Community Activist, Tatiana “Jasira” Lima, is being prosecuted for a crime she did not commit; the murder of her one month old baby girl, Akira.  Tatiana, who is an active member and leader in various community and cultural organizations, has worked extensively in support of Hurricane Katrina survivors, homeless, and young people of color.  This committed young organizer is now in need of your support.

Tatiana’s initial bond was set at $170,000. However, on July 18th, 2011, Attorney Davis successfully argued for the bond to be reduced to $50,000.  “This is a promising first step for the case but now she needs the community and family support”, said Attorney Davis after the hearing.

A special thanks to all of the supporters that donated to the bond fund. Tatiana has made bail, but she still needs your financial support for ongoing bond fees that the court imposed as a condition of her bond.

“We are involved in this case for three reasons, 1)Tatiana is innocent, 

      2) she is a bright young woman who deserves our support and

      3) we believe we can help save her life” said Robert Bozeman,

the managing partner of the Davis Bozeman Law Firm.

Who Is Tatiana “Jasira”? 

Tatiana’s mother died when Tatiana was 16 years old.  Despite this devastating tragedy Tatiana was determined to obtain her education and she graduated from Georgia State University (GSU) Summa Cum Laude in 2008 with a Bachelor’s Degree in African American Studies.  While at GSU, Tatiana was President of Sankofa Society, founded Daughters of the Diaspora (D.O.D), and traveled to New Orleans to assist in post-Katrina food/clothing drive efforts. Ms. Lima continued her work as an organizer and as an active member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), where she was involved in organizing political forums, community outreach, and children’s education programs. MXGM has spearheaded the effort to form the Justice for Tatiana “Jasira” Lima Committee and secure Ms. Lima’s freedom. 

Prior to her incarceration, Tatiana had begun taking Post-Graduate classes for a Physical Therapy Program and working part-time. Tatiana has never been arrested before these false charges were brought against her.

Statement of Facts & Law 

On July 2, 2010, Tatiana became a first-time mother by giving birth to Akira Copeland.  Akira was a healthy and happy baby girl.  Tatiana and Akira came home from the hospital to live with Jeremy Copeland, Tatiana’s boyfriend and Akira’s father.  On August 2^ndAkira was taken to the hospital after Tatiana became concerned about the baby’s breathing.  Prior to taking Akira to the hospital she called her sister and described the baby’s condition and then she contacted the pediatrician who advised her to take Akira to the hospital.  The examining physicians observed several bone fractures to Akira’s skull and ribs.  Police were alerted of the injuries due to suspected child abuse.  According to police documents, the baby’s father, Jeremy Copeland, told police that he believed he might have accidentally caused the child’s injuries when she fell while he was changing her and when he rolled over on her while sleeping.  Mr. Copeland was arrested.  There was no evidence or suspicion that Tatiana was involved in the death of her beloved child or knew that Mr. Copeland had intentionally inflicted any injuries.   In fact, after questioning, the detectives allowed Tatiana to remain at her daughter’s bedside in the hospital during her final hours.  Tragically, 48 hours after she was admitted, Akira died.  

Two weeks after the unfortunate death of her child, Tatiana was interviewed again by police and was arrested after the detectives decided that this first-time mother, “should have known more or should have done something more.”  On August 17, 2010 she was then charged with Cruelty to Children in the First Degree.  However, at the Preliminary Hearing on September 1, 2010 the District Attorney’s office presented the additional and more serious charges of Murder, Felony Murder, Aggravated Battery, and Aggravated Assault.  Fortunately, the Honorable Judge Karen Woodson listened carefully to the evidence (or lack thereof) and found that there was not sufficient evidence for the charges of Murder, Felony Murder, Aggravated Battery, and Aggravated Assault.  Ms. Lima was released on bond and worked and went to school until the District Attorney’s office again presented the more serious charges of Murder, Felony Murder, Aggravated Assault, and Aggravated battery to a Grand Jury for indictment on October 29, 2010.  Ms. Lima was then rearrested and was given a bond in March of 2011 of $170,000. 
 

What Can You Do? 

Please help us in our fight to support Tatiana “Jasira” Lima.  No donation is too small.  Donations are being accepted payable to Community Aid & Development Corp., a 501(c)(3).  Go to www.justice4tatiana.org to use PayPal to donate or mail donations to Community Aid and Development Corp. P.O. Box 361270, Decatur GA 30036-1270. Please write in the memo section on check or money order “Tatiana “Jasira” Lima Bond Fund.  You can also express your concerns about the prosecution of this innocent young woman by writing letters to the District Attorney of Fulton County, Paul Howard at 136 Pryor Street Third Floor, Atlanta, GA, 30303-3477.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

One, because he was a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). RAM, founded in 1962 was one of the first revolutionary nationalist formations of the 1960’s created in response to oppression of people of African descent living in America. Blacks were being oppressed politically, economically, socially and physically and this became the impetus for the creation of a number of groups to respond and counter these actions.  During the 1960’s, many groups fighting race based oppression were either started or comprised mainly of students on college campuses throughout the United States and RAM was no exception.

The other reason Hoover pegged him as so dangerous was his organizing skills. Dr. Ahmad took RAM out of the colleges and brought it to the streets. As the first field chairman he articulated a number of objectives for the organization including giving Black people a sense of racial pride, solidarity, dignity, unity and commitment to the struggle for independence.

On Thursday, November 17, 2011, Dr. Ahmad gave a presentation sponsored by the Department of African American Studies at Georgia State and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. There he gave a history of his journey in the Black Power Movement. He was very humble in saying he was only one of many important people involved in the movement but Hoover made him seem so by labeling him the most dangerous person of that time. 

We were not only privy to his experiences but we learned about his interactions with Rosa Parks, her involvement with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the civil rights movement and her consistent removal from buses as she asserted there should be equality in transportation. It was not a one-time situation but a concerted effort to fight for equality on her part.

He also talked about first hand interactions with Malcolm X stating how easy he was to work with and how eager he was to work. What do you need me to do was a statement he used in regards to being approached to work within the movement.

Being able to interact with an elders whose shoulders we stand upon is a wonderful experience. Hearing firsthand what our elders have been through gives us inspiration to continue their work for our liberation. As parting wisdom, Dr. Ahmad was asked is there still a need for a Black vanguard like Ram in today’s society. His response-as long as there is capitalism, there will be racism. As long as there is racism, it will be necessary for a Black revolutionary cadre to address it and the inequitable treatment of our people. His advice-use the issues and contradictions of the U.S. government to organize the people. Create a process where you can build cadre in sufficient number to build organizations that address our realities because we have the solutions and the power.

The agricultural and industrial strength that laid the foundation for U.S. economic power exists because of the blood, sweat and tears of the Afrikans who were enslaved.   Enslaved Africans literally built Wall Street, the very wall from which Wall Street gets its name, were Africans were bought and sold.  The sale of our Black bodies enriched the early traders and bankers. Now, everyday Wall Street bankers desecrate our ancestor’s graves and dishonor their work by trading this blood money on top of an African burial ground!

New Afrikans’ incredible contributions to the strength of the U.S. capitalist economy are continuously unacknowledged and devalued.  From numerous inventions to forms of art, the history books remain silent about our contribution to this country’s wealth. We demand reparations that honor the immeasurable value of our work!

There is a direct link between corporate profit and New Afrikan suffering.  While New Afrikan people suffer under the stress of under-resourced communities, high unemployment and high imprisonment rates, our people are kicked out of our homes, off our land, and lose small businesses. Meanwhile private and public prisons benefit off of our cheap labor to earn billions of dollars a year and media moguls make billions of dollars a year on the sexual degradation of our people and the glorification of violence in our communities.  As a result of these and other racist policies and practices, the official unemployment rate for New Afrikans in some states is higher than 34% and the wealth gap between white and New Afrikan households has grown even wider in the wake of the mass scale thievery orchestrated by Wall Street. We will continue to fight back against our economic oppression! 

We will continue our struggle for collective self-determination, human rights, and reparations!  We do not expect the powers that be to willingly change systems of exploitation that benefit the top 1% and are resolved to build our own alternatives. 

We stand in solidarity with occupy wall street’s outcry for economic justice because it speaks to the realities of Afrikan people in the U.S. and around the world, and our members are in the streets, in solidarity, from New York to the S.F. Bay Area, Atlanta to Dallas and in D.C. and Philadelphia.

The execution of Troy Davis, a New Afrikan man from the state of Georgia caused an international outcry for justice. The execution, i.e. state lynching, left many of our people in a state of shock, dismay, and anger. With so much doubt around the validity of the verdict, many of us are left trying to understand how or why the state could still decide to put Troy Davis to death.  How could they be so blatantly unconcerned with justice and so quick to take life of a Black man?

The answer to that question is written in our history here in America.  Let this serve as a teaching moment for our people.

It is clear that we, New Afrikan people (of African descent) live in a society whose political and economic structures have been built and maintained around the exploitation of our labor, the destabilization of our communities, and the marginalization of all independent thought. Although slavery formally ended many years ago, the deadly and exploitative relationships between our people and this Empire are still intact. The historic and current exploitation of our labor, from slavery to mass incarceration continues to rob us of our dignity, our ability to live freely, and in many cases live at all!

We see the execution, or rather the state murder, of Troy Davis as a direct link to the accepted and calculated killings of our people by institutions of The United States, including corporations who benefit the most from our exploitation.   Our tax dollars are what pays for the murders of Troy Davis, the housing of inmates, death row, and all of what we refer to as the Prison Industrial Complex.

Troy Davis is not an isolated incident of injustice but just the latest individual incident that has captured our attention. We have to think outside the box of accepted political discourse and find long term answers to our problem. Our problem is not only with the prison industrial complex, the market economy and the political system but also with America as a whole and how it uses these systems to control our lives, limit our resources and diminish our capacity to live as free human beings.

That is the lesson of Troy Davis and the lesson of our history in America: the only way that we can survive is for us to organize and win self-determination, so that our destiny and our lives can be in our own hands, and not in the hands of those who oppress us.

*********************Save the Date**********************​*******

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions or BDS movement, launched in 2005 to uproot the zionist settler-colonial project and dismantle the Israeli apartheid state following the various setbacks to the Palestinian liberation movement stemming from the Oslo accords, is rapidly growing into a powerful international political force. As the movement continues to grow and expand it is bound to encounter more obstacles and roadblocks. One way to defeat these limitations is to study and learn how other peoples’ movements that have employed BDS strategies and tactics on an extensive level organized themselves to overcome or maneuver around the roadblocks on their path. One such movement is the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) in North America. The BLM has employed BDS strategies and tactics extensively for the greater part of the last 200 plus years in its unfinished question for liberation. What follows is a brief summary of the BLM’s experience and a short exploration of some of the lessons learned from this extensive experience.

The BLM has employed a broad range of strategies and tactics in its pursuit of liberation over the 500 long years of its existence, including mass rebellions, emigration, work stoppages, mass strikes, armed struggle, and international dipolmacy. Some of the most dynamic of the liberation strategies and tactics employed have centralized the comprehensive utilization of boycotts, divestment initiatives and sanctions, commonly known as BDS. The most dynamic element of these BDS initiatives is that when they have been successful they have been able to engage masses of people and harness limited individual capacities and transform them via collective activities into powerful social and political weapons. And they have often been able to accomplish this in creative ways that have reduced individual risk and minimized direct conflict with brutal and vastly more powerful enemies like the Klu Klux Klan, White Citizens Councils, the Southern Planter Elite, and the United States Government.

It can be soundly argued that the employment of BDS strategies and tactics within the BLM have their roots in antebellum or pre-Civil War initiatives to end chattel slavery and secure basic human dignities. One of the earliest recorded successes of a combined boycott and divestment initiative was the protest of the Black Community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1787 led by Richard Allan and Absolom Jones against the racist practices and policies of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This initiative lead to the creation of the order of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, which became a cornerstone in the institutional development of the Black Community in the United States. Another exemplary model from the antebellum period is drawn from the Abolitionist movement (under Black and white leadership on both sides of the Atlantic), which organized a boycott in the early 1790′s of the strategic goods of the triangular trade such as sugar, rum, tobacco, cotton, coffee, and dyes that built the empirical economies of the Atlantic ocean and laid the foundation for the capitalist world system. These boycotts played a major role in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the United States and the United Kingdom by 1808.

BDS tactics within the BLM grew in considerable scope and application after the civil war. As African descendant people in the US have had very little access to capital until relatively recently, and even less substantive political power until the 1970′s, boycotts, rather than divestment and sanctions, have been the primary weapon in the BDS arsenal employed by the BLM. Between the 1860′s to 1940′s, a broad range of successful boycotts were organized by BLM forces that challenged the system of white supremacy and the institutions of oppression including government and private pension programs that excluded or exploited freed slaves and their descendants, lending agencies that exploited Black farmers, discriminatory transport systems and laws established at the turn of the 20th century, businesses that refused to hire or serve Black people, the US armed forces for discriminatory policies and engagements in imperial conquest, and the US government directly via the original March on Washington Movement led by A. Philip Randolph against racial oppression and discriminatory hiring and contracting practices.

The 1950′s witnessed the maturation of the BLM’s employment of boycott strategies. The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott of 1955 – 1956, generally considered one of the three primary catalyzing moments of the high tide of struggle mounted by the BLM between the 1950′s – 1970′s (the other two being the Brown v Board of Education decision and the murder of Emmett Till), dealt a critical blow to the legally sanctioned policies and practices of white supremacy. Although the Montgomery Bus Boycott is generally portrayed as being the product of a spontaneous act and for canonizing the heroic actions and leadership of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., it was in all reality a deliberate and well thought out campaign based on years of preparation and planning. Montgomery however, was not the first boycott of its kind. Similar boycotts were organized in Mississippi, such as the one lead by TRM Howard against the lack of restroom facilities for Blacks on commuter buses in 1952 – 1953, and the Baton Rogue, Louisiana Bus Boycott of 1953 lead by Willis Reed and the Rev. TJ Jemison.

As previously noted, divestment strategies were not as widely employed in the BLM prior to the 1960′s. But, when they were employed they tended to serve as catalysts for Black institutional development.  Most of the documented mass divestment initiatives employed by the forces of the BLM involved the removal of wealth, deeds, and insurance polices from financial institutions and insurance companies that brazenly supported the oppressive policies and practices of American Apartheid. The most successful of these divestment initiatives lead to the establishment of independent Black institutions such as banks, insurance companies and mutual aid societies, particularly before the Great Depression of the 1930′s which liquidated most of the wealth amassed by Black people after the Civil War. Two of the most successful divestment initiatives that translated into Black independent institutions occurred in Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana where Blacks acted in mass by taking their merger savings from discriminatory institutions that denied them equal services – loans, medical assistance, burial funds, etc., and pooled them together to create mutual aid societies and banks. Initiatives such as this were employed after the Great Depression, more often to support a boycott initiative. But, they tended to be more short lived and limited in their impact as a result of capitals restructuring after WW II and the creation of various welfare state institutions that provided essential social services.

In the 1960′s the utilization of boycotts and divestment initiatives became less prominent in the overall orientation of the BLM primarily as a result of the defeat of the legalized dimensions of American apartheid and the attainment of more political power and social influence in the United States as a direct result of the success of the mass resistance mounted by the movement. Sanctions however, began to grow in both utilization and importance from the mid-1960′s on. The sanctions typically employed by the BLM concentrated on exerting intense political and economic pressure on government institutions and corporate enterprises to force them to comply with various demands, such as access to jobs, educational opportunities, community investment, and decent housing. This type of sanction was employed because then, as now, Blacks in North America have not been able to attain self-determination in the form of national independence to be able to enact state level sanctions. A few of the more successful sanction initiatives of this period  targeted the automotive industry, colleges and universities, and state social welfare agencies over hiring, safety, access and quality administrative issues.

One of the most memorable and celebrated BDS initiatives employed by the BLM was an international initiative in support of the anti-Apartheid Movement of Azania (i.e. South Africa). The BLM and the Azanian or South African liberation movement share a long and deep history of solidarity and strategic collaboration going back to late 1800′s. From the 1920′s on, through the efforts of activists like Max Yergan and A.B. Xuma, the BLM and the South African liberation movement not only appealed to each other for inspiration and solidarity, but consistently shared strategies and tactics to aid their respective struggles. How to apply BDS strategies and tactics, particularly after the success of the Indian liberation movement – which the BLM and Azanian liberation movements both stood in active solidarity with – in attaining independence from the British empire in 1947, and that of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, became a common feature of their exchanges. Upon the founding of the anti-Apartheid struggle by activists from the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa in London in 1959, BLM activists and organizers were some of the first international supporters to take up the call and organize solidarity initiatives throughout the United States. These initiatives began to gain critical mass beginning in the 1970′s through the initiatives of formations like the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) and Trans-Africa Forum. They played a major role in weakening the Apartheid regime economically and isolating it politically be getting North American cultural workers (artists, academics, and athletes) to honor the boycott call, forcing several major American corporations to divest from the South African economy, and in forming a solid political block in the US Congress around the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to press for US government to enforce international sanctions of the regime. This long history of solidarity played a critical role in the collapse of the Apartheid state in the late 1980′s and the transition to majority democratic rule in 1994.

The BLM was not playing favorites in its international support of the Azanian liberation movement it should be noted. It also employed BDS strategies and tactics in support of numerous national and social liberation movements in Africa – most notably those of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, and Congo/Zaire – where it called on the US government and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) to stop arming and supporting the colonial empire of Portugal, the white settler regime in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), or for the US government to sanction and US corporations to divest from the reactionary Mobutu regime in Zaire after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.

What the history of the BLM’s employment of BDS strategies and tactics illustrates is that they can clearly be successful in advancing and attaining some of the critical objectives of a peoples’ liberation movement. However, as the uncompleted struggle for Black liberation in North America testifies to, they, like all strategies and tactics, have their limitations. Where BDS strategies and tactics have tended to be most successful in the history of the BLM has been when mass self-reliant resistance was employed to confront a target that was either dependent on Black labor or economic patronage, typically the utilization of a service like transportation or the consumption of a product, or when boycott and divestment campaigns lead to the establishment of Black autonomous or independent institutions. Another critical factor in the success, or failure, of BDS tactics in the service of the BLM was the degree to which they shamed the US government in the context of the Cold War or constrained its operations in the Third World. However, it should be noted that while Pan-Africanism and the eliciting of international solidarity have been central to the BLM since the era of slave rebellions, maroon societies, and the abolitionist movement, and was extensively mobilized between the 1880′s – 1900′s, the 1920′s – 40′s, and again in the 1960′s – 80′s, the BDS initiatives of the BLM tended to be insular or self-reliant mobilizations that self-consciously depended on the strength of the Black masses themselves.

These historical and contextual lessons from the BLM are critical for the Palestinian BDS movement to internalize and incorporate where applicable. As the Palestinian BDS movement is currently modeled more on the example of the anti-Apartheid movement than the BLM (or Indian) example, it possess some of the limitations of that particular movement, particularly the reliance on Palestinian exiles and descendants in the diaspora for leadership and non-Palestinains throughout the world for support and patronage. Exiles or their descendants in the diaspora can sometimes be gravely out of touch with realities on the ground in their homelands, non-Palestinians who engage the movement in various capacities can sometimes have little regard for the necessity of Palestinian self-determination for determining the course of the struggle, and the general support of international allies can often be whimsical and conditional. The balance of forces in the world must also be taken into strategic consideration. The lack of a critical mass of progressive nation-states, as existed in the 1960′s and 70′s for instance, limits the threat of sanctions, and the general weakness of progressive social movements the world over (even with the inspiration of the so-called “Arab Spring”) sets some constraints regarding both reach and depth on the employment of boycott and divestment initiatives.

These are the fundamental limitations related to the anti-Apartheid model of BDS. The primary limitation regarding the utilization of a more BLM oriented model pivots on the role of Palestinian labor in the interrelated and interdependent political economies of Palestine and the zionist nation-state. The Palestinian economy, namely that of Gaza and the West Bank, is severely constricted by what is in effect an Israeli and US-led embargo (in the case of Gaza its actually a full on military blockade), while Palestinian workers are rapidly joining the ranks of the worlds excluded, dispossessed and disposable populations due to the embargo and wholesale replacement in the Israeli economy by super-exploitable migrant workers imported from Southeast Asia and Africa. Prior to the 1st Intifada, the Israeli economy was largely dependent on Palestinian labor. Israeli capital, in unison with the Israeli nation-state, took deliberate steps after the 1st Intifada to make sure that Palestinian labor could never critically disrupt the economy again, hence the replacement. Palestinian labors limited ability to disrupt the Israeli economy means that it is limited in its ability to employ many of the successful BDS methods employed by the BLM in the 20th century.

However, as the example of the BLM illustrates, none of these challenges are insurmountable. The Palestinian liberation movement and its allies can and should learn a great deal from the BSM movements employed by the Black, Azanian, and Indian liberation movements, but take head that none of them can be copied whole cloth. In the final analysis, the Palestinian BDS movement is going to have to blaze its own course to address the conditions of the present era and those of the future. Those of us committed to the cause of Palestinian liberation and see the BDS movement as an essential tool to attain it would do well to take stock of the lessons that can be gained from critically examining a protracted struggle like the BLM, and prepare ourselves to embark on a long marathon down freedom’s road.

Original article posted: http://www.usacbi.org/2011/08/kali-akuno-the-black-liberation-movement-and-boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-lessons-and-applications-for-the-palestinian-liberation-movement/

The Black August Hip Hip project returns in 2011 with a packed line up of artists!

The Black August Hip Hop Project 2011 – August 25, 2011

Featuring performances by:

• Les Nubians
• Saigon
• Hasan Salaam
• Mike Flo
• The Remidners
• Kalae All Day
• Supa Nova Slom
• Nena Blue
• Faro Z

& Surprise Special Guests!

Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011
Time: Doors Open at 7:00pm – Show 8:00pm -1:00AM
Location: S.O.B’s 204 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
Subway: 1 Train to Houston St

Tickets $15 in advance / $20 day of show.

For more info: http://mxgm.org/blackaugust/