Tag Archives: MLK Jr.

national news

Petulant POTUS-elect fires back at iconic lawmaker

I’ve already declared that I believe U.S. Rep. John Lewis’s declaration that Donald Trump is “not a legitimate president” went too far, that Trump is — in my view — legitimate.

So … what does Trump do? He responds to Lewis — perhaps the mostĀ legendary member of Congress — with a couple of tweets.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to……mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk ā€” no action or results. Sad!” Trump wrote in two tweets Saturday morning.

I want to repeat the ending: “All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad!”

Good ever-lovin’ grief, man!

Given that the president-elect seems to know nothing about our history and the role that many brave men and women played in shaping it, I feel compelled to remind everyone that of all of Trump’s critics, John Lewis has more than earned his right to speak out.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-john-lewis-233630

He stood with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He marched with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. He faced down racists, was beaten to within an inch of his life — on more than one occasion — while speaking out for the cause of equality for all Americans. He participated in boycotts, protests, marches, demonstrations.

For the president-elect — a man with zero public service experience — to denigrate a critic as renowned and beloved as Rep.Ā Lewis is to yet again demonstrate his utter and absolute ignorance of an iconic figure’s stature.

national news, political news

Getting ready for a pile of negativity

Clinton-and-Trump

I am steeling myself for what I know is coming.

The election of the next president of the United States is going to be an ugly, nasty affair.

It’s a function, I suppose, of anger among the electorate. I am having difficulty processing the reasons why folks are so angry.

My larger sense, though, is that the negativity will be fueled by quality of the two major-party nominees.

Republican Donald J. Trump will be nominated first. This coming week in Cleveland, delegates will gather to send this fellow off to do battle with the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will receive the Democrats’ nomination.

Both of these individuals will pack a large load of negative baggage onto the campaign trail. Trump’s unfavorable rating is the 70 percent range; Clinton’s is in the high 50s, low 60s.

So, with little to commend these folks’ positive attributes, they and their campaigns are likely to resort to extreme negativity to tell us all why the other candidate is so repugnant.

I came of age in the late 1960s. I remember a time when the nation was torn to shreds by political unrest. The Vietnam War was going badly. My first political hero, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down while he campaigned for the presidency … two months after an assassin killed Martin Luther King Jr. The year was 1968 and it will go down as the most tumultuous year of the final half of the 20th century.

RFK used to consider politics to be a “noble profession” and I bought into it. My belief in its nobility, though, has taken plenty of hits over the years. Money has corrupted the system. We keep seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices every four years.

And that brings us to this campaign.

Are the major-party candidates driven by their grand vision? Will they offer us chapter-and-verse dissertations on why they represent the very best of Americans?

I am not holding my breath.

If my fears prove to be true — that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will drive voters to stay home rather than having their voices heard at the ballot box — then we can lay a good chunk of the blame at the negativity we will have heard.

Let’s all get ready for what we know is coming.

national news, political news

Not exactly a repeat of ’68 in this campaign

RFK

Those talking heads are comparing the anger we’re hearing at Donald J. Trump’s campaign rallies to what we heard 48 years ago when that year’s presidential campaign turned really ugly at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

I beg to differ.

Yes, the convention turned into a bloodbath. Anti-Vietnam War protesters stormed the streets outside the convention hall and battled with police. Reporters and delegates were beaten up on the convention floor.

But prior that tragic event, we heard at least one candidate seek to speak to our better angels, to try to quell the anger.

Robert Francis Kennedy was that man. He had entered the Democratic campaign relatively late. He launched a frenetic, mad dash for his party’s nomination. President Johnson bowed out. Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s young legions were rising up against the “establishment.” Vice President Hubert Humphrey was in the race, too.

Then, as columnist Mike Barnicle notes, tragedy struck in Memphis, Tenn. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death.

Sen. Kennedy got word of it. He climbed aboard a truck bed in Indianapolis and told the largely African-American crowd what had just happened. They gasped.

He went on.

ā€œWhat we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

ā€œSo I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, thatā€™s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us loveā€”a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.ā€

Many cities erupted in violence that night. Indianapolis did not.

I watched that campaign unfold in the spring and early summer of 1968 beforeĀ I wasĀ inducted into the Army,Ā at which timeĀ my own life changed forever.

Not one time did I hear a candidate in either party exhort his supporters to punch protesters in the face. Nor did I hear any candidate offer to pay an assailant’s legal fees after being arrested for sucker-punching a demonstrator.

Sure, we were an angry nation back in 1968. We had reason to be worried. A bloody war in Asia was going badly and many Americans wanted an end to that conflict.

It came to a head at the Chicago convention that year.

One reason for the violence was that the man who sought to tell us the truth about our anger and sought to offer solutions to ending it himself was gunned down in that Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

Robert Kennedy’s death cameĀ nearly two months to the day after the night he stood on that truck bed and offered words of consolation and healing.

 

national news

Rosa Parks: an American icon

rosa-parks-84620846-E

Sixty years ago today, a 42-year-old woman became an American hero, an icon.

She might not have known at the moment of her heroic act that’s how she’d be remembered, but that’s what happened.

Rosa Parks was riding on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala. The bus was crowded and Parks was sitting while some passengers were standing. One of them told the bus driver to order Parks to stand up, to give her eat to him. She refused.

Parks was African-American; the passenger who demanded her seat was a white male. One did do such things in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.

Parks was arrested, booked into jail.

At that moment a middle-age woman took her place among the legions of Americans who fought for equal rights for all citizens.

She would lead a bus boycott of the Montgomery transit system. Parks would become the face of bravery in the fight against racial discrimination.

She had grown tired, she said, of “giving in.”

On that day in a capital city of one Dixie’s states, she didn’t give in. Six decades later,Ā the nation still salutes her bravery.

Rosa Parks wasn’t a gifted orator. One didn’t hear her make compelling speeches before monstrous crowds, a la Martin Luther King Jr. No, all she had to do was simply be there.

Parks made an appearance in Amarillo; I believe it was the late 1990s. My wife and I felt compelled toĀ see and hear her. The meeting room at the Civic Center was packed.

Rosa Parks was introduced. She strode to the microphone. ParksĀ saidĀ some truly forgettable things and then sat down. It didn’t matter one single bit that Parks didn’t stir our souls. Just seeing her — being in the same room with her — was enough for any of us present that day.

Parks died in 2005. Her courage will live forever.

 

national news

‘Southern heritage’ surfaces yet again

Can there be a more profound demonstration of what the Confederate battle flag means to most Americans than what transpired recently at a famous Atlanta, Ga., church?

Surveillance video captured images of a couple of men placing the flag around Ebeneezer Baptist Church, where the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — one of the 20th century’s greatest Americans — used to preach.

Hmm. Very interesting, don’t you agree?

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/four-confederate-flags-left-at-king-center-ebeneze/nm889/

Why do you suppose the individuals seen on the video were doing that? Was it because they wanted to demonstrate their “pride” in their “Southern heritage”?

Or, perhaps they wanted to send some other kind of message to the congregants at the church, the vast majority of whom are African-American.

Here, folks, is why the Confederate battle flag has become such a symbol of hate.

It’s been in the news lately. Nine African-Americans were murdered by a white gunman as they studied the Bible together in Charleston, S.C. A young suspect arrested and charged with the crime is known to have hatred toward African-Americans and he, too, has been photographed displaying with great pride the Confederate battle flag.

The South Carolina legislature voted to take the battle flag down from the statehouse grounds where it had flown since the 1960s to protest landmark civil rights legislation enacted by Congress.

Now this, at Ebeneezer Baptist Church.

“To place Confederate flags on the campus of Ebenezer Baptist Church – after this horrific act in Charleston [and] in the wake of all thatā€™s happening in our country – whatever the message was it clearly was not about heritage,ā€ the Rev. Raphael Warnock said. ā€œIt was about hate.ā€

Do you think?

national news

Take a bow, Toya Graham

One of the many curious aspects of social media is that it produces stars literally in an instant.

Someone snaps a picture or shoots a video on a cell phone, posts it on Twitter or Facebook, and the subject of the image becomes a star.

The latest national social media star is a young mother of a teenager who she spotted doing something quite wrong.

Toya Graham saw her son throwing objects at Baltimore police officers and then proceeded to smack her son upside his head. Repeatedly. She chased him, scolding him with some pretty rough language.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mom-talks-about-smacking-son-around-during-baltimore-riot/ar-BBiNB11

She’s received lots of praise on social media from those who believe she should speak for a lot of angry parents.

I happen to be one of her admirers.

Toya Graham called herself a “no-tolerant mother.” She added, “Everybody that knows me knows I don’t play that.” She’s a single mother of six. She was captured on video reacting the way — I believe — most self-respecting parents would react if they saw their child committing a destructive act.

Graham’s son was taking part in a disturbance that erupted in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, a young African-American man who died in police custody of a severed spine. The cops have yet to explain how that happened. They’d better step up — and soon — to account for this terrible incident.

None of that, though, justifies the mayhem that exploded in Baltimore. I am struck by what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. might say to all of this. He would be horrified. As someone noted, also on social media, Dr. King “changed the world without ever lighting a fire.”

Today, though, a single mom stands tall as a symbol for parents who need to get angry — as she did — when she witnessed one of her children doing something shameful.

 

Uncategorized

MLK gets Gold Medal … finally

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, no doubt would be honored to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, which was given to them today in ceremonies on Capitol Hill.

Are there more deserving people than the Kings? I think not.

MLK receives Congressional Gold Medal

Why, though, did it take 46 years after Dr. King’s assassination to award him this medal?

Some things escape my sometimes-feeble ability to understand certain processes. It took a decade to honor Rev. and Mrs. King. Congressional leaders from both parties hailed them as the “first family of the civil rights movement.”

It astounds me nonetheless that an honor — the highest civilian award given by Congress — would take this long, more than four decades after that rifle shot in Memphis, Tenn., ended Martin Luther King Jr.’s life.

Mrs. King would live until 2006. She carried on much of her husband’s work, speaking out on racial injustice and seeking equality for all Americans.

I’m not going to keep carping about the delay. I’ll just add that MLK and Coretta Scott King were two of this country’s greatest citizens. Their work stands for all time and it speaks for itself.