A face of hate - Neal Boortz
"We need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta"
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
If by some chance you think that racism is going away, that the celebration of the end of slavery on Juneteenth has any meaning, that the deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (link to diary by Meteor Blades) on this day in 1964 is part of a long gone past, that the economic conditions of black folks (link to diary by Shanikka) is improving, you need to stop for just a second and listen to the hate spewed over the airwaves here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, by hater-in-chief Neal Boortz.
Yeah Boortz. Tell white folks to get guns and go on a vigilante KKK white citizens council spree- and shoot young black men down and then imprison their mothers.
He said (I ain't embedding his bigoted voice)
This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city. And let their -- let their mommas -- let their mommas say, "He was a good boy. He just fell in with the good crowd." And then lock her ass up.
There is currently only one petition online calling for the removal of Boortz. We need to get Color of Change to go after Boortz with the same vigor that they used to take down Dobbs, and Beck. (please drop them a note).
For those of you not familiar with his hate radio show:
Neal A. Boortz, Jr. (born April 6, 1945) is an American libertarian radio host, author, and political commentator. His nationally syndicated talk show, The Neal Boortz Show, airs throughout the United States on Dial Global (formerly Jones Radio Networks). It is ranked seventh in overall listeners, with 4.25+ million per week.
There is now a facebook page up called "Boycott Neal Boortz's Sponsors".
For those of you who are staunch supporters of Freedom of Speech....I ask, when does it cross the line?
As we move into an election season ahead - the voices of hate will grow louder. Having just returned from Netroots Nation - to which I give mixed reviews, I hope that the Netroots will step up to the plate in 2012 and give more voice to those of us who want to stop the hate and calls for violence as well as the actual violence being done to us.
Violence has many faces. It is political, social and economic.
Netroots Nation managed to keep Native Americans invisible (except on our panel and a caucus) did not deal with the prison industrial complex (except on our panel) and should have dealt with sky-high black unemployment, and a 15.7 percent unemployment rate in Puerto Rico (our colony of color). Native Americans suffer even more:
The country’s 2.1 million Indians, about 400,000 of whom live on reservations, have the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, and disease of any ethnic group in America” [9] Native Americans remain at the bottom in almost every measurable economic category. Indians earn only a little more than half as much money as the average American-less money per capita than whites, blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. Nearly one-third of Native Americans live in poverty, which is more than twice the rate for Americans in general. American Indian couples earn $71 for every $100 earned by all United States married couples.
Violence is a lack of health care. Violence = death from AIDS
More than any other racial/ethnic group in the United States, Blacks account for more new HIV infections, AIDS cases, people estimated to be living with HIV disease, and HIV related deaths. Even though Blacks make up 13% of the US population, we account for about half (49%) of the people who get HIV and AIDS. Blacks don't live as long as people of other races and ethnic groups with AIDS, due to a multiple level of barriers (i.e. poverty, stigma, etc.). Blacks have more deaths due to HIV/AIDS than any other racial/ethnic group.
Instead of panels on how to craft better emails I want to call for more representation and activism on life and death issues that we face.
Stop hate.
Stop violence
Stop ignoring the real needs of poor folks and people of color in the US.
I am sick and tired of hearing language that only addresses "the middle class".
That goes for almost all of our elected officials - up to and including the President - but for me the solution has to come from boots on the ground - boots from the roots.
Van Jones called for “Rebuild the Dream" at Netroots Nation. He is under attack - yet again.
I’m talking about something much, much deeper than that. Something that we had in this country until the commercializers turned it into something else. The American Dream was simply the idea that hard work should pay in our country. That you should be able to get up in the morning in America, and if you willing to and are able to work, walk out your front door, go to a dignified job, put in a good day’s work and come back home with a paycheck that you can feed your family with and give your children a better life. That’s the American Dream. That’s what our parents fought for and our grandparents fought for and we should not let it be taken away from us on our watch. That’s the American Dream.
And we have Dream killers. Dream killers, who have a wrecking ball agenda for our country. A wrecking ball for America. But they painted that wrecking ball red, white and blue. And they think we’re going to salute their red, white and blue wrecking ball? They got another thought coming in the United States of America. No. It’s time for the deep patriots to stand up to the cheap patriots. It’s time for the deep patriots who love this country and who love everybody in this country, no matter what color you are or who you want to marry or what kind of piercing you got in your nose, we love everybody, we are the deep patriots. They’re the cheap patriots and I’m tired of them questioning us and what we stand for.
So are we going to stand together?
His words "they painted that wrecking ball red, white and blue" echoed the words of Buffy Saint Marie in "My Country Tis of Thy People You're Dying"
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye
Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.
We cannot allow victory to racists and bigots. We cannot allow the poor to be invisible and voiceless.
As I've said before, and I'll say it again:
The revolution will not be blogged - it must be slogged.
We have to fight for our lives.
Get up, put your boots on, get out and organize.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In recognizing the history of American freedom, advocates say, Juneteenth is as deserving of recognition as Independence Day. Time: A brief history of Juneteenth
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There is a common misconception among Americans that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with a stroke of his pen. Yet the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, did no such thing — or, at least, it didn't do a very good job of it. Two and a half years later, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers sailed into Galveston, Texas, announced the end of the Civil War, and read aloud a general order freeing the quarter-million slaves residing in the state. It's likely that none of them had any idea that they had actually been freed more than two years before. It was truly a day of mass emancipation. It has become known as Juneteenth.
Since then, Juneteenth has been a day of celebration for many African Americans, a de facto second Independence Day commemorating the end of slavery and a first step toward inclusion in the greater American dream. It's a bittersweet holiday, "a time of celebration, but also a time of reflection, healing, and hopefully a time for the country to come together and deal with its slave legacy," says the Rev. Ronald V. Meyers, chairman of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. Meyers has worked for almost 15 years to get Juneteenth recognized by state legislatures. Currently, a little more than half of U.S. states acknowledge Juneteenth in some form or another, usually on the third Saturday of June.
The proclamation reaches the South where a family of slaves receives news of their emancipation.
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"The Big Man" of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, saxophonist Clarence Clemons has died. New York Times: Clarence Clemons Dead at 69
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From the beginnings of the E Street Band in 1972, Mr. Clemons played a central part in Mr. Springsteen's music, complementing the group's electric guitar and driving rhythms in songs like "Born to Run" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" with muscular, melodic saxophone hooks that echoed doo-wop, soul and early rock 'n' roll.
But equally important to the group's image was the sense of affection and unbreakable camaraderie between Mr. Springsteen and his sax man. Few E Street Band shows were complete without a shaggy-dog story about the stormy night the two men met at a bar in Asbury Park, N.J., or a long bear hug between them at the end of the night ...
A former college football player, Mr. Clemons towered over Mr. Springsteen at 6 feet 4 inches and about 250 pounds -- his self-evident nickname was the Big Man -- and for most of its history he stood out as the sole black man in a white, working-class New Jersey rock band. (The keyboardist David Sancious, who is also black, played with the group until 1974.) Onstage he had almost as much magnetism as Mr. Springsteen, and even if much of his time was spent hitting a cowbell or singing backup, he could still rile a stadium crowd with a few cheerful notes on his horn.
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America can't reclaim its standing as a global leader unless young men of color also get a shot at academic success. The Root: We Must Educate All Our Young Men
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ince this nation was founded more than two centuries ago, there has been nearly constant tension between tradition and evolution. Yet over the years, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, the forces of progress have haltingly advanced, and continue to do so today. After all, just 50 years ago businesses still hung signs that screamed, "For Whites Only," universities openly discriminated and the government struggled mightily to suppress the memory of "separate but equal."
There's no doubt that our country has come a long way. But few would argue that our progress is complete, and it continues to mask a deeper dysfunction of the status quo.
There is an education crisis facing young men of color. It's not on the front page of the newspaper. People aren't organizing on Facebook or Twitter. But it's out there, and if we fail to address this crisis together, the education level of the entire American work force will decline for the first time in our history.
President Obama has challenged our nation to reclaim its position as the world leader in college degrees, and young men of color are the key to achieving this goal. In the past, when a president called on us to act for the sake of our shared future, we responded. We built warplanes and rocket ships. We invested in science and the arts. We achieved prosperity unparalleled in human history.
Today, young men of color face a challenge that lends itself much more toward apathy than activism. Many young men of color are not pushed to their limits by rigorous coursework in high school. Many find themselves adrift at large universities without organized support systems. And some are forced to choose between personal obligations and academic responsibilities.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
A small add placed in a small newspaper offering a small remainder of an inherited largesse. A sitting in a small room. A drawing on a small canvas. Then, a small amount of color splashes texture as a small shadow emerges from a small corner just above the edge of the easel. A small beacon of light from a small and forgotten lamp illuminates the center and focal point of the small, artistic endeavor; telling a small story of the grand scheme of things.
Still Life with Poverty.
There Came a Soul
She arrived as near to virginal
as girls got in those days—i.e., young,
the requisite dewy cheek
flushed at its own daring.
He had hoped for a little more edge.
But she held the newspaper rolled like a scepter,
his advertisement turned up to prove
she was there solely at his bidding—and yet
the gold band, the photographs ... a mother, then.
He placed her in the old garden chair,
the same one he went to evenings
when the first tug on the cord sent the bulb
swinging like the lamps in the medic’s tent
over the wounded, swaddled shapes that moaned
each time the Screaming Meemies let loose,
their calculated shrieks so far away
he thought of crickets—while all around him
matted gauze and ether pricked up
an itch so bad he could hardly sketch
each clean curve of tissue opening.
I shut my eyes, walk straight to it.
Nothing special but it’s there, wicker
fraying under my calming fingers.
What if he changed the newspaper into a letter,
then ripped it up and tucked the best part
from view? How much he needed that desecrated
scrap! And the red comb snarled with a few
pale hairs for God in his infinite greed
to snatch upon like a hawk targeting a sparrow—
he couldn’t say At least I let you keep your hair
so he kept to his task, applying paint
like a bandage to the open wound.
Pretty Ida, out to earn a penny
for her tiny brood.
He didn’t mask the full lips
or the way all the niggling fears
of an adolescent century
shone through her hesitant eyes,
but he painted the room out, blackened
every casement, every canvas drying
along the wall, even the ailing coffeepot
whose dim brew she politely refused,
until she was seated
as he had been, dropped
bleak and thick,
onto the last chair in the world.
-- Rita Dove
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