Occupy Wall Street

I have to be honest here, I just don't get Occupy Wall Street. When it started up, I was geeked.  I was ready to join up and finally get something done about the dysfunction in DC. Occupy Wall Street seemed like the perfect laxative to end the constipation that is American government.

An alternative to the Democratic Party....dare I dream?

I jumped downtown on public transportation and into Piatt Park...and … it didn't feel like a protest....felt like a bunch of kids who got together and were now sitting around asking each other...”well...what do you want to do?....I don't know...What do you want to do?”

I went home.....They mean well...but they don't know what to do. A few weeks in...Jessie came to town and did the “I am somebody shuffle” for them. Made em happy...many more Black people showed up....but left when Jessie did......OWS still on their butts, camped out in Piatt Park.

Several weeks into these so called protests, I'm sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting....and watching and waiting...and watching and waiting..

What am I waiting for....well, I guess I'm waiting for something to happen...like...protest maybe...like civil disobedience maybe....like mass arrests for, well protesting instead of sitting on your ass in a public park, playing drums.

Protesting to me is not pitching a tent in a public park and waiting for someone in power to take notice.

This time around... I don't have the luxury of youth on my side....If I take to the streets now and risk getting smacked upside the head or jailed...It's going to have to be worth it....real change....for everybody.....I don't see that with OWS...not yet...

Protesting for change, to me is pitching your tent on someone's desk...in someone's hallway.... or on someone's front steps...demanding they talk to you...or...call the cops to arrest your ass for interrupting their day.

You post bail...you go to the hospital and get your wounds treated...and you come back..You don't take time off to celebrate holidays with your parents in the burbs.

Sitting in a public park under a tent, under the watchful eyes of cops....seems more like a temper tantrum...something to do...until your parents give into your demands.

You need to earn your tear gas and pepper spray...sitting there reacting to over reacting pigs is not protest...ghandi-esque....picturesque...useless..

It's safe....it's “look at me, world...I'm taking a stand to change the world...sorta”

Safe....but not effective.

OWS is on the tongues of nearly everyone nationwide. It has seized the opportunity...but it doesn't know how to harness the power....and it is not reaching out to those who do know how to make it work..

Like I said, Jessie showed up in Cincinnati. Angela Davis made an appearance in Oakland.

MlK's peaceful protestors needed the counterpoint of the Black Panther Party, the SDS (students for a democratic society), CORE and SNCC to make it's point.

OWS just has OWS...no leaders...no one apparently willing to take the heat and lead..OWS is not reaching out to form coalitions....

It is complaining because Congress won't do the bipartisan thing...well....OWS is not being very bipartisan either...instead of waiting for the church to come to you...why not go to the church?

Folks are watchin...but OWS...just sits there and drums..

Brown Shirt Patriotism

Now I know what it must have been like to be a jew and to watch Hitler lash out from his podium in Nazi Germany while watching Sarah Palin and John McCain whip up their crowds into mouth frothing frenzy using code words and innuendo. I saw it first hand Wednesday, when Palin landed in Wilmington Ohio, home of the Sarah Palin corn maze.

After introducing her kids, she slammed into her brand of attack politics while her people shouted insults at each mention of Obama’s name. It was a very scary feeling to see and hear such vitriolic fervor in the name of patriotism. The xenophobic hatred was palpable inside the Roberts Center.

The Republican Party continues to ignore the fact that America is not a monolithic culture of European descended, fundamentalist practicing immigrants. This country really is a melting pot of many cultures, many beliefs, many backgrounds, many origins. If John McCain was really serious about country first, he would speak out against this anger. He would tell his people to cool it with the nastiness. Same with Palin. But it’s obvious that this campaign is about control and power and not people or country. McCain’s silence speaks volumes about where his head really is.

I’m old enough to have heard Martin Luther King called a troublemaker, seen him beaten, spit upon and thrown in jail because he chose to disagree with the vanilla majority. I can recall as if it were yesterday the names of the people lynched, shot, beaten and mutilated because they tried to vote or tried to register others to vote. I remember when sitting at a lunch counter or attempting to gain entrance to Coney Island’s swimming pool, right here in Cincinnati, would get you arrested for disorderly conduct.

Chills literally played up and down my spine as I listened to Palin nearly drowned out by the chants of her joe six pack crowd. The contrast with the Obama rally earlier in the day was startling. No one took McCain’s nor Palin’s name in vain. No one attempted to link them to dubious folks from their pasts and they do have them. Palin sleeps with a homegrown terrorist...her husband Todd. McCain’s POW story is not quite as heroic as he would have you believe.

And I’m not mad at young blacks who want to be members of the GOP. I applaud them for their fortitude, because I believe that the only way to change the republican party is from within. Neither party will change unless forced to. The Democratic Party is learning. The GOP and its followers are still struggling with diversity. I have always felt they fear that we minorities will do to them what they have historically done to us. But if they truly looked at the civil rights struggle they would know that we simply want a piece of the pie not a piece of their hide, although we would be well justified in taking it.

Gandhi, MLK, and now Barack are preaching to “turn the other cheek” and so we will again.

Buddha says be the change you want to be...and so I will.....

© 2008 Jo Anne Moore, JAM Publications

A Dream Deferred, No Longer...

We are on the verge of something this country and the world has never before experienced. What Dr. King gave voice to 45 years ago, is nearing fruition. Before we go forward with Obama, tonight, we need to look back, one more time and remember....

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. August 28th, 1963...March on Washington

1968

This is the week that Bobby Kennedy was killed back in 1968. I was 17. My pending graduation from high school should have been the highlight of that year for me. But I remember going to bed elated that Kennedy was winning in the California primary, only to awake to news of his death. I was devastated, again.

I was still reeling from the death of Martin Luther King, only a couple of months before.

I was devastated, emotionally with this latest blow, but also angry, very, angry.

The morning after Martin was killed, I erupted in history class after one of my classmates stated matter of factly, that she didn’t understand what all the fuss was about...he was just a troublemaker, she said. I was the only black in the class, one of just four in the graduating class...the only female.

I exploded, lashed out at my white classmates and stormed out of the room. I was mad and didn’t care what they thought. I hated every one of them. I was not tossed out of school. I was not suspended. Instead, my teacher, a white man, let it be. He found me where I had gone to stew and just let me talk. And after I vented, he never mentioned it again. My classmates quickly forgot, too. We just steered clear of anything dealing with civil rights. Since black history wasn’t a part of the curriculum when I was in school, it wasn’t too hard to ignore.

But me, I stayed angry. Hell, I’m still angry. I guess you could say I woke up...really woke up. I am truly surprised, but as I write these words, I can still taste the bitterness through the tears in 2008. Funny, you think you put things behind you, but it seems the door on that closet never really locks, and the memories come spilling out at the least bit of incentive.

The anniversary of RFK’s death pushed the door open again. He was more than a shadow of his big brother. He was new hope for the people. I still believed in government and non corrupt politicians, at that time. Maybe Camelot was still alive with Bobby. But it wasn’t meant to be. Fresh off his victory, he was gunned down in a kitchen by Sirhan, Sirhan who is serving time for the killing, or by the security guard, if you believe conspiracy theories.

Teddy became the man, but then, he screwed up at Chappaquidick and it seemed that Camelot was finally buried for good. I went from devastated, to angry to cynical. My innocence was gone. But I guess that is what growing up really is.

1968 was the year I grew up. I graduated high school, entered college and proclaimed my civil rights radicalism, amidst the deaths of my heroes. A part of me died with them. But a better me goes on. Rest in peace, RFK, MLK, and 1968.

My Granddad was Republican

The issue of my grandfather’s political affiliation came up when one of my uncles got into politics by running for city council. My uncle ran as a democrat. My grandfather always voted. He could barely read and write due to his rural Kentucky upbringing. But he was a very smart man. He just never went to school. He read the newspapers everyday and was the greatest story teller I have ever known. He never said he was a republican, but all my older relatives said he was.

I suspect they were also republicans in that time and place. At that time, the republican party was not referred to as the GOP. It was, really the party of Abraham Lincoln. And it would make sense back in the day for Blacks to be republican rather than democrat.

By the time I was born and grew to adulthood, it did not make sense for Blacks to be republican. When I came of age, the Dixiecrats, southern racists, die hard segregationists, angry at the move to integrate this country, abandoned the democratic party and hijacked the republican party to make it what it is today. The Grand Old Party, home of the Christian conservative right wing.

I bring all this up because a black group of conservative republicans is running radio ads stating that Martin Luther King was a republican. The ads have outraged black liberals, democrats and those who marched with the slain civil rights leader. From an historical standpoint that may have been true. But Martin’s party affiliation was not what was important.

What was important was the color of his skin, period.

The good ole boys who ran rampant in the south in the later part of the 20th century didn’t walk up to a Black person and ask them what political party they were affiliated with, before they turned the dogs loose, or shot them, or beat them or hung them from the nearest tree.

Skin color was it, nothing else counted.

Hell, we weren’t considered smart enough to know the difference between political parties in the first place. Anyone who did was considered “uppity.” You know the term, “uppity nigger.”

Party affiliation only mattered for white people because they have the luxury of telling you what party they belong to. They are camouflaged at birth by their skin color.

Doesn’t matter with us. No matter what you did, doctor, lawyer, merchant, thief....you were still a nigger, first and foremost.

That’s what got you killed, not being a republican or democrat.

A message for my black right wing Christian conservative brothers and sisters....you have to know history, before you can use it to justify your perverted stance against your people.