Motley Moose – Archive

Selma to Montgomery march – 1965

I was re-reading for the nth time Hamden Rice’s powerful piece “Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did“, yesterday, where he describes what his father told him about the importance of Dr. King and the movement he was an integral part of, in making black people unafraid.

When talking about the resistance to Martin Luther King Day, last Sunday, and in reading and commenting in Meteor Blade’s piece on J. Edgar Hoover’s  assaults on Dr. King and the movement, it struck me that some people-imho mistakenly-believe the civil rights movement was ended with the death of Dr. King. That somehow it was buried with him, and is now solely to be honored and respected as “history”, to be dusted off a few times a year. The wikipedia entry gives dates “1955-68”.  

I realized that those of us who lived during those early days have a very different perspective than those who were born later and perhaps got insights from watching series like “Eyes on the Prize” or reading memorial news coverage.

For me, the movement has never ended…yes it has had an ebb and flow, and yes, we have lost leaders and cadres and supporters over the years-to natural and unnatural death-but the reasons we have struggled haven’t gone away, and the reports of “movement’s end”, from my perspective are greatly exaggerated.

In fact, it’s a lie that we cannot afford to buy.

On Tuesday,12 January 2010, four years ago, a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. killing more than 300,000 people and leaving  countless numbers of people homeless. Memorial services were held in Haiti Sunday, and in the U.S. where there is a population of over 830,000 Haitian-Americans, and in other parts of the Haitian diaspora.

Please take a moment of silence in memory, and then be silent no more. Time for screams of outrage.

Amnesty International researcher Chiara Liguori, wrote:

Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of the earthquake, Haiti was headline news across the globe. Yet four years on, with the cameras gone, the problems and suffering of the people remain.

It is estimated that almost 150,000 people are still living in 271 displacement camps, often in appalling conditions. The lack of access to basic services such as safe water, sanitation and waste disposal leaves them exposed to the risk of cholera and other diseases. Many still live in makeshift shelters, vulnerable to flooding, especially during hurricane season.

It’s unacceptable enough that people are still living like this. But many Haitians living in displacement camps also have to contend with the constant fear of being forcibly evicted. Since 2010, more than 60,000 people have been forced from their makeshift shelters, and it is estimated that almost half of those living in displacement camps face the ongoing threat of forced eviction.

Amnesty International denounced the situation in a report released last April in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. The country’s authorities reacted promptly and committed themselves to thoroughly investigating the evictions. Yet no perpetrator has, to our knowledge, been brought to justice. And while the evictions stopped for a couple of months, they have continued again since June.

Taking a page from the Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina, that has now spread to Georgia, activists in South Carolina have declared “Enough is enough!” and are heading to the SC statehouse on January 14th with these demands:

Expand Medicaid

This year, some 1,300 South Carolinians will die because state lawmakers pushing an extreme agenda refused a federal grant to expand Medicaid.

Fund education

In 2013, K-12 funding was nearly $500 million below what is required by law. Higher education funding is 40% less than in 2002, and tuition at our state colleges is among the nation’s highest.

Protect voting rights

South Carolina has the least-competitive elections in the US, with 80 percent of lawmakers facing no major opposition in general elections. And instead of trying to make voting easier and more accessible, SC’s political elite keep making it harder and less inclusive.

They are asking demonstrators to wear black:

We will wear black as a symbol of mourning, in honor of the 1,300 who will die this year in South Carolina because the state refused to use our tax dollars to expand Medicaid.

The Charleston City Paper reports:

Progressive activists in S.C. to launch ‘Truthful Tuesday’ at State House

Progressive activists across South Carolina will gather at the State House in Columbia next week for ‘Truthful Tuesday’ – an event styled after a series of protests at North Carolina’s capital dubbed Moral Mondays.

“It’s to really put lawmakers on notice regarding the need to expand Medicaid and protect voting rights and to fully fund public education,” says George Hopkins, a College of Charleston history professor and Charleston chapter president of the S.C. Progressive Network. “Hopefully on Wednesday the 15th the headlines across the state will read ‘Citizens Descend on Columbia’ to demand legislators take action on these issues.”

Legislators will return to Columbia on Jan. 14 to begin the second of a two-year legislative session. During the week the Legislature is in session Tuesday through Thursday. Last session, South Carolina became one of several states that chose not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act healthcare law. Lawmakers have also passed a Voter ID bill, and the last session saw efforts to curb early voting.

The coalition has been convened by:

National Association of Social Workers – SC

SC AFL-CIO

SC Christian Action Council

SC NAACP

SC Progressive Network

The SC Education Association

Get the word out to everyone you can in South Carolina, and if you don’t know anyone there you can still send support.

This is how a movement grows, one day, one person, one group at a time!

For those of you who have been following and supporting the growth and development of the North Carolina grassroots political movement and Moral Monday protests, there is good news for 2014. The movement is moving forward and is now expanding its efforts into neighboring Georgia.

The first major protest of Moral Monday GA will be taking place next Monday, January 13th.

Moral Monday Georgia is a multiracial, multi-issue coalition of citizens working for positive change for the public good. For too long, many elected officials in Georgia have ignored the moral implications of their actions and inactions with respect to the neediest among us. Our coalition stands against all forms of discrimination and amplifies the voices and ideas of folks in marginalized circumstances.

Together we are building the collective voice of the people to be heard over the voices of big business, corrupt money and repressive government by fighting for legislative and public policy issues to improve ordinary people’s lives. In practice, we seek to contribute to the creation of a more just and peaceful society where dialogue, debate and discussion prevail, and will work to achieve consensus in our group without silencing minority voices.

Moral Mondays coming to Georgia State Capitol

Gov. Nathan Deal is going to have some visitors to the Gold Dome on Jan. 13, and they won’t be there to compare recipes.

The first Georgia-based event of the grassroots social justice movement Moral Mondays will occur, organized by the new group Moral Monday Georgia. The issue of the day will be the governor’s decision not to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid [see accompanying article on Medicaid expansion], and the schedule includes legislator visits, a workshop and a rally outside the capitol featuring numerous speakers.

Moral Mondays started in North Carolina in 2012 to protest controversial laws passed by their Republican governor and legislature. Typically it is a civil disobedience protest, marked by a mass entrance into the capitol where many are peacefully arrested. Thousands of people showed up on Mondays to disrupt the legislative session with more than 900 willing to be arrested as part of their civil disobedience.

Please like the Moral Monday GA facebook page, and pass this information on.

(photo: Kiyun)




Dr. Chester Middlebrook Pierce, Emeritus Professor of Education and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School put an academic name to racial stressors. He wrote about:

the effects of racism, first proposing the concept of racial microaggressions in 1970. Microaggression usually involves “demeaning implications and other subtle insults against minorities”. He described these subtle nonverbal exchanges as ‘put-downs’ of blacks by offenders and suggested they may also play a role in unfairness in the legal system as microaggressions can influence the decisions of juries.

Most of us are aware of racism. There are big, flaming in your face, cross-burning, spewing, blatantly racist moments in time that almost everyone you know can see, and react to. Those are easy-almost. But the things that wear at you, tear at you, day-in-day-out tend to be smaller, shrug-offable, till they pile up, drop by drop, irritation by irritation.

Those of us who are forced to bear with them and bear up under them rarely get a chance to be vindicated, and are often chastised for being “overly sensitive” or “imagining it all” when we finally speak up to put a stop to yet another “diss” or put-down.

For visual representations, take a look at 21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis

Photographer Kiyun asked her friends at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus to “write down an instance of racial microaggression they have faced.”

President-elect of Chile, Michelle Bachelet

Felicitaciones a los chilenos

Congratulations to the Chilean people, and to President-elect Bachelet.

Chilean Voters Return a Former President to Power

Ms. Bachelet received about 62 percent of the vote, compared with 38 percent for her opponent, Evelyn Matthei, according to preliminary results from the Chilean electoral service. Ms. Matthei conceded defeat.

Ms. Bachelet, who was widely admired as president from 2006 to 2010, when her policies helped shield Chile from a sharp downturn during the global financial crisis, has put forth an ambitious package of proposals that would, among other things, increase corporate taxes, expand access to higher education and overhaul the 1980 Constitution, which dates to the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Her platform contrasted sharply with the anti-tax views of Ms. Matthei, a former labor minister who belongs to the most conservative wing of the governing coalition of President Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing billionaire. Ghosts of the Pinochet era hung over this year’s race; unlike Mr. Piñera himself, Ms. Matthei voted in favor of General Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite that opened the way for democracy to be re-established in Chile.

The coalition that led her to victory is the Nueva Mayoría

The New Majority (Spanish: Nueva Mayoría) is a Chilean electoral coalition created in 2013 and composed mainly of center-left political parties supporting the presidential candidacy of Michelle Bachelet in the 2013 election.

The coalition consists of the four principal parties of the Concert of Parties for Democracy, namely, the Socialist Party of Chile (PS), the Christian Democratic Party (Chile) (PDC), the Party for Democracy (PPD) and the Social Democrat Radical Party (PRSD). In addition, the New Majority also includes the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh), the Citizen Left (IC), the Broad Social Movement (MAS) and centre-left independents

Queue exploding heads of wing-nuttia here in the U.S.

Anti-apartheid leader and African National Congress (ANC) member Nelson Mandela raises clenched fist, arriving to address a mass rally, a few days after his release from jail.

South Africans and supporters world-wide continue to pay tribute to and honor Madiba, Nelson Mandela. You can visit the official SA government site for memorial and funeral events. From heads of state, to young schoolchildren, there has been an outpouring of condolences and sentiment.

The media coverage has been extensive-I’ve tried to look at as much as I can find-but so far the best and most comprehensive, imho, has been the live coverage from SABC TV, South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Coverage here in the U.S. has been varied, from laudatory to much of the usual carping and racism from the right, and many media outlets are already posting overly sanitized versions of his life and history, disconnected from his role and part in a struggle larger than one man, no matter his greatness. For those of you who may have missed it, please read shanikka’s Farewell Madiba, Who We Once Called Nelson Mandela

Let us take a moment of silence to remember Madiba, Nelson Mandela, who joined the ancestors today at the age of 95.

President Obama has issued a statement, in which he said:

“He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home.  And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth.  He no longer belongs to us — he belongs to the ages.”

Let us take a moment of silence to remember all those who have died world wide, and renew our efforts to assist those living with HIV/AIDS and to prevent new infections.

From the World Health Organization:

   HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 36 million lives so far.

   There were approximately 35.3 [32.2-38.8] million people living with HIV in 2012.

   Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected region, with nearly 1 in every 20 adults living with HIV. Sixty nine per cent of all people living with HIV are living in this region.

   HIV infection is usually diagnosed through blood tests detecting the presence or absence of HIV antibodies.

   There is no cure for HIV infection. However, effective treatment with antiretroviral drugs can control the virus so that people with HIV can enjoy healthy and productive lives.

   In 2012, more than 9.7 million people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries.

UNAIDS is targeting “Zero Discrimination” and has set 10 goals for 2015

   Sexual transmission of HIV reduced by half, including among young people, men who have sex with men and transmission in the context of sex work;

   Vertical transmission of HIV eliminated and AIDS-related maternal deaths reduced by half;

   All new HIV infections prevented among people who use drugs;

   Universal access to antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV who are eligible for treatment;

   TB deaths among people living with HIV reduced by half;

   All people living with HIV and households affected by HIV are addressed in all national social protection strategies and have access to essential care and support;

   Countries with punitive laws and practices around HIV transmission, sex work, drug use or homosexuality that block effective responses reduced by half;

   HIV-related restrictions on entry, stay and residence eliminated in half of the countries that have such restrictions;

   HIV-specific needs of women and girls are addressed in at least half of all national HIV responses;

   Zero tolerance for gender-based violence.

Champagne Ellison, San Jose State University senior, at protest rally (Karl Mondan)



Colleges and universities are supposed to be “institutions of higher learning”. They are also places we expect our children to be safe. Yet once again there are headlines highlighting racism on campus.

No – not in Alabama or Mississippi, or Georgia.

This time it’s at San Jose State in California.

I’m tired of people pointing at the south as the last bastion of racism in the U.S.

I’m also tired of headlines using the term “hazing”. It diminishes the severity of the racism.