> WW News Service Digest #47
>
> 1) Africans in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) NYC transit contract and public workers' right to strike
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Groups plan to shut down IMF meeting in April
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) AFL-CIO and immigrant workers
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
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>Message-ID: <008a01bf7ff6$a9363e50$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Africans in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus
>Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 20:13:16 -0500
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>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 2, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>PART TWO OF AFRICA'S GIFT TO CIVILIZATION:
>
>AFRICANS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE BEFORE COLUMBUS
>
>By Pat Chin
>
>[Part 1 refuted the racist Eurocentric view of African
>history. It looked at ancient Africa's central role in the
>rise of civilization--from the world's first use of fire to
>the development of agriculture, metallurgy and the complex
>sciences underpinning the building of vast empires in
>Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Songhai. Part 1 also analyzed
>Africa's decline in relationship to the voyages of
>Christopher Columbus and the rise of the trans-Atlantic
>slave trade and racism.]
>
>
>
>Many cultural parallels have emerged that point to the
>presence of Africans in the Western Hemisphere well before
>Christopher Columbus accidentally encountered the Americas
>in 1492.
>
>There is ample evidence from anthropology, linguistics and
>other scientific disciplines to support the view that the
>ancient Africans used their knowledge of sea currents and
>other navigation and boat-building skills to cross the
>Atlantic Ocean.
>
>These mariners came looking for trade. They brought with
>them, among other things, plants, animals, cloth, their
>knowledge of science, technology and the arts. Others may
>have washed ashore accidentally after being caught in
>powerful Atlantic currents.
>
>Modern experiments have shown that ancient African boats,
>including the "dug-out," could have been made seaworthy
>enough to cross the vast waters. Boat builders in Central
>Africa's Lake Chad constructed a papyrus craft that was
>sailed from North Africa to Barbados in the eastern
>Caribbean in 1969. Other similar journeys have shown that
>small boats can indeed survive the crossing.
>
>The pre-Columbian presence of Africans in the Western
>Hemisphere has been deliberately suppressed to reinforce
>the racist fiction of African inferiority. The Europeans
>invented this myth to justify the growing slave trade.
>
>But signs can be found in the oral traditions of Guinea
>and other African countries, as well as in the Native
>American nations--north and south. Documentary traces have
>also survived in Portuguese and Spanish writings, including
>the journals of Columbus.
>
>In addition, "An overwhelming body of new evidence is now
>emerging from several disciplines, evidence that could not
>be verified and interpreted before, in light of the infancy
>of archeology and the great age of racial and intellectual
>prejudice," wrote anthropologist and linguist Ivan Van
>Sertima.
>
>In 1492 the Native people of Hispanola--now Haiti and the
>Dominican Republic--gave Columbus proof that they had been
>trading with Africans--proof in the form of spears they
>called "gua-nin." The tips were made of gold, silver and
>copper, as Columbus later discovered, no doubt to his
>greedy delight.
>
>According to linguists, "gua-nin" is rooted in the Mande
>languages of West Africa. Moreover, metallurgy was first
>developed on that vast and ancient continent.
>
>Columbus later used this information, along with knowledge
>gained from Portuguese navigators, to sail the "Guinea
>Route" in 1498 on his third voyage to the Americas. He
>landed first on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, spotted
>the South American mainland and called the region the "New
>World."
>
>Days later, his men brought from a Venezuelan coastal
>settlement cotton handkerchiefs woven in the colors and
>styles of Guinea that were used in both cultures as
>headdresses and loincloths.
>
>This was one of the first documented traces of an African
>presence in America. "Within the first and second decades
>of the so-called `discovery,' " noted Van Sertima, "African
>settlements and artifacts were to be sighted by the
>Spanish."
>
>The historical record suggests that the European invaders
>first spotted a Black settlement on an island off
>Cartagena, Colombia. Africans also traded with Brazil and
>settled in Panama and elsewhere on the mainland.
>
>Peruvian tradition, for example, records a tale of Black
>men from the east who penetrated the Andes mountains before
>Columbus' arrival. More recently, Africoid skeletal remains
>were found in pre-Columbian strata in the Pecos River
>Valley, which straddles Texas and New Mexico
>
>Interestingly enough, many of the early Black settlements
>were found along the coast where the divisions of the
>powerful trans-Atlantic Equatorial Current terminates.
>
>The early African presence went beyond the mainland. Not
>only did the indigenous people of Hispanola give Columbus
>proof of their trade with African mariners--in 1975
>archeologists unearthed two Africoid skeletons in the
>Virgin Islands which were carbon dated to A.D.1250.
>
>"Black populations have been found in the midst of very
>different nations," anthropologist Alphonse de Quatrefages
>wrote of the region.
>
>"Such are the Charruas of Brazil, the Black Caribees of
>Saint Vincent in the Gulf of Mexico, the Jamassi of
>Florida. . Such again is the tribe of which Balboa saw some
>representatives in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in
>1513."
>
>Some of the most striking evidence that Africans reached
>the Western Hemisphere before Columbus are the realistic
>portraitures of Black Africans in clay, gold and stone that
>have been found in pre-Columbian strata in Central and
>South America.
>
>But Mexico bears perhaps the greatest and earliest
>imprints. Skulls found there, along with numerous artifacts
>and the pyramids, reinforce the view that Africans crossed
>the Atlantic before Columbus.
>
>Most impressive are the huge stone heads with African
>features found in three different areas of the ancient
>Olmec heartland--now Mexico--which flourished between 1500
>B.C. and 600 B.C.
>
>Each sculpture--11 in all--stands six to nine feet, weighs
>up to 40 tons and has been carbon dated to at least 700
>B.C. They were built at least 2,000 years before Columbus'
>voyages set in motion the European slave trade and "the
>colonization not only of history," according to Dr. John
>Henrik Clarke, "but also the information about history."
>
>If history were written truthfully you would learn, for
>example, that Africa seems to have had a strong and
>enduring influence on Olmec culture. And that it peaked
>during the same period that Black Egyptian culture ascended
>in Africa. The first African clay masks, pyramids, mummies,
>trepannated skulls, stelae and hieroglyphs found in America
>were also from this era.
>
>Documents in Cairo, Egypt, as well as Mandingo oral
>tradition reflect the sea voyages of the great Mali Empire
>from a later period. A year after sending an expeditionary
>fleet across the Atlantic, in 1311 King Abubakari II sailed
>west with a huge flotilla.
>
>"Neither of the two Mandingo fleets came back to Mali to
>tell their story," explained Van Sertima, "but around this
>same time evidence of contact between West Africans and
>Mexicans appears in strata in America in an overwhelming
>combination of artifacts and cultural parallels."
>
>They suggest that the Aztecs might have witnessed
>Abubakari's landing and thought him to be the reincarnation
>of one of their gods. "A black-haired, black-bearded figure
>in white robes," noted Van Sertima, "one of the
>representations of Quetzalcoatl, modeled on a dark-skinned
>outsider, appears in paintings in the valley of Mexico,
>while the Aztecs begin to worship a Negroid figure mistaken
>for their god Tezcatlipoca because he had the right
>ceremonial color."
>
>The pre-Columbian presence of Africans in the Americas is
>also reflected in linguistic similarities and other
>cultural parallels including rainmaking rituals, but these
>are just a few examples of many.
>
>Part 3 will look at the presence of Africans in early Asia
>and Europe.
>It will also analyze the links between capitalism, slavery,
>colonialism and racism.
>
>Sources: Clarke, John Henrik, Christopher Columbus and the
>Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European
>Capitalism, 1993; Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, The World and
>Africa: An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in
>world history, 1965; Josephy, Jr., Alvin M., 500 Nations,
>1994; de Quatrefages, Alphonse, The Human Species, 1905;
>Van Sertima, Ivan, ed., Blacks in Science: ancient and
>modern, 1983; Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, 1976.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
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>
>
>Message-ID: <009001bf7ff6$c52ee350$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] NYC transit contract and public workers' right to strike
>Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 20:14:03 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Mar. 2, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>NYC TRANSIT CONTRACT AND PUBLIC WORKERS' RIGHT TO STRIKE
>
>By Milt Neidenberg
>New York
>
>The hard-fought battle by the 33,000 members of Transit
>Workers Local 100 to win a decent contract from the New
>York Metropolitan Transit Authority has ended. The workers
>who run the subways and buses--women and men of all
>nationalities--have ratified the proposed agreement.
>
>The vote was 11,570 in favor and 7,069 opposed, according
>to Local 100 President Willie James. He had waged an all-
>out fight to get approval.
>
>More than 14,000 members didn't vote. This reflects the
>bitter controversy between New Directions, a strong
>opposition faction that narrowly lost the local's last
>election, and the Willie James leadership. They clashed
>over the contract's merits.
>
>The agreement provides a 12.48-percent compounded raise
>over three years. The MTA also pledges to reduce the
>workers' pension contributions by 3.3 percent.
>
>The economic package far exceeds the average settlements
>won by the labor movement these days. However, the contract
>has language allowing the MTA to alter job descriptions in
>subway and bus maintenance. The changes threaten seniority
>rights and job security, and will be a factor in production
>speed-ups.
>
>The contract also allows the MTA to continue using
>workfare workers. Management forced this on the union in
>the 1996 contract--replacing some union-wage jobs with
>slave labor.
>
>For these reasons and others, New Directions opposed the
>settlement. Those members who voted for the contract felt
>that it was the best they could get once the strike threat
>was removed and momentum was lost. Those who voted against
>the contract wanted to fight on.
>
>The 33,000 train and bus workers must now close ranks. The
>MTA, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Wall Street are unhappy
>that because of the pressure from the strike threat, they
>had to grant a settlement that is better than the average
>economic packages. They will want their revenge, and will
>find ways to violate the contract, punish the workers and
>push them to produce more.
>
>A major factor in this contract fight was the arrogant
>interference of the union-busting Giuliani and Wall Street.
>It began in October 1999, when the union threatened to
>strike during the winter holidays, including the period of
>the millennium new year celebrations. The strike threat was
>a response to the MTA trying to jam a totally unacceptable
>contract down the throats of the rank and file.
>
>A transit strike during the holidays would have been a
>major economic catastrophe. It would have cost the
>corporate and banking establishment, real-estate tycoons
>and employers in general hundreds of millions of dollars in
>losses. And it would have been a political disaster for
>Giuliani--who was preparing to run for the Senate.
>
>The strike threat was backed up by a series of militant
>demonstrations and train and bus slowdowns by the rank and
>
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