The fundraiser night titled "Brazil Comes to Harlem" will feature "live performances from NYC's hottest Afro-Brazilian dancers, musicians and capoeristas!" [Lorelei Williams] said. "It should be a lot of fun and interesting as well." The New York-born Williams, who has a twin sister, admitted that her humongous task of founding and helping to coordinate POMPA activities across the sea and here has been exhausting but very rewarding. "We launched POMPA in 2004."
What even serious individuals must note is that 40 or 50 years ago, the kind of jobs that illegal immigrants migrate towards today are the same positions that African Americans were relegated to. How else can we explain highly educated African Americans, even some with Ph.D's, being forced to work at the post office or as a hotel waiter. The barriers for African Americans were Jim Crow; for Hispanics or Latinos fleeing Mexico, El Salvador, Guatamala or other South American countries, it is the wretched poverty in those countries. For them, such jobs are a "step up" from what they had to accept in their country.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
240 p., When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964.
