When Rodney King was snatched up into the whip and whirl of the winds of racial history in this country thru his savage beating in 1991 and the resultant revolt in 1992, it was an invitation of history he had no idea would come, no interest at first in accepting and ultimately, no way to engage it except as the man he was and tried to be.
The Institute of the Black World 21st Century has just completed Town Hall Meetings in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Baltimore to increase public awareness about the devastating impact of the “War on Drugs” on the Black community as a racially biased strategy/policy.
Friday, May 18th at Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) convened a Town Hall Meeting on the “War on Drugs” and its devastating impact on Black communities. Nationally syndicated talk show host Warren Ballentine, Keynote Presenter for the event, told an attentive audience that “it’s time to consider legalization to take the profit out of the drug traffic and stop the violence and killing in our communities.”
The Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) is in the process of convening Town Hall Meetings in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Baltimore on the devastating effects of the “War on Drugs” on Black America and gearing up for State of the Black World Conference III (SOBWC) at Howard University in D.C. in November after the 2012 presidential election.
A large audience packed the lower auditorium of the historic Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in downtown Washington, D.C. Thursday, May 3rd for a Town Hall Meeting to discuss the War on Drugs and other criminal justice policies a growing number of leaders feel have had destructive effects on Black families and communities. Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, President, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, set the tone by lamenting the growth of the prison-jail industrial complex as a result of criminal justice policies which target Black communities.
Dr. Ron Daniels, President of the New York based Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), announced today that the organization is intensifying its efforts to end what he describes as a “racially- biased” War on Drugs by holding Town Hall Meetings in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, PA and Baltimore, MD in the next few weeks. President Richard M. Nixon launched the War on Drugs 41 years ago to halt the trafficking of illegal drugs in the U.S.
The Institute of the Black World 21st Century Presents a Town Hall Meeting
Should Drugs Be Legalized to Stop the Violence and Killing in Black Communities?
Thursday, May 3, 2012 6:00PM (Doors open at 5:30PM)
Mount Carmel Baptist Church, 901 3rd Street, NW, Washington, D.C., Rev. Dr. Joseph Evans, Sr. Pastor
All across America a massive mobilization is in full force demanding justice in the horrific and unjustified death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. It was a vigilante style killing aided and abetted by Florida’s wild, wild west “Stand Your Ground” law. The Trayvon Martin case has struck a nerve in Black America, not only because of the tragic and unnecessary death of a promising young African American man, but because this case is symbolic of a broader pattern of assault on young Black males throughout the country.
March 10-12, 1972, an estimated 10,000 Black people converged on a small steel town in Indiana for one of the greatest gatherings in the history of Africans in America – the Gary National Black Political Convention. As I reflect on more than a half century on the frontlines of the Black Freedom Struggle, anyone who is intimately familiar with my work is aware that the Gary Black Political Convention was one of the defining moments for an emerging social/political activist from Youngstown, Ohio.
On April 27th at the Schomburg Center in New York family, longtime allies/friends and the community will gather to share in the celebration of my 70th Birthday. Personally, I’m not much on birthday celebrations, so the event will be a benefit to support the work of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), the organization which I have devoted my energies building for the past decade. I view IBW as a signature/legacy initiative – the culmination of nearly a half century of advocacy and organizing on the frontlines of the Black Freedom Struggle.
Last night’s compelling PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name is a painful reminder of the depths to which this nation invested in white supremacy. The story of how Blacks in post-Civil War America were cast into corporate slavery and exploited by the “rule of law” to enrich economic elites and provide poor whites the comfort of relative advantage by race should widen the public’s understanding of racial disparities that are evident today.
Haiti Pilgrimage Delegation January 17 – 21, 2012 Communiqué Two years after the earthquake which devastated the world’s first Black Republic, the Haiti Support Project (HSP) led a diverse delegation…