"Fire and fury like the world has never seen before" #HeatherHeyer #CharlottesvilleVirginia

H/T DownWithTyrnny

Don't be a Chump 

The problem with the continued begging, ‘why won’t he denounce, why won’t he denounce’ is that at some point, maybe later today, President Trump will go before a podium and read off through gritted teeth a pro-forma denunciation of Nazis and it will seem to a lot of people like it means something when it doesn’t. He’s already made crystal clear where he stands here.

Profile in Cowardice 

It's hilarious to me how some folks (see white people) are shocked at what they are seeing in Charlottesville, Virginia They are openly wondering how we could have come to this. "We have taken a step back when it comes to race relations." Or, "What happened? We are a better country than this."
Ahhhm, no we are not.

Let the Hippie blaming begin 

Blaming the hippies for right-wing violence is a venerable conservative tradition.

We know Trump is in bed with White Supremacist 

When Steve Bannon was head of Breitbart News. He proudly referred to Breitbart as the “platform of the Alt-Right.” They have an even bigger platform now. Bannon whispers in Trump’s ear. Stephen Miller writes his speeches and Jeff Sessions enforces his laws. Sebastian Gorka is always willing to promote the White Nationalist agenda and defend Trump about never denouncing them.

Mike Pence is no better  

Pence defended Trump’s display of equanimity in blaming the people who stood up to hate and bigotry. After all, Donald Trump didn’t jump to the immediate conclusion that racist, swastika-wearing, Hitler-praising, club-wielding Nazis were the bad guys at Charlottesville.

Many sides aren't palling around with Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, and racist

The First Amendment protects your execrable spewage. But it also protects mine and I will not be cowed or silenced by your terrorism. I and others will shame you, shun you, and make sure you lose your jobs and job opportunities. We will out you for vile subhumans that you are. You are few and we are many and we will not stop until you crawl back into the sewer from which you slithered and where you belong and the heavy lid that Donald Trump removed is put back in place.
To paraphrase our president, we will rain down non-violent fire and fury on you like the world has never seen.
You will NOT be allowed to terrorize us and you will NOT rise to power in the United States of America.

Heather Heyer is the Viola Luzzio of our times 

Heather Heyer

Yesterday was a day to remember - that I'm trying to forget. The capper on the day of the worst racist riot on American soil in generations was when some psychotic little bozo named James Alexander Fields plowed his automobile at full speed into a crowd of hundreds, injuring twenty-seven and killing a young woman named Heather Heyer. To the best of my knowledge, she is the first white woman to be martyred in the name of civil rights since Detroit school teacher Viola Liuzzo was gunned down by the KKK in March of 1965.

Tell Congress to #RestoreTheVote

EYE am sick and tired of being sick and tired of the media enabled  fake outrage , and demands for a DOJ investigation, after Alabama closed 31 DMV offices in mostly poor, rural counties with majority African-American populations. under the guise of saving money.

EYE am sick and tired of the pretense and hand wringing. Let's get real. This is #Sweet Home Alabama people.

The home of Jimmie Lee Jackson.
The Home of some First Class Funerals. 
The Home of Viola Luzzio.
The Home of Amelia Boynton Robinson.
The Home of Bull Conner. 
The Cradle of the Confederacy. 
 he Home of Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever.
The Home of Shelby Co. vs Holder. 
The Home of Selma.
It's not rocket science.

Talk is cheap. Now is the time to put up or shut up. Instead of calling for investigations after the fact, call on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act. Instead of complaining about the results after enabling the results, call on the Alabama State Legislature to repeal the Voter ID Bill.

We must strongly encourage both Houses of the U.S. Congress to enact strong legislation to restore, strengthen and modernize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when they return to Washington, D.C. after the November election for the “lame duck” session. We need to ensure that Americans’ right to vote is not compromised!

Action We Should Take >>

I wonder why some white Alabamians are having a hard time separating fact from fiction in #Selma the movie?

No, I have not seen #Selma yet.  Am I going to see the movie?  I haven't decided.  As someone who lived through those dark difficult days I'm not anxious to relive them.  Yes, I know it's fiction based on factual history, but I don't know If I can relive the horror, the fear, the terrorism, the injustice, and the brutality all over again.  It's just to painful, and I don't want to be bitter, for lack of a better word. 

Evidently some (not to be confused with all) white Alabamians are finding the movie hard to watch too.  Poor George Wallace Jr., and Cecil Williamson, Selma City Council Vice-President are in a state of denial and can't separate fact from fiction.  According them the movie is full of inaccuracies and Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt needlessly changed history in order to tell what was an already compelling story in "Selma."

What inaccuracies are they talking about?  They are the ones, enabled by the white male dominated media,  trying to rewrite history. 

Here is a reminder of the shock and shame of Alabama history for those who were there, and a lesson for those who weren't there. Watch, read, listen, and learn.

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it"  Edmund Burke

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of Medgar Evers

 

Once Upon a Time in America

Fifty years ago today Medgar Evers was gunned down by a white supremacist. His crime? 

Bit by bit, Evers cultivated community resistance against inequity. He made bumper stickers, led protests and investigated vigilante violence, such as the murder of Emmett Till.
As Evers’ accomplishments grew, so did the determination of white supremacists to stop him. On the night of June 12, a member of the White Citizens’ Council shot Evers in the back as he walked from his car to his home. The murder took place just hours after President Kennedy had given a powerful speech supporting civil rights.
Evers’ death was but one violent act among many committed by segregationists who were set on stopping the movement. Community organizers acknowledged the danger, but continued to build the movement at the local level. In so doing, they ultimately overcame this violent opposition. Their individual courage made universal change possible.

Ironically the Roberts Court is poised to strike down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act Evers and others lost their lives fighting for  any day now.  Even more ironic is the fact the case was bought before the court on  behalf of  Shelby County Alabama  ,which happens to be represented by none other than Alabama State  Senator Scott (Aborigines) Beason.

Shelby County is involved in a United States Supreme Court case in the current session challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County’s argument is one, essentially, of equal protection. While emphasizing the progress the South has made, they further the argument that if every district is not covered by Section Five’s preclearance requirement, none can be. Mr. Rein, the attorney for Shelby County, argues that the formula of the 1965 VRA deciding which States to cover is not tailored to today’s situation—that it was a formula made for 1965, and should therefore not be applied today. Essentially, that Shelby County should be left alone to do run their elections however they wish in their own backyard.

Well, we all know how that will turn out .

Well, I’m going to be real honest with you: The Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9 to 1 for Democrats.

 MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and others are planning a caravan across Alabama on June 14 to encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to save a major portion of the Voting Rights Act.

In honor of Myrna Copeland, the finest democratic woman I know

I'm trying to remember if I told Mryna Copeland she was one of my Shero's .  I hope I did, because she was right up there with Viola Luizzio  in my book.  She was a privileged, white woman who used her position of privilege and power  to fight for equal rights, civil rights and human rights for all people.

On a personal note, Myrna was, in my Daddy's words, his buddy.  She drove him to Eutaw, Alabama in Greene County, in her car in the Spring of 1970, along with Dr. John Cashin and others, to introduce him to the community and the School Board when he was named Superintendent of the Green County School System.  Dad says he was scared to death to be riding in the car with a white woman in Alabama at night in 1970, but Myrna was not. My Dad would have been the first African American School Superintendent in the nation if it had been embroiled in the same racial politics that prevail in Alabama and the nation today, and the racial politics Myrna devoted her life to fighting.

It's so like Myrna to be found dead at the health food store she founded and operated for 40 years appropriately named the Pearly Gates.  She died as she lived.  Fighting the good fight.  We will miss her vital presence, her courage, her sense of humor and her comittment to making this world a better place for all of God's people.

 HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- She was considered a woman of strong will, and she had to be to do all that she did during one of the most socially turbulent periods in the history of the Deep South.She was a white woman, one of the few from Alabama, who marched from Selma to Montgomery, belonged to the NAACP and attended strategy sessions at the home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Late in her life, she still lived by the motto she had adopted when she was active in the civil rights movement: "Not to have taken part in the actions and passions of your time is to have never lived.''

Rest in the peace you deserve for a life well lived beyond the Pearly Gates.

The Right to Vote Today. The Right to Vote Tomorrow. The Right to Vote Forever.

THE SIXTEENTH STREET Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."


In light of former Alabama Congress Critter Artur Davis' baseless accusation black voters commit wholesale voter fraud without impunity I am cross posting a diary I composed during my tenure at Left in Alabama on the anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act. Links updated.

On this day in 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D. Texas) signed the National Voting Rights Act. For my fellow Americans who've always had the right and the privilege to vote today may not be a big deal to you, but to me and mine it's a very big deal.

The right to vote is sacred to African Americans. I know it sounds cliche, but it's steeped in blood, sweat, tears, courage and sacrifice. That's why we don't think Voter Suppression with the State Seal of Approval is funny. It's why we shake our heads at the tough Voter ID Laws enacted by red republican state legislatures. It's why we get weep silently when real voter fraud/suppression gets a slap on the wrist, and the imagined voter fraud is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It's like pre 1965 all over again.

My paternal grandparents were allowed to vote in the 1940's because they were educated/educators. They were teachers at what was known then as the Veterans Continuation School (pre GI Bill), a federal program designed for veterans returning home from the war to continue their education.

The classes were held at night and they a stipend. One of the classes they taught was how to pass the Literacy test. My grandparents were also exempt from paying the $2.00 poll tax because they taught at the school. So you see,  black veterans returning home from war, didn't have the full rights and privileges they fought for others to  have overseas.

My maternal grandfather could vote because as my mother says "he worked in the mines" and he was grandfathered in because his father "worked in the mines". My maternal grandmother cast her first vote after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She was a Republican because "Lincoln freed the slaves". As much as we tried to tell her that was the Republican party of yesterday, she was loyal to the Republican party until the day she died.

My parents cast their first votes right here in Madison County in the 1950's. Although it was pre Voting Rights Act, they didn't have to pay a poll tax or take a literacy test. I remember my Daddy taking me to the Madison County Courthouse to register to vote on my 18th birthday, and my younger siblings on their 18th birthday. It's a rite of passage I continued with my own offspring.

Today is in honor of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D. Texas) for having the courage to do the right thing. It's in honor of Viola Luzzio, who was murdered after the Selma to Montgomery March. Today we honor the memories of Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Denise McNair, Carol Robinson, Addie Mae Collins and Carol Wesley.

Some GOP members of congress believed the National Voting Rights Act is "over reaching" and objected to renewing it in 2006. Fortunately they were over ruled and the Voting Rights Act was extended for another 25 years.

In July 2006, 41 years after the Voting Rights Act passed, renewal of the temporary provisions enjoyed bi-partisan support. However, a number of Republican lawmakers acted to amend, delay or defeat renewal of the Act for various reasons. One group of lawmakers, led by Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland came from some preclearance states, and claimed that it was no longer fair to target their states, given the passage of time since 1965, and the changes their states had made to provide fair elections and voting.

Another group of 80 legislators supported an amendment offered by Steve King of Iowa, seeking to strip provisions from the Act that required that translators or multilingual ballots be provided for U.S. citizens who do not speak English.[5] The "King letter" said that providing ballots or interpreters in multiple languages is a costly, unfunded mandate.

Will the National Voting Rights Act need to be extended another 25 years? I don't know, but based on current GOP/conservative sentiment it sure looks like it.

Addendum

The real reason that I oppose the Republican Party has nothing to do with my being a Democrat. I'm not. I'm an independent, with no political party. I don't oppose the Republicans in order to support the Democrats, I oppose the Republicans because the kind of people who perpetrated the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing have joined the GOP. Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Nixon's Southern Strategy, these people were loyal Democrats, partly because of the New Deal but mostly because of Reconstruction and the Civil War. When the Democratic Party split along sectional lines in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act, the Republicans reached out to the disaffected Southern Democrats, encouraged them to join the GOP. The party did not change the Dixiecrats, the Dixiecrats changed the party.

Whatever political party draws its strength from these people is the party I'm going to work to defeat.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth will be laid to rest today

In memory and honor the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth I am turning the floor over to two great posts written by two great Alabama Bloggers.

Mack Lyons pens an excellent account of Birmingham, Alabama Fred Shuttlesworth who fought like the Devil to change. Here is an excerpt;

While reading an AL.com story about concerned citizens meeting to discuss and plan Birmingham's future, I ran across this nugget that's a bit of a theme among some dissatisfied with the Magic City's current shape:

They should talk about B'ham's past (pre 1963). A lot more pleasant.
Be nice if they could revert back to that time. I just don't see it happening, which is why I left.

I've never known any black person from Birmingham to talk pleasant about the city as a whole pre-1960s, unless it involved their own neighborhoods. That kinda narrows down the pool of people most likely to say the above, trolls excluded.

The Simple-Minded Savior talks about the present state of Alabama.

I was born and raised in this God forsaken state and it IS still stuck in the 50's and 60's. It's not a stereotype and why anyone would want to visit here is beyond me. Oh yeah, they can come visit and see what main attraction? The CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM...Some parts of the interstate still have a confederate flag flying high and proud so what's he talking about? And the fact that one of the State Legislators called Black people "ABORIGINES" on tape and it was part of a trial transcript makes no never mind. Yeah, you're right, Alabama has not one racial problem, it's a beacon of hope, a melting pot of sorts for the nation. This State, Alabama, should be held out as the example of how loving a state should be. *sarcasm* If Jesus came back right now and came to an Alabama suburb, he would be labeled a dead beat liberal hippie and crucified a second time.

Let these diaries serve as an incentive to march on until victory is won in grateful appreciation for the sacrifices of

Reverend Shuttlesworth

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Four Little Black Girls

Viola Luizzo

Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Their living will not be in vain.


Funeral Services for Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth will bestreaming live beginning today at 10 a.m.

Rest in Peace thy good and faithful Servant. Your faithfulness endures for all generations Psalm 119:90