Ecuador declares emergency as police protest, president is attacked

By Arthur Brice, CNN

September 30, 2010 -- Updated 1942 GMT (0342 HKT)

 

(CNN) -- Ecuador teetered on the verge of a government collapse Thursday, as national police took to the streets of Quito, the capital, and attacked the president over what police say was the cancellation of bonuses and promotions.
The government declared a one-week state of emergency Thursday afternoon and put the military in charge of security.
"This is a coup attempt," President Rafael Correa said in a TV interview a couple of hours after police lobbed tear gas at him.
Correa, who was forced to flee to a nearby hospital, said police were trying to get at him.
"They're trying to get into my room, maybe to attack me. I don't know," he said in a telephone interview with state-run Ecuador TV. "But, forget it. I won't relent. If something happens to me, remember my infinite love for my country, and to my family I say that I will love them anywhere I end up."
A video by CNN affiliate Ecuavisa later showed a defiant Correa standing at an upper floor window, shouting to a crowd of supporters, "If they want me, here I am," and then rapidly ripping his necktie loose
A broadcast by Ecuador TV showed mobs on the streets and clouds of black smoke coming from burning tires and garbage. Sporadic looting was reported.
Correa had taken to the streets to try to negotiate with police but was soon surrounded and jostled by a crowd and forced to flee after someone fired a tear gas canister at him. Some of those shoving him were police officers in full gear.
Video from CNN affiliate Teleamazonas shows a man in a tan suit punching Correa and trying to yank a gas mask off the president's face.
The broadcast then shows a hunched-over Correa being led away, his face still covered by the gas mask. Correa, who recently underwent knee surgery, leaned on a crutch with his left arm.
A news photograph later showed him lying on a stretcher.
A government helicopter had tried to evacuate him but was unable to land.
He went on the air from a hospital a couple of hours later to denounce what he called a cowardly attack.
"They fired gas on us -- on the president of the republic," Correa said in a telephone interview with Ecuador TV. "This is treason to the country, treason to their president."
Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino led a large and boisterous pro-government rally at the Carondelet Palace, the president's home. He urged the crowd to take to the streets to peacefully "reject this coup" and "to rescue our president."
Said Patino, "We are not afraid of anyone."
Analysts pointed to the government's precariousness.
"This is the most serious protest that the government of Rafael Correa has faced," analyst Eduardo Gamarra told CNN en Español.
Rank-and-file police took over their agency's headquarters, Ecuador TV said.
There also were reports that the military had taken control of their bases and the airport.
Most of the military remained neutral, though there were reports that some rebellious units seemed to side with the police uprising.
Ecuador has nearly 58,000 members in its military and 33,000 in the national police force, according to Jane's Intelligence Review.
The military, Jane's said, is undergoing a professionalism transformation designed to give it greater flexibility.
The National Civil Police, meanwhile, is the nation's major law enforcement organization.
Government officials tried to quell the rebellion, insisting that the security forces had been misinformed and warning that the nation's democracy was in danger.
"I want to tell the country there has been an attempt at a coup," said Gabriel Rivera of the Country Accord Party.
"This is a Machiavellian plan organized by sectors of the right," Rivera said on Ecuador TV.
Miguel Carvajal, the minister for interior security, said there was no threat to salaries or benefits. He blamed the reports of the benefit cuts on a massive disinformation campaign.
"He who says that is lying," Carvajal said.
"We call on the citizens. We call on the armed forces. We call on other governments to defend our democratic institutions," he said.
A police spokesman went on the air on Teleamazonas to dispute the government's allegations, saying that the security forces were in fact supporting Correa.
"Fellow officers who hear me nationally, stop this action," said the spokesman, identified only as Sgt. Mejia. "Don't close the streets. Return to the streets to work."
The disturbances occurred as Correa threatened to dissolve the national assembly over a dispute about several laws, including public service and education.
Angry police said they were overworked and underpaid.
"We work 14 hours a day," a uniformed officer said on Ecuador TV. "We are the ones who never protest."
Said another: "One hour without police. Let's see what happens."
Diego Borja, director of the central bank, went on the air to urge calm and for people to take care.
"The police are not protecting the people. They are protesting," he said. "There could be problems."
He also sought to prevent a run on deposits.
"The money is safe," he said. "But be careful if making large withdrawals."

Peru closed its border with Ecuador, and messages of support for Correa came from the governments of Argentina and Venezuela.click here for video: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/30/ecuador.violence/?hpt=T1

Black Leadership is DEAD?

NOW HERE'S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE FOR DISCUSSION...

Black leadership is dead. There, I said it. We have people in leadership positions, but far too many of them are operating as if it were the 1960s or even the 1980s instead of the 21st century.
As I've traveled from state to state over the years, I've heard folks saying that "we need another Malcolm, we need another Martin," as if dynamic hip-hop generational leaders like Malia Lazu, Ras Baraka, April Silver, Shani Jamila, and Brian Echols don't even exist. In fact, I can easily count off 100 such leaders from coast to coast--all of who are doing incredible work in their communities.
We seem to have forgotten the old axiom that all movements are local. Black America has been pining for a national savior since the Civil Rights Movement came to a screeching halt in the 1970s. Apart from our flirtations with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan in the 1980s and 90s, we've been stuck in the wilderness without any sort of national Black leadership model for forty long and difficult years.
Want to know why large pockets of Black America remain in great despair despite all our amazing post-Civil Rights era advances? Well, look no further than the incredible lack of vision and imagination of our Black leaders--be they elected officials, ministers and imams, public intellectuals, heads of social service organizations, educators, entrepreneurs, or grassroots activists.
Black American leadership has been in a state of arrested development since the days of Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Angela Davis, and the Black Panther Party. But some leaders were killed or driven mad by those times, while others wound up in jail or sold out their principles for access to the American dream, for themselves and their immediate circle, rather than for us all. Little wonder, then, that so many of us have pinned our dreams on Barack Obama in 2008. Someone like him was a long time a-coming.
But, no, President Barack Obama is not a Black leader; he is the President of the United States of America. Not the President of Black America, or of hip-hop America, or of young America. Just America. And therein lies the great irony of Mr. Obama being the first Black president in American history. There is this great expectation that President Obama will be that liberator for us, the modern-day Malcolm X-meets-Dr. King, with a swagger that fuses the jazz of John Coltrane and the hip hop of Jay-Z.
But some in Black America have been hard on President Obama for not being, well, Black enough for their taste. Part of the reason for this feeling is the huge void in visionary Black leadership. We've been stuck in this vacuum for so long that we expect Mr. Obama to fill it up for us. We expect him to tell it like it is on race and racism, and fulfill all the needs of Black America.
That is not only completely unfair to Mr. Obama, but it speaks of the desperation surrounding our lack of leadership. Many of us are still searching for the sort of leader that has never existed in the White House, or in the statehouse, or in any city's City Hall.
Meanwhile, we ourselves are scattered, unfocused, and constantly reacting instead of being proactive. We react to the police murders of Sean Bell (New York) and Oscar Grant (the Bay Area), to the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, and to gentrification, mass unemployment and mass incarceration, but where are our proactive local and national agendas?
Yes, no doubt racism is alive and well in America. In spite of all its proclamations to the contrary, America has never had the kind of national conversation about race we truly need. This is not a matter of somebody just giving a speech, no matter how eloquent. What we require is something akin to the truth and reconciliation commission established in South Africa after the fall of apartheid.
But what armchair critics of Barack Obama fail to grasp, in historical terms, is that it has always been the people, not the person in the White House, who pushed our nation forward. If there were no abolitionist movement led by the likes of Frederick Douglass, then there would have been no Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln. Without A. Phillip Randolph and others threatening a massive protest in Washington, then Franklin Roosevelt would not have banned discrimination within World War II industries. And with no Civil Rights Movement, there would be no Civil Rights Bill in 1964 and no Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Whoever has occupied the White House has always had to face harsh critics. And W.E.B. DuBois, an intellectual giant who lived well into his 90s, was chief among them. But current sideline critics and some of these multimedia hustlers posing as intellectuals ought to study DuBois a bit more closely. Not only was he a scholar, a prolific writer, and a true renaissance man interacting with Black people globally, but he also helped to build institutions that served the people, including the N.A.A.C.P. He didn't just dog out a sitting president and leave it there.
DuBois understood that talk can be wonderful, but nothing beats action. And that was the principle behind the N.A.A.C.P. before that organization went adrift. A strong difference of opinion on the best way to deal with racism is what led DuBois out of the N.A.A.C.P. in the mid-1930s. Here's a small part of his stinging critique:

Today this organization, which has been great and effective for nearly a quarter of a century, finds itself in a time of crisis and change, without a program, without effective organization, without executive officers who have either the ability or disposition to guide [it] in the right direction.

Sound familiar?
DuBois was addressing the need for Black institutions of all kinds. Something that is still badly needed in Black America in 2010.
No wonder we are at such a crossroads in Black American history. On the one hand we have groups like the N.A.A.C.P., which seem so spooked by right-wing zealots that they allow a Shirley Sherrod to go down without making sure the people hear the truth, or even listen to her entire speech. On the other end of the spectrum are all the Barack-haters, folks who never seem to miss an opportunity to verbally assault the President every chance they get. That would include certain motormouth Black Ph.D.s, and the sort of media pundits who have much to say about the Black community, but who are rarely ever seen in any Black community except when it's time for a drive-by photo opportunity.
All this noise makes for great headlines and television ratings, but does absolutely nothing to empower Black America.

It really is a sad joke. Doubly sad when you consider the many challenges we face, including the HIV/AIDS pandemic, nonstop violence in all forms, serious health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, and the lack of respect afforded to both our elders and our youth.

Black leadership will continue to be dead if we waste our time heaving hate at Barack Obama, or waiting for him to solve all our problems. We ourselves must rise to meet the challenge. The question is what are you doing, in your local community, on a consistent basis, to build or support institutions that help our people to help themselves?

My job as a leader, and your job, too--if you care enough--is to support true visionary leaders. Folks like Charlie Braxton in Jackson, Mississippi--a handicapped Black man who works day to day, thanklessly and often anonymously, with and for the people. I have seen Charlie bring feuding gang members together, mentor all kinds of young people, create one business after another, and serve as a beacon of light for a community where so many other lights are dimmed.

That is the new model of Black leadership in the 21st century: build or maintain institutions that provide direct service, resources, and information to our communities; change, once and for all, how we discuss the many challenges facing our people; and be on the front lines with the people as much as possible.

When we can do that--and identify and support more who do--then we in Black America will have a real shot of getting out of this wilderness. But if we do not, then it will be another long 40 years looking for a Moses who may never come.


Kevin Powell is writer, activist, author of 10 books, and most recently a Democratic candidate for the United States Congress in Brooklyn, New York. He can be reached at kevin@kevinpowell.net.

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan David Bloom

http://books.google.com/books?id=cfr2ePZfFC4C&lpg=PP1&ots=jcPSvj81mZ&dq=bloom%20closing%20the%20american%20mind&pg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false

This text from pages 91-97 is something that SOAD should be concerned with. Bloom outlines in very interesting ways the new direction in which the American higher educational institution that we are faced with today-one that he describes as lacking the same values of scholarship that it once did in its initiation.

In pages 91-97 he outlines how race has informed how universities and the students within them interact with students of color. Of course this means Affirmative action, black studies and things of the like are mentioned.

SOAD should be concerned with this excerpt because it informs our significance on New School's campus. It helps us understand and complexify why we should exist? and why are group like us is relevant today. Take a look.

Who is the African Diaspora?

The African Diaspora is one of the  (if not) most expansive dispersement of people sharing the same origin/descent, similar traditions/culture etc. throughout the world.

This includes the Caribbean with top populations of people of African descent in:
Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, Barbados, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Virgin Islands, Grenada, Antigua and Bermuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands

In Europe the top populations of people of African descent are within:
France, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Russia, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Republic of Ireland, Austria, Finland, Poland, Hungary

In Asia, the top populations are within:
Israel, Japan, India, Pakistan, China, and Singapore

In South America/Central America the top populations are within:
Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rico, Panama, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay

North America:
USA, Canada, Mexico

Oceania:
Australia

The top 15 African diaspora populations include:
Brazil
USA
Colombia
Haiti
Dominican Republic
France
Jamaica
Venezuela
UK
Cuba
Peru
Italy
Canada
Ecuador
Trinidad and Tobago

Nicaragua

What is the African Diaspora?

To address the African diaspora, we must first address the word diaspora. The word that has greek etymological origin in translation means a scattering (of any thing). Today the word is used to refer to humans, more specifically, ethnic groups of people who have scattered or migrated away from their ancestral homeland. Thus to think of the African diaspora is to think of the nomadic/cultural, voluntary, and forced /involuntary movement of people from the continent Africa to the rest of the world. Such movement (some historians/anthropologists have found) can be traced back to 1200bc-700bc when black Africans from Egypt and Nubia sailed west across the Atlantic and initiated extensive contact with native peoples in the Americas. Contemporarily speaking, those who identify as being a member of the African  diaspora mostly identify with the history of the involuntary movement of people of African descent throughout the world.