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Which Voters Had the Most Impact?: The Election of President Obama
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I ran across an interesting, if now old, account on MSNBC about the 2008 exit polling that makes a point I have not seen elsewhere. Since the 2008 election numerous analytical (media and otherwise) accounts have argued that Barack Obama won mainly or only because of younger voters, or because of new Latino voters, or because of certain other “XYZ” voters.
However, Ana-Maria Arumi, head of polling analysis for NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo did some study of the 2008 election exit-poll data:
On a state-by-state level, when she re-ran the numbers as if there were no voters under 30, the only states that would switch to Republican presidential candidate John McCain are Indiana and North Carolina.
Thus, Obama would still have won the 270+ electoral votes necessary without these young voters and these two states. She also analyzed the Latino voters’ impact:
In a counter-factual world in which there were no Latino voters, both New Mexico and Indiana would have switched into the McCain column.
Again, he would have had enough electoral votes to win if there had been no Latino voters. Then she calculated the biggest factor of all:
… in the make-believe world where no African-Americans voted, while Obama still would have won most of the states that he won, McCain would have been able to take the hotly contested states of Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Without these African American voters, and their presence in key states with 107 electoral votes, Obama would have lost the election to John McCain.
I may have missed it, but I do not remember anyone inside or outside the Democratic Party assertively giving the most central credit to African American voters for President Obama’s election. Or any discussion of this critical reality today in regard to the election of Democratic Party members of Congress in 2010 or 2012, or the reelection of President Obama in 2012.
Indeed, without African American voters no Democratic Party candidate would have won the presidency (Carter, Clinton, Obama) since the passage of the critical Voting Rights Act in 1965.
This, of course, does not mean that these other voters were not important in the election coalition that brought Carter, Clinton, or Obama to office.
It does mean that African American voters, and activists, often need to be credited with great expansions of American freedoms, past and present.
Indeed, African Americans and their activism, votes, and/or issues and goals relating to them, have been central—if sometimes invisible–in most U.S. elections since they got the vote in the 15th Amendment. This amendment was brought to the United States, ironically enough, by “Radical Republicans” in 1870. For a brief time, less than a decade, those white Radical Republicans fought to expand the rights and freedoms of African Americans. They soon lost out to a resurgent white Democratic party, substantially in the South, and to fearful, more conservative white Republicans in the North and the South. One has to wonder what the United States would be like today if this freedom-expansion agenda had been allowed to continue in the 1870s-1880s period.
Faking Democracy: More Evidence of Racist Barriers in US Voting
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Cord Jefferson at TheRoot has a good piece on the 1965 Voting Rights Act now 45 years later. There are still many barriers to black voting, both as a result of disenfranchisement because of (often nonviolent) crimes and very direct discriminatory blocking of voters of color:
Currently, 10 states — including Florida, Virginia, Arizona and Kentucky — permanently disenfranchise at least some convicted felons, and 20 more require criminals to complete prison, parole and probation before being allowed to vote again. … An estimated 5.3 million Americans, 4 million of whom are out of prison, are denied the right to vote based on their felony convictions. About a third of them are black, including 13 percent of all African-American men.
Much of this disenfranchisement, as Michelle Alexander has shown in her fine book, The New Jim Crow, comes from being imprisoned for drug crimes that whites, who do much of the drug crime, rarely get imprisoned for.
There is also the issue the substantial discrimination against black voters and other voters of color that still is carried out by white conservative forces, including Republican operatives. As I pointed out recently in Racist America (second edition, 2010):
Researchers have identified an array of blocking strategies used by white officials to reduce black representation: gerrymandering political districts, changing elective offices into appointive offices, adding new qualifications for office, purging voter-registration rolls, suddenly changing the location of polling places, creating difficult registration procedures, and using numerous other strategies to dilute the black vote. One dilution strategy consists of intentionally setting up or continuing at-large electoral systems, instead of utilizing elections by smaller districts. The purpose is to enable white voters, who dominate the larger political unit, to determine who will be the political representatives in that unit. Research data on local and state elections indicate that, taken together, these strategies have significantly reduced black political power in many areas.
Jefferson also notes that legislators have been slow to do anything about these mostly white-generated anti-voter felonies:
For five years now, lawmakers have attempted to push through the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, to no avail. That means it’s still not a federal crime to knowingly lie to voters in order to keep them from the polls, even during a federal election. Maryland Senator Ben Cardin spoke to the Deceptive Practices Act’s importance in 2007, citing a false flyer that had been handed out in black communities in Milwaukee during the 2004 presidential election.
The flyer made phony, sometimes wild claims–such as that a traffic ticket disqualified you from voting. Still no protective law has been passed. Could it be that the U.S. is still far from being a real democracy?
Using “Nazi” and “Neo-Nazi” for Anti-Immigrant Policing & Protests?
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The website, Project Economic Refugee, a project of the Progressive American Latino Community, has a spot-on article discussing the use of the “Nazi” and “neo-Nazi” terms for the private and government police-state-type actions taken against Latino immigrants and other Latinos, not only in Arizona (as Maria recently discussed), but in numerous other states, indeed now for more than a decade. The article begins:
It’s time to stop apologizing for calling out racism and for categorizing Arizona’s immigration law as what it truly is about. Now that Judge Susan Bolton (a conservative judge…) has struck down major portions of Arizona’s authoritarian police law…. Governor Brewer and her camp are looking more and more like nothing else but right-wing authoritarians that have embraced ideals that are in direct opposition to American values. … right-wing Arizonan politicians are forcing honest well-intentioned police officers to act as some sort of gestapo agents.
Recognizing that lots of mainstream folks, especially in the media, object to such “Nazi” and “Gestapo” comparisons, they lay out their reasons:
When you hear about how actual neo-Nazis are literally out hunting down immigrants, it’s hard not to call it “Nazi.” When you hear about how white supremacist nationalists are behind the legal defense fund in support of SB 1070, it’s hard not to call it “Nazi.” When you see cases where racial profiling has led to such barbaric acts such as the time when a pregnant woman was forced to give birth cuffed by the wrists and ankles, it’s hard not to use the word “Nazi” … when you find out that SB 1070 was written by and introduced to the Arizona legislature by people that are proud to identify themselves as “Nazis”, [see here it’s hard not to use the word “Nazi”.
The website piece has links to evidence for these assertions. They continue:
Congresswoman Linda Sanchez pointed out something that is very much the case: how some of the people behind the Arizona law actually ARE white supremacists. …. What most people are doing, is comparing Arizona’s law to the threat of racist authoritarian supremacist acts.
After discussing how some Jewish American leaders have protested the use of Holocaust or Nazi comparisons as exaggerations for what is going on with anti-Mexican immigration efforts, the author adds this:
The Anti-Defamation League itself has also come out in staunch opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, going as far as filing an actual legal challenge to it. . . . the law was written and introduced by people that are proud to consider themselves supporters of actual neo-Nazis. …. All in all, I’m reminded of the words of Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel: “No Human Being is illegal.”
Glenn Beck Attempts to Co-Opt Dr. King’s Civil Rights Legacy
Posted by: | CommentsOn his June 18 radio talk show, Glenn Beck discussed his upcoming “Restoring Honor” rally, which is scheduled to take place this coming August 28th at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. If Beck’s earlier “Rally for America” (2003), the finale of his book promotion tour through “real America” is any indication, there will be lots of flag waving, honoring the troops, and some relatively small crowds. But he has something else in mind for this rally.
(Beck at ‘Rally for America’ 2003)
As Beck noted, August 28 marks the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. What critical, progressive commentators can only recognize as an absurd, disgusting irony befitting life in the 21st century “bizarro world” of contemporary racial relations, Beck regards himself and the event as ordained by no less than God:
“what an appropriate day – at first we picked that date and we didn’t know and I thought ‘oh geez,’ but now I think it was almost Divine providence… I do.”
In his characteristically melodramatic style (and despite the fact that his initial hesitation suggests he, himself, questioned the appropriateness of doing so) Beck ran with the symbolism, sentimentally opining on June 15:
“As we create history together, your children will be able to say ‘I remember. I was there,’ as we… as we pick up Martin Luther King’s dream that has been distorted and lost. It’s time to restore it, and to finish it.”
There are perhaps no better words to capture the perfectly incongruous nature of this association than those provided by the master of satire, Stephen Colbert: “Finally, someone is bringing Martin Luther King’s movement back to its conservative white roots” (The Colbert Report, June 23).
Indeed, the idea that Glenn Beck or his scheduled guests (which include Sarah Palin and the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent) should assume the mantel of restoring King’s dream is beyond perverse. Recent articles by Dennis Henigan and Paul Helmke expose the track records of the individuals involved in planning this event, and with those, demonstrate what an offense this event is to the civil rights legacy of Dr. King. Among many gems from NRA Board Member, Ted Nugent, is his public declaration that South Africa’s apartheid wasn’t that “cut and dry,” because “all men are not created equal. The preponderance of South Africa is a different breed of man.” Is the wicked irony of the NRA’s celebrated presence at an event shrouded in the legacy of the assassinated leader, whose entire platform was built on peaceful, nonviolent protest, lost on everyone organizing this event?
Beck, for his part, has been at the conservative right forefront of what anti-racist writer/educator Tim Wise has cleverly labeled the “Cult of White Victimhood,” and their calls of “faux-pression”. In fact, Beck has not only argued that President Obama’s policy agenda is driven by “reparations” and the desire to “settle old racial scores,” (an absurd claim, the legitimacy of some form of restorative justice notwithstanding); he boldly claimed on Fox News that Obama was a “racist” with a clear “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Stepping back from the obvious problems of Beck’s rally, however, we should contextualize white conservatives’ embrace of Dr. King’s legacy and civil rights rhetoric in a larger
framework. This latest example is part and parcel of an increasingly commonplace exercise in colorblind racism. Whites frequently invoke memories of the civil rights movement and the beloved Dr. King as a maneuver of positive self-presentation, evidence of the progress we have made in society. While the intentions of such whites may be “good,” the rhetoric remains problematic nonetheless, as it is often employed to invalidate the persistence of ongoing interpersonal, institutionalized and structural racism.
More malevolent and concerning, however, is the way in which white conservatives are increasingly invoking the civil rights legacy to support the actual dismantling of civil rights victories. Tragically, the paradoxical invocation of civil rights rhetoric has become a contemporary means by which the racial status quo of white supremacy is restabilized and even strengthened against further attack. Consider the way in which “civil rights” have been rearticulated in the battle over affirmative action. In the past several years “Civil Rights Initiatives” groups have emerged in numerous states, including Michigan, Washington, California, Nebraska, Colorado and Arizona. While the name might suggest otherwise, these groups have successfully introduced “civil rights” proposals in the past 2006 and 2008 November election ballots that would ban affirmative action in government hiring and university admissions. (In at least one case, the U.S. District Court found that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative had engaged in systematic voter fraud, as individuals recruited to sign the anti-affirmative action petition were led to believe the ballot initiative was actually in support of affirmative action. This suggests just how distorted “civil rights” rhetoric has become in recent years.) Indeed, affirmative action has been rendered largely impotent in wake of these types of legal battles, including several key Supreme Court decisions.
Similar rearticulations of “civil rights” abound. Affirmative action re-coded as “reverse discrimination”; health care and economic reform reframed as “reparations,” with the implicit understanding that something is being taken from innocent whites and redistributed to undeserving blacks; fellowship and scholarship programs originally designed to increase the representation students of color in various programs literally struck down under the Civil Rights Act of 1964!
In this upside-down climate, conservatives like Beck and other “Cult of White Victimhood” members unflinchingly argue that they are the true defenders of civil rights, as they work to erode the hard fought gains of people of color and protect normative white dominance. With no-end in sight, the need for critical scholars, activists, and citizens to publicly deconstruct the political rhetoric of so-called “civil rights” in the 21st century, and reappropriate and protect the civil rights symbols of our past is nothing short of urgent.
~ Jennifer Mueller, Doctoral Candidate & Graduate Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Rethinking Racism
Posted by: | CommentsThe Andrew Breitbart and Fox News smear of former USDA Shirley Sherrod, and the NAACP and White House’s complicity in her defamation and firing, still has lots of people thinking and talking about race and racism. Unfortunately, the focus has been on individual racism. This is a proposition we’ve got to rethink.
Racism, as we’ve discussed here and elsewhere, is systemic. If you’d like to know what systemic racism at the USDA looks like, it looks like this. Black farmers have been systematically discriminated against by the USDA for decades. They were due assistance – given to white farmers, but not to black farmers – and were denied this because of their race. Black farmers went to court to get redress for this, won the case, but still cannot get the money that is owed them. There was another set back for black farmers this week, as the Senate stripped $1.2 billion for the claims from an emergency spending bill, along with $3.4 billion in long-overdue funding for a settlement with American Indians who say they were swindled out of royalties by the federal government.
Rather than focus on this systemic nature of racism, the Breitbart smear and the fall out afterward have people focused on the endless and pointless question about who is/is not a racist. This is a distraction from the larger and more intractable forms of racism that really plague the U.S. Rinku Sen has a brilliant post at TruthOut which makes this case. She writes:
What the right wants us to forget is that race relations are rooted in systems, and that not all racism is individual, intentional and overt. Individual bias plays a role, to be sure, but it’s the institutional rules, written and unwritten, that enable such racism, not the other way around. You can’t “heal” a system; you have to rebuild it.
This is where the left often loses its way on race. I was surprised, for instance, to read the following in Joan Walsh’s Salon.com column on Wednesday: “People are spending a lot of energy to get folks like the Spooners and Sherrod to think they should be enemies, when the real issue is class.” Walsh, who has a solid history of responsible reporting on race issues, goes on to say that’s what the left should remember from this debacle, because the right wants us to forget it.
I take the opposite lesson: The intersection of race and class is a complicated thing, deserving of more attention, not less. Treating class as the “real issue” means treating race only as a function of it, which amounts to colorblindness for leftists. It’s a highly limited answer to working-class white resentment of working-class black people. Progressives’ over-reliance on the “same boat” argument doesn’t help keep multiracial alliances together. Rather, it stumps us when we need to explain exactly how racism works, not just in the economy, but also in education, prison, health and, yes, agriculture. Liberal silence on race is what allows Breitbart to distort the definition of racism, to strip it of all discussions of power, history, policy or collective responsibility such that the notion of reverse racism has enough merit to be taken seriously in the first place.
Sen is spot on here when she notes that the progressive left’s inability to speak cogently on race is what opens up a space for right-wingers like Breitbart. She also makes an excellent point about the overlap between race and class. Perhaps this will serve as a wakeup call for those on the left to get smarter about race and racism so that they aren’t “snookered” by the likes of Breitbart again.
Children March against Anti-Immigrant Federal Action
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On July 28th, 2010 hundreds of children will march in front of the White House in Washington D.C., in Los Angeles in front of the Federal Building, and in Mexico City at the US Embassy. They march to deliver a letter to President Obama and to protest the tragic situation of children being taken from their undocumented parents following deportation.
The children who are separated from their parents often end up in the foster care system. Once in this system, it becomes almost impossible for the parents to get them back because of language difficulties, legal status, resources, and understanding how to negotiate the complex system.
In an effort to provide a better life, these parents lose the most important and precious thing in the world to them and all because they wanted to a life free from destitution and poverty. We’ve come a long way from Emma Lazarus’ “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” written in 1883.
Knowing that this is the immigration policy that the U.S. is enforcing, there are those who may not comprehend how parents could take such a high risk to lose their children by working here without the proper documentation.
Well, imagine you live in a community that has suffered tremendous financial hardships, particularly since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has obliterated the local corn market because it couldn’t compete against the government subsidized corn imports from the U.S. Your main source of income is gone. Your children wear clothes made out of old flour sacks, they don’t have shoes on their feet, they don’t go to school, and they rarely eat meat. You’ve started giving your six-year old coffee to fill him up. They cry from hunger and when they get sick there is nothing you can do. The only answer seems to be to work in the U.S. Your options are to either leave your young children behind knowing full well that by the time you return they will not even remember who you are, or you to take them with you. You don’t fully understanding that if you get deported, the cost is that you might lose them forever.
If we put ourselves in this position, not many of us could sit back and watch our children suffer hunger and destitution without doing something, anything to ease their suffering and improve their lives. This is why so many parents risk everything, leave everything, and come to work in the US.
When did separating very young children from their parents because of deportation policies become American values? Most people cannot imagine the destructive long-term consequences these policies are having on immigrant families—for years. It should take far more severe than trying to earn a living even while working without the proper documentation to justify the government separating parents from their young children. The act of dividing families, particularly families of color, reveals a dark side of America—one we have seen before with black slave children removed from parents and sold off like if they weren’t even humans and with Indian children who were removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools to teach them how to be white people. Americans justified these atrocious acts in the past and we are doing it again. Will people of color, especially the poor and the most vulnerable, ever be seen and treated as human beings in this country by most people? If they were surely these policies would not be sustainable.
Something must be done that both (1) keeps the children with their parents, and (2) ensures the children’s rights as U.S. citizens in the future should they be deported with their parents. Immigration laws must be changed in ways outlined by Michele Wucker, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City, who states, “The population of immigrants who are in this country without legal papers did not grow to more than 10 million people without America’s full participation in the legal charade.”
Until the Obama administration or the Congress have the guts to fix our immigration system, the most compassionate means of enforcement need to be found. And it cannot and should not involve the kinds of family tragedies that take children away from their parents.
Double Cross in LaCrosse: More Discrimination against the Original Americans
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The Creator’s Game, that is what lacrosse is called by the Iroquois and Huron peoples who began playing it around a thousand years ago. The game was played in lieu of war, for healing, and to train Iroquois youth in survival skills. Perhaps most importantly, it is played to honor the health and joy the Creator has made possible for the people. Today, according to Sports Illustrated it is the fastest growing sport in the United States at all levels of competition. Its current name, given to it by French explorers who watched the nations play, is lacrosse.
The world championships in the sport were held in Britain this week with 30 nations competing. The Iroquois team, though ranked 4th in the world, was not there to compete since the governments of the United States and Great Britain denied them travel visas. It seems that their identification and passports from the sovereign nation of the Iroquois Confederacy were not sufficient proof that they would not engage in terrorist activities. The U.S. Secretary of State’s office held the requests up for 12 days, relenting with less than 48 hours left to depart. A onetime waiver granted to a nation that is constitutionally recognized as sovereign? After the U.S. relented, the British denied the visas on their end. The Iroquois teams have been traveling to tournaments on sovereign Iroquois visas for more than 25 years.
In 2007 the United Nations passed the long awaited Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Britain voted for and the U.S. Secretary of State has issued a year-long series of forums to consider finally supporting. This resolution purported to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples to their existence as sovereign entities with rights to their identity as peoples. Yet in an international sporting event, the indigenous peoples who invented the game are denied the right to participate because their identity is in question. The U.S. and Britain suggested that the players simply get U.S. or Canadian passports. In order to play the game they originated, they were asked to give up their identity as Iroquois. This was a price too large for the players. It was regarded as a simple request by the State Department. Simply deny who you are and we will let you play. That has been the message from the U.S. government since its inception, to all people of color.
In a previous blog post on this site, I discussed the skepticism in Indian Country about promises from the government which never seem to yield actual results. The Secretary of State studies indigenous rights and denies passports. The Administration promises swift settlement of Cobell and it still languishes awaiting payment at a bargain rate. Leonard Peltier was denied parole last summer. The current administration has issued many press releases promising a new era in relations with Native Americans. So far, it is business as usual: make promises, get support from Native peoples, stall on delivering promises, change the rules that govern the promises and finally ignore the promises.
And, the original players of the Creator’s Game are playing it at home in Indian Country, where it has been played for a thousand years.
Political Candidates Now Running as Open White Supremacists
Posted by: | CommentsInteresting piece over at the Huffington Post about a white supremacist , Ryan J. Murdough, who is running for a seat in the New Hampshire State House on a platform of hate.
Several things come to mind. First of all, the organization “American Third Position” is but one more burgeoning white supremacist organization advocating a racialized version of grassroots populism. This group states that it is “represent[ing] the political interests of White Americans, because no one else will.” I do not need to explain how this logic is faulty, as Joe Feagin has already outlined this on this blog and in his most recent book The White Racial Frame. As Feagin states, there is already a party that represents the political interests of white people and it is called the current Republican Party.
More disturbing, however, is the twisting of civil rights language for the furtherance of white racism. For instance, Murdough’s equating of diversity initiatives as “anti-white” legislation. This is a reactionary technique that whites have long used to fight against the hard-won gains of people of color. And as Feagin also outlines in his book, the ascension of “post-racial” rhetoric only exacerbates these sentiments.
Murdough, and the A3P he represents, are similar to the Tea Party Movement and the emerging Glenn Beck-ers, all of whom seem to think the language of civil rights applies to perceived white racial disenfranchisement. The appearance of privileging people of color is enough to set the white racial frame in motion, rationalizing the undeserved privileges that white people have always enjoyed in this country and denying equal opportunities to non-white groups (who are seen as less deserving and inherently not allowed to reap the same rewards).
Finally, as mentioned in this blog many times before, this sort of white anger is particularly virulent when it comes to the Tea Party movement. This group seeks to re-establish/protect/maintain white racial hegemony in politics, ideology, and culture. That is the political subtext to the “Take back our nation” speeches and placards they carry. Even Glenn Beck, with all his “liberty and justice rhetoric” is but a white racial zealot fighting to maintain his privilege. Much like the above mentioned white supremacist, Beck plans to use the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement for his personal (and collective white racial) gain. His “Take America Tour,” which will commence with a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 2010 (the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech) is in my opinion, blasphemy to the extreme.
Unfortunately, the sentiments of Murdough, Beck, and Tea Partiers will continue so long as the white racial frame remains supplanted in the political consciousness and as long as neoliberal doctrine continues to avoid discussing the reality of racial inequality in America.
A Mexican Revolution Photo History, 100 Years Later
Posted by: | CommentsWhat do most Americans know about the Mexican Revolution? It disrupted everything in Mexico 100 years ago this November, prompting several waves of Mexican immigrants to enter the United States five generations ago.
Most of us may have heard of President Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, the soldaderas, Venustiano Carranza, Pascual Orozco, Victoriano Huerta, Álvaro Obregón, and others. In different contexts, we also know about William Randolph Hearst, President Woodrow Wilson, General John J. Pershing, George Patton. But do we know the latter were also participants in Mexico’s civil war upheaval?
Do we know who did what to whom when during an 18-year uprising by Mexicans that changed Mexico and the United States, a history that has continued to shape both nations? The Mexican Revolution is part of our unrecognized U.S. border history, and knowing the events of 100 years ago helps us to understand current immigration issues.
Here, for example, are the opening words of “Chapter 7: Rebel Armies Advance on Mexico City”:
Despite the unexpected developments that the revolution unleashed throughout Mexico, a feeling of expectancy, of widespread hopefulness prevailed. Even then, people had no idea what to expect, given the changes and uncertainties. What would happen when the revolutionary armies from the north and the south met in Mexico City?
People kept hearing they would be “liberated,” that the revolution would free them from Porfirio Diaz’s tyranny, but how that would happen remained unclear.
The Porfiriato had both shaped and created the Mexico that everybody knew for more than 30 years. After a generation and a half under Porfirio Diaz, and now in the grip of the revolution, most Mexicans were destitute. The country was in shambles, and Mexicans and the foreign investors wanted stability.
The advancing rebel generals–Villa, Obregon, and Zapata–were daily moving toward Mexico City with their armies. All three had supported Francisco Madero, but Madero was now gone. Obregon was beginning to fight for Carranza, and Zapata and Villa simultaneously inspired and scared the people because no one actually could say what they were going to do once they were in the Palacio Nacional, the National Palace.
The uncertain developments caused some Mexicans to be cautiously optimistic while others were depressed, and the rest didn’t know what or how to feel.
The great majority of the citizens were anxious and bewildered, for no one could control events that clearly were unpredictable. Even then, reports of battles, skirmishes, and disastrous encounters between the armies in different cities and regions of the country constantly surfaced. No one could say with certainty what would happen if and when soldiers from the different revolutionary factions met in the capital, Mexico City.
Would the losing soldiers be killed, imprisoned, or what? Would the victorious leaders meet and celebrate despite the unrest? What would they say? What would the people hear? What would they decide for Mexico? No one could say anything for sure. Clearly, it was not a good time to be in Mexico City or anywhere else in that vast country with so much unrest and unclear future. Most Mexicans didn’t know how other people they daily met on the streets felt about the revolution. It was awful because everything was in turmoil. No one knew what the following day would bring, or the next hour, or the next few minutes.
My 132-page photo history narrative contains 80 carefully selected photographs from the more than 483,000 pictures taken by Mexican, American, and foreign photographers who rushed to Mexico in 1910 to capture the revolution’s developments.
Note: Copies of Why Pancho Villa & Emiliano Zapata Wore Cananas: A 100th Year Photo History of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1928 are available from Marco Portales at 3800 Chaucer Court, Bryan, Texas 77802.
Would this get the NRA to Support Gun Control?
Posted by: | CommentsI’m starting a new organization, and I’m inviting all African Americans to join. It will be called the American Rifle Association. Yes, it will be an organization for all blacks who love guns and all those opposed to gun control. … My dream is to set up ARA chapters in every large and small city across the country with a significant black population. We will offer African Americans proper training in buying and using guns. …. We can add shooting activities to black family reunions, where dads and moms and kids can learn the safe way to care for and handle AR-15s, Uzis, AK-47s ….
He adds:
Once the heads of the NAACP and the National Urban League read Justice Thomas’ stirring language [in the recent Chicago gun case] tying black freedom to gun ownership, it’s likely that we can get those organizations to add some red-blooded American activities to their annual conventions, like a deer hunt or a visit to a firing range . …
I remember comedian Dick Gregory suggesting in the 1960s that the only way to get gun control in America was to start forming NRA chapters in the ghetto. …. I can’t see the NRA, GOP or the Tea Party opposing the American Rifle Association. We’ll adopt a logo with an Uzi against a red-black-and-green background and an American flag.
Was Dick Gregory right?
