Tag: Civil Disobedience

MLK,Jr Day–2017

Closing Thought–16Jan17

I have been trying for a week to come up with a really good tribute to the man, Martin Luther king, Jr,……I went through a ream of paper taking notes and writing drafts and in all that time I could write the perfect Tribute to a man that means so much to so many….

As a veteran of the Vietnam War I was impressed with his speech against that war and the others to come……

One of the greatest speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Time to Break Silence,” was delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967. It is a statement against war in principle, in the same sense in which King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” published four years earlier, had been a statement against social injustice in principle. Yet like that extraordinary earlier appeal, “A Time to Break Silence” is also addressed to the evils of a particular time and place. It protests the command and deployment by Lyndon Johnson of almost unlimited violence against the people and the land of Vietnam for the declared purpose of protecting them from the menace of world communism.

(Continue reading…..)

Source: Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War – by David Bromwich

This speech as so many of his talked to the people and the times…..I am sure there are others that meant much to other people…..below is a link to all of his speeches and stuff……

Source: Martin Luther King Speeches – I Have A Dream Speech and other great, famous speeches by Dr. King

This great man deserves all the recognition the country can offer…..he has gone down in history as a great civil rights activist and a great humanitarian.

His memory will live on!

On that note I close down for the day….enjoy your day and be safe…..chuq

The Veterans Are Coming!

The protests around the DAPL have been going on now for months…the NAs are trying to protect their land from a pipeline and the reactions by the company and the government have been anything but civil…the use of dogs, rubber bullets, gas, water on cold days….etc etc….

The news has come out that there is a contingent of veterans heading to North Dakota in support of the protesters…..

The thousands of protesters already camped out in defiance of the Dakota Access Pipeline are about to get reinforcements in the form of hundreds of veterans, Stars and Stripes reports. As many as 2,000 vets will arrive in North Dakota on Sunday with the goal of “protecting the protesters,” Marine Corps veteran Anthony Diggs says. “There is a lot of power in veterans from all over, from all branches of the military, coming together to create a protecting front against the police, who are militarized themselves,” he says. But the vets aren’t just bringing symbolism; they’ve raised around half a million dollars to help protesters get through the winter and are bringing supplies, lawyers, and more.

The vets are expected to arrive the day before the Army Corp of Engineers had ordered protesters to abandon their camp on federal land. But while the Army Corps has since said it won’t force protesters off the land, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple issued an “emergency evacuation” of the camp Monday in the face of an oncoming blizzard, Reuters reports. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says it has no plans to move, and its chairman points out it’s ironic that Dalrymple is suddenly concerned about cold protesters days after police sprayed them with fire hoses. Contrary to previous reports, Dalrymple won’t block food and supplies from getting to protesters as part of the evacuation, according to the AP. A spokesperson says that had been “misconstrued.”

If I were in charge I would put the vets camp between the military force and the NAs….

Source: Video Archive – Veterans Against the Dakota Access Pipeline

I wish I were younger…I traveled to Wounded Knee in 1973 but was detained before I could make it to the Rez…..

Hopefully the assistance will be useful……maybe the thugs will show more respect to the vets than they have shown to the NAs……but my guess is ….NO!

Tom Hayden—R.I.P.

Back in the days of my youth there were special people if you were into the protest scene…..Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden…..among others.

It all began with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and their Huron Statement and the movement ballooned from there…..into a nationwide protest against war….where have all the leaders gone?

They were the backbone of the anti-war activism…..we took our cue from their examples……slowly our “heroes” from those days are dying off and there seems to be NO one capable of taking their place as the leaders of a movement……

Sadly Tom Hayden has passed on….he will be missed…..

Famed ’60s anti-war activist Tom Hayden, whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago 7 trial, Vietnam War protests, and ex-wife actress Jane Fonda, has died. He was 76. He died on Sunday after a long illness, said his wife, actress Barbara Williams, noting that he suffered a stroke in 2015. Hayden, once denounced as a traitor by his detractors, overcame his past and won election to the California Assembly and Senate, where he served for almost two decades as a progressive force on such issues as the environment and education. He was the only one of the radical Chicago 7 defendants to win such distinction in the mainstream political world, the AP reports.

In 1960, while a student at the University of Michigan, Hayden was involved in the formation of Students for a Democratic Society, then dedicated to desegregating the South. In 1968, he helped organize anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that turned violent and resulted in the notorious and circus-like Chicago 7 trial. Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were later overturned, and an official report deemed the violence “a police riot.” “Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968,” he wrote in the essay “Streets of Chicago.” Read more about Hayden, who was married to Fonda for 17 years, here.

Good-bye old friend….Rest In Peace.

‘A Riot Is the Language of the Unheard’

As the weekend begins I find myself not seeing anything that I would call “cool” to post on…….so I will retreat into the world of illusion and crap….politics.

Cooler weather has finally shown up….perfect weather for taking it to the streets……..

I have been surfing some of those “other” sites….you know the ones….those that see “bad guys” behind every action….a bomb, a killing and riot…..most of them are feeding the hysteria of FEAR.

We have had a couple of years of “riots” over the killing of people……mostly black lives have been destroyed…..there is a wealth of blog posts that come down on the two sides …but few people are looking at the underlying situations.

We have heard all the analysis….mostly from people that have NO idea what is truly going on in the society as a whole….most of them view it from their position within it.

The problem is that the people that are rioting seem to believe that their voices mean nothing in this society….and of course when that is brought up we will hear the quotes from MLK, Jr……the problem is most of them a selective and tries to reinforce the “norm” in this society……but MLK had so much more to say…..

The words of the real MLK were far more radical than today’s cherry-picked lines.

The Martin Luther King Jr. who is cynically trotted out every time racial unrest erupts in our cities is the MLK who can be conveniently used to prop up the status quo. He is the MLK of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, ignoring the core root of an urban uprising and unable to recognize the intrinsically higher value of black lives over commercial property interests. He is the MLK reduced to “I Have A Dream,” used in conservative political ads to scare-monger about invading, job-stealing Mexican immigrants. He is the almost wholly fabricated MLK whom the modern GOP claims would today be one of their own, presumably standing alongside them as they vote against the poor, women and people of color at every opportunity.

Source: ‘A Riot Is the Language of the Unheard’: 9 MLK Quotes the Mainstream Media Won’t Cite | Alternet

Those critics all I can say to them as it must be lovely looking down on so many people that you have NO idea what they are going through.

America: Love It Or Leave It!

Remember that slogan from days past?  Boy, I do!

I admit it in the past I was an unashamed radical…..anti-war protester from the 60 and 70’s….and there is one thing that sticks out in my mind about those days……..during protests were met with a chant of “America:  love it or leave it”  by well meaning conservs and liberals alike….what would become known as the “moral majority” or whatever they called themselves in those days…..we were an enemy within…….according to them we were trying to destroy our beloved homeland….nothing was further from the truth but few listened…….

My question is where are those concerned Americans now?  The same Love or leave it bunch are the ones that are doing the destruction not some radical like myself…….it seems those same “patriots” are the ones doing the most damage to this country…..far more so than anything we did back in the day…..

This brings me to my point……in my readings I found an interesting piece of information……..interesting to me because of the abuse I suffered at the hands of those “patriotic” Americans………

Land of the free … to move to another country? A recent poll of 2,000 adults concluded that 35% of Americans would consider quitting the US and living abroad. That number jumps to 55% in the 18 to 34 demographic, per the poll by Transferwise, a UK-based money transfer service. But maybe we’re a little more patriotic than that: When asked the same question, with “within the next five years” tacked on, the overall percentage drops to 14%. (One caveat: These percentages include both Americans born here and abroad.) So how many people make good on the inclination? Only .001% of the country—3,415 people—actually gave up citizenship last year, reports CNBC.

Really?  Now you tell me who has done more damage to this country…..the nits today or the radicals of yester-year?

Erik Rush: ‘Violent Civil Disobedience’ Needed To Stop Liberals, Gay Marriage | Right Wing Watch

I know that the ignorant masses that are on the Right wing will say and or whatever it is that they think will motivate the idiots that subscribe to their lunacy but there comes a time when their words are chosen to ramp up harm to the country.

It is time for the government and law enforcers to start calling these pricks on their bluff and hold them responsible for their irresponsible words.  I do believe I have the right to say what is on my mind but if I get on the TV or radio and basically call out for violent action then that goes beyond voicing an opinion and into the realm of incitement.

This a/hole is hoping that his verbiage will motivate some of the mental midgets into action so there will be a response and then they can say….”Told you so”…..

What would these toads do if a black leader told the people that they needed to rise up in armed revolt?  They would have a stroke and die sprinting to FOX to make a comment.

I believe that there are limits to the first amendment…….this is not free speech this is trying to incite violence……where should we draw the line?

Erik Rush: ‘Violent Civil Disobedience’ Needed To Stop Liberals, Gay Marriage | Right Wing Watch.

Can We Ever Make Anti-War Fashionable? by Lucy Steigerwald — Antiwar.com

It does my old heart good to see that Americans are once again taking to the streets….as an aging hippie protester I believe in the power of the people….even though it has been degraded in the past we can still make a difference……..Americans are protesting mostly around economic issues and social issues

I recently did a post on anti-war protests and where they have gone…….Americans No longer see the need to fight against war…..basically because only a small percentage has some skin in the game of war…..

So my question is….will Americans ever be protesting war again?

 

Can We Ever Make Anti-War Fashionable? by Lucy Steigerwald — Antiwar.com.

Where Have All The Protestors Gone?

Yesterday was the most boring day I have experienced in years…..news wise that is……enough already with Brady’s Balls!

Seeing the protests recently in the death of man in police custody in Baltimore started me thinking about my youth and the protests that I participated in…….like why is there not more concern on America’s path to endless war?  Where is the anti-war protests?

Seeing my fellow Americans in the streets protesting makes my heart smile……..we are protesting the Wall Street thieves……we are protesting for social justice………we are making a stand for civil rights…..again……but where is the anti-war protests?

There is a sad state of affairs here in the US….we are at war and NO one cares……not the public…..not the media…..not any politician……it will not become important until bodies start coming home and the media has something they can fixate upon…….then only then will a snowstorm in winter become a non-starter…..

What has happened to the US anti-war movement?  I have asked this question many times and in posts on IST…….we have a decades long war being fought by Americans and yet there is NO substantial protests…….yes we have a anti-war movement….but it has been marginalized…..why?

The question has been asked and now there is a response……

 

How the Anti-War Movement was Demobilized; Remembering I.F. Stone | Informed Comment.

Dems launch effort to demilitarize police | TheHill

My news dump continues…..hopefully some will find it useful……I shall return to original posts a little later……

Do you remember the protests in Ferguson, Missouri?  All the military hardware that the PD had at its disposal?  Then later in Baltimore…..all the nifty military stuff the police were using to try and control the situation?

After all that the media started reporting just how much military hardware was available for PDs even to college campus police…..it is a scandal at what these people are getting to use against the population.

The debate has been that something needs to be done….well sports fans the Dems are trying to do just that…..

 

Dems launch effort to demilitarize police | TheHill.

Baltimore: The Blame Game

After a rough start the last couple of days have been relatively quiet in Baltimore……and as usual someone has got to be blamed for the violence and the destruction…….the sad part is that the people and events that take the heat are seldom the cause……but they continue to play politics with a social problem…….

And as you would expect the GOP has its bad guys…….

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has officially thrown his hat into the 2016 ring, told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that “I came through the train on Baltimore last night, I’m glad the train didn’t stop.” He also said the “lack of fathers” and a “lack of moral code in our society” should eventually be examined for the “thievery and thuggery” that has taken place in Maryland’s largest city. The GOPer added “this isn’t just a racial thing. It goes across racial boundaries.”

Paul’s excuse sounds more like a political campaign than an honest evaluation…….but he isd not alone with moronic overtones……..there will ALWAYS be Donald Trump……..

What would a crisis be without the mind numbing lip flapping of The Donald?

“Our great African American president hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!” Trump tweeted on Tuesday, resulting in a backlash on Twitter with many accusing the billionaire businessman of being racist.

Trump called on Obama to “go to Baltimore and bring both sides together. With proper leadership, it can be done! Do it.” Trump also criticized the Baltimore police for allowing “the city to be destroyed,” and asked if U.S. taxpayers were expected to pay for the damage.

It’s Obama’s fault…….that tired old accusation……..

The media has gone so far as to make the story about the victim not about the circumstances of his death…..plus the media keeps counting down the hours and minutes to curfew with the hope that something set the crowds off……

Sad part is that NO one wants to talk about the real reasons for all this violence……..and because of this there will be more…..and more……