Political Community and Environmental Prisoners, The BP oil spill effect on Black Fishermen…
Monday, July 19, 2010 at 05:18AM America has openly stated that they do not have any political prisoners locked up in their jails. If you ask this same question to Black people in America we would have a different answer. I can think of a few political prisoners like Matula Shakur, Mumia Abdul Jamal and these are some of the most popular cases so most people have heard of these two individuals. But there are many others like Michael Davis Africa, Herman Bell or Veronza Bowers, Jr. who is considered Americas longest incarcerated political prisoner in the world. We have been politically imprisoned since our time here in America from not being able to vote to getting locked up for believing we had the right to vote.
In our communities we have been terrorized and imprisoned by having bombs dropped on us for trying to establish our own business and business communities like Black Wall Street. On May 31st, 1921 white people in America attacked our communities and destroyed thriving black owned and operated businesses and killed Blacks young and old In Oklahoma for trying to better themselves. The government of America backed the white opposition in their actions and dropped bombs on us to destroy what we had built. Today we are imprisoned in our communities by white cops who shoot us down like animals and never go to jail for it. We have cases of a 90 year old women in Atlanta (Black Mecca) being shot down to a 7 year old little girl in Detroit being shot by police in her sleep. How can our children dream of change if they are being murdered while they are dreaming? Quite disturbingly the rate of Black people being killed by police and racist mobs had increased since the election of America’s so called first Black President.
One of the first protest I was involved in as a young activist was against waste management companies trying to dump waste sites in the Black community in Minneapolis Minnesota. The company wanted to put dump sites right in the community next to schools, parks and houses where Blacks, Latinos and poor Whites lived. Now some may say, “what is the problem?” but if you take into consideration the fact that the environment is being poisoned and the air polluted and the aftermath of these many careless and irresponsible practices of these big, unchecked industries on health causing all kinds of diseases such as cancer, tumors and birth defects etc. then you realize, without question, “why this is a problem.”
It is 2010 and in some respects and in a number of arenas the notion of going green is now the popular thing to do or at least talk about doing and incorporating into one’s business model and mission, but 20 years ago going green was a newer, less acceptable idea, highly resisted by large industries and corporations because cutting back on habits that were environmentally unsound translated as loss of company income.
The Black fisherman in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are feeling the same helpless feeling that our political prisoners feel when looking to the government for aid or compensation, for the BP oil spill. The government pretends like it isn’t affecting us in a different way than it effects the rest of America but of course it does. The money from the BP package is being distributed first to the people along the Florida Keys. The keys don’t have black fisherman but they do have a rich community full of mansions and condos that wealthy Americans rent and live in. They are the first to receive money then it is passed around to everyone else since the fishermen are obviously not in Florida the money when and if it comes will not be much when it gets to them, sounds a lot like the aid for Katrina victims. Until Truth Prevails my Eyes will be watching.
http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/pps+pows/pplist-alpha.shtml
http://www.veronza.org/G-Summary.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill
http://www.myblacknews.net/the-forgotten-black-fishermen-in-the-gulf-oil-spill/14398





























