Harry Belafonte

From KeyWiki

Harry Belafonte is a member^[1]of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves^[2]on the Advisory Board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.

Peace for Cuba Appeal

In 1994 Harry Belafonte was an initiator of the International Peace for Cuba Appeal, an affiliate of the Workers World Party dominated International Action Center.

Other prominent initiators included Cuban Intelligence agent Philip Agee, academic Noam Chomsky, Congressman John Conyers and Charles Rangel^[3].

IPS event

On September 23, 2003 the radical Institute for Policy Studies held its 27th annual Letelier-Moffitt Memorial Human Rights Awards.

• International Award Recipient: Nancy Sanchez Mendez

Presented by Jan Schakowsky, United States Representative

• Domestic Award Recipient: CASA de Maryland

Presented by Harry Belafonte

• Special Recognition Award: Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil-in absentia

Presented by John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO

With special musical performance by Isabel Aldunate in remembrance of the 30th anniversary of the military coup in Chile^[4]

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

In 2008 Harry Belafonte signed a statement circulated by the Partisan Defense Committee calling for the release of convicted “cop-killer” Mumia Abu-Jamal.^[5]

SNCC re-union

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee held its 50th anniversary conference at Shaw University here, April 15-18, 2010.

At its founding here on April 17, 1960, the now-legendary civil rights organization adopted its first formal program. Life long Communist Party USA activist Debbie Bell was a founding member, serving alongside Julian Bond, Harry Belafonte, John Lewis (now a member of Congress from Georgia), Freedom Singer and Sweet Honey in the Rock founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, the Revs. David Forbes and James Lawson, Joyce Ladner and Dick Gregory.

All these founders spoke at the anniversary event. There were speeches too by Attorney General Eric Holder and actor Danny Glover.^[6]

Harry Belafonte also gave a global perspective with the admonition that we need to stop worrying about the Democratic Party and looking to it as the solution. He urged seeking our own independence and solutions with a recognition that strategies of the past might be useful, but the enemy is different and therefore requires new strategies..

References