This month we are going concentrate on the contributions of African women to politics, culture, economics, media and more. So many women have been indispensable to us in defining our Black experience in Amerikkka.

We could start with the likes of Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells, who in their era were political factors whose accomplishments we still marvel at to this day. We could look at women like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who chooses to fight inside the system, but whose track record proves what side she is on in this war. We have cultural icons like Erykah Badu, who recently rocked Tel Aviv with her pro-Palestinian and anti-Iraq war message - in the tradition of Billie Holliday, who used her platform to sing against lynching, which is where we got the classic "Strange Fruit."

We have other political icons like Black Panther Akua Njeri, the widow of Chairman Fred Hampton, who continued to souljah on in a revolutionary fashion after the government assassination of her husband as he slept beside her in bed; like Assata Shakur, who continues to fight for human rights for Black and other oppressed people from exile in Cuba, where she is forced to live; and like Ericka Huggins, who was the director of the Oakland Community School, the award-winning Black Panther school that was located in East Oakland during the ‘70s and the beginning of the ‘80s.

There needs to be a month like Black Women's Month so that the young women of our community can have good role models to look up to, instead of the ones that are fed to them through the media, like Condoleeza Rice or "New York." We must remember that women in most cases are the first teachers of the child, so it is important to hold the ones up who deserve it so that future generations can have the blueprints to teach the revolutionary principles that will allow us to one day shake this state-sponsored oppression.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and visit www.blockreportradio.com, hiphopwarreport.com and myspace.com/blockreportfilm.

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