part of the strategy, aimed at showing the company that small concessions wouldn’t be a means of blunting criticism in the future. Facebook ultimately committed to installing a more permanent civil rights infrastructure within the company. More recently, it’s taken steps to combat the spread of hate speech and ban the conspiracy group QAnon from the platform.
“While [the campaign] hasn’t led to as many changes as I would like, my little civil rights organization is taking on the biggest communications platform the world has ever known,” Robinson says. “And has forced a scenario in which Mark and Sheryl have to deal with our attacks, which are rooted in their failures, and also have to still work with us.”
Officials at Facebook say they now consider Color of Change a partner, albeit an at times adversarial one. “They have been an important part of some of the changes that we’ve been making, and I think that they are really masterful at what they do,” says Ruchika Budhraja, a Facebook spokesperson who has been involved in the negotiations with Color of Change.
Ashley Boyd, vice president of advocacy and engagement at Mozilla, who works with Color of Change on diversity issues, says the technology space is particularly ripe for this kind of pressure. The sector’s “move fast and break things” mindset is often blamed for reinforcing unethical decision-making, but Boyd notes that it also makes many of these companies uniquely prepared to undergo significant changes quickly. Color of Change’s effectiveness, she says, stems from the way it uses storytelling to force companies to see the consequences of their actions for communities they are otherwise inclined to overlook. The organization has had particular success with Airbnb, which recently announced a new effort to track racism on its platform, and Pinterest, which banned images of plantation weddings in 2019.
At the same time, Color of Change has redoubled its efforts in Hollywood. Building on the model Robinson learned at GLAAD, which fought for more complex portrayals of gay and lesbian people on television, Hatch has set out to alter the way Black Americans are shown on the big and small screens. The group has waged an all-out assault on any programming riddled with stereotypes. In addition to the Cops campaign, it stopped Oxygen from airing a reality series about the rapper Shawty Lo, titled All My Babies’ Mamas, which intended to make comedy of the fact that he’d fathered 11 children by 10 different women, and it petitioned Bravo to turn its cameras off during fights that broke out during its Real Housewives series.
The organization also now offers consulting services to Hollywood writers rooms and works directly with production companies to make sure they’re factoring in inclusion and representation from the very beginning of the process. Color of Change has released a groundbreaking report on the lack of diversity among writers and showrunners, and the first-of-its-kind “Normalizing Injustice” study, published in early 2020, on how crime entertainment distorts our understanding of the criminal justice system. Robinson and his team have worked with creatives like director Ava DuVernay and producer Dream Hampton to promote award-winning projects such as the Central Park Five miniseries When They See Us and Surviving R. Kelly.
Hatch, who launched Color of Change’s political action committee in 2018, also used DuVernay’s When They See Us to encourage Black voters to push for reform-minded district attorneys. The organization helped to elect more than a dozen in the 2018 midterms, and released a full slate of endorsements ahead of the 2020 election, signaling a new front for Color of Change.
While Robinson concedes that his organization has made progress, this work is part of a long game. None of us knows what will bring the next moment of reckoning. But when it comes, Color of Change, and its millions of members, will be ready.
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of They Can’t Kill Us All: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives.
University, England and World Renowned News Expert Commentator, speaking about Abdul-Jalil and the Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation.
“GOD sent me an ANGEL!” – Hammer, speaking about Abdul-Jalil.
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Josephine Baker becomes First Black Woman Honored at the Pantheon in Paris, France
Black, American-born, a woman, and arguably best known for her exotic dancing: Josephine Baker hardly fits the profile of France’s historical heroes. But today, the performer from Saint Louis, Missouri, was granted one of France’s highest honors: A tomb in the Pantheon in Paris, the country’s monument to its heroes. There have been only 80 people granted the honor since the tradition began in Napoleonic times. Baker is the first Black woman honored at the Pantheon, according to the Elysee Palace. She is also only the sixth woman, which includes scientist Marie Curie and politician Simone Veil.
I was fortunately able to be living in Paris and Europe in 1971-72 with all the many other African American’s experiencing the same creative mind/life altering “expatriate” life, with the INCOMPARABLE Josephine Baker and James Baldwin.
Ms. Josephine Baker- Always the Charmer, mannering in such a way as to suggest a playful attraction; flirtatious, with a disarming coquettish smile that melted the coldest of men. Yet she was more seductive with her intelligence, intoxicating with her infinte logic obviously gleaned for her years of unimaginable suffering beneath that gorgeous armoured exterior! A “DEVINE knowledge” I came to realize and call it as that “DIVINUS”– GOD CONSCIOUS/CONSCIENCE DRIVEN MANDATORY PREREQUISITE seemed to guide us all through our universe challenging academic exchanges of enlightenment usually convened by Beauford Delaney! Without it, you had not admission ticket, and ALL privileges were denied!
James Baldwin, “Jimmy” as we called him, was “sub-conscientiously” EVERYWHERE (America and around the World) at ALL of the important events of the Civil Rights Movement – rarely in the background. He ALWAYS presented a vivid drama, intermingling the personal and the political, as one of the most enigmatic figures in 20th-century American history. They both, Josephine Baker and Baldwin, and ALL those in our circle at the time, including and especially Beauford Delaney, were exceptionally intelligent, gregarious and charismatic, artistic in a highly unusual visionary way- but were denied their TRUE place in HISTORY- until after their deaths, but stilled strolled in the limelight denied them for various “excuses” as reason THEN that still exist TODAY- TOO INTELLIGENT, TOO BLACK, TOO POLITICAL, TOO WELLSPOKEN/OUTSPOKEN, and some just “gay”.
I had the DISTINCT HONOR of having my Portrait painted by Beauford Delaney- “Portraitist of the Famous”, the most important African-American artists of the 20th century! He has painted portraits of Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Emperor Halle Selassie of Ethiopia, W.E.B. Du Bois, John F. Kennedy, Salvadore Dalí, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Robert Kennedy, Marian Anderson, Jacob Lawrence, Ella Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Parker, James Jones, Jean Genet, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, W.C. Handy, Countee Cullen, Henry Miller, Jean-Claude Killy, Herb Gentry, Alain Locke, Cy Twombly, Sterling Brown, Georgia O’Keeffe, Augusta Savage, Stuart Davis, Richard A. Long, John Koenig, Jackson Pollock, Vassili Pikoula, Henri Chahine, Lawrence Calcagno, Elaine DeKooning, Palmer C. Hayden, Darthea Speyer, Herbert Gentry, Ed Clark, James Jones. Henry Miller, Richard Wright, Jacob Lawrence, to name a few!
Delaney was a respected elder of the Harlem Renaissance crowd. His intimate portraits from this period show his beliefs of love, respect and equality between all people. In this time he became a “spiritual father” to writer James Baldwin.
Baker — a dancer, singer and wartime spy — is a household name in France. Her scantily-clad dancehall routines — often playing on colonial tropes — are synonymous with the wild reverie of the 1920s. Although less well-known in her American homeland, she was proud of her humble roots in Saint Louis and later in life became a fierce advocate for civil rights, speaking at the 1963 March on Washington.
Baker’s voice resonated through streets of Paris’ famed Left Bank as recordings from her extraordinary career kicked off an elaborate ceremony at the domed Pantheon monument. Baker joined other French luminaries honored at the site, including philosopher Voltaire, scientist Marie Curie and writer Victor Hugo.
Military officers from the Air Force carried her cenotaph along a red carpet that stretched for four blocks of cobblestoned streets from the Luxembourg Gardens to the Pantheon. Baker’s military medals lay atop the cenotaph, which was draped in the French tricolor flag and contained soil from her birthplace in Missouri, from France, and from her final resting place in Monaco. Her body stayed in Monaco at the request of her family.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to “a war hero, fighter, dancer, singer; a Black woman defending Black people but first of all, a woman defending humankind. American and French. Josephine Baker fought so many battles with lightness, freedom, joy.”
On Tuesday afternoon, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke at a ceremony at the Pantheon to mark Baker’s interment. Though her body remains buried in Monaco at the request of her family, a coffin was entombed at the site bearing handfuls of dirt from four important locations in her life — Saint-Louis, Paris, Milandes — the site of her chateau home — and Monaco. This is not the first time that the honor has been bestowed this way, according to the Elysee. French Resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion are represented by caskets with earth. The date of her interment also holds significance, marking the anniversary of when she received French citizenship in 1937. Macron tweeted a video celebrating Baker’s life Tuesday, in which he said she had “all the courage, all the boldness, she’s quite synthetic of what it means to be French.” Hailing her fight for universalism, her war-time acts, and her “absolute freedom,” Macron added in the video that Baker “is quite inspiring.”
“Josephine Baker, you are entering into the Pantheon because, (despite) born American, there is no greater French (woman) than you,” he said.
Baker was also the first American-born citizen and the first performer to be immortalized into the Pantheon.
She is not only praised for her world-renowned artistic career but also for her active role in the French Resistance during World War II, her actions as a civil rights activist and her humanist values, which she displayed through the adoption of her 12 children from all over the world. Nine of them attended Tuesday’s ceremony among the 2,000 guests.
“Mum would have been very happy,” Akio Bouillon, Baker’s son, said after the ceremony. “Mum would not have accepted to enter into the Pantheon if that was not as the symbol of all the forgotten people of history, the minorities.”
Bouillon added that what moved him the most were the people who gathered along the street in front of the Pantheon to watch.
“They were her public, people who really loved her,” he said.
The tribute ceremony started with Baker’s song “Me revoilà Paris” (“Paris, I’m Back”). The French army choir sang the French Resistance song, prompting strong applause from the public. Her signature song “J’ai deux amours” (“Two Loves”) was then played by an orchestra accompanying Baker’s voice on the Pantheon plaza.
During a light show displayed on the monument, Baker could be heard saying “I think I am a person who has been adopted by France. It especially developed my humanist values, and that’s the most important thing in my life.”
The homage included Martin Luther King’s famed “I have a dream” speech. Baker was the only woman to speak before him at the 1963 March on Washington.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker became a megastar in the 1930s, especially in France, where she moved in 1925 as she sought to flee racism and segregation in the United States.
“The simple fact to have a Black woman entering the pantheon is historic,” Black French scholar Pap Ndiaye, an expert on U.S. minority rights movements, told The Associated Press.
“When she arrived, she was first surprised like so many African Americans who settled in Paris at the same time … at the absence of institutional racism. There was no segregation … no lynching. (There was) the possibility to sit at a cafe and be served by a white waiter, the possibility to talk to white people, to (have a) romance with white people,” Ndiaye said.
“It does not mean that racism did not exist in France. But French racism has often been more subtle, not as brutal as the American forms of racism,” he added.
Baker was among several prominent Black Americans, especially artists and writers, who found refuge in France after the two World Wars, including famed writer and intellectual James Baldwin.
They were “aware of the French empire and the brutalities of French colonization, for sure. But they were also having a better life overall than the one they had left behind in the United States,” Ndiaye, who also directs France’s state-run immigration museum, told The Associated Press.
Baker quickly became famous for her banana-skirt dance routines and wowed audiences at Paris theater halls. Her shows were controversial, Ndiaye stressed, because many activists believed she was “the propaganda for colonization, singing the song that the French wanted her to sing.”
Baker knew well about “the stereotypes that Black women had to face,” he said. “She also distanced herself from these stereotypes with her facial expressions.”
“But let’s not forget that when she arrived in France she was only 19, she was almost illiterate … She had to build her political and racial consciousness,” he said.
Baker became a French citizen after her marriage to industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. The same year, she settled in southwestern France, in the castle of Castelnaud-la-Chapelle.
“Josephine Baker can be considered to be the first Black superstar. She’s like the Rihanna of the 1920s,” said Rosemary Phillips, a Barbados-born performer and co-owner of Baker’s park in southwestern France.
Phillips said one of the ladies who grew up in the castle and met with Baker said: “Can you imagine a Black woman in the 1930s in a chauffeur-driven car — a white chauffeur — who turns up and says, ‘I’d like to buy the 1,000 acres here?’”
In 1938, Baker joined what is today called LICRA, a prominent antiracist league. The next year, she started to work for France’s counter-intelligence services against Nazis, notably collecting information from German officials who she met at parties. She then joined the French Resistance, using her performances as a cover for spying activities during World War II.
In 1944, Baker became second-lieutenant in a female group in the Air Force of the French Liberation Army of Gen. Charles De Gaulle.
After the war, she got involved in anti-racist politics and the civil rights struggle, both in France and in the United States.
Toward the end of her life, she ran into financial trouble, was evicted and lost her properties. She received support from Princess Grace of Monaco, who offered Baker a place for her and her children to live. Baker died in Paris in 1975 at age 68.
The ceremony bore all the hallmarks of French pomp: A military orchestra, the rousing national anthem, and a choir of children singing one of Baker’s own songs, according to the Elysee. The symbolic, tricolore-draped coffin was carried by six members of France’s air and space force, followed by another member of the Air Force carrying the five decorations that France bestowed upon Baker during her life. These include the World War II Resistance medal and the Knight of the Legion of Honor, one of the country’s highest awards.While she died in 1975, much has been made of the decision by Macron to grant her this honor now. For Macron, the occasion offers a chance to rally France around its pride of those who resisted the Nazi occupation in World War II, as well as address a long-standing deficit in the number of women, and people of color, who rest under the Pantheon dome.As Baker’s coffin was brought to the steps of the Pantheon, a recording of her most famous song was played: “J’ai deux amours” (I have two loves: My country and Paris).
May 29, 2022
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