Motley Moose – Archive

I’ve been waiting for video of this speech to be posted. You already know how I feel about Moral Monday and how it is moving through and gaining strength in the south.  It’s great to be able to share a coming together of the progressive fighters in Wisconsin with Moral Monday from North Carolina.  

Yara Allen, from the NC NAACP and a Moral Monday arrestee opened with song, introducing Rev. Barber to the enthusiastic crowd gathered in the Bethel Lutheran Church on March 13, 2014.

Many thanks to the blue chedder blog, for documenting this. Check out the site for lots of photos.

They posted a preview of a piece by Glenn Schmidt, soon to be posted to Union Labor News:

In the vibrating crowd of at least 800 people in the pews of Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison on March 13, Barber’s call and response was not at all out of place. “Moral dissent,” the crowd repeated after him, “is the pathway,” here they paused again, “to higher ground,” pause, “in our nation.”

Isaiah and Ezekial soon found their way into the conversation. So did Rush Limbaugh, as Barber called out the radio talk show extremist, “Caring for the poor and workers’ rights is not Communism. It’s the Gospel.”

Barber reinforced the connection between North Carolina and Wisconsin by invoking the name of Father James Groppi, the Wisconsin priest who led civil rights marches in the sixties. “Many people saw Milwaukee as the Selma of the North,” Barber said.

Today is the anniversary of Lorraine Hansberry’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun, which opened at the Barrymore Theatre in New York City on March 11th, 1959. Hansberry’s “Raisin” was the first play written by a black woman to be performed on the Broadway stage.

Hansberry, who was born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, died young, at age 35, on January 12, 1965, from pancreatic cancer. She was eulogized by many at her funeral in Harlem and the song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” sung by Nina Simone, who was a close friend was composed in her memory.

Every time I walk onto the campus where I teach, at SUNY New Paltz, I pass the Sojourner Truth Library. The library was named for her in 1971, and houses a large collection of her papers and articles. I love to enter the library to view the mural , created by artist Rikki Asher, and 13 graduate students.

When I drive through Ulster County New York, where I live, I’m often reminded that Isabella Baumfree, born around 1787, who later took the name of “Sojourner Truth” in 1843, was enslaved here, along with many other black women and men. Slavery in New York began in 1626, when NY was still New Netherland.

I’m sick and tired of reading comments loaded with right-wing memes and myths.

Every time we try to deal with discussing racist murderers, whether its Micheal Dunn or George Zimmerman, and his defenders, someone steps into the conversation and brings up the tired trope of “black-on-black crime” as a tried and true method of derailing the conversation away from racism, Stand Your Ground laws as they affect black people, and racially biased jurors and prosecutors who don’t deliver justice-for us.  

I see these unrelated stats thrown around willy-nilly, and not just on Fox.  

This stuff is to be expected from Faux News, or folks over at Breitbart’s site.

Liberal/left/progressives need to stop.

There are people who still don’t “get it” about why black and brown folks, and our allies don’t think Michael Dunn getting convicted of attempted assault on a car, but not for murdering Jordan Davis was “justice”.

There are people telling us we should be satisfied with Angela Corey, the prosecutor, and the jury, who did manage to convict Dunn for attempted murder of the teenaged passengers of the car who are alive.  

Well…we are angry. We are not satisfied. The twitterstorm that erupted after the verdict is still raging at #DangerousBlackKids  

Look at him. That car seat can barely restrain him. #dangerousblackkids pic.twitter.com/JdMMUjoiko

– J.N.G. (@thewayoftheid) February 16, 2014

(photo of some of my fellow travelers from the bus)

I traveled down to Raleigh, NC for the Moral March on Saturday Feb. 8th with a bus load (and two vans) of folks, organized by the Kairos Center, Poverty Initiative, at Union Theological Seminary.

We left at around 6:30 AM on Friday for the 10 plus hour drive south. It was a wonderfully diverse group – black, white, brown, red and yellow, young, old, straight and LBGT. There were union organizers, members of  Picture the Homeless, Domestic Workers United, Occupy Faith NYC , seminary students, and more.

On the bus we each introduced ourselves and said a little bit about why we were going and who were the people who we felt had lifted us and inspired us to be there that day.

People shared the names of teachers, mentors, movement activists, and their parents.

We sang together.  

I am not a photographer. My seatmate on the bus, Resa Jones is, and you can see her inspiring photos in her stream.  

I took snapshots with my cheap Cannon, and wanted to share them with you today.  

When we arrived in Raleigh, our first stop was at Community UCC church of Raleigh where a dinner was waiting for us.

Then we headed over to a mass meeting and worship service  at Abundant Life Christian Center, to hear some rousing speeches, and song.  Then back on the bus to the Martin Street Baptist Church, where we would unroll our bedrolls to sleep that night.

The next morning we gathered at Shaw University for a rally at 9:30 AM.

And then we marched.

The crowd grew and grew, and there was no way to tell how many of us were there, but later USA Today said we were 80 to 100 thousand!

You can see the size of the crowd in this video, which shows the marchers, and you can hear the end of Dr. Rev. William Barber’s speech.

When I remembered I had a camera, I got it out and snapped pics of the signs people were carrying, which reflect the breadth of the coalition that was gathered there.

Follow me below the fold, and I’ll let the pictures continue telling the story.

If you haven’t seen this report from Bill Moyers, on what is going on in North Carolina, take some time out, look at it and pass it on.

“State of Conflict: North Carolina” offers a documentary report from a state that votes both blue and red and sometimes purple (Romney carried it by a whisker in 2012, Obama by an eyelash in 2008). Now, however, Republicans hold the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature and they are steering North Carolina far to the right: slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, providing vouchers to private schools, cutting unemployment benefits, refusing to expand Medicaid and rolling back electoral reforms, including voting rights.

You can read a full transcript of the program here.

Moyers warns:

Last summer, Pope succeeded, opening North Carolina’s highest court to the highest bidders.

Katie bar the door – except that no matter which door we’re talking about, Art Pope has the key to it. And possibly to the future.

Take the firepower of the rich, pour in heaps of dark money loosed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, add generous doses of fervent ideology, and presto: the battle for American politics and governance is joined. And every state becomes North Carolina, including yours.

We can stop this.

Saturday, February 8th, 2014 people of good will and commitment to addressing injustice are gathering in Raleigh NC to raise their voices in protest.

This is one of the broadest based coalitions of progressive people being forged today.

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

En Garde! Fencing and black fencing masters

I grew up with dreams and fantasies of fencing and swashbuckling, duels and derring do. As a child my dad played a musketeer in the cast of Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, starring Puerto Rican actor Jose  Ferrer, and one of my cherished mementos is his dueling foil.

I buried my nose in the works of the black French author Alexandre Dumas, and in my head the three Musketeers were black.  Little did I know at the time, that Dumas had modeled his Count of Monte Cristo on his father, Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, better known as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

If reading about the rape and sexual abuse of women is a trigger for you-please skip this.

If fighting back against it-wherever it occurs-is part of your moral, personal and political agenda-read on.

Department of Justice finds conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison to be unconstitutional , Mike Cason wrote January 17, 2014 at 6:17 PM, and updated this story on January 18th.

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — The U.S. Department of Justice said today that conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison violate the Constitution, citing what it called “a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment.”

DOJ sent investigators to Tutwiler last April and reported their findings in a 36-page letter to Gov. Robert Bentley.

“The women at Tutwiler universally fear for their safety,” the report stated.”They live in a sexualized environment with repeated and open sexual behavior, including: abusive sexual contact between staff and prisoners; sexualized activity, including a strip show condoned by staff; profane and unprofessional sexualized language and harassment; and deliberate cross-gender viewing of prisoners showering, urinating and defecating,” the report stated. DOJ said the conditions violate the Eighth Amendment right to be protected from harm. It said problems go back almost two decades. The DOJ also said it will expand its investigation to look into medical and mental health care for inmates and other issues.

It has been a long march since the days when civil rights activists came together in Selma Alabama in 1965 to further focus the nation’s and the world’s eyes on the injustices and degradations heaped upon those of us who are of a darker hue than the majority.

Immorally deprived of our rights-to vote, to economic equality, to share public spaces, to live lives free from fear and intimidation from racist segregationists, we built a mighty coalition of blacks, whites and browns, men and women-in the era which became known as “the Civil Rights Movement.” It is spoken of as “history” as if the battle was won and ended-with racism defeated and social and political injustices vanquished. Yes, we won battles, yes we got new legislation-like the Civil Rights Act of 1964-and of those victories we can be proud.  

But the war is not won-yet.

Some of the early voices have been silenced-by assassination-like those of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, though their words and deeds ring on in a clarion call for justice. Other powerful voices passed into the arms of death like Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, having fought the righteous fight-aware they had passed on the torch to a younger generation.

Rising up out of the south which birthed the first movement are new voices, meshed with those of veterans of earlier struggles.

This powerful movement is growing stronger day by day.

Next stop on the justice train is Raleigh, North Carolina, where a massive demonstration will be held on February the 8th.