As we progress along the hardy path through the Democratic (What A Swell) Party primaries, we are told there are ISSUES out there that need to be addressed.
And that is very true indeed. Just read any of gjohnsit's diaries to see the truly daunting challenges we are facing as a species.
This isn’t just an issue of the “soul” of the Democratic Party. It's also about gaining power.
I can’t do much individually to save Flint, Michigan, though I can do my share to help. I can’t do much individually to solve the endless wars raging throughout the world, to check the aggression of the American Empire, to deal with mass incarceration and lack of equal justice under the law, such fundamental values, there is no further backing away I can do from them.
Since this is Black History Month, I thought I’d share with my fellow Bernie Democrats my feelings when reading some of the stories about the civil rights movement.
Here’s just one, one of many. It’s about Fannie Lou Hamer.
Here’s a blurb:
On one fateful day, while walking by the Ruleville, Mississippi town center, Fannie Lou saw a sign posted by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and decided to investigate. She was 37 years old at the time and was ripe for expressing her outrage over the conditions she and other blacks were subjected to in this rural community. She joined SYNC and worked as a field worker on the voter registration committee. The committee worked on preparing blacks to read and write so they could register to vote. Seventeen people tried to register and were turned back one day. When Marlow was informed of the drive to register, he threatened Fannie Lou and her family with expulsion from the plantation. She left that night and stayed with friends but it wasn't long before her location was discovered and she and her friends were shot at that night by the KKK.
During the Jim Crow years, the power was entirely with the white authorities. It was truly impossible to imagine that voting by Blacks in the Jim Crow south would ever come to pass in any significant sense.
Fannie Lou was physically beaten and usually feared for her life.
Now why would someone do that? Why would someone put themselves in such utter danger for an ideal they knew was impossible to reach?
And please let us not forget, we still have not reached it. After 50 years we still have not reached Equal Justice Under the Law and the fulfillment of the Voting Rights Act.
Anyway, why would someone do this?
The white segregationists used all their significant power to try and shut down the Civil Rights Movement. Constant arrests, physical assault, murder, sometimes in broad daylight, with no one ever held accountable.
Why would Fannie Lou take these risks, to the point of almost being killed:
In 1963, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was formed because no help from the Federal Government regarding the right to vote was apparently coming. The party registered 60, 000 new black voters across the state of Mississippi. Delegates from the party were sent to the 1964, Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey where they challenged the seating of the Mississippi delegation.
Fannie Lou took the opportunity to describe to the convention, and to the world, the horrific way she was treated after they left the voter registration workshop in Charleston, South Carolina in June 1963. She said that on the way home, they were hungry and wanted to stop at a Trailways bus terminal in Winona, Mississippi for food. Fannie Lou decided to stay on the bus while the others went into the terminal. They were not served but were arrested. She was also arrested. She was taken out of her jail cell and taken to another cell and there under the orders of a State Highway Patrol officer, was battened by two Negro prisoners with a police blackjack. The first prisoner beat her until he was exhausted. The law enforcement officer then ordered the second prisoner to beat her. It was three days before members of SYNC were allowed to take her to the hospital.
What could be so important to you that you’d continue to fight even after this kind of treatment?
Our vote is power. What we cannot do separately, we can do if we are united.
The first thing entrenched power will do in return is make the effort to divide. It’s easy and it doesn’t cost much.
Of course if that doesn’t work, there are other methods, sophisticated, shiny, scary, brutal, seductive and just plain out of control.
So this primary fight is not some hysterical, self-indulgent drama festival that detracts from the REAL issue.
It’s a movement, whether the powers that be wish to acknowledge that or not. It is real and it isn’t going to go away or get crushed. It affects this country and this world in all its diversity.
Those people you see at the rallies, read on Twitter and Facebook, at this blog, are not drawing a line in the sand. Our backs are against the wall. Even if we wanted to un-see what we’ve seen, we can’t. So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The present system cannot continue as it is without causing even more suffering to those of us least able to bear it, the poorest and most vulnerable.
I am no hero, I’m a physical coward who has a degree from the Three Stooges School of Self Defense. But I would rather get beaten, screaming all the way, than watch any more suffering and not have anyone in power willing to help.
Charity won’t cut it. There’s only one way for us to really help each other and to lift up the vulnerable we’ve been walking on for so long — and that is to unite and take back our government and make it represent all of us.
There are still too many brilliant lives out there that could be helping us solve the big problems of the world but who are instead treated like Fannie Lou Hamer was.
Enough is enough.