EDITORIAL: SECESSION, SEDITION OR JUST PLAIN SILLINESS?

 

Why on earth would any State want to secede from The United States of America?  The mere suggestion of secession by any U.S. State or territory in a country already amped-up by the real prospect of destructive terrorists threats in the wake of 911 is no less than an overt act of sedition punishable by law!  That this administration has dealt with the mere suggestion of secession by its own citizens demonstrates the utmost temperance, a hallmark so very representative of the calm and thoughtful Barack Obama in stark contrast to the “Shoot-Em-Up Cowboy” mentality of his predecessor George W. Bush.  In the third Presidential Debate Romney exhibited latent traits of war-mongering and other barbarisms demonstrative of what would surely reveal itself as a “Strike Now Evade Or Circumvent Accountability Later” philosophy.  But the juiced-out production the republican party has attempted to brainwash The American People with since Ronald Reagan took the White House has played out, the credits have rolled by, the screen is blank, the house lights have come on and the curtain has now closed… the audience has left the theater and is now walking out into the real light of day. The only thing that stands in the way of The American people and the recapture of the American way of life are the very politicians they have elected to protect their rights, jobs and freedoms.  Heretofore these politicians have squandered precious time with inane partisan allegiances and biases that have nothing to do with the better and larger interest of Americans as a whole. 

 

If congress really had the interests of the American people at heart they would go to the capitol and refuse to leave the chambers of congress until they had worked out a bipartisan plan to return jobs, security and economic prosperity to America!  But the whole thing has become “Just A Job” to them, they wake up, piss off billions of dollars taxpayers money and time playing insider games that never result in a payout of benefits for millions of Americans who are jobless, homeless and hopeless and then go home like thousands of other commuters to do the same stupid thing over and over and over again.  Likewise, instead of posting ridiculous petitions for secession, something that just is not ever going to happen, these Americans who are so unhappy with the their country should focus on the real issues at hand; The inability of congress to set petty differences aside and galvanize itself in the true spirit of Americanism to solve the great problems facing our country as it enters the twenty-first century…  How do you explain to a father and mother who are have lost their jobs and are about to lose their house and stability that you are going to resurrect an anachronistic and obsolete technique called the filibuster to waste time in  congress instead of doing what intelligent, principled men in congress should do, discuss and negotiate in those precious hours that stand between a rapidly sinking ship and a plan of action that might save vessel and crew!

 

My first reaction to the absurdity of these secession petitions was simply to ignore them; better to focus on issues of dire urgency and immediacy than to waste valuable time and energy on spoiled, selfish individuals who would distract the American consciousness away from the real issues of the day.  Every minute wasted on this idiocy means time taken away from real issues such as providing food and shelter for the displaced.  Can you imagine what would happen if these misguided souls focused their energy on petitioning congress to develop legislature that would give incentives to companies who kept their manufacturing operations on U.S. soil?  Can you imagine what could happen if these disgruntled Americans used their energy to petition congress to develop incentives to protect U.S. property and assets from foreign investors while we rebuild our economy from the ground up?

 

I eavesdropped on someone’s commentary on the recent petitions for secession the other day as they offered a succinct solution, “Well let them secede”!  I wanted to follow-up with an admonition but following the august example of my president, Mr. Obama I restrained myself from immediate unpolished commentary deciding to put further thought into the matter before publishing my personal opinion… It is my understanding that a state may not, in fact secede and that the very act of secession inclusive of any degree of its process would be considered “Sedition” or treason, an act punishable by law!  In the mid nineteenth century The Confederate Movement was put down by the Union Army the criminal perpetrators absolved of their crimes against The United States Government in lieu of the Abolition of Slavery for all time pursuant to the 13^th Amendment and the peaceful restoration of those criminal, treasonous States to the Union.  For further commentary on The Confederate Movement go to the article “RETHINKING THE RELEVANCE AND LEGACY OF THE CONFEDERATE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA”  at this link:  http://forthebrothas.blogspot.com/2012/04/rethinking-relevance-and-legacy-of.html.   

 

One night whilst biking on the mall, this night in particular to photograph the new WWII Memorial I was stunned by a poignant caption carved deep into the stone and it read, “Freedom Is Not Free”!  That statement moved me so that it has stayed in my consciousness ever since.  The framers of The American Constitution, the Authors of The Declaration of Independence, The Gettysburg Address, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Civil Rights Act shared the common vision that Americans should act as a unified front not as a broken, disheveled, undignified confusion of rabble!  Americans do not betray their country, they do not threaten it with secession when they feel they have not got their way, we are not children quitting the game when because we feel insecure or simply because we have lost a round.  We are Americans, strong and resilient and possessed with a tenacious sense of fraternity we have the unique ability to love those with whom we differ philosophically because we understand the holistic equation, we see the bigger picture, we are the bigger person!

 

FIN

Written By David Vollin

 

 

References: Click on the link below to view the referenced dument in its entirety.

1.        The Civil Rights Act:  http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/ 

2.       The Emancipation Proclamation:  http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/ 

3.       The Gettysburg Address:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address 

4.       The U.S. Constitution:  http://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm 

5.       The Declaration of Independence:  http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html 

“LINCOLN” A CIVIL WAR RETROSPECTIVE TAKES A CANDID LOOK AT THE POLITICKING OF THE 13TH AMENDMENT INTO LAW…

If there is one clear message conveyed in Spielberg’s newest documentary/drama about a short segment in the life of President Lincoln it would be that slavery was the fundamental cause of the American Civil War.    Central to Spielberg’s development of that theme which fundamentally rocked the mid nineteenth-century American States to their very foundations on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line was the concept of divine right.  But the intellectual argument against divine right shall have to be left to other venues in order to be developed in its entirety.  This movie opened up so many doors to contemplation that Spielberg surely must follow-up in order to tell those unique stories as well.  Lincoln is the story of how one of Americas most renowned and controversial presidents took an aggressive lead in the little known saga of the politicking of the 13^th Amendment into law.  This is the story of how a few powerful and principled white men ended over 200 years of enslavement of Africans and black men in North America, effectively completing what the founders had failed to accomplish 100 years earlier at the birth of America. 

Spielberg laid no tinsel or guild upon the artifice employed to procure the narrowly ratified 13^th Amendment or upon a war weary congress struggling to make manifest the egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment; freedom and equality for all men.  He revealed the grit and grime, the bribes and back room deals, and the trickery so common now in our twenty-first century congress/lobbyist relations; this was its origin.  What is most notable is that he did not shrink from including racially biased content delivered by characters who did not embrace emancipation in order to achieve a higher degree of verisimilitude.  Nothing was edited, no euphemisms were afforded and characters spoke as clearly as they would have done, unfiltered to deliver the mindset of the times.  Notwithstanding, the nobility of the ratification of the 13^th Amendment was not diminished; Spielberg demonstrated that however grudging, Congress understood its duty to fulfill the egalitarian prophecy framed in The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution over 100 years earlier by the founding fathers but he accurately demonstrated how hard-fought that battle was. 

The movie spans only a few months between the ending of Lincolns first term and his untimely assassination at the outset of the second.  It reveals a Lincoln who had clear and carefully thought out plan to end slavery and how he bided his time in order to change the course of history.  The story of Lincoln’s turbulent home life is a mere but humanizing background to the dizzying politics of what would then have been a bustling and war-torn Washington, D.C. 

The movie opens as Lincoln speaks with former slaves now enlisted as Union Officers in a segregated regiment.  Lincoln congratulates them for their legendary valour in battle setting the tone for their presence throughout the movie as a sign of socioeconomic change.  That they were so present at the meeting of the Southern Delegation yet absent at Appomattox was also a cleverly embedded note.  Spielberg chose a radical departure from what one might have expected of Appomattox, a gentlemanly gesture of departure at the terminus of surrender… As such it is easy to visualize Appomattox as such, a mere formality at the end of a much greater performance.

Overall, Spielberg’s “Lincoln” was a wonderfully accurate and detailed account of the politicking of the 13^th Amendment to the American Constitution within its ensanguined context of gun smoke, corpse-strewn battlefields, elegant parlors and the halls of congress it did remind us that people who could easily have turned their backs on slavery came together in one city to emancipate the enslaved forever, not with any clear plan of how they would move forward once the deed had been done but doing so because this change would ultimately be for the betterment of all men.

FIN

Written by David Vollin

EDITORIAL: A GLIMMER OF HOPE IN A GREY WORLD...

 

Whether Obama’s commitment to break away from the obsolete practices of the past, taking government out of the hands of big business and placing it back into the hands of the people is shared by the majority of Americans will be decided on the political battlefield by the close of 11/6-12.  

For those honest, hardworking Americans who simply desire to get past the drudgery and hopelessness of working merely to pay bills, who hope someday, somehow to be able to afford to exist with a reasonable degree of comfort and safety which includes some form of economic security, a nest egg for tomorrow, election day looms as the threshold of either a great and promising opportunity for the working man or a lost one. 

 

For many weeks I have remained silent; listening, watching, thinking and hoping that this presidential race was not about race but about real, tangible, human issues.  Issues that would touch the lives not only of pampered millionaires but of the millions whose nitty gritty work actually brings those millions into Wall Street… It seemed so strange that the republicans could be blinded to the fact that their obsolete recipe for capitalism had run the country into the ground during the 8 years of the Bush Administration.  Partisanship or not, I wondered,  could they really have been oblivious to the way in which the Bush Administration allowed wall street bankers to rape and pillage the once healthy American economy?  Did they miss the patently gangster process by which Americans paid for a war in which Iraq was physically devastated in order to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and then taxpayers were made to pay for Halliburton to rebuild it again?  Did they not know that Bush and Cheney owned significant economic interests in Halliburton?  I had to stand back as a democrat and look at the picture more objectively.  My head was spinning with ugly images of the obvious… Every molecule of the republican administration under Bush revealed a massive fear campaign steeped in alleged terrorist and illegal alien threats clearly launched to blind the public of the real threat the American way of life, the elitist and corrupt Republican Party itself!  Each day under republican rule painted a different code color of fear and suspicion.  In contrast the Obama administration has been like smooth, gentle surface of a woodland pond.  If the terror was so real where did it go?  Was it coming for Bush and the republicans or was it just conjured up by them?  

 

I wondered how those who worked for a living, just like me, could even think about supporting a party that still believed in trickle-down economics or what I like to call “Pie Crust” economics…  The wealthiest classes eat the meat filling of the pie and the rest of the population picks up the fallen pie crust crumbs… hardly an acceptable condition.  Some might even call this form of capitalism, “Pig-Foot” economics…  not too far removed from the “Voodoo” economics of an earlier republican president.  Both Reaganomics and the republican policies of Bush ignored the welfare of the common man.  Life was about big business acquisitions and international trade while the American worker was looked at as some filthy parasite leeching away at the ill-gotten profits of big business. Why would anyone opt for such a miserable existence except if they did so with the intent that however bad off they might be, others would be harmed even more possibly eliminating them from the pool of competition… my face grew grim because I knew that only two things could cause a person to be so ignorant to and accepting of their own demise… racism… or just sheer ignorance…  As always, I hesitate to pull the race card because it truly has no place in logical, rational assessment but since the prospect has been raised so many times both openly and subliminally I had to visit it if just for one unpleasant moment… but I happily moved on… I am sure there have been some reasons for the resistance to Obama based in racism but in order to be bigger I mustn’t dwell on it… the first Obama win proved that racism, though present, was far less a variable than I had ever imagined… but a variable nonetheless…

 

Well, I sighed, if it is not racism then what have could make poor, working class or even middle class people identify philosophically with the very rich? The answer, if indeed it was the real answer was even more disturbing… I thought; it is because supporting elitist policy, even though they are far from being part of that elite class, makes them feel closer to something they wish to be but are not or may never be; a reality they cannot cope with accepting…  It reminds me of the mid-twentieth century sitcom “Bewitched” in which the child Tabitha was possessed with the magical power of “Wish-Craft”!  The rusty special effects that unconvincingly transformed Tabitha’s wish-craft into reality appeared to be the very same faux magic as a poor man’s misguided support for elitist republican policies that saw him only as a poor an insignificant pawn.  How could a poor man think about supporting the enslaving policies of the very rich?  It is like the ancient practise of the warrior to eat the flesh of a formidable animal of prey and/or array himself in the animals likeness in order to become enamored of that animals legendary qualities… Wish craft yes… I can see why desperate and hopeful people could fall into such folly but what does any of this buffoonery have to do with reality?  The reality is that the very wealthy and powerful Americans are not on the same side as the poor and working and middle classes… we are diametrically opposed…  they can only remain wealthy if we remain poor…

 

Obama’s seasoned perspicacity is a clarion to all who truly love freedom and want to protect it! His commitment invigorates the spirit of fairness and humanitarianism as well as to encourage sound economic and social policy is unprecedented…  He sees past the next 4 years knowing that change may not be felt before the ending of his term and that is the very definition of a new start!  He is the first runner in the relay… he is steadfast to get the game going and ready to pass on the baton having made a fundamental gain in the first heat.  He is the president of the common man…  He thinks like we think… A rich man does not understand the simple setbacks and challenges common men face in their day to day existence because it is not their experience…

I cannot touch every man and woman in ways that will help them identify a betrayal to themselves and to others. Common men and women who support policy designed for the wealthy, elite are traitors to their own cause.  Common men and women do not have time in this life to wait for the crumbs of trickle-down, pig-foot, pie-crust or wish-craft economics to fall onto their already bare plates… their lives will be over and spent in need and want… The world is far too wide and all I can do is hope that the misguided will one day wake up from their disconnected fantasies and join those who struggle for real freedom and justice.  In the present my thoughts are with those brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, sexes, religions and nationalities who are still able to see through the heavy cloud of deceit and distraction created to masque the villainous misdeeds of the very rich under the guise of the republican party.  My only hope is that most of us who call ourselves Americans can keep the commitment to real change and not weaken and fall back into imprudent and corrupt practices of the past.  But in order to do this Americans must understand that real change is not an overnight process and Americans have not ever truly done what they needed to do in order to effect real change.  Change is not a magical spell achieved through the instantaneous process of “Wish-Craft”, it comes only after long hard effort and struggle to remove the old and replace it with the new.  So those of like mind who still have hope for the America envisaged by the framers and the slaves and their descendants who upheld the commitment to freedom and social evolution, they are my glimmer of hope in a grey world…

 

FIN

 

Written by David Vollin

www.forthebrothas.blogspot.com  

 

EDITORIAL: BIRTH CERTIFICATE FOR OBAMA

This is an excerpt from a response to a distinguished colleague concerning a virtual debate about the nature of the request for President Obama's credentials beyond those which were deemed necessary for him to become a member of congress and to hold the highest office in the United States of America. 

A school book used in Public Schools Authored by Booker T. Washington

 

To one of my most distinguished members,

 

Please allow me to attempt to clarify the issue of the request for President Obama's birth certificate and credentials as I see it, therefore, in my opinion.  This issue has been one of heated and fascinating intellectual debate among several members of “For The Brothas: A Virtual, Cultural, Intellectual Salon” and yourself.  As the Administrator of the group I have largely remained silent encouraging your l debate but so interesting were many of its fine points I was inspired to compose a separate response of my own, one which I hope will answer your valid questions.  First let me say that it is American to question everything and so I support your curiosity about Obamas past, for he is truly a great man of whom I feel Americans know precious little.  However, the dearth of popular knowledge about this great mans past does not lead me to conclude that he has something to hide, on the contrary, there is nothing about his character that shows anything except a man who is wise and contemplative, an quality much overdue in the white house.  The past two presidencies have been riddled with scandals and unrest.  The president who preceded Obama was accused of drug abuse and his cabinet of insider collusion and a host of other ethical crimes, none of which were ever seriously pursued.  Does this absolve Obama or any other president of scrutiny?  No it does not.  But we must carefully weigh the value of all claims of impropriety ere we charge a man of any wrongdoing, after all we are a country that prides itself in having invented the concept of "Due Process".  Who he was may not be so important now as who he is today and what he represents.  In a country on the verge of economic failure I am more interested in the policies and philosophy of Obama now than where he went to high school and what he wore to the prom or if he may have ever had a brush with the law.  Remember that in the 1950’s through 1970’s many freedom fighters were willingly arrested as humanitarian acts of civil disobedience… I am not saying that Obama was one of them but I am saying that we must look much closer to a man’s record to see the nature of the crime in order to determine if one had been committed. But I digress…

Out of the previous 54 American Presidents Obama, president number 56 is the first in over 200 years to have his credentials as an American Citizen openly questioned!  Ironically, he is the very first Black American to hold the hallowed office as Commander In Chief!  If this were a real issue for such a high profile job then it should have been addressed before he was sworn in.  Bi-Partisan differences have summoned heated controversy and rivalries over many different issues throughout the existence of the Presidency itself but never before has such a serious claim been made against a president.  The issue is not so much that he has something to hide, rather it is that if this is going to be adopted as criterion for all presidents of the future then let it be set into law that all Presidential candidates must make specific aspects of their personal history available as public record. 

 

So you see this is more of a legal issue than anything else.  Obama, as an American citizen is entitled to his privacy  and likewise he is not required to provide any data that was not agreed upon as terms of his office save by personal choice.  Should the practice of providing a clear disclosure of specific personal data including proof of birth, criminal background, and even more personal data like known associates and affiliations as sort of public dossier become ratified as law then not only Obama but all future presidents will have to abide by it.  Again the question is, in the words of a famous American folk tune, "If it's good enough for Lincoln, it's good enough for me"!  And I do not remember anyone ever asking about Lincolns credentials when he took the oath of office even in the midst of Civil unrest his "Americanness" was never questioned though his particular brand of it was bitterly fought against and defended with hundreds of thousands of lives...

 

In America, unfortunately we must always be sure that we are not blind-sighted to racism, for it has been so intimately woven into the fabric of this nation.  Many of our past presidents came from families that had recently immigrated to America but their record of public service and citizenship was proof enough that they were indeed Americans.  Do you realize that during reconstruction black voters were kept from voting when a law was passed stating that if your grandfather could have voted they you could vote?  This is where the term “Grandfathered” comes from.  It was an outrage and it instantly eliminated millions of blacks from voting for the next 80 or so years because their grandfathers were slaves and they had no vital records to prove otherwise!

 

Be careful of what you feed into,  understand the dynamics, the double standards so evident in a system that is far from perfection.  If America is legendary for anything it would be its long, bloody, violent history of racism and unfortunately all of the breakthroughs of the Civil Rights Era cannot erase in 50 years what has been festering as a staple of American “Matter-Of-Right” policy for the past 400 years…  This, my son, takes time… But more so it takes vigilance!  The pendulum of freedom can turn against you at any moment! It is poised to do so! Every gain that you make must be fought for with blood sweat and tears… I was inspired with such emotion when I read a passage on the new WWII memorial stating, "Freedom Is Not Free"!

‘

You have been fortunate enough to have lived to witness one of the truly rare, groundbreaking events of all human history with the presidency of Barak Obama.  Had you been living 60 years earlier there is a high likelihood  you would have been answering, “Yez’um Massuh” in some menial occupation under the yoke of Jim Crow.  Had you been born 160 years ago you would be rotting at the stinging tip of the bullwhip of your slavemaster’s iron will to keep you oppressed as mere chattel in a free slave labor economic machine.  How very much you have to be thankful for, and virtually all of it done through the labor of others... you it's beneficiary...

 

Too long have I digressed to explain the cancer of racism, you know what racism is and if you do not then open your eyes brother for surely this issue was quelled from the dark recesses of that abominable beast!  Racism…It is a thing I have no personal use for, I am bigger than racism… I love all men as equal but as a black man in America I must always be conscious of it’s presence…

From the 1800's until the 1960's white minstres in "Black Face" performed as comic buffoons with affected black dialects and nannerisms they imagined to be typical of Black Americans. 

 

 

 But racism is all around us... and the black man has historically been the butt of Americas frustration and the personification of its humor...   As a race we have been hated and ridiculed, kept ignorant and poor.  Those times are quickly changing but we must be sure to galvanize ourselves around causes that will move history forward and not allow us to slip back into the racist mire of the not so distant past...

In conclusion I say to let the law of the land declare to Obama if he must produce evidence of his birth and of his life’s history, otherwise he is doing only as each of the 56 presidents before him has done… Obama has been nominated to represent the Democratic party in the race for the  57^th President of The United States, the country is galvanized to support him on his historic journey.  Let the law of the land dictate to the president what credentials he must set forth for public consumption.  If you have a problem with the law then take action to change it!   Be a man of action! But whatever you do have a mind and ear for history, for therein are your questions best answered….

Many Black Americans died never owning their lives, their undocumented history lost to the ages...

 


FIN

David Vollin

Administrator

AT SPRINGS END...

 

I let my laughter kick

through rusting leaves

and each one

that fell

opened up the

o’er grown summer canopy

till all there was, was sky…

my spirit

sensing it’s escape rose

far beyond

the limbs

creaking in the wind

of this ancient wood

to kiss the widening firmament

revealed as each leaf

sank to the soil…

i loved the waning beauty

captured in the passing moments

of this time

though the noble

evanescing culture of

this transitional realm

cost my senses

many cherished climes

so I resigned, bereft of everything

to test the very gravity of loss

defining its cost

the grander of two

an exquisitely repaid revenue

hid in the woods

and the secret places of the wild

at springs end…

 

 

FIN

By David Vollin…

BAYONNETTES AND HORSES

 

President Obama wore a blue foulard at tonights 10-22-12 debate.

 

President Obama has never been so lucid and caustic to the Romney presidential campaign than he was tonight.  It was almost as if Romney and Obama had agreed beforehand that they were going to completely embarrass the character and intelligence of Romney in an all-out effort to make a decisive blow to all republican hopes of a presidential tomorrow… One of the classic hallmarks of Romney’s lack of knowledge and Obamas unforeseen tenacity and wit was when Romney created a fancifully anachronistic metaphor referencing antique battle ships and aircraft only to be reminded that new technological advances have largely rendered these traditional twentieth-century weapons obsolete.  I happened to be dining at Hill Country, a large Texas Barbecue Restaurant full of people all focused not on the luscious authentic southwestern styled barbecue and side dishes that have won them fame in the first year of their existence within a bow shot of the capitol building but on the enormous flat screen television broadcasting the debate… The volume was turned way up so the noisy banter of the large dining  room would not drown out the fine points of the debate, we all watched while Romney was literally flogged on international television.  The crowd of people actually clapped at the end of Obamas closing speech but remained silent at Romney’s close.  Consistent with Obamas claims that the policies of the Republican Party are out dated and obsolete, tonight’s debate culminated with Obama likening it to bayonets and horses, weapons of the distant past.  Obama mentioned several times that While America clearly has a responsibility to world politics it must begin to focus more on domestic issues.  Obama zoomed into the American family and workplace, for those few minutes he was our close friend, our coworker, our President Elect 2013…  Tonight I liked the nature of my president, he was strong, confident, witty and decisive.  Romney really was all over the place never truly able to focus on any one thing... he was lost... So once again I have taken sides with our august president Obama... and to Romney I have only to say with disgust... "Bayonnettes and Horses indeed"!

 

FIN

 

Written by David Vollin

ON THE CUSP OF POLITICAL CHANGE

FUNERAL PROCESSION FOR MEGAR EVERS

 

History has challenged men at various times to fight for a social and political cause or sit it out allowing others to take up the torch of freedom!  Take yourself back to the Deep South during The Civil Rights Era and imagine the precarious threat many of black Americans faced having to defend their right to exist as free men on one hand and having to deal with the hatred and ignorance of the clan and its sophisticated, and oppressive network of white supremacists on the other.  It must have been the equivalent of a living nightmare but one that had by then stretched over hundreds of years.  Not one black family would have escaped the experience of the lynching of a loved one… or the threat of one at literally any time or place…  It was truly a living hell…

 

SEGREGATION IN AMERICA

The goal of oppression is to use a man’s fear of retaliation in order to render the oppressed impotent and ignorant; docility is the result of a cultural brain-wash, a Pavlovian crack, an operant conditioning standard administered by all successful oppressors to the oppressed. Black Americans living in the rural and urban south during The Civil Rights Era had every reason to fear they would be victims of focused violence if it became known by white racists that they were assembling for the purpose of organizing against racism but they understood that the alternative was even worse… at least some of them did… At a time when a black man could be hunted down for sport, hung in a tree, mutilated, violated and left as a warning for others who could blame anyone of color from shrinking away from the road of civil disobedience?  Even white freedom fighters were not immune to lynching by zealous racists.  It was a dangerous world of uncertain outcomes but clearly a world on the cusp of political change…

NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, PROTEST, DEMONSTRATION WERE FUNDIMENTAL ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL CHANGE DURING THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA...

 

The twenty-first century is not without its unique socio-political challenges and they are no less urgent then those faced by black Americans nearly seventy years ago in the rural south of these United States.  Every time a group of oppressed people are forced to fight for political change they will face certain inherent risks to themselves.  Depending upon how progressive the region they live in is these risks could be drastically different but this difference is always directly proportional to the amount of resistance that has been applied to that region in order to gradually push it forward.  This means that in some regions, while there may be a significant proportion of the population that is sympathetic to change, conditions have not improved because the status quo has not been effectively challenged. 

 

There is a difference between a dam that is sound and a dam that is about to break…  The sound dam has not met any formidable resistance, it is strong because it has been designed to be so and can still resist the forces it was designed to resist.  The dam that is about to break has been challenged with a series of small but well-planned forces applied over a period of time.  Each time force is applied it is stronger and better focused on its task.  The dam expects renewed resistance but braces itself and even fortifies itself to deal with new assaults but everyone knows that eventually the external agitating forces will exceed the dam’s ability to resist and then the dam will break…

THE NIAGRA MOVEMENT IN 1906 WAS THE FIRST SIGNIFICANT CIVIL RIGHTS  MOVEMENT AFTER RECONSTRUCTION.  IT'S MANIFESTO WAS TO BE THE VERY SOUL OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF THE 1960'S

When men are thirsty and they cannot drink because the waters are dammed they only have two choices; to die of thirst or to take down the dam.  Every time men are challenged with this classic dilemma they must galvanize themselves organizing a formidable opposition to the change they seek in order to experience and enjoy the fruits of change.  They might endure oppression and let others fight the good fight in other places and hope that eventually that change may spread to include them.  But sometimes when change is gifted and not fought for the beneficiaries fail to comprehend the value of that change having marginally subsisted during its slow transition.  Knowing that one can survive without change and understanding ones duty to take action to effect positive change and to continually protect the attributes of change are qualities which are so individually linked to a man’s constitution. 

THE HAYMARKET RIOT IN CHICAGO IN 1886 FORMED ONE OF THE EARLIEST UNIONS IN THE US. 

 

The sense of civic duty, of responsibility for things outside of one’s self, the instinct that drives men to assume responsible stewardship of their world, to take up important challenges and follow them through, all of these human qualities are inherent in every man but for reasons that literally shape and define the world in which we live these qualities are not equally manifested in all men.  For some men it is only a matter of maturity that will define the instant of revelation.  For some men who have a stronger instinct of selfishness, their internally focused activism for self-preservation will always prevent them from joining the ranks of progressive men.  For this reason alone change is never an instantaneous thing.  Because change is such a forgiving thing men who would not join the front lines of a cause, who shrunk from activism, who remained silent or even criticized and doubted the movement for change are free to enjoy its benefits once change has encompassed them having been fought for and won.  The men who fight for and accomplish change will never be so shallow as to bar any man from enjoying its bounty.  But until change is won those who fight must recognize friend from foe for as surly as many great victories have been won through brotherhood, many defeats are owed to disunity, lack of focus and to the debilitating blow of a bitter betrayal…  The landscape is often treacherous though precious when on the cusp of political change…

ENGRAVING COMMEMORATING THE TRUE BOSTON TEA PARTY OF THE 18TH CENTURY... PRECURSOR TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION...

 FIN

LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT WITH OTHER ABOLITIONISTS AND SUFFRAGISTS

 

Written by D. Vollin…

BLACK AND WHITE BLUES MUSICIANS FORM A GROUP CIRCA 1920