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quakerjoe · 6 years ago

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I thought white people were evil. I was wrong.

Whenever anyone mentions the historical atrocity of chattel slavery, white people will emerge from the dark crevices of humanity to gnaw away at the assertion like roaches on a discarded Cheeto. They will explain how most white people didn’t own slaves. They will offer a convoluted explanation about the Confederacy and Southern heritage. They will introduce the concept of “presentism”—the idea that we shouldn’t judge the actions of people in the past using modern-day standards—as if the white people of the past couldn’t quite grasp the idea of inhumanity and brutality until 1861.

Everyone knew that slavery was evil. Everyone knew that Jim Crow was evil. Everyone knew that lynching was evil. Everyone knows that any kind of injustice or inequality is evil. These things persist because most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate them.

And most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate inequality and injustice because they usually benefit in some small way. The Southern economy was built on evil slavery. Jim Crow laws maintained a national order with white people firmly planted atop the social hierarchy. Systematic injustice keeps black people in their place, but it also comforts white people to know that the big black bogeymen are being kept behind bars.

Inequality and racism exist not because of evil but because the unaffected majority put their interests above all others, and their inaction allows inequality to flourish. That is why I believe that silence in the presence of injustice is as bad as injustice itself. White people who are quiet about racism might not plant the seed, but their silence is sunlight.

Many of those people don’t speak out because they fear alienation more than they hate racism. For them, the fear of having someone furrow their brow in their direction outweighs their hatred of sending children to an underfunded school knowing that they don’t have an equal chance at success because of the color of their skin.

They know the reality of disproportionate police brutality, but they don’t have to worry about their children being shot in the face. Their kids receive good educations. Their kids can wear hoodies whenever they please. Little Amber and Connor’s résumés don’t get tossed in the trash because of their black-sounding names. Their children’s futures are determined only by work ethic and ability. Therefore, they stay silent on the sidelines.

That’s not evil.

That is cowardice.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON (MAYBE)

On Thursday, while visiting San Antonio, I was approached by a gentleman who heard my name and wanted to know if I was the Michael Harriot from The Root. He said that he was a paralegal who works with one of the noted immigration attorneys who were all over the news that day (I don’t know which one because I had been traveling and ... Crown Royal). He began to explain how the Trump administration was literally putting children in concentration camps.

Hold up ... before that previous sentence causes Caucasian heads to explode, allow me to offer this definition from Dictionary.com:

Now back to our previous conversation.

Just before he shook my hand and said it was nice meeting me, he explained that it was entirely possible that those children might never see their parents again. Then he said something that I still cannot erase from my brain. He paused, his hand still gripping mine, and looked past me as if he were recalling something, and said, “This is some Gestapo shit, man.”

I know that sentence gave liberals heart palpitations. There is always pushback anytime someone compares anything or anyone to the führer. Even though there is a literal Nazi movement rising in this country, Hitler is the third rail of every conversation, no matter how apt the comparison.

Despite the similarities between 1933 Germany and 2018 America (a rise in nationalism, a government-sponsored ethnic-cleansing movement, a racist strongman in power, that whole concentration camp thing ... ), the most obvious parallel between the Third Reich and the Trump administration is the willing silence of the majority.

Trump chief of staff John Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and many others refuse to publicly stand up to this insane administration even though they disagree with the policies. Ryan would rather quit. Kelly has reportedly given up. Sanders is reportedly leaving the White House. But none have publicly broken up with Donald Trump.

But it is not just the politicians in the Republican Party who are afraid to speak out against their base; the spineless cowardice of the Democrats has also become increasingly apparent. We expect Republicans to stand with their fearless leader and maintain their grip on power, but Democrats have been so silent that Rep. Maxine Waters’ defiance makes her look like a crazy woman in a tinfoil hat by comparison.

A CBS survey revealed that most Americans disagree with Trump’s “both sides” equivocation regarding the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year. According to a CNN/ORC poll, a majority of Americans opposed the white-nationalist-inspired travel ban. Two-thirds of Americans say that separating children from their parents at the border is unacceptable, according to a CBS poll.

Still, most white people won’t do shit.

The crisis at the border is the latest addition to a long list of instances when white people have chosen silence over what is right. Most of the white people who supported civil and voting rights still did not march, boycott or sit in. The white people who shed tears over police videos won’t attend a Black Lives Matter meeting.

Cowards. All of them.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

—DESMOND TUTU

At least once a week, I will receive an email from a well-meaning white person who wants to know what they can do to fight injustice and inequality. The answer to that is simple. Whenever and wherever you spot racism or inequality, say something. Do something.

Every. Single. Time.

If a white person spoke up every time a fellow Caucasian used the word “nigger” in the safe space of whiteness, they would stop doing it. If a white person advocated for diversity and equality behind the closed doors of power, where black faces are seldom present, people in power wouldn’t dismiss the reality of the tilted playing field.

And maybe I should go back and add the word “some” before every mention of “white people” in this article because I’d bet every penny I have that at least one white person with good intentions is reading this while murmuring, “Not all white people ... ”

Which is exactly my point.

“Some” is not enough.

Some white people will speak out sometimes, just like some fish can fly and somebears can ride bicycles. But if a biologist were lecturing on the mobility of aquatic animals or grizzlies, it would be idiotic to interrupt with the rare cases of flying fish or bears that ride Huffys.

Fish swim. Bears walk.

And white people are cowards.

“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

—LILY TOMLIN

There is a quote in the Holocaust Museum by Martin Niemöller, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for speaking out against Adolf Hitler. The quote reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Initially, Niemöller supported the Nazi Party for years because he “felt that reparations, democracy, and foreign influence” had damaged his country and “believed that Germany needed a strong leader to promote national unity and honor.”

Sound familiar?

When they came for black people, white people, like Neimöller, did nothing because they were not black. When they came for the Muslims, white people did not speak out because they were not Muslims. When they came for the immigrants, white people remained quiet because they were not immigrants.

The most disheartening part of all this is that black people and other people of color alone cannot abolish discrimination and hate. It is a problem created by white America and maintained by the silence of the majority. Every form of inequality would disappear by next Friday if every white person in America used his or her privilege to eliminate it.

It is useless to speculate on the exact reasons why they don’t. Sure, some of them are racists who benefit from the current social order. But many are just unmotivated because they don’t want to upset the apple cart. They will weep at the sight of children being ripped from their parents’ arms and shipped to internment camps. They will say Philando Castile’s death was a cruel injustice. They will tell you they “have a good heart.”

But they will only whisper these feelings? Who gives a fuck about hearts when their mouths are quiet and their hands are idle?

Republicans who disagree with the Trump administration remain silent. Instead of screaming at the top of their lungs, Democrats are calmly suggesting the same electoral solution that put Trump in power in the first place. Moderate whites say nothing behind closed doors. White women still have not confronted the 53 percent of their population who supported Trump.

And that is why racism persists. That is how Trump maintains his power. Injustice is evil. The cowardice of silence perpetuates injustice, and anything that perpetuates evil is, by definition, also evil.

Therefore, silence is evil.

As Leonardo da Vinci once said (I could not find the exact source. I think he said it when he painted the Mona Lisa, fought injustice as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or starred in Inception): “He who does not oppose evil commands it to be done.”

This is some Gestapo shit.

Until all white people do and say something, people in power will always be able to point to the silent majority and say that no one cares about racism or inequality. Ultimately, whiteness affords them the right to remain silent.

I thought white people were evil.

I was right.

- Michael Harriot

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thegiftedoneishere · 6 years ago

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I thought white people were evil. I was wrong.

Everyone knew that slavery was evil.

Everyone knew that Jim Crow was evil.

Everyone knew that lynching was evil.

Everyone knows that any kind of injustice or inequality is evil. These things persist because most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate them.

That’s not evil.

That is cowardice.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON (MAYBE)

Hold up ... before that previous sentence causes Caucasian heads to explode, allow me to offer this definition from Dictionary.com:

Concentration Camp: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.

Now back to our previous conversation.

Still, most white people won’t do shit.

Cowards. All of them.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

—DESMOND TUTU

Every. Single. Time.

Which is exactly my point.

“Some” is not enough.

Fish swim. Bears walk.

And white people are cowards.

“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

—LILY TOMLIN

There is a quote in the Holocaust Museum by Martin Niemöller, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for speaking out against Adolf Hitler. The quote reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Sound familiar?

But they will only whisper these feelings? Who gives a fuck about hearts when their mouths are quiet and their hands are idle?

Therefore, silence is evil.

This is some Gestapo shit.

I thought white people were evil.

I was right.

#the root #excellent article #truth

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stanandcharleyandfriends · 7 years ago

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American astronaut Leland Melvin is as famous for this photo with his dogs as he is for his courage in space. He also briefly played football in the NFL, and weighs in on the current controversy there:

***

To Donald Trump, by Leland Melvin

Donald Trump, I listened to your Alabama rally rant and could not believe how easily you say what you say.

We have become numb to your outlandish acts, tweets and recent retweet of you knocking down Hillary Clinton with a golf ball that you hit.

Donald Trump, your boorish and disgusting actions are not funny. They actually promote violence against women especially when your followers act out what you say.

Comparing this to what you say in condemnation of an unarmed black man peacefully protesting by exercising his constitutional First Amendment rights by silently taking a knee is appalling, unnerving and reprehensible.

Today, you called Colin Kaepernick “a son-of-a-bitch.”

You said he should be fired.

You are calling his white mother a bitch.

The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling. Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially?

Our National Anthem has been edited to try not to offend, because when Francis Scott Key penned the song he watched freed slaves fighting for the British and wrote this stanza:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

In 1814 former slaves fought with the British for their freedom from their American enslavers.

Key witnessed a battle from a ship off the Maryland shore at Fort McHenry, which inspired him to write what became our National Anthem.

I served my country not in the military, but as 1 of 362 American Astronauts that have explored the universe to help advance our civilization. Not just Americans, but all humans. I also was briefly in the NFL and stood for the National Anthem with my hand over my heart. What makes us great is our differences and respecting that we are all created equally even if not always treated that way.

Looking back at our planet from space really helps one get a bigger perspective on how petty and divisive we can be. Donald Trump, maybe you should ask your good friend Mr. Putin to give you a ride on a Soyuz rocket to our International Space Station and see what it’s like to work together with people we used to fight against, where your life depends on it. See the world and get a greater sense of what it means to be part of the human race, we call it the Orbital Perspective.

Donald Trump, please know that you are supposed to be a unifier and a compassionate and empathetic leader. If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try. I pray that you do the right thing.

May God bless you.

Sincerely,

Leland Melvin Former Astronaut and NFL Player

(source)

#Leland Melvin #dogs #NFL protests #racism in america #donald trump

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jewish-privilege · 7 years ago

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One September weekend in 1995, a few thousand people met at a convention center in Seattle to prepare for an apocalyptic standoff with the federal government. At the expo, you could sign up to defend yourself from the coming “political and economic collapse,” stock up on beef jerky, learn strategies for tax evasion, and browse titles by writers like Eustace Mullins, whose White nationalist classics include The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, published in 1952, and—from 1967—The Biological Jew.

The sixth annual Preparedness Expo made national papers that year because it served as a clearinghouse for the militia movement, a decentralized right-wing movement of armed, local, anti-government paramilitaries that had recently sparked its most notorious act of terror, the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal courthouse by White nationalists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. A series of speakers told expo attendees the real story: the attack had been perpetrated by the government itself as an excuse to take citizens’ guns away.

Not a lot of Black folks show up at gatherings like the Preparedness Expo, one site in an extensive right-wing counterculture in which White nationalism is a constant, explosive presence. White nationalists argue that Whites are a biologically defined people and that, once the White revolutionary spirit awakens, they will take down the federal government, remove people of color, and build a state (maybe or maybe not still called the United States of America, depending on who you ask) of their own. As a Black man, I am regarded by White nationalists as a subhuman, dangerous beast. In the 1990s, I was the field organizer for the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, a six-state coalition working to reduce hate crimes and violence in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain States region. We did a lot of primary research, often undercover. A cardinal rule of organizing is that you can’t ask people to do anything you haven’t done yourself; so I spent that weekend as I spent many—among people plotting to remove me from their ethnostate.

It helped that, despite its blood-curdling anti-Black racism, at least some factions of the White nationalist movement saw me as a potential ally against their true archenemy. At the expo that year, a guy warily asked me about myself. I told him that I had come on behalf of a few brothers in the city. We needed to resist the federal government and we were there to get educated. I said I hoped he wouldn’t take it personally, but I didn’t shake hands with White people. He smiled; he totally understood. “Brother McLamb,” he concurred, “says we have to start building broad coalitions.” Together we went to hear Jack McLamb, a retired Phoenix cop who ran an organization called Police Against the New World Order, make a case for temporary alliances with “the Blacks, the Mexicans, the Orientals” against the real enemy, the federal government controlled by an international conspiracy. He didn’t have to say who ran this conspiracy because it was obvious to all in attendance. And despite the widespread tendency to dismiss antisemitism, notwithstanding its daily presence across the country and the world, it is obvious to you, too.

From the time I documented my first White nationalist rally in 1990 until today, the movement has made its way from the margins of American political life to its center, and I’ve moved from doing antiracist organizing in small northwestern communities to fighting for inclusive democracy on a national level, as the Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice program officer at the Ford Foundation until recently, and now as a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yet if I had to give a basic definition of the movement—something I’ve often been asked to do, formally and informally, by folks who’ve spent less time hanging out with Nazis than I have—my response today would not be much different than it was when I began to do this work nearly thirty years ago. American White nationalism, which emerged in the wake of the 1960s civil rights struggle and descends from White supremacism, is a revolutionary social movement committed to building a Whites-only nation, and antisemitism forms its theoretical core.

...The meteoric rise of White nationalism within national discourse over the course of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and freshman administration—through Trump’s barely coded speech at fascist-style rallies, his support from the internet-based “Alt Right,” and his placement of White nationalist popularizers in top positions—has produced a shock of revelation for people across a wide swath of the political spectrum. This shock, in turn, has been a source of frustration within communities of color and leftist circles, where White liberals are often accused of having kept their heads in the sand while more vulnerable populations sounded the alarm about the toll of economic crisis, mass incarceration, police violence, deportation, environmental devastation, and—despite and in reaction to the election of Barack Obama—the unending blare of everyday hate. This is an understandable reaction. It’s one I’ve often shared. But the fact that many of us have long recognized that the country we live in is not the one we are told exists doesn’t mean we always understand the one that does. Within social and economic justice movements committed to equality, we have not yet collectively come to terms with the centrality of antisemitism to White nationalist ideology, and until we do we will fail to understand this virulent form of racism rapidly growing in the U.S. today.

To recognize that antisemitism is not a sideshow to racism within White nationalist thought is important for at least two reasons. First, it allows us to identify the fuel that White nationalist ideology uses to power its anti-Black racism, its contempt for other people of color, and its xenophobia—as well as the misogyny and other forms of hatred it holds dear. White nationalists in the United States perceive the country as having plunged into unending crisis since the social ruptures of the 1960s supposedly dispossessed White people of their very nation. The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for White supremacist ideology. White supremacism—inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South—had been the law of the land, and a Black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? For that matter, how could feminists and LGBTQ people have upended traditional gender relations, leftists mounted a challenge to global capitalism, Muslims won billions of converts to Islam? How do you explain the boundary-crossing allure of hip hop? The election of a Black president? Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education, and even Washington, D.C. It must be brainwashing White people, rendering them racially unconscious.

What is this arch-nemesis of the White race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews. Jews function for today’s White nationalists as they often have for antisemites through the centuries: as the demons stirring an otherwise changing and heterogeneous pot of lesser evils. At the turn of the twentieth century, “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”—a forgery, first circulated by Czarist secret police in Russia in 1903, that purports to represent the minutes of a meeting of the international Jewish conspiracy—established the blueprint of antisemitic ideology in its modern form. It did this by recasting the shape-shifting, money-grubbing caricature of the Jew from a religious caricature to a racialized one. Upper-class Jews in Europe might have been assimilating and changing their names, but under the new regime of antisemitic thought, even a Jew who converted to Christianity would still be a Jew.

In 1920, Henry Ford brought the “Protocols” to the United States, printing half a million copies of an adaptation called “The International Jew,” and the text has had a presence in American life ever since. (Walmart stocked copies on its shelves and for a time refused calls to take them down—in 2004.) But it is over the past fifty years, not coincidentally the first period in U.S. history in which most American Jews have regarded themselves as White, that antisemitism has become integral to the architecture of American racism. Because modern antisemitic ideology traffics in fantasies of invisible power, it thrives precisely when its target would seem to be least vulnerable. Thus, in places where Jews were most assimilated—France at the time of the Dreyfus affair, Germany before Hitler came to power—they have functioned as a magic bullet to account for unaccountable contradictions at moments of national crisis. White supremacism through the collapse of Jim Crow was a conservative movement centered on a state-sanctioned anti-Blackness that sought to maintain a racist status quo. The White nationalist movement that evolved from it in the 1970s was a revolutionary movement that saw itself as the vanguard of a new, whites-only state. This latter movement, then and now, positions Jews as the absolute other, the driving force of white dispossession—which means the other channels of its hatred cannot be intercepted without directly taking on antisemitism.

This brings me to the second reason that White nationalist antisemitism must not be dismissed: at the bedrock of the movement is an explicit claim that Jews are a race of their own, and that their ostensible position as White folks in the U.S. represents the greatest trick the devil ever played. ... Contemporary antisemitism, then, does not just enable racism, it also is racism, for in the White nationalist imaginary Jews are a race—the race—that presents an existential threat to Whiteness. Moreover, if antisemitism exists in glaring form at the extreme edge of political discourse, it does not exist in a vacuum; as with every form of hateful ideology, what is explicit on the margins is implicit in the center, in ways we have not yet begun to unpack.

...What I learned when I got to Oregon, as I began to log untold hours trying to understand White nationalists and their ideas, was that antisemitism was the lynchpin of the White nationalist belief system. That within this ideological matrix, Jews—despite and indeed because of the fact that they often read as White—are a different, unassimilable, enemy race that must be exposed, defeated, and ultimately eliminated. Antisemitism, I discovered, is a particular and potent form of racism so central to White supremacy that Black people would not win our freedom without tearing it down.

...The White nationalist movement that emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century grew across the country. But it was Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming that neonazis in the 1980s carved out as the territorial boundaries of their future Whites-only state, a region that self-identified “Aryans” from around the country began to colonize with nothing short of White national sovereignty as their goal. “Ourselves alone willing,” declared White nationalist leader and Aryan Nations organizer Robert Miles, “we shall begin to form the new nation even while in the suffocating embrace of the ZOG.” In White nationalist parlance, the United States is the ZOG, or Zionist Occupied Government. It was in the Northwest that the nascent militia movement—notorious in the 1990s after standoffs between White nationalist compounds and the FBI in Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas—declared war on their country loudly enough they could no longer be ignored.

...When folks ask me, skeptically, where the antisemitism in the White nationalist movement lies, it can feel like being asked to point out a large elephant in a small room. From the outset of my research on White nationalism all those years ago, it was clear that antisemitism in the movement is everywhere, and it is not hidden. “Life is uglier and uglier these days, more and more Jewish,” William Pierce wrote in The Turner Diaries. “No matter how long it takes us and no matter to what lengths we must go, we’ll demand a final settlement of the account between our two races,” the narrator promises at the book’s conclusion. “If the Organization survives this contest, no Jew will—anywhere. We’ll go to the uttermost ends of the earth to hunt down the last of Satan’s spawn.” White nationalism is a fractious countercultural social movement, and its factions often disagree with each other about basic questions of theory and practice. The movement does not take a single, unified position on the Jewish question. But antisemitism has been a throughline from the Posse Comitatus, which set itself against “anti-Christ Jewry”; to David Duke’s refurbished Ku Klux Klan, which abandoned anti-Catholicism in the 1970s in order to focus on “Jewish supremacism”; to the neonazi group The Order, inspired by The Turner Diaries, which in the mid-1980s went on a rampage of robberies and synagogue bombings in Washington state and murdered a Jewish radio talk show host in Denver; to evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson who denounced antisemitism but used its popularity among their followers to promote an implicitly White supremacist “Christian nationalism”; to the contemporary Alt Right named by White nationalist Richard Spencer, which has brought antisemitic thought and imagery to new audiences on the internet—and now at White House press conferences.

...Over years of speaking about White nationalism in the 1990s and early 2000s in the Northwest and then the Midwest and South, I found that audiences—whether white or of color, at synagogues or churches, universities or police trainings—generally had a relationship to white nationalism that, at least in one basic sense, was like my own. They knew the scope and seriousness of the movement from personal experience, and—if they didn’t take this for granted to begin with—they were not shocked to discover its antisemitic emphasis. The resistance I have encountered when I address antisemitism has primarily come since I moved to the Northeast seven years ago, and from the most established progressive antiracist leaders, organizations, coalitions, and foundations around the country. It is here that a well-meaning but counterproductive thicket of discourse has grown up insisting that Jews—of Ashkenazi descent, at least—are uncontestably White, and that to challenge this is to deny the workings of White privilege. In other words, when I’m asked, “Where is the antisemitism?,” what I am often really being asked is, “Why should we be talking about antisemitism?”

...I can answer this question as I have been doing and will continue to do: antisemitism fuels White nationalism, a genocidal movement now enthroned in the highest seats of American power, and fighting antisemitism cuts off that fuel for the sake of all marginalized communities under siege from the Trump regime and the social movement that helped raise it up. To refuse to deal with any ideology of domination, moreover, is to abet it. Contemporary social justice movements are quite clear that to refuse antiracism is an act of racism; to refuse feminism is an act of sexism. To refuse opposition to antisemitism, likewise, is an act of antisemitism. Arguably, not much more should need to be said than that. But I suspect that much more does need to be said. To the hovering question, why should we be talking about antisemitism, I reply, what is it we are afraid we will find out if we do? What historic and contemporary conflicts will be laid bare? And if we recognize that White privilege really is privilege, what will it mean for Jewish antiracists to give up the fantasy that they ever really had it to begin with?

...A central insistence of antiracist thought over the past several decades is that, as with any social category produced by regimes of power, you don’t choose race, power chooses it for you; it names you. This is why all the well-meaning identification in the world does not make a White person Black. Likewise, as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around. I developed an analysis of antisemitism because I wanted to smash White supremacy; because I wanted to be free. If we acknowledge that White nationalism clearly and forcefully names Jews as non-white, and did so in the very fiber of its emergence as a post-civil rights right-wing revolutionary movement, then we are forced to recognize our own ignorance about the country we thought we lived in. It is time to have that conversation.

Read Eric K. Ward’s full article at Political Research Associates. It is long but amazing and important.

#long post #Eric K. Ward #Eric Ward #white supremacy

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6dogs9cats · 7 years ago

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To Donald Trump I believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of this country even though at the time they were drafted, their tenets of life, liberty justice for all and eventual freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and petition amendment ratified in Dec 1791, only applied to a select group of people and not ones that looked like me. Donald Trump, I listened to your Alabama rally rant and could not believe how easily you say what you say. We have become numb to your outlandish acts, tweets and recent retweet of you knocking down Hillary Clinton with a golf ball that you hit. Donald Trump, your boorish and disgusting actions are not funny. They actually promote violence against women especially when your followers act out what you say. I used to walk the grounds of UVA in Charlottesville, VA as a graduate student only to watch in horror as those same grounds became a battlefield being trod by Nazi and anti-Semitic worshippers armed with assault style weapons ready to fight to make America White again. (their words). You actually said there were nice people on both sides. People armed and ready to kill other Americans for the purpose of eradicating Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Mexicans, Asians, Latinas and even the first real Americans, Native Americans to make America Great Again were “nice people”? Comparing this to what you say in condemnation of an unarmed black man peacefully protesting by exercising his constitutional First Amendment rights by silently taking a knee is appalling, unnerving and reprehensible. Today, you called Colin Kaepernick “a son-of-a-bitch.” You said he should be fired. You are calling his white mother a bitch. The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling. Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially? Our National Anthem has been edited to try not to offend, because when Francis Scott Key penned the song he watched freed slaves fighting for the British and wrote this stanza: “And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” I guess if I were a slave back then I probably would have done anything to obtain freedom from my American oppressors who were whipping, killing, raping, dismembering, hanging or releasing the dogs on people like me all under our Constitution. In 1814 former slaves fought with the British for their freedom from their American enslavers. Key witnessed a battle from a ship off the Maryland shore at Fort McHenry, which inspired him to write what became our National Anthem. I served my country not in the military, but as 1 of 362 American Astronauts that have explored the universe to help advance our civilization. Not just Americans, but all humans. I also was briefly in the NFL and stood for the National Anthem with my hand over my heart. What makes us great is our differences and respecting that we are all created equally even if not always treated that way. Looking back at our planet from space really helps one get a bigger perspective on how petty and divisive we can be. Donald Trump, maybe you should ask your good friend Mr. Putin to give you a ride on a Soyuz rocket to our International Space Station and see what it’s like to work together with people we used to fight against, where your life depends on it. See the world and get a greater sense of what it means to be part of the human race, we call it the Orbital Perspective. Donald Trump, please know that you are supposed to be a unifier and a compassionate and empathetic leader. If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try. I pray that you do the right thing. May God bless you. Sincerely, Leland Melvin Former Astronaut and NFL Player

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irenenorth · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Irene North

New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/08/when-will-you-step-up-and-speak-out/

When will you step up and speak out?

I almost can’t believe I’m writing about Nazis.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in upstate New York, I heard about Nazis a lot. They were the evil people the world fought in World War II. Why the world fought is a complicated matter, but in simple terms, Nazis wanted to eliminate anyone not like them. To them, Jews were most responsible for the ills in Germany. But if you were Polish, mentally ill, old, etc., you were a target as well.

While the Nazis were defeated, remnants of their ideology lingered. In the United States, the First Amendment to our Constitution values free speech so much, Nazis, white nationalist and fascists are allowed to continue with their rhetoric and protests. As a teenager, I saw and read news articles about the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and white nationalist rallies. Most of them were in the South. Everyone laughed. We knew these people were on the fringes of society. We educated ourselves about these groups and decided we wanted no part of any group promoting hate and exclusion of others.

Fast forward to the last decade. These hateful people were still around, but they received validation from people who did not like a black man in the White House. They hung President Obama in effigy. They called him vile names.

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, they came back with a vengeance. Conservatives didn’t admonish them. Some liberals didn’t either. Everyone was under the impression these repugnant human beings were still on the fringe. Donald Trump seemed to encourage them.

I, and others, however, warned what a Trump presidency could be like. On election day, I told several people their vote for Trump would only embolden the racists. They scoffed. They said they weren’t racist. I explained a vote for Trump was a vote condoning sexist and racist behavior. They wouldn’t believe me. Today, I sit in my living room, having watched the events which unfolded on Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017 and I again have this same argument. Only this time, the Trump supporters I know are saying these people were just “fed up Americans” and they aren’t racist or Nazis.

I’m fed up, too. I don’t, however, kill people or treat others like garbage to make myself feel superior. I attempt to talk to others, at least those who are willing to have an honest, open dialogue and don’t regurgitate Breitbart or FOX News.

You are Nazis. If you walk around with swastika tattoos, yell, “Jews will not replace us,” “Seig Heil,” and “Blood and Soil,” you’re a Nazi. If you extend the Nazi salute, you’re a Nazi. And these people like what they hear from the president.

A HISTORY LESSON

Yes, they are racist. If we don’t do something to stop this now, it will only get worse.

In recent years, there has been a push to remove Confederate statues and monuments from their respective places in the South. Some have said this is an effort to rewrite history. Those who live in the South believe their ancestors were heroes who were defending the south against oppressors in Washington. Many claim the south was fighting for state’s rights, but that’s disingenuous.

In their declarations of causes of seceding from the United States, the southern states made clear, their property – slaves – were at the heart of the matter.

Georgia said, “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.”

Georgia went on to say everyone agreed Africans were subordinate and unequal to Whites and the North didn’t complain when they received goods from the south made with slave hands, so there are no need to argue it now. Georgia ended its declaration by saying depriving them of their slaves would result in a subversion of society and destruction of their families.

Mississippi said, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

Mississippi listed 14 reasons it was seceding. Four did not directly relate to slavery.

South Carolina said the Declaration of Independence said they were free, sovereign and independent states. Citing Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, South Carolina was angry the North didn’t uphold the law which stated if a slave escaped into another state, it was that state’s responsibility to return the slave back to the party to “whom such service or labor may be due.” In the declaration, South Carolina was angry at the belief the entire government now thought as the northern states did.

Texas viewed the United States as a country that wanted slaves forever. Texas was upset that no more state could join the Union as slave states and called the Northern States disloyal and the federal government imbeciles. Texas was also angry that the government did not do enough to protect them from “Indian savages” and the “murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico.”

Texas accused abolitionists of “actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union.” Texas lists seven ways these groups have deprived slave owners of their slaves.

Virginia also said the federal government perverted their powers, “not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.”

That’s right. The southern states were being oppressed. Not black people. That’s what they believed.

Imagine if these people ever faced actual oppression. pic.twitter.com/dhPCbtfEjO

— Julius Goat (@JuliusGoat) August 12, 2017

Yes, secession was technically a state’s rights issue, but for anyone to ever say it had nothing to do with slavery is a liar. Those state’s rights were about keeping their property – slaves.

Do not let others claim only a minority of people owned slaves. While this is true, the majority in the South supported slavery. It’s a twisting of the truth to validate their point.

This is what you are celebrating if you are celebrating the Confederacy. The confederate flag is not a symbol of southern heritage. It is a symbol of hate, exclusion and white superiority. It always has been.

And if you want to put it in the context of the times, half the country didn’t want slavery and most of the world had already abolished it. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. The empire had abolished the slave trade in 1807. Western and Eastern Europe, Central and South America all abandoned slavery and serfdom in the early 1800s to 1859.

IT’S TIME TO CHANGE

Saturday, August 12, 2017 is a stain on our nation. Those who marched with their tiki torches, Hitler salutes and screamed, “Blood and Soil” are cowards and terrorists.

Donald Trump stroked the racist’s egos and stoked the irrational fear they have of other people. Trump’s rhetoric emboldened these people. The silence of people who voted for Trump and claim they are not like this, are giving tacit approval of their actions.

During the election campaign, Trump received vocal support from white nationalist groups. He refused to condemn the KKK. He was endorsed by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. Trump repeatedly attacked the Obama administration and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for being weak on radical Islamic terrorism. Yet he is silent on radical white terrorism.

If a Muslim had driven that car on Saturday, would we be calling this terrorism? You know we would. This was a domestic terrorist attack by neo-Nazi white supremacists. Trump is weak on terrorism, but when it’s his base, he won’t contradict them.

This country needs to educate itself once again to rid ourselves of racism, bigotry and hatred. We need to tell every citizen white supremacy is not acceptable. It is not normal. There is no discussion on this. If we want to return to normal, we cannot accept hatred and fear of “the other.”

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe told the group, many of whom aren’t from Virginia, “Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you’re patriots, but you are anything but a patriot.”

CORRECTING HISTORY

Over the past few years, several states have been removing Confederate statues and monuments. This is not rewriting history. This is correcting history. The Confederate cause was not honorable. If you support the Confederacy today, you are supporting slavery.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was a traitor. He fought so one group of people could keep another group of people as slaves. No, he wasn’t against slavery. That’s a myth conjured up to make him more kind and palatable. He explicitly said he was pro-slavery in an 1856 letter.

“I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.”

Peter Cvjetanovic, 20, seen in the picture above, told KTVN Channel 2 in Reno, Nevada he isn’t a racist.

“I came to this march for the message that white European culture has a right to be here just like every other culture,” Cvjetanovic told Channel 2 News. “It is not perfect; there are flaws to it, of course. However I do believe that the replacement of the statue will be the slow replacement of white heritage within the United States and the people who fought and defended and built their homeland. Robert E Lee is a great example of that. He wasn’t a perfect man, but I want to honor and respect what he stood for during his time.”

The man he wants to honor is one who took pleasure in the physical punishment of slaves and splitting up slave families.

Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor told The Atlantic, “Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that ‘not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.’”

John C. Breckinridge was the last Confederate States Secretary of War. He fled the country after the South lost the Civil War. He is a coward, but he has a memorial in Kentucky. Lexington Mayor Mayor Jim Gray said it’s coming down, along with all the other Confederate statues and monuments in town.

Leave the battlefields. Leave Appomatox Court House. Teach the real history in books and museums. Don’t honor traitors in public spaces. Monuments and statues are for raising people up who made the world better.

A CHANGE NEEDS TO COME

James Alex Fields Jr. (c.) brandished a shield from the Vanguard America group before the Charlottesville attack. (Go Nakamura/New York Daily News)

The terrorist from Saturday is James Fields Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio. He marched with Vanguard America, a fascist organization, before plowing over pedestrians. The group is already trying to distance themselves from Fields, claiming he wasn’t a member, therefore they aren’t responsible for his actions.

But they all are responsible. Anyone who voted for Trump is responsible. Anyone who failed to learn history when it was taught to you in school is responsible.

When you said you couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, you voted for this. When you watched people roughed up and beaten at Trump rallies, you voted for this. When you excused his “grab ’em by the pussy” comments, you voted for this. When you listened to the man at the pulpit, you voted for this. When white nationalists endorsed Trump, you voted for this. When you ignored Trump’s racist comments, you voted for this. When you poo-pooed his mocking a disabled reporter, you voted for this.

When you say nothing about the incident in Charlottesville, you condone it. When you try to use “whataboutism” on this incident, you condone it.

But I am still standing across the street. There is no line in the sand. Come and stand on my side and loudly proclaim, “This is not right. This is not normal” and be on the right side of history.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents hunted and killed Nazis for the ideology spewed forth on Saturday. We should never allow it to return to normal. Don’t make excuses for them. It makes them stronger.

The U.S. Constitution gives them the right to gather and shout their words of hate. It doesn’t absolve them of the consequences of their speech. Make them own it. Don’t let them hide under a hood. These people are remnants of history. May they return to the textbooks and not our streets.

As President Barack Obama tweeted and Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

It’s time we help them learn how to love.

#Charlottesville #Nazis #racist #Trump

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investmart007 · 6 years ago

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AHIHUD, Israel | Druze army vets campaign against Israel's Jewish state law

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/M2IW7i

AHIHUD, Israel | Druze army vets campaign against Israel's Jewish state law

AHIHUD, Israel — Anwar Saeb spent two decades in the Israeli military, rising to the rank of colonel and suffering wounds in battle while serving as a brigade commander during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Now, the 51-year-old lawyer, a member of Israel’s Arabic-speaking Druze minority, finds himself on the front lines of a different and unlikely battle — leading a campaign against a contentious new law that critics say sidelines minority groups.

Tens of thousands of Druze Israelis, along with Jewish supporters, thronged a Tel Aviv square on Saturday night in a rare demonstration against government policy by the typically muted community. Saeb and Amal Assad, a retired brigadier general, led the protest. For Saeb, the campaign is especially painful. The Druze minority is fiercely loyal to the state and well-integrated in society, yet its members feel betrayed by the new “Nation-State” law.

“We don’t think it’s good for the Jewish people. It’s not good for the state of Israel,” he told The Associated Press at his office, which has been turned into the “Headquarters of the Nation-State Law Protest.”

Israeli and multicolored Druze flags covered nearly every inch of the walls, and his desk was stacked with posters bearing a Jewish Star of David in the Druze colors: green, red, yellow, blue and white.

The law, sponsored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and passed by parliament last month, endorsed the country’s identity as the nation-state of the Jewish people. But it also downgraded Arabic from an official language to one of “special standing” and emphasized “developing Jewish settlement as a national value.”

Advocates of the law say it merely enshrines the state’s existing character and upholds the rights of minority groups in a democratic society. But critics say it turned the country’s Arab minority — 20 percent of the population — into second-class citizens. The law has faced both civil opposition and legal protests, including multiple challenges in the Supreme Court.

Netanyahu’s government has had a strained relationship with much of the Arab minority. Many oppose his hard-line policies toward their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza or remain scarred by his 2015 election-day attempt to galvanize supporters by warning that Arabs were voting in “droves.”

But the backlash among the Druze is surprising and potentially politically damaging.

The Druze belong to a small secretive sect that splintered off Shiite Islam in the Middle Ages, with populations concentrated in the mountainous areas of Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Less than 1 percent of the population, Israel’s 130,000 Druze carry outsized influence in the country.

Unlike the Muslim and Christian Arab minorities, Israeli Druze are drafted to the military and many strongly identify as Israeli. Most live in hilltop towns and villages in the Galilee, where memorials honor the more than 500 Druze soldiers and police officers killed in the line of duty. They have risen to senior military positions and have served as senior ministers and diplomats.

Saeb said there was no conflict between his Israeli and Druze identities, likening it to the dual identity of American Jews. How would they feel, he asked, if the U.S. passed a law stating the country was a Christian nation?

“We Druze decided before the foundation of the state (in 1948) to go with the Jews, and if the Jews bite the dust, we go down with them,” Saeb said. “We’re not connected to the Jews to protect them, we don’t serve the Jews. We’re not loyal temporarily. We’re loyal to our home. This is my home.”

Speakers at Saturday’s rally said that special relationship between the Jews and Druze had suffered a major blow because of the Nation-State Law.

A handful of Druze soldiers in the Israeli military criticized the law on social media, breaking military rules that prohibit soldiers from expressing political opinions.

Lt. Amir Jmall wrote in a post directed at Netanyahu that he, his brothers, and father all served in the military and in return are treated like “second class citizens” by the law.

“I don’t want to continue and I am sure that hundreds of other people will stop serving and be released from the military because of your decision,” Jmall said. He did not respond to requests to be interviewed.

Anat Baeeny Kara, a Druze woman volunteering in the protest campaign, said her 17-year-old son is set to enlist in the Israeli military next year, and feared the nation-state law would turn Israel into a “racist state.”

“I always wanted my son to have a military career. I want him to safeguard the country’s security.” She said she’s still telling her son he must serve, “but there’s a feeling of being a mercenary, of not being an equal citizen.”

Netanyahu met last week with Druze leaders in a bid to assuage concerns. According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu cut the meeting short after Assad, Saeb’s fellow protest leader, warned the law would “lead to apartheid.”

Despite the rally, Netanyahu doubled down on his defense of the law on Sunday, saying it doesn’t harm any citizens and was needed to “ensure the future of Israel as the state of the Jewish people for generations to come.”

Saeb says the law could be fixed by adding one clause: “equality for all citizens.”

The protest leaders have called for Israel’s declaration of independence, which enshrines protection of minority rights, to supplant the new legislation.

Issued in May 1948, it proclaimed the country as the Jewish homeland, rebuilt after 2000 years of exile. But it also called for the “development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants.” It guarantees “complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex.”

Saeb said that he himself has never “felt second class” as a Druze in Israel, and his qualm is solely with government policies.

“I’m fighting so that the state doesn’t become second-class, because laws like this turn it into second-class state,” he said.

By ILAN BEN ZION ,Associated Press

#AHIHUD #Anwar Saeb #army vets #brigadier general #campaign against #Druze Israelis #Druze minority #headquarters #Israel Druze #state law #suffering wounds #TodayNews

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mavwrekmarketing · 7 years ago

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The official portrait of astronaut Leland Melvin with his dogs Jake and Scout.

Image: NASA/REX/Shutterstock

Leland Melvin — former astronaut, NFL player, engineer, author, and owner of the best damn official NASA photo of all time — shared a perfect takedown of President Donald Trump to his Facebook page on Saturday.

In his post, Melvin condemned Trump for many of his recent actions, calling them both “boorish and disgusting.” The post touches on multiple incidents, including Trump’s NFL-connected attacks on free speech, his tweet which depicted violence against Hillary Clinton, his comments after protesters clashed with racists in Charlottesville last month, and just his general pettiness and inability to unite the country.

SEE ALSO: NASA honors ‘Hidden Figures’ inspiration with a new research facility

Melvin’s letter should absolutely be read in full, below, but if there is one takeaway, it’s this passage: “Donald Trump please know that you are supposed to be a unifier and a compassionate and empathetic leader. If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try. I pray that you do the right thing. May God bless you.”

To Donald Trump

I believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of this country even though at the time they were drafted, their tenets of life, liberty justice for all and eventual freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and petition amendment ratified in Dec 1791, only applied to a select group of people and not ones that looked like me. Donald Trump I listened to your Alabama rally rant and could not believe how easily you say what you say. We have become numb to your outlandish acts, tweets and recent retweet of you knocking down Hillary Clinton with a golf ball that you hit. Donald Trump your boorish and disgusting actions are not funny. They actually promote violence against women especially when your followers act out what you say.

I used to walk the grounds of UVA in Charlottesville, VA as a graduate student only to watch in horror as those same grounds became a battlefield being trod by Nazi and anti-Semitic worshippers armed with assault style weapons ready to fight to make America White again. (their words). You actually said there were nice people on both sides. People armed and ready to kill other Americans for the purpose of eradicating Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Mexicans, Asians, Latinas and even the first real Americans, Native Americans to make America Great Again were “nice people”? Verses what you say in condemnation of an unarmed black man peacefully protesting by exercising his constitutional First Amendment rights by silently taking a knee is appalling, unnerving and reprehensible. You called Colin Kaepernick “a son-of-a-bitch.” And said he should be fired. You are basically calling his white mother a bitch. The strong contrast in language for a black man and a Nazi is very telling. Do you have any sense of decency or shame in what you say to the American people that are part of your duty to serve respectfully with dignity, presidentially?

The National Anthem that we listen too has been edited to try not to offend because when Francis Scott Key penned the song he watched freed slaves fighting for the British and wrote this stanza:

I guess if I were a slave back then I probably would have done anything to obtain freedom from my American oppressors who were whipping, killing, raping, dismembering, hanging or releasing the dogs on people like me all under our Constitution. In 1814 former slaves fought with the British for their freedom from their American enslavers and Key witnessed a battle from a ship off the Maryland shore at Fort McHenry which inspired him to write what became our National Anthem.

I served my country not in the military but as 1 of 362 American Astronauts that have explored the universe to help advance our civilization. Not just Americans but all humans. I also was briefly in the NFL and stood for the National Anthem with my hand over my heart. What makes us great is our differences and respecting that we are all created equally even if not always treated that way. Looking back at our planet from space really helps one get a bigger perspective on how petty and divisive we can be. Donald Trump maybe you should ask your good friend Mr. Putin to give you a ride on a Soyuz rocket to our International Space Station and see what it’s like to work together with people we used to fight against, where your life depends on it. See the world and get a greater sense of what it means to be part of the human race, we call it the Orbital Perspective.

Donald Trump please know that you are supposed to be a unifier and a compassionate and empathetic leader. If you can’t do the job then please step down and let someone else try. I pray that you do the right thing. May God bless you.

Sincerely, Leland Melvin Former Astronaut and NFL Player

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joshuazev · 7 years ago

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On surround sound:

I had a topic that I probably could have focused on for this post today, but instead I wanted to draw attention to several things that happened and are happening around the world today and maybe more specifically in the United States. Like I mentioned in the last post there were nine rallies set for this weekend that were supposed to be focused on “free speech” for the alt-right, neo-nazis, white nationalists, etc. One of which was going to be held in Boston. There was a lot of backlash after the mayor agreed to allow a permit for them to rally in the first place. Many people didn’t know what was going to happen, but I’m sure many, like myself, expected the worst. Boston has been a historically racist city for centuries. Literally, centuries. Which, slightly off topic, I do find it interesting that so many of the most popular “Union” cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston have earned reputations for intensely struggling with racism. Ironic that the states in the civil war that were a part of the union, the side against slavery, would struggle hundreds of years down the line with similar and debatably worse problems of oppression. Again, none of those three cities, has been more the negative spotlight for being racist than Boston. Like I also mentioned yesterday, a lot of people thought that it would be best not to show up because it could be seen as adding more fuel to the fire and giving the negativity more energy. I’m happy to say that people did come and they came in unbelievable numbers. In fact, the numbers were so high that the “free speech” rally had to stop. Strength in numbers, to say the least. I’m hoping this will set the standard for the following rallies. There is no place for hate speech and violence and droves of counter protesters is certainly a great way to prevent something terrible from happening. Then again, I had a thought. Essentially, if we shut up the white nationalists, neo-nazis, anti-semites, then we are muting them completely. That’s what we want, right? People shouldn’t be allowed to threaten others and say such terrible things. You would assume that if it continued to happen that this side might get discouraged enough to quiet, pack up, and hide. Over time the wounds of hate would heal and then everyone lives happily ever after. What it doesn’t solve is the existence of these ideals and the existence of these people, and their ability to mobilize. Ideas are not so easy to eliminate. Idealists on the counter-protesting side or the side of peace and equality for all would hope for a conversation to discuss why each side feels the way they do and hopefully the opportunity to come to an agreement or understanding that would benefit both sides. I’ll be honest, I have no desire to hear anyone say that we should rid the world of minorities, jews, etc. That’s the type of stuff to make me clench my fists and see red. I just wonder sometimes about the existence and contagiousness of ideas, in this case, for the worse. Influential figures, mothers and fathers, teachers, group leaders that are effective in their teachings can convince people to believe anything. In the South, scratch that, in our nation there are leaders that have been fundamentally preaching the wrong ideas and kids at a young age are susceptible to believe whatever their leaders tell them. You see where I’m going with this. I want the counter protesters to shut the shit down. Suppress the hate. I’m just not sure it’s getting things done in the long term, but like I said yesterday…how long can we wait?

My last thought for now on this matter is that I hope the counter protesters continue to show their strength, positivity, and fight to resist, and rebel against the president and his idealistic descendants. Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Mountain View (?), New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, D.C., my thoughts will be with you. Stay strong.

…

In New York, there was a rally in Brooklyn today for Colin Kaepernick with NYPD cops and a special guest, Frank Serpico. Serpico, of course, is the cop that Al Pacino popularized in a movie of the same name. During his time as a policeman Serpico struggled, but ultimately was successful in exposing the corruption in the NYPD police force. All of the cops were in agreement that the treatment Kaepernick has received since kneeling for the national anthem and speaking out against social issues, has been unjust and wrong. In a sign of solidarity they all wore “I stand with Kap” t-shirts and raised their fists at the end of their discussions. Serpico would later say, “I am here to support anyone who has the courage to stand up against injustice and oppression anywhere in this country and the world.” He is 81 years old now. I had forgotten that “Serpico” was a true story and I’m amazed that he is still out on the vanguard speaking his opinions. I wonder what his relationship with the NYPD is. Spoiled? Mending? I was having a discussion today about the word “whistleblower” and the word “snitch” and I wondered why I had a negative association with both of the words, not just “snitch.” What was the programming that made me think this way? Why does the act of exposing something illegal, illicit, and harmful garner a negative response? Why do so many people side with the ��victim” in that situation instead of the “informer”?

…

I was walking towards the 1 train subway station today and was coming down the steps. I see three cops behind a table looking like they were ready to do some random inspection. I got a couple of steps from the bottom and they requested to see my backpack. I was pretty “meh” about the situation, but wasn’t confrontational, so I knew there wouldn’t be a problem. Correction: I didn’t think there would be a problem. While one dude is doing the strip thing on my backpack and checking the sample to see if would return any foreign substances, the officer in the middle was reading the words on my shirt. It was a shirt I had bought a year or so before with YG, Kamiayah, and Sad Boy in the car posing for “The Fuck Donald Trump Tour.” I see the officer reading slowly, “The-Fuck-Donald-Trump Tour” and he proceeded to chuckle and laugh a little bit. I’m over here thinking he vibes with it and agrees. Another officer hands me my bad and the one slow-reader says to me, “The best president we’ve had in a while” and chuckles again. I took a second to register what he said and then sarcastically gave him a thumbs up sign, hot in my head, and wanting to do so much more than be sarcastic.

And they wonder why…

…

I posted today on several Facebook forums because I was on the lookout for some new temporary places to live. In the past I had posted on these same forums and got some pretty good results, a fair amount of messages, and leads to get myself situated. I think it’s because I have no problem being myself on these posts. I’m sarcastic, stupid, dorky, and I make admirable attempts to be funny. Several of these forums are under the tag name “Gypsy Housing,” which in the past has gotten a lot of backlash because “gypsy” is a derogatory term. I was hoping to find a place for 750-900, which narrowed down my options immensely, but it’s what I could afford. Just a little context. So, I started off my post today with,

“Dear gypsies, minorities, allies, semites, alt-leftists, internationals, artists, fans of r&b, and other people I'd love to hang out with,

I thought it was a pretty all encompassing way to bring people in. I was naive in my thinking. After letting the posts breathe for some time and getting a couple responses I received one response that said,

“It's very weird and insulting to list minorities then offer to pay $800 for a fucking room. People like you are the reason our rent is so damn high now.”

I was a little shocked. My first response was to be defensive and then I wondered whether I should have been more sensitive before putting that first line there. However, with hindsight being 20/20, when you read that did you cringe or did you see nothing wrong? I like to know these things because I don’t want to make the same mistake in the future even though the defensive side of me wonders whether the woman overreacted. As a white male, I don’t want to play the “people are way too sensitive and need to chill out” card because, like I said, I’m a white male. I’m a part of the least oppressed people in the world.

Just wondering, really.

…

You can see the themes, though. Race. Race. Race. These are sensitive times we are living in and there is always a lot to talk about. No shortage of topics, I’ll tell you that.

…

Peace and love to all.

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djgblogger-blog · 7 years ago

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The military, minorities and social engineering: A long history

http://bit.ly/2vYXwKt

LGBT veterans march in a Boston parade. Contrary to what some may say, the military has a long history of embracing socially marginalized groups. AP Photo/Steven Senne

President Trump’s tweeted ban on transgender persons serving in the U.S. military has restarted the perennial debate about the relation between military service and social policy.

Writing in The Washington Times, columnist Rebecca Hagelin opposed the integration of transgender troops: “Social engineering,” she wrote, “is not the purpose of the United States’ armed forces.” Meanwhile, Ash Carter, who as Barack Obama’s secretary of defense lifted the ban on transgender individuals in 2016, used similar terms in condemning President’s Trump’s tweet: “To choose service members on other grounds than military qualifications…is social policy and has no place in our military.”

In fact, as I found while researching the story of African-American soldiers and of immigrant recruits during World War I for my book “Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality,” the armed forces have played a vital role in shaping American social policy toward the country’s minorities.

Race and the right to serve

The right to serve in the common defense has always been a fundamental civil right in the U.S. and a hallmark of full citizenship.

Originally, the prerogative to serve in the militia was restricted to “freemen” or citizens. A few blacks had served in state and federal units in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. But it was not until the Civil War that blacks were generally allowed to enlist in the federal Army.

African-American soldiers serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Library of Congress

Between the end of Reconstruction and the start of World War I, the U.S. underwent a demographic revolution. Cities and industrial towns were transformed by massive waves of immigration. The arrival of large numbers of ethnic groups from hitherto untapped parts of Europe and Asia – groups whose language, culture and religion were strikingly alien – seemed to threaten existing cultural norms and social structures.

At the same time, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, the “Great Migration” carried large numbers of black people out of the South. African-Americans became a national rather than regional minority.

Fear and resentment of these newcomers generated a political backlash.

Already in the period between 1890 and 1915, the South had established a new regime of oppressive racial laws known as Jim Crow. In response to the Great Migration, racial animus grew in the North. In parallel to this, there was an anti-immigration movement backed by both Populists and Republican “progressives.” Harvard President Lawrence Lowell stated the core belief of these movements: that “Indians, Negroes, Chinese, Jews and Americans cannot all be free in the same society.”

The crisis produced by American entry into World War I brought these movements up short. Suddenly the nation had to raise an army of millions from scratch, with the utmost speed.

The Great War and a new social bargain

There was no way to achieve that goal without enlisting large numbers of African-Americans and immigrants or “hyphenated Americans,” a derogatory term for immigrants first used at the turn of the century. It was in this crisis that American leaders rediscovered the ideals of civil equality that late 19th-century ethno-nationalism had called into question.

A wave of official publications produced by the Committee on Public Information now described the U.S. as a “vast, polyglot community,” whose democratic ideal was

“higher than race loyalty, transcend[ing] mere ethnic prejudices, more binding than the call of a common ancestry … [an ideal] to which every citizen, of whatever race, may rally, without losing hold upon the best traditions of … his race, and the land of his nativity.”

The official ideologists of America’s Great War offered minorities a new social bargain: recognition as Americans in exchange for loyal service in wartime.

Through the special Foreign Soldier Service, a military agency organized to provide language and civics classes for the foreign-born, the Army would become a school for citizenship. Organizations representing minority communities – the Jewish Welfare Board, Knights of Columbus (for Italians) and various black church groups – were invited to provide support services in the training camps.

Half a million immigrants from more than 40 different nations would serve during the war. The 77th Division, initially recruited in greater New York, was noted for the high percentage of immigrants, especially Jews and Italians. But immigrants served in every division. Sergeant Alvin York of the 82nd Division, for example, the Tennessee mountain man and later war hero, found himself “throwed in with a lot of Greeks, Italians and New York Jews.”

Over 350,000 African-Americans would serve with the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Units of the 93rd Division (including the “Harlem Hell Fighters” of the 369th Infantry) won distinction fighting as part of the French army. But most blacks were used as labor and support troops, and the combat units faced discrimination and mistreatment serving with the American Army.

The 369th Infantry, better known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters,’ challenged assumptions about the capability of African-Americans to serve in the military during World War I. Public domain

From racial backlash to renewed liberalism

Once the war ended, racial and ethnic fears and resentments reasserted themselves.

Jim Crow was violently reaffirmed by lynchings and racial pogroms, and in 1925 an Army report distorted the combat record of its black units to justify policies limiting the role of black troops in future conflicts.

New policies of “race”-based exclusion were aimed against white ethnics too. The tone was set by Congress’ passage of the Reed-Johnson Act, restricting immigration by ethnic groups deemed undesirable – Jews, Italians, Eastern Europeans. Most Ivy League colleges adopted formal quotas limiting the number of Jewish students, and informal rules affecting Italian applicants. Real estate “covenants” barred Jews and other ethnic groups from purchasing or renting homes in certain towns or districts.

However, the war experience had roused the political consciousness of racial and ethnic minorities. Black civil rights organizations cited their people’s record of military service in demanding an end to Jim Crow. New ethnic veterans organizations, most notably the Jewish War Veterans, were prominent in fighting for veterans’ benefits and civil rights. Blacks, Jews and other working-class ethnic groups gained influence as part of the New Deal coalition.

The crisis of mobilization for World War II recreated the opportunity for social change that had been squandered after World War I.

Once again the large-scale enlistment of black and ethnic minority soldiers was a necessity. And this time the conflict pitted Americans against the explicitly racist ideology of Nazism. The resemblance of Nazi race laws to the segregation and exclusion enforced by Jim Crow helped discredit the South’s racial regime with a broad public. And Hollywood played a critical role in transforming public opinion, through its production of war films, later known as “platoon movies.”

The pattern was set by “Bataan” in 1943, which symbolizes America in a small unit whose members include (in addition to some white regional types) a Jew, a Pole, an Irishman, two Filipinos and – most extraordinarily – an African-American. The U.S. Army was still racially segregated, but Hollywood deliberately set reality aside to create an ideal vision of an integrated America.

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The new vision: A diverse military for a diverse society

It was this integrated vision that would shape post-war social change. White minorities were the first to benefit, pushing back against the patterns of discrimination that had barred Jews and Italians from employment, elite college admissions and housing. A new federal commitment to civil rights for African-Americans was signaled by President Truman’s 1948 decision to racially integrate all military units.

As new laws (like the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65 and Title IX in 1972) have mandated the increased inclusion of hitherto marginalized or excluded groups in the mainstream of economic and political life, those steps have registered in the makeup of our armed forces.

In a representation of today’s Army, a symbolic “platoon” would have to include many more African-Americans and Latinos, Asians of different national origins – and also women, and gays and lesbians.

Each act of inclusion has raised concerns about the effect on unit cohesion and military effectiveness. In 1948, for example, Army Secretary Kenneth Royall declared Truman’s order would lower the morale of the many white Southerners in the service, and that the Army should not be “an instrument for social evolution.”

LGBT soldiers, many serving openly, are an essential part of today’s military. U.S. Air Force photo illustration by Senior Airman Michael Smith

Similar objections were raised to the integration of women, gays and lesbians into the military. Nevertheless, in these cases military leaders achieved integration without loss – and indeed, generally with an enhancement of military effectiveness.

In the mass armies of the two World Wars, inclusion was mandated by the sheer size of the force. Now that we have an all-volunteer military, the requirement of inclusiveness is, if anything, greater, because force size and the mix of specialists cannot be augmented by mass conscription.

As Senator John McCain recently said,

“We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so – and should be treated as the patriots they are.”

Richard S. Slotkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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mayoperry-blog · 8 years ago

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Six Unsent Letters

This is a project I did for an English 3 class in sophomore year. After reading “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992″ by Anne Deavere Smith, I responded to the written play in a series of letters that I wish I could send to the characters in the play or to the world.

Dear Latasha, You were too young. Just like that, your life were cut short by Soon Ja Du with to a single bullet. Du was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, which has a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. That’s some consolation, right? The judge gave Du probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 dollar fine. Apparently your life is worth 16 days of community service and a couple hundred dollars. This horrific injustice did not go unnoticed. Your murder, along with Rodney King’s beating sparked outrage in Los Angeles that eventually turned into riots in 1992. You are not forgotten. I’m assuming you like Harry Potter, because you were 15 and what teenager doesn’t like Harry Potter, or at least heard of him? One of my favorite moments comes in the last book, when Harry is speaking to his parents and those who have guided him, and given their lives for him. “‘Dying? Not at all,’ said Sirius. ‘Quicker and easier than falling asleep’ ”. I hope this is how it was for you. I know that your family tries to take comfort in the fact that you did not suffer, nor did you have a single moment to feel the pain caused by that woman. No one has forgotten you, even now. Even after all these years, you are still as relevant as ever. On the 25th anniversary of your death, your family and community gathered where you died. They held candles and exchanged memories of your life cut short. The late rapper 2Pac referenced you in his posthumous 2002 hit, “Thugz Mansion”. Shakur raps, “Little LaTasha sho' grown/Tell the lady in the liquor store that she's forgiven, so come home”. The song talks about how he would rest in peace and find happiness when he is in a place where all the troubles and pains of his life come to an end. 2Pac also dropped names of African American icons, including Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X. You are referenced among those who made an impact on the world and the African American community, because you’ve done exactly that. You have not been forgotten, and you have pushed your people to begin the contemporary fight for equality and justice in the eyes of the government. Latasha, you have done more for your people than you will ever know, and I hope that you, wherever you are, can realize that. You have not, and will never be forgotten.

Rest In Paradise Latasha. Sincerely,

Perry Mayo

Dear Mr. King, You are a legend. After your infamous beating from the LAPD, you became the face of your people. They fought, and are still fighting, in your name among others for justice. Your excessive beating stemmed from a high speed chase that ended with you on the ground. Although only two of the four attacking police officers were indicted for your attack, it lit the fuse on a deadly civil bomb. On May 1, 1992, you came forward with a plea for peace. You requested, "People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" You are exactly correct. There’s nothing standing in the way of justice except insane bigotry, groundbreaking excuses, and white privilege that goes back for generations. You were not the first to experience unfair treatment from those who believe themselves to be better than you, and you won’t be the last. There were the jews, the Hispanics, the African Americans, and people of color in general. Now, a new group that just has to be oppressed, the LGBTQ+ community, with a special bright red target on those who identify as transgender. Your bravery and resilience empowered those who were too afraid to stand up to their oppressors, and has inspired the silent to voice their opinions. You know what I find almost laughable? The blatant double standard for blacks versus the whites. You’ve experienced this first hand, and you won’t be the last person to do so. You were caught in a high speed chase, and then beat within minutes of death, while in 2012, Dylann Roof was captured by the police after killing nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, North Carolina. You were nearly killed for driving 110 miles per hour, while Roof was taken into custody and given a bulletproof vest during transportation. Why protect the life of a homicidal maniac, while endangering that of a speedy driver? Thank you for your fighting spirit. I’m glad that your people have such a strong sense of unity and fight, because your uphill battle for justice is long from over. History will inevitably repeat itself, but I know that you are ready for the fight, and you will overcome whatever obstacles are thrown in your path. I can only hope that you are proud of yourself for sparking this revolution, and that you realize how many doors you opened for your people. Rest in peace, Rodney.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear Miss Rae, or Queen Malkah, Author Ralph Ellison wrote that as an African American “I am invisible... simply because people refuse to see me...When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed everything and anything except me.” You can relate and absolutely agree, I’m sure. After the murder of Latasha Harlins, you spoke out about the unity of the African Americans, and your opinion on Charles Lloyd, a wellknown black attorney, and how he represented and defended Soon Ja Du, who had killed one of his fellow African Americans. You’re right. He sold his card. He’s a sellout, trading in the pride of his ethnicity and the history for a fat paycheck. He doesn’t deserve to stand by you, if you thought for one second that he was a loss, you are sorely mistaken. He is as useless as a bicycle to a fish in my eyes. It’s people like you who will keep the fight alive, and keep spirits high. You value unity and standing together, especially in times of oppression and opposition. You recognize the disparity of justice between the African Americans, or people of color for that matter, and the white community. Not only do you recognize it, you speak out against it, something many would not do in the 1990s. You see beyond the fake promises of the Pledge of Allegiance for God’s sake. Liberty and justice for all, as long as you’re white, cisgendered, and heterosexual. What a great country we live in. You told Anna Deavere Smith, “ifthewhitemediadoesnotdecidetoprintsomethingthathappenstous,wewon’tknow/ ... Because justice denied Latasha Harlins/Is justice denied every American citizen.” Once again, your majesty, you’ve hit the nail right on it’s pretty little head. Skin tone doesn’t determine what someone deserves, in any circumstance. As soon as people see things from your point of view, the world will be infinitely better. You’d be proud, I think. With all of the movements that have sprung from your injustice, from chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot”, to staging “dieins” based on the times that the victims cried for help or lay slain on the sidewalk, I’d imagine that you’re pretty proud. You’ve always been aware of the fact that based on the amount of melanin in your skin, you will have higher, harsher, and millions more hurdles than any of us out here, any of us trying to get by. But you, my dear, have navigated those roadblocks with ease and the grace of a golden pheasant. Your people need someone like you.

Here are my instructions for you, Queen Malkah: When times get tough, and big, bad history rears it’s head and tries to trample you and your spirits, you be there to lead your people. You hold your head high, raise your sword to the sky, unleash a battle cry more chilling than death itself, and run. Sprint headfirst into injustice, slashing anything in your way and reduce it to a dust. You charge, and you fight, and fight, and fight until you can’t fight anymore. Even then, you push through, until you’ve made it to the other side with your people close behind. Once you are in the beautiful forest clearing with your warriors surrounding you, only then, can you relax and celebrate your victory as equals of those who have pushed you down. But until then, rally your troops, and continue your battle for equality. We’ll be behind you, waiting for your cues. Thank you, your highness, I applaud you for your bravery.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo, a willing warrior at your service.

Mr. Zimmerman, I will not start this letter with “dear”, because that word implies adoration. You murdered an innocent man. It doesn’t matter if Trayvon Martin seemed “suspicious”. You were told, by the authorities, to star in your SUV and to not approach the teenager. Even if it was self defense, you went against the orders of police and instigated a fight with Trayvon, which ended with the teenager dead in the street. That’s not the worst part, I believe. In my eyes, the most sadistic part of the situation came after you murdered a 17yearold boy. You put the gun used to kill Trayvon online, and tried to auction it off. Bidding in an online auction for the gun reached $65 million at one point as people on the Internet drove the offers to astronomic levels. Many of those were sarcastic, George, I can assure you that. A top bidder whose account has been since deleted, at one point used the name “Racist McShootface”. Another bidder competed for the weapon under the name Tamir Rice, another victim of police brutality. Tamir was killed by police while carrying a toy gun. He was 12. I just want to make it known that people are against you. I also hope that you know that by murdering Trayvon, you added about a thousand gallons of fuel to the fire that is propelling the black community. So, in a dark, twisted sense of the phrase, thank you, George. Thank you for showing adults that they can’t trust the police or neighborhood watch to keep their community safe or their children alive. Thank you for teaching teenagers that they should stay clear of the police instead of going to them for help. Thank you for teaching kids that the police are more dangerous than criminals themselves, and that you won’t protect them, you’ll kill them. Thank you for giving the next generation and the generations to come a precautionary tale about what happens when white privilege is added to racism, and multiplied by an accessible deadly weapon. So thank you, again really, thank you George, for opening our eyes to more horrors, and teaching us that monsters aren’t just in closets or under beds, on wanted posters or in jail. They’re on our streets, wearing government uniforms, and are trusted with the responsibility protecting the community. Thank you, George Zimmerman, for pushing the black community to fight that much harder for themselves, against people like you.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear Mr. Garner, You did not die in vain. After being choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, you became one of the faces that headed the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Your plea for help. “I can’t breathe!”, is being used as a battle cry for those fighting for justice. It’s not just in your city, or just those who know you. For two days in a row, a group of white collar professionals staged “dieins” in support of calls for increased police accountability following the deaths of unarmed black men. Also, dozens African American men gathered on the front steps of the courthouse in downtown L.A. and held a silent vigil for those who have died in police confrontations. At about the same time in Oakland, protesters chained themselves to the city Police Department's headquarters. You helped fuel a movement that is sweeping this nation. Don’t you ever doubt for a second that you died for nothing. Something I find sick is that media has tried to humanize your killer. Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who choked you, has received so many death threats that a police detail guards his Staten Island home around the clock. People want to avenge you. The media has tried to cover up the crime of Pantaleo, by telling us about his childhood, his achievements, his innocence. They tell us about his teachers glowing comments, and that he received awards as an honorable Eagle Scout. We see past that. We know that the media is whitewashing your death, and making it seem like you asked for it. They say, “well, he was a threat who needed to be subdued”. It’s all bullshit. We know, and we are fighting for others to join us. Your untimely death has helped millions realize the type of false reality that we live in, and you’ve opened people’s eyes to the fact that the police aren’t always the good guys, and that black men aren’t always the bad guys. You’ve given people another reason to fight, and one more name to drop when the topic of injustice is breached. With three words, you’ve dumped gallons of butane on the roaring wildfire of black rage, and for good reason. “I can’t breathe”, and the entire black community is suffocating. You’ve given everyone, black or not, stranger or family member, one more thing to fight for. You should be proud of yourself, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Just know that you’ve done well by yourself and your community. I hope that you can finally breathe. Rest In Paradise, Eric.

Sincerely, Perry Mayo

Dear World That I Live In, These past two years, I’ve had my eyes opened to the world around me, and the world within myself. I have not yet fully come to consciousness, for that takes hundreds of years. I personally believe that no one has ever completely come to consciousness. What even is consciousness in the first place? Who am I to determine when or how one has their eyes opened to everything and anything, to the core of what holds our thoughts together, and what keeps us from literally going insane? I’ll tell you what consciousness is. Consciousness is everything and nothing. It is the balance between finding codependence and self love. It is realizing why we’re here and what we’re doing, while also not questioning why or how or what, and just being. You don’t need answers.

Consciousness is. How do we come to consciousness? How does one begin to become aware, while remaining in their personal matrix? We don’t. Here’s the only thing that we can do. Fall back into your beingness, let it catch you, and you are at home. There is nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to fix. Just be. History repeats itself. The same ideas circle around every hundred years, and every hundred years, those same ideas drag the human race to the lowest of low,, to the depths of rock bottom. We sit, and wallow, and fight, until finally, one or two sensible people realize what humans have done to each other, and they pull us back up to a point where we can once again be proud of ourselves. When any given group oppresses another, the oppressed will soon enough turn around and take down another group. The vicious cycle has killed billions and will continue to kill until the world is reduced to a devastatingly singular and lonely person who has no one left, for everyone else was killed by the cyclical hate. One will remain, after the rest of the world has committed global suicide.

You, my dear, are sailing on the widespread and glistening wings of pure imagination if you think, for a single second, that the human race can go forth without destroying itself through a made up hierarchy based on one’s skin tone or who they fall in love with, how much they earn or what lies between their legs.

Here’s my two cents, coming from a teenager who’s seen more than they need to see to make a decision. I call my theory “The Fiji Complex”. I’ve been to Fiji twice, and I came to one

of the biggest realizations of my life during my second trip. I experienced an epiphany, if you will. I realized that the community had a completely different outlook on life, one that seems foreign and possibly laughable to anyone else. The way that Fiji operates is simple, with every citizen living their lives almost identically to their neighbors, whether they realized it or not. They put others before themselves. This is how I see it. Whoever it is, their needs, preferences, assurances or fears come before yours. When you are with someone else, they are top of mind.

Now, it may seem stupid and unrealistic, but it’s not. By putting someone before yourself, you don’t have to ignore your needs, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for them to live. It’s not, and will never be, a winlose situation. It’s a mindset. The way that they operate on the islands resonates with me, because it’s one of the most simple theories I’ve ever come across. When you help someone, they’ll turn around and help you. That’s what it comes down to. If you go out of your way to make someone comfortable, sooner than later, they’ll return the favor when you’re in need. If you put ten people before yourself, when the time comes, and you need help, there are ten people on hand who will be at your side at the drop of a hat, simply because you were there for them however long ago. It’s stupidly simple. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. In Fiji, there was no moral hierarchy. People were classified by clan and bloodline, income and gender, but inside, everyone was the same. No one was better or worse, morally or in terms of their mindset. They all had the same core value: the comfort of others. Whoever you are, foreigner, local, man, woman, child, gay, straight, whatever. If you are there, they will make you comfortable, and you will inevitably return the favor.

Now, you may not think, “because they helped me, I have to help them”. As a matter of fact, that thought won’t ever cross your mind. Something from inside will spark, and you will want to help. You’ll long for the feeling of being able to help someone, purely because you want to and you know it’s the right thing to do. With their comfort, yours will come. If you touch 100 people, just by doing small things like opening a door for them, giving up your seat, or even greeting them and acknowledging their existence, you have made 100 allies. You will have 100 people who will stand behind you and push you forward, and 100 people who will be ready to catch you if you fall, and help you back to the place you were at before you fell. Now, imagine if you did this with every person you met, every person you’ve interacted with. When the time

comes, you will have an army bigger than the Romans, stronger than the Spartans, all fighting for you. We need to remember who we really are. There is one earth but a million worlds, and no world is more important than another.

Behind race, income, orientation, gender, we are all humans. We all live together, and we’re all going to end up six feet under sooner or later. There’s not a single reason as to why you wouldn’t help someone. Social norms be damned. I can assure you, with 100% confidence, that helping that man on the street carry his bag is a million times more important than making your subway ride. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that stepping in front of a child harassing another kid is a billion times more noble and touching than donating a fat check to a charity. The Fiji Complex takes everyone’s fears and social biases, innate or taught discriminations, and throws them out the window. Nothing is more important than a human life, and the value of the person, no matter who they are. A “lowly” beggar is worth just as much as a king adorned in jewels. Both have a heartbeat, a brain, and a conscious. Those are all the similarities you need to treat someone well and with respect.

Once people realize this, everything will be fine. Once people decide that your neighbor is more important than yourself, even just for a second, the world will be one step closer to living in peace, without fear of obliterating the human race. Police will be heroes again, black people will just be people, wars will be a thing of the past. Now, I can’t say how long this will take. Thousands of years. Maybe millions. We may even kill ourselves with pollution before this idea fully circulates the globe, but as long as people begin to realize what they’re doing, progress will be made. As long as two people have their eyes opened to reality, and what we can do as a human race to turn it around, I will feel satisfied. As long as one kid becomes aware of himself and those around him, I’ve done my job. But, until then, we won’t stop fighting. Queen Malkah, myself, and any other person who sees how pure this world can become will continue to preach and spread our message until the day we die. I hope that this idea of a united world isn’t just a dream.

For the last time, Sincerely,

Perry Mayo

#2016 #march 2016 #assignment #english 2