On This Day, 1965

Jon S. Randal (from FB)
March 9, 2014 ·

He was a white minister. Some said he didn't have to go, he had a good life in Boston, he had a loving wife and four loving children. But, he was horrifed at the brutality he saw happening in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, as what is now called "Bloody Sunday." So, when Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. issued a nationwide call to the clergy, urging representatives of all denominations and faiths to journey to Alabama and stand with African Americans there for the cause of voting rights, social justice, and equality, James Reeb answered the call. Believing that to do nothing in the face of injustice is as wrong as to condone it, Reeb knew he had to go.

Those of you who know your history know what happened and know what occurred on "Bloody Sunday."  On March 9, at an integrated restaurant in Alabama, Reeb and two other ministers were confronted by several white men brandishing clubs and shouting racial slurs. One man slammed his club into Reeb’s head, knocking him to the ground. Several hours elapsed before Reeb was admitted to a Birmingham hospital where doctors performed brain surgery. He never recovered, and he died on March 11, 1965.

His murder spawned national outrage. President Lyndon B. Johnson called Reeb’s widow and father to express his condolences, and on March 15, he invoked Reeb’s memory when he delivered a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. That same day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. eulogized Reeb at a ceremony at Brown’s Chapel in Selma:

"James Reeb, symbolizes the forces of good will in our nation. He demonstrated the conscience of the nation. He was an attorney for the defense of the innocent in the court of world opinion. He was a witness to the truth that men of different races and classes might live, eat, and work together as brothers."

The last phone call Reeb made was to his wife at the restaurant before he was beaten. His wife would later say that Reeb believed in the aims of the civil rights movement, almost nothing could have stopped her husband from going to Selma, though he knew the risks associated with doing so.

James Reeb, January 1, 1927 – March 11, 1965

Hate Liberals?

Is that you?

You hate "libruls"?

They're--we're--libtards?

Really?

"Liberals got women the right to vote.

Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote.

Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty.

Liberals ended segregation.

Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.

Liberals created Medicare.

Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

What did Conservatives do?

They opposed them on every one of those things...every one!

So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."

--Matt Santos, character in The West Wing

Conservatives, also, under the George W. Bush administration, got us into two, count 'em, two wars and crashed the economy, too, by the way. And by economy, I don't just mean the US, national economy, I mean the world economy. There was very nearly a global, economic meltdown.

More.

“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”

--President John F. Kennedy

They, Liberals, are for the people, first and foremost.

So yeah, call me a Liberal.  I'm good with that. 

Link:  150 Achievements Of Liberalism

This Thursday, August 6, 2015

This Thursday evening, is, coincidentally and/or ironically:

--the date of the first debate of the 2016 Republican Primaries.

--the date of Jon Stewart's final Daily Show appearance as host.

--the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan

--the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. 

Thanks for the first three to FB friend Doug Frank.  Thanks, Doug.

The Two Political Parties are NOT the Same

Sure, campaign contributions can and do buy government representatives in the US in all states on every issue, definitely. If anyone gets that, it's me. I've been writing for a few years on how we need to kill campaign contributions.

But the fact is, if anyone in the US looks coldly and honestly at our US Congress, the representatives there and what they've written and done and who they've represented and defended and fought for, it's clear the Republican Party and their operatives have fought for and still are fighting for the wealthy and corporations far more than that other party.

Far more.

The CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation and the Koch brothers and Waltons and others aren't all aligned with the Republicans and the Right Wing of this nation because they're fighting for the working man or the average man and woman on the street or the middle- or lower-classes. Not a chance.

And for proof?

Look no further than this list of things for the people, for the nation that the Democrats wrote and created:

• Social Secuity
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• The GI Bill
• Endangered Species Act
• Environmental Laws
• The Space Program
• The Peace Corps
• Americorps
• The Civil Rights Movement
• Earned Income Tax Credit
• Family & Medical Leave Act
• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• Americans With Disabilities Act
• Freedom of Information Act
• Women's right to control their reproductive future
• Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
• The Internet
• Balancing the federal budget
• The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
• Lobbying Disclosure Act
• "Motor-Voter" Act
• The Voting Rights Act
• Unemployment Insurance
• Medicare/Medicaid
• Food Stamps/WIC
• Social Security
• Peace between Israel and Egypt
• Peace between Israel and Jordan
• The Department of Education
• The Department of Energy
• The Department of Transportation
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Labor Laws
• The Marshall Plan
• Winning World War II
• Food Safety Laws
• Workplace Safety Laws
• The Tennessee Valley Project
• The Civilian Conservation Corps
• The Securites and Exchange Commission
• Women's Right to Vote
• Universal Public Education
• National Weather Service
• Product Labeling Laws
• Truth in Advertising Laws
• Morrill Land Grant Act
• Rural Electrification
• Public Universities
• Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Public Broadcasting
• Supporting the establishment of Israel
• The United Nations
• NATO

And the Republicans and Republican Party were against virtually, if not actually, each and every one.

 
Now? 

The Republicans are against the Voting Rights Act and are, instead, trying to disenfranchise Americans and keep them from being able to vote. IN Texas alone, in the last election this year, it's been estimated that the Republicans' Voter ID laws--very Jim Crow like--kept 600,000 Texans from being able to vote.

Very American, eh? Very "Representative government" right?

So don't say the two parties are the same. 

They're anything but.

More than 10 million Americans got health care insurance in the last couple of years, due to Democrats.

They're not the same. 

No way.

I'll grant you, the money spent in and on elections makes them too similar but the differences, the wide differences, are still very much there.

And just now, Republicans are working on destroying Social Security. And Medicare. And Medicaid.

Finally,we need to stop seeing fellow Americans as "us vs. them." We need to all be Americans, working together for the benefit of America and Americans, all of us, and decidedly not just the wealthy and corporations as too many things have been in the last few decades, at least.

Link: What Have Liberals and Democrats Ever Done For Us?

"Why are you a Democrat?"

LOTS of reasons:

Like

The Insanity of that Right Wing Political Party

And the hypocrisy

America: Where we were, where we are (guest post)

How many of you recall a time in America when the income of a single school teacher or baker or salesman was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family? That used to be the norm. For three decades after World War II, we created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years the wages of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled. More than a third of all workers belonged to a trade union -- giving average workers the bargaining power necessary to get a large and growing share of the large and growing economic pie (now, fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers are unionized). CEO pay then averaged about 40 times the pay of the typical worker (now it's over 300 times). 

In those years the richest 1 percent took home 9 to 10 percent of total income (today the top 1 percent gets more than 20 percent). The tax rate on highest-income Americans never fell below 70 percent; under Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, it was 91 percent (today the top tax rate is 39.6 percent). Some of this money was used to build the largest infrastructure project in our history, the Interstate Highway system; some to build the world's largest and best system of free public education, and dramatically expand public higher education. We enacted the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to extend prosperity and participation to African-Americans; Medicare and Medicaid to reduce poverty among America's seniors; and the Environmental Protection Act to help save our planet. And we made sure banking was boring. 

Then came the great U-turn, and for the last thirty years we've been heading in the opposite direction. The collective erasure of the memory of that prior system of broad-based prosperity is the greatest propaganda victory conservatives and the privileged have ever achieved. But the fact we did it then means we can do so again -- not exactly the same way, of course, but in a new way fit for the twenty-first century and future generations of Americans. It is worth the fight.

--Robert Reich

Confirmed: Still "open season" on black males in America

Let's not kid ourselves. The title, above, is precisely what the jury and their verdict confirmed last week in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial, like it or agree with it or not.

It's been made clear once again, shoot a black male in America and chances are extremely good you will not only get away with it but not spend any time in jail whatever.

Forget that Mr. Zimmerman was told by the police to not tail the stranger in the hoodie:

Police dispatcher:  "Are you following him?"

 Zimmerman:  "Yes"

 Dispatcher:  "Okay. We don't need you to do that."

Put that out of your head.

All that matters is that it has been proven, once again, that a black male's life in our society still, to this day, has precious little value.

Douglas Blackmon, in his important, revelatory book Slavery by Another Name pointed out how, after the Civil War--and for far too many decades--black men in the South could be and were, repeatedly arrested for doing nothing more than walking in very public areas.  If, at time of arrest, they couldn't prove they were gainfully employed, which was not uncommon at all, of course, they were not only arrested but found "guilty." To make matters far, far worse, they were not only put in jail but then sold--seriously, sold--by the jail to corporations for their work.

If you didn't know this, it doesn't surprise me.  Far too many Americans know far too little of our nation's own history and far less than that, of course, about black Americans and their history.

So along with being discriminated against and lynched and held down socio-econonically, they were also treated like this, as I just described.

Keep in mind, too, the numbers and ratios of black Americans that are in jails now, and have been for far too many decades, showing our justice system incarcerates black men at far, far higher rates than white males or other minorities.  Just a few of the very factual statistics:

• A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life.2
• Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision whether imprisoned, jailed, on parole or probation.
• One out of nine African American men will be incarcerated between the ages of 20 and 34.
• Black males ages 30 to 34 have the highest incarceration rate of any race/ethnicity.

I'll stop with the statistics there.

Suffice it to say, as so many have so rightly pointed out, this society and our social and economic systems are slanted or tilted or worse, against the black male in America.

What's great is that we get to blame it on them, too.

Just as happened just now, with Trayvon Martin.

Turns out he was guilty.

Links:  Statistics of incarcerated African-American males 

Jail Inmates at Midyear 2009 - Statistical Tables

The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality

Slavery by Another Name | PBS

The strange--really strange--priorities of the Right Wing

And this is a good idea somehow?

 

More, ladies and gentlemen, on Rand Paul

It's going to be a long, fun way to November.

Enjoy your Sunday, folks.