The John Robert SCOTUS ruling on the #VRA in Pictorial Form

I’d like to think I’m not alone in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively gut of the Voting Rights Acts that at this point there is a need to express anger and rage before having the ability to constructively go forward.  There were a stream of images that came to me with captions that I found highly therapeutic in putting together.

I'll probably write about it at some point unless someones planning on doing some in the street protesting in which case I'll be there.

Namaste friends

My Juneteenth Wish

#Juneteenth Next year my family as children of the middle passage lets prepare a feast like the Seder #BlackSeder and tell of our freedom. We will be sure to set a place for LeRoy that brother is always late. Let's talk about Ebeneezer Bridge and Danziger Bridge Marcus Malcolm Martin and brother Chuck D. How many of us have watched a respected elder be called boy or gal let us celebrate that such disrespect is now under the breath. We will proclaim next year equality and most of all respect because like Israel it is a place that exists. Lincoln didn't grant our freedom God did and that which God bestows NO MAN MAY TAKE. Many of are in custody but all of us are free let us remember and celebrate it by holding our eyes up to the world. #juneteenth #BlackSeder

Namaste Friends.

Able Archer the Cost of Mistrust

It matters if one diplomat finds out another thinks his breath smells bad, it does in the relationship between the two people, scale it up it can matter in the relations of nations.  There was something about the truth speaking to power and tree shaking Edward Snowden is doing that truly disturbs me and I wanted to discuss it around a story.

It is now apparent about a 75% of Edward Snowden’s story is completely untrue.  From his CIA exploits in Switzerland, his salary, and his disclosure to China and Russia small bits of information along with big yarns of spin do nothing to help the impression one has about his integrity.

It’s fairly obvious the potential damage done to our relationship with Switzerland. We are currently trying to get them to drop veils of secrecy and help us chase down the 1% tax cheats an effort I’m sure Snowden didn’t help.  Thankfully the leadership in Switzerland seems to be laughing at Snowden’s story.    I want to compare what’s going on with what almost happened in 1983 during an exercise called Able Archer.  It’s my intention to show how close we came to all out nuclear Armageddon over the same themes of misinformation and mistrust that seems to infect both left and right.

The NSA FISA and Glenn Greenwald Did he Lie to Anyone?

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like Glenn Greenwald and haven’t for some time.  The incident that put him on my permanent shit list occurred when I was just a little bird deciding to see what this Twitter thing was all about.

There’s a presence out on those twitter streets that goes by the handle @angryblacklady if you aren’t following her I would suggest you do because I was an open fan of hers before I tried to hop out the twitter nest. I was introduced to her by her political writing which has graced places like The Grio among others, I guess I could hit her bio and find tons of other stuff but I didn't need anyone’s validation then and just trust me she’s wicked wicked smaht.  

One day I’m enjoying watching ABL dissect Glenn Greenwald live and before the world on the issue of the NDAA one of her arguments happened to be the Patriot Act is of far more impact, and scary and is going to bite us first let’s work on that.  I wonder if the fact she was right means anything now anyway. 

I know she was taking him apart because he and his followers decided that the issue of the NDAA was no longer the topic of the day but rather the character of Obama supporters.  I once took philosophy way back in High School (I know huh?  Public school taught philosophy) where we went over all the forms logical fallacy in argument.  Mr. Navarro spoke to me from the dim mists of time and said that’s an Ad Hominem Adept, an attack against the person not the topic means the person has nothing to say on topic.

That’s ok, as I said ABL was destroying him all day, it wasn’t that he engaged in Ad Hominem it’s what the attack was.

Glenn Greenwald said the supporters of Barack Obama would watch Barack Obama rape a nun on the cameras of MSNBC enjoy it and defend the action by saying Obama merely wanted to illustrate the evils of rape

Read about Glenn Greenwald use rape imagery to silence Black women

Scratch the record the police are here the party is over everyone has to go home.  Wait a minute you say a Black lady, an Angry Black Lady who fights for feminist causes like just about no other would enjoy watching a rape, in the face of being destroyed in argument? Yes, yes he did.

No he never apologized mollified or adjusted the tone of the statement it stands just like that right now, so when Greenwald steps to me, I don’t care much about what he has to say, so there I did it, I don’t like him find him to be a man that has no integrity and uses tactics to silence dissent that would horrify the people he accuses of stifling his rights. 

Did I shoot the messenger?  I got nothing else to say about the message?  Let’s do that!

The NSA FISA and President Obama Did He Lie to Anyone?

First, in the interest of full disclosure I’m an Obamabot.  Not just an Obamabot I’m the model T-1000 with the liquid skin and frickin lasers for arms.  That’s not the point of this expose, but I don’t mind saying Barack Obama excretes excellence and gets the shit done.  I feel no need to criticize him and would keep it to myself if I did.

That out of the way I’d like to examine a meme that has become pretty prominent in the controversy regarding the exposure of our NSA’s methods and practices by a 29 year old who believes highly in American civil liberties, yet donates money to Ron Paul  a man who opposes the civil rights acts.

That is that Barack Obama is a liar.  That he promised some kind of hope and change that he horns waggled a group of the reality community by his pretty words.

I submit the words of the President are kryptonite to said people to be ignored and substituted with what they want to TELL him to do.

I draw your attention to July 3, 2008.  This date is 4 months before President Obama was elected as President of the United States.

THE ACTUAL WORDS OF BARACK OBAMA

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.
This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.
But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

He then goes on to describe the mechanisms for oversight by the other two branches of government that despite the election of President Blackenstein still exist in our constitutional form of government.   However what he says next I’d like to direct to all my “progressive” friends who state they supported him not knowing his position that he took your vote.

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions. No tool has been more important in focusing peoples' attention on the abuses of executive power in this administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true -- not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

Kind of sounds like Sgt. Barnes looking at the hipsters after he iced Elias huh?

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That's ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

Did you catch that he understands that he would lose supporters with his decision and right then and right there told such supporters Well Bye, I’d like to prove I’m not a monster in other areas but you know..

So, no you can’t call President Obama a liar what you are doing is saying you’re like the Congress voting on things without knowing what’s in them, and that’s not Obama’s fault its yours.

Little Old Jackie from Pasadena

Pasadena was built by the kind of wealth so vast it doesn't need to wear a watch because it determines who is late.  Let me set the environment for you.  It is linked to Los Angeles by California and the west’s first freeway what we now call the 110 or Arroyo Seco Parkway, but when it was constructed was known as the Pasadena Freeway.

You might wonder how having the first freeway in the west means time waits for you, and let me tell you.  They built it purposefully with looping curves and lovely parks surrounding it. No engineer’s straight line efficiency for these people.  Driving into Pasadena was meant to be an event and one you went to through beautiful environs and narrow lanes.  Consequently when I was a lad growing up just about every high school in the San Gabriel Valley had a missing person from the graduating class who went to fast and plunged into the LA River or missed a curve and slammed into a tree.  

Once you escape the curves you have the option of 3 exits for heading north into the city.  Orange Grove is the first and when you make the turn left the first thing you might notice if you’ve watched TV on January 1^st it is the route of the Rose Parade. 

The blocks on this street are wicked long and are an artifact of it’s beginnings as one of the Southlands first millionaires row built by easterners one upping each other in their western retreats.  The names on the mansions read like a who’s who of early 20^th century mega-money.  Busch had his first gardens Gamble had a mansion that used no metal fasteners, Wrigley chewed up a huge chunk with a lovely house that’s used as the parade’s headquarters today.

I doubt when Jackie Robinson’s mother moved the family to town in 1920 they used the Orange Grove exit for even in my day doing so was an invitation for the Pasadena Police to ask a Black person what they were doing, and most folks I know of the Black persuasion try and avoid that.  They would have most likely used Fair Oaks and turned left to drive through the city and north toward the Black section of Pasadena.

121 Pepper Street where the Robinson’s made their home is currently solidly in the area that Black folks clearly live, but when he moved there it wasn’t.  Pasadena has the honor or shall I say the indignity of being the only school district west of the Mississippi Riverr to have had to undergo court ordered bussing in the early 1970’s.  I happen to be a graduate of the first class to be integrated. 

There were strict lines and rules about where blacks could live and go without good reason. Customs that were enforced by realtors and bankers and police existed well into the bussing era, but despite that life for Blacks in Pasadena was relatively prosperous and nice.  The city is and was beautiful, and let’s face it, rich people really don’t want their maids hassled all that much.  It tickles me to read accounts of Jackie Robinson’s life and the poverty he underwent as a child to think in the Southern California Blacks from Pasadena were thought of as rich, they owned their home and land, kind of uppity if I can borrow a term. The Robinson’s are considered one of Pasadena’s Black founding families and it’s just interesting to consider pioneers as poverty stricken.  There are worse curses than may your Grandchildren consider you poor I suppose.

Can We All Get Along? - rough partial trailer from pablo miralles on Vimeo.

Hail alma mater; blue and gold so fair,

we sing thy fame, we love thy name

thy strength shall never fail.

We sing thy praises, our love shall never die,

blue and gold all hail to thee-John Muir High.

Sirhan Sirhan?  Rodney King it's all good when you have a Jackie Robinson. You might be the luckiest high school coach in America if your team is down at halftime and you can call on the legacy of Jackie Robinson to motivate your troops, and our coach didn't mind saying “Jackie didn't fight for your right to stand up for you to lay down” except in memory of old coach I've omitted the swears, and before the great integration and to this date John Muir is and was an athletics powerhouse.

I like to note that during this time in Jackie Robinson’s life historians like to discuss that he was somehow “gang affiliated”.  That’s difficult for me to swallow in that the folks I’ve spoken to that grew up here in and around that era tell me a gang was defined as any 3 Black people meeting not actively sweeping or mowing lawns etc.

In 1938 Jackie and a group of his friends were riding home from playing baseball at Brookside Park a lovely golf course and park with an Aquatic center constructed for the LA Olympic Games in 1932.  He and his friends were accosted by a White man who called them several flavors of the N word.  Jackie’s friend escalated the situation, however displaying the temperament that would serve him in baseball later Jackie attempted to play peacemaker and calm the situation down.  Soon a crowd of as described by an arriving motorcycle cop consisted of “between 40 and 50 members of the Negro race” gathered.

Over the course of the confrontation the crowd melted until there was only one person left for the officer to draw his weapon on and take to jail Jackie Robinson. “I found myself up against the side of my car” he said “with a gun barrel pressed unsteadily into the pit of my stomach.  I was scared to death”

He was taken to jail where he was not allowed access to a phone and forced to spend the night after being charged with “hindering traffic” and resisting arrest. 

He entered a plea of not guilty paid a bond of 25 dollars and was released after contacting a baseball coach.  The charge had bite in that he was also under threat of a previously suspended sentence he had received.  He was required to be on good behavior imposing that sentence might have spelled the end of Jackie Robinson before he really began.

Luckily for him Pasadena had UCLA boosters in it’s City administration.  A booster convinced him to change his plea and greased the wheels so that nothing further would come from the incident.  Without comment the Star News reported “That the Negro football player be not disturbed during football season”

Link to Robinson biography

It's interesting I like to postulate that Jackie Robinson learned the grace to handle racism form the worst elements America has to offer by growing up a midst what America would think of as its best elements.

Namaste Friends go see "42"

The Story of 40 Acres and a Mule

William T. Sherman

General William Tecumseh Sherman had a different idea regarding how the war should be prosecuted.  Late in 1864 although the South had suffered extreme wounds on the battlefield the home and hearth of the South had yet to be really touched, and the morale and fighting spirit of the population remained extremely high. 

General Sherman set out to change all that with his “March to the Sea”.  Sherman had just finished torching the city of Atlanta the confederate’s workshop and his troops were fat and happy and ready to do some damage after spending months camped in the city.

Sherman let loose from his normal supply chain with the intent of “foraging liberally” and allowing both his armies hunger and thirst for vengeance to bring the war to the actual people of the South.

Sherman split his 60,000 man force into two units and feinted towards two sides of the state while actually heading for the state Capital of Milledgeville.  The twin forces made the populace howl, removing anything that could have been of military value and food.

He also began to collect a large following of newly freed slaves snapping at the first opportunity to leave the burning plantations and sullen White folks of their bondage.

General William Tecumseh Sherman was no natural friend of Black people.  He counseled them to remain where they were.  Sherman wanted people just given a promise by the Emancipation Proclamation to stay on the plantations and with Masssah.  He had military reasons, his army was moving fast and light and without supply he had no real ability to provide for the newly freed, but that’s just an excuse he could have, there were 1000’s of former slaves assisting his army by building roads and providing the labor for military engineering, but he like many Union officers and his lieutenant General Jefferson Davis were racist.

Ebenezer Creek

Painting By Dave Russel

Betrayal at Ebenezer Creek

As the XIV Corps prepared to cross Ebenezer Creek, Davis ordered that the refugees be held back, ostensibly 'for their own safety' because Wheeler's horsemen would contest the advance. 'On the pretense that there was likely to be fighting in front, the negroes were told not to go upon the pontoon bridge until all the troops and wagons were over,' explained Colonel Charles D. Kerr of the 126th Illinois Cavalry, which was at the rear of the XIV Corps.
 'A guard was detailed to enforce the order, ' Kerr recalled. 'But, patient and docile as the negroes always were, the guard was really unnecessary.'
 Kerr saw Wheeler's cavalry 'closely pressing' the refugees from the rear. Unarmed and helpless, the former slaves 'raised their hands and implored from the corps commander the protection they had been promised,' Kerr wrote. '…[but] the prayer was in vain and, with cries of anguish and despair, men, women and children rushed by hundreds into the turbid stream and many were drowned before our eyes.'
 Though what happened once Davis's troops had all crossed remains in dispute, it seems fairly certain that Davis had the pontoon bridge dismantled immediately, leaving the refugees stranded on the creek's far bank. Kerr wrote that as soon as the Federals reached their destination, 'orders were given to the engineers to take up the pontoons and not let a negro cross.'
 How many women, children, and older men were stranded cannot be determined precisely, but 5,000 is a conservative estimate. 'The great number of refugees that followed us…could be counted almost by the tens of thousands,' Captain Hopkins of New Jersey guessed. Major General Oliver O. Howard, commander of the right wing of Sherman's army (which included Davis's corps), recalled seeing 'throngs of escaping slaves' of all types, 'from the baby in arms to the old negro hobbling painfully along the line of march; negroes of all sizes, in all sorts of patched costumes, with carts and broken-down horses and mules to match.' Because the able-bodied refugees were up front working in the pioneer corps, most of those stranded would have been women, children,
and old men.
 What happened next strongly suggests that Davis did not have the refugees' best interest in mind when he delayed their crossing of the creek, to say nothing of his apparently having ordered that the bridge promptly be dismantled. Davis's unabashed support of slavery definitely does not help his case, though Sherman insisted his brigadier bore no 'hostility to the negro.'

When news of the Ebenezer Creek Massacre reached the abolitionist North Secretary of War and strict abolitionist Edwin M. Stanton was not pleased.   He traveled to Savannah Georgia the terminus of what became Sherman’s successful march and there he held a meeting on January 12, 1865 with Sherman, but also with a group of Black Freedmen and religious leadership at Charles Green’s mansion on Macon Street.

Edwin M. Stanton

The Root

Their chosen leader and spokesman was a Baptist minister named Garrison Frazier, aged 67, who had been born in Granville, N.C., and was a slave until 1857, "when he purchased freedom for himself and wife for $1000 in gold and silver," as the New York Daily Tribune reported. Rev. Frazier had been "in the ministry for thirty-five years," and it was he who bore the responsibility of answering the 12 questions that Sherman and Stanton put to the group. The stakes for the future of the Negro people were high.
 And Frazier and his brothers did not disappoint. What did they tell Sherman and Stanton that the Negro most wanted? Land! "The way we can best take care of ourselves," Rev. Frazier began his answer to the crucial third question, "is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own." And when asked next where the freed slaves "would rather live -- whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves," without missing a beat, Brother Frazier (as the transcript calls him) replied that "I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over … " When polled individually around the table, all but one -- James Lynch, 26, the man who had moved south from Baltimore -- said that they agreed with Frazier. Four days later, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, after President Lincoln approved it.

Special Field Order No. 15 

Georgia Encyclopedia

The order explicitly called for the settlement of black families on confiscated land, encouraged freedmen to join the Union army to help sustain their newly won liberty, and designated a general officer to act as inspector of settlements. Inspector General Rufus Saxton would police the land and work to ensure legal title of the property for the black settlers. In a later order, Sherman also authorized the army to loan mules to the newly settled farmers.
 400,000 acres was set aside by the order in the mostly abandoned rice growing areas along the Atlantic Coast of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina including the Georgia Sea Islands dividing them by 40 acres provided room for 18,000 Black Settlers

The Root

Section two specifies that these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves: " … on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves … By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such." 

 The response from the newly freed populace of Black people in the south was electric.

When the transcript of the meeting was reprinted in the black publication Christian Recorder, an editorial note intoned that "From this it will be seen that the colored people down South are not so dumb as many suppose them to be," reflecting North-South, slave-free black class tensions that continued well into the modern civil rights movement. The effect throughout the South was electric: As Eric Foner explains, "the freedmen hastened to take advantage of the Order." Baptist minister Ulysses L. Houston, one of the group that had met with Sherman, led 1,000 blacks to Skidaway Island, Ga., where they established a self-governing community with Houston as the "black governor." And by June, 

 Where’s my 40 Acres?  Where’s my mule?

Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 lasted only as long as Abraham Lincoln did.  It was never national policy it was a military order.  Sherman was asked if the order was supposed to be permanent or a temporary thing, he said temporary, and Andrew Johnson Lincoln’s Democratic successor and Vice President was far more interested in reconstructing White power in the south than providing Black people with rights and land, so the order was revoked the same year it was issued.

Namaste Friends