You are currently browsing the marsha joyner category
By Marsha Joyner
Isn’t technology wonderful! You can see our TV 6,000 miles away. And Facebook brings everyone within a keystroke.
Just before the late evening news in Hawaii, my husband Kenneth said, “a tremendous 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile.”
“That’s awful,” I responded and went to bed thinking no more of it.
Until 5:20am my cell phone rang and rang and rang—“Oh damn, nobody calls this time of morning unless it is bad news.” By the time I was fully aware the landline rang. “Yes Scott, no Scott—thank you Scott” Kenneth said and promptly turned on the TV. We have a Tsunami warning because of the earthquake in Chile.”
“Oh dear, I must get Kaspar’s (the cat) carrying case . . . do we have enough fresh water. . .I hate canned foods. . . etc,” I began the emergency check list in my head. Knowing full well that we have everything. Living next to the water demands a level of preparedness that most people do not have to deal with.
HoneyGirl (the dog) was breathing heavy next to the bed and Kaspar (the cat) was standing on my chest daring me to open my eyes. What a way to awake from a dream. Or am I still dreaming? No, this is real!
The TV news was showing lines at the gas stations and it was still dark. Local residents were scrambling to stock up on water, gas and food as sirens pierced the early morning quiet across the islands ahead of the tsunami. Some stations had enough gas, but other stations reportedly ran out. At supermarkets, residents stocked up on essentials like rice, water and toilet paper in anticipation of the high waters. The TV repeatedly ran the picture of a sign at a store limiting families to two cases of Spam. A must in every local menu.
My first of many calls was to Marilyn, my daughter, to warn her… “Damn!” The sleepy voice on the other end of the phone said. “Mom what a wake up call. Thanks Mom, I’ll get my young’ens together. Aaron is at the airport leaving for a class trip to America and Ashley has to go to class today.” They live at the top of a step hill in Maile, a very safe place to ride out a Tsunami. The home has an unobstructed view of the ocean. It’s about 50 miles from me as the crow flies. But then we have no crows. And I really don’t know how crows fly.
§ Read the rest of this entry…
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on February 28, 2010 at 10:16 pm
By Marsha Joyner
Did Martin die in vain on that fateful day of April 4, 1968? What has transpired in these 40 years with respect to King’s dream? There are several events in the Bible where the number 40 is of paramount importance—can any of them be related to our struggles these past 40 years? Rain 40 days and 40 nights (original flood); Israelites in wilderness 40 years; Jesus in the wilderness 40 days; Ascension occurred 40 days after the resurrection; Pentecost occurred the 50th day; (do we have to wait for another 10 years for The Dream (Pentecost)?). No I have not become a religious fanatic, but these things came to mind in my thinking about the plight of the US today, forty years after the assassination.
The Southern Poverty Law Center recently issued a report about the 888 organized hate groups operating in our country—a staggering 48% increase since 2000 in white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant extremist, anti-gay and other groups. Is this the content of our character? Are we not living up to the dream? Or is it a nightmare?
When the government of the United States lied about the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and a connection between 9.11.01 and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When the government of the United States lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq being a threat to the United States peace.
When the government of the United States allows the economy to get out of hand and its citizens suffer while it spends 3 trillion dollars on an unwinnable war. Is this the content of our character?
Martin Luther King, Jr said:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Can we afford to stand by and silently allow this to happen?
40 years after his death what would Martin Luther King, Jr. say about this election season? We have a Black man and a White woman running for the highest office in the land. But as a nation have we shown our commitment to ending injustice, racism and sexism? When the media bashes immigrants, and overweight people are the targets of jokes… Do we pay homage to Dr. King and his dream one day a year and then go back to being a purveyor of violence and hate? Is this the content of our character?
As the ranks of hate and violence swell, people of concern must stand up and be counted.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963)
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method, which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964)
Moses led the Israelites out of bondage and into the wilderness. For forty years they labored and toiled in the desert. He did not reach the promised land with them. However, they grew in strength, throwing off the shackles of bondage. The Bible tells us they made the final journey to the promised land.
Will it take another 10 years or 40 years for us to rise from the ashes of bondage, hate and violence? And awaken from this nightmare to live out the true meaning of the content of our character?
—
Photo: The family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. walk in the funeral procession of the slain civil rights leader in Atlanta on April 9, 1968. (AP)
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on April 4, 2008 at 8:23 am
Last year, Marsha Joyner wrote a guest post on Watch Night Services in African American communities. For the last two weeks, in the approach to New Years, her post has been drawing search engine traffic every day. Here are the opening paragraphs.
Those of us who grew up in America’s traditional Black communities know of Watch Night Services, the gathering of the faithful in church on New Year’s Eve. So as I ventured into the world it came as a surprise to me that other than the Catholic Church, which celebrates the eve of the feast of the Circumcision late on the evening of December 31, primarily white protestant churches generally do not have a church service for a secular holiday.
The service is an opportunity to tell the story of one of the most important milestones in the Blacks’ American history. The Watch Night Services that we celebrate in Black communities today can be traced back to gatherings on December 31, 1862, also known as Freedom’s Eve. On that night, Blacks came together in churches and private homes, anxiously awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. Then, at the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863, and all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. Blacks have gathered in churches annually on New Year’s Eve ever since, praising God for bringing us through another year.
Read the rest here.
UPDATE: If you liked Marsha Joyner’s guest post on Watch Night Services, you might want read some of her other posts on Hungry Blues. I’ve added a “marsha joyner” tag to all of her posts. Click on the “marsha joyner” link at the bottom of this post or in the sidebar to go to the archive of her writings on this blog.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on December 31, 2006 at 2:03 am
By Marsha Rose Joyner
For: Linda
From: MarshaRose
“Child of pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love gift of a fairy tale”.
by Lewis Carroll
Time and distance dims memories!
And we all edit our thoughts.
As the White Queen said, “What good is a memory, when it only works in one direction and that is backwards?” In this day of TV and make-believe we have become desensitized and some things are too beautiful to forget.
Thus was Linda!
“A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing–
A simple chime that served to time
The rhythm of our rowing–
When echoes live in memory yet,
Through envious years should say, “forget”
Linda lived a life of value undefined by property and prosperity.
She lived a life in pursuit of the beauty nestled in everyone and everything – a beauty that is unrecognized by most of us.
Linda led an ever-changing life exploring the unthinkable and the unknowable. Finding the magnificence that is buried deep beneath the surface.
Linda was compelled to give all that she had – a burden not generally appreciated nor understood.
I do not know the time nor the place when she came into my life – but today as I sit with the knowledge that I’ll not hear her happy voice or see her smiling face – I roam from room to room touching the material things that we shared, the precious items she willingly gave away; a set of 19th Century French classic books; a stack of Civil Rights era recordings, [“The Freedom Singers Sing of Freedom Now!” –Mercury Records –1964 – “The Freedom Movement Told by Coretta Scott King” – Caedmon –1969] and many more; her father’s sculptures and of course her love and wisdom.
Linda understood when we give away a small piece of ourselves we get an even greater reward.
And she did give –
I called her “The Modern Day Harriet Tubman”
This Jewish woman with all the gifts that upper middle class in New York can bestow – opened her household to anyone and everyone fleeing the south. Legends of the Civil Rights Movement, the people who most of us only read about and worshiped at their altar, were real to her – because they had stayed at her home.
Linda gave voice to students of other cultures where English was a second language. She opened them to the elements – a world of communications – gave them the courage to read, write and dream in English. She introduced them to poetry in French and Farsi as well as Mozart on the out of tune school piano.
“I have not seen they sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter:
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy life’s hereafter-
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.”
“Love is grabbing hold of the great lion’s mane.” The ancient, fiery, Persian poet Hafiz wrote. And she did!
Linda was a warrior: The struggle for equality and justice was never far from the surface. Linda was prepared to suffer for the greater goodness of the world without falling prey to the continued enticement of money and fame. Linda had to go her own way, embolden the weak, bringing light into darkness with a spirit unbroken by the heartbreak and false promises of a world that did not understand.
Playing Beethoven on her beautiful Baby Grand from her living room overlooking West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – Linda told me “the ambient noise of your daily routine is about to increase.”
“That is not possible,” I replied.
Bang! Went the piano top. She stood up. The cats scattered.
“Oh yes, they want to build an incinerator in my back yard – we must stop it!”
I walked over to the Lanai doors – It was a clear, bright Sunday. The afternoon sun, moving toward the south facing shores was just beginning to cast shadows. The gentle winds and billowing soft clouds gave an imperceptible repose to the surrounding loch. The sheer beauty of the waves gently licking the shore belied the carnage, which took place here at West Loch- the site of one of the bloodiest events of WWII.
She was right. The noise did increase. We were back on the path again. This time against the modern day Klan dressed in three-piece suits – the corporations and the City & County of Honolulu government and we did stop the incinerator.
“Come; hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear
Who fret to find our bedtime near.”
Last October, Linda, ScottyB, my son, Christopher and I ventured down to Lowndes County. Me, complete with all of my fears and prejudices and Linda armed only with her camera – she so loved everything about the place. The people who’d been involved in the Lowndes County Movement; the overgrown cemetery with its many secrets; the rustic homes that had provided shelter from the rage; the smell of autumn; and the chill in the air. We should all be privy to her view of Lowndes County.
“Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind’s moody madness—
Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow,
And childhood’s nest of gladness
The magic words shall hold thee fast:
Thou shalt not heed the waving blast.”
Linda’s father told her “even if you do not practice being Jewish – always say you are Jewish so that Hitler will not have won”.
Linda lived and loved around the world – from New York, France, Iran, London, Hawaii, California, and “The Black Belt” being devoted to justice and equality – I think when her father welcomed her into the hereafter his first words to her “thanks to you – Hitler will not have won.”
“And, through the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story
For “happy summer days” gone by,
It shall not touch with breath of bale,
The pleasure of our fairy-tale”
Lewis Carroll
“Through the Looking-Glass
And what Alice found there”
MarshaRose
June 28, 2006
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on June 29, 2006 at 8:56 am
By Marsha Joyner
December 2005
Those of us who grew up in America’s traditional Black communities know of Watch Night Services, the gathering of the faithful in church on New Year’s Eve. So as I ventured into the world it came as a surprise to me that other than the Catholic Church, which celebrates the eve of the feast of the Circumcision late on the evening of December 31, primarily white protestant churches generally do not have a church service for a secular holiday.
The service is an opportunity to tell the story of one of the most important milestones in the Blacks’ American history. The Watch Night Services that we celebrate in Black communities today can be traced back to gatherings on December 31, 1862, also known as Freedom’s Eve. On that night, Blacks came together in churches and private homes, anxiously awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. Then, at the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863, and all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. Blacks have gathered in churches annually on New Year’s Eve ever since, praising God for bringing us through another year.
Long before President Abraham Lincoln had ever dreamed of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, an edict of freedom, Blacks had been hoping and praying for such a measure.
Lincoln had originally conceived of the proclamation as a measure for the self-preservation, rather than for the regeneration, of America. But the proclamation, almost in spite of its creator, changed the whole tone and character of the Civil War. Blacks sensed this more quickly than did Lincoln.
Despite the proclamation’s limitation African-Americans hailed it with much joy. The war, wrote Frederick Douglass, was now “invested with sanctity.” The Emancipation Proclamation did more than lift the war to the level of a crusade for human freedom. It brought some very substantial practical results, for it gave the go-ahead signal to the recruiting of Black soldiers. By midsummer of 1863 Lincoln could report, “The emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.”
The esteem that African-Americans had for the Emancipation Proclamation helped to make it one of the most far-reaching pronouncements ever issued in the United States. African-Americans were instrumental in creating the image of the proclamation that was to become the historic milestone. The proclamation soon assumed the role that African-Americans had given it at the outset, and became to millions a fresh expression of one of humankind’s loftiest aspirations—the quest for freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation did not have to await the verdict of posterity: within six months after it was issued on that fateful date of January 1, 1863, the mass of Americans had come to regard it as a milestone in the long struggle for human rights.
“As affairs have turned, it is the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the nineteenth century,” lamented Lincoln, as he sat in a pensive mood for is his portrait painter Francis B. Carpenter in February 1865. Later that spring, in the waning days of his life, in what was to be a rare moment of self-revelation, Lincoln confided to lifetime friend, Joshua F. Speed that he had come to believe that his chief claim to fame would rest upon the Proclamation. It was the one thing that would make people remember that he had lived.
Those of us who come from an oral tradition must tell this story in every generation; thus we celebrate the Watch Night Services.
~
Image: Heard and Moseley. Waiting for the hour [Emancipation], December 31, 1862. Carte de visite. Washington, 1863. Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-6160 (4-21a) (click on image to enlarge).
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on December 27, 2005 at 9:46 am
By Marsha Joyner
Former President of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition-Hawaii, Marsha Joyner, has name inscribed on the “Wall of Tolerance” at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama
10-2005
We came in road-weary VW Buses, with backpacks and sleeping bags, willing to sleep on any floor, withstand certain adversity, every abuse and encounter death, to add another face to the struggle for equality and dignity in America during the 1950’s and 60’s. There had been protests against the American evil system of Jim Crow, in the courts and in the streets, but after Montgomery the protests swelled to a collective force.
Now in October 2005, we arrived in Montgomery, Alabama “The Cradle of the Confederacy” on jets, sports sedans and air conditioned SUV’s with matching luggage and stayed at the Embassy Suites, showing evidence of years of wear and tear.
I was moved beyond words to see my name and that of my mother among the 300+ names on the Wall of Tolerance. However, I was more impressed and honored to be with the thousands of allies, veterans of the movement, who were in the crowd and whose names did not appear. Black, white, red, yellow & brown, Uncles & Cousins, Mothers & Sisters, Christian & Jews, Gay & straight; some with walkers and in wheel chairs accompanied by children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, proud to share a moment, that for most, if not all of us, never dreamed would come.
Yes, I had a pittance in the Civil Rights Movement, I was the first “colored girl” to graduate (1956) from an integrated school in Baltimore MD after the Brown vs. BOE (1954), walked many picket lines, participated in sit-in demonstrations, gone to jail for having the audacity to ask to be served a 10 cent hamburger at the White Castle, faced death at the hands of an angry white mob when I had the impudence to attempt to register people to vote and walked the ever moving line of Jim Crow. But today I was in the company of real heroes, people who had practiced non-violence here in the overtly violent south.
It was here in Montgomery that a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was selected to lead a congregation and began his march toward fame. Here, he preached nonviolence in the face of Jim Crow. Rosa Parks sat down and refused to get up here, and thousands of unnamed “workers in the vineyard” walked to work for more than a year because of her. The bus boycott started here. Heroes whose names are lost to history took a stand for freedom here. People from Hawaii joined the thousands more who walked in the rain and mud for five days from from Selma to Montgomery, seeking the right to vote.
This magnificent day was the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, which includes the Wall of Tolerance. The wall incorporates the names of people who have dedicated themselves to fighting intolerance in their daily lives. Using digital technology to spectacular effect, the names flow down a curved 20 by 40 foot wall. The names on the wall include Civil Rights workers from all fifty states and Japan.
Patiently, we stood in line to touch, to feel, to smell and take pictures of the bus in which Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat to a white man, as if it were the Holy Grail and to gently touch the waters of the black granite memorial which flow over the names of 40 martyrs who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement, a period framed by the momentous Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.
The memorial sits only a few blocks west of the first capitol of the Confederacy, the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office to become President of the Confederate States. From Court Square, the order was sent in 1861 to “reduce” Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War. Ninety-four years later, on a December evening, Mrs. Rosa Parks began a historic bus ride from Court Square. East is the Dexter Avenue (King Memorial) Baptist Church, where a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., led the movement Mrs. Parks began.
“Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat just a few blocks away from where we are today,” said Center co-founder Morris Dees in his welcoming remarks. “You’ve come from throughout the United States to be a part of the march that she started. “The placement of your name on the Wall of Tolerance shows the march for justice continues,” he said.
“This event is about honoring heroes,” said U. S. Congressman Artur Davis (D-Ala,), who was the dedication’s keynote speaker. “It has been the lot of our country that the bravest of us have laid down their lives, some anonymously, some in full view of the world,” Davis said. “All share courage and are heroes. That’s what we honor today.”
He urged everyone to consider “the enduring power of people who are willing to take a stand.” Davis continued, “Standing here, five minutes away from where George Wallace declared that men and women could not be equal, there is a new ground rising. There is a new Alabama in sight. There is a new country in sight. But only if we keep believing in each other, in the power of right.”
NAACP chairman Julian Bond, greeted with a standing ovation as he was introduced, served as host for the dedication ceremony.
“Each of us is a ripple, and together we are all a mighty stream,” said Bond in his closing remark.
Monday, October 24, 2005 sitting in the airport as we said our goodbyes, the overhead TV monitors flashed an alert, “Civil Rights Giant Rosa Parks dies”. We hugged each other, as it seemed she, the woman whose name was on the invitation to the movement, had waited until the conclusion of the tribute to the other unsung heroes to take her final bow.
She left us physically but her legacy will never fade away.
She is at peace!
Marsha Joyner
October 25, 2005
Photos, courtesy of Marsha Joyner:
Marsha Joyner with her son Chris German (L.) and with Cedrick Ashe (R.), standing in front of the bus on which Rosa Parks made history.
Marsha Joyner and Julian Bond at Southern Poverty Law Center
Correction:
First photo is taken in front of a replica of the Cleveland Avenue bus, on which Rosa Parks made history. The original bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, Michigan. For more information see “The Bus,” by Donnie Williams.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on November 8, 2005 at 12:38 am
(Via Marsha Joyner.)
Ted Poston, “They Are No Longer Afraid.” The New York Post
June 19, 1956.
You’d been living with [the bus boycott] daily for nearly three weeks in Montgomery, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. Only through the words of others were you finally able to articulate a feeling, which had been with you from the beginning.
Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson, dynamic president of the Women’s Political Council, had been one of the first to pinpoint it for you.
“Pass the lowliest, the most ignorant one, on the street and you’ll see it,” she said. “He walks a little straighter, his head is a little higher… They no longer lack courage; they’re no longer afraid. They’re free for the first time in their lives and they know they’ve won their own freedom. This goes not only for the lowest domestic but for the highest Negro professional also.”
J. E. Pierce, Alabama-born economist whom you’d known a decade ago in your native Kentucky, expanded it:
“What you’re seeing here is probably the closest approach to a classless society that has ever been created in any community in America. The whites have forced the Montgomery Negro to recognize one thing—that they are Negroes first and then domestics, doctors’ wives, scholars or lawyers second.
“But for the first time the Negro is accepting with pride, not shame, the fact that all Negroes look alike to white people. Through their unity, their car pools, their determination to share and share alike, they have found each other—as Negroes… Walk a little straighter… head a little higher.
“This new dignity is not accidental. And it is no accident that they call each other ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ on every possible occasion. For the first time in their lives they feel like ladies and gentlemen from the bottom to the top.”
Copyright © 1956 The New York Post. Selected from the Library of America anthology. See Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941-1963.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on November 4, 2005 at 12:45 am
by Marsha Joyner
With silent lips she cries. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This is etched in stone on the Statue of Liberty—as Lady Liberty looks out to the Atlantic Ocean, her back turned to the rest of us.
The huddled masses: the poor of all sizes, shapes and colors,
The people whose skin color is red, yellow, brown or black, whose eyes are slanted, whose religious Sabbath is celebrated on Friday or Saturday, the disabled,
Those whose sexual preferences are not “normal”(?), are we the wretched refuse,
The brown skinned people who struggle across a hostile border to realize an unkept promise— yearning to breathe free—
Mahatma Gandhi said, “passive violence fuels the fire of physical violence; and if we want to put out the fire of physical violence, logically we have to cut off the fuel supply.” What is passive violence? According to Gandhi and his grandson Arun, passive violence is what we do to criticize and disrespect other people’s lives, their heritage, their history and their values. I will have to add ignoring or acting as if the huddled masses do not exist.
As the TV cameras give us a look into the faces of displaced people, children without parents, old folks without homes, the sick and dying left behind. We must ask the question, are they the wretched refuse? Are they tomorrow’s terrorists?
What happens to them two weeks from now when the cameras stop rolling, when the public moves on to the next headline? Is that what the huddled masses will look like?
For those of us who have glanced at the other side, can we say, “send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me”?
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People, who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop it now. I don’t have the answer, but I do know that collectively we can.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on September 6, 2005 at 1:39 am
By Marsha Joyner
New Orleans, the city of romantic myths and memorable music, Gulfport, Pass Christian, little towns and villages whose names only appear on a AAA map are “Deja vous all over again”. If you will remember in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, he had to come to grips with the social problems of the day, which demanded reflection upon the nature of society and, therefore, upon the nature of man.
He showed us a man who went to jail for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. Of course, while he is in jail his family starved to death. We became acquainted with children who need to be fed, men who need jobs, and women who need to be treated humanely. By the end of the play we were crying out for change. The suffering of the people was more than we could endure.
And so it has been with the people suffering from Katrina. People dying in the flood ravished streets, baking alive on roof tops in 95 degree heat, five days without food and water, crowded into the domed prison without the basic sanitary facilities. “Les Misérables”, American style.
Over the course, thanks to the the television coverage of Katrina, we witnessed poor people trapped in a social/political system with no way out. What little they had to sustain life, washed away by the most powerful forces of nature.
President Bush said, ”there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud.” Troops with guns are meant for desperate people breaking through stores, wading through polluted water to get the necessities of life, dry clothes, drinking water, medicines and a loaf of bread; not for the rich corporate entities.
Did Katrina open our eyes to a problem, which has been glossed over? Are we seeing the under belly of America, the poor, the minorities, the people who could not afford to evacuate; whose very existence depends on the meager handout of the government. A government, which we saw was too long delayed in coming to the rescue.
Did Katrina show us an America that we pretend does not exist? The magnitude of everyday suffering is intolerable and such conditions must be changed through social action. We, members of SNCC and countless others, worked tirelessly to enact social changes only to see subsequent Administrations dismantle them. We are now back to square one. Like Victor Hugo, again, we must convince America that the poor, the minorities, the outcast, the people stealing in the midst of Katrina, the outcast—the misérables—are worth saving.
Aloha pumehana
Marsha
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on September 2, 2005 at 11:03 pm
Marsha has an op-ed in today’s Honolulu Advertiser:
The biggest impediment to voting is not the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens Council or economic sanctions; it is apathy. The two biggest sources of apathy are oppression and privilege. Privilege enables people to vote their pocketbook, and oppressed people feel there is nothing for which to vote.
Today, far too many people do not appreciate or do not know of the struggles that women, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific islanders and other minorities have gone through for the right to vote.
Consider:
- Not until 1920 were women granted the right to vote.
- In 1946, racial barriers were let down for Chinese and Filipinos so that they could vote.
- In 1952, Japanese, Koreans, and Samoans became eligible for citizenship so they, too, could vote.
- And the 1965 Voting Rights Act removed impediments to voting for everyone.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said, “The nation is entering a mean-spirited attack on civil rights, and with it comes attempts to undermine or eliminate the Voting Rights Act. When President Bush was asked directly to support reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, he refused to make a commitment to extend the Voting Rights Act.”
If we are to have peace, justice, and prosperity, we must have open and honest dialogue. We must register to vote and thoroughly participate in our democracy.
Across America, too often it is the lower-income people who have the lowest voter registration, and the people of privilege who have the highest. We need to turn that around.
(Read the rest.)
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on August 7, 2005 at 4:20 pm
[This is from my friend Marsha Joyner, who produced the TV series. I carried something else by her yesterday. --BG]
“All life on Earth has been touched by the event, which took place here.”
The official Trinity Site proclaims
For we are all Downwind
Atomic Bomb Series on ‘Olelo Channel 53 (Hawaii)
Sixty years ago on July 16, 1945, the final step of the WWII Manhattan Project took place at Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time. The project marked the beginning of an era of nuclear weapons, scientific discoveries, unfathomable injuries and unimaginable sorrows.
The 19-kiloton explosion ushered the world into the atomic age. The second bomb, known as “Little Boy”, was detonated over the city of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. The third bomb, known as “Fat Man”, was detonated over the city of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. The fourth bomb known as “Able” was detonated in Bikini and began 30 years of horrific atomic/Hydrogen bomb tests throughout the Pacific Ocean.
The atomic/nuclear age has wrought worldwide havoc beyond belief. It has had such an impact on our lives, that we should not ignore the history but study it and learn from it.
From 1945 through 1962, the United States conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians participated in the conduct of those tests, and many of the participants were exposed to ionizing radiation.
July 15, 2005 Channel 53 – 10:00 p.m. “Atomic Bomb part II”
July 16, 2005 Channel 53 – 9:30 p.m. “Half Life”
July 17, 2005 Channel 53 – 9:00 p.m. “Cry At The End”
The entire series will be repeated
July 23, 2005 Channel 53
7:30 am “Black Hole”
8:30 am “Atomic Bomb part I”
9:30 am “Atomic Bomb part II”
11:00 am Half Life”
12:30 am “Cry at The End”
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on July 16, 2005 at 8:02 pm
By Marsha Rose Joyner
Aloha,
On August 6th we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the signing by Lyndon B. Johnson of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And of course, our own, the late Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink was instrumental in is formation and passage.
Almost one hundred years after the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting voting rights to everyone, non-whites in America had not enjoyed the full measure of freedom. The cost of Freedom was exceptionally high.
We, The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition- Hawaii are requesting that you join with us in a VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVE. We feel that it is the best way to commemorate this event as well as celebrating the lives of all of the people who sacrificed so that we may enjoy the right to vote.
Many people from Hawaii made huge sacrifices and involved themselves in the voter registration campaign in the southern states. Southern Blacks who tried to register to vote–and people of other races who supported them–were typically harassed, beaten or killed.
For years, hundreds of thousands of people had worked and died to secure human rights for everyone in the U.S. July 2, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed The Civil Rights Act into law. Yet some of the southern states still resisted granting voting rights to everyone. The physical abuse was unimaginable and the economic manipulation deplorable for those who tried to register to vote.
The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks–and three events–that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with “billy-clubs” and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a “symbolic” march to the bridge. On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong.
“At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama (March 7, 1965). “There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem,” President Johnson said in his message to Congress three weeks after the televisions images of Bloody Sunday were shown to the world.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required equal access to public places and outlawed discrimination in employment, was a major victory of the black freedom struggle, but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was its crowning achievement. The Act had an immediate impact. Within months of its passage on August 6, 1965, one quarter of a million new black voters had been registered. Winning the right to vote changed the political landscape of the United States. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, barely 100 African Americans held elective office in the U.S.; today there were more than 10,000.
The biggest impediment to voting is not the KKK or the white citizens council or economic sanctions; it is apathy. Today, far too many people do not appreciate or do not know of the struggles that women, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders and other minorities have gone thru for the right to vote.
The Voting Rights Act was costly—100 years, thousands were arrested and served time in jails across America, while others gave their lives for the right to vote. People stand today on the ground won by people yesterday, it is a debt we owe.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on July 15, 2005 at 10:51 pm
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTS