In Brattleboro, president Donald Trump's employees are planning to deport a black man to Africa. A rally to support Mamadou Bah will be on October 14 at 4 p.m. at Pliny Park in Brattleboro. Bah does not want to be deported. He is from Guinea. He has been in the USA since 2002. He has never committed a crime.

The average life expectancy in Guinea is 59 years. In the USA it is 79. A powerful video of Bah talking about his situation, and more information about the rally, are at www.facebook.com/events/1929746080620559.

The average white person is richer than the average black person in the USA and around the world because, thousands of years ago, white people got lucky – not because, as racists say, white people are smarter or work harder.

Some 13,000 years ago, through luck, white people ended up in the area now known as Iraq, which then had better farmland than the area where black people lived. This allowed white people to store surplus food, and allowed some members of their society to spend time doing things like inventing steel. This and other innovations are why white Europeans later took black Africans as slaves, rather than the other way around. This story is told in the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond.

Today, the USA uses its military to steal oil and other resources from Africa, and to keep dictators in power. With 5 percent of the world's population, the USA spends as much on the military as the rest of the world combined. This story is told in the book “Private Empire” by Steve Coll.