Starting Date: 10-02-2006
Starting Time: 6:30pm
Uhuru Solidarity Center
3733 Lancaster Ave.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
United States
215-387-0919National Action Campaign
All Diamonds Are Blood Diamonds; Boycott ALL Diamonds!
What: National Action Campaign Against the Diamond Trade
FORUM and Film – “Reparations Now”
Who: Kamau Bectemba, leader of Philadelphia African People's Socialist Party
Alison Hoehne, coordinator of Philadelphia's African People's Solidarity Day
When: Monday, October 2nd at 6:30 pm
Where: Uhuru Solidarity Ctr, 3733 Lancaster Ave in West Philadelphia
---------- also ----------
ACTION: Demonstration on Saturday, October 21 at 12 pm
at 8th and Sansom Sts., Jewelry Row, Philadelphia
FILM: “Reparations Now” from Burning Spear Productions, with powerful footage of African civilization, slavery, Jim Crow and the white wealth built at African people's expense.
In an attempt to educate the American public about the violence and oppression they charge is intrinsic in the diamond trade, the African People's Solidarity Committee is launching a national action campaign against the diamond industry with a series of demonstrations and actions targeting diamonds retailers in U.S. cities.
Founded by the Uhuru (African freedom) Movement to organize support from the white community for the African liberation and unification struggle, the group is calling for concerned citizens to:
Organize protest actions targeting the diamond industry.
Boycott all diamonds; All diamonds are blood diamonds!
Donate diamonds to the Uhuru Movement for African-led development programs for renewable energy and water purification in West Africa
Support the struggle for reparations and national liberation for African people
Organizers of the National Action Campaign reject the diamond industry’s recent publicity campaign promoting the extraction and sale of "non-conflict" diamonds as beneficial to indigenous and African communities.
Critics of the industry point to Botswana, the largest supplier of uncut diamonds in the world, where a fourth of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. A third of the people of are undernourished and the life expectancy is 36 years. Botswana has the second largest per capita AIDS rate on the planet, with nearly a quarter of the people infected.
The World Diamond Council admits that $8.4 billion in rough diamonds are extracted from Africa each year. This amount multiplies as the diamonds are refined and sold, traveling from Africa to Antwerp to Israel and the U.S., enriching white communities along the way.
Campaign organizer Alison Hoehne states, “We have the responsibility to shut down an industry that ravages the land and labor of Africa to benefit the white world. For white society, the diamond is promoted to represent the ultimate expression of love. For Africa, the diamond trade has its origins in colonialism, with African people forced to labor on their own land under slave-like conditions for pennies a day.”
In recent years, proxy wars funded by foreign interests competing over the mineral-rich African continent have destabilized the region, allowing for the uncontrolled export of diamonds by independent groups and individuals. The DeBeers Group, the diamond cartel founded by British colonist Cecil Rhodes, responded to this threat to their control of the diamond trade by devising the concept of “blood” or “conflict” diamonds, referring to any diamonds sold on the world market without their “Kimberley Process” stamp of approval.
Hoehne counters, “All diamonds are blood diamonds! The diamond wars are just another chapter in the centuries-long history of Western colonial domination in Africa that kidnapped millions of African people for enslavement in the Americas, wiped out whole segments of the African population in Africa, stole African land and resources, and enslaved African people on their own soil for the benefit of the white world.”
For more information and the truth about diamonds, info@apscuhuru.org
Contact: National Office, African People’s Solidarity Day Campaign (215) 387-0919, or email apscuhuru.org Geographical Scope: Local Speaker |
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