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The Denver Post’s Kim Mitchell did a brief but interesting story on a march by 800 people at the Democratic National Convention last week, one that got very little other media attention. These marchers were raising very important questions about the U.S. treatment of immigrants and the failure of the Obama campaign to raise the issue from an aggressively humanitarian and human rights perspective. Mitchell reports that their press statement said (h/t: Commondreams)

“This is Germany in the 1930s all over again! . . . The past seven years of the Bush regime have seen a dramatic escalation of attacks on immigrants on many fronts.”

Yet the marchers were also critical of the Barack Obama campaign:

“Obama has made no call to reverse this whole ugly program,” the statement says. “Stop the attacks on Immigrants! Stop the ICE raids! Stop the Criminal Bush Program!”

Interviews with protesters were revealing:

“We want to build bridges and not walls between our countries,” march organizer Rudy Gonzales said. “We want pathways to citizenship. We want to decriminalize immigration.” . . . Felipe Perez . . . said he is a first-generation citizen who lays tile for work, and that several members of his family were deported, including his aunt who was pregnant…. “We didn’t know what happened to her. Something has to be done to open our borders. I still have family members who come here to make a better life,” he said.

People came from around the country to protest U.S. immigration policies:

The Rev. Ron Stief, of Washington, D.C., helped organize . . . . “There is no issue more important than how we care for immigrants,” he said. “The way that families cannot be united is a problem as well as the way people have been criminalized and end up in jail.”

Even our more liberal political candidates do not seem to be able to do an honest assessment of immigration, for fear of losing voters. The humanitarian crisis here is huge and well-documented, yet nativism seems to still be lurking over every US politician’s shoulder. Does one still have to be nativistic to win state-wide or national political office these days, as has been the case for more than a century in this country?

Well, it appears that most any U.S. problem is worse than racism. (H/T: ColorLines) I have heard many discussions of whether sexism or classism is worse that racism, but this seems to set a new low standard for inanity in such comparisons. At the Denver Post, Kirk Mitchell reports this story, “Abortion foes using racism to make point at DNC,” which is about planned protests at the Denver Democratic party convention next week:

Operation Rescue leaders vowed today to pass out hundreds of thousands of racist pamphlets and to stage sit-ins. . . . Handing out the pamphlets is the group’s way of spotlighting a greater evil than racism, [Randall] Terry said. “The flier is meant of offend. Do you think racism is abhorrent?” Terry asked at a news conference. . . . He said child killing is much worse. Anyone who votes for Sen. Barack Obama supports the killing of babies…. “Which is a worse crime: slavery or murder? The correct answer: murder. A slave can get free, but a murder victim cannot get ‘undead.’ “

What do you make of this kind of political and moral logic? Please add your comments below to this open thread.

At the “black and progressives website for Obama,” Amiri Baraka provides a good critique both of the whitewashed New York Times cover story, “Is Obama The End of Black Politics?” and also of the “people with the signs in St. Petersburg” who said to Obama “You’re undermining the (Black) Revolution.”

In his analysis Baraka points out that

Black politics will only disappear when the Black majority disappears. And even the wish fulfillment of New York Times “liberals” can never achieve this, nor the creepy self hatred of those incognegroes the Times wants to anoint as post black negroes. Still the question of Obama’s candidacy is a quite different consideration. As I have said , in print and in the flesh at many forums, no matter what is said by whoever thinks to deny this, or even what Obama says himself, the foundation of Obama’s successful candidacy is the 90% support by the Afro-American people. A fact that I’m sure he understands. Obama also understands that it is the rest of the American people he must reach out to, no matter how attempts he makes to do this are questioned, even by Black people.

This is a point the mainstream media constantly miss. If it were not for the long African American struggle for liberation from racism, indeed every phase of that nearly four centuries struggle, this country would not be nearly the democracy that it so far is. African Americans are the major carries of the deep liberty and justice frame and tradition, which has been mostly rhetoric for the white majority historically. He then critiques the “militants” who recently protested Obama. Black or white, he says, the do not

understand that the logic and strength of Obama’s candidacy is the 21st century manifestation of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements, impossible without it. Jesse Jackson’s two impressive candidacy’s were also part of that motion, not to accept both these phenomena as positive aspects and results of our collective struggle is to lack “True Self Consciousness”.

Then he asks the million dollar question about what the next major step in this long history of progressive struggle should be and lists an excellent set of planks for a “more progressive Obama campaign.” And at the same website, Maulana Karenga adds some important points about the white racism in the New York Times shoddy analysis:

But in spite of the catchy title and the lineup of rising Black political stars, the end point is always the same—definition of a deficient, divided and self-destructive community. It is an old racialist ploy of singling out and praising the few in order to better condemn the many. And the praise is never for self-determination, but rather for self-denial and self-concealment of one’s Blackness.

He adds this sharp piece about the Times arguing that the Obama campaign means we are in a post racial era where the older black politicians are increasingly irrelevant:

This racialized and irrational “reasoning” is directed towards several ends. First, it is to indict and dismiss the older generation of leaders and at the same time the legitimacy and relevance of their social justice claims, their rootedness in community, and their recognition of the centrality of multiform struggle around issues of wealth, power and status. In this regard, they are criticized both for their being /too race conscious for their people /and /not race conscious enough for a selected person/. Needless to say, no such discussion is carried on about being post-White, post-Jewish, post-Gentile or even about other ethnics of color.

Secondly, the article seeks to redefine normal generational differences into divisive ones, to provide a language of antagonism and rupture instead of one of necessary continuity and regular generational change as in every group.

In other words, the Obama campaign, win or lose, stands, not against those who led and engaged in previous black political and civil rights efforts, but on their shoulders. Obama stands on the shoulders of the many black men and women (and some white allies) who sacrificed to get all of us this far toward democracy. This is still the early stages of racial politics, indeed. No “post racial era” is anywhere in sight.

I’m traveling all day today (from Berkeley back to NYC), so won’t be able to attend this, but if you’re in the NYC-area and want to do something about the racism in the media, specifically Fox News, here’s your chance. Today, hip hop star Nas will join members of ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org to deliver 620,127 petition signatures demanding that FOX end its pattern of racist attacks against Black Americans including presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. The group will make the delivery at 2:00pm on Wednesday, July 23rd at FOX in Manhattan. More about this event here.

The Raleigh News and Observer has an interesting story about L. F. Eason III, a white North Carolina state manager with a distinguished record of state employment, who was forced to retire (in reality, fired) because he would not allow the employees at his laboratory to lower the flag to honor one of the most infamous of the white-racist advocates ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, the unrepentant anti-civil-rights advocate, Senator Jesse Helms:

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley. When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours’ delay, one of Eason’s employees hung the flags at half-staff.

His reasons have been made clear in interviews and emails:

“Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week,” Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request. He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his “doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice” and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

This act of courage against the country’s and the state’s long history racial oppression was regarded as ordinary “failure to obey orders,” that is, insubordination:

In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately. Though he’s only 51, Eason chose to retire, although he pleaded several times to be allowed to stay at the lab.

The white guys who run the North Carolina state bureaucracy just could not understand his principled stand against the extremism and negativity that Senator Helms has long been the poster boy for. These North Carolina bureaucrats seem to be taking the same position that Adolf Eichmann took in his trial for his role in the Nazi Holocaust—that a lower ranking bureaucrat should just “obey orders” and do his/her job no matter how irrational and anti-human those orders may be.

Helms has been widely celebrated around here in North Carolina, absurdly so in my judgment. Few here seem willing to do an open and sustained critique of Helms’s very negative legacy on racial and other oppressions. Clearly, a long and outrageous record of anti-gay, anti-civil-rights statements and actions trumps a principled stand again racism and homophobia in this alleged “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Native American issues and actions get very little attention from the white-run media these days, but the Associated Press finally paid some attention to the 100-person “Longest Walk 2,” which has trekked (photo: AP photo)

from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to draw attention to the effects of environmental devastation on American Indians and all people. The walk … is expected to end July 11, when organizers plan to present a 30-page manifesto of American-Indian environmental concerns to Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat who advocates on a wide range of minority issues, on the U.S. Capitol steps…. national organizer Dennis Banks … founded the first walk in 1978.

The accent is on the environmental impact of Americans’ waste and trash, but numerous other important Native American issues are also being accented by the march:

Along the way, Banks said they’ve picked up 3,800 bags of trash. They’ve also gathered a running list of American-Indian worries — everything from concern about burial grounds under threat in Kentucky to fears about the future of Arizona mountains threatened by ski resort development.

There is a great interest in the presidential campaign too, because of the first not-white candidate:

Their concerns gained renewed attention in May as Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama visited Montana’s Crow Indian reservation and was adopted into the nation during a private ceremony.

Why is there so little attention to Native American issues these days? Yet another sign of a white-controlled mass media? And in this case the media reporters and editors did not know enough about US and Native American history to inquire about the name, “Longest Walk,” of this march.

Consider the history of the destruction of Native American societies, which accelerated in the late 19th century. In the Southwest, Indian resistance was substantial. Military expeditions against Navaho and Apache communities in the Southwest attempted to destroy or hem them in. Establishing headquarters in Navaho territory, Col. Kit Carson began a scorched-earth program, destroying Navaho fields and herds. He herded his captives three hundred miles to a reservation—the infamous “Long Walk” that is central to the Navaho collective memory of oppression. By 1890 most of the remnants of Native American groups had been forced onto reservations. Most attempted to maintain historic cultures, including language and religion, and drew on their cultures to resist pressures of acculturation to white folkways, as they still do today.

The AP is reporting that hundreds were arrested today at One Police Plaza. I was there, didn’t get arrested, but interviewed some people there about why they were at the protest, why they were getting arrested, and their experiences with racism in New York City. Here’s the (rough cut) of the video (about 5 minutes):

A series of acts of civil disobedience in response to the verdict in the Sean Bell case are planned throughout New York City today.  While there have been protests all along in this case (like the one in December, pictured here, from Joe Holmes via Flickr), the protests today are unusual because they are happening simultaneously at six locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.   Described as a “pray-in,” protesters will kneel in pray in the streets to stop traffic during the evening rush hour traffic, and many plan to be arrested.   Rev. Al Sharpton and members of his organization, the National Action Network, are leading the protests aimed at demanding federal authorities bring civil rights charges against the officers in the Sean Bell case. The three officers were acquitted of all charges last month. NYPD and local news channels are expecting large crowds, and I will be there among all the others who are outraged at the taken-for-granted violence against black and brown people in this city.    And, Carol Taylor, said she will be there.  She’s quoted by a local news source saying:

“I was America’s first black flight attendant. I’m 76 and a half years old and I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Similar protests are  planned around the U.S., such as this one in Atlanta.  If you’re in the New York area, it’s time to get out, show up and demand a stop to police brutality.  If you’re outside New York, find a protest near you and join in.  Or, organize your own.

We should attend well to the sermons and speeches of one of our great anti-racist leaders, who was assassinated four decades ago this week. Indeed, just one year to the day before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” which established him as a leading advocate of ending the Vietnam war and the unnecessary bloodshed there. His strong critique of U.S. imperialism and governmental failure to improve the lives of people around the globe also made him the target of much criticism, hate, and threat, much like Dr. Jeremiah Wright and his strong condemnation of U.S. government failures more recently.


The speech was given to a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at the famous Riverside Church in New York City. Toward the end of the speech, King asserted that:

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. . . . Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

He is still on target today. We need again, as a nation, to declare eternal hostility toward and take concerted action against poverty, racism, and militarism. Later Dr. King dramatically accents the importance of an activist brotherly love:

When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. . . . We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. . . . We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world.

It is time for us to heed well such prophetic voices against racism and war, once again. Human beings have created the problems of racism and war, and we human beings can thus fix such problems if we commit ourselves to that.


Please add your own remembrances of and feelings about Dr. King and his speeches in the comments. He is much missed.

Sadly, this Friday marks the 40th anniversary of a world-changing day—the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It is hard to believe that it has been four decades now! I can still remember the day well, and exactly where I was, and how I learned. One of my African American undergraduates at the University of California called to tell me on the phone. I can still feel my and his pain as we talked, and the sense of national despair that soon developed in many areas, like it was just yesterday.


The day before he was killed, Dr. King gave one of the great speeches ever given by an American, one called “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” It was given on April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple (Church of God) in Memphis, Tennessee. Early in this amazing speech on behalf of striking garbage workers, Dr. King speaks in terms that are still quite relevant today:

The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. . . . But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. . . . The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”

The nation is still very sick with racial oppression. There is still trouble and confusion, yet people are hopeful and rising up across the globe to improve their conditions, seeking still to be free of racism, gender oppression, and class oppression.


Soon in his speech, Dr. King adds historical and philosophical reflections for which, even as a young man, he was deservedly famous:

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. . . . Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.

He was alluding to the Vietnam war, as well as struggles against racial and class oppression. He had become very critical of what imperialistic war, and had lost supporters, especially in the white elites. Indeed, he may have been assassinated because of these views as much as for his black liberation views. His views speak very much to our time, for once again we have a president, with a war-mongering entourage, who decided to solve (what now we know were fictional) problems overseas by means of violence. Yet, violence usually does not work, as Dr. King constantly reminds us. It rebounds and tends to trigger yet more violence.

Dr. King continues by speaking of the world’s human rights revolution, the revolution for better living conditions for the world’s oppressed:

If something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis. . . . The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.

He then proceeds to note that there will be yet more Memphis marches to show the world that 1,300 of “God’s children” are suffering and hungry. King had come to see that fighting racism meant fighting its impact and consequences in many areas, such as in the low wages for US occupations in which workers of color, such as African Americans, are concentrated, like the 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers.


After telling the story of the Good Samaritan, King concludes with these rather chilling and far-seeing words, which seem to indicate he felt death in the air:

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. . . . Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!