Please Assist Phylicia Barnes In Her Safe Return to her Family and Friends

Missing: Phylicia Simone Barnes

It goes without say, doesn't it?, that were Phylicia Simone Barnes white and blonde, her face would be familiar to anyone with a television set. As it is, national and dominant corporate media--run by white men--are slow to still when it comes to reporting on missing persons. Particularly and especially when they are Black, Brown, Indigenous, or Asian; or poor, homeless, in prostitution, and female. If you're not young, thin, blonde, female, middle class or wealthier, and what the corporate media considers "pretty", you can expect media to ignore your disappearance. That's not just tragic, it's ethically bankrupt and racist, heterosexist, classist, and misogynistic as hell. Please support the efforts to reunite Phylicia Barnes with her family and friends.

Everything that follows, and the photo above, is from radioamber.net. Please click on the title below to link back. A video about Phylicia's disappearance appears at the end of the post. So too does information on how to help. And please pray for her safety and well-being.

Did Phylicia Barnes Just Disappear – Police Baffled

Jan 20th, 2011 | By Paul P | Category: Alert Follow Up News

Eight days from today will be a month since the disappearance of now 17 year old Phylicia Barnes on Dec 28th 2010. Her 17th birthday came and went January 12th and she remained missing. Her mother has vowed to celebrate the event upon her return and remains hopeful that will be soon.

Police have had few leads in the case. Of those leads none were found to be helpful. They reportedly have called it one of the strangest and most vexing missing persons cases they’ve ever investigated.

After a public outcry about fairness because Phylicia is black, there has been some national media coverage including the NBC Nightly News featuring the case of Phylicia Barnes last night. Many feel it was to little to late because coverage came weeks after her abduction.

Auhorities remain baffled saying it’s one of the strangest missing persons cases they’ve ever investigated. They believe she may have been kidnapped and taken out of the state without leaving behind any evidence of the abduction. Despite FBI involvement the case seems to be at a stand still with no new information coming forth.

There is a $10,000.00 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Phylicia Barnes.

Anyone with any information on Phylicia’s disappearance, no matter how small, is urged to contact the Baltimore police at             855-223-0033    .

Radio Amber Alert Video

Related: Phylicia Barnes Still Missing Despite Efforts Use our search to find more stories on this case, type in search box Phylicia Barnes.

Dakota Activist, Writer, Professor: Waziyatawin and her pro-liberation politics. Please find ways to support her efforts!

photograph of Waziyatawin is from here

Free Speech is assumed to mean that people are free to speak, as individuals. But to speak and be heard as a member of an oppressed class one needs a few things beyond a voice, such as class-credibility and status, privilege, and access to dominant media. Indigenous people across North America have none of the above and that's how the White Man wants it. If you are shut out of dominant media, is that called Censorship? If it isn't, why?

Genocide in the U.S. is probably the least discussed and least reported on atrocity in the U.S. It's been going on for hundreds of years and is not over. The genocide isn't defined only in terms of mass murder. It is defined by systematic governmental and industrial destruction of cultural, economic, social, and spiritual systems required for a People's survival. The Dakota, among many other nations inside the geographic boundaries of the U.S. of America, are under siege. When will U.S. white folks give a damn, I wonder? And stop hanging Dream Catchers in their windows and from their vehicle's rear view mirrors. Here's a dream worth catching: stopping the genocide against Indigenous People globally, and against the Dakota locally.

What follows are two posts linked together supporting the activist work and values of Waziyatawin (Dakota). With thanks to Brenda, from Censored News, for the first portion. Please click on the title just below to link back.

Native America Calling: Free Speech and Censorship

Thursday, January 20, 2011– Free Speech & Censorship

Inflammatory rhetoric on the radio and in politics is in the spotlight, with public officials calling on everyone to “tone it down” to avoid confrontations. While Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin can say anything they want, it seems that an Indian scholar doesn’t enjoy the same rights to free speech. Professor, historian and activist Waziyatawin (Dakota), also known as Dr. Angela Wilson, received calls from the FBI after she gave a speech in which she told students “It’s time for American Indians to abandon symbolic demonstrations. We're going to need to take a different kind of action…we're going to need to recover our land base, by any means necessary." What is free speech in America? Guests include Waziyatawin and talk radio host Jay Winter Nightwolf (Cherokee/Taino/Shoshone).

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What follows next is from Waziyatawin's website: http://waziyatawin.net/commentary/

Waziyatawin is a Dakota writer, teacher, and activist committed to the development of liberation strategies that will support the recovery of Indigenous ways of being, the reclamation of Indigenous homelands, and the eradication of colonial institutions.Waziyatawin comes from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. After receiving her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000, she earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.She is the author, editor, or co-editor of five volumes including: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives (University of Nebraska Press 2005); Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (University of Nebraska Press 2004); For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook (School of Advanced Research Press 2005); In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century (Living Justice Press 2006); and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (Living Justice Press 2008).

Waziyatawin is also the founder and director of Oyate Nipi Kte, a non-profit organization dedicated to the recovery of Dakota traditional knowledge, sustainable ways of being, and Dakota liberation.