Oct. 30, 2011

Occupy D.C. Taps Deep Reservoir of Anger

By Barrington M. Salmon 

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Washington Informer

Protest signs fill the sidewalk as Occupy D.C. continues to express its outrage with government and corporate America. Courtesy Photo.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) -  At McPherson Square in North West Washington D.C. on a recent Friday night, a large crowd of mainly young protestors participated in a general assembly where a plethora of issues, ethereal and practical, were considered and agreed upon.

Members discussed, among other things, a march the next day and whether marchers could walk on sidewalks without being troubled by law enforcement; they asked whether the goal was to be arrested and the consequences of that; and they also talked about the location of tents; how not to kill the grass; and how best to safeguard people's personal belongings as the group settles in. An interesting interactive feature included the 'mic checks' – a novel way to ensure that everyone heard questions and other information by participants who repeated, word-for-word, what each speaker said.

About 30 tents in neat rows covered most of the grassy area. Small knots of people chatted, a Jewish group, led by two guitarists, sang, not far away, while a trio comprised of a guitarist, accompanied by a tuba player and a trombonist, worked on perfecting some impromptu arrangements. At one entrance to the park stood a fading red and white Occupy DC sign and a large American flag attached to a length of white PVC piping bending in the night breeze.

One sign read: "The whole world is watching – we are the 99 percent." Back at Freedom Plaza, retired Col. Ann Wright eyed the tent city around her with undisguised pleasure. "It is encouraging to see the numbers and to see this all over the country," said Wright, who traveled to the District from Honolulu, Hawaii. "There are 150-200 people left from the 1,500 who were here over the weekend. I certainly hope for more ... I think the politicians are getting the sense that people are pissed off. City governments are going down the toilet."

Wright, a former diplomat and soldier – who said she was "on the ground" in Somalia, Grenada and Panama – said she is deeply concerned about certain government policies and wars "that are sucking us dry."

"We have lost our financial and moral standing in the world," said Wright, who spent 16 years as a diplomat and resigned in 2003 because of her opposition to 'Bush's war.' "So much funding goes into these wars and at the same time, we're dealing with the pitiful state of education, roads and healthcare. The corporate greed is appalling and Wall Street is sucking us dry, too."

Wright added that it's heartwarming to see the growing numbers of city councils, mayors and other elected officials around the country endorsing the protestors. A mantra of the Occupy movement is that "the 99 percent will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent."

The 1 percent includes banks, and the insurance and mortgage industries which are said by the group to control 99 percent of the money, and the 99 percent encompasses the rest - the have-nots. In actuality, the wealthiest 1 percent is thought to control about 40 percent of the nation's wealth.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), first described the protestors as "a mob" before backtracking and calling them, instead, unpatriotic, while Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), warned that the media shouldn't be allowed to cover the protests for fear that it would give the movement legitimacy and "as it did in the 60s, end up shaping policy." According to the website, the Raw Story, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said the protests are a conspiracy to help President Barack Obama. He called the occupiers "anti-American and anti-capitalist to criticize bankers."

Former Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich said the protests are "a natural outgrowth of Obama's 'class warfare,' and described the unrest "as a strain of hostility to free enterprise." At the same time, House Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), used the television forum of "Meet the Press" to blame the president for sowing class envy and social unrest and preying on people's emotions, envy, fear and anger. However, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (D), is encouraging more Americans to support the occupy protests around the U.S.

"My sense is that there's a great fear that this sweet deal that a lot of people have in Washington and New York, this unholy alliance between our government and our media, the financial markets and the financial businesses, that this unholy alliance is being threatened and challenged," he said. "It is a threat and attack on every working American and it's time we upset the apple cart. I think they are nervous and that this has great potential."

Naismith and Evans theorize that the movement is fostering a new reality and building a refreshing consciousness and concern for others that was lost in the me-ism and selfishness that are often by-products of a capitalist society. Both said they welcome the changes this movement could foment. For Chapel Hill, N.C. resident Tracey Wall, coming to the District was precipitated by his concerns about the direction the country has taken.

"I have a 20-year-old son and I'm concerned for his future," said Wall. "I can't believe how far things have gone. I am taking a stand and representing people who have been disenfranchised. We have a war economy and there has been a rapid erosion of our freedoms. I would like to see this all end with single-payer healthcare that is affordable, corporate power out of politics, the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and taking the money from the military budget and giving it to the people...I have seen the unparalleled growth of people power that has usurped the dialogue between one capitalist party – the Democrats, and the other political party – the Republicans. People have growing needs such as unemployment, joblessness, foreclosures, homelessness, and the never-ending wars. This is a wake-up call to all politicians. If you stand in the way, or stand on the tracks of the Peoples' Freight Train, you will be run over. Choo-choo!"

Oct. 30, 2011

News Analysis

'Fault Line' in History: No Mention of Corretta Scott King at Monument

By Rev. Barbara A. Reynolds

Corretta Scott King

Rev. Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Even among the splendor of the day’s festivities, the absence of any words or deeds of Coretta Scott King carved in the stone of the monument honoring her husband left a fault-line in our nation’s history.

The recent dedication of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument l offered a splendid tribute crowned by President Barack Obama linking his presidency to the martyred human rights leader. The centerpiece of the monument on the National Mall is a towering 30 foot statue of Dr. King carved out of stone. It is a grandiose salute to a man who without an army, weapons, or a national treasury commanded a war so unlike that of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who are enshrined in memorials nearby.

Dr. King commanded a spiritual army that helped liberate the heart and soul of America from its deepest hatred and molded it into a liberation movement for freedom and dignity that continues resounding around the world.

The memorial is spectacularly significant; something for all the world to see for generations to come. This grandier makes the absence of any lasting tribute to Coretta Scott King, the person that did the most to carry forth Dr. King’s legacy, so compelling. I dare say if it were not for this woman by his side, his legacy would never have risen to such heroic proportions today.

Somewhere on that vast four acres there should be a statue, a bust, a plaque or something showing that she was a co-partner in this great freedom movement. (She died on Jan. 30, 2006.) Why not a mention of her on the Monument's wall of great quotes?  He once said, “In every campaign, if Coretta was not with me, she was only a heartbeat away.””

In fact, one of Coretta’s most cherished quotes symbolizes what kind of woman she was. Horace Mann, the founder of Antioch College, her alma mater, once said, “If you have not found a cause to die for, you have not found a reason to live.”

That statement was not mere words to her. She lived at a time when she virtually had to have the faith of a prophet and nerves of steel just to live each day. During the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott carloads of Ku Klux Klan drove through Black housing sections. The Kings received constant threatening calls. Then on January 30, she was in the house with her infant daughter, Yolanda, when the King’s house was bombed. “We could have been killed, but it was just not our time to die,” she told me. Despite the terrorism and the pleas of her parents to leave Montgomery she stayed with Martin until the 369 day boycott successfully ended.

   “During the bus boycott I was tested by fire and I came to understand that I was not a breakable crystal figurine, “she said. “ If I had been fragile and fearful this would have been too much a distraction for Martin. Certainly his concern for my safety and that of the children would have prevented him from staying focus on the movement, but he came to understand he could trust me with trouble .In Montgomery, I was tested and found I became stronger in a crisis.”

In 1968, the testing became heart-breaking. On April 4, Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis while a campaigning for the rights of striking garbage workers. During the national upheaval and riots following the assassination, much of the nation was awed not only by the poise of Coretta King but by her inner strength as she took her slain husband’s place and led the march. “What most did not understand then was that I was not only married to the man I loved but I was also married to the movement that I loved.”

In taped interviews, Mrs. King told me how after her husband’s death her faith gave her the strength to raise her four children and to build a world-class center in Atlanta to continue the non-violent work of Dr. King. This move brought her into a bitter contention with some of Dr. King’s chief aides who had their own agendas for self-promotion and tried unsuccessfully to push Mrs. King out of the way.

In Atlanta, she led a redevelopment effort of deteriorated neighborhoods that helped create the diversity that attracted the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Center, along with the King birth home, the gravesite at the center, where both Kings are entombed brings in thousands of tourists each year and has helped Atlanta become the spiritual Mecca of America, according to Steve Klein, communications director of the Center.

Following the success of raising funds for the center, Mrs. King started lobbying for the King Holiday Bill. While only a sentence or a phrase is ever used to describe this effort it took more than 15 years of hard-core organizing, the drive to collect 6 million signatures and lobbying from state to state, along with civil rights supporters in Congress and in the streets to pass the legislation to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday which was signed into law on Nov. 2, 1983..

At the same time, she was working to institutionalize her husband’s legacy Mrs. King also emerged as an incomparable human rights spokeswoman in her own right. “Where ever there was injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.”

As I started interviewing Mrs. King in the mid-1970’s, it was clear that she did not see herself as an appendage or a footnote in history. She often emphasized that she was more than a wife during Dr. King’s life and more than a widow after his death.  She once told me “My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one’s purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one’s self.”

Coretta King was the other half of the Martin Luther King persona. They were two souls with one goal of giving their lives to create a Beloved Community where all people would have dignity and justice. Telling one story without the other creates a flaw and imbalance, a scar on history. It would be shameful for this not to be corrected.

Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds, the author of six books, including “Jesse Jackson: America’s David,” is working on a biography of Coretta King. An ordained minister, she was former columnist and editorial board member of USA Today,

Oct. 30, 2011

Supreme Court Could Decide to Review Health Care Reform Nov. 10

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro-American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The nation’s highest court could decide whether to review President Barack Obama’s health care reform law as soon as Nov. 10, Politico reports.

Five opponents of the law and the Obama administration have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether the law’s requirement for all Americans to buy insurance is constitutional. Five of the six requests have been sent to the court already, according to Politico.

Opponents of the law, including 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business, Liberty University and the Thomas More Law Center, and petitions from the Obama administration will be under consideration.

In a private conference on Nov. 10, the court could decide if they want to hear the issue, and would announce their decision on Nov. 14. Justices could also defer a decision until a later conference.

Politico said the Supreme Court is expected to hear the issue because the administration has asked and circuit courts have issued conflicting decisions on whether the mandate is constitutional.

Oct. 24, 2011

Obama: Qaddafi Death Ends "Long and Painful Chapter”

By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Barack Obama, confirming what millions had heard and watched on national television, announced Oct. 20 that Libyan Ruler Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. 

“This marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya, who now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya,” Obama said in the Rose Garden announcement. “For four decades, the Qaddafi regime ruled the Libyan people with an iron fist.  Basic human rights were denied. Innocent civilians were detained, beaten and killed. And Libya’s wealth was squandered.  The enormous potential of the Libyan people was held back, and terror was used as a political weapon.”

Like a domino effect, Qaddafi’s fall follows the killing of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden and U.S.-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki – all during the Obama administration.

The manner in which Qaddafi was killed still remains in question. A Libyan transition government has established an investigatory team to determine whether he was really shot by accident as some contend or assassination.

The death of Qaddafi comes after months of protest in Libya that forced the dictator and his family out of his palace and on the run.

“One year ago, the notion of a free Libya seemed impossible,” Obama said. “But then the Libyan people rose up and demanded their rights.  And when Qaddafi and his forces started going city to city, town by town, to brutalize men, women and children, the world refused to stand idly by.”

Obama was not shy in assuming partial credit for the death.

“Faced with the potential of mass atrocities - and a call for help from the Libyan people - the United States and our friends and allies stopped Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks,” he said. “A coalition that included the United States, NATO and Arab nations persevered through the summer to protect Libyan civilians.  And meanwhile, the courageous Libyan people fought for their own future and broke the back of the regime.”