By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 06, 2021
On March 25, Georgia’s Representative Park Cannon, a Black woman and state senator, was arrested for knocking on the door of the private office of Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, as he and six white men signed a law that effectively suppressed the right of Black people to vote in local, state and federal elections. Cannon was charged with two felony counts for obstruction of law enforcement and disruption of the General Assembly that is likely to send her to prison for eight years if she is found guilty.
Georgia’s new law requires photo identification to vote absentee by mail, the source of many of the Democrats’ votes in state and federal elections. In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians voted with absentee ballots; 65 percent of whom voted for Joe Biden. The new bill makes it a crime to offer water or food to voters waiting in line. Longer lines are often found in “the poorer, densely populated communities that tend to vote Democratic” (New York Times, April 2).
President Joseph Biden criticized the law. He said: “This is Jim Crow in the 21st century. It must end. We have a moral and constitutional obligation to act.” He acknowledged that Republican sponsors were trying “to deny people the right to vote” and called it “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.” On Thursday, three voter-mobilization groups in Georgia sued to block the law alleging that “it illegally hurts Black voters under the federal Voting Rights Act” (Jeff Amy, AP, March 27).
This Republican bill was an act of revenge for the election defeat its party suffered in the presidential and state elections in 2020 and 2021. National Public Radio, a syndicator to over 1,000 public radio stations in the U.S., noted that the Georgia bill would “end up disenfranchising Black voters. It’s also seen as Republicans’ rebuke of the November and January elections in which the state’s Black voters led the election of two Democrats to the [U.S.] Senate” (March 26).
As we view the bill that the Georgia State Legislature passed, we should remember that the states rather than the federal government control the elections. It’s a very ominous sign then when it’s reported that 40 other state legislatures that are controlled by the Republicans are drafting similar bills to control their state’s elections. Although the Democratic-controlled House of Congress passed a bill that would set voting standards for all the states—such as allowing for automatic voter registration, allowing former felons to vote, and limiting how states can remove voters from the voting rolls—it is not likely that an evenly divided Senate would support such a bill.
America is hell-bent on retaining white supremacy as long as it can do so. That America will become “minority white” in 2045 only increases the anxiety prejudiced whites feel about this fall from grace and control of the country.
In 1972 James Baldwin said that America’s major problem was the maintenance of “white supremacy” and that “Blacks have never been free in this country, never was it intended that they should be free, and the spectre of so dreadful a freedom—the idea of a license so bloody and abandoned—conjures up another, unimaginable country, a country in which no decent, God-fearing white man or woman can live. A civilized country is, by definition, a country dominated by whites, in which the blacks clearly know their place. This is really the way the generality of white Americans feel, and they consider—quite rightly, as far as any concern for their interest goes—that it is they who, now, at long last, are being represented in Washington” (No Name in the Street).
It is not coincidental that on the same day that Governor Kemp signed his dastardly bill into law (March 25) UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the world celebrated the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He reminded us of the genocidal acts that were committed against Black people and warned that “although the transatlantic slave trade ended more than two centuries ago, ‘the ideas of white supremacy that underpinned it remain alive.’ We must end the legacy of this racist lie.
“We honor the memory of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade by educating about its history and acknowledging its impact on our world today, by urging everyone to tackle racism, injustice and build inclusive communities and economies.”
“Not only do the descendants of the 15 million victims of the transatlantic slave trade have to grapple with the pain and grief of their ancestors, but every day they navigate a world built by them, but not for them.”
After she was released, Canon wrote on social media: “We will not live in fear, and we will not be controlled. We have a right to our future and a right to our freedom” (Jeff Amy). By her simple act of knocking on Governor Kemp’s private office door, Cannon announced herself as the new Rosa Parks of the Voting rights era. Hers is a fight against the New Jim Crow Law of the 21st century; an attempt to build a world in which she and her Black and white compatriots could live in peace and dignity.
Fannie Lou Hamer, an American civil rights activist, reminded us: “Nobody’s free until Everybody’s free” to which Martin Luther King added: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught up an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Trinbagonians are an inescapable part of Black people’s struggle for justice anywhere they find themselves. This is the lesson we should learn from what’s taking place in Georgia today.
I find it hard to believe that in 21 Century that Black People in the USA do not have government issued photo ID or other proof of Citizenship which will enable them to vote. Even in the remotes jungle areas of India tribal people’s vote using picture I D cards.
Why is this an issue in the USA?
Denying people food and water while waiting in line to vote is morally wrong.
“America is hell-bent on retaining white supremacy as long as it can do so. That America will become “minority white” in 2045 only increases the anxiety prejudiced whites feel about this fall from grace and control of the country”
America foreign policy in the 1960s was to create subservient western nations that depended on America for their survival. This was articulate by the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“In the five decades of the Cold War there were only two considerable situations emanating from the region that had an overall impact on US strategy. The first one was the Cuban Revolution of 1959, that embodied the worst nightmares of the Department of State by leading a country of the hemisphere to communism and a direct association with the Soviet Union9 (curiously, the situation of Cuba continues to be the object of the same restrictive policies, such as the economic embargo and the Helms-Burton Amendment following the end of the Cold War and the abandonment of its content in the entire rest of the world).
The second one was the great political crisis that burst out in Central America after the toppling of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Jr. in Nicaragua in July 197910. Like a cluster bomb, this situation spread to neighboring countries, linking up with other bloody internal conflicts that opposed military forces backed by the United States against the armed organizations of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Guatemalan guerrilla groups gathered in the Union for Guatemalan National Resistance (URNG). In this case, a theoretical proposal
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formulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, known as the “domino effect”, was applied. Kissinger maintained that in the struggle against communism there were no second or third- level countries, since the downfall of a small country under Soviet influence could generate a linked effect of new, more important losses, making it necessary to establish barriers and avoid communist takeovers in every spot.
Other significant cases in those years, also dominated by the fear of an expansion of communism, were: the toppling of the regime of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala that put an end to the so-called Democratic Revolution launched in 1944 under the accusation of a rising influence of the country’s small Communist Party, but actually triggered by the threat of an agrarian reform that could deprive the powerful US corporation United Fruit Company of part of its lands; later, the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 to contain the possible Cuban influence on the government led by Colonel Francisco Camaño in the political aftermath of the assassination of the emblematic dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in that country; and finally, the active US participation in the sharp political struggle that preceded the Chilean coup d’état of September 11 1973, which put an end to democracy in that country and cost the life of president Salvador Allende.
In general it may be stated that the organizations that formulate foreign policy toward Latin America normally have not attempted to work with articulated visions or specific projects. This only happened when they felt their interests were being affected globally by some process in the region or when they attained a certain electoral impact. In those cases, proposals such as president John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance For Progress”, the Human Rights Policy of the Carter administration, or the Initiative for the Americas of president George Bush Sr. which Bill Clinton later turned into the proposal for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which was scheduled to come into being in 2005 and is currently under complex discussion, were formulated.
These more ambitious visions usually came into conflict with the more routine- bound pace of the career officials at the Department of State, and as a consequence they did not come into practice.“ — Luis Maira Aguirre*
Relations Between Latin America and the United States: Balance and Prospects**
With thousands of Central American citizens entering the US legally and illegally, there will certainly be a shift in the nation demographics. Post World War II thousands of European came to America in waves to start a new life.
The Latinos are strongly Catholic. During one of my visit to New York I notice a higher percentage of them. The usual mother father and five children. Whilst other people group are having smaller families they are having larger families according to Catholic tradition of no contraceptives.
In the next decade there will be a huge demographic shift in many of these swing states and that shift will be in favour of the Democrats. The Republic Trump party got the soundest cuttail in the last election. The prophets, the white supporters all got a shock that they did not anticipated. They are scrambling to get back from whence they have fallen..
Based on US population statistics the Hispanics seem to be the fastest growing group in the USA. Are these laws directed to them also? If the projections are correct, the majority group in the USA will emerge as consisting of a coalition of Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and Indigenous peoples.
Why are Whites so threatened by the Black population which only consist of approximately 14% of the population today?
“In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians voted with absentee ballots; 65 percent of whom voted for Joe Biden.”
The absentee ballot system should be done away with.. I don’t believe in it. I think it is useful for people who lack mobility and are unable to get to the polling booth. Along with soldiers in foreign mission and citizens abroad. Others should simply join the line and cast their ballot. It is a once every 4 year exercise.
There should be a form of early voting where people can come and cast their ballots a week before to lower the crowd on election day. Of course that will be subject to interrogation given the narrow gap of election victories.
The fact that Trump got 35% and Biden got 65% of the mail in ballots does not surprise me. Trump was telling his supporters to not use the mail in ballot system and instead show up on the day of election and cast your vote. Biden was doing the exact opposite and encouraging his supporters to mail in their ballot. The stunningly beautiful Jill Biden was even featured in an add encouraging people to mail in their ballot so that they don’t have to wait in long lineups especially seniors.
Former President Trump lost the last election and in the process almost started a civil war. Elections are undeclared wars and must be treated as such, by each party requiring fair play. In John Lewis district he got 85% of the votes despite not being there…
“The absentee ballot system should be done away with.. I don’t believe in it.” Well, who died and made him Lord and and Master that we must follow what he believes in.
It is not for outsiders to believe in it or not believe in it. It is for Americans to decide.
“Others should simply join the line and cast their ballot.”
Poor fella. He pretends he does not know.
Since states control the mechanisms of election process in the USA, factors such as number of polling places in certain districts, days the are set aside for voting, number of attendants in polling places and availability of ballots all vary and are deliberately reduced in more densely populated areas in the US sun belt states, especially where people of colour, reside in urban areas. Long lines are the predictable consequence of this and a discouragement to voters especially those of colour. Voting in elections should be made easier not harder for all voters. In most developed countries that is the case, but not in certain parts of the USA where it is a deliberate act of voter suppression.
For many such voters the process is neither fair nor democratic.
Wow…never knew. In that case please don’t stop the absentee ballot. I thought it was standardized meaning 300 per polling booth.
A lot of mischief goes on in the world first democracy.
Nahum 1:9. “What do ye imagine against IYEHAWAH? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time. ”
Really, this is all that need be said about this new Jim Crow sought by Esau-Edom. Nevertheless, so thorough have been the LIES spouted by ALL Gentile religions, I have to explain further.
As it was in the days of Belshazzar, whose lot was to witness a disembodied hand writing upon the wall:
Daniel 5:25-28. “And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. 26This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. 27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. 28 PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. ”
So it is today.
Esau-Edom, under whose dominion — “by the sword”, as prophesied (Genesis 27:40) — was brought to the world white-supremacy racism, and in one manifestation, Jim Crow in the U.S. South, is like unto Belshazzar. His time is now up. He has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting.
It has been a long run, about 2,600 years, starting ca. 600 BC, when the 1st kingdom of the Gentiles over-ran Jerusalem. Daniel prophesied these four kingdoms. The second was Medo-Persia, which took over from Babylon as prophesied in the quote above (Daniel 5:28). The third was Greece (ca 320 BC), which is when “white power” was first established in the post-Flood world.
(It had existed before, pre-Flood. Then too there was continual wickedness in the world, which is why IYEHAWAH brought about the Flood; Genesis 6;5-8. Then too, part of the evil they wrought upon the world was gene manipulation, bringing forth all manner of cross-species, soul-less entities — the origin of demons).
The 4th kingdom of the Gentiles is that which is now being brought down. As seen by the prophet, Apostle John the Revelator, within the 4th kingdom there arose 10 horns and 7 heads. That is, 10 hegemonic powers arose (10 horns), representing 7 main belief/ideological structures (7 “heads”). The U.S., representing the head of white-supremacy/Jim Crow is that hegemonic power, –one of 10 as seen by John — now being brought down, the whole Esau-Edom world along with them.
Daniel 2:44. “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Esau-Edomite rule, and white supremacy/Jim Crow with it, is being brought down. The dominion will be assumed by Esau’s twin, Jacob. He it is who would have suffered 400 years of “affliction”, and would be brought out at the hand of IYEHAWAH, “with great substance”. The Exodus from under Pharaoh is a picture of that which will now happen. As happened then, will happen again now.
2 Esdras 6:9. “For Esau is the end of the world, and Jacob is the beginning of it that followeth.”
This is further prophesied by Daniel:
Daniel 7:18. “But the saints of the most High [That is, Jacob] shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.”
This is also in accordance with the prophecy and grant of dominion to Jacob:
Genesis 27:28-29. “Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:
29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.”
Furthermore, that grant of dominion would particularize on the tribe of Judah, moreover on one of the royal line of David and Solomon, the “lion of Judah”.
Genesis 49:10. “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
“Shiloh” simply means the one that brings salvation, or the one that would be raised up to assume that dominion. Properly, his title will be “Iyeshiloh”, and is the one that Iyeshuah will raise up to rule with a “rod of iron”. Gentile Christian theology has confounded these two; they are separate:
Revelation 2:26-27. “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him [IYESHILOH} will I [IYESHUAH> give power over the nations:
27 And he [IYESHILOH] shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I [IYESHUAH: per Rev 1:1] received of my Father [IYEHAWAH].”
Iyeshiloh will be “raised up”. Iyeshuah will “come down” from heaven with his armies to do so.
It is a matter for debate and speculation whether Gentile Christianity got this wrong deliberately. In either case it is consistent with:
Jeremiah 16:19-20. “O IYEHAWAH, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited LIES, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit. 20 Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?”
This tallies with:
Psalms 147:19-20. ” He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
20 He hath NOT dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye IYEHAWAH.
TMH has simply kept the Gentiles from the proper understanding of His word. That word was given to our forefathers, the Negro/Jacob prophets , to put down in Holy Scripture. It was not, and never was, for the Gentiles. Under Esau-Edom’s dominion, they have twisted that Holy Scripture with LIES aforethought:
1 Maccabees 3:48. ““And laid open the book of the law, wherein the heathen had sought to paint the likeness of their images.”
They hated Negro/Jacob because of envy. He was chosen and they were not. They also hated Iyeshuah, because He too came in the line of Negro/Judah. So they sought to change His likeness to look more like themselves. Here is a link showing a true-er depiction of Iyeshuah: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/834573374681450993/ . This image is found in Rome, where it is apparently kept “hidden”.
Matthew 24:9. “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. ”
It is indeed the Negro that is apparently “hated of all nations”. They are “confederte against thee” (Psalms 83:2-6).
The people that now occupy the land of Israel are not Jacob/Judah, though they call themselves “Jews”. They have not been afflicted “400 years”. Quite the opposite, they had a controlling hand in our affliction; see Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews which reveals that Jewish traders controlled the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Those Jewish traders, like King Herod (“the Idumean”) in the time of Iyeshuah, were of the seed of Esau-Edom. Their seedline descendants and brethren today are the ones that wield financial power in the world. That they would claim, falsely, to be Jacob/Israel/Judah, as was prophesied:
Revelation 2:9. “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) [applies to Negro/Judah, not the “Jews”] and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are NOT, but are the synagogue of Satan[applies to the so-called Jewish people].”
Negro/Judah does not “say they are Jews”. The so-called “Jews” in Israel, “say they are Jews”. The prophecy therefore applies to those that are the so-called Jewish people. In any case, we now know as a historical matter that those Jewish people are not of the seed of Jacob. Rather they are Gentiles with whom Esau-Edom mixed his seed; see the book of Jasher for Esau’s history mixing with Canaan , Ishmael, Ham (Mizraim/Kush) and Japheth (Rome, Greece, the isles of the Gentiles). Hence the variety of Jewish people: Khazar, Edomite, Sephardic being the main branches. The Ethiopian Jews are the real seed of Jacob, and heavily discriminated against in the so-called State of Israel == they are Negro/Jacob after all.
Negro/Judah is UNIQUELY a fit to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, also the trans-Sahara slave trade, also the trans-Indian-Ocean slave trade as far as China/Japan. ALL of us that came off the slave boat had woolly hair and skin the color of burnished bronze == even the “black Irish” victims of Cromwell’s anti-monarchy revolt in Britain, but that’s another story. The Jews are not a fit.
Therefore, we the Negro — the woolly-haired people with skin the color(s) of burnished bronze, same as Iyeshuah (Rev 1:14-15, Daniel 7:9, 10:6) — are in fact that Jacob and Judah of Holy Scripture. The Word is given to us to decode and understand, and its meaning is hidden to the Gentiles, of ALL religious persuasions. It was hidden from us also, as we were put into a state of slumber, from which we are now — only some of us, alas — awakening.
I say all that to conclude where I started: There shall NOT be a “second affliction” (Nahum 1:9). Prophecy will assuredly be fulfilled, as it was when our forefathers were carted off here, there and everywhere, into affliction, into a hard and cruel bondage. Why? Because we disobeyed our High Power, IYEHAWAH. But He would not condemn us forever. He is now here to redeem us, as promised, and indeed right on schedule. The attempted “Jim Crow II” will only further condemn our enemy, Esau-Edom and his allies.
Jeremiah 30:8-9. “For it shall come to pass in that day, saith IYEHAWAH of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: 9 But they shall serve IYEHAWAH their High Power, and David their king [Iyeshiloh not Iyeshuah], whom I will raise up unto them.
Therefore, it is unnecessary to wring our hands and lament in this matter. Rather, it is a time to rock back with a broad smile, and say to them “bring it!”. We Negro/Judah could not escape the prophecy. Now it is Esau’s time. They will not escape it, either!
Shalom.
Isaiah 14:1-2. “For IYEHAWAH will have mercy on Jacob , and will yet choose Israel [the NEGRO], and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of IYEHAWAH for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.”
Therefore, fear NOT. Rather:
Revelation 18:4. “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”