January, 06 2010, 08:53am EDT
Africa Action Mourns the Loss of Bill Sutherland, 1918-2010
“I'm a person who believes in nonviolence on principle. And true nonviolence is a spiritual force that the people can have, which can be the most powerful thing going. But I respect the revolutionist who adopts a violent method, because I think that the most important thing is the revolution." —Bill Sutherland
WASHINGTON
Africa Action
is saddened to learn of the death of Bill Sutherland, African American
pacifist, Pan African activist elder, and a founder of Africa Action's
first predecessor organization, the American Committee on Africa. He
died peacefully on the evening of January 2, 2010. He was 91.
"Bill was a remarkable person and a true pioneer committed to the
liberation struggle in Africa and achieving an end to colonialism and
Global Apartheid," said Gerald LeMelle, Executive Director of
Africa Action. He adds, "Africa Action is grounded in the history
and purpose of his vision and through his legacy, we are committed to
promoting human rights and working towards social, political and
economic justice in Africa."
During a ceremony of Africa Action's 50th anniversary, George Houser, a
founding Director of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and The
Africa Fund said, "This is how we got started. It was the Defiance
Campaign in South Africa sponsored by the African National Congress to
which we responded, resulting in more then 8500 arrests for nonviolent
civil disobedience against the apartheid laws. It was Bill Sutherland
who urged us to get involved."
The Americans for South African Resistance became the ad hoc support
group and a vehicle for information about the Campaign and to raise
money for political prisoners for the Africa. In 1953, once the
Defiance Campaign ended, the Americans for South African Resistance
disbanded, and Sutherland and his colleagues established a more formal
organization, the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), presently known
as Africa Action.
Sutherland's relationship with a broad spectrum of Africans who played
key roles in both revolution and reform, including Frantz Fanon,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Dennis Brutus and others, helped shape his
vision of a more just world. During his experience living in Africa
for over three decades, Sutherland demonstrated an unyielding
commitment to the liberation struggle.
Michael Stulman, Associate Director for Policy and Communications said,
"His work is a history of solidarity that is essential for finding
new paths to a future of human rights for all."
Africa Action extends our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
To find more information on funeral arrangements, please email info
(at) africaaction.org
XXX
Bill Sutherland, Pan African Pacifist, 1918-2010
Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between the peoples of Africa
and the Americas for over fifty years, died peacefully on the evening
of January 2, 2010. He was 91.
A life-long pacifist and liberation advocate, Sutherland became
involved in civil rights and anti-war activities as a youthful member
of the Student Christian Movement in the 1930s. Sutherland was raised
in New Jersey, the son of a prominent dentist and youngest brother to
Reiter Sutherland and to Muriel Sutherland Snowden of Boston, who
founded Freedom House in 1949 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship
"genius" grant. He spent four years at Lewisburg Federal Correctional
Facility in the 1940s as a conscientious objector to World War Two,
striking up what became life-long friendships with fellow C.O.s Ralph
DiGia, Bayard Rustin, George Houser, Dave Dellinger, and others. In
1951, in the early days of the Cold War, Sutherland, DiGia, Dellinger,
and Quaker pacifist Art Emory constituted the Peacemaker bicycle
project, which took the message of nuclear disarmament to both sides of
the Iron Curtain.
In 1953, in coordination with the War Resisters International and with
several activist groups and independence movement parties on the
continent, he moved to what was then known as the Gold Coast. An active
supporter of Kwame Nkrumah, he married playwright and Pan African
cultural activist Efua Theodora, and became the headmaster of a rural
secondary school. The call of Pan Africanist politics was very strong,
and Sutherland was instrumental--along with a small group of African
Americans living in Ghana at the time, including dentists Robert and
Sara Lee-in hosting the visit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Coretta Scott King to the 1957 independence celebrations. In the early
days of the first Ghanaian government, Sutherland also served on the
organizing team of the All African Peoples Congress. He was appointed
private secretary to Finance Minister Komla Gbedema. He was also
central to the development of the Sahara Protest Team, which brought
together African, European, and U.S. peace leaders to put their bodies
in the way of nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert.
Sutherland left Ghana in 1961, working in both Lebanon and Israel for
the founding of Peace Brigades International, and for the Israeli labor
organization Histadrut. It was also in this period that he began a
friendship with Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of the Ismaili community,
working in support of displaced persons as Sadruddin became United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He settled in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania in 1963, as a civil servant. Sutherland's chief work in Dar
involved support for the burgeoning independent governments and
liberation movements. A close friend and associate of Tanzania's Julius
Nyerere and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, Sutherland helped develop the Pan
African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA). He
served as hospitality officer for the Sixth Pan African Congress--held
in Dar in 1974--working with C.L.R. James and other long-time colleagues
to bridge the gap between Africans on the continent and in the
Diaspora. He hosted countless individuals and delegations from the U.S.
in these years, including assisting Malcolm X in what would be his last
trip to Tanzania. His home in Dar became a camping ground for
liberation leaders in exile from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South
Africa and throughout the region. His love of music, especially jazz,
his passion for tennis (which he played well into his 80s), and the
pleasure he got from dancing, were hallmarks of his interactions,
shared with political associates and personal friends the world over.
Despite Sutherland's close association with those engaged in armed
struggle, he maintained his connections with and commitment to
revolutionary nonviolence, and joined the international staff of the
Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in 1974. As the
AFSC pushed for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to South African
anti-apartheid clergyman Bishop Desmond Tutu, Sutherland was working as
the AFSC international representative. In 2003, the AFSC initiated an
annual Bill Sutherland Institute, training Africa lobbyists and
advocates in various policy issues and educational techniques.
Sutherland was also the recipient of an honorary doctorate degree from
Bates College, and served as a Fellow at Harvard University's Institute
of Politics. He was awarded a special citation from the Gandhi Peace
Foundation in India, and, in 2009, received the War Resisters League's
Grace Paley Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2000, Africa World Press published Sutherland's Guns and Gandhi in
Africa: Pan African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and
Liberation, co-authored by Matt Meyer. Archbishop Tutu, who wrote the
foreword for the book, commented that "Sutherland and Meyer have looked
beyond the short-term strategies and tactics which too often divide
progressive people . . . They have begun to develop a language which
looks at the roots of our humanness." On the occasion of Sutherland's
90th birthday last year, Tutu called in a special message, noting that
"the people of Africa owe Bill Sutherland a big thank you for his
tireless support."
Bill Sutherland is survived by three children--Esi Sutherland-Addy,
Ralph Sutherland, and Amowi Sutherland Phillips--as well as
grandchildren in Accra, Ghana; Spokane, Washington; Lewiston, Maine;
New Haven, Connecticut; and Brooklyn, New York. In addition to scores
of family members, friends, and loved ones, he will be missed by his
niece, Gail Snowden, his loving partner Marilyn Meyer, and his
"adopted" sons Matt Meyer and john powell. There will be a private
funeral for family members this week, and memorial services will be
organized for later this year.
Africa Action is a national organization that works for political, economic and social justice in Africa. Through the provision of accessible information and analysis combined with the mobilization of public pressure we work to change the policies and policy-making processes of U.S. and multinational institutions toward Africa. The work of Africa Action is grounded in the history and purpose of its predecessor organizations, the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), The Africa Fund, and the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), which have fought for freedom and justice in Africa since 1953. Continuing this tradition, Africa Action seeks to re-shape U.S. policy toward African countries.
LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular