NAACP Supports Democrats over Black people?

During a conversation between Fox News’ Kelly Wright and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley, an interesting dialogue emerged about the NAACP.  While I am not one to spend much time pretending that the majority of conversations on Fox News actually make sense, this one got my attention.

Wright and Riley asked whether or not the NAACP’s snap endorsement of President Barack Obama’s support for gay marriage was driven by their loyalty toward Obama or by the desires of its membership.  Riley, who seems like one of those folks who might be in a hurry to dismantle the NAACP, argued that the organization’s leadership has put its loyalty toward the president ahead of the concerns of its members.

I am not with Riley in extrapolating this peculiar political move to imply that the NAACP has lost the bulk of its value.  But any fool can see that the NAACP’s endorsement of gay marriage was in direct response to President Obama’s announcement.  Any claim by the organization that their statement “just happened” to occur right after Obama’s announcement is absolute nonsense.   As a supporter of gay marriage myself, I can say that we were all talking about the issue because President Obama started the conversation.

The NAACP could have handled the Obama/gay marriage issue by simply remaining silent (as did the Urban League).  Instead, its leadership drew a line in the sand which positioned its interests to be in alignment with the Democratic liberal machine.  Money and power were the rule of the day here, and the members of the organization were not important in the NAACP’s perpetual quest to maintain good relations with King Obama.

For those who don’t know, here’s how things are working right now in the relationship between the White House and the Black community: The Obama Administration gives us its agenda and tells us to fulfill it.  The administration understands clearly that the black vote is relevant for re-election, but not relevant enough to use valuable resources to improve the lives of African Americans directly.

So, when Obama makes an announcement that is not in the interest of the majority of the black community (i.e. gay marriage), the administration gets on the Bat Phone to find African American public figures who are willing to force feed the Kool-Aid to the masses.  Massive liberal media platforms like MSNBC are enlisted as the launching pads of propaganda, where church-going Black folks are then described as illiterate Neanderthals who need liberal White people to think for us.  Those willing to share the message are rewarded in numerous ways:  Appearances by Obama at their events, their own television shows/segments and other behind-the-scenes goodies that people get for playing for the liberal team.  Truth becomes the enemy in this form of dysfunctional cronyism, and we should all be sickened by it.

The administration’s agenda is not presented to the Black community in a respectful sharing of ideas.  Rather, it is pushed forward in a manner reminiscent of how African dictators would squash protesters to protect the interests of foreign oil companies.  Those who have anything unpopular to say are told to remain dumb and silent — or called Uncle Toms for not supporting every move by the brother in the White House.   The collective political IQ of Black America dropped by 30 points after the election of President Obama, for freedom of thought and expression were quickly tossed to the wayside.

I am not one to call out those who use their leverage in Black America to make themselves into de-facto employees of the Obama Administration, because it’s quite clear who they are.  Basically, anyone you see who claims to be a Black leader but refuses to ever critique the actions of the Obama Administration is effectively working on behalf of the administration to get negroes in line with their agenda. The problem with this form of politics is that the lesson for the powers-that-be in Washington is that you don’t have to do anything for all Black people collectively;  instead, you only have to make sure its leadership is in your pocket.  As a case-in-point, you should notice how the rulers of many African countries are wealthy from foreign corporations, while the people remain in dire poverty.  The same idea is being applied right here in the US.

The factors I’ve described explain why the NAACP suddenly spoke up in support of gay marriage, even though it was in direct misalignment with the majority of its members.   The Black McCarthyism that has come into existence since the rise of President Obama should be disturbing to us all, because heavily non-Democratic forces are being used to support Democratic power.  Anyone who questions the administration or brings up legitimate concerns (i.e. poverty , mass incarceration, educational inequality, economic inequality) is immediately assaulted by one of the hired goons of the administration who has taken responsibility for keeping Black folks silent.  This does not increase our freedom as a people, it reduces it.

One can’t help but be disappointed that NAACP leadership has signed on for the Black oppression program, for its commitment to the advancement of Black people should supersede its loyalty toward any politician.  The NAACP is at its best when it is truly non-partisan, and has no permanent friends or enemies (see Colin Powell as a great example).  Only our interests should be permanent, and those interests should be related to the advancement of Black people.  Given that many of our leaders have rented themselves out to the liberal machine, it might be time for a mutiny.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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“No, it’s not. Come home. Please come home,” his wife, Cheryl Buswell-Robinson, recalled begging of him.

The black activist and follower of Martin Luther King Jr. never made it home to Bogue Chitto, Ala. He was declared dead, but his body never was found and little is known about what happened. Not knowing has haunted Buswell-Robinson and the couple’s three children for nearly 40 years.

The United States government handles investigations on reservations. Minneapolis-based FBI spokesman Kyle Loven said the Robinson case is a pending investigation, so federal prosecutors and investigators can’t discuss it.

Buswell-Robinson, 67, flew into Sioux Falls from Detroit on Thursday ahead of a conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1973 American Indian Movement takeover of the Pine Ridge reservation village of Wounded Knee.

She’s not looking for arrests or prosecutions. She just wants to know where her husband’s body is so she can give him a proper burial.

“People have information as to where his body is buried,” she said.

Two Native Americans were confirmed to have died during the 1973 siege, and rumors of other deaths persist. FBI documents that now are public suggest the possibility of people buried at Wounded Knee during the occupation. There’s no mention of Robinson in the FBI correspondence, but two documents reveal the presence of two black people toward the end of the standoff:

- On May 5, 1973, a transcript of an interview with a man who claimed to be at Wounded Knee the week prior stated “he heard that one black man and one black woman had recently arrived.”

- A May 21, 1973, FBI memo reported an Indian woman who left the village on April 20, 1973, counted 200 Indians, 11 whites and two blacks.

Buswell-Robinson said those two were most likely Robinson and a black woman from Alabama who went with him. The woman returned after the standoff; Robinson didn’t.

Buswell-Robinson filed a missing person’s report with the FBI and in October 1974 traveled to Rapid City and the AIM headquarters in St. Paul, Minn., but said she learned nothing about what happened to her husband. In the years after Robinson’s disappearance, she corresponded with writer and political activist Barbara Deming.

In a letter dated Dec. 29, 1974, Buswell-Robinson wrote that she had been told Robinson backpacked into Wounded Knee at night and was later shot for not following an order to immediately report to AIM co-founder Dennis Banks.

AIM member Richard Two Elk of Denver told The Associated Press in 2004 that he had seen someone shoot Robinson in the knees, but the reason was because he had refused to pick up a gun and was constantly annoying people in the bunker. Two Elk declined an email request from the AP this week to talk further about the incident.

Banks, in a telephone interview Thursday, said he can’t recall ever meeting Robinson. He said the only recollection of Robinson he has is when his family visited AIM in St. Paul to ask for information.

“Over the years, the Robinson name has popped up and I’m not sure even who would have that information or where it was,” Banks told the AP. “That’s a complete blank to me.”

Banks said there was no formal AIM investigation into the disappearance of Robinson or anyone else during Wounded Knee.

“We never conducted any, like, major search for anybody that was missing, just except by word of mouth, `Did you guys ever see this or that?’ That’s as far as I know and that’s as far as it went,” he said.

Clyde Bellecourt, another AIM co-founder, said he wasn’t in Wounded Knee in April 1973. He left a month or so earlier to form the Wounded Knee Legal Defense-Offense Committee and act as AIM’s spokesman.

“I’ve heard some rumors about this Robinson thing, but supposedly that happened a long time after I was gone, if anything did happen,” he said. “Nobody’s ever talked to me about it implicating anybody or even said it’s happened.”

Perry Ray Robinson Jr. was born Sept. 12, 1937. He was in Washington in 1963 for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and attended the 1964 funeral of three white civil rights workers killed in Mississippi.

In 1968, Robinson was among the protesters who set up Resurrection City, a camp at the Washington Mall.

Robinson likely was at Wounded Knee for just a day, but Buswell-Robinson is surprised so many AIM members don’t remember him. The personable 6-foot-2 black man with a deep baritone voice would have stood out on a Midwest American Indian reservation, she said.

Robinson’s nonviolent approach probably was not well received at what was a violent situation, and it’s possible AIM members incorrectly suspected he was a federal informant, Buswell-Robinson said. It’s also likely he dealt with some racism, she said.

“I’m hoping that AIM people can look in their hearts and realize this was a good man. This is a brother,” Buswell-Robinson said. “This is a man that was willing to give his life for justice for what’s right.”

She said she traveled to the conference from her current home in Detroit because she’d like to talk to AIM leaders, anyone who was at Wounded Knee and the two women who ran the clinic where Robinson may have been taken.

At the least, she wants to get the Wounded Knee record corrected so it acknowledges her husband’s presence.

“Maybe that’s the best I can hope for, that in the official record Ray’s name won’t be excluded,” Buswell-Robinson said. “Because right now, it’s like he never existed.”

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Rev. Addie Wyatt

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The trailblazing Wyatt, who died of undisclosed illness two days after being admitted to Advocate Trinity Hospital, spent her life fighting against gender and racial discrimination in the workplace.

She was an integral participant and leader in the major Civil Rights marches and her adept ability to organize was employed by six presidents, according to an ABC 7 Chicago news report.

For example, Eleanor Roosevelt even selected her to serve on President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Born in March 28, 1924, in Brookhaven, Miss., Wyatt moved to Chicago in 1930 and married Claude S. Wyatt Jr. in 1940. By 1955, she became an ordained pastor and cofounded Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago’s South Side with her husband who died last April after 69 years of marriage.

But Wyatt’s commitment to social justice will perhaps be her most lasting legacy as she parlayed a meatpacking plant job into rising through the union ranks to become the first female vice president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

She was also a founder of the National Organization for Women. And Wyatt and her husband often marched with Dr. Mart Luther King Jr. who later commissioned her to help start Operation Breadbasket, a program operating in 12 cities that helped distribute food. The organization later grew into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, according to a UPI report.

In 1975, TIME named her one of the magazine’s “Women of the Year.”

Maude McKay, 74, the Rev. Wyatt’s sole surviving sibling, told the Chicago Sun-Times:

“She always believed in being fair and honest, and she stood for what was right. She just couldn’t take injustice.”

Watch this ABC 7 Chicago news video about her life and legacy:

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

Lanier W. Phillip

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The great grandson of a Georgia slave, Phillips story is a fascinating one.  He was raised in the segregated south in the 1920′s and 30′s, where the lynching of Black men was a sport, but then again, they also resorted to burning them alive, beating them to death or just riddling them with bullets.  The white supremacists gang, the Ku Klux Klan, reigned supreme and used terrorist tactics to suppress Black people.  Blacks were disdainfully referred to as ‘n***ers,’ had limited rights and were segregated from Whites.  Blacks were separated from Whites at schools, in public places and on public transportation.  Blacks were denied access to parks, beaches, picnic areas, and from many hospitals. Politically, Blacks were powerless.  Segregation was supported by law enforcement and the legal system.

Blacks were less than second class citizens at the time that Phillips was growing up.  He belonged to a race of people who faced discrimination in housing, jobs, and who were even given curfews in some areas.  Phillips was raised to never look a White person in the face.  He was deathly afraid of them because he had witnessed their wrath against his people.  Since he had struggled with so much oppression in his life, his heart was filled with hate for those who were his oppressors.

In an effort to flee the confinements of his surroundings, Phillips made the decision to join the U.S. Navy in 1941 at the age of 18.  Even though the Navy was still segregated, he weighed his options and went with the naval branch where blacks were relegated to mess attendants.

On February 18, 1942, Phillips was aboard the U.S.S. Truxtun and a fierce storm caused it and a supply ship the U.S.S. Pullox to get shipwrecked off the southeast coast of the Canadian province Newfoundland in a tiny town called St. Lawrence.  A total of 100 men died in the devastation but Phillips was amongst the 46 sailors who survived.

Phillips’ body was washed ashore and was covered head to toe in black oil.  When he opened his eyes he saw a group of White people, who had assembled to help the survivors.  A White man with an accent spoke to him in a kind way and tried to help him by walking him over to a fire for warmth.  Phillips was taken aback that a White person had spoken to him so politely and offered to help him.  “I had never heard a kind word from a White man in my life, and I had hatred for White men,” he told the Washington Post two years ago.

A miner’s wife, Violet Pike, then offered to wipe his face to remove the thick oil that covered it.  Phillips was petrified that the woman, upon wiping his face, would see that he was in fact a Black men and the kindness would end abruptly.  Instead, Pike took Phillips to her home to care for him.  She even spoon fed him broth until he had recovered full circle.

The sailor’s perception of White people changed after his experience in Newfoundland.  He came to the realization that not all White people had hate in their hearts for him.  He was profoundly touched by the kindness of the White people in the town and never forgot their kindness over the years.  These caring White people had managed to melt away the hatred and fears he long harbored in his heart for them.

The life-changing event altered Phillips perception of Blacks, Whites and equality.  It fueled him to want to bring about change for his people, so he began his crusade to fight against oppression.  As a prominent civil rights figure, Phillips found himself marching side-by-side with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He also broke ground by becoming the Navy’s first Black sonar technician.  Phillips throughout the years wanted to repay the towns people’s kindness toward him, so he managed to donate enough monies so that a playground could be built in the town of 1,000 residents.

Phillips was also an eloquent lecturer who traveled the country giving speeches about his life and of the turning point.  In 2008, he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Newfoundland for his lifelong dedication to civil rights.  On February 18 of this year, Phillips traveled back to St. Lawrence to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the disaster.

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The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision halts two sections that would “make it a felony for an illegal immigrant to do business with the state” and “courts can’t enforce contracts involving illegal immigrants.”

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The law has been challenged in both Arizona and Georgia by the U.S. Supreme Court and various activist groups.

“We are very pleased that the Eleventh Circuit understood the harms these provisions were causing in Alabama, and saw fit to enjoin them,” said the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Sam Brooke, who argued before the panel last week. “This is a great day for the residents of our state.”

Alabama, a state known for it’s propensity to suppress civil rights, is of course contesting the move:

“I will continue to vigorously defend Alabama’s immigration law in the courts,” said Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange. “I am hopeful that the Supreme Court’s coming decision in the Arizona case will make clear that our law is constitutional.”

According to the Associated Press, Arizona’s strict immigration laws are the catalyst for the pending law:

After Arizona adopted its tough law in 2010, five other states – Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah – adopted variations on it last year, with Alabama’s widely considered the toughest in the nation. All five laws have been challenged by coalitions of civil rights and immigrant rights groups, and the federal government has sued to block those in Alabama, South Carolina and Utah.

The conservative states claim that they have had to make these moves because the federal government refused to act.

“He looked like a redneck,” said Philip Hirschkop, a lawyer who soon recognized his mistake — Loving was actually a pioneer for racial equality.

The white bricklayer from Virginia defied stereotypes and centuries of racist laws when he married Mildred Jeter, who was black and Native American. Convicted of violating a law against interracial marriage, the Lovings fought for their rights and won a landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down such bans nationwide.

Their lives are explored in a new documentary, “The Loving Story,” which premieres Tuesday on HBO.

Today, there are more than 4 million “mixed marriages” in the United States, and roughly one in seven new marriages are between people of different ethnicities. But in 1958, when the Lovings’ marriage was ruled illegal and they were banished from their native Virginia, 21 states outlawed interracial unions.

“The Loving Story” details the couple’s nine-year battle to live in Virginia as man and wife. Using evocative photographs, newly unearthed footage and interviews with the Lovings’ daughter and lawyers, the film reveals the power of love to overcome bigotry.

“I came to respect Mildred and Richard so much,” said the film’s director and producer, Nancy Buirski. “I think these people had such high standards and strong principles and in many ways they defied stereotypes.”

“You don’t have to be an activist to change history,” Buirski said. “You just have to believe strongly in something.”

Richard and Mildred grew up near each other in rural Virginia. They courted for a few years before getting married in Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1958, then returned home to live near their families.

On July 14, the sheriff broke into the Lovings’ bedroom in the middle of the night and took them to jail. Judge Leon Bazile sentenced the Lovings to five years in prison, but suspended the sentence as long as they left the state. And Bazile made a statement that demonstrates the immense distance society has traveled since 1958, a statement that is narrated at the start of the film:

“Almighty God created the races: white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages,” Bazile said in court. “The fact that He separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mate.”

But “The Loving Story” makes clear that Mildred and Richard Loving were meant for each other.

Numerous still photographs, taken for Life magazine by Grey Villet, capture the intimate glances and gestures shared by soul mates. Archival film depicts mundane moments of daily life — a sock smoothed over a foot; a log tossed into the stove — that become pregnant with meaning when a family is under attack.

Mildred, who died in 2008, does most of the talking, her gentle voice describing the ordeal she endured with her husband and three children. Richard, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1975, says little beyond, “I’m not gon’ divorce her.”

The Lovings moved to Washington to be together, but Mildred was not suited for city life. A friend told her to write to the U.S. attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, who advised her to contact the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hirschkop and Bernard Cohen were the ACLU lawyers who took the case to the Supreme Court. Their opponents argued that interracial marriages — and the children they produced — were much more likely to have difficulties. They compared Virginia’s law banning such marriages to those prohibiting polygamy or incest.

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in the Lovings’ favor.

Buirski noted that even though most Americans now say they have no problems with interracial marriage, pockets of resistance have remained.

Laws prohibiting interracial marriage stayed on the books in South Carolina and Alabama until 1998 and 2000, respectively. In 2009, a Louisiana justice of the peace refused to marry a black man and a white woman. “I’m not a racist,” said the official, Keith Bardwell. “I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way.”

In a 2011 Gallup poll, 84 percent of whites and 96 percent of blacks said they approved of interracial marriage.

“It’s not something we can take for granted,” Buirski said.

“Racial identity is an important conversation to have in our culture, and I think the more we bring it to the forefront of our conversation, the better it is for everybody. That’s one reason I don’t see this story as history. I see this as living history.”

A history written by two people who knew their love was true, and who may have glimpsed a better future.

“It’s not so much me and Richard — we could go away,” Mildred says in the film. “It’s the principle. It’s the law. I don’t think it’s right. If we do win, we’ll be helping a lot of people.”

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The letter urged Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate NYPD’s surveillance operations, revealed by an Associated Press investigation, which monitored entire neighborhoods and built databases about everyday life in Muslim communities.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have insisted that police only follow legitimate leads and do not conduct preventative surveillance in ethnic communities. A May 2006 report addressed to Kelly, however, recommended increased spying at mosques and an assessment of the region’s Palestinian community to look for potential terrorists.

Even before the AP published the document, Kelly was under fire from Muslim groups who were angry that a controversial movie about Muslims, “The Third Jihad,” was shown at NYPD training sessions. Kelly appears briefly in the movie.

About 150 protesters gathered near police headquarters Friday to challenge the NYPD’s tactics. “Don’t be afraid, stand for justice!” they chanted before holding evening prayers in nearby Foley Square.

“Just the fact of knowing there is someone out there trying to listen to my conversations that can turn me into some kind of criminal, which I’m not, and exploiting my religion, it hurts,” said Sondos Alsilwi, an 18-year-old history major at City College.

Schneiderman’s office did not immediately have a comment on the letter.

The Obama administration has made fighting homegrown terrorism a focus of its national security strategy but has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether it endorses the NYPD’s tactics. Tom Perez, the U.S. Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor, has refused to even answer questions about the NYPD.

The 2006 intelligence report, entitled “US-Iran Conflict: The Threat to New York City,” made a series of recommendations to Kelly, including: “Expand and focus intelligence collections at Shi’a mosques.” It includes a list of mosques and community organizations stretching from southern New Jersey to Connecticut.

The NYPD’s operating rules prohibit it from basing investigations on religion. The NYPD also says it follows FBI guidelines, which would prohibit many of the steps recommended in the report.

But the NYPD faces little in the way of oversight when it comes to its intelligence programs. Both the City Council and Congress are kept in the dark about this secretive aspect of the department. Many first learned about the spying programs from news reports.

“The masses of people around this city are fed up with the police,” City Councilman Charles Barron told protesters Friday. “Who the hell do they think they are?”

On Thursday, Kelly downplayed the significance of the 2006 document, calling it a “contingency plan” for military conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Such language does not exist anywhere in the document.

Fears of such a conflict were rising again Friday amid concerns in the Middle East that Israel was preparing a military strike on Iran. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that an attack would only hurt the United States.

“A war itself will damage the U.S. 10 times over” in the region, “Khamenei said in a national broadcast Friday.

Iran is a majority Shi’a country, while most Muslims belong to the Sunni sect.

In August, when the AP first reported on the spying operations, Bloomberg said the NYPD doesn’t even consider religion as part of its police work.

“We don’t stop to think about the religion,” he said. “We think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”

Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna would not say whether the mayor still believes that.

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In order to maintain its existence, we need to expeditiously reinvigorate our economic equality. There is no time to waste. We are at risk. American households and small businesses are threatened to make ends meet. Now, is the time if we want to start reshaping our families, businesses, and economy, said Jackson.

Jackson, who is hosting his 15th annual Wall Street Project in New York City, is focusing on ways to make things better for America’s beleaguered middle class. The event, which ends Friday, focuses on bringing  everyone to the table in a bid for economic fairness. The founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition sat down with NewsOne to discuss why economic equality is needed more than ever in the United States.

NewsOne: The theme of this year’s Wall Street Project sounds similar to what President Barack Obama talked about in his State of the Union Address. What are your concerns regarding this country’s middle class?

Jesse Jackson: There are clear patterns of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos. The big banks targeted Blacks and Latinos with toxic packages of subprime predatory lending. Your house is your first small business. It’s where your investment is and [where] our greatest asset is. The wiping out of millions of homes took away Black and Brown wealth. It drove poverty, it drove unemployment, it drove people to food stamps.

The Black public sector middle class teachers, policeman, firemen, and post office workers, those jobs have been on the decline but there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the private sector. What is especially painful is government policy bailed out the banks without making them make reinvestments for rebuilding. The result is 53-million Americans are food insecure, 50-million Americans are in poverty, 44 million are on food stamps, 26 million are looking for a job.  We must renew the economy from the bottom up, not top down.

NewsOne: How do you correct the issues that have negatively affected the middle class?

Jackson: The major companies got bailed out by the government so the victims should get bailed out by the government. The lack of oversight was what allowed the banks to run amok. The bankers who drove homeowners into foreclosure and churches into foreclosure never faced a judge. They faced small fines like Countrywide, but the fines did not correspond to what they stole. The fines became the cost of doing business as oppossed to a detterent. You really need a renewed commitment for the direct investment of jobs at the bottom.

You are not going to revive the unemployment of 26 million Americans with tax cuts. There was a direct jobs program from the Rooselvelt administration in the 1930s. The Justice Department has set up a task force to investigate the banks and the mortgage crisis but that’s a little too late. Whenever they report they will report the obvious. It will be too late to impact the people who need the help the most. We’ve known about mortgage fraud for four years.

NewsOne: What did you think about President Obama’s economic proposals in his State of the Union Address?

Jackson: President Obama projects a strong offense, but he faces a rebellious Congress focused on state’s rights. The interest right now is taking resources back to the state and allowing the minority to have tyranny over the minority. It’s an ideological power grab. It’s like in this Congressional rebellion they are willing to sink the ship to destroy the captain. You look at the Super PAC ads and they are attacking each other. They are not attacking poverty or the lack of health care. They are not attacking issues that matter. They are not discussing how to get people back to their houses.

NewsOne: Why is President Obama so vulnerable?

Jackson: This is such a toxic environment. Look at how the governor of Arizona puts her finger in his face. How disrespectful can you be to anyone, not to mention the President of the United States. That is profoundly disrespectful. It’s not unlike the Congress calling him a liar or Gingrich calling him a food stamp president who comes from some tribe in Kenya. They question his citizenship and his credentials. This is the most-toxic environment that we’ve known in a century.

NewsOne: Talk about one thing that needs to happen in the next few years to give the middle class a chance at recovery.

Jackson: The first thing that has to happen is the protection of voting rights and registration. If the right wing has their way and state’s rights control voting rights, they would remove protections that make it difficult for seniors to vote. It would be harder for students to vote on campus. These are attempts to suppress acts of voting. There are 16-million Blacks registered to vote but 10 million are unregistered. The 10-million unregistered voters may be the key to the election.

The election of President Obama or the right wing will determine what happens in the next few years. They want state’s rights again, they want to remove voting rights protection, they want to undermine Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. All the infrastructure Lyndon Johnson put in place is vulnerable to a right-wing controlled Congress and White House. The stakes are very high. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we have the power to fight back. When this happened in the past we didn’t have the right to vote. We couldn’t get into the stadium. We went to bat without a bat. But now we can swing the bat. We can hit the ball, but you have to come out of the dugout and fight. No one has earned the right to do less than their best.

NewsOne: Although the Black middle class has been disproportionately affected by the financial meltdown, isn’t the entire middle class of all races and ethnicities at risk?

Jackson: The liberation of Blacks is not for Blacks only. When Blacks got the right to vote, white women got the right to sit on juries. What’s good for Blacks is good for all of America. What’s good for the very rich might not be good for anybody but them. Why would anyone be able to make $21 million not showing up for work for a single day? That is vulgar capitalism. That is not good for the nation. When Lyndon Johnson kicked off the war on poverty he did so in Appalachia to deracialize the debate. We have a moral concern to feed all of the hungry, wipe out malnutrition, so that every American be housed and every child have access to education. Ours is a broad-based moral agenda. Our moral vision is not limited to race on one part of town.

NewsOne: You’ve been hosting the Wall Street Project for 15 years. Are you optimistic about any change the event has produced?

Jackson: Fifteen years later we are still in the business of opening closed doors and fighting for economic justice. We see measures of bits of progress. We are facing a stiff wind right now, but if we persist and keep fighting back, we will prevail.

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Christie said, “I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.”

The Huffington Post reports:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), who supports gay marriage, criticized the comment. “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states,” he said, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said the governor needed a “history lesson.”

Read More At The Huffington Post

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Moore, 21, called in to report an officer who’d groped her breast while responding to a domestic disturbance at the home she shared with her boyfriend.   But rather than receiving justice, Tiawanda was charged with violating the Illinois eavesdropping law, a felony that carries a stiff penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

After recording her conversation with the officer and being charged for it, Moore was later acquitted in August.  One of the jurors called the trial “a waste of time.”

Moore spent two weeks in the Cook County Jail.  She eventually got out and filed suit against the city and the police department.  She is alleging unreasonable seizure, false arrest, and malicious prosecution and claims that the law specifically exempts those who record police officers “under reasonable suspicion that another party to the conversation is committing or is about to commit” a crime.

Prominent Chicago attorney Karen Cecile-Wallace says that Moore was right to record the officer:

The Illinois eavesdropping statute is a double-edged sword. It prohibits persons from being recorded without their knowledge and permission, but Moore was within her right to protect herself from the officer’s blatant unlawful and egregious acts. I commend the jury for reaching the right decision.

I am in agreement with attorney Wallace.  It’s interesting to see legislators creating laws that serve to protect themselves at the expense of the American public.   This woman did nothing wrong, and it’s frightening to live in a world where a woman who records a police officer seeking to cover up a crime, can end up in jail.  Welcome to the end of American democracy; our country is no longer the standard bearer as it pertains to civil liberties.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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Carter was part of Thurgood Marshall’s NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a lawyer and helped win the historic 1954 court decision, Brown Vs. The Board Of Education that ended legal segregation in the American school system.

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Carter’s well-honed argument that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional on its face became the Supreme Court’s own conclusion in Brown. The decision swept away half a century of legal precedent that the South had used to justify its “separate but equal” doctrine.

Mr. Carter and his underpaid, overworked colleagues at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued before the court that the South’s schools rarely offered anything like equal opportunities to African-American children. But that was beside the point in any case, they said. Segregation itself, they argued, was so damaging to black children that it should be abolished, on the ground that it was contrary to the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal rights to all citizens.

Read More At The New York Times

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At this year’s convocation and other campus events, MSU honored the legacy of hundreds of former Morgan State students who played a pivotal role in the sit-in movement seven years before the widespread launch of the tactic.

Back in 1953, Morgan State students were lining up daily at a lunch counter in Read’s Drugstore in Baltimore, demanding desegregation. A manager or waitress would try to lure the daily protesting bunch from their seats by reading Maryland’s trespassing statute. The students didn’t budge.

Picketing, sit-ins, and hundreds of arrests eventually led to some changes in segregated Baltimore. As a result of Morgan State’s relentless student activism, in 1955 owners of Read’s Drugstore opened their lunch counter to Blacks; in 1959 Arundel Ice Cream also began to change their practices.

This year’s festivities, surrounding the commemoration of the brave MSU alumni, were accompanied by a range of students, faculty, visitors, and influential Black leaders from around the country. A list of attendees included John Lewis, the Freedom Rider-turned-congressman; Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings; Lt. Governor Anthony Brown; and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

“It is important that our students know the legacy of their school and whose footsteps they are walking today,” said MSU President David Wilson as he stood at the unveiling ceremony of the recreated lunch counter at Read’s Drugstore. Along the walls near the lunch counter exhibit is a stunning pictorial display that takes viewers on a tour of Civil Rights activism in Baltimore from 1947-1963.

University of Maryland law professor Larry S. Gibson, the person responsible for the timeless exhibit, donated his collection to MSU and it will remain in the main hall of the University Student Center.

While speaking to a crowd at Morgan’s campus Gibson said, “Finally we’re going to get some history straight.”

Plots to suppress the African American vote date back to the Reconstruction Era. Prior to the Voter Rights Act of 1965, these were some of the more commonly used tactics by conservatives who wanted to keep blacks from voting.

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In 1873, a gang of whites in Colfax, Louisiana murdered more than 100 blacks who were assembled to defend Republican officeholders—this was, of course, back when Republicans had some sense. Federal prosecutors indicted three of them, but the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the indictments in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Literacy Tests

Perhaps the first literacy test aimed at keeping blacks away from the ballot box was South Carolina’s notorious “eight-box” ballot, adopted in 1882. The test, as explained in “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South” by J. Morgan Kousser  and “The Law of Democracy,” by Samual Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildes went as follows:

Voters had to put ballots for separate offices in separate boxes. A ballot for the governor’s race put in the box for the senate seat would be thrown out. The order of the boxes was continuously shuffled, so that literate people could not assist illiterate voters by arranging their ballots in the proper order. The adoption of the secret ballot constituted another implicit literacy test, since it prohibited anyone from assisting an illiterate voter in casting his vote. In 1890, Southern states began to adopt explicit literacy tests to disenfranchise voters. This had a large differential racial impact, since 40-60% of blacks were illiterate, compared to 8-18% of whites. Poor, illiterate whites opposed the tests, realizing that they too would be disenfranchised.

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Poll Taxes

If you didn’t have money, you didn’t have a vote:

Georgia initiated the poll tax in 1871, and made it cumulative in 1877 (requiring citizens to pay all back taxes before being permitted to vote). Every former Confederate state followed its lead by 1904. Although these taxes of $1-$2 per year may seem small, it was beyond the reach of many poor black and white sharecroppers, who rarely dealt in cash. The Georgia poll tax probably reduced overall turnout by 16-28%, and black turnout in half (Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67-8). The purpose of the tax was plainly to disenfranchise, not to  collect revenue, since no state brought prosecutions against any individual for failure to pay the tax.

Sources: Voting Rights: The Poll Tax, Marion Butts Collection, Dallas Public Library and The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Ridiculous Registration Practices

Even if blacks could read or had money, racist registration practices were created to make their efforts to vote miserable:

Southern states made registration difficult, by requiring frequent re-registration, long terms of residence in a district, registration at inconvenient times (e.g., planting season), provision of information unavailable to many blacks (e.g. street addresses, when black neighborhoods lacked street names and numbers), and so forth. When blacks managed to qualify for the vote even under these measures, registrars would use their discretion to deny them the vote anyway. Alabama’s constitution of 1901 was explicitly designed to disenfranchise blacks by such restrictive and fraudulent means. Despite this, Jackson Giles, a black janitor, qualified for the vote under Alabama’s constitution. He brought suit against Alabama on behalf of himself and 75,000 similarly qualified blacks who had been arbitrarily denied the right to register. The Supreme Court rejected his claim in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903).

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Today’s tactics are a drastically different, more sophisticated but no less obvious.

Voter ID

Some states, like Wisconsin for example, are trying to pass laws that are requiring people to present birth certificates to certify their eligibility to vote when they never had to before. Take, for example, how this will hurt one senior citizen as reported by the Center for American Progress Action Fund:

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

Redistricting

Every ten years, county commissions, state House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are redrawn based on population changes reported in the U.S. Census, the Detroit Free Press reports. The problem with this is that GOP leaders see population growth in black and Latino communities that vote heavily for Democrats and want to spit these Democratic voting bases. Take the state of Michigan for example, as reported by the Detroit Free Press:

Several groups representing African-American and Latino voters have filed a lawsuit challenging the new maps that define the 110 districts for the state House of Representatives.

The state Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, UAW and the Latino Americans for Social and Economic Development, along with several individuals filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit today. They’re asking for a temporary restraining order, halting the new districts from taking effect while a new map is drawn and approved.

“This is a coordinated assault on our voting rights,” said Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP Detroit branch.

The groups have two main complaints: the new map will force eight Detroit incumbent legislators to run against each other; and a district that now encompasses most of the primarily Latino population in southwest Detroit has been split into two districts.

The game is the same, but the tactics have changed. Click on the links to learn how not to be swindled by the GOP disenfranchisement machine.

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The SPLC’s study, “Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education 2011,” covers curricula and requirements for the civil rights movement.

Education Problem In America Compared to Civil Rights

Mississippi Schools Still Segregated Despite Court Order

The Grio Reports:

“Most states do not think civil rights history education is important” Maureen Costello, SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance director told theGrio. “I want people to take away from the report the idea that teaching history in general is really important and teaching about civil rights encourages you to be a better citizen.”

Teaching Tolerance, SPLC’s educational resource initiative, conducted the study by examining all the 50 states’ academic standards and curriculum requirements related to the teaching of civil rights history in schools. Those standards and requirements were compared to what civil rights historians and educators consider core information about civil rights history.

Read More At The Grio

According to Reverend Dennis W. Wiley, gay rights are inextricably linked to Black America’s struggle for civil rights.

He added that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  was alive he would be one of the LGBT movement’s biggest supporters.

“[I]t would seem to me that those of us who have been the victims of oppression and discrimination would be the last ones to facilitate the oppression and discrimination of others,” he writes.

Read more at BET.com

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And yet, the list is long: Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, Dorothy Height, Septima Clark, Marian Wright Edelman…

So as the masses gather in Washington D.C. to pay homage to Dr. Martin luther King Jr. at the unveiling of his new memorial, some are taking the time to remember the many African-American women who risked their lives, and worked tirelessly in the battle for racial equality.

I am not necessarily calling for the establishment of a new memorial in honor of black women on the National Mall, but I am suggesting that in this “age of Michelle Obama” that we start to acknowledge and celebrate the incredible sacrifices and service of the black women who did so much of the important work that helped propel the civil rights movement forward.

Read more at the Grio.

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The Poll found that most Americans– 90% of whites and 85% of Blacks– say civil rights for Black people have improved in the USA during their lifetime, although far more whites believe African-Americans have progressed.

While nearly eight in 10 whites say Black people have an equal chance in their community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, six in 10 African Americans say job discrimination persists, USA Today reports:

“Whatever the civil rights movement did or did not accomplish, there remain very different perspectives, on average, between blacks and whites on how they view the country,” says Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial politics. On such non-policy issues as acceptance of interracial marriage or the prospect of a black presidential candidate, “there is something verging on a sea change.”

Read more at USAToday.com

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Despite the DOJ’s dissent, Civil Rights activists are ardently pushing them to proceed with the case, while citing the Emmett Till Unresolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. Nonetheless, the DOJ contests that the Malcolm X assassination does not meet the parameters of that act.

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Taylor is touring the nation’s capital a month after her home state of Alabama apologized to her for never bringing to justice the men who were accused of kidnapping and assaulting her in the 1940s.

She took her first trip to Washington to attend a forum at the National Press Club about late civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who championed Taylor’s cause as a field caseworker with the NAACP.

In 1944, Taylor, who is black, was a 24-year-old wife and mother living in Abbeville, Ala. Seven white men kidnapped and sexually assaulted her and then left her on the side of a road. Two grand juries, made up of white men, refused to indict anyone.

The Associated Press does not typically identify victims of sexual assault but is using her name because she has publicly identified herself.

Last month, Alabama lawmakers offered Taylor, now 91, an apology for how her case was handled. Officials from her native Henry County and the mayor of Abbeville apologized to her in March.

Taylor didn’t see the Obamas during her White House tour Thursday but called the executive mansion “beautiful.” The Vermeil Room with its portraits of past first ladies was one of her favorites.

The nation’s capital is a contrast to Taylor’s hometown, a small southeast Alabama community.

“It’s a lot more to see than Abbeville,” she said, with a laugh. “Everything is different.”

Taylor traveled back to Abbeville last week to receive the state resolution of apology on Mother’s Day at Rock Hill Holiness Church. She had been walking from the church after service when she was kidnapped 67 years ago.

“That was a good day to present it to me,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know they was going to do it.”

Taylor said she keeps the resolution at home in a trunk with other special items. “I try to keep it where I won’t never lose it,” she said.

Mary Owens, Taylor’s granddaughter, accompanied her on the trip. She called Taylor a “hidden hero” and a “woman of integrity.”

“She has overcome,” Owens said.

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“To go through what those people are going through would be a complete nightmare,” said construction worker Bernie Simmons of Brooklyn, NY.

According to Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, African-Americans who are in unions are 12 percent more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan than non-Black unionized workers.

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“Collective bargaining has lifted up people of color and women the most,” said Applebaum in a speech today at the 2011 National Action Network convention. “Unions continue to be a core element of improving economic equality in this country and we can’t let them take our rights away and we won’t.”

According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, union members earn almost 30 percent more than non-union members, and women in unions earn 28 percent more than non-union women.

In New York City, the Bloomberg administration’s attempt to privatize many facets of city government isn’t going unnoticed, according to the Executive Director of District Council 37, Lillian Roberts.

“We have to fight because if we don’t it can happen here. Don’t close your eyes. It’s going on right beneath us,” said Roberts.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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“And we wonder why our boys are struggling,” Duncan said. “We need more Latino and African American male teachers. We need to show these kids that they can also educate people just like them when they grow up.” Duncan used the convention to promote the federal TEACH campaign that persuades male minorities to enter education.
 The program was launched in the Fall 2010.

RELATED: Top Five Things To Watch For At Sharpton’s NAN Convention

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

Duncan recounted a story from the days after he was appointed to President Obama’s cabinet in 2008, when he sat down with Sharpton and professed that the civil rights issue of the 21st century was no longer race.

“The issue is education,” Duncan told Sharpton. “We have to do whatever it takes to educate our children and we’re currently failing,” said Duncan.

.

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Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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“This is a working convention,” Sharpton said. “This is why it’s called the National Action Network; not the National Pontificating Network or National Procrastination Network. We have real problems, real pain, and we really need to deal with that in our community. We have no time for showboating.”

RELATED: Top Five Things To Watch For At Sharpton’s NAN Convention

The National Action Network, founded in 1991, is one of the leading civil rights organizations in the country, dedicated to the principles of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.

“We have been fighting for a long time and will continue to do so,” Sharpton continued. “We will talk about the issues affecting our country and create a plan of action to bring these issues to the table right now.”

With the 2012 election season begun, the convention commenced with the panel “Politics 2011-2012: What are the Issues?” moderated by Sharpton and featuring panelists such as New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, former congressman and NYU professor Harold E. Ford Jr., and others.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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The panel focused on issues such as collective bargaining, immigration, and poverty rates. But the center of the attention was dedicated to  unemployment.

With Black unemployment currently at 15 percent and rising, the long lines at job fairs were what affected Lee A. Saunders, treasurer of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

“It’s pretty simple – the issues are jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, and let me re-emphasize, jobs and the economy,” Saunders said.

Other panelists like MirRam Group founder Roberto Ramirez spoke about the lack of empathy for working people.

“We need to address the wealth disparities in this country,” said Ramirez. “If we can address the deficit and bailing out Wall Street, we can help our poor people in this country. We need to be just as prepared to help Blacks and Latinos whose houses are being foreclosed as those who don’t have a problem paying their mortgage. It is unbelievable that the only job extension in this country can be unemployment extension.”

While jobs were a central issue of the conference, the issue of immigration brought strong emotion from both Ramirez and George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU.

Said Ramirez: “We are currently under an administration which has deported more individuals than our previous administration. Which is shocking. We can’t even pass something as simple as the Dream Act. Why? Because they’ve put a million requirements to be able to qualify to stay in this country.

“I’m surprised being left-handed isn’t one,” said Ramirez to laughter and clapping.

The rest of the day’s schedule includes panels focusing on guns and violence, plenary presentations by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and a speech by President Obama.

At the end of the first panel, Sharpton announced that he will be going on a city-to-city tour with details to emerge at the end of the convention.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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Almena Lomax

Los Angeles, California– Almena Lomax, a civil rights activist and founder of the Los Angeles Tribune died March 25th at 95 years old.

Her son Michael Lomax, who is the president of the United Negro College Fund says that she died after a short illness.

She and her family moved from Los Angeles to the Deep South in the ’60s to be a part of the civil rights movement.

“She was a terrific writer…the only one of all the black newspapers at the time who really was fearless about exposing things as they were. She didn’t soft-pedal anything,” said veteran civil rights lawyer Leo Branton Jr.

Source

Freedom Fighters

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An editorial in this week’s New York Amsterdam News, the legendary Black newspaper of New York, highlights the rise of Rev. Al Sharpton’s storied civil rights organization The National Action Network, which will celebrate its 20th year of operation April 6-9 at their national convention in New York City.

Related: NewsOne Columnist Rev. Al Sharpton named one of the “Top 15 Civil Rights Leaders of the 21st Century”

The editorial, written by the publisher and editor-in-chief of the paper Elinor Tatum, talks about the birth of the National Action Network in 1991. Tatum called the organization “the heart” of the continuing civil rights movement. She views Sharpton’s group as the premier civil rights organization of her generation in the same way that the NAACP and the National Urban League were to her parents.

“Happy birthday, National Action Network. For many of us, we literally might not be here without you.” Elinor Tatum

Founded by Sharpton in 1991, the organization was one of the first civil rights groups of the 21st century. From the onset, the organization’s mission has been to to address the social and economic injustice experienced by Blacks in the United States. The main focus of Sharpton’s organization has been to tackle three key areas affecting minorities in America  — the criminal justice system, social justice issues, and reducing verbal indecency within the African-American community.

The National Action Network is headquartered in Harlem, New York, but currently has over forty active chapters nationwide.

Key Moments:

- The National Action Network is widely credited with drawing national attention to such critical issues as racial profiling, police brutality, and the US Naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Notably, the organization was prominently involved with the police brutality cases of Amadou Diallo (New York), Abner Louima (New York) and Patrick Dorismond (New York). Sharpton also took the lead in protesting the Jena 6 case in Jena, Louisiana which garnered national attention. This past year, Sharpton held a march in Washington D.C. called “Reclaim The Dream” which thousands attended.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON AMSTERDAMNEWS.COM

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PARTNER LINK: Juliette Lewis Photos

Convicted of arson and conspiracy, the “Wilmington Ten” were exonerated in 1980 after Amnesty International took up their case and proved that the group was prosecuted for their political beliefs, rather then their connection to the crime.

The Black Newspaper Publishers are collectively pushing for a full pardon.

‘We are going to tell the story of the Wilmington 10,” said the National Newspapers Publishers Association Chair, Danny J. Bakewell, Sr, ”And, we think it is incumbent for us to fight for a pardon for those 10 people… justice to this day has not been served.”

Source

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Alabama — Last summer, African-American man Worcy Crawford passed away at the age of 92. If you are unfamiliar with the name, you aren’t the only one.

With his passing, a civil rights story of epic proportions went untold.

When people think of buses and the civil rights era, they think of Rosa Parks. But many forget that there was a man who was busing around all the Blacks during the time of segregation. This man didn’t only bus Blacks, he owned the buses.

Read more at the NYTimes

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By portraying collective bargaining as a human rights issue, union officials hope the rallies can help fuel a backlash against Republicans in Wisconsin and other states trying to curb collective bargaining rights for public employees.

“This is a fight for workers, this is a fight for the middle class, this is a fight to try to stave off the shift in power and wealth that is starting to become gross,” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

The planned rallies on the 43rd anniversary of King’s death are part of a coordinated strategy by labor leaders to ride the momentum of pro-union demonstrations and national polls showing most Americans support collective bargaining rights as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP leaders in states fight to reduce or strip those benefits.

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Walker has argued that collective bargaining is a budget issue. He says the bill the state Legislature passed Thursday stripping most collective bargaining benefits will give local governments flexibility in making budget cuts needed to close the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. He is expected to sign it soon.

“That’s something people forget about Dr. King,” said Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. “We all know about his work in the civil rights movement, but he was also a workers’ rights advocate.”

It’s also another signal that labor leaders are trying to broaden the coalition of groups speaking out against efforts to limit collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. Unions are coordinating the rallies with the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and other civil rights, religious and progressive groups.

“Dr. King lost his life struggling to help sanitation workers – public sector employees – achieve their goals for a dignified existence as workers,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference. “We think that’s an extraordinary backdrop in which to frame the debate over what’s taking place in the country today.”

When King traveled to Memphis in 1968, he was lending support to more than 1,100 black sanitation workers who were on strike seeking better working conditions, higher wages and benefits, and union recognition.

Daniel Walkowitz, a labor historian at New York University, said the gesture was typical of King’s later years, in which the targets of his activism were less often the legal barriers to civil rights for blacks. More often, King was focused on lack of employment and educational opportunities for African-Americans.

“Tying the rallies to King is an interesting strategy because it does draw upon King’s understanding that the problems of labor were problems of civil rights,” Walkowitz said.

Walker argues that the sweeping step against collective bargaining is necessary to balance the budget not only over the next two years but into the future. He said he wouldn’t compromise on the issue or on anything that saves the state money.

But union leaders see it as a fight for middle class rights. Wisconsin unions had agreed to cuts in pension and health benefits as long as they could keep collective bargaining rights. Labor leaders say Walker’s refusal to compromise shows he wants to leave unions toothless and cripple their political clout.

While unions are on the verge of losing power in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, union leaders believe they are winning the war of public  opinion and pulling in broader support.

“The movement is bigger than just the labor movement,” United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said. “What we’re seeing is an awakening about the importance of collective bargaining.”

Labor leaders already have pledged to pour more than $30 million into a push to stop legislation in dozens of states that seeks to limit bargaining rights of public worker unions or otherwise curb union power. Union officials are also helping mobilize demonstrations in state capitols and spending money on recall campaigns against GOP officials who support efforts to curb union rights.

Roland Martin talks with filmmaker Keith Beauchamp about his new series launching on the Investigation Discovery channel entitled “The Injustice Files.” The series will focus on cold cases from the civil rights era,

“The Injustice Files” airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST on Investigation Discovery.

It’s always interesting talking to American youth, especially African-Americans, who are quick to suggest that the “old ways of doing things” — like marches, rallies, protests and boycotts — have no effect on changing public policy today.

Maybe someone should tell that to the people in Egypt, who brought the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak to its knees and forced him to resign over the course of 18 days.

While Mubarak tried desperately to hold onto his powers, the millions of Egyptians, led by the nation’s disgruntled young, made it clear that waiting for him to not seek re-election in September wasn’t enough; they wanted him gone. Today.

Their ability to remain unified reminded me of “the fierce urgency of now,” often proclaimed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When the people want freedom, asking them to wait is a waste of time. What did Dr. King title his letters from a Birmingham, Ala., jail? “Why We Can’t Wait.”

As the developments in Egypt were covered each day, it was eerily similar to that of the Civil Rights Movement. The spark in North Africa began with a Tunisian farmer setting himself on fire to protest police trying to extort money from him. In 1955, the fire burning inside African-Americans was lit by the brutal murder of Emmett Till.

In Egypt, the nation’s youth used Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to get their message out and to show the world that they were unwilling to continue to live in a state of oppression. During the Civil Rights Movement, long before Time, Newsweek and The New York Times showed up, the Chicago Defender, Memphis Tri-State Defender and a host of other black newspapers were the outlet used by leaders to get their message to the masses — as chronicled by Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff in “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.”

One of the galvanizing forces in Egypt was 30-year-old Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive. His arrest, and subsequent release, rallied the people even more.

We can’t forget the arrests of a 26-year-old preacher in Montgomery, Ala., and other cities that put the attention on the oppressive nature of Jim Crow all across the South, galvanizing his supporters. That man was Martin Luther King Jr.

His insistence of following a nonviolent path to changing America was seen and felt all across Egypt. Knowing full well that they would not have the sympathy of the world if they chose to take up arms against their oppressors, the Egyptian protestors maintained their commitment to civil disobedience. And just like when Bull Connor and angry mobs showed their violent ways against fellow Americans, the world seethed with anger as pro-Mubarak supporters killed protestors and the secret police were unleashed with fury. The people in Egypt were just as brave and fearless as the people in Selma, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark.

During the Egyptian crisis, even the reaction from today’s American political leaders was similar to the lack of forthrightness during the Civil Right Movement. Instead of being unequivocal in standing for full freedom for all Egyptians, political leaders hedged their bets, trying to protect their interests and not those of the people demanding a change.

While many feared for what America would look like when Jim Crow was crushed, too many fear what will happen in Egypt in a post-Mubarak world. It is abundantly clear that those demanding freedom will not accept anything less. They want free and fair elections; they want the government to care more about the poor and disenfranchised, not just the well-to-do.

Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Dorothy Height, A. Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth and countless others didn’t settle for some freedom; they demanded full access to democracy.

And I have no doubt that the people of Egypt will not stop protesting and rallying and mobilizing and organizing until their dreams of democracy become a reality.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and the author of the book “The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin.” Please visit his website at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Every idiot likes to speculate on what the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. would be thinking or doing if he were alive today so I figured, why should I be any different?

So here’s what I think: Dr. King would be married to a white woman and living in Africa if he were alive to day.

This probably leaves you with two questions immediately: why a white woman and why Africa?

Well, you may not know this, but Dr. King actually contemplated marrying the white girl that he was seeing back while he finished up his doctorate at Boston University.

He was as engaged in the concept of Civil Rights as he was when he eventually became famous, but weighing the pros versus the cons of presenting the world with a dynamic mixed-race couple at the forefront of Civil Rights and becoming and iconic black family man, he ultimately and maybe even wisely chose to marry Coretta Scott.

Also of note is the fact that the overwhelming bulk if not every last one of the women that Dr. King was alleged to have had affairs with were white.

The guy just had a taste for white chicks.

Sorry.

Plus when you consider that a lot of Black, militant and angry OGs—Frederick Douglass, Ishmael Reed and Quincy Jones immediately come to mind—either finally marry white or consistently marry white, it wouldn’t have surprised too many people if, after Coretta passed in 2006, the Dr. pulled a “Hef” and got a young, hot one.

Now, why Africa?

Dr. King was so bitter and disillusioned with America near the end of his life that he was probably only a day or two away from flag burning.

Everybody remembers him questioning near the end whether or not it was indeed wise to “integrate into a burning house”, but almost nobody picks up on one of the most amazing things he ever said in the last public speech he ever made on the last night of his life.

Think about it: “we as a people shall get to the promised land.”

He wasn’t talking about Cleveland, my Damies (shout out to Pootie Tang)!

All the great Black minds from Marcus Garvey to Bob Marley argued in favor of repatriation to Africa with two men in particular, men that King definitely respected and one that he actually ran with, having done so; W.E.B. Du Bois, and King’s ace boon… you know, Stokely Carmichael.

Doc would be an 82 year-old naturalized citizen of Ghana right now somewhere with an ex-playmate on his arm, watching sports, mad that the Falcons lost, but rooting for Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin to make it to the Super Bowl.

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