Messages which absolutely need to be seen today due to time constraints or breaking news. Remember to check the"new answers" link for the most active topics. This topic will run for a week, and then we will start a new dated "urgent" file.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2000

Answers

here's more ammunition for sports fans/anti-mascot people to use. Tobe

Subject: Hank Aaron spoke out!

Just came across this item published in July 2000. The author is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Sport and Society. The article appeared in the Sports Business Journal

Robert

http://www.sportinsociety.org/rel-article10.html

Hank Aaron Steps Up to the Plate on the Use of Native American Names and Mascots in Sport by Richard E. Lapchick

Special for the Sports Business Journal

In one day, Hank Aaron did more for the campaign to stop using Native American names and mascots for sports teams than the 30 plus years that the campaign has been active.

As fans gathered for the All-Star Classic in Atlanta, Aaron stepped up to the platform that throwing out the first pitch gave him. He talked to the media about race and sport. This was not new for the man who had his own personal triumph of breaking Babe Ruth's career home run chilled by innumerable death threats and a barrage of hate mail. What was new was his statement that if the name "Braves" that he wore on his chest for decades was hurtful to many Native Americans, then it should be changed. He instantly became the most prominent athlete to take that position publicly.

I always found it incongruous that Ted Turner never really reacted when people confronted him about owning a team called the Braves that rallied around the Tomahawk Chop. Here was a man who brought the Soviets and Americans together for the Goodwill Games. He hired Hank Aaron, arguably baseball's most outspoken critic on racial issues, as a high-ranking executive for these same Braves. He donated $1 billion to the United Nations. Nothing in his personal or professional profile would conjure up a question about race other than the Braves.

I had been in that position myself. I played freshman basketball for the St. John's Redmen. My father coached those Redmen for 20 years, and was affectionately called "the Big Indian." He never had reason to question the nickname or the wooden Indian mascot.

That all changed late one evening in 1969 at Mama Leone's Restaurant, near the old Madison Square Garden. Whenever we were there to eat after a game, people would come up to my father to greet him or ask for an autograph. This night started no differently until an older man who appeared to be in his late 60s, like my father, asked if he could join us.

He told my father how much he admired him as a coach and as someone who helped to integrate basketball. (My father had signed Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, the NBA's first black player, when he was the coach of the Knicks in 1950). We smiled until he added that these things made it particularly embarrassing that my father coached a team called the Redmen and was called "the Big Indian." The man was an Indian.

That was the first time that we had ever thought about what the "Redmen" meant. It began to conjure up memories of headlines: "Redmen on the Warpath;" and "Redmen Scalp Braves [Bradley]." The Braves even "hung the Redmen" once. Something was wrong with the picture.

Here was the man who helped integrate basketball being thought of as racially offensive. He died in 1970 and the issue persisted for another 20 years until St. John's, like other universities that came to understand, rid itself of the Indian symbols and name.

Too many haven't. More than40 colleges and universities and five professional teams, including the Braves, use Native American names and symbols. Would we think of calling teams names such the "Chicago Caucasians," the "Buffalo Blacks," or the "San Diego Jews?"

Could you imagine people mocking African Americans in black face at a game? Yet go to a game where there is a team with an Indian name and you will see fans with war paint on their faces. Is this not the equivalent to black face?

Although the thought of changing tradition is often painful, the sting of racism is always painful to its victims.

Supporters of maintaining the names and mascots generally claim that their use furthers our appreciation of Native American culture. They say that names are meant positively, that to be called a "Brave" is a compliment. There are even Native Americans who don't challenge that view.

Nonetheless, most Native Americans believe that campuses where Indian names and mascots are used can be hostile learning environments not only for Native American students, but all students of color and all students who care about racism. They have no doubt that this issue is about racism.

They insist that on most campuses where Native American symbols prevail, there are hardly any with a Native American studies department or serious attempts to recruit Native American students and faculty.

The fact that history has ignored the incredible pain we have inflicted on Native Americans does not now give us the right to ignore their largely muted call. Hank Aaron has given that call a new and powerful voice.

Like all people of color and women who fight for their rights, their voices must be raised to make people who look like me become uncomfortable like that Indian man did with my father and me in 1969. Like Hank Aaron did before the All-Star game.

In June I spoke at the Sovereignty Symposium in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is an annual gathering of Native American leaders to discuss issues of their sovereignty- how to protect it where it is intact and how to reclaim it where it has been stolen. The use of Native American names and mascots for sports teams is one of the issues Native Americans believe is a breach of their sovereignty.

That is so ironic. To me, Native Americans are our most spiritual people. They believe that we all live within the one circle of humanity, no matter what the color of our skin.

We wait for our sports teams to honor that circle.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2000

Final Conflict, BCM Box 6358, London, WC1N 3XX, England

Final Conflict c/o ACTP, 8175A Sheridan Blvd # 358, Arvada, CO 80003

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2000

Luckily no-one caught the slip by Marino last week, "welsh" is the name of a people, and not a verb...

This Final Conflict connection is truly fascinating. There is another letter to the editor in a following issue, which I found by looking for "onteora" and "Jews" in Google. followup

The mascot issue also made the Weekly Reader kids' poll, I'll email them for the date and the results of the poll. mascot pro or con

Can't recall if this September piece from a Plattsburgh paper made the various lists, but it has an interesting and telling anecdote concerning Kevin Glover at the end

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2000

I appologize for not posting this one, thought it had been posted.

----- Original Message ----- From: John Donoghue To: Charles E. Yow, Esq. Cc: Hal Rowe Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 8:36 AM

Got your e-mail. Marty tells me that there was no letter. We will search our records. We would also like your assistance in discovering the source of the google material that you sent along with your request. JMD

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

St. George a traditional patron saint of Britain, the slayer of dragons.

However, in context, I've just done a little looking around and found St. George cropping up in some radical British nationalist movements. The International Third Position (ITP) There is an American branch of The Third Position, website not accessible at present. Fairly incoherent philosophies, from what I've seen, though undoubtedly those with a better knowledge of the nuances of British nationalist politics would be able to differentiate. Could Marty's fan be a member of the American branch of ITP? They have a street paper called "The Voice of St. George."

Final Conflict magazine, that site says, is "a fanzine with a Third Positionist viewpoint, (but which is editorially independent of the ITP) covering a wide range of topics of interest to Nationalists."

SPLC intelligence paper on the Third Position on the web.

General links on some British nationalists movements merepseuds The Merepseuds site also mentions an Army of St. George, which may merely be a web presence.

I note with some amusement a complaint on the ITP site that Satanists are infiltrating the nationalist movements. Given that Satanists are always being confused or conflated with witches (quite erroneously), it's like some strange moebius strip of strangebedfellowism emerging... and there is is mention on the SPLC site of neo-pagan Odinists begin involved with ITC. Oy vay, my head hurts contemplating all this.

Pharmacists can have doctorates, my little sister has a doctorate in pharmacology. Bu they don't commonly use them as titles, unless they are pretentious gits. May be just a folk usage.

Prison origin a possibility then , but still only speculation.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Charles: When can we release this information?

Are the points that I can see as "true" the same ones you would focus on? Meaning, that we can with certainty say the following:

1) Final Conflict has allied itself with C.A.R.E. (not the other way around, we don't have evidence of that.)

2) MM has received correspondence from FC or people who read it, which he failed to disclose to the full Board.

3) MM lied about having received such correspondence when asked by Donahue.

Again, when can this information be released to the press, and by whom? My sense is that the sooner the better, or we will give them too much preparation time, as they obviously must know this will soon come out and must be scrambling to get an alibi together. And to which press? Newsweek first? NYT? Local papers? NPR?

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

My reason for thinking that the writer is a local member of CARE is this: "After the Jews gained control of the school board they removed the name Indian from the school teams and removed the school mascot. In response a grass roots organization of original hard working White residents of the school district gathered together and started C.A.R.E. with the intent to restore the Indian name and our school mascot, we also decided to take back our school and correct the Jew inspired changes that effects our children's education."

I think that the "our school mascot" and "we decided to take back our school" are unequivocal statements of the writer being local and a member of CARE.

I'm not quite sure what you would be considering mistakes, Charles, maybe you'd like to give your opinions on what mistakes there are? What I can see as being "mistakes" are merely the antisemitic paranoia, that everyone against them is Jewish, that there are Jews everywhere working against them running all the businesses, etc.

Ted was talking with someone at a coffeehouse recently, who related a story about a friend of theirs back beyond Phoenicia. He kept having rather chilling encounters with local people, to the point where he finally got up the nerve to ask one person what the problem was. He was told it was because he was Jewish. Not being Jewish, and somewhat bewildered by this, he asked how they came to that conclusion. He was told it was because he had a big nose. Everyone knows Jews have big noses.

I've got some information to get to Sergeant Cervini of the State police, shall I print out the Final Conflict issue and get it to him?

I may be seeing Hal Rowe next week, shall I show this to him?

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

It strikes me that if the writers of both letters in Final Conflict are indeed local, as my anaysis leads me to believe, they certainly are politically aware of matters in their own sphere to be following a British nationalist e-zine. Not just amateurs.

The mention of the "moms" led me to look for a tie-in in the "Upstate New York Coalition for Democracy" material, where I found a Christian mothers group called "Moms in touch" on their list of groups they are concerned about. Their contact list is by email request, not having a secure alternative email I didn't want to try checking it that way. I can only give you the conserv ative Christian links, which call the 1997 survey a witch-hunt. Has a long list of organizations they were watching.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2000