Archive for Race
Justice for Trayvon
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From the email inbox:
Interfaith Vigil
This Sunday April 1st @ 4PM
Reuter Terrace – across from the fire department on the terrace above City County Plaza ParkWe invite you to join us for an Interfaith Vigil this Sunday in remembrance of Trayvon Martin, the African American teenager who was shot and killed recently in Sanford, Florida.
An ecumenical group of area religious leaders will pray with us, rally, and speak out for justice in a nonviolent way.
In solidarity with Trayvon, please wear a hoodie.
Sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Asheville & Buncombe County
P.O. Box 328; Asheville, NC, 28802
335-6896, 281-1624
www.mlkasheville.org
An Amendment One Fable
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the venerable Aesop:
An Eagle had made her nest at the top of a lofty oak. A Cat, having found a convenient hole, lived with her kittens in the middle of the trunk; and a Wild Sow with her young had taken shelter in a hollow at its foot. The Cat resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: “Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food.” Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: “Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your litter to find food, the Eagle is prepared to pounce upon one of your little pigs.” When night came, she went forth with silent foot and obtained food for herself and her kittens; but, feigning to be afraid, she kept a look-out all through the day. Meanwhile, the Eagle, full of fear of the Sow, sat still on the branches, and the Sow, terrified by the Eagle, did not dare to go out from her cave; and thus they each, with their families, perished from hunger.Those who stir up enmities are not to be trusted.
The occasion for the Aesop is a post at Pam’s House Blend. (The Blend’s version uses foxes instead of cats; you get the idea.) A Maine court document reveals one of the principle aims of the National Organization for Marriage:
According to a court document that was uploaded online, NOM specifically worked to drive a wedge between the black and gay community on the subject of marriage equality:
According to page 11 of this document called Marriage: $20 Million Strategy for Victory:
3. Not a Civil Right Project
The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.
NOM has portrayed whatever African-American opposition to marriage equality its spotlighted as spontaneous attempts by leaders and members of the black community to keep its civil rights legacy from supposedly being “tainted” by a comparison to gay equality.
Pretty smart guy, that Aesop.
Dr. Boyce Watkins on MLK, Jr.’s Memorial
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Dr. Boyce Watkins
…I’ve chosen to stay home on the day that the Dr. King Memorial is dedicated. I am not sure if Dr. King would attend this ceremony himself if he were alive today. I speculate that instead, he might be spending the week protesting on Wall Street, fighting for labor rights or battling the epidemic of mass incarceration.
Here are a few questions I think Dr. King might ask about this memorial if he were alive today:
Dr. King Question #1: Is there anything better we could do with that $120 million dollars, given that 40 percent of all black children are in poverty?
So, Who Are The Welfare Junkies?
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So much misdirected anger.
Over at Daily Kos, Zwoof has seen a rash of chain emails about “welfare junkies” who are “drug-fueled slackers.” Obligingly, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced the Welfare Reform Act of 2011 to discipline deadbeats on food stamps.
This is old news. It is Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” (1976) revisited. It is the Lee Atwater/Roger Ailes revolving door, “Willie Horton” campaign ads from 1988. It is the right blaming hurricane victims in New Orleans’ poor, Lower Ninth Ward in 2005 for not leaving town in their SUVs and checking into Shreveport or Dallas hotels until Hurricane Katrina blew herself out. It is conservatives blaming the 2008 financial meltdown on the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. The government, you see, forced private mortgage lenders and Wall Street to fatten themselves on CDOs built from the “liar loans” they invented and sold to shiftless poor people. In the United Kingdom, it is BBC’s 2010 “The Scheme,” a series critics described as “poverty porn,” depicting welfare recipients that London’s tabloid Daily Mail calls “welfare junkies” (Well, what do you know?) and “foul-mouthed, lazy scroungers, cheats, layabouts, drunks, drug addicts” leeching off “the goodwill of taxpayers.”
The Future They Feared
Posted by: | CommentsWe were sitting in a Waffle House in Staunton, Virginia discussing the state of the nation over breakfast. I had just read an Ed Kilgore column in Salon about the nationwide Republican war on voting rights, and the conservative debate over whether voting is even a right or not.
As I am standing in line to pay my tab, a African-American man in his forties slides into an occupied booth next to the register and sits opposite an older white man. They share a brief exchange about how his shift went. Two smiling, white waitresses come over to take his order and start a friendly argument over how he likes his toast. He is a regular.
“Toast, not grits?” remarks the older white man.
“It’s Filmore,” smiles one of the waitresses to the cook. “Burn it. He likes it burnt.”
“Dark, not burnt,” Filmore insists.
This is Virginia — the capitol of the Old South. Black man. Restaurant. Sharing a table with a white man. White women competing over who will wait on him.
It occurs to me that the prospect of the very everydayness of such a scene horrified many Virginians and others across America 50 years ago.
Some people need an “other” to fear or they don’t know who they they are themselves. It’s not just generational. It is a personality type. Many of the same types today fear poor people, gays, Muslims and Mexicans.
We are on our way to see the Gettysburg battlefield where two American armies slaughtered each other, where the Army of Northern Virginia lost its war over the right to deny rights to an entire class of “others,” and to hang onto a people’s irrational fear of the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House.
(Cross-posted from Dirty Hippies.)
Troy Davis– From the (Prison) Ground
Posted by: | CommentsLocal blogger, gadfly and muckraker Jason Bugg traveled to Georgia Diagnostic Prison to bear witness to the Troy Davis execution, here’s an excerpt and a link to the entire story…
I’m not a journalist; I’m a guy who writes simple little things for this blog. Thanks to the readers of this blog, I went down to Jackson, Georgia yesterday to see what was happening at the vigil and protest for Troy Davis. I’ve never been close to anything like what I saw. I’ll do my best to add in names of people and try to recount things that they said, but what I’ve included here are my impressions, and should by no means be treated as authoritative.
Reconstructing Reconstruction
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Poll tax receipts from Catawba County
For over 230 years the genius of our founders’ self-correcting democracy has expanded the original narrow voting franchise from white males to blacks to women and to eighteen year-olds. The Democratic Party has done some self correcting as well. Now once again we have to protect and defend voting rights Americans won with their blood, sweat and tears.
As early as tomorrow, North Carolina’s new GOP-led General Assembly is preparing to introduce a bill requiring citizens to present a photo ID to vote. WRAL reported on Friday:
An analysis by the State Board of Elections obtained Friday by WRAL News shows that at least 700,000 registered voters in the state don’t have a driver’s license or photo ID issued by the Division of Motor Vehicles. Records for another 300,000 people need further checking to determine if they have a license, elections officials said.
That would mean the state would need to furnish photo IDs to about 1 million people so they could vote if the General Assembly approves voter identification legislation.
Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies released a study last week which estimated the costs of implementing the proposal at about $20 million dollars. But cost is beside the point. It would be just as wrong if it were free.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Justice and equality. Freedom and respect. Unending dedication to reaching the mountaintop. Thank you, Dr. King, for challenging all of us to be a part of the solution.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
“If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.”
Black and White
Posted by: | CommentsThe 6th Annual YWCA Black & White Gala will be held on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30 pm at the Crowne Plaza Expo Center. It’s a dance PARTY for everyBODY. The evening will feature high energy music from Westsound, an exciting silent auction, and food from local restaurants. Festive black and white attire is encouraged.
Tickets are $50 each (YWCA members get 20% off). All proceeds from the event will go to support YWCA programs which bridge gaps in child care, education, health care, and earning power. The mission of the YWCA is eliminating racism and empowering women. The YWCA serves approximately 6,500 people a year.
Fun video from last year’s event:
To reserve your tickets, call 254-7206 x 207 or order online at www.ywcaofasheville.org.
