"Walk together Chulluns don't you get weary there's a great camp meeting in the promised land"

“We shall overcome.”

A spark of hope from my father. pic.twitter.com/YiEz5zG8dd

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) June 27, 2020

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord"

Today's Must Reads

Personal Memories of 43 Years Ago

The content of our character

Martin Luther King, Jr. Links I Like~link inserted

Happy 81st Birthday Dr. King

It's RedEye's BlogOversary!

It's hard to believe it's been three years, 652 posts and 53,474  page views since I was forced to start RedEye's Front Page after being booted from Left in Alabama that fateful Friday, November 13th , 2009, because of the content of my comments and other post.

 It still hurts I'm no longer allowed to participate in the Informed, Involved, Progressive conversation at Left in Alabama, but I will be eternally grateful to mooncat for encouraging me to blog, and to countrycat for forcing, I mean encouraging me to get my own blog.  I assumed we were equals who could agree to disagree and still remain friends.  Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk.  It is what it is.

RedEye request the pleasure of your company on a special a stroll down memory lane on the anniversary of RedEye's Front Page, and the fifth anniversary of my first blog post, in honor of  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

 Those were the good old days.    My very first post at Left in Alabama, Monday November 5, 2007. (Who would have thought those days could look good?)  Who would have thought indeed?

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King, Jr. - Monday, January 21, 2008.

Celebrating the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.-, Monday January 19, 2009

RedEye's Random Thoughts - My very first post at RedEye's Front Page, Sunday, January 17, 2010

Happy 81st Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.-Monday, January 18,2010

Martin Luther King, Jr. Links I Like- Monday January 17, 2011

Become a contributor to RedEye's Front Page!  Why should I have all the fun?  Drop me a writing sample at redeyeblog.alabama@yahoo.com.

You can also follow me on twitter.

Thank you for reading, lurking and commenting.  Let us march on until victory is won.
RedEye

Today's Must Reads
Martin Luther King, Economic Equality and the 2012 Election
Why I carp and whine, and why I wish I didn't have to~a very personal diary

Personal Memories of 43 Years Ago

I remember the evening of April 4, 1968, like it was yesterday. I was in my bedroom doing my homework when I heard my mother scream "Oh My Lord No"! We ran to the living room and watched TV in horror.

I remember thinking, "not again", referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We watched the replay of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top Speech". We watched as a young minister we knew personally shook Dr. King's hand after he finished the speech.

I remember my youngest sibling proclaiming "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last" in front of the television.

I didn't want to go to school the next day but my parents made me. I was one of 12 African American students in a student body of about 500. I remember walking into the predominately white high school on April 5, 1968, to find the students and most of the faculty members celebrating the death of Dr. King with a Pep Rally complete with hundreds of Confederate Flags waving and the band playing Dixie. Some of my classmate's fathers  were members the Alabama National Guard bragged their fathers were going to Memphis to kill some N's. I remember being glad when the school day was finally over.
I will be glad when this day is over because it still feels like yesterday.

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.
In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.

On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King's casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.

On the 43th anniversary of that terrible and tragic day in our history, let's not forget why Dr. King was in Memphis in the first place. He was there fighting for economic justice for trash collectors in the city of Memphis. Fighting a battle for people who were downtrodden, overlooked and spit on by a city, and the white power structure that ran it.

Redeye's Interesting Reads and Rants for Interesting Times

This is not the Effing Hope and Change I worked for, donated to and voted for. How many @#!% jobs did the Bush tax cut for the rich create? ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. So why the heck is Bush, I mean Obama extending them for two more years? Are we not supposed to notice the Bush tax cuts are extended for two years, but unemployment insurance is only extended for 13 months? Former President Bill Clinton tried to tell us the Obama story was a fairy tail..of course the media we have twisted it into him playing the @#$ race card taking the focus off of the substance of his remarks.

During a December taping with PBS's Charlie Rose, a frustrated Clinton called Obama "a roll of the dice," as aides tried to end the interview. Then, in New Hampshire, he argued angrily that the story of Obama's principled position on the Iraq War was a "fairy tale," a charge few reporters bought. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking African-American in Congress and officially neutral, found Clinton's tone insulting and said so publicly.

I don't feel sorry for President Obama, I feel sorry for the American people.

Only fools should feel sorry for Obama as he prepares for a Republican-led House and weakened Democratic control of the Senate. This is Obama’s “comfort zone,” where he can continue to woo Republicans to join his grand center-right coalition. The only people Obama has no tolerance for are liberalish Democrats, who will emerge relatively stronger in the new Congress thanks to the decimation of Obama’s Republican-Lite friends in conservative Democratic ranks. By freezing federal wages, Obama signals that he has no philosophical problems with the GOP’s general aims.

To say I am disappointed in President Obama for compromising with the gop gangsters is an understatement. Like his Harvard buddy Artur Davis, he has ripped his drawers with me.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said over and over that he was running to "put an end to the Bush-McCain philosophy." Campaigning in Colorado just days before the election, Obama clearly stated his opposition to Bush-era economic policies and ridiculed the idea that "we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else. It’s a philosophy that gives tax breaks to wealthy CEOs and to corporations that ship jobs overseas while hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing here at home."

After months of breathless speculation 7th district Congress Critter elect Terri Sewell names Nichole Francis Reynolds as her Chief of Staff. I haven't been able to find out much information about Ms. Reynolds but I do know she is a native of Loraine Ohio, she is the former COS for OH-13 Congress Critter Betty Sutton and is a member of the populist caucus.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee 10 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The Alliance for Worker Freedom 0 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 61 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - Lifetime 58 percent during their legislative career up until 2008.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to American Forest and Paper Association's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 33 percent.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Associated General Contractors of America 71 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the International Warehouse Logistics Association 10 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers 20 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 In 2007-2008 National Federation of Independent Business gave Representative Sutton a rating of 56 in its 110th (2007-2008) Pre-Election Congressional Report.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to National Restaurant Association's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 40.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to National Retail Federation's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 20 percent.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Small Business Association 69 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association 70 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors-National Association 70 percent in 2007-2008.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The Alliance for Worker Freedom 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 55 percent in 2007.

1999-2000 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Ohio National Federation of Independent Business 25 percent in 1999-2000.

1995-1996 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce 43 percent in 1995-1996.

This coupled with the fact Reynolds was the District Director for former DINO Congress Critter Harold Ford, Jr. doesn't bode well for the voters in the 7th district. And couldn't Sewell have found a qualified individual from her district/state as her COS? Terri Sewell said she wasn't going to be a rubber stamp for President Obama, well here is her chance. She can vote HELL to the NO on the extension of the Bush tax cuts since he doesn't expect rubber stamp fealty in exchange for his endorsement.

Redeye Reads and Rants over and out.... to be continued when I can type without cussing.

Real Liberal Quotes from Real Liberals, for the Real Liberal Mind to Chew On

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"~President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election by saying as little as possible about what he might do if elected. Through even the closest working relationships, none of the president-elect’s most intimate associates felt they knew him well, with the exception perhaps of his wife, Eleanor. The affable, witty Roosevelt used his great personal charm to keep most people at a distance. In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use — of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.~Senator Robert F. Kennedy

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills — against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all.

"Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives, lessening human suffering, advancing the causes of peace and justice in our country and the world… Politics is what we create out of what we do, what we hope for, what we dare to imagine."~
Senator Paul Wellstone 1944-2002

I remember how he stood his ground in an era during which the needs of average Americans were largely ignored while power and money became even more concentrated in already wealthy, powerful hands; how he fought for economic justice, for universal health care, for a higher minimum wage and prescription drug benefits under Medicare; how he always had time to listen; how he challenged us, asking in The Conscience of a Liberal, ”How can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world and still hear from Republicans, and too many Democrats, that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?”; how he expressed concern for the safety of Muslim Americans after the 9-11 attacks; how he set aside an hour a week to talk with his interns to stay in touch with their lives; how he relied on and frequently sought the advice of his # 1 campaigner, his wife Sheila, who died with him; how he chose to run again despite the onset of multiple sclerosis, relying on his bubbling spirit to pick up the slack while the money poured in from out of state conservatives who were determined to bring him down; and how he was winning despite the efforts of corporations like the big pharmaceuticals that blessed his opponent with $200,000 while giving Wellstone $900 and change. Paul Wellstone was outspent time and again, but he was a winner because he played no favorites and was never outworked. Senator Tom Harken, Paul’s best friend and comrade through many Senate battles, fought back tears to say it best: “Paul was hampered by a bad back, but he had a backbone made of steel!”

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 1967.

I believe it will end with a ruling of the 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals or a ruling of the U. S, Supreme Court. If this can happen to me, it can happen to mayors, congressman or presidents who appoint or take some action favorable to a contributor.

My conviction is anti-American in the sense politics must be funded and presidents who are elected appoint contributors as ambassadors, members of Congress vote in favor of issues that benefit contributors and governors appoint contributors to all kinds of positions. This is done every day in America, in every state and in Washington, DC.~Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"~Fannie Lou Hammer

Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper, changed a nation's perspective on democracy.

Hamer became involved in the civil rights movement when she volunteered to attempt to register to vote in 1962. By then 45 years old and a mother, Hamer lost her job and continually risked her life because of her civil rights activism. Despite this and a brutal beating, Hamer spoke frequently to raise money for the movement, and helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to challenge white domination of the Democratic Party. In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic Convention, and in l968, the Convention seated an integrated challenge delegation from Mississippi.

Deeply committed to improving life for poor minorities in her state, Hamer, working with the National Council of Negro Women and others, helped organize food cooperatives and other services. She continued political activities as well, helping to convene the National Women's Political Caucus in the 1970s. She is buried in her home town of Ruleville, Mississippi, where her tombstone reads, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

"If you think Halloween is scary, don't vote on November 2nd and see how scary it will be"~Redeye

Happy 81st Birthday Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the day when America "honors" Dr. King on his birthday, let us not forget the reason he's not here to celebrate what would be his 81st birthday is because he was murdered in Memphis, TN in support of striking sanitation workers (aka garbage men). Dr. King didn't live to see his 81st birthday because he had the audacity to fight for African Americans to have the right to vote. Dr. King was murdered because he believed in peace not war. Dr. King was murdered just like President Abraham Lincoln was murdered for freeing black folk from the bondage of slavery. Dr. King was murdered just like President John F. Kennedy and his brother Senator Robert F. Kennedy because they dared believe all men and women were created equal.

So as we "celebrate" the legacy of Dr. King today, let us also remember why he died and what he died for. Some of the same Americans who praise King today are some of the same Americans who bombed his house and called him Martin Luther Coon and other derogatory names. Some of the same Americans who praise Dr. King in death, hounded and harassed him in life. Some of the same Americans who praise Dr. King today will attend a Tea Party protest tomorrow. The same politicians who honor Dr. King today will vote against health care reform tomorrow. The same elected officials who celebrate the legacy of Dr. King will vote to send our sons and daughters to war.

Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech will be played over and over again on his birthday. I choose to honor his birthday by remembering the speech he gave on the eve of his death and these prophetic words; I'm happy,tonight I'm not worried about anything, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Happy 81st birthday Dr. King. May you rest in the peace you were denied on earth.