|
Home
Releases
In the News
About ATAC
Join ATAC
Links
Contact Us
|
< Return to In the News Index
Source: ATAC Date: July 2, 2004 Byline: Press Release
Black Independence Day! July 3, 2004 4:00 P.M.
ACROSS FROM LIBERTY BELL (6TH & MARKET)
FREE THE AFRICANS ENSLAVED BY GEORGE WASHINGTON AT AMERICA’S FIRST “WHITE HOUSE”
For more info, contact ATAC (AVENGING THE ANCESTORS COALITION) at 215-552-8714 or mc@bowserweaver.com.
Also, log onto www.avenge.biz
POSITION PAPER OF ATAC!
What ATAC Requires:
ATAC (Avenging The Ancestors Coalition) requires a culturally dignified, historically complete, physically dramatic, and timely installed and/or timely presented commemorative project at the President’s House site, as well as other permanent memorializing acknowledgments- with substantive and ongoing participation from the African American community- to honor primarily the eight Africans who were brutally enslaved by President George Washington at America’s first “White House,” which is now where the new Liberty Bell Center is located. ATAC also requires the formal acknowledgment, permanent marking, and conspicuous highlighting of the slave quarters footprint, which is at the entrance to that center.
In addition to honoring those eight, the installation and other acknowledgments are to honor all Africans who contributed mightily to America. Moreover, ATAC requires that Independence National Historical Park (INHP) formally and assertively petition Congress for the total funding necessary for the entire project and acknowledgments. ATAC also requires that INHP incorporate into this project the fundamental story of the indigenous people (i.e., “Philadelphia’s” original inhabitants) as told by historians selected by the indigenous people themselves.
What Is ATAC:
ATAC is a broad based coalition of African American community activists, media personalities, religious leaders, civic organizations, lawyers, historians, businessmen/women, and other voters who are the descendants of the victims of European slavery- the greatest holocaust in the history of humankind. In addition, ATAC is the coalition that is spearheading an ongoing voluminous letter writing campaign and also is accumulating a vast amount of signatures in its continuing petition drive, totaling more than 10,000 (and increasing daily). ATAC is the coalition that held massive demonstrations on July 3, 2002 and July 3, 2003 and that provided substantial documentation to the Congressional Appropriations Committee, thereby helping to lead to the committee’s Interior Department $19 billion budget amendment calling for the “appropriate commemoration” of the aforementioned enslaved Africans. Moreover, ATAC is the coalition that has the active support of various Black (and other) elected officials throughout Pennsylvania.
Why ATAC Requires It:
ATAC requires the commemorative project and other permanent memorializing acknowledgments as well as the slave quarters footprint marking because justice demands that. Justice demands that because our ancestors as forced laborers transformed America into the economic world power that it remains today, because our ancestors died for America in all of its wars, and because our ancestors had their culture, religion, language, families, homelands, lives, and even status as humans ruthlessly, violently, and viciously stripped from them for three centuries by America (and other European-initiated slave trading countries) in a manner that no other ethnic group has ever experienced in the entire history of humankind. ATAC also requires that project and other acknowledgments as well as the slave quarters footprint marking because they are an essential part of the truth of American history.
For more information, contact Michael Coard, Esquire at The Bowser Law Center at 215-552-8714 or at mc@bowserweaver.com. Also, go to www.avenge.biz and www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves
|