CaribWorldNews, BINGHAMTON, NY, Fri. Nov. 6, 2009: The first African-American Congresswoman from the State of Georgia is set to address a Walter Rodney Committee forum set for Binghamton University next Tuesday.

Congresswoman Cynthia Ann McKinney is set to speak at a two-part Walter Rodney Committee forum entitled `Black in America, Black in Palestine: African Americans, Palestine and Prison Industrial Complexes` on November 10, 2009, at the University`s Anderson Center from 7 p.m.

The session is designed to explore what the instance of Palestine teaches us about the policing and territorial confinement of entire peoples as a politics of death that are a necessary function of the world-economy, a statement from the Committee said.

McKinney is a Ph.D candidate in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She was also a Diplomatic Fellow at Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia; she has also taught political science at Clark Atlanta University. Her political career includes having served in the Georgia State Legislature from 1988 to 1992, and, in this, she and her father, veteran Civil Rights activist, Bill McKinney were the only father-daughter duo serving jointly in the same legislative body in the United States.

McKinney made history by being elected to Congress in 1993 and served five consecutive terms. Her political comeback in 2004 was one of the most spectacular in recent congressional history. McKinney was ranked among the most progressive members of the U.S. Congress. In 2005, she along with Congressmen Murtha and Serrano voted for the immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.

McKinney helped bring war crimes charges against Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his role in the genocide that claimed over 6 million lives in Africa. Perhaps Cynthia`s greatest act was her leading flood survivors out of the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.