The Hand Grenade
NBN Projects 43,000 Black COVID-19 Deaths by September 16, 2020
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 09/11/20
Today, NewBlackNationalism.com released its projection that 43,000 Black people will have lost their lives to COVID-19 by September 16, 2020. The next APM Research Labs report on Black mortality is scheduled for release on September 17. APM aggregates mortality data by race and ethnicity from 48 states and the District of Columbia.
As of Tuesday, August 18, 35,932 Black Americans are known to have lost their lives to COVID-19, an increase of 3,230 deaths since the August 4, APM report. Nationwide, Blacks comprise 22.1% of all known COVID-19 deaths by race although Blacks represent 12.4% of the population.
Over the two-week period from August 4 to August 18, 230 Blacks died every 24 hours, doubling the rate of Black deaths from July 21 to August 3, when 115 Blacks died per day. The increase represented the tail end of the national spike led Arizona, Texas, and Florida in mid-July in which 38 of 50 states reported dramatic increases in COVID-19 cases due to Trump’s reckless business “reopening” plan.
Trump attempted to blame the increases on the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that brought 15 million people into the streets in 550 demonstrations from June 25 to July 28. Quite the opposite, Black deaths hit their lowest level (115 per day) since the pandemic began. During the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first week of May witnessed 406 Blacks dying every 24 hours.
We are releasing our projection of 43,000 Black coronavirus related deaths now, because K-12 and college students are returning to classes. Thus, we face another potential flash point where a dramatic spike in Black deaths could occur. This is New Black Nationalists’ seventh Black Covid-19 report since the pandemic began. We issue alerts when game-changing events could radically increase the lethality of the virus in Black communities. School openings are such an occasion.
Based on information we’ve reviewed by looking at school re-opening plans at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the largest K-12 school districts across the country we are projecting a rate of 215 Black deaths per day until September 16, 2020.
At HBCU’s there is a wide variety of plans for reopening that have gone in effect. Here is a representative sample of the different approaches, HBCU’s have developed.
Howard University, Washington, D.C.— One-hundred percent on-line learning for the fall semester.
Hampton University in Virginia -- One-hundred percent on-line learning for the fall semester.
Spellman College, Atlanta, Georgia -- First year students returned to campus, and their phase plan calls for graduation seniors to return in January 2021. All other students are conducting on-line courses.
Jackson State University in Mississippi, Resumed classes in August with full time return of students in a hybrid environment of on-line and in-person classes, and a gradual phase-in of more students.
Alcorn University in Mississippi -- Adopted the same plan as Jackson State University but the first three weeks of class are all on-line for all students.
Florida A&M in Tallahassee -- Full return of students, engaged in hybrid on campus learning.
Texas Southern, in Houston students were offered full time classroom return, full-time on-line or hybrid learning.
Virtually all HBCU campuses have reduced class size, socially distanced classrooms and dining facilities, reduced numbers in dormitory rooms, and significant cancellations of sports programs. Testing stations and mandatory mask wearing for entering buildings policies have been instituted for almost every university.
The return of K-12 students remains a highly fluid and contentious issue, with many school districts offering a hybrid model of on-line and in classroom learning. Thus far, six teachers have died in five states since schools began re-opening in early August.
In the nation’s largest school district, a firestorm of protests New York City erupted against the Department of Education’s proposal to offer families a hybrid of part-time in-person instruction and remote learning met with fierce opposition from teachers and parents. Mayor de Blasio pushed back opening date for school openings by eleven days.
Most major K-12 school districts across the country are nervously watching New York City. Data published by Education Week indicate that 78 percent of the nation’s 50 largest public districts aren’t planning to reopen with any in-person instruction.
In several re-opening school districts most students will be attending in-person one to three days a week and learning from home the rest of the time, while 39% of students nationwide have so far have opted for fully virtual learning. By some estimates, at least half of the nation’s children will now spend a significant portion of the fall, or longer, learning in front of their laptops.
We conclude again, by reminding our readers that we are on our own. There never has been and their won't be a plan to fight COVID-19. Even if Trump is voted out of office, a new administration could not begin to act until the end of January 2021. The Black community must continue to do everything we can to survive in tact until the crisis eases.
Wear your mask, social distance and encourage your family and friends to do the same. We are responsible for each other as we've never been before. Given what we've been up against, our communities have risen to the challenge. Let's stay strong.
29,946 Black Deaths from COVID-19 as of July 21 -- Data Points and Trends
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 07/29/20
As of Tuesday, July 21, 2020, approximately 29,946 Blacks have lost their lives due to COVID-19, according to APM Research Labs. The increase of 1,621 deaths over the past two weeks means that on average, 115 Blacks died every 24 hours. The current rate of death stands in stark contrast the peak period in early May when 406 Blacks died every 24 hours during one four-day period. APM Research Labs aggregates mortality data from 45 states and the District of Columbia.
In May, we projected that by September 1, the total number of Black deaths would reach 30,000. It is now certain that we shall exceed 30,000 deaths by the time of the next APM Research Report on September 7 by at least one-thousand more deaths. While we factored in Trump's re-opening would raise the number of new cases and deaths, the spikes in Arizona, Texas, and Florida were more muscular than we had anticipated.
NewBlackNationalism.com began tracking data on Black mortality beginning in early May. This is the seventh COVID-19 Alert we have published. Based on the recent data we’ve processed from APM Research Labs, we have identified some noteworthy trendlines that may be of interests to our communities.
Since mid-June, new coronavirus cases and deaths rapidly ascended as a result of Trump’s pre-mature “reopening.” Black deaths as a percentage of the total population remained constant, then started to fall in mid-July to its lowest levels since April. How is this to be explained? In short, three words: New York City
New York City’s dramatic reduction of the number of Black deaths over the past two months has been the single largest factor stabilizing Black mortality rates. From July 20 to July 27, New York State has only recorded 125 deaths. During the peak period in early May, New York was recording more than 4000 deaths a day, with over 1000 of the victims being Black. New York still accounts for more that 25% of the total Black deaths nationwide. (See table below)
July 7– July 21 Total Black Deaths 29,946 Aver. Deaths per day 115 Per. of Total Deaths 21.0
June 10-June 23 Total Black Deaths 26,747 Aver. Deaths per day 122 Per. Of Total Deaths 21.3
May 27–June 9 Total Black Deaths 25,028 Aver. Deaths per day 223 Per. Of Total Deaths N/A
May 12–May 26 Total Black Deaths 21,898 Aver. Deaths per day 338 Not Available
May 8-May 11 Total Black Deaths 17,155 Aver. Deaths per day 206 Per. Of Total Deaths 20.6
May 3–May 7 Total Black Deaths 16,329 Aver. Deaths per day 407 Not Available
From early May 3 to July 21, the percentage of Black deaths compared to the total number of deaths nationwide has consistently hovered between 20.6% and 23.2%.
The unprecedented numbers of Blacks who participated in the historic Justice for George Floyd marches across the country, did not result--as feared-- in a spike of Black deaths attributable to Covid-19. On balance, Black protestors wore masks in significant numbers and practiced social distancing when possible. Trump has tried to shift the blame away from his “back to work and death” policy, to the Black Lives Matter protests. There is no evidence in Black communities to support that claim.
The relative stabilization of Black deaths can also be attributed to the states pumping the brakes on Trump’s “reopening,” reinstituting ban policies, and mask wearing policies. It has only been in the last three weeks that southern Trumpocrat Governors have bent to the will of COVID-19, and started closing businesses and lifting bans on wearing face masks. This has limited the number of Blacks returning to jobs as “essential workers” in front-line, high public contact jobs.
But we aren’t out of the woods yet. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are beginning to spike again. All these states have Black populations that exceed 32% except Alabama, which is 26.8 Black.
Arizona, Texas, and Florida, the three states that have experienced the sharpest rise in coronavirus cases and deaths have smaller percentages of Black populations than many of the states and large metropolitan areas that were hit hard by COVID-19. Arizona Blacks make up 3.4% of the state population, Blacks are 16.6 of the population of Florida, and 14% of the population of Texas.
Since Blacks communities absorbed the first fatal wave of COVID-19 that devastated, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, we have weathered the storm. Although, Blacks have continued to die in disproportionate numbers to our percentage of the population, the catastrophe could have been much worse in the South and the potential force multiplier effect of Black participation in the George Floyd protests.
Civis Analytics, a data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns — suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others. Even if you cut by half the low-end estimate of 15 million people to seven million people and factor in how many were Black protestors, we’re talking serious numbers and "super-spread" possibilities.
The next big hurdle is pushing back against Trump's “Back to School death campaign." Predominantly Black metropolitan areas must resist having schools districts opening on time, with kids in the classroom five days a week.
As we move forward, our message is the same to the Black community. We are on our own and have no choice but to look after each other.
Trump and his administration have never understood nor wanted to solve the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve never had a plan. They don’t have a plan now, and never will. They have thrown in the towel and from now to election day, will desperately try to ignore the pandemic. It won’t work, because the virus is spreading to mostly white whose governors had their heads so far up Trump’s ass, they never took precautions.
We leave you with these statistics on deaths by race and racial disparity.
Total Deaths to Date by Race
Race June 23 July 21
Whites 57,933 65,950
Blacks 26,747 29,946
Latinos 18,568 22,226
Asian Americans 5,000 5,686
Indigenous Indians 774 1,095
The Disparity of Covid-19 Related Deaths by Race as of July 21, 2020
White Americans experienced 51.4% of deaths but are 62.2% of the population.
Black Americans experienced 23.3% of deaths but are 12.4% of the population.
Latino Americans experienced 17.3% of deaths but are 18.3% of the population.
Asian Americans experienced 4.4% of deaths but are 5.7% of the population.
Indigenous Amer. experienced 2.2% of deaths but are 1.0% of the population
Letter To Black Lives Matter Bristol on Jen Reid Statue
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 07/18/20
To the Black Community of Bristol, Activists, Friends, and Supporters of Black Lives Matter:
The stateless maroons of the New Black Nationalist movement send our warmest regards from America’s settler state.
Since early June, we’ve followed and been inspired by the resistance movements in London, Nottingham, and Bristol supporting Justice for George Floyd, and the direct actions taken against the carceral state of England and Wales.
George Floyd’s public execution also ignited a global reckoning with the legacy and institutions of imperial plunder and slavery. Amid the growing number of paintings removed, buildings renamed, and statues dismantled of colonial pillagers of Global South civilizations, the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston’s monument in Bristol was of special importance to us.
Bringing his cast to ground, dragging it to the Pero Jones bridge and dumping it in the harbor, was a just action for this butcher whose Royal African and South Seas Company ships transported over 100,000 men, women, and children across the Atlantic—all bearing his brand impressed in their flesh by a hot poker.
To New Black Nationalists, Colston was not just another slave trader but a monopolistic baron. Nor was Bristol just another port town; its lifeblood since the 1100s was built on slave trading, starting with the Irish. Along with Liverpool, its docks fueled the growth of British Empire, and as a consequence transported our ancestors that seeded an oppressed Black nation on North America’s shores.
Thus, Bristol’s efforts to take down Colston’s name from Colston Hall, remove his portrait from Lord Mayor Cleo Lake’s office, combat the influence of the Society Merchant’s Venturers, and your collaboration with the University of Bristol to deepen historical research on Bristol’s slave trade, reflects a comprehensive effort to correct the historical narrative and prosecute a reckoning with the U.K.'s imperialist past.
Just as important, Bristol’s resistance has given the Black Lives Matter movement’s second wave or what we call BLM 2.0, something it never had before: its first monument and memorialized figure embodied in the statue of Jen Reid. Mounted at Bristol square on July 15, it is an equally inspiring and powerful statement about the future.
Who could have anticipated that when Reid scaled the empty plinth after Colston’s statue was toppled, the photograph of her giving a Black Power fist salute, would be converted by artist Mark Quinn into a compelling and iconic black steel and resin statue?
We are untroubled by the fact that the sculpture, entitled “A Surge of Power” was mounted by Quinn’s team without the knowledge or consent of Bristol City Council.
Recalling her feelings about scaling the plinth and raising her fist, Reid said “It was like an electrical charge of power was running through me. My immediate thoughts were for the enslaved people who died at the hands of Colston and to give them power. I wanted to give George Floyd power, I wanted to give power to Black people like me who have suffered injustices and inequality. A surge of power out to them all.” Reid and Quinn have done that and more. We can attest that Reid’s power surge has been felt here in the Western Hemisphere, if not around the world.
New Black Nationalists also believe it is fitting and appropriate, that Black Lives Matter’s first monument and memorialized individual is a Black woman. In countless ways, Black Lives Matter’s agenda, its outlook, organizational model, embrace of Intersectional Theory, and its three founding Black feminist leaders are a direct outgrowth of the powerful Black Feminist movement that continues to broaden its influence since its inception in the 1960s.
It’s precisely because Jen Reid’s statue captured the power and future possibilities of the moment that Bristol’s municipal elites removed the monument in one day—surely a timeframe that shattered all records of municipal governments' bureaucratic response time for a non-emergency.
So where does Bristol’s resistance movement and Black Lives Matter go from here? Jen Reid’s statue now belongs to the global Black Lives Matter movement. It belongs to the people of Bristol. Both Reid and Quinn said they didn’t expect Bristol’s square to be its permanent home.
For the moment, it appears the statue has been appropriated by the city and is housed in a museum. We can hear Jen Reid’s statue saying, “I can’t breathe.” We pray that the Ms. Reid statue is liberated soon, and is attached to a permanent site in Bristol.
We have read that other cities in the U.K. are interested in Jen Reid’s statue. We get that. But we hope the monument remains in Bristol, where it truly belongs. It is an integral part of the next chapter the people of Bristol’s will write in its struggle against all manifestations of historical erasure and the ongoing battle against the carceral state.
As Blacks in the U,K. comprise three percent of the total population but 12 percent of those incarcerated, in a country that jails more people than any other in Europe per capita, this will be a fight with many twists and turns.
Moreover, the 2017 Runnymede Trust reported that Bristol is the worst city in the UK to grow up in disadvantaged and African heritage in terms of schooling outcomes and employment opportunities. Please know that we are aware of the real difficulties you face in Bristol. That's why its all the more important to continue your struggle.
Even as we prepare to send you this communication, we just received video of the police attack in Islington on Marcus Coutain, where an officer had his knee on his neck, mirroring the George Floyd execution.
The video filming and intervention of the crowd may have saved Mr. Coutain's life. In the U.K., like its cousin, America's settler state, cell phone justice is the first and last line of Black people's defense against state-sanctioned violence and terror.
We conclude with the words of Cleo Lake, “We cannot wait for social reform and action to be granted or sign off by administrations, it must be taken by the collective will of the people. I would urge other cities in the UK and abroad to remove their statues that symbolize global white supremacy and oppression, if indeed they truly do believe like they say they do, that BLACK LIVES MATTER!
In Struggle,
The Stateless Maroons of New Black Nationalism
NEWBLACKNATIONALISM.COM
New Black Nationalists Support Sioux Tribes Demand to Return the Black Hills
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 07/04/20
On this July 4, 2020, New Black Nationalists wish to express our full support for the demands of the Sioux Tribes in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, and Nebraska calling for the return of the Black Hills illegally seized from them by America’s settler state.
We support the Sioux Tribe resistance and protestors at Mt. Rushmore, and condemn the illegal Black Hills occupation by the U.S. government in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
While the 1980 Supreme Court ruling confirmed that the U.S. government seized the Black Hills without ever offering just compensation, we support the Sioux Tribe’s outright rejection of the $1 billion payoff offered by the U.S. government in exchange for the Black Hills.
Completely devoid of morals and principles, the U.S. imperialist class and its White Supremists louts like Trump, are incapable of understanding the concept of “sacred land.” They believe anyone and anything can be purchased at any price. It cannot.
The Sioux Tribes refusal to sell the birthright of their ancestors inspires our struggle as Black Nationalists who are working to create an independent Black nation-state when American Empire ultimately collapses in the 2020’s.
Further we endorse the calls of Chiefs Harold Frazier, Julian Bear Runner, and Nick Tilson to remove the Mt. Rushmore monument as a desecration of their sacred lands. From the dynamiting of the Black Hills in the 1930’s to construct the monument, to the despoliation of the Black Hills water table, and the recent prospecting efforts for a new gold mine, capitalists greed continues to ravage the environment in the Black Hills.
Some have challenged the notion that Trump's desecration of sacred Sioux Tribal lands is a celebration of White Supremacy. But all indigenous people and Black people living in America’s settler state, know nothing could be further from the truth.
We could start by pointing out that the sculptor of the Mt. Rushmore monument--Guyton Borglum--was a card carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was commissioned initially by the Daughters of the Confederacy to work on the Stone Mountain, Georgia monument to immortalize Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. But that's just a tease.
President George Washington, of course was the notorious owner of 153 Black slaves, many of whom deserted his plantation and fought with the British in the Revolutionary War to win their freedom.
His rise to fame on the French and Indian War frontier was as an Indian killer. Called the “Town Destroyer” by the Iroquois, one of Washington’s scorched earth forays burned forty Iroquois towns, destroyed all its orchards, and 160,000 bushels of corn.
Washington was the Father of America’s bloody “Indian Policy.” At Mt. Vernon as President, he negotiated with the Creeks, Iroquois, and other tribal leaders. His conditions were simple: either you accept the “fair price” we offer to buy your land, or you will be in his words “extirpated.”
Thomas Jefferson not only held 600 Black slaves, but his book, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” outlined the first modern theory of scientific racism, essentially designating Black people as “Others.” Jefferson placed Black people outside the boundaries of American law and civilization, and insisted Blacks constituted a national security threat.
As Governor of Virginia, he said the following regarding subduing indigenous people, "If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated or driven beyond the Mississippi."
Jefferson is widely quoted as saying Indians were of “equal body and mind” as European settlers. Nevertheless, he engineered the removal polices of the Shawnee and Cherokee tribes west of the Mississippi, and later the removal of Georgia’s Cherokees to west.
No other U.S. president has more Sioux blood on his hands than Abraham Lincoln. He approved the largest mass hanging in American history of 38 Dakota Sioux tribesmen in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862.
Three-hundred Dakota Sioux were charged with the murder of 490 white Minnesota settlers as the result of the war that broke in 1861. The war occurred after the U.S. government didn’t deliver food supplies guaranteed to the Sioux as the part of the conditions of the sale of their lands that created Minnesota as a new state in 1858.
Lincoln, "the so called" great liberator issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free Black slaves when it was his last best option to win the Civil War, famously saying, “If I could end the war without ending slavery I would do so.”
Clearly, he regarded Black people as inferiors. “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he proclaimed. Up until the last two weeks prior to his assassination, Lincoln was still attempting to negotiate a mass deportation plan to ship all Black people out of the United States.
Then there is Teddy Roosevelt who said of indigenous people, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are.”
Roosevelt was a strong advocate for breaking up the tribes. In 1902 he instructed the Bureau of Indian Affairs Bureau to send a letter demanding Native men cut their hair, as part of them making “progress to civilization." The same year he urged Congress to cut subsistence to Natives, to encourage work that would “lift the savage toward self-help and self-reliance which constitute the man.” Need we say more?
The Dakota Sioux and Black people don’t need anyone to lecture us or question our historical memory. The history is clear. We've lived it. We know what White Supremacy looks and sounds like. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the few things Trump knows.
Like scheduling his Tulsa rally during Juneteenth, Trump’s traveling White Nationalists re-election campaign is pre-programmed to push all the White Supremists hot buttons--valorizing monuments of ethnic cleansers and slaveholders. His 2020 tour stop at Mt. Rushmore is reminiscent of introducing COVID-19 into the Black Hills, like a high-tech smallpox blanket.
The events at Mt. Rushmore this July 4, 2020, have truly captured the spirit and reality of what the birth of the American Republic has meant to indigenous people and Black people. Nothing depicts the essence of the American experience more than the small contingent of peaceful Dakota Sioux-led protestors being confronted by the National Guard, outfitted in full-battle riot gear, buffeting the crowd with pepper spray and hauling them off to jail.
“Today has been a proud day to be Lakota," said Nick Tilsen of the NDN Collective. "We shut down Mount Rushmore. We put this place in lockdown for three hours and we did it in a good way. We got this power from our ancestors.”
For the Dakota Sioux, all indigenous people, Black people and People of Color there are going to be a lot of good days in the 2020’s. New Black Nationalists have said and continue to say that American Empire is spiraling towards an existential crisis.
The signs of consequential change are all around us. Every time the criminal rule and comprehensive corruption of American Empire is challenged, we come one step closer to determining our own future destiny.
26,747 Total Black Coronavirus Deaths as of June 23, 2020
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 06/28/20
JUNE 28, 2020, REPORT NO. 5 BLACK COVID-19 ALERT
As of Tuesday, June 23, 2020, the APM Research Lab reported that the total number of Black deaths attributed to COVID-19, now stands at 26,747.
The positives news is that since mid-May, the percentage of Black deaths compared to the total number of deaths (125,545 on June 23) has dropped from 23 percent to 21 percent.
Over the past 14 days, the average number of Black deaths per day has declined to 122, compared to the peak period of May 3-May 7, when Black deaths per day averaged 407. APM Research Labs collect mortality data from 45 states and the District of Columbia. Their findings are released every two weeks.
In NewBlackNationalism.com's May 30 report, we expressed concerns that Black participation in hundreds of demonstrations for George Floyd could spike new cases of COVID-19. As the demonstrations were continuous in many cities over a two week period, the prospects of rapid asymptomatic transmission was a threat that had to be considered.
With the exception of Houston and Atlanta, which are still being investigated, we can report with confidence that no evidence has surfaced suggesting Black participation in the demonstrations led to significant increases of COVID-19 cases in our communities.
That being said, the coronavirus has rebooted. Single-day record high numbers of COVID-19 cases were reported this weekend in Texas, Florida, and Arizona. On Friday, June 26, the largest single-day national total of new cases was recorded. Overall, new cases of COVID-19 are on the rise in 33 states.
In most instances the increases were driven by lax social distancing and economies that reopened too soon. Across the country, new COVID-19 cases are skewing toward younger people under 30 years of age. Not surprisingly, several states are now reinstituting restrictions lifted during the economic re-opening.
In Phoenix, Blacks are 6.7 percent of the population and have made up 9.1 percent of the COVID-19 deaths. At present, there are no discernible increases skewing disproportionately toward the Black population for new cases. Maricopa County is at the breaking point, with virtually no intensive care units available in the Phoenix area.
Houston, a city of 2.2 million residents of which 25% are Black, could be a different story. On Friday, Houstonians woke up to find text messages on their cell phones that the city has gone to CODE RED.
Everyone that could, was advised to "stay at home." On Sunday, San Antonio received a similar alert for Bexar County. They were advised that local hospitals "are approaching capacity." The bill has come due for these three states whose governors did nothing for months in hopes of placating Trump.
Similarly, Atlanta, a 51.4 percent Black city, and its surrounding metropolitan area continue to be under a declared "state of emergency" until June 30. Georgia's new COVID-19 cases spiked to 2,200 on Sunday.
Testing lines in DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Cobb Counties were through the roof. Again, more than 30 percent of the new cases are youth under 30. The state of Georgia concluded the increases in the Atlanta area were not caused by the intense demonstrations for George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. Then again, whose going to trust information coming a state whose governor said on April 2, that he was unaware COVID-19 could be spread asymptomatically?
The total number of deaths by race as of June 23, 2020 is as follows:
Whites 57,933
Blacks 26,747
Latinos 18,568
Asian Americans 5,000
Indigenous 774
Three cities NEWBLACKNATIONALISM.COM looked at as potential hotspots that played a prominent role in the George Floyd demonstrations were New York City, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
New York, once the COVID-19 epicenter and site of multiple demonstrations, reported on June 28, that there were only 10 coronavirus deaths for the entire state. In New York City, hospitalizations and emergency room visits have been flat for more than a week. Black deaths in the state of New York to date total 7,491. New York is now imposing mandatory 14 quarantines for visitors and its own citizens if they come from designated states with escalating new cases of COVID-19.
In Minneapolis, new COVID-19 cases are rising for 18-29 year-olds as a result of bars and other businesses reopening. But, for the last six days Minnesota's statewide death count has dipped to single digits for the first time since April. Blacks make up 18 percent of Minneapolis's total population.
Washington, D.C., was another concern because Blacks comprise 46 percent of the city population, but have accounted for a stunning 74 percent of DC's COVID-19 deaths--the highest disproportionate death rate by race in the country.
Continuous demonstrations, and 6,000 federal troops from various states temporarily garrisoned on its soil were additional concerns. Despite a few upticks in early June, D.C.'s death rate and hospitalization rates have been falling consistently since they peaked on May 10.
On the whole, throughout the course of the demonstration for Justice for George Floyd, Black and white protestors took wearing masks seriously, and many social distanced at rallies when possible. As indicated in our last communication, we encourage all protestors to still get tested, and we appreciate the organizers who set up testing booths at their demonstrations and rallies.
We cannot emphasize enough, that this remains a dangerous period for Black communities across the country. With each passing day, Trump becomes more detached from reality concerning the pandemic. There is, and has never been a coherent plan to extricate us from the crisis of the present. For the moment, we must assume those circumstances remain the norm.
States, cities and locales are on their own, and so are we. We have to do whatever is necessary to suffer as few losses as possible. We're playing for time, and ultimately a vaccine that is probably another nine months away, if we're lucky.
When NEWBLACKNATIONALISM.COM decided to issue and ongoing series of advisories on COVID-19, we subtitled our first alert on March 7, "On Becoming Italy." Italy discovered its first case of coronavirus on January 31. By March 10, the government shut down all incoming foreign travel, all businesses except for grocery stores and pharmacies were closed, a nationwide 'shelter in place' was ordered, and all public gatherings were banned. They did all that in 37 days. Today, Italy is virtually coronavirus free.
Trump imposed a ban on incoming travel from China on January 31, the same day Italy had its first COVID-19 case. Five months later, the U.S. had its single biggest day of new coronavirus cases this past weekend. The U.S. never became Italy, not even close.
Remember the Tulsa Massacre: The Fight for Reparations
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 06/21/20
Saturday’s campaign kick-off in Tulsa, Oklahoma of Donald Trump’s “Merchant of Death Tour” was a complete disaster. The day started with six Trump advance team members—including two Secret Service agents--testing positive for the coronavirus. Things went downhill from there.
The 100,000 people Trump’s campaign predicted would attend the rally didn’t show up. Inside the 19,000 seat BOK Arena, more than ten thousand seats were left unfilled. Low turnout forced Trump’s aides to cancel the additional outdoor program for the anticipated overflow crowd. Work crews scrambled to dismantle the outdoor stage and jumbotron before news crews filmed that embarrassing scene. They failed.
Worse still, a contributing factor to the rally’s pathetically low turnout was the result of Trump’s campaign being “pranked” by thousands of teenagers placing fake ticket reservations on the TIKTOK app. It’s poetic justice for all the hacking, creating fake sites, disinformation campaigns, and Facebook profile theft by the Russians and Cambridge Analytica to support Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Donald Trump insisted on holding this indoor rally despite Tulsa’s record spike in coronavirus cases to demonstrate his legion’s loyalty by their willingness to risk exposure to COVID-19. But he also wanted something else. He wanted a rally that conjured visions of a sacred blood and soil ritual, a collective suicide pact that bonded the White Nationalist leader to his minions.
More than being president, Trump seeks immortality as a mythical demi-god; the white race’s savior from the “Browning of America.” He knows history will judge him as a “rogue president,” just like he knows the confluence of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and America’s economic depression is a yoke around his neck that has condemned him to the political gallows.
Down nine points in the polls to Joe Biden with four months until election day, Trump’s got nothing to lose. He’s playing the role of the bionic white-boy, who spits in the face of COVID-19, doesn’t wear a mask, doesn’t social distance, ignores advice from medical experts, and ingest hydroxychloroquine pills for breakfast.
Authentic authoritarian leaders must always create an aura of invincibility. Mythical demi-god wannabees also require followers willing to engage in conspicuous displays of blood sacrifices for their maximum leader.
In Tulsa, the trappings of a blood ritual were on full display. Most attendees refused to wear masks, and they signed waivers absolving Trump’s campaign of any liability if they develop "virus-related illnesses"--as many certainly will.
For the past three weeks, Trump has watched millions of Black-led multi-racial protesters risk heightened exposure to COVID-19, and his threats to restore “law and order,” by participating in mass demonstrations that tipped national public opinion against naked police brutality.
To counter the unprecedented multi-racial criminal justice reform wave sweeping the country under the banner of “Black Lives Matter,” Trump selected Tulsa—site of the worse racial massacre in U.S. history—on the Juneteenth weekend for one reason; to reignite race-based cultural warfare.
For Trump, Tulsa represented a critical pivot point to reset his flagging campaign. They would reorient the campaign’s focus to Steve Bannon’s old Cambridge Analytica model. That model calls for juicing white grievance to maximize turnout of Trump’s low-information white working-class voters, while suppressing the Black vote by any means necessary.
In Tulsa, stoking White Nationalism was a family affair. Eric Trump said, “When you see these animals taking over our cities, burning down our churches, this isn’t America.” Not to be outdone by the son, The Apprentice warned that “Our people are not nearly as violent. If they were, it would be a terrible, terrible day for the other side.” And just who is "the other side?"
New Black Nationalists have repeatedly said, the deeper Trump sinks into crisis, the more authoritarian and desperate his rule will become. This is especially true in terms of provoking a civil conflagration pitting White nationalists and whites generally against people of color and the left.
When Trump brought more than 6,000 federalized troops into Washington, D.C., to clear Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, he signaled his designs to manipulate circumstances to justify a state of emergency.
This was a constant theme in the threats he made to governors around the country if they couldn’t enforce law and order, he would “solve their problem for them.” Perhaps The Apprentice wasn't aware that protesters seeking justice for George Floyd were teargassed in 98 cities, in a two-week period.
In the next few months, Trump will go all out to start delegitimizing the upcoming elections, rail against mail-in ballots, and look for excuses to disrupt the presidential elections at the state level. This strategy is critical not only for Trump to try and steal the November elections, but its part of his post-election strategy if he loses.
If and when Trump is forced from office in 2020, he is laying the groundwork to become the “official White Nationalists opposition" to whoever occupies the White House.
In-part, this explains his attempts to forge “blood oaths of loyalty” with his supporters. Trump's contingency planning calls for preparing for a second civil war in the Republican Party to exert control over the GOP from White Nationalist Central Headquarters in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, should he lose. It Trump can't take the GOP, he will simply launch a new White Nationalists party, and television network to displace FOX News, as his propaganda arm.
In the meantime, Trump and his motley crew are trying to regroup after the debacle in Tulsa. They can’t afford another disaster like Tulsa on the “Merchant of Death Tour” that will spread COVID-19 to cities far and wide.
In 2016, Donald Trump bragged he could “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone” and not lose any voters. He didn’t have to. Under his watch the number of coronavirus deaths nationally as of June 20, 2020 was 120,244. From the turnout at the Tulsa rally, it appears Trump has lost quite a few voters. We shall see.
As of June 9, the number of Blacks who’ve died from COVID-19, stands at 25,028. These figures were collected by the APM Research Lab from mortality data from the District of Columbia and 43 states.
Rayshard Brooks & George Floyd: Cell Phone Justice in Action
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 06/17/20
Ask Black people who George Holliday is. Few, if any would know. Can't blame them. Holliday is the unassuming white guy that stepped out on his apartment balcony on March 3, 1991, and witnessed four Los Angeles policemen beating Rodney King to a pulp.
His recording of the incident on a Sony camcorder went viral around the world. Holliday's video was the opening shot of a long battle by Black people to prove our claim that the police were racist, brutalizing, murderous thugs with a license to kill in our communities. Holliday's video altered the dynamic, along with the so-called "Rodney King Riots."
The problem is that is took 31 years to convince a slim majority of white people in America and hundreds of millions of people around the world. It took 25 years for video technology to migrate from camcorders to pocket-sized, mobile, high definition, audio capable, user friendly cell phones that any seventeen year-old could produce irrefutable live footage of police assassinations. It took five more years for the world to finally accept the evidence as valid.
Michael Brown's execution in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 was captured by cell phone video. Eric Garner's choking in New York in 2014, was taped by cell phone video. Walter Scott, shot in the back in South Carolina in 2015, like Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, caught on cell phone video. Philando Castile, gunned down in the back seat of his car with his girlfriend and baby in the front seat, video streamed live on Facebook. Alton Sterling, killed in 2016 by Baton Rouge police in front of a store, filmed by cell phone. We could go on, by do we really need to?
It was cell phone video that forced police departments to begin deploying dashboard cams and ultimately body cameras, which they fought at every turn. Even when mandated by law to wear body cameras, cops still cut them off when they're ready to get thugged out.
Police departments couldn't tolerate the ubiquity of the masses having the power to produce video evidence and drive the narrative indicting their racist gestapo tactics and mob style killing of Black people.
For years, even with all the cell phone videos of police murders of Black people, practically no police officers were ever convicted of murdering a Black woman or Black man.
This past month, killer cops in Minneapolis and Atlanta have been indicted for murder in less than a week. Cell phone videos from the public and the unprecedented protests have reshaped shaping public opinion about police practices and their racists actions across the country.
Still, the system is what it is. The cops, courts, and laws are all designed to control and suppress Black people who have been treated as a national security threat since we arrived on the shores of North America.
The fact that the entire criminal justice system has been challenged by three weeks of national and world wide protests, doesn't the mean the system can be reformed or made to work.
Its working exactly as it was designed to. But like all the other institutions that have been propping up American Empire, it is breaking down. Worse still, it increasingly l lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of people.
Ironically, after all the attempts to change laws, train cops, reform courts and institute oversight over America's Praetorian Guards, cell phones have exposed and upended the rotting corpse of so-called American justice. For Black people cells phone justice and taking to the streets, is our first and last line of defense to secure a modicum of justice in America. But not for much longer.
Remember the Tulsa Massacre: The Fight for Reparations
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 06/14/20
Mass outrage has forced Donald Trump to move his June 19 campaign event in Tulsa, where 300 Blacks were massacred in a 1921 riot, to June 20. It means his proto-White Nationalist rally won't stain the Juneteenth observance of the day Black slaves were informed of their freedom.
"Remembering Tulsa," however, requires us to do more than register our distain and opposition to Trump's boundless racism. The Black community of Tulsa is owed justice as the victims of the worse racial massacre in U.S. history.
Tulsa and the 1985 Philadelphia police bombing of the home of Black M.O.V.E. activists (11 killed) are two of the only domestic mass racial killing fields in which aerial bombardment was deployed. To this day, the state of Oklahoma has provided no accounting of the recovery of most of the bodies of Tulsa's Black victims. We need to turn up the heat to bring closure to the recovery of the missing bodies and for the Black community of Tulsa to win its fight for reparations.
Despite the recommendations of the Oklahoma Commission to Investigate the Tulsa Race Riot, the State of Oklahoma denied reparations in the form of direct payments to the survivors of the 1921 massacre. They denied direct payments to the descendants of the survivors. No compensation was offered to the owners of over one thousand homes and businesses that were destroyed in the ten-block area known as Greenwood or Black Wall Street.
Instead, the 118 survivors alive in 2001 received a gold plated medallion embossed with the state of Oklahoma's seal, a scholarship fund, and a memorial park named after local Black historian John Hope Franklin. That's it.
Federal district and appellate courts dismissed law suits filed against the state of Oklahoma because there was a two-year statue of limitations; in other words the suit should have been filed by 1923, as if it was remotely possible to receive a modicum of justice in those days.
HR Bill 1843 introduced by John Conyers to extend the statue of limitations has been stuck in Congress since 2012. The state of Oklahoma and the U.S. Congress need to be pressed to the wall to take action.
Since 1989, the "Commission to Study Reparations for African-Americans Act," also introduced by Congressman John Conyers has been languishing in Congress. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party should be put on notice that nothing less than the passage and implementation of H.R. Bill 40 is acceptable to the Black community. This ultimatum should stand if Democrats win the presidency and hold the House of Representatives. If Democrats fail to recapture the Senate, they must cut the deal with Senate Republicans. No excuses.
Joe Biden's comment last week saying he "supports the concept" of reparations but wants to see how studies play out, before he goes "all in on direct payments" doesn't mean anything. In addition, Biden now insist he can't support reparations unless Native Americans are included. That proviso is entirely on Biden.
Let's be clear about the issue direct cash payments. Today, the average white family has ten times the wealth of the average Black family. The inequality is structural in origin and began with the governments systematic legal denial of Black wealth creation during 250 years of slavery and a century of Jim Crow laws.
Any suggestion that the Black-white wealth gap can be closed in the absence of individual cash payments is sheer fantasy. We're not entertaining diversions.
As William Darrity and Derrick Hamilton's report "What we Get Wrong About Closing the Wealth Gap" states, Blacks cannot close the racial wealth gap by changing their individual behavior, assuming more personal responsibility or "acquiring the portfolio management insights associated with financial literacy. In fact, white high school dropouts have more wealth than Black college graduates. Moreover, the racial wealth gap did not result from a lack of labor. Rather, it came from a lack of financial capital."
We're sick of Black politicians shuffling and moaning when it comes to direct cash payments to the descendants of slaves. The U.S. government made direct cash payments to Japanese World War 2 victims of internment camps on two different occasions.
Black Democrats want to talk about everything else: baby bonds, free college tuition, tax credits, debt cancellation, small business funding, and technology transfers. When it comes to land as reparations compensation, forget about it.
New Black Nationalists have no illusions that the U.S. government will ever willingly pay reparations to Black people unless they are forced to, or until American Empire collapses, as we predict it will in the 2020's. Nevertheless, we support all righteous demands.
We're working now to prepare for the creation of a new independent Black nation-state when American Empire falters under the weight of an existential crisis it can't extricate itself from.
As part of the creation of a new Black nation-state we will demand just payment for reparations in land and direct cash payments. There will be no debt cancellation. One way or another Black people are going to get reparations.
That being said, we have work to do now to win reparations as soon as possible. What forms of reparations compensation should be prioritized? Who should pay for reparations, and why? What payout amounts constitute just compensation? These are questions that Black people in their millions should have a clear understanding of.
New Black Nationalists have developed a framework that begins to tackle these issues. It incorporates successful historical lessons of reparations efforts in the United States. We invite you to visit our website to review an expanded article on Black Nationalism and Reparations.
Building on the momentum of the Justice for George Floyd movement, the Tulsa massacre, and the run up to the 2020 elections, this is a critical moment to step up our profile on winning reparations.
China Targets African Workers and Students
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 05/26/20
Municipal bus drivers made them sit in the back of the bus. They were denied admittance to hotels and hospitals. Taxi drivers refused to pick them up. The sign on the restaurant door read, "Black people are not allowed to enter."
No. This isn’t Alabama in the 1950’s. It’s Guangzhou, a sprawling metropolis of 12 million people in southern China in 2020. The target of these racist attacks were the city’s 300,000 African traders, workers and students--the largest African diasporic community in Southeast Asia.
NewBlackNationalism.com condemns the People’s Republic of China’s government for encouraging and supporting these attacks. First through their silence, then denying these despicable acts ever happened, even as the abuses were being video streaming across the planet via internet.
Beijing’s scapegoated Guangzhou’s African community as force multipliers spreading the coronavirus, to deflect attention away from the government's failure to coverup the COVID-19 outbreak in January.
In early April, Guangdong Province officials mandated coronavirus testing for Guangzhou but instead began a targeted campaign to forcibly test African residents. Guangzhou's African population was ordered to self-isolate or quarantine in designated hotels. Some were subjected to additional random tests, without ever receiving their results.
In the meantime, landlords and hotel managers began evicting African immigrants, claiming their rents weren’t paid or their papers were not in order. By the hundreds, African immigrants were forced to sleep on the streets and under bridges, while at the same time food establishments refused to serve them.
Worse still, Africans were blamed for sourcing China’s growing list of social maladies: drug dealing, black markets, and a metastasizing aids epidemic. The atmosphere generated in China that provided oxygen for these attacks on African immigrants is bigger than China's coronavirus dilemma.
The Chinese media routinely portrays Africans as backward or primitive and blackness is often assailed as unattractive. This Lunar New Year, China’s most popular television show watched by 800 million people, featured a skit by a Chinese actress in blackface. Sound familiar?
Nor did this anti-African wave in China just start this spring in China, it goes back decades. In 1988, rioting erupted in the city of Nanjing when two African students entered Hohai University for a Christmas eve party with two Chinese women. University security guards claimed the ladies were prostitutes. Fighting broke out and didn’t end until the following day. Thirteen people were left injured.
Thus, it was only a matter of time before the ultimate weapon was brandished to ignite the Chinese flame of nationalist retribution; Africans were accused of raping Chinese women. Chinese national honor had to be defended.
But the counter response from African countries pushing back, global condemnation of Beijing's racist actions, and the May 6, Human Rights Watch report accusing China of discrimination against African communities during the coronavirus pandemic, put the Chinese government on the defensive. Token measures were enacted to ease the criticism.
China’s Foreign Ministry released a statement ordering a halt of all discriminatory practices, it said didn’t exist two weeks earlier. McDonald’s pulled down its no Blacks allowed here sign and issued an apology. Stores, hotels, and hospitals were ordered to serve Black people. But in the end, nothing is going to change.
Quite the opposite, China’s sweeping, and systematic rape of Sub-Saharan Africa, and its 920 million people intensifies with each passing year. Bauxite from Guinea, oil from Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Sudan and Chad, copper from Zambia and the Congo, platinum from Zimbabwe, cocoa from Ghana, and diamonds from Sierra Leone. This list goes on and on, the point is the same.
Chinese imperium, or what Africans on the continent deride as "chopsticks mercantilism,” is a brutal old school colonial system of extracting Africa’s raw materials and resources reminiscent of the Rothschilds and Rhodes era of British empire building in the late 1800s.
With investments and contracts in sub-Saharan Africa exceeding $299 billion from 2005 to 2018, China’s massive imperial footprint is glossed over with smooth monikers like the “New Silk Road” or framed as a benign infrastructure venture under the rubric of the “Belt and Road” initiative.
More than the economic pillaging of Africa has been China’s willingness to underwrite dictatorial regimes like former President Robert Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe to sustain its economic plunder. For the past two decades, Beijing has substantially undermined Africa’s brief spurt of democratic governance and helped facilitate an autocratic about face.
More to the point, it’s impossible for any plundering imperialist power with great nation ambitions like China, to subject an entire African sub-continent to ruthless exploitation, and then treat her sons and daughters with anything other than distain and utter contempt.
China's savagery on its mainland is nothing more than an extension of its imperial arrogance and hubris not just in Africa, but against Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighurs. Remarkably, there was a time long ago when China was the polar opposite of what its become-a thuggish regime of bottom feeding money-grubbing parasites.
When China was a revolutionary socialist country, its government, its leader Mao Tse Tung, and its people supported African liberation movements for independence and the revolutionary struggle of Blacks in the United States.
Since the 1950s, China welcomed Black revolutionaries like W.E.B. DuBois, Robert Williams, Huey Newton and Elaine Brown. Black revolutionaries across the world were supported, and afforded sanctuary while in exile.
On April 13, 1968, over one and half-million Chinese people led by the Red Guard youth, marched through the streets of Peking in support of the revolutionary risings of Black people that occurred after Martin Luther King’s assassination.
At that march, Mao Tse Tung issued the following statement.
The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class. It is a tremendous aid and inspiration to the struggle of the people throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism. On behalf of the Chinese people, I hereby express resolute support for the just struggle of the Black people in the United States.”
How times have changed.
Coronavirus Update: 17,155 Black Lives Lost as of May 11, 2020
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 05/12/20
As of Monday, May 11, 2020, approximately 17,155 Black people have died from COVID-19, out of 82,925 reported deaths. Blacks make up 20.6 of coronavirus related deaths reported nationally so far. *
These statistics represent totals from Washington, D.C., and 39 states regularly reporting deaths by race and ethnicity collected by the APM Research Lab. The race and ethnicity reporting gap for the eleven non-reporting states, likely means the total number of Black deaths could easily exceed 20,000 as we go to print.
New totals are scheduled to be reported again by APM Research Lab on May 16, 2020. Black-Nationalism.com will continue to monitor the outcomes.
Half the 50 states that started reopening businesses on May 11, have not experienced a steady decline in new COVID-19 cases over a consecutive 14-day period. Several other states reopening businesses on Monday, are reporting rising numbers of new COVID- 19 cases. Thus, the April 17, Center for Disease Control and Prevention plan for reopening America, has simply been thrown out the window.
With the pre-mature reopening of businesses and other public spaces like beaches, disproportionately high COVID-19 related Black mortality rates are certain to continue.
The number of Black public sector workers in “essential jobs,” Blacks with lower-end service sector jobs with high human contact ratios, and Blacks using public transportation conflates the COVID-19 Black death-risk ratio.
From the reporting period of May 3 – May 7, an average of 407.2 Black people died every twenty-four hours. Black-Nationlism.com expects this death ratio to continue at relatively high levels over the next few weeks as states reopen their economies. From May 7 - May 11, an additional 826 Black deaths occurred.
As stated, in a previous article, New Black Nationalists also remain deeply concerned about COVID-19 Black mortality projections in the immediate future and long-term in the Deep South, where the majority of Blacks still reside.
Our concerns are twofold. First, are the prospects of a dramatic short-term uptick of Black deaths in the Deep South associated with the “national reopening.” The second concerns a possible “endless winter” scenario where rolling COVID-19 hotspots persist over an elongated period of time, decimating small predominantly Black towns and enclaves like Albany, Georgia. In these areas, poverty levels, Blacks lacking health care insurance, and the scarcity of health care facilities is a lethal combination.
Finally, we would like to caution against preconceived notions of how and where COVID-19 is impacting Black people. Kansas, the quintessential “heartland” state is posting Black COVID-19 related mortality rates that are seven times higher than whites.
The "reopening America" campaign marks the transition to the end game of the Trump administration to win re-election in November 2020. The overriding calculus under consideration is determining the acceptable number of COVID-19 related deaths vs. the alienation of Trump's white base voters and white swing voters in battleground states.
That is the only number that matters to the Merchant of Death.
*The APM Research Lab also used a second metric for reported race and ethnic COVID-19 related mortality data in the following passage:
“Another way to examine racial disproportionality in COVID-related mortality is by comparing the percentage of COVID-19 deaths to the percentage of population. Collectively, Black Americans represent 13% of the population in portions of America releasing such data but
have suffered 27% of deaths.”
Black Nationalists Reading Cherie Turpin: Black Feminism & Afrofuturism
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 04/17/20
Black-Nationalism.com, is proudly featuring Dr. Cherie Turpin’s thought piece, “Disruptive Strategies, Black Feminism, Intersectionality and Afrofuturism,” which recently appeared on www.academia.edu.
Highly provocative and content rich, “Disruptive Strategies” applies battlefield tested theoretical lessons learned by Black Feminists’ over the past four decades to the intellectual challenges confronting Afrofuturism’s speculative thought insurgency.
As Dr. Turpin points out, “The development of Afrofuturism as an aesthetic, theory, or as a process is fraught with many of the same critical debates and discursive tensions that continue to permeate through Black Feminism with regard to essentialism, identity politics, performativity, and aesthetic concerns. Ironically, African American critical theory provides very sophisticated tools for the analysis of cyberculture, since African American critics have been discussing the problem of multiple identities, fragmented personae, and liminality for more than 100 years.
For New Black Nationalists (NBN) “Disruptive Strategies” could not have appeared at a timelier moment. Since August 2019, our efforts to re-tool Black Nationalism’s intellectual body of work has focused on three areas Dr. Turpin’s article addresses: 1) crafting a consensus theory of Black culture, 2) launching an on-line Black Feminist—Black Nationalist Exchange to facilitate dialogue, 3) and incorporating significant elements of Afrofuturism’s cultural system into New Black Nationalists (NBN) cultural theory and practice.
When the initial outline of NBN’s Cultural Enlargement Theory project was released in December, its alignment with many of the central tenants of Afrofuturism surprised us. Most compelling was Afrofuturism's expansive universe of possibilities for Black women, Black feminists, and LGBTQ activists for creative autonomy and cultural expression.
Moreover, personalities like Octavia Butler, Alondra Nelson, and Ytasha Womack, were more than just brilliant thinkers and writer-advocates for Afrofuturism--they were architects shaping its journey from the margins into the bloodstream of the Darker Nation.
The coalescence of Black Feminists and Afrofuturists is not new, but it has been gaining momentum during the past decade. Dr. Turpin notes that, “By 2011 [Jennifer] Nash takes her call to reconsider intersectional analysis in a critical and political direction that seems to anticipate and invite what I would refer to as a theoretical “bridge” for those who would seek to engage in Black feminism beyond identity traps… [Nash] invites an Afrofuturist vision of Flack feminism when she theorizes that ‘Practicing Love, Black Feminism, Love-Politics, and Post Intersectionality,’ dreams of a yet unwritten future, they imagine a world ordered by love, by a radical embrace of difference, by a set of subjects who work on/against themselves to work for each other.
Search though one may, you’ll not find two more radical currents challenging the dominant Western globalist narrative, its twisted social relations, underlying racism, comprehensive corruption, and moral bankruptcy than contemporary Black Feminists and Afrofuturists.
Cognizant of the potential for Afrofuturism to emerge as a major conduit for Black feminist cultural and political expression, it is paramount that New Black Nationalists grasp deeply the nexus between these two movements.
Dr. Turpin’s article illuminates the intimate connections and synergies that bind Black Feminist and Afrofuturist sensibilities. Among the common points of reference and struggle Dr. Turpin highlights are the following.
Stereotypes regarding "Black women and intellectual abilities continue to be extremely difficult to unravel in the 21st century by "Black feminists who seek to build a counter-text to them.
"Black feminist theorists have attempted to take on the difficult task…to recover Black womanhood from degradation. Women develop theories, characters, art, and beauty free of the pressures of meeting male approval, societal standards, color-based taxonomies, or run-of-the-mill female expectations.”
“Afrofuturist and Black feminist engage in the recovery and retelling of the presence of people of African descent as contributors to cultural production and articulation.”
“Afrofuturism and Black feminism are both part of the critical apparatus vehicle for Afrodiasporic women and men who seek to disrupt the sequential order of things or what we have understood to be history, or even fact, and the otherwise homogenous ideological framework.”
“Afrofuturists are reclaiming space previously assumed to be alien to us, claiming authority to speak as creators and innovators.”
Afrofuturism renders the master narrative about the past, present and future instable and uncertain.
“Afrofuturism as a movement may be the first in which black women… are equally represented as the face of the future and the shapes of the future.”
Womanhood, agency, reclaimed spaces, expectations, unwritten futures, creators, recovery, societal standards, innovation, counter-text, and claimed authorities.
These words are not your customary political terms of art—left-wing or otherwise. These descriptors that leaven Dr. Turpin’s seven passages are the language of dignity and creating a new humanity. They are the lexicon of restoration and hope, making that which was sundered, whole. Black Feminists and Afrofuturists are amassing a powerful ensemble of symbols and metaphors that envisions alternate futures that are not simply fodder for reductionist public policies, radical platforms, or manifestos.
Perhaps Ytasha Womack’s said it best when she observed that “Afrofuturism doesn’t create in opposition to anything. As a result, women Afrofuturists are free to do what they want and how that shows up is uniquely individual ... Self-expression in Afrofuturism isn’t about making a statement, it’s about being.”
Black Nationalists March 7 Coronavirus Warning Now a Tragic Reality
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 04/07/20
Thirty days ago, Black-Nationalism.com released its coronavirus warning to Black communities across the country called Becoming Italy. We’re deeply saddened our projection that Covid-19 posed a potential calamity for Black people has become a reality.
On March 7, there were 300 reported Covid-19 cases and 17 deaths. Today there are 398,185 reported cases and 12,844 deaths. Our article noted that Covid-19 could move quickly off the West Coast to urban areas. We warned that Black people “cannot just sit back and wait for calamity to befall us.” In truth, our warning was too late, and our audience too small to be impactful.
Of the 512 coronavirus deaths in Louisiana, more than 70 percent were Black. In Michigan, where Blacks are 14 percent of the state’s population, 73 percent of the corona virus victims are Black. Similarly, in Chicago, Blacks are 30% of the city population, but registered 72% percent of the Covid-19 fatalities. Many states and cities have not been recording death by race data.
Why Black people are dying in higher numbers is no mystery. With more instances of underlying health issues like diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and asthma, compounded by higher numbers of folks without health insurance, Black communities are dry tinder. Covid-19 ignited the fire.
Even emergency rooms, normally poor people’s health care provider have been shut off because they’re more dangerous public spaces to contract the coronavirus. The poor were told don’t come here. And let’s not even talk about the doctors, nurses, and medical staff at these hospitals without protective gear and face masks.
In New York City’s Elmhurst Hospital that services lower-income residents, long lines wrapped around the corner for coronavirus testing on one side of the hospital before they ran out of tests. Meanwhile, on the other side of the hospital, refrigerated trucks (mobile morgues) loaded accumulating body bags of the departed.
Still, much of this tragedy could have been anticipated, as we did in our March 7 article. More unexpected were the ramifications of the rapidly escalating shelter-in-place orders issues by cities and states that shut down work and mobility literally overnight. The sudden explosion of mass unemployment left almost four million people out of work in one week.
Moreover, many Blacks working in low-paying jobs were not able to transition to telework jobs. Many Black service workers who were laid off didn't have health insurance plans. For Blacks working in essential city services like sanitation collection, the gig economy, delivery jobs, and grocery store workers remain in high-risk environments.
Another big issue is the problem of access to food. Low-income workers and individuals on public assistance cannot purchase on-line groceries to be delivered to their homes because EBT cards can’t be used on the web.
Just how aware Black people were of the dangers posed by the coronavirus is something that seriously needs to be explored. We were especially taken aback by the situation in Albany, Georgia a town of 75,000 people. There have been 39 deaths and over 900 reported coronavirus case. Most of the victims attended two funerals, where the virus exacted a heavy toll on mostly Black senior citizens.
If we knew anything, it was that we weren’t going to get any assistance from the White Nationalist Trump, and his administration. In the March 7 article, we stated the following:
“Should the coronavirus spread quickly and significantly threaten Black communities, risking treatment with experimental antivirals administered by a racist Trump administration will undoubtedly conjure visions of a modern-day Tuskegee Experiment.
We are just about at that point 30 days later. Buffeted by the press today, about the skyrocketing number of Black deaths from Covid-19, Trump said that he really wasn’t aware until yesterday that Black people were getting hit so hard. “I don’t like it,” he said.
But since his administration won’t do a damn thing, we know what comes next; Trump spouting more stories about Blacks taking his miracle cure, hydroxychloroquine. We can already hear him saying, “What do you have to lose?
In the meantime, we must keep fighting to save as many lives in the Black community as possible. Our southern rural areas are now in the crosshairs. We need to come up with some innovative ways to get our people fed, their medicines delivered, their children sheltered in place safely, and networks activated to check on each other.
Now is the time to crank up some creative uses of technology and social media to keep communicating with each other. We still have a way to go to get on the downward slope of this crisis. The worse may still be in front of us.
When this is over, and we have buried our dead, we need to have a serious discussion about what has happened here. Public officials, Black newspapers, churches, civic groups, black radio stations, barbershops, beauty shops, blacktwitter and every formal and informal Black communications network needs to think long and hard about what we’ve been saying or not saying this past two months about Covid-19.
We can blame others, and a lot of them deserve it. In the end however, we need to focus on what was in our control. We had a responsibility to each other safe. We’ve fallen short, but we’ll ready the next time.
Black-Nationalism.com Condemns Attacks on People of Asian Descent
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 04/06/20
Today, Black-Nationalism.com condemned the escalating attacks directed against people of Chinese and Asian heritage as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. New Black Nationalists are calling on Black people to take no part in these misguided and hateful actions against people of Asian descent.
Over seventy-three percent of these physical assaults, verbal threats, incidents of Asians being spat upon, and spatially barred in public places like parks, schools, and transportation nodes have been directed against Asian women. Sixty-four percent 64% of people attacked aren’t even from China. Almost half of the attacks have been against the property of Asian-owned businesses.
On March 30, a U.S. congresswoman said attacks on the Asian people in the U.S are scaling up to 100 incidents a day. New Black Nationalist regard these attacks as cowardly and despicable.
Spearheading the spike in violence against people of Asian descent, is the racist Trump who for two months denied the seriousness of the Covid 19 outbreak. He called it a “Democratic [Party] hoax.” Later it said it was just another strain of the flu that would “disappear like a miracle.” But when the ticking time bomb exploded in mid-March, Trump suddenly started calling the pandemic the “Chinese virus.”
First used on March 16, “The Apprentice” said he calls it the “China virus,” because “that’s where it came from. I don’t regret it, but they accused us of having done it through our soldiers.” Not to be outdone, a day later conservative groups organized by the Media Research Center, including anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ groups signed a March 17 letter to Trump asked him to investigate China’s role in spreading the novel coronavirus and hiding its origins. For the far-right wing anti-government “accelerationists” whose ranks include the New Zealand and the El Paso White Nationalist mass murderers, Covid-19 is a recruiting bonanza. Accelerationists believe America’s globalist, pluralistic society is irredeemable and degenerate. The faster American Empire unravels and is dismantled, the sooner the system will collapse. For them acts of violence that foments chaos will accelerate the U.S. governments' downfall.
What is being portrayed as the yellow Chinese peril, launching a stealth biological strike that suddenly hurled 3.5 million people out of work, metastasized across the country ravaging all human life in its path, and reducing the worlds greatest superpower to a pauper begging for rudimentary things like face masks and protection gowns has expanded the political battlefield for White Nationalists propaganda
Trump’s stunning ignorance and incompetence has aided the far-right accelerationist cause as confidence in the government’s ability to respond to the crisis is vindicating their messaging that the fate of Washington, D.C.'s global colossus is far more precarious than anyone previously imagined.
In this environment, Black people cannot be a party to anti-Chinese hysteria. Covid-19 has now penetrated our core urban areas. As we warned a few weeks ago, this Covid19 pandemic is going to exact a special kind of pain on Black enclaves across the country. At the Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York where refrigerated trucks were brought in to carry away twenty-plus bodies in one day, underserved communities and areas where people do not have health care insurance are going to endure untold suffering.
From all over the world, they came and celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans in February. Now that the party goers are gone, the legendary sixty percent Black city that gave the world jazz and blues is besieged by Covid-19. Detroit, where I grew up in the 60s on Motown’s unique bouffant and chiffon soul music of a new Black generation, now finds itself in the crosshairs of the Covid 19 pandemic. With a population that is eighty-four percent Black, Detroit, once the 5th largest city in America has dropped to 21st. On the ropes and fighting for its life, Covid-19 could administer a devastating blow to this legendary Black metropolis.
Before this bio-warfare is over, all of us are going to lose some very special people. We are not going to be the same. The question is will we be better or worse? More determined or less?
We can never be better if we yield to the temptation to scapegoat and victimize innocent people, least of all Chinese people whose government was complicit in inflicting a grave atrocity on them. We of all people know that too well.
What's Next for the Black-Left After Bernie Sanders Collapse
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 03/20/20
“First, we need someone to beat Trump. Then we’ll talk about the revolution.”
In the aftermath of the March 17 elections, Bernie Sanders Democratic presidential hopes have now become a mathematical impossibility. The Covid-19 crisis has reduced the remaining primaries to a ceremonial curtain call on the campaign. So, what comes next for the Black-left that's substantially invested in Bernie's anti-establishment socialist insurgency?
Over the past decade a reconfigured Black-left has emerged. It’s decidedly anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and pro-electoral reform, skews feminist, millennial, and social-democratic, while outwardly expressing skepticism toward Black Nationalism under the euphemism of combatting “narrow nationalism.”
This trend which we characterize as Neo-Black Social Democracy has serious firepower and a big political upside. What they lack is a consensus agenda, and an organizing center or dominant personality that defines their political identity.
Thus, the contemporary Black-left, with Sanders campaign activists and supporters like philosopher-king Cornell West, National Co-Chair Nina Turner, Sanders National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray, leading activist Benjamin Dixon, former NAACP Executive Director Ben Jealous, rapper Chuck D., Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Antar Lumumba and Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrice Cullors, are punching below their weight class with Black voters.
Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic’s bizarre suspension of normal campaign activities until the July Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, may be an opportune moment for the Black-left to recalibrate its assumptions and path forward.
From now until the convention in Milwaukee, power negotiations between the Biden and Sanders camp will be going full tilt. Are Black concerns going to be on the table and concessions made to accommodate Black voter demands?
Joe Biden believes the hype that he’s the Black electorates’ anointed candidate, whose sinking campaign was raised from the dead by divine providence and South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn’s timely endorsement.
Having won the Black vote by large margins, Biden’s not feeling the pressure to cede to further Black demands, especially demands that could scare White educated suburban Republican women—you know, the sophisticated Becky’s who still aren’t terrified enough of Trump as he rips away their reproductive rights and allows Covid-19 to ravage their communities.
Quite the opposite, when Biden insist in every campaign speech these days that, “Democrats don’t won’t a revolution, they want results,” he’s issuing a declaration that Sanders socialist riot has been suppressed. Indeed, Biden’s concession to Black voters and Black women in particular, will be naming a Black woman as his Vice-Presidential running mate.
While the conventional wisdom gives the inside track to Senator Kamala Harris or Georgia’s Stacy Abrams, don't be surprised if former National Security Advisor Susan Rice ends up getting tapped for the job.
Nevertheless, the Black-left should reject the minimalist logic of being satisfied with a Black Vice-Presidential nominee. Biden doesn’t support a bill to study reparations. He doesn’t support decriminalization of marijuana. We could go on, but these types of issues are more important than a VP selection. Will the Black-left make specific demands that are conditional for their support in November or give “Fighting Joe” a free ride? Time will tell.
These issues raise the central question; What does the Black-left want, and how do they envision their association with the Sanders campaign bringing them closer to their goals? The Black-left has several options to consider:
*Does the Black-left want to merge its forces with Sander’s existing democratic-socialist machine and become dominant players in its leadership and policy making structure?
*Is the Black-left’s long-term goal to engineer a radical left-wing takeover of the Democratic Party?
This is Bernie Sanders last presidential run. While he remains the titular leader and driving force of the Democratic Socialist movement, if dynamic Hispanic, Black, and women leaders don’t emerge to replace Sanders and the “Bernie Bros” like advisor Jeff Weaver, the movement will stagnate.
On the flip side, Biden could lose the election to Trump, thereby strengthening the Democrats left-socialist impulses. But even if Biden wins, he would likely be too old to pursue a second term. Is the Black-left prepping a future presidential candidate now for 2024?
What we may be looking at is a permanent state of affairs in which the Democratic Party will be locked in a soft civil war between "moderates" and "the radical left", as the increasingly Black-and-Brown party continues to move further left, and more social-democratic.
*Does the Black-left want to deploy some version of an Inside-Out Strategy that Cornel West urged Black Lives Matter to adopt in 2015 when he said; “The Black Lives Matter movement must stay in the streets as well as put pressure on the powers that be on the inside. We need an inside-outside strategy. We can’t just be solely outside and have no impact inside. We need both fronts.”
*Does the Black-left want to engage in a national strategy to build a bottom-up electoral movement that concentrates on winning local and state offices and places more emphasis on running independent, third-party and socialist candidates?
*Does the Black-left want to mainly shift to a metapolitics strategy of eschewing elections and primarily radicalizing Blacks through agitation, propaganda, arts, culture, and community organizing. This approach emphasizes winning the war of ideas and changing the political culture so decisively that the political system will be forced to respond on its own. The Vietnam War was a metapolitical struggle that reversed public support for war primarily through educating the public and exposing America’s imperialist aims.
Irrespective of which path or model the Black-left decides to adopt, there must be some kind of working consensus achieved for their efforts to cohere and have the organizational strength to exert its will.
Looking at the diverse forces that currently make up the Black-left or Neo-Black Social Democrats, achieving relative unity on a baseline of issues will have its challenges, but neither should the task be overly difficult.
New Black Nationalists assessment of the forces comprising today’s Black-left includes the following groups: progressive Black millennials, progressive Black artists, alternative cultural personalities, left-leaning Black feminists, radicalizing Black women, LGBTQ activists, Black socialists, left-wing Black Democrats, Black Lives Matter (BLM) anti-fascists, anti-White Nationalist resistors, various and sundry 60s Black Power veterans.
How the Black-left approaches the end game of the 2020 general elections and responds to its outcome is a matter of great importance to New Black Nationalists. Generally speaking, we don’t subscribe to electoral participation as a meaningful vehicle to achieve our ultimate goal of creating a Black nation-state when American Empire ultimately collapses.
However, we aren’t naïve or so filled with illusions of “revolutionary purity” that we don’t recognize major shifts in the peoples' mood and the balance of forces that occurs in elections and alters the political battlefield.
Nor are we absolutists. As conditions change, alliances and coalitions vacillate, shift, and split. Some forces become more revolutionary, others less so. As the history of Russia and China attest, revolutionaries often have to temporarily enter elections as a tactical or strategic consideration to advance their cause.
Irrespective of who wins the presidency, in the 2020 elections, it's going to be a game changing moment with consequential implications for the future. When thousands of Black people who presumably are going to vote for Joe Biden in November said, “First, we need someone to beat Trump. Then we’ll talk about the revolution,” they weren’t just making an excuse not to vote for Bernie. That is something radicals and revolutionaries should think long and hard about.
We trust and hope in the coming days that the Black-left will make wise choices and acquit itself well.
Black People versus Bloomberg: The Indictment
by Webster Bernell Brooks lll on 02/21/20
From 2002-2012, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed the most draconian and comprehensive anti-Black "police state" in modern American history. Now he wants to be president. Black people must fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July to bury Bloomberg's presidential candidacy in the graveyard of racists and thuggish oligarchs where it belongs.
Bloomberg is the nothing more than the flipside of Donald Trump. He watched Trump manipulate Caucasian fears of a Black and Brown majority into a White Nationalist mob that elected him president. Now, Bloomberg believes he can bamboozle Black people into forgiving and forgetting his racist transgressions and elect him to save us from Trump’s tyrannical rule.
But Black people won't forget Bloomberg’s Stop and Frisk policy that subjected five million Black and Brown New Yorkers to illegal “suspicionless” street searches and seizures by the NYPD. They won't forget him boasting that, “The way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them against the wall and frisk them.”
Black people won't forget how the NYPD demographically mapped 800,000 Muslims (175,000 of whom were Black), conducted photo and video surveillance, deployed police informants, recruited “mosque crawlers” to infiltrate Islamic places of worship and schools, and tracked people converting to the Islamic faith.
Black people will remember how Bloomberg’s administration intimidated, harassed, and forced over 1.5 million people of color to be fingerprinted like criminals to receive food stamps. Bloomberg said "We're just stopping people from breaking the law." In other words, Bloomberg believes Blacks are a crime spree waiting to happen, thus our communities must be occupied by overwhelming police force, and we must be surveilled, fingerprinted, tracked, intimidated, and scapegoated.
That brings us to the pure savagery of Bloomberg's racist machinations when he spent a decade and $6 million dollars fighting a settlement in the case of the Central Park Five, (five Black and Hispanic youth) who were falsely convicted of raping a white woman jogging in Central Park. They were exonerated when DNA evidence proved their innocence.
It was only after Bloomberg left office that Bill DeBlasio, who succeeded him as mayor, settled the $41 million Central Park Five lawsuit and ended the fingerprinting of food stamp recipients in his first year in office.
Michael Bloomberg is not only Trump turned inside out, Trump is the entire rationale for his candidacy. To beat the billionaire Trump, the media and Democratic Party elites argue that you need a billionaire like Bloomberg.
"You can't bring a knife to a gunfight" they say, suggesting that Bloomberg knows how get "Mob Deep" with Trump and beat him at his own game.
In this New York tale, Trump, like his German homeboy Dutch Shultz, is the loud-mouth, destructive brute who wrecked fear and havoc in Harlem to take over Bumpy Johnson’s lucrative numbers racket. Bloomberg is the modern-day Meyer Lansky, the demure Jewish financial wizard who bankrolled Lucky Luciano’s hit on Shultz, then brokered an arrangement to protect Johnson’s numbers operation for a percentage of the profits.
But Michael Bloomberg doesn’t know us. He can spread his $63 billion war chest around to grease the palms of some Black politicians, preachers, and 501 non-profits to skim a percentage of the Black vote. But that's not going to fly on the Black street.
We’re not moral cretins. We're not like Trump’s supporters who don’t care that he’s a criminal, tax cheater, scammer, procurer of women of easy virtue, and congenital liar.
That’s why this call to Stop Bloomberg is about far more than politics. This is gut check time for the Darker Nation. It's about whether Black people are still imbued with moral authority and integrity. If Black Democrats support a winning Bloomberg nomination, they will whitewash his racist and draconian actions against their own communities, thereby constituting the severest debasement our collective self-respect and dignity.
As Black Nationalists, we don’t have a horse in this race. Nor do we believe any candidate can remedy the ills of American Empire’s imperialist system that is hurtling inexorably into crisis. But neither do we dismiss “bourgeoise politics” as an inconsequential reformist diversion disconnected from future revolutionary possibilities.
Quite the opposite, we are on the cusp of a political and generational sea change. It matters whether Blacks en masse grovel and sell out to an arrogant financial baron like Bloomberg, as his political mercenaries for ten pieces of silver. It matters if we are so afraid of a stupid-ass White Nationalist like Trump, that we can't see his very existence as president is accelerating the decline of American Empire, and magnifying how brittle the Cathedral's foundation is in its sunset moment.
We're being serious here. Are Black people really that afraid of Donald Trump? And why are Black Democrats debating the merits of a Bloomberg candidacy anyway? Blacks Dems control an overwhelming bloc vote in the party to determine who the nominee will be if they decide to throw their weight behind one candidate.
No. It seems Black Dems are intent on giving away their power, chasing after white men who made their careers unleashing law enforcement on our communities to keep us under control. Such are the qualifications of Bloomberg, Biden and Buttigieg. This muddled state of affairs, we are told, is a sign of progress because Black people are demonstrating that we're not a political monolith!
All that being said, it will also matter a great deal if Black Dems swing the other way and back the Democratic Socialist insurgency of Bernie Sanders. After all, the whole Bloomberg project is about stopping the radical octogenarian Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination.
Bloomberg is the firewall to contain a Democratic Socialist Black viral breakout. He is the last line of defense in 2020 for the Democratic Party establishment and elites. Even though Bloomberg got beat down hard in his first debate in Las Vegas this week, he's not going anywhere.
All the other "moderate candidates," except one (Biden, Buttigieg or Warren) is going to run out of money before the end of March: Bloomberg won't. And if Sanders doesn't have enough votes to win the nomination on the first ballot in Milwaukee, Bloomberg will become a central player to either win the nomination or name the person he is willing to put his money behind. This is why Black-Nationalism.com predicts Black people will have to fight Bloomberg and his machine all the way to the Democratic Convention.
What we’re going to find out over the next three months is how much of a fighting mood Black people are in. That too is going to matter, because in case you haven't noticed, Trump, the Republican Party, the Alt-Right and White Nationalists are bringing the fight to our doorstep.
New Black Nationalists Hand Grenade Blog Archive
