UPDATE: please ignore the poll, I edited it and removed several times before I published the diary, but apparently, it just would not go away. LOL. Thanks.
As our party moves further and further to the 'right' and the Old Democratic Party (once called the 'Working Man's/Woman's Party') seems to be quickly morphing into 'Blue Dog Deficit Hawk Land.' In this day and age, we expect a quick fix, but there are no quick fixes, and I wonder why our so-called leaders didn't seem to worry about the 'deficits' when it paid off Wall Street/The Banks with $ 8.5 trillion dollars of our hard earned tax dollars, who knowingly were 'cooking the books' with risky untried and unproven market theories that began the worst catastrophic economic crash in our nation's history, whereby millions have lost their jobs, their homes and their dignity. Nor were/are our 'leaders' concerned about deficits of taxpayers money spent by the US Government to finance both the War in Iraq ($732,098,254,424) and the War in Afghanistan($281,923,134,883). Look here to see the daily costs: http://costofwar.com/...
No one was worried enough in our Government or has even bothered to 'find' the still missing $9 billion spent on Iraqi reconstruction that is still unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management. Strange that the Senate/House haven't stopped feeling free 'to give themselves a raise year after year' and the endless 'bailouts' continue, as Treasury Geithner lifted the $400 billion dollar 'cap' on Freddie/Fannie Mac......And now 'they are all so worried about the 'deficits?'
Bullshit. That's what I call that. There is a false notion growing in our party and it's original platform, based on the deep polarization of our two party system, which has failed us. That is, if we do not vote for Obama, and not hold his feet to the fire, by laying down like cowering beaten 'good little Democrats,' then the only alternative we have is that 'the Right Wing Fake Christian Crazies' will take over.
I reject his notion completely. It is a false argument, and literally 'spits' on everything our proud traditions stood for in the past for those Americans who deeply believed in our principals as a party.
Today I am issuing a Challenge to Congressman Alan Grayson, The Congressman With Guts, who has been touting himself as the Peace Candidate. But more about that later.....
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
George Santayana
When cheaters prosper, we end up with the worst possible system and to call it a free market system is an obscenity. -William Black
I love all three quotes, but the one by William Black hits the nail on the head...because it is indeed the 'cheaters' who are prospering, who are getting away with the most corrupt government our nation has ever witnessed to date (which has been becoming more and more corrupt for the past 50 years or more).
The 'unholy' alliance of the Military Industrial Complex, Our Corporate Overlords, The Oil Companies and our failed Government are all in the same business - the business of 'cheating' Americans and getting away with it, day in and day out.
Believe me, I hate to be the one to tell you, but we are right back at the very beginning of the Labor Movement in our nation. We are starting all over again, because we forgot. Because we stopped fighting the exact same ways that anything that was worth changing (which we had made great strides in) for the poor, the middle class, the downtrodden, the elderly and our basic civil rights and civil liberties. We forgot how all great movements in our party's proud past, such as the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the End to the War in Vietnam occurred.
And because we forgot, how we 'got here,' we are now nearly back to square one. If anyone wishes to argue that assumption, feel free to do so, and yes, we have made strides in our way of life in this nation, but with a so-called 'Jobless Recovery' please note one small, but obvious fact:
Without jobs, we have no recovery. Without a recovery, we will sink deeper and deeper into the morass of polarization and Oligarchy Madness. It is that simple. We are smack dab in the middle of the Second Great Depression, no matter what anyone else says. And the 'human cost' to Americans is quickly mounting:
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which operates 24-hour crisis help lines around the country, reported an increase of 18 percent from January to May this year. The rates have fluctuated wildly, from 13,424 in January 2007 to a peak of 59,500 two months ago. Other news outlets around the nation have recently reported a troubling flow of suicides and murder-suicides by people facing crippling financial troubles, including:
* An armed man facing foreclosure in Chattanooga, Tenn., who called police early July 1 threatening suicide. Authorities said that after officers arrived, the man talked with them from the porch of his house and then burst down the steps waving his gun while screaming, "Suicide by cop!" He died in a hail of bullets.
* A husband in Santa Ana, Calif., who called police later that same day to say he had shot his wife while she slept and then overdosed on Valium in a murder-suicide pact the morning they were to be evicted from their apartment. He survived and has been charged with murder.
* A husband and father in Anaheim, Calif., facing foreclosure and a mountain of credit card debt, last month shot and killed his wife, critically wounded their 3-year-old son, shot at but missed their 5-year-old son and then killed himself, police said.
http://www.aolnews.com/...
Our government and the public servants, including President Obama seem to have forgotten who pays their room and board, and who the hell they are supposed to be working for - that would be us, the American taxpayers.
The 'Cheaters'...the Robber Barons are back in charge, and boy are they doubling down...fast. It is never, ever enough, so don't think this is the 'end of America and the Middle Class'...this is 'just the beginning of the end of America and the Middle Class.'
Case in point:
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.
It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."
Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldmans pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market. They reckoned food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked, so they switched their funds there. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded on to this ground. So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for derivatives based on food massively rose – which meant the all-rolled-into-one price shot up, and the starvation began. The bubble only burst in March 2008 when the situation got so bad in the US that the speculators had to slash their spending to cover their losses back home. When I asked Merrill Lynch's spokesman to comment on the charge of causing mass hunger, he said: "Huh. I didn't know about that." He later emailed to say: "I am going to decline comment." Deutsche Bank also refused to comment. Goldman Sachs were more detailed, saying they sold their index in early 2007 and pointing out that "serious analyses ... have concluded index funds did not cause a bubble in commodity futures prices", offering as evidence a statement by the OECD.
http://www.independent.co.uk/...
Do you actually think that Goldman Sachs 'cares' about starvation among the poorest in the world? Think again. They do not. This a a horribly graphic statement, I know, but rather than shying away from the reality of the Robber Barons in charge again, I welcome that reality, because if we cannot find the courage to face these 'vipers' then, you are a volunteer, not a victim. These 'vipers' have one rule: It's never enough, strip the carcasses down to the bone then sell the bones to the highest bidder.
Do you know how the G-20 came about? Well I didn't until recently....
NAOMI KLEIN:
Ten years ago, Paul Martin, who was then Canada’s finance minister, later Canada’s prime minister, was at a meeting with Larry Summers. This is 1999, so Summers at that time was Bill Clinton’s nominee for Treasury secretary. And the two men were discussing this idea to expand the G7 into a larger grouping to respond to the fact that developing country economies like China and India were growing very quickly, and they wanted to include them into this club, and they were under pressure to do so. So, what Martin and Summers did—and this history we only learned last week. This really wasn’t a history that had been told. So this story came out in The Globe and Mail. And it turns out that the two men didn’t have a piece of paper. They wanted to—I don’t know how this would possibly be the case, but their story is that they wanted to make a list of the countries that they would invite into this club, and they couldn’t find a piece of paper, so they found a manilla envelope and wrote on the back of the manilla envelope a list of countries. And by Paul Martin’s admission, those countries were not simply the twenty top economies of the world, the biggest GDPs. They were also the countries that were most strategic to the United States. So Larry Summers would make a decision that obviously Iran wouldn’t be in, but Saudi Arabia would be. And so, Saudi Arabia is in. Thailand, it made sense to include Thailand, because it had actually been the Thai economy, which, two years earlier, had set off the Asian economic crisis, but Thailand wasn’t as important to the US strategically as Indonesia, so Indonesia was in and not Thailand. So what you see from this story is that the creation of the G20 was an absolutely top-down decision, two powerful men deciding together to do this, making, you know, an invitation-only list.
And what you really see is that this is an attempt to get around the United Nations, where every country in the world has a vote, and to create this expanded G7 or G8, where they invite some developing countries, but not so many that they can overpower or outvote the Western—the traditional Western powers. So, as this happened, we have also seen a weakening and an undermining of the United Nations. And I think that that’s the context in which the G20 needs to be understood. And that’s why a lot of the activists in Toronto this week were arguing that the G20 is an illegitimate institution and the price tag is—that we, as Canadian taxpayers, have had to take on for hosting this summit, you know, $1.2 billion, is particularly unacceptable, given that we have the United Nations, where these countries can meet in a much more democratic, much more legitimate forum, as opposed to this ad hoc invitation-only club from the back of an envelope in Larry Summers’s office.
http://www.democracynow.org/...
Ah yes, 'That' Larry Summers who along with Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan literally 'black listed' and threw out Brooksley Born when she had the audacity to warn all of these men about the devastating financial results if 'derivatives and fraud' were not reined in. Ms. Born is an American patriot as is Elizabeth Warren, both first class human beings in my book.
Oligarch Madness is in full swing in our nation, and I am deeply sorry to say that President Obama has lost all sight of his supposedly 'progressive roots.' I'm sure that there will be comments about 'I never believed he was a true progressive,' but that is not what he ran on. He ran on 'uplifting the Middle Class' and reining in what he called, 'the profound irresponsibility of Wall Street.' If you deny that, then I can point you right in the direction of a diary I did many many months ago that actually has videos of Candidate Obama, and who we 'thought' we were voting for:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Or, more to the point another diary I did, which is coming home to roost:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Now, that we know after the Fake Health Care Reform bill, followed by the Fake Financial Reform Bill, with absolutely no re-negotiation of NAFTA in the works, or the rebuilding of the Middle Class or our manufacturing base, who 'we really got' is Bill Clinton on 'steroids' and the same people (surprise surprise) just keep 'showing up'...like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, The Goldman Sachs club, the infamous 'punch you in the face, fuck you progressives' Rahm Emmanuel, and of course the now famous Pete Peterson's Cat Food Commission who are busy figuring out a way to make 'cat food' taste better so that when the 'elderly' are forced into eating it, 'they won't mind too much.'
So...three guesses as to who is going to pay for the 'Great Heist of 2008' in which Wall Street/the Banks tanked our economy, as the continuation of 'business as usual' with absolutely no accountability for that particular group of 'cheaters,' (or the so called 'Regulators' none of which have been held accountable) that put more than 15 million people out of work, out of their homes, which robbed them of their retirement and savings, then of course there are the 'endless, endless wars' that 'we the people' are being be forced into paying for as our Corporations continue to sell our jobs overseas throwing millions of Americans into abject poverty. So now, the Republicans/Fake Democrats Blue Dogs are going to come after the final safety net to rob Peter to pay Paul?
Welcome to the new 'Death By Spreadsheet' people. As quoted above from the article about Goldman Sachs starving the poorest of people on our earth: Let the Starvation Begin.
So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for derivatives based on food massively rose – which meant the all-rolled-into-one price shot up, and the starvation began.
And this upcoming obscenity that we call America, is exactly what we are going to keep getting because we forgot, how we got here in the first place. We keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again:
If we just 'elect better Democrats' then it will all work out in the end. Here is a clue folks: I can literally count on one hand the 'Progressive Democrats' that are representative of our original party platform. I certainly believe in all kinds of Democrats, but I'll be damned if I'm going to sit by and let these ass hat Corporate Whores sell us down the river (just as easily as the Republicans have done).
The strange thing is this: Our new and better Democrats get to Washington DC, and all of a sudden, are sucked into the Vortex Bubble known as the 'Twilight Zone of Corruption.' It's all about fund raising, and Lobbyists...its all about the 'Jet Set Life' of the rich and famous...it's all about the next election, and the 'Bubble they live in' that is the furthest thing from people who are are now living in 'Tent Cities' that are starving, that are angry, that are disillusioned, that are now in a state of grabbing on to people like Sarah Palin or worse Mitt Romney, because our party keeps moving to the right and over again.
How is that working for you? Dissent within our own party, is apparently no longer 'allowed' the the Republican Party, which is officially owned by Rush Limbaugh, who has hysterically joined the recent meme that 'Americans are fat and lazy and drug addicted.' Oh yeah, Rush?
The health of any democratic state can be measured by the degree to which its citizens feel free to voice their dissent against the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. Guarantees of free speech, free press and free assembly mean absolutely nothing if the people live in fear of retaliation should they choose to speak their minds regarding their politicians.
Oppression comes in many shapes and sizes. It hides its evil motives in the pretense of supposed honorable acts all the while bullying the naysayer into silent submission with unspoken threats of retribution. However, let there be no doubt whatsoever that democracy requires, no demands, dissent.
Free political discussion and the right to disagree with those in political power are the cornerstone of a free country. Without the right to dissent there is no way for the people to unite in thought and purpose regarding the process that decides their lives and futures.
Again...I am going back to the original theme of this diary: How, did we as a party as a society, fight our way into a decent wage, a small piece of the American Dream, how did this happen, and why did we forget it? Why do we keep blaming the media, instead of remembering 'what worked in the past'?
In these 'modern' times it is easy to forget, because we have bought into the 24 hour news cycle, because we are living in the age of 'drive up to the window' quick answers, because we have the internet to put our rage into what we think of as reality when it is not. We can certainly organize our thoughts, and argue our points of view here, but nothing will ever replace, showing up in solidarity face to face with our Corporate Over Lords, in person....nothing.
Our 'learned Helplessness' has claimed our souls and we lay paralyzed living from pay check to pay check, cowering in our fear, and that is exactly the way these 'CHEATERS' want you to feel. We have forgotten our roots, and the amazing strength and courage of how other Democrats fought, sacrificed and even died in the streets of our nation for our most basic freedoms have, including a decent wage and dignity. We blame everyone but ourselves. We blame the media, even though we are a nation of over 310 billion people and once again, ignore the other massive movements in our nation, where citizens had the 'guts' to organize, march throughout our nation and on Washington DC. Many of these movements took a very long time before change was finally implemented, but I can assure you, no one in these movements (Labor Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Ending the War in Vietnam) gave a rats ass about blaming the media. They understood that if enough people joined together, person by person, day by day, that their message would prevail, and prevail it did, until WE FORGOT WHERE WE CAME FROM AND HOW WE GOT THERE. We let our politicians divide us with class warfare, and because of that, we let them 'set up the decoys' that keep us from focusing on the realities we find ourselves in today.
The reality is that there are no jobs. They are not coming back. Our manufacturing base has been destroyed, and our jobs are all overseas. The reality is 90 percent of our nation's wealth is held by the top 1 percent, who are the Oligarchs. They have stolen from us, blatantly and have gotten away with it. They have destroyed our nation, and 'they' are in charge, full charge, and now...both parties, are simply 'passing back and forth' the 'power and money' as we sit on the sidelines, arguing amongst one another, as to the false choice of 'if we don't fully support our President, we are doomed.' Sorry, but that sounds too much like 'black mail' to me, and I'm having none of it.
FDR told activists in his own party, "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
Franklin Roosevelt was also famous for not staying bought, after he took huge amounts of money from the special interests of his day. Modern politicians of either party would never do this after accepting thinly veiled bribes. They stay bought, because they know the next election is coming up, and people will find ways to be nice to them after they are out of office and don't need to worry about campaign finance laws.
http://www.politicalcortex.com/...
The rationalization, must stop in our party, if we are to regain the American Dream again....otherwise, I can promise you this:
Our American Nightmare, is going to continue, without a doubt.
Here is how we managed over hundreds of years to build our party:
19th Century American Unionism
In the early 1800s many men from large cities put together the organization which we now call the Trade Union Movement. Individuals who were members of unions at this time were skilled, experienced, and knew how to get the job done. Their main reasoning for starting this movement was to put on strikes. However, they did not have enough men to fulfill their needs and the unions which began this trendy movement, collapsed quickly. The Mechanics’ Union Trade Association was the next approach to bring workers together. In 1827, this union was the first U.S. labor organization which brought together workers of divergent occupations. This was "the first city-wide federation of American workers, which recognized that all labor, regardless of trades, had common problems that could be solved only by united effort as a class."[6] This organization took off when carpentry workers from Philadelphia went on strike to protest their pay wages and working hours. This union strike was only a premonition of what was to come in the future.
According to history.com:[7] Besides acting to raise wages and improve working conditions, the federations espoused certain social reforms, such as the institution of free public education, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and the adoption of universal manhood suffrage. Perhaps the most important effect of these early unions was their introduction of political action.
Workers realized what unionism was all about through the configuration of mechanics association and many people followed in their footsteps. The strike gave others hope that they could get their concerns out by word of mouth. Before this time many people did not speak about their concerns because of the lack of bodies. However, with more people comes more confidence. Strikes were a new way of speaking your mind and getting things accomplished.
The next established union which made an impact on the trade movement was the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union. This union was founded in 1834 as the first domestic association. However, this union was short lived due to the panic of 1837. "[Andrew] Jackson thought the Bank of the United States hurt ordinary citizens by exercising too much control over credit and economic opportunity, and he succeeded in shutting it down. But the state banks' reckless credit policies led to massive speculation in Western lands. By 1837, after Van Buren had become president, banks were clearly in trouble. Some began to close, businesses began to fail, and thousands of people lost their land." [8] This collapse of financial support and businesses left workers unemployed. Many of these workers, who became affected by the 1837 disaster, were members of a union. It was very hard for them to stay together in an economic hardship and the trade union movement came to a bump in the road. But the economy was restored by the early 1840s and trade unions started doing better. National labor unions were forming, different than ones in the past, consisting now of members of the same occupation. The work force was drastically impacted by the Civil War and the economy was thriving. Many workers gained employment because of this economic boom and unions increased greatly. "More than 30 national craft unions were established during the 1860s and early '70s."[7] One of the significant national craft unions to be formed during this time was the National Labor Union (NLU). It was created in 1866 and included many types of workers.[9] Although relatively short-lived, the NLU paved the way for future American unions. Following the decline of the NLU, the Knights of Labor became the leading countrywide union in the 1860s. This union did not include Chinese, and partially included black people and women.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
This is but a very small part of our history as the 'Working Man's/Woman's party', which has been lost to the 'rationalization' of our party moving further and further to the right, as Oligarchy Madness continues unabated, and how our party has 'sold us down the river' and left us to languish in poverty.
Again, my friends: The Oligarchies are in charge, the Robber Barons are in charge, and we are back to square one, again. Where are we today, after Wall Street/the Bankers and now the Oil Companies, The Corporations and the War Machines have gotten away with financial terrorism of the worst kind? These amoral cowards are thieves, murderers, liars and crooks and they have 'captured' our government just as surely as the Military Industrial Complex has captured our government and that is exactly what President Eisenhower warned us about.
Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, science, empirical evidence and expert advice struggled to be heard above the din of politics. It's one thing to prioritize politics over good policy; it's quite another to let bad politics drive the agenda. But that's what the Bush administration did during its Terri Schiavo era and his congressional majorities paid the price.
Today, a new band of Mayberry Machiavellis has gained control, counseling President Obama to ignore the advice of his economic team and press forward with deficit reduction ahead of job creation. Senior White House adviser David Axelrod told the New York Times recently that "it's my job to report what the public mood is." The public mood, said Axelrod, is anti-spending and anti-deficit and so the smart politics is to alleviate those concerns. "I've made the point that as a matter of policy and a matter of politics that we need to focus on this, and the president certainly agrees with that," said Axelrod of the deficit hawkery that the administration has engaged in over the last several months.
It's an odd political strategy because Axelrod knows that if it succeeds, it will be both bad policy and bad politics. He said as much when asked about the pressure from economic advisers to focus on stimulus and job creation. "I'm very much allied with the economic group, because even as a political matter it would be very shortsighted to take steps that would send us backward," he said. But the Mayberries have already taken those steps: by using the bully pulpit to highlight deficit fears, by proposing an across-the-board spending freeze, by creating a commission to reduce the deficit and stacking it with hawks, by making it clear to progressive allies that the White House political team believes a deficit-reduction focus is important for the midterm elections. The one recent effort by the President to pressure Congress to move forward with jobs-related spending came in a letter sent on a Saturday evening that was met with derision on the Hill for its ham-handedness.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Wow, Axelrod is talking about 'Deficit Fears' that he fully admits are bad politics, and as he says:
"it's my job to report what the public mood is." The public mood, said Axelrod, is anti-spending and anti-deficit and so the smart politics is to alleviate those concerns. "I've made the point that as a matter of policy and a matter of politics that we need to focus on this, and the president certainly agrees with that," said Axelrod of the deficit hawkery that the administration has engaged in over the last several months.
The public mood? OMFG. This is the complete disconnect. Here is a clue Mr. Axelrod...........we are dying here in our nation, and your answer is to cut the 'safety net'? Well excuse me but if your job is to 'report the public mood,' then might I suggest that you Mr. Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel spend the next month in a 'Tent City' outside of Sacramento California in the 120 degree heat? I've reserved two lice ridden sleeping bags for the two of you in a 'tent' full of former Marines who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who would like to 'share some of their anger management problems' with you and Rahm.
As the saying goes Mr. Axelrod, we 'already paid at the office.' As a matter of fact we paid and paid and paid again and we are still paying, by believing that if we just shut the fuck up, and rationalized it all, after letting Bush/Cheney get away with murder, and war crimes, tanking the economy, that somehow, we might be able to depend on President Obama, to at least 'pretend' that in the end there would be some form of justice coming back to the Middle Class by way of 'the new and better Democrats' and the gutless wonders we call the ever growing Blue Dog Democratic party. Here is a little more history, on how 'we' built our original party:
The 'Civil Rights Movement' in our nation, began in 1948 and continues today....see the time line right here:
http://www.infoplease.com/...
But this is what I remember the best, because I was a little girl living during this period in the south:
On the night of Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows: "Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday."[6]
The next morning at a church meeting led by the new MIA head, King, a citywide boycott of public transit was proposed to demand a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses. Such a line would have meant that if the white section of the bus was oversubscribed, whites would have to stand; blacks would not be forced to remit their seats to whites. This demand was a compromise for the leaders of the boycott who believed that the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept it rather than a demand for a full integration of the buses. In this respect, the MIA leadership followed the pattern of earlier boycott campaigns in the Deep South during the 1950s. A prime example was the successful boycott a few years earlier of service stations in Mississippi for refusing to provide restrooms for blacks. The organizer of that campaign, T. R. M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken on the brutal slaying of Emmett Till as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only four days before Parks's arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.[7]
The MIA's demand for a fixed dividing line was to be supplemented by a requirement that all bus passengers receive courteous treatment by bus operators, be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, and blacks be employed as bus drivers. The proposal was passed, and the boycott was to commence the following Monday. To publicize the impending boycott it was advertised at black churches throughout Montgomery the following Sunday. On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boy cotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work, although it is unclear to what extent this was based on sympathy with the boycott, or the desire to have their staff present and working.[citation needed] When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London. Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials on December 8, 1955, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received extremely few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities.[8] Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws. In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the White Citizens' Council, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. The councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King's and Ralph Abernathy's houses were firebombed, as were four black Baptist churches. Boycotters were often physically attacked. Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. King commented on the arrest by saying: "I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice." Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted, and the boycott officially ended December 20, 1956. The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. Martin Luther King, Jr. capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision. The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had ramifications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses and provided more than just a positive answer to the Supreme Court's action against racial segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott reverberated throughout the United States and stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement. The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories and gave Martin Luther King, Jr. the national attention that made him one of the prime leaders of the cause.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Again I remind you as a fellow Democrats...this 'Boycott' lasted for 381 days...that means that these brave and courageous Americans walked, miles and miles to work, many in the searing hot southern heat, and organized, and did not give in, they sacrificed for what they believed in, and I am so ashamed to say, that we can not even 'hold a candle' to their courage.
In fact, the only thing you can call what they did was a 'National Strike' on a local level, and yet, here we sit, as 'blue faced' ranting bloggers, blaming the media. When was the last time you remember, any of our fellow men/women willing to take this kind of action, giving such a sacrifice?
Then I hear this kind of thing:
But it's a new day...............a new age.............the Internet will save us....we have built this great 'blogging' political power money machine, that is far more important than 'Marching in the Streets' (which is so passe) and whhhaaaaaaaa whaaaaaaaa....the 'media' won't cover it...its all the media's fault..not ours. So how is all this magical internet political machine working for you, besides giving us a lazy place to make excuses, to rage rage rage, and to throw our money down an endless whole that equates to pissing in the ocean in our two party system that has been deeply captured by the 'unholy alliance' of the Military Industrial Complex, Wall St./the Banks, the Oil for Blood Companies, and our Whorish Congress.
Well guess what people? All great movements that made change, took a very long time. Do you actually think that you are going to get a 'Drive in Junk Food Political Change Burger' at the Window of your choice? All the 'great changes in our nation, all the great movements' never happened overnight..............ever. So stop believing your own 'press' and stop for a second and remember again, what worked before?
Open your hearts to an actual proven way of change, and stop trying to think we 'reinvented the wheel' because guess what? We did not. Did it ever occur to you, that the Media/Republican MSM Corporate Overlords Machine are actually 'depending on you' NOT TO SHOW UP? Ever thought of that type of reality? Because if we did begin a real movement "Stop the Endless Wars, Bring Back Our Jobs Movement," and showed up in the millions, then how could they ignore us? They could not ignore us, but they sure as hell can ignore us on the Internet, can't they, because that is exactly what is happening.
Finally, let me add one other movement, just so we are going to grab on to how, things change in our nation.....they never certainly happen over night.
The Vietnam War (1945–1975)
The U.S. Antiwar Movement: 1960–1970
Events
1959 Students for a Democratic Society is founded
1965 First draft riots occur on college campuses
1966 Fulbright publishes The Arrogance of Power
1967 Johnson authorizes CIA to investigate antiwar activists 35,000 protesters demonstrate outside the Pentagon
1968 Protest outside Democratic National Convention turns violent
1970 National Guard kills four protesters at Kent State University
Key People
Lyndon B. Johnson - 36th U.S. president; used the FBI to track and detain antiwar protesters
Richard M. Nixon - 37th U.S. president; claimed existence of "silent majority" of Americans who supported the war
J. William Fulbright - Arkansas senator who criticized Johnson and U.S. war strategy in Senate hearings in 1966
By the time of the Tet Offensive, the antiwar movement in the United States had been in full swing for quite some time. The 1960s in the United States were already a quasi-revolutionary period: the civil rights movement had flourished under Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders, and the post–World War II "baby boom" had produced an especially large youth generation, who thanks to postwar prosperity were attending college in large numbers. Not surprisingly, a large student protest movement emerged as U.S. involvement in Vietnam grew.
In 1959, students had founded the semi-socialist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Many students at universities across the country held "teach-in" rallies, which quickly transformed into protest marches as the war progressed. By 1965, after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the SDS began to organize protest rallies against the Vietnam draft, and some students publicly burned their draft cards. Thousands of young draft dodgers fled to Canada and other countries to escape military service. One last example....to again, remind all of us...that 'movements for change' real change...do not, and will never happen over night...they happen over a very long period of time, but they happen when we have had enough...
http://www.sparknotes.com/...
You see, we forgot that....we forgot that 'movement for change' real change do not, and will never happen overnight....but they do happen when we have had enough.'
So the question is............have you had enough? If you have, then let us embrace, how changed happened in our party. Certainly not overnight, but with one person at a time, over very long periods of time.
I am choosing to move beyond 'blame' and 'excuses' and into 'solutions' because it is the 'blame game'...the class warfare, the 'decoys' of ideology that is keeping us as a people from moving forward. Rage has a way of paralyzing us as human beings, and like violence it is self perpetuating, in addition to being counter-productive. Positive action building a movement with 'solidarity' of purpose within our party rejecting the 'Blue Dog Cat Food Commission' crap-o-la that is coming our way, in addition to the on-going Oligarch Madness, is where I'm moving towards. ACTION.
Here is a clue as to how this is being played out now right under our noses:
Scott Adams warned of this trend in "Dilbert & the Way of the Weasel." Forget competition. No, capitalism breeds monopolies, it's a "financial system designed to transfer money from lesser weasels to greater weasels. Someday, if everything goes according to plan, one supreme weasel will have all the money and everyone else will be his or her domestic servant." Phil Izzo & Paul Vigna analyze today's jobs report and what it says about the state of the economic recovery. Plus, Naftali Bendavid on why today's unemployment numbers are a problem for Democrats.
Until then, 99% of America's wealth remains concentrated in Wall Street's "Conspiracy of Weasels." They know only one thing, blindly "follow the money. If you took the same amount of money" traded daily on the NYSE, "sealed it in drums and dropped it in the ocean, 4 billion weasels would drown just trying to be near it."
When Obama signs the so-called reform bill, blow a goodbye kiss to our last great hope for true reform: Obama failed. True reform will never happen. Wall Street gains more power fighting every new reform bill, making massive investments in lobbyists. Witness their rapid return to power since near-bankruptcy in 2008. No, the Weasel Conspiracy members didn't drown, they rule America. They killed democracy, destroyed capitalism and are consolidating vast new wealth and power in the hands of this conspiracy of Wall Street, Corporate CEOs, the Forbes 400 and Washington's pay-to-play power-players. Result: Less than one million co-conspirators control a nation of 310 million citizens. Here are 12 more warnings exposing the Weasel Conspiracy's phony financial reforms:
http://www.marketwatch.com/...
But I remember my dad, who as child sold newspapers on the streets at the age of 10 during the Depression to support his mother and 5 sisters and brothers telling me over and over again:
"Never forget where you came from......never forget who died for us in this country or in Ireland, when the British had warehouses full of food, that starved us out of our own land. Never forget, that your granny was raised in hut with a dirt floor and waited 2 years to earn her citizenship before she came here....never forget...where you came from, because if you do, then you will forget what it means to be an American, and that is a rare gift, not an automatic right...and fight for that right, because no matter how hard you fight, they will keep trying to take it back away from you every day of your life."
And that is where we are again, whether we want to admit it or not. The Robber Barons are in charge again, and 'they' have taken it all away from us piece by piece, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. I've had enough. Have you?
Sometimes great Americans are called to duty, to a destiny that is what I would call kismet.
Today I call on Congressman Alan Grayson, who has been touting himself as the new 'Peace Candidate.' I deeply admire Congressman Grayson for his stand on truly progressive issues, and for having the guts to go after war profiteers and the Crooks, liars and thieves of Wall Street.
Today I call on the good Congressman to begin a new 'movement' in our nation to be entitled the 'End the Endless Wars, Bring Our Jobs Back Home' movement. In addition, I would also like to challenge those people who have joined Congressman Grayson in his recent efforts to stop the endless wars:
Howard Dean
Martin Sheen
Michael Moore
Oliver Stone
Robert Greenwald
Barbara Lee
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
Dennis Kucinich
Congressman Grayson has this to say about the endless wars:
"Imagine if we had decided after 9/11 to wean ourselves off oil and other carbon-based fuels. We'd be almost ten years into that project by now.
"Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring "war" on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".
"Imagine.
"Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is "stability" in countries that never have been "stable", and never will be.
I challenge Congressman Grayson to put his vision into action by beginning a true movement in our nation, not unlike the great Labor Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the end of the Vietnam War Movement.
I challenge Congressman Grayson to answer the call as all great Americans have in the past by announcing the first March on Washington DC to take place on Labor Day of 2010.
If you agree with this, please feel free to email the good Congressman at this address and ask him to respond to this diary and remember this:
We have everything to lose, if we do not act and remember as Democrats, who we really are, and how we got here. We are in need of a true progressive with guts, to turn the page and led us into a new direction for change in our party and for our nation.
Contact Alan
Phone: 1-800-403-0303
Email: alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com
For more on Congressman Grayson's Peace Movement go here:
http://www.congressmanwithguts.com/
Like the late great Rosa Parks, it only takes one brave American to begin a 'Movement.' I would like to hear from Congressman Grayson and the people who are currently supporting him in his Peace Movement, to let us know, besides simply asking us for 'more money,' what are they willing to do, to begin real change in our nation.
Thanks as always.