A lot has happened since the July 4th Independence Day celebrations of 2020 when yours truly saw published:
Not All Americans Celebrate the Birth of a Racist Slave Owning USA Homicidal at Home Genocidal Abroad
Prominently placed statues of famous racists are no longer acceptable, just as policemen shooting African Americans has finally become unacceptable. Why not dispense with the far out illusion of a racist colonial capitalist USA being worth celebrating.’
June nineteenth is now a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 has been given major attention both in Tulsa and in prime time evening news coverage. Graves are being dug up and compensation talked about besides acknowledging the indescribable horror of the inhuman behavior of the White perpetrators.
On March 26, Evanston Illinois became the first U.S. city to issue slavery reparations. Critics have said a plan by Evanston, Illinois, to give housing grants to Black residents isn’t enough. But experts say this could be just the beginning.
The city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family over the Black man’s death in police custody. The former police officer who killed George Floyd on a Minneapolis street last year, was sentenced Friday to 22 and half years in prison. There had been demonstrations the year before in 140 US cities and in many cities internationally – in Europe, new movements against racism there.
May 30, 2021, the remains of 215 Indigenous children have been found in a mass grave on the grounds of a former residential school in Canada. Investigations found that many of the children who attended the school had suffered from physical abuse, rape and malnutrition. This has been a major news event involving condemnation of the Canadian Catholic Church.
After years of negotiations, the German government recognized the atrocities committed against Namibia’s Herero and Nama ethnic groups as genocide. CBS News May 28, 2021.
The mayor of Amsterdam has apologized for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capital’s former rulers in the global slave trade. AP news wire, July 1, 2021
This writer finds it quite a spectacular turn around to see so much willingness of people in important positions to admit to so many deadly crimes of racism both in and outside the United States of America.
What still seems missing is some calling attention to the enormous loss of life from similarly racist US led and US backed deadly military action today throughout more than a half dozen nations in the Middle East and Africa suffering US regime change wars.
In any case, Fourth of July birth of a nation Independence Day celebrations will undoubtably be somewhat affected, if not quite noticeably less boisterous in general, then at least subdued among certain swaths of citizenry sensitive about slavery having been inherent for so long in US history.
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.
