UN Fact-Finding Mission to Investigate Racial Discrimination in the United States

Kali Akuno, co-director of Cooperation Jackson, says it will give greater exposure to the realities of African Americans and put the US government and the state of Mississippi on notice

January 22, 2016

Bio

Kali Akuno was the Coordinator of Special Projects and External Funding for the late mayor Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, MS. He is the author of the organizing handbook Let Your Motto Be Resistance and wrote the preface to the report Operation Ghetto Storm. He is an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) (www.mxgm.org), former co-director of the US Human Rights Network, and served as executive director of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund based in New Orleans, LA. Kali currently resides in Jackson, MS.

In 2014, the United Nations declared this decade as the International Decade for People of African Descent. The UN Human Rights Council has established a Working Group of Experts on people of African descent. The working group is mandated to carry out a factfinding visit to the United States, and they will be traveling to Washington, DC, Baltimore, Jackson, Mississippi, and New York City in the coming days, and they plan to gather firsthand information about the current human rights situation of African-Americans and follow up on recommendations that they may have to fight racism. The panel of experts is headed by Mireille Fanon-Mendes France. She's the daughter of Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary philosopher, and the author of many books, among them The Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Mask.

So to discuss the work of this working group headed to the United States I'm joined by Kali Akuno, and he's a co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and one of the authors of the Jackson plan. Kali, so good to have you with us again.

KALI AKUNO: Pleasure to be here.

PERIES: Kali, so the United Nations Working Group of Experts on their way to the U.S. and to your city this evening is going to examine the racism and the situation of African-Americans in this country, but in Jackson in particular. Give us a sense of what they're going to find in Jackson.

AKUNO: Well, they're going to find a city which is deeply impoverished, systemically neglected, and really in a deep sense of conflict and turmoil. Jackson is currently under some considerable threat by the largely white congressional, state congressional power structure in the state, which is as we speak trying to strip Jackson of control over its airport, which is something that just got initiated the last several days. And also to remove all control over our water situation.

They're going to find a city in which the average income is well under--family income is well under $35,000. Unemployment for black folks is well in the range of 30, 40, maybe even 50 percent in real time and in real terms and conditions. And they're going to find overall in Mississippi the conditions either where the black folks in particular make--the circumstances that we face make Mississippi typically the poorest and the unhealthiest state in the so-called Union.

So this is what they're going to find. We are putting together testimony from folks who have experienced a broad range of human rights abuses, from police brutality to extrajudicial killing, to false prosecution, to different forms of prison slave labor, to wretched housing conditions, to discriminatory housing practices, to environmental racism. These are all the different things that they will hear firsthand from those who have suffered through these conditions at the, both from private industry hands in the case of, like the Nissan workers who will be testifying, but also at the hands of the Mississippi state government and some of its municipalities and other offices.

PERIES: This is not the first time the United Nations has made such a trip to the United States. There's been inquiries over incarceration. There's been inquiries, I think there was a trip to Detroit not too long ago to examine the conditions there. What comes out of these kinds of reports and factfinding missions?

AKUNO: The main thing, truth be told, that comes out of this is more exposure, more highlighting of our issues, and to give our issues kind of international standing and international play, which various forces within the United Nations system, be it a kind of working group such as this one or special rapporteurs, or even some of the, the member states can then use to pressure the United States government, and its various kind of divisions, to be more responsible in fulfilling their obligation towards human rights.

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