Yah khai, Shalom!
Beloved Family and Friends ,
I pray this mail with its attachment finds you in the highest of spirits and health. On behalf of the Nominated Council of Elders in regards the above subject I am sending the attached statement. The contents of the attached statement are self explanatory. You may receive or have already received a copy of the NCE statement from other elders who were involved in the
process. Our thoughts are that the current on-going situation finds a truth
centred way of resolve and reconciliation on behalf of the greater objective in restoring the capacity and potential of who we are as a people. May each one of you continue to have a blessed day.
Perfect Peace,
YehoeshahfahtStatement of Nominated Council of Elders (NCE)
29/11/2010
Re: Suspension/expulsion of Bro. Omowale Rupert from Galaxy Radio
The purpose of this statement is to clarify, the reason why the above NCE was prematurely discontinued and was therefore unable to fulfil its designated objectives. We had intended to issue this statement at the discontinuation of the NCE in April, but this was not possible. The necessity and urgency of this statement at this time is due to the recent publicity document of the Pan-Afrikan Society Community Forum (PASCF), dated 26th October, 2010, which stated:
“Galaxy’s management has refused to respond to letters, invitations to meet, phone messages, text messages and the Elders’ Council.”
It is our duty to inform the community that this statement is incorrect, in its reference to the “Elders’ Council”; hence our original concern that unless we, the NCE, informed the community ourselves, the reason for the breakdown of the process, could be subject to misinterpretation.
In January 2010, the PASCF/Friends of Galaxy nominated this Elders Council to undertake a ‘Conflict Reconciliation’ process, after three months of campaigning to, “Lift the suspension on Bro. Omowale”. To this effect, we were asked to review all relevant documentation and to engage all stakeholders (eg Galaxy Radio Management, Bro. Omowale RuPert and other parties cited e.g. Bro. Caul Grant); with a view to facilitating dialogue, aimed toward reconciliation.Whilst it is true to say that Galaxy Radio management was, initially, expressly reluctant to get involved in the process, as they felt that the matter was closed; it is equally true that three members of the NCE contacted them at varying stages, and found them
responsive and respectful. It seems only fair to note here that Galaxy Radio was, to the best of our knowledge, not involved in establishing the NCE.
Notably, however, at the point of the breakdown, Galaxy Radio was engaging constructively with the NCE and had, in fact, agreed to meet with a NCE delegation.
They had also appointed Baba Herukutti to liaise with us.From the outset of the process, the NCE found that whilst certain leading members of PASCF seemed committed, others were uncooperative, rendering PASCF’s overall commitment ambiguous. Our advice that they halt the campaign and refrain from inflammatory public statements was not heeded. Furthermore, against our expressed request, PASCF convened a public meeting in February 2010, to discuss issues which they had asked us to investigate. Eventually they began questioning the remit and validity of the NCE and proposed reconstituting it, to involve some young people. In this climate, it became clear that the process was not viable.
In effect, the reason the process broke down, was due to the lack of commitment and eventual de facto withdrawal of PASCF itself. This was particularly disappointing as it was PASCF who had nominated the Elders Council in the first place.
We deeply regret this, as the process had so much potential. We also deeply regret and are extremely concerned about the acrimony that has ensued and the impact of this on our community at large. Nonetheless, we believe the reconciliation process can be re-established if all parties are willing to engage, and to refrain from any emotive public statements or action against each other. Terms such as “counterinsurgency” and “con-Afrikanist” can only serve to exacerbate an already volatile situation.
This NCE wishes to state also that we are concerned about the repeated flagging up of the phrase ‘By any means necessary’, in this matter, without context. This we do not believe is serving any constructive purpose, especially where it is implied, that organisations and individuals who do not support PASCF’s approach, are directly or indirectly condoning drug smuggling in our community.
Suffice to say, that no responsible, rational Pan-Afrikan organisation,
institution or individual would condone drug trafficking in our community in any circumstance and would, in fact, condemn it in principle.However, we are mindful that there is a serious compassionate issue at the heart of this matter, involving the avoidable death of a baby and its traumatic effects on his father, compounded by state persecution and denial of justice. It is therefore insensitive and wrong to pursue this matter, void of its compassionate context, in the name of fighting drugs in our community. Notably, we are not aware of any Pan-Afrikan organisation or institution in our community (including Galaxy Radio and PASCF), that condones drug trafficking.
This NCE is concerned with restoring Ma’at (truth, justice, righteousness, harmony, balance reciprocity and order) and the Nguzo Saba, with emphasis on Umoja (unity) and Ujima (collective and responsibility). Both Galaxy Radio and the PASCF are valued resources in our community and the existing acrimony between them has created a serious fracture which needs urgent mending; being mindful that our community needs its full collective energies to drive the fight for our people’s total liberation.
We hope that this statement brings clarity to the matter and that the parties concerned will seriously review the possibility of reconciliation. To this end, this NCE is willing to assist.
Nominated Council of Elders:
Bro. Yehoeshahfaht Ben Israel (Chair); Mama Lindiwe Tsele; Baba Rev. Hewie Andrew; Baba Eliyahtsoor Ben Israel, Queen Mother; Nzingha Assata; Baba NNA Pepukayi (absent when statement agreed); Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka.
In Perfect Peace,
Bro. Yehoeshahfaht Ben Israel (Chairperson of the NCE )
NOTE: SEE ATTACHMENTS:-
From: Alkebu-Lan
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2010 12:18 PM
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: FW: Nominated Council of Elders' Statement in regards Galaxy Radio and Bro Omowale Rupert Reconciliation process
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Re: Suspension/expulsion of Bro. Omowale Rupert from Galaxy Radio”
It is with some distress and moral and political concern that the PASCF reads the 29th November 2010 “Statement” by some members of the Nominated Council of Elders (NCE) which, gratifyingly, is not signed by all members of the NCE.
That statement is drafted with maximum care, directed at achieving the single, perverse - even dishonest - aim of unjustly heaping blame on Pan-African Society Community Forum (PASCF) for the breakdown of a negotiating process that should have involved Galaxy Radio Management (GRM) who rejected the process for several months. That process was largely one-sided because of the admitted non-involvement of the GRM. It was in fact initiated by the PASCF, which remained fully committed for months until frustrated by (a) GRM's extended and determined refusal to participate and (b) by growing signs that some members of the NCE were approaching the matter whether - consciously or not - with a built-in bias towards the GRM and against the PASCF.
The statement signed by some members of the NCE is not aimed, as it claims, at adding clarification and dealing in truth. A secondary un/conscious aim of the statement is to provide political cover for the Galaxy Radio Management (GRM) and for that Management’s determination to give free and uncontested air-time to forces that are unapologetically committed to importing and disseminating drugs and the proceeds of the sale of those drugs into our African community. They do so despite massive evidence of state involvement in such dealings. The statement suggests that the members of the NCE who signed it have a politically seriously defective reading of the manifestly bogus claim that such an approach to drugs importation and peddling can ever be justified either by the use of Brother Malcolm X’s maxim “by any means necessary” or in any other pro-African way.
No one reading the statement by the some members of the NCE can possibly grasp the sincere and non-antagonistic efforts that PASCF, and especially its leading member Brother Minkah, made to bring peaceful and constructive resolution to the political disagreement between the PASCF and Galaxy Radio Management. Brother Minkah’s efforts in this regard were tireless and it is a gross and unworthy distortion to use a term such as ‘seeming’ when speaking of his unstinting and honest commitment. It is precisely the positive attitude on the part of PASCF that is reflected in our reference in our 26th October 2010 statement to GRM's non-response to the “letters, invitations to meet, phone messages, text messages” we sent to them over a period of many months.
The creation of the Nominated Council of Elders was an initiative of the PASCF and was another part of that positive effort. However, members of the NCE who signed their statement barely acknowledge any of this. They do so only as part of the disturbing (and objectively pro-Galaxy Radio Management) blame-game they have launched against the PASCF. A further pointer to the PASCF’s positive effort and attitude at principled resolution was the fact that much of its work to achieve this outcome was carried out under the rubric of the Friends of Galaxy Radio (FoGR) and was continued on a brotherly basis even while several Galaxy broadcast/ers kept up a pattern of veiled and open attack on members of the PASCF – especially on Brothers Minkah and Omowale.
The members of the NCE who signed their statement have contrived to turn into a lie the PASCF’s summary (Oct. 2010) of its efforts to get discussions going with GRM. They do so by stating that :
Whilst it is true to say that Galaxy Radio management was, initially, expressly reluctant to get involved in the process, as they felt that the matter was closed; it is equally true that three members of the NCE contacted them at varying stages, and found them responsive and respectful. It seems only fair to note here that Galaxy Radio was, to the best of our knowledge, not involved in establishing the NCE. Notably, however, at the point of the breakdown, Galaxy Radio was engaging constructively with the NCE and had, in fact, agreed to meet with a NCE delegation. They had also appointed Baba Herukutti to liaise with us.
If truth and accuracy (rather than heaping unjustified blame on the PASCF) had been behind this remark, the members of the NCE making it would have informed readers of their statement which 3 of them made contact with GRM and when; the exact point in the process of attempted negotiation the GRM abandoned its determined expressed non-involvement, who was notified and what they did with that information.
The experience of the PASCF was that the GRM’s refusal to negotiate persisted long enough to frustrate at least some members of the NCE. It would have been helpful for readers of the statement to be informed exactly when it was that the GRM ceased regarding the matters being raised by PASCF (and which the NCE had been created to resolve) as “closed.” Which aspects of it are now open and since when? What is the date of the note/letter, e-mail or telephone message by which the NCE informed the PASCF of this important change in the approach of the GRM. Readers of the statement by some members of the NCE’s might reasonably have been told when exactly the GRM “appointed Baba Herukutti to liaise with us [them]?”
If all, or much, of this came after frustration had been engendered amongst both members of PASCF and some members of the NCE, then the presentation of this as evidence of the helpfulness of the GRM in contrast to the unhelpfulness of PASCF is, to say the least, disputable and certainly not even-handed.
Also typical of the pro-GRM stance of the members of the NCE who signed its statement is the following:
From the outset of the process, the NCE found that whilst certain leading members of PASCF seemed committed, others were uncooperative, rendering PASCF’s overall commitment ambiguous. Our advice that they halt the campaign and refrain from inflammatory public statements was not heeded. Furthermore, against our expressed request, PASCF convened a public meeting in February 2010, to discuss issues which they had asked us to investigate. Eventually they began questioning the remit and validity of the NCE and proposed reconstituting it, to involve some young people. In this climate, it became clear that the process was not viable.
The PASCF regard this as unworthy of the relevant members of the NEC because it is systematically and deliberately misleading. The PASCF’s approach to the GALAXY issue was lead by Brother Minkah in whom the PASCF organizationally had and retains full confidence. And, we say again, that there was no question of ‘seeming’ commitment on his part. There was in fact nothing “ambiguous” about the broader PASCF’s commitment to a just and African community-protecting outcome. If the points being made in the statement are that the issues involved were being regularly debated within the PASCF and that different views were expressed concerning them, then that is true. However, all those debates/discussions ended in the expression of full support for the PASCF’s position and approach as conducted under the leadership of Brother Minkah.
The relevant NCE members do not in their statement either to name any “uncooperative” PASCF members, nor to give a single example of such behaviour on our part. The signatories of the statement do not explain what were the forums they put together nor what requests were made with which the PASCF was not co-operative. Nor do they bother to concede that if any requests from them made to us may have been questioned by us, such questioning could have been valid. On what basis would the NCE have regarded its every action as beyond question? As it happens, there were no such forums and no reasonable or politically principled requests by the NCE were refused/rejected/uncooperatively responded to by the PASCF.
It was also misleading of the NCE not to point out that, even when frustrated by GRM's reluctance to participate, the PASCF did not abandon the NCE process, but agreed to the APLO continuing their facilitating role. When the APLO approached Baba Herukutti (Galaxy Radio's designated elder), the initiative was rejected point blank.
It is wholly true that the PASCF went ahead with its scheduled Public Forum (not a “public meeting”) in February 2010 on the subject of the impact and nature of the illicit drugs industry on and in the UK African community. The PASCF found itself unable to accept that our Forum conducted on such a topic could be validly seen as challenging or undermining the NCE. It may well have been seen by the GRM as an attack on them. But that is another matter and the fact that some members of the NCE came so closely to identify with a GRM concern (and with its interest in preventing legitimate political debate on the drugs issue is itself revealing.
It is worth noting that Mr Gaul Grant (mentioned in the NCE’s statement) was given a platform at that PASC Forum - which was chaired by Brother Cecil Gutzmore - to advance and defend his views and drugs importing and peddling actions. Mr Gaul Grant made his usual heart-reaching connection between the unfortunate loss of his son and his involvement in the importation and peddling of drugs into the African community. It must also be noted that Mr Grant is a convicted smugger of large quantities of drugs who in his lengthy presentation to that Forum admitted that on some of his drugs importing operations he brought into the UK – and into the African Community here - significant quantities of drugs from Jamaica, when he himself neither knew - nor apparently cared - whether the substances were marijuana (which some people regard as a sacramental herb) or cocaine. The Forum was video-taped.
The members of the NCE who signed their statement found absolutely no words to say about how some of the broadcasters of Galaxy Radio and Galaxy Radio Management itself were dealing with the issues at stake in the sacking of Brother Omowale: nor do they specifically express any objection to the ongoing attacks on the PASCF and some of our leading members that continue to be put out by Galaxy Radio. While they are completely silent on Galaxy Radio Management’s behaviour, they declare with gusto that the PASCF would not refrain from “inflammatory public statements.” Yet not even one example of such a statement is provided, as clearly it should have been. No example is provided because, in point of fact, the PASCF made no such “inflammatory statements.”
It is a matter of record that the PASCF has taken every opportunity express its full sympathy with Mr Gaul Grant over the loss of his son in circumstances that reek of negligence compounded by possible racism on the part of responsible state medical authorities. Some members of the PASCF have personal knowledge of such loss and many other Africans in the UK have had such losses inflicted on them. Their individual responses to such loss have been many and varied. The PASCF remains entirely unable to accept that Mr Grant’s response to his own grievous loss, which he himself says involved various illegalities (long permitted/condoned - he says - by law enforcement agencies) committed on his own account “to gain access to the courts” can have been other than against the interest of the African community. It certainly became anti-African at the point at which these illegalities embraced the importation of large quantities of drugs (possibly including cocaine).
The PASCF also sees every reason to maintain our view that we are acting correctly in standing up against drugs importation and drugs peddling. The members of the NCE who signed their Statement do include in it some strong general remarks against drugs in the African community but they manage to combine this with a deafening silence on the specific matter of Mr Gaul Grant’s above mentioned anti-African activities and Galaxy Radio Management’s persistent on-air facilitation of him in his continuing unapologetic promotion of that line. Nor does their statement bother to recognize that GRM’s sacking of Brother Omowale followed a disgraceful on-air attempt by GRM to silence Brother Omowale in his attempt to question GRM’s facilitation of Mr Grant in his anti-African actions and attitude [Click to listen: http://www.ligali.org/media/galaxy_on_truth_and_justice_251009.wma]. These include the outrageous and to us political dangerous and disreputable claim that the proceeds from the peddling of dangerous drugs – including to and within the African community – can ever represent resources to be used in our African liberation struggle.
Furthermore, part of the evidence reviewed by the NCE included Mr. Grant's assertion that he had given money to organisations in our community allegedly working towards Afrikan Liberation. The NCE expressed no comment on the possibility that trusted organisations may have knowingly or unknowingly accepted drug money. Nor have they commented on the corrupting and damaging effect such payments have on our community or the ability of those organisations to make a principled condemnation of the anti-African actions of known drug smugglers and their supporters. What would Papa Garvey or the Osagyfo Kwame Nkrumah have to say about such lines of action, argument and resulting confusion?
The members of the NCE who signed the statement are silent on the resolutions of the open community meeting of 27th October 2010 chaired and hosted by NCE members (Mama Lindiwe and Reverend Hewie) set up to look into the issues in dispute at which GRM was offered a platform but failed to attend. What is the NCE's position on those community resolutions? There is also the problem that from the outset, sister Nzingha declined the opportunity to participate in the NCE.
In the light of the above, the PASCF finds that it has no alternative but to reject the political line and approach advanced by some members of the NCE who appear to have fallen under the influence of the GRM in their document entitled:
Statement of Nominated Council of Elders (NCE) 29/11/2010
Re: Suspension/expulsion of Bro. Omowale Rupert from Galaxy Radio
Pan-Afrikan Society Comunity Forum
As received by TheBlackList --
From: omowale rupert
To: PASCF
Sent: Sun, 5 December, 2010 0:46:07
Subject: Response to the “Statement by Some Members of the Nominated Council of Elders (NCE) 29/11/2010