From the Black Agenda Report website:

“Jackson Rising” Conference Still Scheduled, Despite Mayor Lumumba’s Death

Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s “Jackson Rising” conference on how to move towards self-determination and participatory democracy “is still on” for May 2-4, according to Kali Akuno, a close aide to Lumumba. “We need the support of progressive and radical and revolutionary people throughout the United States to support us in fulfilling this mission,” said Akuno, who is also a veteran organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, co-founded by Lumumba in 1993. “If you really believe in the ‘Jackson-Kush Plan,’ then you have to understand it is going to take more than one individual to facilitate that.” Mayor Lumumba’s funeral is this Saturday.

Texas Sheriff Widely Suspected in Mutilation Death of Black Man

Sabine County authorities concluded that foul play was not a factor in the death, last November, of 28 year-old Alfred Wright, whose body was found with his eyes gouged out, his tongue severed from his mouth, teeth knocked out, and part of an ear missing. Attention has since focused on Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox and state police officers. “When you start looking at consistent lies and cover-up, not only by the sheriff’s department but by the Texas Rangers – we should all be concerned about that,” said Jeffrey L. Boney, associate editor of the Houston Forward Times, which has closely followed the case. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Wright’s death.

Political Motives Behind Anthony Monteiro Termination

Community and campus activists in Philadelphia are pressing for reversal of Temple University’s effective firing of Dr. Anthony Monteiro, who served for ten years as an associate professor in the African American Studies Department. “As this country moves steadily to the right, the perception is that progressive forces on campuses need to be routed,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston. “To the extent that we don’t speak up for Tony Monteiro, professors like myself are only jeopardizing our own existence,” said Horne. The chair of African American Studies at Temple, Dr. Molefi Asante, was complicit in Dr. Monteiro’s termination.

U.S. to be Confronted at UN on Torture by Solitary Confinement

The United States will have to answer to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, next week, on its policies of mass solitary confinement of prisoners. Efia Wangaza, a member of the U.S. Human Rights Network’s delegation to Geneva, says the U.S. is not in compliance with three international treaties, including covenants against torture. This is “a follow-up to our previous work, in which we were able to challenge the United States on the existence of political prisoners,” said Wangaza, head of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. She asks that listeners help pay the cost of the delegation’s on-site work in Geneva, by going to www.wmxp955.com.

Confederate Flags in Kiev

Washington is engaged in a global campaign of “subversion and destabilization at every level,” said Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center, in New York. The U.S. has long bankrolled protests by rightists in Venezuela, and brags of contributing $5 billion to “democracy” in Ukraine – “that’s really money for subversion,” said Flounders. “These are storm troopers” who “not only hung swastikas but also Confederate flags” in Kiev, where the U.S. is “pushing an extreme neo-Nazi, right-wing agenda.”