Civil Rights

Engaging The Powers: The Promise Of A New Civil Rights Era

July 17, 2015 Troy Jackson, www.sojo.net Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Civil Rights, Fight for 15, Occupy, Racial Justice

By Troy Jackson in Sojo - When Occupy Wall Street emerged in the fall of 2011 many media personalities and social commentators critiqued the lack of a clear and concise list of demands from the nascent movement. Months later, when the only thing blanketing Zuccotti Park in New York City was freshly fallen snow, I was tempted to write off Occupy as an idealistic moment that produced little lasting change. As we move toward the 4-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, my assessment has changed. Thanks in part to the work of Occupy, America is having a new debate around increasing the minimum wage, restaurant workers are waging their “fight for 15,” and even Wal-Mart recently announced wage increases for employees. We are having new public policy debates around what it means to be part of a moral economy.

This Is Our Selma

July 14, 2015 Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II , www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Civil Rights, Elections, History, Law, North Carolina, Voting

By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II in The Huffington Post - In 2006 the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to re-authorize the prized 1964 Voting Rights Act and President George W. Bush signed it. After the first Black President won two elections, five U.S. Supreme Court justices over-ruled 98 senators and gutted the law. Their ruling, called Shelby, two years ago opened the floodgates, giving the green light to state legislators throughout the South. One North Carolina state senator even declaring that Shelby had removed the "headache" of pre-clearance. The right wing that had seized Mr. Lincoln's party was turned loose to wage war on our sacred right to vote.

I Don’t Discuss Racism With White People

July 13, 2015 John Metta, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Civil Rights, Racial Justice, Racism

By John Metta in The Huffington Post - I don't talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I'll tell a story: It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a single sentence, said by my Black sister: "The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist." There was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about. It has become the single most important aspect of my aunt's relationship with my Black family.

Misunderstanding The Civil Rights Movement & Diversity of Tactics

June 25, 2015 Tactical Diversity, www.tacticaldiversity.wordpress.com Strategize! Civil Rights, Tactics

By Tactical Diversity - It’s gotten to be a pattern on the Left. When Black protest erupts into insurrection, as it did in Ferguson and Baltimore, most liberals and white radicals express empathy for the cathartic release of anger, but urge the oppressed that this is not the way. This is “not strategic,” says the leftist concern-troll. This is “what the police want.” Most of the time they manage to stop short of asking “why are they burning down their own neighborhood?” –if only to be mindful of clichés—but some can’t even help themselves there. In the aftermath, Amy Goodman(seemingly channeling Alex Jones) will spread conspiracy theories on how the government “orchestrated” the rioting.¹ The respectability politics of nonviolence will return. It’s hard to believe that anyone who has paid attention to Black Lives Matter takes these positions in good faith because, of course, the riots in Ferguson were objectively the best thing that happened to a movement that was already more than a year old.

‘No Justice, No Peace’: Clarity Of Purpose, Warning To Ruling Class

June 18, 2015 Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com Strategize! Civil Rights, Human Rights, Law, Racial Justice, Social Change

By Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report - The logic of the emerging movement is Black self-determination – the principle that Black people have the inherent human right to determine their own destiny – which, in the immediate sense, means control over how they should be policed, and by whom. The venerable slogan “No Justice – No Peace” has served as a workhorse of the current protest, and would be an ideal organizing principle if the implications of the slogan were fully understood, rather than simply mouthed. The slogan takes the political position that the price that Power must pay for continued injustice against Black people is the loss of civil peace. It is a vow by the movement to transform the crisis that is inflicted on Black people into a generalized crisis for the larger society, and for those who currently rule.

Finally, B’more Mayor Joins Call Of Citizens For DOJ Investigation Of Police

May 7, 2015 Luke Broadwater, www.baltimoresun.com Resist! Baltimore, Civil Rights, Criminal Justice, police brutality, Racial Justice

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to conduct a full-scale civil rights investigation into the pattern and practices of the Baltimore Police Department — a probe that would examine excessive force, discriminatory harassment, false arrests, and unlawful stops, searches or arrests. "We all know that Baltimore continues to have a fractured relationship between the police and the community," Rawlings-Blake said. "I'm willing to do what it takes to reform my department." The Justice Department already is conducting a "collaborative review" with Baltimore police, but its recommendations will not carry the weight of law. Such reviews differ from full-scale civil rights investigations because they are launched by agreement with local officials and are not enforced by court order.

The Historical Context Of Voting Rights

April 4, 2015 Bruce Hartford, www.crmvet.org Educate! Civil Rights, Elections, History, Voting

Abstract political debates aside, as a matter of practical politics those who are eligible to vote — and who actually DO vote — are members of "We the People." They are what we used to refer to as "full-citizens." They are the recognized stakeholders of our society. As a matter of practical politics, those who are barred from voting are not part of "We the People." When we were founded as a nation, a fierce political battle erupted over who would have the vote. In essence, it was a fight over who was included in "We the People." We have been fighting that political war ever since, and we continue to fight it to this day. The issue of who has the vote continues to be a fight because those who are well-served by the status-quo want to limit the voting power of those who they fear have good reason to be dissatisfied with the way things are.

Newsletter: Praise For The Radicals

March 22, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Civil Rights, Corporatization, fast track, Globalization, Martin Luther King Jr, Racism, Radicals, TPP

In his recent article, “The Dance of Liberals and Radicals”, the liberal Robert Kuttner writes, “No great social change in America has occurred without radicals, beginning with the struggle to end slavery. Causes that now seem mainstream began with radical, impolite and sometimes civil disobedient protest.” We at Popular Resistance share the view that there need to be people and groups who see the bigger picture, who fight for what is not on the table and who are willing to put their bodies on the line to make change. Those are the people we try to lift up in our daily coverage of the movement because they are rarely recognized and are usually lacking in resources. Yesterday we marched in Washington, DC for Spring Rising with our friends in the peace and Black Lives Matter movements.

LBJ And The Speech That Changed America

March 22, 2015 Julian E. Zelizer, www.theatlantic.com Resist! Civil Rights, Elections, Racism, Voting Rights

Fifty years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered one of the most powerful pieces of oratory in presidential history. Standing before Congress at 9 p.m. on March 15, just a few days after the shocking violence that civil-rights protesters confronted during the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Johnson called on members of both parties to pass a bill that ensured the federal government would take the steps that were necessary to protect voting rights. Delivering that speech was a courageous decision. When the grassroots civil-rights movement tried to force Johnson’s hand by creating unbearable pressure to send a voting-rights bill to Congress, the president might have ignored or stifled their dissent. Instead, he fully embraced their cause by connecting himself and his White House to the fate of this legislation. He didn’t equivocate.

New Civil Rights Advocates Defeated Old-Line Groups On Net Neutrality

March 19, 2015 AOSCRUGGS, www.alldigitocracy.org Resist! Civil Rights, FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

The fight over federal regulation of the Internet should have been an easy victory for the big guys, especially when it came to marshaling the communities of color. Major telecom companies like Verizon and Comcast had the groups like the NAACP, the Multicultural Media and Telecom Council or MMTC and Urban League behind them. But the issue turned into a battle between David and Goliath when a coalition of smaller, online civil rights organizations took net neutrality to the virtual streets. By using social media aggressively and persuasively, the online civil rights groups helped convince the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify the Internet as a public utility that would be regulated under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.

The Mother Of Nonviolent Direct Action: Lucy Parsons

March 16, 2015 William Loren Katz, www.zinnedproject.org Educate! Anarchism, Civil Rights, Nonviolence, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

She called for the use of nonviolence that would have broad meaning for the world’s protest movements. She told delegates workers shouldn’t “strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production.” A year later Mahatma Gandhi, speaking to fellow Indians at the Johannesburg Empire Theater, advocated nonviolence to fight colonialism, but he was still 25 years away from leading fellow Indians in nonviolent marches against India’s British rulers. Eventually Lucy Parsons’ principle traveled to the U.S. sit-down strikers of the 1930s, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the antiwar movements that followed, and finally to today’s Arab Spring and the Occupy movements.

The Dark Side Of Selma The Mainstream Media Ignored

March 12, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Civil Rights, History, Media, Selma

When nearly 100,000 people descended on Selma last week to mark the 50th anniversary of the attack on voting rights protesters known as Bloody Sunday, they encountered a city that looked nothing like the quaint but divided communitydepicted in the recent Hollywood film. On the outskirts of town, clusters of mobile homes and crumbling shotgun houses sit along unpaved roads. The majority of downtown businesses near the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge — save for several fast food chains and payday lenders — stand vacant, their windows boarded up or broken. Most of the city’s public housing projects, built in the early 1950s, are in serious need of repair. With more than 36 percent of residents and 60 percent of children living in poverty, Dallas County is the poorest in the state of Alabama, making it one of the poorest in the country.

Meet One Of The New Civil Rights Leaders

March 9, 2015 Phillip Agnew and Michelle Chen, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Civil Rights, Dream Defenders, History, Racial Justice, Youth

I’m excited because it seems people are waking up—people from low- and middle-income communities, people who have typically been in the margins, who weren’t part of organizations. When we first started mobilizing in 2012, I could have never imagined things would have happened this quickly. On the other hand, this really is something that, if you look back at history, was easy to predict. You have police who do not come from the community and have a culture of contempt for black and brown people, especially when they’re young and poor. You have communities with no say in the way their lives are lived, no educational opportunities, no jobs that will make ends meet. And you have rampant and growing explosions between police and the people that they’re supposed to protect. This is a recipe for disaster. This is 1967. This is 1968, when cities around the country, including Chicago, Newark, Detroit, Oakland and Watts, began to explode.

Black Lives Matter Protesters Interrupt Obama In Selma

March 8, 2015 Alice Ollstein, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Civil Rights, Racism

SELMA, ALABAMA — On Saturday, President Obama spoke at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the attack on voting rights protesters known as Bloody Sunday. “Our march is not yet finished, but we are getting closer,” he said. ” If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work is never done – the American experiment in self-government gives work and purpose to each generation.” As he spoke, a group of protesters wearing shirts with airbrushed portraits of those killed by police started banging on drums and chanted, “Ferguson is here. We want change!” and “This is what democracy looks like.” Obama did not pause his speech or acknowledge the interruption. But some older people in the crowd became angry, shouting at the young protesters: “Your vote is your voice! Get registered!”

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