I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Shortly after the publication of a blog post about his putative endorsement of Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero last night, Minister Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Nation/Marcus Garvey Movement in Detroit called the Messenger to clear up a few things.
First, he said, he had not endorsed Bernero for governor; his name on a list of Detroit-area endorsers was a mistake and he was not endorsing anyone for governor this year because “we’ve decided to sit out this campaign. We’re bogged down with so much work in the community right now, we just don’t have the time at this point to get involved with campaigning.”
Second, he addressed claims in a Metro Times article that we had linked to calling him a black separatist who wanted the races to remain separate. Here’s what he said:
I am a black nationalist, pan-Africanist. My faith is Black Christian nationalism. But I want to address it like this. I am a lover and supporter of all of humanity. I believe in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all men and women. However, in a generalized way, the dominant society, which happens to be European or white or caucasian, has almost completely for 465 years mistreated black people. So when we say that I am a separatist, it needs to be understood that the separating was done before I was born and unless we find some common ground and some common basic human decency, the separating and the segregating will continue. Is that how I would like to live? No. We’re all God’s children. We’re all on God’s earth. There’s enough resources that we don’t have to have any homelessness, any poverty. We can eradicate abject poverty and homelessness and hopelessness and utter despair. Yet those who are misruling the planet lack not the skill but the will and the love to bring about this utopia. I would like to see everybody get along and be brothers and sisters. I believe wherever black people make up the majority, we should be allowed to practice self-determination. I’m against the takeover of the school system, against the takeover of Recorder’s Court, against the takeover of Cobo Hall, against the takeover of the water. If that makes me a separatist, then so be it. That’s not how I want to live, but I didn’t create the conditions we live in.
Shabazz said that he felt the Metro Times had misrepresented his position. We will let his words speak for themselves.
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