Mikey Likes It!: Tulsi Gabbard and Claudia Jones

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Tulsi Gabbard and Claudia Jones

If the election were held today, Tulsi Gabbard would get my vote for president.

I think we could be an amazing country with Tulsi as the president.

Saw this:

#ClaudiaJonesToldUs

blackwomenradicals, BlackWomenStandUp, BAJI and

2 replies111 retweets235 likes

I'm new to Claudia Jones so I went to WIKIPEDIA:

Claudia Jones

Born	Claudia Vera Cumberbatch 15 February 1915 Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad
Died	24 December 1964 (aged 49) London, United Kingdom
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery
Nationality	Trinidadian
Other names	Claudia Cumberbatch Jones
Occupation	Journalist, activist
Years active	1936–64
Political party	Communist Party USA
Family	Mother, father and two sisters

Claudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch (21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964), was a Trinidad-born journalist and activist. As a child she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a political activist and black nationalist through Communism, using the false name Jones as "self-protective disinformation".^[1] As a result of her political activities, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently resided in the United Kingdom. She founded Britain's first major black newspaper, West Indian Gazette (WIG), in 1958.^[2]

Early life[edit]

Claudia Vera Cumberbatch was born in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad, on 21 February 1915. When she was nine years old, her family emigrated to New York City following the post-war cocoa price crash in Trinidad. Her mother died five years later, and her father eventually found work to support the family. Jones won the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at her junior high school. In 1932, due to poor living conditions, she was struck with tuberculosis, a condition that irreparably damaged her lungs and plagued her for the rest of her life. She graduated from high school, but her family was so poor that they could not afford to attend the graduation ceremony.^[3]

United States career[edit]

Bandshell in Eastlake Park in Phoenix where in 1948 Jones spoke to a crowd of 1,000 people about equal rights for African Americans.^[4]

Despite being academically bright, classed as an immigrant woman she was severely limited in her career choices, and so instead of going to college Jones began working in a laundry, and subsequently found other retail work in Harlem. During this time she joined a drama group, and began to write a column called "Claudia Comments" for a Harlem journal.^[5]

In 1936, trying to find organisations supporting the Scottsboro Boys,^[6]^[7] she joined the Young Communist League USA.^[8] In 1937 she joined the editorial staff of the Daily Worker, rising by 1938 to become editor of the Weekly Review. After the Young Communist League became American Youth for Democracy during World War II, Jones became editor of its monthly journal, Spotlight. After the war, Jones became executive secretary of the Women's National Commission, secretary for the Women's Commission of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and in 1952 took the same position at the National Peace Council. In 1953, she took over the editorship of Negro Affairs.^[9]

Black Feminist Leader in the Communist Party[edit]

As a member of the Communist Party USA and a black national feminist, Jones identified with black women's oppression, known as triple oppression. Her ideology consisted of a conceptualization of race, class, and gender within a Marxist lens.^[10] Her focus was on "an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women."^[11] However, Jones was often considered more radical than Marx because she did not believe that capitalism was the only oppressor contributing to sexism and racism. The Communist Party often failed to acknowledge women's difficulty in finding and securing work, in which Jones focused on growing the party's support for black and white women. She sought job training programs, equal pay for equal work, government controls on food prices and funding for wartime childcare programs. Jones supported a subcommittee to address the "women's question." She insisted on development in the party on theoretical training of women comrades, organization of women into mass organizations, daytime classes for women, and "babysitter" funds to allow women's activism.^[11]

"An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!"[edit]

Jones' best known piece of writing, "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!", appeared in 1949 in the magazine Political Affairs. It exhibits her development of what later came to be termed "intersectional" analysis within a Marxist framework. In it, she wrote:

The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced.

Historically, the Negro woman has been the guardian, the protector, of the Negro family.... As mother, as Negro, and as worker, the Negro woman fights against the wiping out of the Negro family, against the Jim Crow ghetto existence which destroys the health, morale, and very life of millions of her sisters, brothers, and children.

Viewed in this light, it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the Negro people in general, but of Negro women in particular. Nothing so exposes the drive to fascization in the nation as the callous attitude which the bourgeoisie displays and cultivates toward Negro women.^[12]

Deportation[edit]

An elected member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Jones also organised and spoke at events. As a result of her membership of CPUSA and various associated activities, in 1948 she was arrested and sentenced to the first of four spells in prison.^[13] Incarcerated on Ellis Island, she was threatened with deportation to Trinidad.

Following a hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she was found in violation of the McCarran Act for being an alien (non-US citizen) who had joined the Communist Party. Several witnesses testified to her role in party activities, and she had identified herself as a party member since 1936 when completing her Alien Registration on 24 December 1940, in conformity with the Alien Registration Act. She was ordered to be deported on 21 December 1950.^[14]

In 1951, aged 36 and in prison, she suffered her first heart attack.^[9] That same year, she was tried and convicted with 11 others, including her friend Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, of "un-American activities" under the Smith Act,^[15] specifically activities against the United States government.^[3] The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal. In 1955, Jones began her sentence of a year and a day at the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia.^[9] She was released on 23 October 1955.^[16]

She was refused entry to Trinidad and Tobago, in part because the British colonial governor Major General Sir Hubert Elvin Rance considered that "she may prove troublesome".^[15] She was eventually offered residency in the United Kingdom on humanitarian grounds, and federal authorities agreed to allow it when she agreed to cease contesting her deportation.^[17] On 7 December 1955, at Harlem's Hotel Theresa, 350 people met to see her off.^[9]

United Kingdom career[edit]

Jones arrived in London two weeks later, at a time when the British African-Caribbean community was expanding. However, on engaging the political community in the UK, she was disappointed to find that many British communists were hostile to a black woman.^[18]

Activism[edit]

At this time in Britain, many landlords, shops and even some government establishments displayed signs saying "No Irish, No Coloured, No Dogs". Jones found a community that needed active organisation.^[15] She became involved in the British African-Caribbean community to organise both access to basic facilities, as well as the early movement for equal rights.^[13]

Supported by her friends Trevor Carter, Nadia Cattouse, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Beryl McBurnie, Pearl Prescod and her lifelong mentor Paul Robeson, Jones campaigned against racism in housing, education and employment. She addressed peace rallies and the Trade Union Congress, and visited Japan, Russia, and China, where she met with Mao Zedong.^[19]

In the early 1960s, her health failing, Jones helped organise campaigns against the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill (passed in April 1962), which would make it harder for non-Whites to migrate to Britain. She also campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela, and spoke out against racism in the workplace.^[13]

West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News, 1958[edit]

From her experiences in the United States, Jones believed that "people without a voice were as lambs to the slaughter."^[19] In March 1958 above a barber's shop in Brixton,^[15] she founded and thereafter edited the anti-imperialist, anti-racist paper West Indian Gazette, its full title subsequently displayed on its masthead as West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News, (WIG).^[20]^[21] The paper became a key contributor to the rise of consciousness within the Black British community.^[19]

Jones wrote in her last published essay, "The Caribbean Community in Britain", in Freedomways (Summer 1964):^[22]

The newspaper has served as a catalyst, quickening the awareness, socially and politically, of West Indians, Afro-Asians and their friends. Its editorial stand is for a united, independent West Indies, full economic, social and political equality and respect for human dignity for West Indians and Afro-Asians in Britain, and for peace and friendship between all Commonwealth and world peoples.

Always strapped for cash, WIG folded eight months and four editions after Jones's death in December 1964.^[9]

Notting Hill riots and "Caribbean Carnival", 1959[edit]

Claudia Jones blue plaque, Notting Hill

In August 1958, four months after the launch of WIG, occurred the Notting Hill race riots and similar disturbances in Robin Hood Chase, Nottingham.^[23] In view of the racially driven analysis of these events by the existing British daily newspapers, Jones began receiving visits from members of the black British community and also from various national leaders responding to the concern of their citizens, including Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, Norman Manley of Jamaica, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Phyllis Shand Allfrey and Carl La Corbinière of the West Indies Federation.^[9]

As a result, Jones identified the need to "wash the taste of Notting Hill and Nottingham out of our mouths".^[9] It was suggested that the British black community should have a carnival; it was December 1958, so the next question was: "In the winter?" Jones used her connections to gain use of St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959 for the first Mardi-Gras-based carnival,^[24] directed by Edric Connor^[25] (who in 1951 had arranged for the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra to appear at the Festival of Britain)^[26] and headlining the Boscoe Holder Dance Troupe, jazz guitarist Fitzroy Coleman and singer Cleo Laine;^[25] the event was televised nationally by the BBC. These early celebrations were epitomised by the slogan: "A people's art is the genesis of their freedom."^[23]

A footnote on the front cover of the original 1959 souvenir brochure states: "A part of the proceeds [from the sale] of this brochure are to assist the payments of fines of coloured and white youths involved in the Notting Hill events."^[27] Jones and the West Indian Gazette also organised five other annual indoor Caribbean Carnival cabarets at such London venues as Seymour Hall, Porchester Hall and the Lyceum Ballroom, which events are seen as precursors of the celebration of Caribbean Carnival that culminated in the Notting Hill Carnival.^[23]

Death[edit]

Jones died on Christmas Eve 1964, aged 49, and was found on Christmas Day at her flat. A post-mortem declared that she had suffered a massive heart attack, due to heart disease and tuberculosis.^[15]

Her funeral on 9 January 1965 was a large and political ceremony, with her burial plot selected to be that located to the left of the tomb of her hero, Karl Marx, in Highgate Cemetery, North London.^[28] A message from Paul Robeson was read out:^[15]

It was a great privilege to have known Claudia Jones. She was a vigorous and courageous leader of the Communist Party of the United States, and was very active in the work for the unity of white and coloured peoples and for dignity and equality, especially for the Negro people and for women.

Legacy[edit]

The National Union of Journalists' Black Members' Council holds a prestigious annual Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture every October, during Black History Month, to honour Jones and celebrate her contribution to Black-British journalism.

The Claudia Jones Organisation was founded in London in 1982 to support and empower women and families of African-Caribbean heritage.^[29]^[30]

Winsome Pinnock's 1989 play A Rock in Water was inspired by the life of Claudia Jones.^[31]^[32]

Jones is named on the list of 100 Great Black Britons (2003).^[33]

In August 2008, a blue plaque was unveiled on the corner of Tavistock Road and Portobello Road commemorating Claudia Jones as the "Mother of Caribbean Carnival in Britain".^[34]^[35]

In October 2008, Britain's Royal Mail commemorated Jones with a special postage stamp.^[36]

She is the subject of a documentary by Z. Nia Reynolds, Looking for Claudia Jones.^[37]

Commemoration of the 100th anniversary of her birth[edit]

Various activities took place from June 2014 onwards. The most successful were possibly those organised by Community Support, which put substantial resources into basic research into aspects of her life and work.

This led to new revelations and rediscoveries about Claudia Jones, not included in the three printed biographies, or the film biography.

Community Support organised A Claudia Jones 100 Day on the 100th anniversary of her birth at Kennington Park Estate Community Centre on Saturday, 21 February 2015. This began with a guided tour showing her two main residences while she lived in London, and the former West Indian Gazette office nearby.

There was also a celebration at The Cloth, in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, near to her birthplace, on the same day.^[38]

The Day was associated with an event held on the previous evening at Claudia Jones Organisation in Hackney, which featured a screening of the film Looking for Claudia Jones by Z. Nia Reynolds.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, February 13, 2019.

This morning, XINHUA reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Tuesday met with acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan in Baghdad and expressed the rejection to any permanent foreign military bases on the Iraqi territory.
Abdul Mahdi's comment came during a meeting with Shanahan in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where the two sides discussed "the development of relations between the two countries, the war against terrorism and developments in the region," a statement by Abdul Mahdi's media office said after the meeting.

But there already are foreign bases on Iraqi soil. And Adel Abdul Mahdi knows that. i guess we're back to Nancy Pelosi's definition from a little over ten years ago -- nothing is permanent. Bases may be in Iraq, Nancy agreed, US bases, but at some point, over years and years and years, things turn to dust so nothing is permanent.

From a ditz to Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM):

Shanahan insists that the US has a “limited role” the intend to stick to in Iraq, and that the US will remain in the country by invitation. How long will that invitation last?

That’s not clear at all, as several Iraqi political blocks are pushing Abdul-Mahdi for a formal timeline for the end of the US presence. With ISIS effectively defeated, Iraqi MPs see little reason for a large US military presence to remain.

Which is a solid take; however, as we all to often forget, the continued US presence has always been allowed for one reason The US-installed government fears being overthrown. Yes, that was most obvious when the deeply paranoid Nouri al-Maliki was prime minister due to his constant public statements that there were plots against him and that this group or that group was a terrorist and blah blah blah. But it is fear of the Iraqi people that has always led the post-2003 leaders to allow US troops to stay in Iraq. And any potential threat -- real or imagined -- results in panic on all sides. (See Barack Obama's rush to send in US troops in the summer of 2014.)

Shanahan is now out of Iraq.

He's gone on to meet with NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In Iraq, the Shi'ite militias linked to Iran are garnering some press attention. Naib Bulos (LOS ANGELES TIMES) notes:

Last month, according to local media reports quoting key politicians and others, the Fatah party persuaded the government to give the Hashd control of the Mutassem Co., one of the largest state-owned construction contractors in Iraq. The Hashd intends to use its fighters to pour cement, pave roads and repair homes as part of the effort to rebuild the country after so many years of war.

Its growing influence has stirred fear in Washington that the Hashd could help Iran circumvent U.S. sanctions, which severely limit its ability to export its goods and do business with other countries.

The U.S. government also has reason to be concerned about its ability to maintain a military presence in Iraq.

John Davison (REUTERS) adds:

Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries that helped Iraqi forces drive the Sunni IS out of its last strongholds in Iraq have taken control of the thriving trade in scrap metal retrieved from the battlefield, according to scrap dealers and others familiar with the trade.
Scrapyard owners, steel plant managers and legislators from around the city of Mosul, the de facto IS capital from 2014 to 2017, described to Reuters how the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have made millions of dollars from the sale of anything from wrecked cars and damaged weapons to water tanks and window frames.
The PMF deny involvement. “The PMF does not have anything to do with any trade activities in Mosul, scrap or otherwise,” a PMF security official in Mosul said.

Considering the abuses these militias have heaped on civilians, it's scary to think they'll now be over scrap metal, especially "wrecked cars." I'd hate to be the Sunni family arguing with the militia that our car worked just fine and we weren't getting rid of it.

ADDED:

Meanwhile, THE CANADIAN PRESS reports researcher and University of Toronto PhD candidate Tracy L. Spurrier is being honored for her work in helping to discover Queen Hama, "a long-lost Mesopotamian queen." They note:

Queen Hama's story began some 3,000 years ago in the lost city of Assyria and is closely tied to another royal, Queen Mullissu-mukannishat-Ninua, who placed a curse on the tomb she'd be buried in."Anyone later who removes my throne from before the shades of the dead, may his spirit receive no bread!" the inscription reads.

The tombs were lost until the late 1980s when researchers excavated a palace in Nimrud, near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Inside they found the bones of the queen who laid the curse along with those of several other unidentified queens.

The archeologists also discovered a treasure trove of gold, Spurrier said.

"It's amazing, it rivals King Tut in terms of detail and quality," she said.

‏ @TracyLSpurrier

We all need jewelry of us w/our personal goddess, lion spirit animal, & badass royal women symbol - the scorpion. 
Read all about Assyrian Queen Hama, her gold, & my research finding her. 
#Mesopotamia #Iraq #Nimrud #Tombs #queens #Assyrian
theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto… @globeandmail

Back in 2017, Traci Watson (USA TODAY) explained:

Hama died young, and perhaps suddenly, hinting at why she was interred in a bronze coffin rather than the usual stone sarcophagus. She was no more than 20, but the gold crowns and other riches in her grave signal her power and wealth.
“She was so young when she died, and we don’t know how,” says Tracy Spurrier of the University of Toronto in Canada, author of a recent study identifying Hama. But “she was clearly an important person, and she deserves to be remembered.”
Hama was queen of Assyria, an empire based in what is now Iraq and stretching as far as Egypt. Hama probably left politics to her husband, King Shalmaneser IV, who ruled during the mid 8th-century BC.
But Assyrian queens were “the holders of the wealth of the household,” controlling the royal residence and property, says Mark Altaweel of Britain’s University College London, who was not part of the study.

New content at THIRD: