Waterstar

Will definitely check that out. I think that so many people, because of fear of being labeled as "conspiracy theorists" are hesitant to offer that which is not at all an illogical educated guess, which is that HIV/AIDS = biological warfare/eugenics. Then again,it seems that much human illness is manufactured as much as is human thought.

(I'm going to check this whole article out soon.) That's true, Troy. A lot of people did and still do like her. This is precisely why McCain put her on the VP ticket. He needed to solidify support. However, his strategic move backfired. Many republicans felt that she was giving their party a bad name. lol Heck even a lot of democrats and independents felt that Palin was giving the republican party a bad name. lol Remember also that Hillary Clinton was doing well in her presidential campaign. While it is realistic to say that many males were perhaps more resistant to a caucasian female president than to a black male president, it is also realistic to suggest that Hilary Clinton's doings provided the greatest source of her undoing. She and her husband,showed that they was not so out of touch with their inner redneck as many people (especially black) had thought. Hillary Clinton's had the support of the LGBT community that Obama is trying hard for now. Clinton already had that for sure. Also, Clinton had the support of many black people who never learned that Bill Clinton was playing them like his saxophone. (We are so easily hoodwinked.) Even the democratic 'black vote' was split greatly between Obama and Clinton. Hillary Clinton was endorsed by many African Americans with great influence in the black community because they had been in the pockets of her family or had received favors (or even pats on the head) from her her husband. Many people who ended up voting for Obama really did so only because Hillary Clinton was no longer running for president. It was great strategically for Obama to to include her in his camp, because while many people did not support Obama, they supported Clinton (lol or should I say "The Clintons"...) You know, I think that if Clinton were in the race this time, Obama would have an even harder time this time around with her last time than he did before.

*Note: I thought that it would be good to post this since there is a discussion on here in which social security is mentioned** Home | FAQs | Contact Us | Text Size < div><img alt="DCSIMG" id="DCSIMG" width="1" height="1" src="https://stats.ssa.gov/dcs5w0txb10000wocrvqy1nqm_6n1p/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript&WT.js=No&DCS.dcscfg=1&WT.tv=8.6.2"/></div> Hstory Home This is an archival or historical document and may not reflect current policies or procedures Excerpts From Francis Townsend's Autobiography In 1943, Dr. Francis E. Townsend published his autobiography--NEW HORIZONS, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By that time the Townsend movement was a decade old and Social Security had been paying benefits since 1937 (monthly benefits since 1940). Even so, only some of the steam had gone out of the movement by 1943. In those early years of Social Security benefits were still small and beneficiaries were few. Old-Age Assistance was more important, both in terms of the dollar value of the benefits and the size of the eligible population. It was not until the 1950 Social Security Amendments that the value and size of the Social Security program finally outpaced welfare benefits. Townsend, in the meantime, continued to advocate his plan. In his autobiography we can see the forces and values that shaped and motivated Dr. Townsend. What we see, I think, is a very sympathetic character is well-meaning and sincerely motivated to do good. It was an irony of history, apparently lost on the good Dr., that his Townsend Plan would have its greatest impact on the well-being of the elderly by serving as a prod to the adoption of Social Security. DEDICATION FROM TOWNSEND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: POVERTY BREEDS WAR This book is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created with certain inherent rights among which is the right to live above the status of poverty and the evils poverty entails. Poverty breeds war. CHAPTER 21- "THE TOWNSEND PLAN": (In this Chapter Dr. Townsend tells us the story of the beginnings of the Townsend Plan, and he reproduces the famous Letter to the Editor of the Long-Beach Press-Telegram, which started the whole thing.) As I look back upon it, I can see that the Townsend Plan was not born all in a lump, but took gradual shape. Certainly it has undergone evolutionary revision since it first saw the light of day in cold print back on September 30, 1933, in the vox pop columns of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Essentials of the measure now before the United States congress are the same as those in the first proposal offered to America ten years ago. But a few details have changed. The first draft of the Plan in the form of a letter to the editor, read: "If the human race is not to retrogress, two facts of essential importance must be recognized; the stimulus to individual effort must be maintained by the certainty of adequate monetary reward. "If business is good at all times, we need not worry about the reward of individual effort; and if money is plentiful we need have no fears that business will become bad. "Of late years it has become an accepted fact that because of man's inventiveness less and less productive effort is going to be required to supply the needs of the race. This being the case, it is just as necessary to make some disposal of our surplus workers, as it is to dispose of our surplus wheat or corn or cotton. But we cannot kill off the surplus workers as we are doing with our hogs; nor sell them to the Chinese on time as we do our cotton. We must retire them from business activities and eliminate them from the field of competitive effort. What class should we eliminate, and how should it be done: Wars have served in the past to hold down surplus population, but the last big war, in spite of the unprecedented slaughter, served only to increase production, while reducing the number of consumers. "It is estimated that the population of the age of 60 and above in the United States is somewhere between nine and twelve millions. I suggest that the national government retire all who reach that age on a monthly pension of $200 a month or more, on condition that they spend the money as they get it. This will insure an even distribution throughout the nation of two or three billions of fresh money each month. Thereby assuring a healthy and brisk state of business, comparable to that we enjoyed during war times. "Where is the money to come from? More taxes?" Certainly. We have nothing in this world we do not pay taxes to enjoy. But do not overlook the fact that we are already paying a large proportion of the amount required for these pensions in the form of life insurance policies, poor farms, aid societies, insane asylums and prisons. The inmates of the last two mentioned institutions would undoubtedly be greatly lessened when it once became assured that old age meant security from want and care. A sales tax sufficiently high to insure the pensions at a figure adequate to maintain the business of the country in a healthy condition would be the easiest tax in the world to collect, for all would realize that the tax was a provision for their own future, as well as the assurance of good business now. "Would not a sales tax of sufficient size to maintain a pension system of such magnitude exhaust our taxability from our sources?, I am asked. By no means--income and inheritance taxes would still remain to us, and would prove far more fertile sources of Government income than they are today. Property taxes could be greatly reduced and would not constitute a penalty upon industry and enterprise. "Our attitude toward Government is wrong. We look upon Government as something entirely foreign to ourselves; as something over which we have no control, and which we cannot expect to do us a great deal of good. We do not realize that it can do us infinite harm, except when we pay our taxes. But the fact is, we must learn to expect and demand that the central Government assume the duty of regulating business activity. When business begins to slow down and capital shows signs of timidity, stimulus must be provided by the National Government in the form of additional capital. When times are good and begin to show signs of a speculative debauch such as we saw in 1929, the brakes must be applied through a reduction of the circulation medium. This function of the Government could be easily established and maintained through the pension system for the aged." Since that early draft of the Plan the sales tax provision has been dropped in favor of a fixed percentage levy upon the gross incomes of all individuals, businesses and corporations, exempting only the first $100 a month of personal income. We have learned that a sales tax is a levy upon the little fellow; that a tax upon gross incomes would touch all equally. Since that first draft of the Plan was written, the provision for a fixed sum to pensioners monthly has been altered to provide that each annuitant shall receive his or her pro rata share of all revenue collected during the month through the gross income tax described. And since that first bill, the class of annuitants who are to receive pensions has been broadened from merely the aged to include the physically handicapped, the chronically ill, mothers with dependent children and others who, through no fault of their own, are unable to work for a living. But we are interested in that first Townsend Plan--why it was written and what happened to it in its earliest days. Weeks before publication of the Townsend Plan, mother and I had been wondering, as had the other aged folks in our city and throughout the nation, about our future. I had never been a top-flight, though usually a competent, physician and surgeon. Mrs. Townsend was an excellent nurse but past sixty and a grandmother. We debated whether I should try to make a fresh start as a doctor in private practice. To what end ? What good would even a fairly large practice do me when well-established physicians could barely make a living due to the impossibility of collecting fees? Then came the idea that I thought might give hope in its contemplation and--if anything were done with it--might alleviate at least some of the ills of the economic system under which we live. That first publication of my program had stimulated several answers in the vox pop columns of the Press Telegram. Some readers had liked the idea; others scoffed at it and cited what appeared to them its defects. I had little else to do, so took the trouble to answer each criticism, as best I could, in succeeding days. It was surprising how much correspondence it developed--and how quickly. Within a few weeks the editor was devoting a full page daily to vox pop discussions pro and con of this "ridiculous" or "sublime" Townsend Plan. People began coming to see me at my home-- not many, but a few. They wanted to know what concrete campaign I had mapped out for achieving this Townsend Plan. I felt foolish in admitting to them that I had no program at all! As weeks went by and the necessity for thinking about some such program was more and more forced upon me, I found myself arriving at a solution for at least our first step along the road. I talked it over with my wife. We knew the people among whom we lived, knew their hardships and sorrows. I was almost certain they would rally to leadership. I knew enough of practical politics to know that no elected representative of the people is going to listen to any of the "little folks" unless they are organized into a reasonably strong bloc of votes. No one man can change the course of things--not in a democracy; he has to have a pile of votes behind him. This was apparent and I thought I saw a way to achieve the goal. Mrs. Townsend was skeptical as to the good that might be accomplished. She did not admit the need of the aged for a psychological buoy to lift them out of the sea of despair. I told her, "Here's a job that must be done and I'm going to try to do it." My solution lay in advertising. First, I drew up a Townsend petition, comprising only a few lines, directed to our local congressman. Then I inserted a one-inch advertisement in our evening paper asking elderly men and women who had nothing better to do to call at my office the following morning. The advertisement told them they could help me circulate a petition that might, possibly, result in alleviating the distress of the thousands who had become victims of the depression. The nation-wide Townsend organization was born the following morning, in November of 1933, in a little eight-by-ten room in the rear of a real estate office. Its personnel at that time consisted of one member--the author. Its equipment, one office desk chair and one straight-backed chair for visitors--if there were to be any--and one small desk. I was surprised, that morning, to find a dozen or more men and women waiting at the office door when I arrived. I showed them the petition and we attached it to ruled sheets for names and addresses. Then they went forth. From their lighted countenances, I knew that my prognostication was right. Their hope had been revived They had been shown that there was something they could do about the distressing situation from which they suffered. Before night they began coming in with hundreds of signatures. They had been met with sympathy and encouragement by almost every soul they appealed to. That night they told their fellow-sufferers about what was doing and the next day they brought others with them, all ready and anxious to go out on the new crusade. Our entire stock of literature, on those first two days, consisted of fifty petitions like those still being circulated over the nation by the hundreds of thousands today. Such was the modest borning of our Townsend movement. But the borning was well attended by the midwives and male attendants who had been attracted by that one inch newspaper advertisement. It soon became apparent to these volunteer solicitors that they were carrying a message that eighty percent of the average voters met on the street were deeply impressed with; the simple logic of the Plan and its implied promise of relief from the desperate condition then afflicting them made the collection of signatures an easy chore. In two weeks' time, four or five thousand people had signed the petition and we deemed it advisable to move "headquarters" a few blocks away where it was possible to receive more visitors than could be handled in the small box-shaped office. We found a remodelled building that could do with some tenants. It was quite an exceptional building there in Long Beach, with a front glorying in five or six modernistic colors. "How much can you pay?" asked the landlord, when approached for office space. "The fact is," we said, "we don't want to pay anything for awhile. We've got to draw in some money before we can pay any out." "Well, I'll let you have an office in my building free-- for one month. After that I'll have to have rent." So the Townsend Plan started off with a total over head, as near as available figures show, of two buckets of paint. The floor was made of concrete blocks and we wanted to brighten them up some, so we got two buckets of paint, one gray and one blue. On New Year's Day 1934, with the help of a young real estate man, I got down on my knees and started in to paint the blocks alternate colors. We had on old trousers and overalls I would paint a block and skip a block, then my partner would come along behind and fill in. The idea was to make the floor look like rubber composition. I was 67 and my helper was 40 but he got tired before I did. Three-quarters of the way across the floor his knees began to creak and groan and buckle on him. And before the job was done he was stretching himself and muttering: "Doc, you're a better man than I am!" The Townsend Plan was underway, a national "reform" movement without employees, without finances without literature or propaganda necessary to any movement, with a mailing list, but without anything else at all--except determination. We put up a big sign in front of the building reading, "Old-Age Revolving Pension Headquarters." It stretched across the front and made the place look like a convention was on. When we were able to rent the office free of charge--even if only for a month--a whole new program of operations was opened for the Townsendites. We went to see a friendly printer. The depression had knocked him nine ways from Sunday and he was getting ready to shut up shop. "Look here," we said to him. "We want some printing done. Can't afford to pay anything for it. But we expect to see some money come in as a result of it and as fast as the money comes in, you'll get paid for the work." The printer didn't think long. With times what they were, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Even if he never got paid, he would be no worse off than he was right then. And if he did get paid, he knew it wouldn't be at the chiseling depression rates that some of the flint-hearted ones would have taken advantage of. "I'll do it," he agreed. "How many thousand do you want for a starter?" In the new quarters, where a desk was rented among a lot of others used by real estate men, the movement began to attract the attention of business men. Though scoffing at the "crazy thing" they were impressed with the immediate hold it seemed to take upon its converts. Every man and woman who signed the petition at once became an ardent champion of the Plan and stood ready to enter the lists of debate for it against all comers. When we announced that 15,000 signatures had been obtained in the city of Long Beach alone, the author deemed it time to carry the message outside the confine of the city. It was becoming apparent that help would soon be needed to keep a record of the growth of the movement and to lay plans for future expansion. Here I doff my chapeau to Mr. and Mrs. Volunteer Worker! No such crusade as ours had been seen on this earth in 2,000 years. No such ardent army has ever enlisted in any cause in all the world. Where Christianity numbered its hundreds, in its beginning years, our cause numbered its millions. And without sacrilege we can see that the effects already apparent from our movement-- with social security on a national scale and state old-age pensions ranging up to $50 a month--may bring some of the deep and mighty changes upon civilization which Christianity sought. Volunteers sprang up on all sides to carry the work of propaganda on to ever remoter sections of the country. Not content with canvassing their home towns, many took their petitions to adjacent towns and started workers out with them. Within a few weeks we had 75,000 names upon our petitions! That is phenomenal, as any one familiar with the drudgery of cause organization will know at a glance. People began writing us from Maine and Florida from Texas and from Oregon, in response to letters written them by friends. Everywhere throughout the nation letters were being sent and new workers being enlisted to circulate petitions directing local congressmen and senators to study the philosophy of the Plan. It was truly spontaneous, rather than stimulated. As one good old preacher put it, "The souls of men seem to have been touched with the torch of the Holy Ghost." Spreading like wildfire, the movement swept the country from end to end. It called the people together in great crowds, speakers sprang up in every community who professed to believe that the millennium was not far away--that the regeneration of mankind, prophesied throughout the ages, was at last being accomplished. I had started a fire that I did not want to extinguish, but that I feared might be difficult to control. I was right I soon saw that unless the people could be organized and their enthusiasm given direction and their purposes defined, there could well be a resulting confusion and conflict of opinion as to procedure which would end in disaster for the movement. The first thing to be done, obviously, was to get the people into an organization through which their zeal and enthusiasm might be amalgamated into a declared purpose. (pgs. 137-147) CHAPTER 22- "A CORPORATION": (In this Chapter Townsend discusses the dynamics and mechanics of forming the mass movement that would propel the Townsend Plan to center stage in America's debates about our economic direction.) The Townsend movement in its first days was a hand-to-hand and a mouth-to-mouth campaign. No magazine editor gave the Plan the benefit of his columns no metropolitan newspaper placed its stamp of approve on the Plan's philosophy of justice and security. All these purveyors of news turned a deaf ear to appeals of their readers to give the Plan publicity. When we were mentioned at all in the press it was with ridicule or abuse. No matter. As we grew "cock-eyed" and "crazy" and "fantastic" and "impossible" we also became more militant and more ardent in our effort to spread the news. I have said that no newspaper took up our cause as its own. I must make one exception. The Daily Chronicle of Centralia, Washington, under the editorship of the late Harry L. Bras, espoused the Townsend Plan in an editorial on February 13, 1934, which started: "There has come to our desk a proposal for financing a nationwide old-age pension plan that really has merit. At first glance it would appear to be impossible, but a careful reading of the proposed bill and a thorough analysis of the objects to be gained through the carrying out of its provisions cannot fail to impress one of its practicability." To crystallize our mass movement into an effective purposeful society with units in every state in the nation, we incorporated, early in 1934, as a non-profit corporation under the laws of California. It was the first of several steps which were simultaneously to make us the targets for editorial sniping--and to make us effective on the national scene as the first "lobby" ever to go to Washington with no thought except for the benefit of the little people. Editorial writers, demagogues and a handful of congressmen later took occasion to note this incorporation as our first step in becoming "a business" rather than "a cause." If great mass movements of the little people of America must incorporate as businesses to achieve their goals, then by all means let us see many more such businesses. We have never felt the step was a mistake. From such feeble beginnings, our cause has become the mightiest issue in the political history of our nation. Before our appearance on the scene, old-age pensions in America were limited to supreme court justices and their widows; police, firemen, war veterans and other such organized pressure groups also received pensions. The little people were not organized as a pressure group, so were left out in the cold. Pensions, we believe, should be given supreme court justices. They should be given policemen and firemen. Because members of these professions have given years of faithful service to the community. But in the same breath, so has any aging citizen whose life has been one of hard work, depressions, rearing a family, being a good citizen and neighbor, living a life free from habitual criminality. Any such aging citizen should be entitled to a pension when his days of physical productiveness have passed. And Townsendites "pressured" for him. No one ever dreamed of a federal social security law until the Townsend Plan caught the imagination of the people. In 1936, three years after the Townsend wave had begun swelling toward Washington, congress acted hurriedly. In excusing certain deficiencies of the present social security act, President Roosevelt once intimated that an imperfect law had to be rushed through to stem the Townsend tide! It was 10 years ago that the Townsend movement started. Today it has become respectable. Doctors, lawyers, ministers, educators, philosophers and--naturally-- politicians are flocking to our standard. We number thousands of clubs of active workers who are organized throughout the nation. When the Townsend Plan grew into an incorporated society for the legal achievement of its aims, the transition took place so fast that amazement began to be tinctured with fear on the part of those who controlled the finances of the country. Some there were who pronounced it a national hysteria that soon would blow over; others said it could only be compared to the advent of Christianity and that it bore the impress of Christ's own teachings--that it was the blueprint of practical, workable, Christianity. Whatever it was, all thinking people recognized that it was a manifestation of power and determination on the part of the people to right the wrongs that had afflicted them so long and so severely. Politicians became alarmed. It became whispered about Washington that this thing must be stopped before it completely upset the political apple cart. How some few politicians hit upon a program meant to stop it dead in its tracks will be discussed later Now that we were a corporation, we wanted to get on a thoroughly business-like basis. After a month in the building that looked like a convention headquarters with the Townsend banner across the front, the owner came around wondering about rent. That was fair enough. We asked what rent he wanted for the place. He wanted $100. As far as we were concerned in those days, such a sum was tremendous, impossible and out of sight. We would not dispute that the office might be worth that, but you cannot pay unless you have the money. We looked around for cheaper quarters and found an office that we could have for three months for $100. That was just about our limit. Early in January in 1934--just two months after the first petitions had been circulated on the Townsend Plan--I helped an out-of-work bookkeeper set up a simple accounting system for the Townsend Plan. As it happened, he had only one leg. He was on relief and dared not accept any pay for keeping our books--in fear of being denied his relief allotment. We found a stenographer to write our letters for a small wage. A fellow came to us and said he had a small printing press and could turn out pamphlets and hand-bills for us at cost. We found volunteer workers for almost every phase of the work that needed to be done. I determined to scrape by as cheaply as I could and take no more than barest living expenses out of receipts. When, a year later, I was able to start my own newspaper, I started drawing a salary as its working publisher and editor. I never have taken any money except expenses-- and they do not run very high at my age and with my frugal tastes--from the Townsend National Recovery Plan organization. Shortly after arranging with our man with the hand-press to publish our little weekly pamphlet called "The Townsend Crusader," he began taking on added dignity and importance. Overnight he became, in his own estimation, an editor and public figure. When we suggested moving the publication to Los Angeles and enlarging it, he informed us that he was the owner of the publication and that it would not be moved. This was the first of a long series of revolts and attempts to steal the movement and direct it into a money-making scheme for those in control. It was to protect our small weekly publication that we incorporated under the name of Prosperity Publishing Company, Ltd., in the late summer of 1934. Our weekly pamphlet soon became a newspaper of considerable size and circulation, its name being changed in January, 1935, to Townsend National Weekly. About a year later the man who had helped me to incorporate began to insist that the money should be divided as it came in and that he should do as he liked with his half. This was contrary to the entire conception I had in mind when undertaking to organize the people in their own interests, and I balked. I decided then and there that no person would, in future, use the Townsend organization for personal profit beyond fair compensation for his services. I determined to take over the entire authority and hold it until an organization could be built up and disciplined into an effective system by which the membership could elect and direct through their chosen representatives. I could see that nothing less than this would have a chance of survival. When, in a disagreement with my partner one day he suggested that I buy him out, I called my attorney and instructed him to interview the partner and ascertain how much money it would take to get rid of him. He named an amount. I told the attorney to offer him slightly less. He did, and the offer was accepted. There was some money in the treasury at the time, and I borrowed some from a bank, pledging the income of the organization for security. I paid for the stock in the publishing company held by my partner and was now in a position to see that funds intrusted to me by the multitude of little people would not go into the pockets of schemers and those interested only in their personal profits. To safeguard the funds of the organization, I had all members of the national headquarters staff, including myself and all employee who handle money, covered by surety bonds to a total amount of $50,000. All accounts are audited quarterly by a firm of certified public accountants and financial reports are published, after each audit, in Townsend National Weekly. On March 22, 1938, the Townsend Foundation--a common law trust--was formed to perpetuate principles of the Townsend Plan. Two United States senators, several congressmen and ex-congressmen, and a handful of business men and women act, with myself, as trustees. The purpose of this trust is to administer bequests and gifts toward enlightening citizens in civic responsibility in the science of constitutional government and in the principles of the Townsend Plan. (pgs. 148-154) CHAPTER 24- "SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE": (In this Chapter Townsend discusses growth of the movement and some of the people who were sympathetic--including Harry Hopkins and H.L. Mencken, according to Townsend. He also reproduces a very favorable column by the journalist Westbrook Pegler.) PREVIOUSLY, I said that only one newspaper publisher espoused the Townsend Plan in its early days. True. But hundreds wrote of it. Some liked the idea but didn't see how it could be done; others scoffed at it frankly; still others would not have liked it no matter how we did it. They just didn't think old folks ought to have "something for nothing" as they termed pensions--just as though sixty years of useful work in the community were "nothing." Among those who considered our program and its founder with fairness, if not with favor, were H. L. Mencken, editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun papers; Harry Hopkins, ex-relief administrator and adviser to President Roosevelt, and others. For what it is worth, I quote from a column by Westbrook Pegler, syndicated writer for the Scripps-Howard papers: "Of all the mahatmas who have undertaken to lead the poor to plenty in the last five years, the only one who seemed to bleed internally for them and to have neither vanity nor selfish ambition is old Dr. Frank Townsend, the author of the old-age pension plan. "Dr. Townsend retired from medicine one day when he saw an old woman fumbling in a garbage can for scraps of food. He decided that this was too awful and abandoned the work that he did so well, to attempt a task which he knew nothing about. "Townsend clubs were springing into existence all over the country and new membership rolls were tumbling in on him in big bundles every hour--yet, though he had become the leader and the hope of many millions of old people, the Doctor, never for a moment, thought of himself as a power. For himself, he wanted not even recognition. "All he wanted for himself was the knowledge that the old woman who had been reduced to foraging in a garbage can for food, and all the other old people in the country, were secured from want and relieved of worry about the material necessities of life until death should come to them. "There was in his bearing neither the querulous martyrdom and mock humility of Upton Sinclair nor the strutting vanity and arrogance of Huey Long. He knew nothing about politics, and his innocence in this respect was in sharp contrast to the man in the White House, whose sympathies were about like his. "If he could feel sure today that by turning over his leadership to someone else he could achieve the pension of $200 a month which he bespoke for everyone beyond the age of sixty who had no criminal record, no selfishness of his would stand in the way of that consummation . . . "His followers, young as well as old, supplied the fanatical wrath which Dr. Townsend could not find in his make-up. To criticize his theory was to wound him in his feelings, but he loved his fellowmen so tenderly that he could not anger." How near or how wide of the mark Pegler may have been may be judged by readers of this book. Certainly the fact that columnists and editorial writers were devoting columns of space to discussing the plan and its author was evidence of the public interest in the subject. The movement had assumed tremendous political significance almost overnight. Working units, by the summer of 1934, had been established in Arizona, Colorado Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming, as well as in our native state of California. After our petition to the congress had been carried into all small towns surrounding Los Angeles--and we had secured hundreds of thousands of signatures to it-- we deemed it time to invade the big city. We moved our headquarters to Los Angeles. The first copy of out paper, The Modern Crusader, published in that city was dated June 7, 1934. Within the next few months so many additional working units had been established that the Townsend movement was represented in thirty states. Our weekly newspaper flourished in Los Angeles for a time. It gained a wide reading clientele and consequently, a good command of local advertising. By the way, the little editor who had refused to come along with us very shortly folded up and lost his publication for lack of supporters. Our headquarters was doing a thriving business. The club idea was a logical step as necessity for closer coordination of the movement became apparent. Our first club, in Huntington Park, California, was chartered on August 7, 1934. We started the organization of these clubs everywhere--loose-knit organisms without by-laws or rules other than those which might be adopted by a debating society--but how they grew. After that first club, hundreds and then thousands were chartered throughout the forty-eight states and Alaska. By October 24, 1935, when we held our first national convention at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago two years after the Townsend Plan had first flashed upon the world, we had exactly 4,552 chartered clubs. A year before this convention we had tried an interesting experiment. Townsendites were asked to hold simultaneous open air meetings in whatever community they might be on a particular sunny Sunday afternoon. Newspapers estimated that 500,000 persons attended 700 of these simultaneous rallies in thirty states. Half a million people in unison recited the Lord's Prayer, petitioning Heaven for a continuance of their daily bread--and then read their demand upon congress which urged that body to give Heaven a hand at the job! Knowing the extreme poverty of those who were attracted to the pension movement we made the first mistake, of all the great number of mistakes we have made, of putting the annual dues for joining our society at only 25 cents. Only during the first flush expansion days of our mushrooming movement were those dues sufficient to carry the ever-growing load of expense. For a time it was hoped new converts would continue to come in great numbers and that the constant stream of quarters would not fail us until the appeal in our benevolent undertaking would reach the hearts of those who lived above poverty. Alas, for the flinty hearts! After ten years of effort we have not reached many of them yet. At one of our national conventions a majority of the delegates sanctioned the raising of the dues to 25 cents a month, but even that small advance caused us to lose almost as much as we gained, when club members dropped out of the organized effort. Much of the bungling clumsiness of humanity in securing for itself a just share of the wealth produced by labor lies in the fact that about nine out of ten who are looking for benefits want George to pull the load while they ride. As far as the Townsend organization was concerned, as our means increased, so also did the calls upon our revenue. More money was constantly required to carry on this and that phase of advancement. We have never had enough. I feel certain, today, that had our friends in the movement been willing to supply our headquarters with dues to the maximum of only 25 cents a month, we could long ago have "sold" the Plan to a vast majority of our citizens. When our first 75,000 names had been obtained upon the Townsend petition in Long Beach, I had drawn up a letter urging our congressman from the 18th district of California to have a bill drawn, incorporating principles of the Townsend Plan, and presented to the United States congress. The completely-filled-in petitions were forwarded to Congressman Burke in Washington. Sensing that here was a movement among his constituents which might have far-reaching effects in coming elections, he had a bill drawn up embodying the features previously described--and presented this bill to congress. By the time the bill was ready and presented, the movement was sweeping the country. In the late summer of 1934, we Townsendites decided we wanted more action out of our Long Beach congressman than we had been getting. We decided to elect our own man. John S. McGroarty, a pleasant old gentleman who liked to be known as the "poet laureate of California," offered to run on our platform. We elected him by an overwhelming vote--and from then on stayed up to our necks in national politics on a non-partisan and non-sectarian basis. (pgs. 160-165) CHAPTER 25- "THEY LIKED THE IDEA": (In this Chapter Townsend discusses relationship of the Townsend Plan to several of the competing movements of his day, including Upton Sinclair's EPIC Plan, Huey Long's Share The Wealth plan and Father Coughlin's Union for Social Justice.) THERE is an ancient saying that it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I had become an old dog (spelled backwards) to a lot of people and I did not know how to play the role. There were always a lot of folks who thought they could do a better characterization of the Almighty than I could--and I'm not the one to say them nay. After all, my background of farmhand, cowboy, hobo, school-teacher and country doctor had not fitted me to be much else than a very human, human being with (I flatter myself) at least my fair share of common sense. But as the Townsend movement swung into high gear there were visible signs of resentment at some of the adulation which came my way because I happened to be, at the moment, a symbol of security to a lot of little folks who were looking for a leader. From time to time throughout the 10-year history of the movement, there have been those both within and without who thought to use the determination and the votes of the Townsend people for their personal aggrandizement. In early days of the movement, the name "Townsend" was thought to be important when attached to the old-age pension cause. So when a Denver lawyer who had been one of the organization's speakers set himself up as the head of his own old-age pension movement, he sought to use the name Townsend, claiming that I had no copyright on it. Judge Orie L. Phillips, in the Denver court, heard arguments, then granted me an injunction denying this group of insurgents the right to use my name in connection with their organization. (Their organization, I may add, died within a short time.) In his precedent-setting decision, Judge Phillips said: "The right of the public as a third person is a paramount consideration." This was in answer to the contention of the others that I held no copyright on my name nor patent on my program for social legislation. The court held that use of the name--particularly its unauthorized use--on a program other than that led by me would deceive the public. "I might think it perfect folly," the court said, "but literally millions of people have become convinced that this Townsend Plan is a good thing and that Dr. Francis E. Townsend is its great leader. They want to associate with him." The decision was of vital importance to future progress of the movement as it stopped rebels from using my name in their schemes. But it was not merely groups splitting away from the Townsend banner that constituted the total of 47 really widespread popular movements which came into public notice with the depression of 1929-39. Other stars flashed upon the horizon and for a period of several years it seemed that most everybody was discussing the comparative merits of the Townsend Plan, Upton Sinclair's EPIC program, Howard Scott's Technocracy, Huey Long's Share-the-Wealth, Father Coughlin's Social Justice, the Bigelow Plan in Ohio and the Ham 'n Eggs platform in California. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that the Townsend Plan was the only one of all this group which (1) was national in scope and (2) had a definite, clear-cut program for which it was fighting. Some of the others were like the Townsend movement on the first point some on the second. None of them, except the Townsend Plan, had both. On July 1, 1935, I wrote a front-page by-line article for Townsend National Weekly which started: "Inasmuch as both Democrats and Republicans, through their leaders, as well as the in-betweeners like Huey Long and Father Coughlin, are coming along with us in our demand for a redistribution of wealth, perhaps some of them will delve deeply enough into their gray matter to present us with a plan that will make their suggestions of sharing the wealth appear feasible. "Thus far, none of them proposes anything new in the matter of taxation. In practically a chorus accord, they cry: "soak the rich with heavy taxes." They forget the fundamental principle of justice which demands that we "soak" everybody proportionately to their ability to buy or spend their money. "Soaking the rich alone and running the money into the national treasury will not add to the buying power of the poor. It will merely provide more money for the politicians to handle. It can never reach the outer fringes of society, where it is most needed. Billions might be piled up in the national treasury until the rich, scared and discouraged, would refuse to venture into any sort of enterprise and productivity would cease. "Only one thing will restore prosperity and make it permanent. The hewers of wood and the drawers of water must be given opportunity to supply their needs liberally. The poor must be given opportunity to cease being poor. This, our Townsend Plan alone makes feasible and practical." After describing the Townsend Plan in operation the editorial ended: "This is our plan. Let us hear from the soak-the-rich crowd as to how they will improve upon it. But we shall not hear from them except in vague generalities. The politicians are cowards and the wealthy are very timid. Thank God, the common man and woman have the vote. These outnumber all others, a hundred to one. They are demanding a redistribution that is fair and just--no more. When justice and fairness prevail. each will have opportunity to prosper in accordance with his ability. That is all we ask." None of the other nationwide movements did offer, it seemed to me, except in glittering generalities, any program for achieving the promise held forth by their slogans. We felt then, have always felt and feel now that the Townsend Plan could not be achieved by our amalgamation with any of these other programs. Any program which succeeds in pointing up the people's need--in awakening the nation to the fact that this country's factories and farms can produce ever so much more than the people have ever had an opportunity to consume--any such program is doing us good. But we do not amalgamate. Early in April of 1935, Upton Sinclair wired Congressman McGroarty, urging that the revised Townsend Plan be withheld from congress until EPIC and Townsend leaders had an opportunity to consider joining forces. With no ill will toward Sinclair, I told reporters: "We don't endorse any socialistic program. The EPIC plan opposes the profit system. The Townsend Plan represents an attempt to make the profit system function. The gates are open for anyone to join us, but we are affiliating with no other movements." Between 1933 and the fall of 1934, Upton Sinclair, known to two generations as a loveable Socialist and widely-read author came so close to winning California's governorship that some of the heavy business interests and old-line political hacks in California went into a sweat that hasn't completely dried up yet. Howard Scott's Technocracy--full production for use--has inherent in its first platform plank that the government, i.e., congress, already shall be Technocracy-minded. But Scott says he scorns politics as at present constituted. And just how he ever intends to get a Technocracy-minded congress without electing Technocrats to the national legislature, I have never heard him explain. Father Charles Coughlin, pastor of the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Little Flower at Royal Oak, Michigan, had become known as a radio orator in the earliest days of the depression. His broadcast sermons against the "international bankers" of New York fell on willing ears. By 1932, Coughlin had become a force in the nation. Coughlin's "National Union for Social Justice" never took more definite form than embodying its desires into a set of 16 principles. It seems to me it was a one-man organization, at best, dependent for direction upon the pastor's most recent radio address. In various broadcast campaigns, he attacked the Rothschilds, the Mexican government and the world court program of the League of Nations. But his movement seemed to lack a definite program for achievement. Huey Long of Louisiana was the first important representative in the United States senate of the suppressed classes of the South. He conceived the "Share-the-Wealth" clubs. These clubs had a philosophy rather than a program, the chief feature of which was a desire to place a limit on the wealth controlled or owned by any one man or family. All wealth above this limit was to be divided among the masses. Upon the occasion of his death, early in September of 1935, I wrote for Townsend National Weekly: "Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisiana, dead by an assassin's bullet, still holds the thought and attention of the nation. Newspapers called him a dictator. He met the death of other dictators of the world. But his was a dictatorship of a state by consent of the majority. He was the product of the ballot box, not the bullet. He commanded the unquestioning allegiance of his followers by his appeals during his swift rise to power and eminence. His wish became this purpose. "No person was indifferent to Huey Long. He was either hated or admired. He asked no quarter and gave none. He stood alone in his niche in American politics and American history. "Many people in many states turned to his share-the-wealth program. They understood, perhaps, the need for economic changes rather than the philosophy of his plan. They trusted the personality at the top, rather than the principles he advocated. His crusade was personal. His courage, his daring, his very ruthlessness, found followers. "That was his triumph and his tragedy. No strong character shared his influence, able to seize the torch of a fallen leader and carry on his crusades. For his followers followed the man, rather than his message. "Even before this is read, the picture will be changed. In his own state the floods of bitterness may cause new tragedies. The struggle for power will go on. And in this nation, those who believed in Long will look for new solutions for their economic problems. "Great causes are built upon principles. They do not depend upon personalities. The cause for which the beloved Lincoln died in the same manner was more powerful after his death than during his life. That will be true of every great advance of civilization in a democracy." It has always been my hope that the Townsend members, through their clubs and councils, would hold together until they have achieved their aim. Since their earliest days they have been under the most democratic system of government that we can conceive. Briefly, it this: Each club of twenty or more members (often running into the hundreds) elects twelve members to serve each year as the club's advisory council. There are as many clubs in each congressional district as we have been able to organize. The president of each club council is eligible to serve, through election, as a member of the congressional district advisory council. Out of all the club presidents only twelve are elected to this district council and the president of each such council automatically serves on the state council. State councils are composed of as many members a there are congressional districts in the state but in no case are there fewer than twelve. In several states which have fewer than twelve districts, additional members are elected to fill out the body. Presiding as chairman of the state council, but holding no vote, is the paid field representative from national headquarters, whose other functions I will discuss in a moment. Delegates from all clubs in each state hold annual conventions at which they elect three members from the state council to serve on a regional council of twelve. The continental area of the United States has been arbitrarily divided into twelve regions of four states each and these regional councils of twelve members each serve the national organization in an advisory capacity. They make their wills known through one member whom they elect to serve on the national advisory council of twelve--one from each region. This council meets annually or at the call of the president of Townsend National Recovery Plan, the post I now hold. This is the theory. Each month since inception of the council plan of government, we have advanced a little closer to its realization. So far, seven regions have been completely organized along these lines; five have made great strides toward such organization. We found that the first year a district was well enough organized to elect a council, the most popular members were elected to serve. But after the first year, popularity took second place to efficiency and sagacity. The people learn how to use democracy only by using it. On April 22,1935, I wrote a message to the Townsend clubs. Written to defeat a demagogic movement within the clubs, it still holds true: "The purpose of Townsend clubs is two-fold. The primary purpose and, for the present, the sole object of Townsend clubs is the enactment of the Townsend Plan into law. We have our entire energy focused on the accomplishment of the Townsend Plan at this session of congress. Such must be the thought and purpose of every loyal Townsend club member. The secondary purpose of Townsend clubs is a desperate fight to continue the democratic spirit and form of government in these United States. "We truly believe that if such a vigorous fight is not prosecuted with all seriousness and resistance, we may expect to see our democratic form of government pass; not only from this country but from the face of the earth during this generation. Most certainly, this is a challenge worthy of our bravest spirits. To accomplish either of these purposes, which we believe to be not only urgently necessary, but a purely patriotic duty, is a task of huge proportions. It is therefore a prime necessity that we maintain in our club organization that spirit of pure democracy which we are willing to fight for as an ideal. "If we allow ourselves to be regimented, if we accept under the guise of "necessary organization" any subservience which obligates us to support any move or any person or persons who are acceptable to some so-called "federation," or council or executive committee, we are by that very act acknowledging that we are not capable of exercising that independent thought and individualism which were envisioned by the founders of our democratic form of government. "The Townsend Plan and the Townsend clubs are of magnitude equal in numbers to a great percentage of our body politic. We must, therefore, demonstrate that a purely democratic form of government can prevail in this country, by having it prevail within our own Townsend club organization. "Certainly we are in a poor position to talk pure democracy if we cannot practice pure democracy. National headquarters of the Townsend movement has not to date attempted and never will attempt to regiment or arbitrarily command the Townsend clubs; rather it has always and will continue to give advice and direction which have been tempered by actual experience and good counsel. "The best and purest intentions are often held by those who promote other organizations within Townsend clubs; invariably it is but a short time until a few are doing all the thinking and planning, and our Townsend clubs are no longer democratic, self-governing groups of free-thinking and acting people, but instead are being told what to do, what to think, what to believe and for whom to vote." I've wandered a bit from the life of Dr. Townsend, but thought you might like to read of a few of the other "crackpot" movements that had a depression birth in America. I've mentioned principally the national movements. There were any number of others that were limited to the sun-baked land of California, my adopted state. California has been called the home of the crackpots but that connotes also that it is the home of new ideas. California people are not afraid to spring a new proposal or to suggest a change; they are a fast-thinking swiftly-acting heterogeneous folk. They have come from everywhere and represent every nationality under the sun. They are not afraid. You see none of the slavish adherence to custom among them that characterizes non-migratory peoples. They know what they want, and if old forms or customs stand in the way of their getting what they want, they are prompt to brush them aside. Give me the crackpot rather than the dullard; give me the fast thinker rather than the drone. Give me the west where civilization is ever reaching upward! (pgs. 166-177) SOURCE: All excerpts from,Townsend, Dr. Francis E., New Horizons (An Autobiography), ed. by Jesse George Murray, Chicago, J.L. Stewart Publishing Co., 1943. {C} <a href="http://www.usa.gov/">Privacy Policy | Website Policies & Other Important Information | Site Map Need Larger Text? {C} B<img />est m<img />atches f<img />or t<img />ownsend s<img />hares s<img />ocial s<img />ecurity s<img />hare o<img />f a<img />ll r<img />evenue c<img />ollected d<img />uring t<img />he m<img />onth t<img />hrough t<img />he g<img />ross i<img />ncome t<img />ax... J<img />ump t<img />o t<img />ext » M<img />ore m<img />atches » « F<img />ewer m<img />atches

Source: The Huffington Post Cuomo Targets Stop-And-Frisk, Seeks To Lower Number Of Low-Level Marijuana Arrests [uPDATE] Posted: 06/04/2012 9:40 am Updated: 06/04/2012 1:28 pm Entering the debate over NYPD stop-and-frisks, Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing legislation that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view. The Governor plans to meet with state lawmakers Monday, The New York Times reports, in an attempt to amend a state law that was the basis for the arrest of over 50,000 people in New York City last year, most of whom were black or Latino. Under the current law, possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana shouldn't result in arrest unless it's "burning or in public view." The NYPD, however, will often ask the hundreds of thousands they stop on the streets to empty their pockets, and when the marijuana comes out of the pocket, it becomes "in public view," and they can make an arrest. There are more arrests for low-level marijuana offenses than any other crime in New York City. According to the Associated Press, marijuana arrests in New York account for one out of every seven cases in the city's criminal courts. In 2010, the city spent $75 million to put pot-smokers behind bars. In September, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly issued a memo, telling city cops, "A crime will not be charged to an individual who is requested or compelled to engage in the behavior that results in the public display of marijuana." The Times reports, however, that the effect of Kelly's order on the number of marijuana arrests has been minimal. "This proposal will bring long overdue consistency and fairness to New York State's Penal Law and save thousands of New Yorkers, particularly minority youth, from the unnecessary and life-altering trauma of a criminal arrest, and, in some cases, prosecution," a Cuomo official told The Times. Mayor Bloomberg disagrees with Cuomo's position on marijuana arrests. The Mayor's argued before that the arrests deter other, more serious crimes. UPDATE: Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come out in support of Governor Cuomo's plan. Bloomberg said Cuomo's plan "strikes the right balance," by allowing cops to still arrest those who are smoking in public. “We look forward to working with legislative leaders to help pass a bill before the end of session,” the mayor said in a statement. Ray Kelly will attend Cuomo's press conference Monday in a show of support of the bill.

Troy said: "The only reason Obama got in was because he convinced enough white folks he was about hope and change" Oh and let us not forget that Sarah Palin was a real game changer for that election, too. Obama should be calling McCain every day of his term thanking him for putting Sarah Palin on the republican ticket because she decreased McCain's chances severely.

Cynique said: "Huey Long is, in a way, echoing the ideas of Karl Marx. And President Obama's contentions coincide with those of Huey Long. Unfortunately, the chaos of "every-man-for-himself" is an easier and more natural way of life than the order and cooperation required to provide everybody with their fair share" Oh indeed. I agree in every way with this. I think the name Huey P Long can be remembered to in that that P is in the middle and so People, can we say, "politician"? Yes though. I feel that a in general, a politician is a politician is a politician. Most politicians have exactly what comes first in that word as what comes first in their priorities: politicians. However, let me tell you something. If I had a choice between Long and Obama, I do believe that Long would get my vote. I think that Long would have been more apt to do what it is that he said he wanted to do for people. I think that he would have risked pissing those who are for big business off to do what he said that he wanted to do for people. I believe that there are some really good things that Obama wants to do for people, but in my opinion, he spent the majority of his term caring too much about pissing the big business ppl off (who weren't going to like him one way or the other anyway). As for Long never vigorously fighting against segregation, maybe he was on to something. lol Honestly, integration has probably set us back in many ways. It has probably made us take as many steps backward as it has made us take steps forward. I think equal rights and justice are always more important than integration. The latter does not automatically imply the former, as we can see even better than ever since President Obama's election. Cynique said: "As a populist he dismissed the NRA the brainchild of FDR who got this country back on its feet during the depression with a lot of government funded social programs, the most notable one being Social Security." Yes, I see what you are saying, but I must say that Foot Draggin Roosevelt (FDR) wasn't really in a rush to oppose segregation vigorously, either. Plus, he was sure to consult with the negroes to maintain popularity in the negro world, but he did not rock the boat in regard to race too much either. Back on Long and Roosevelt though, the main reason that Long opposed FDR's efforts is because he felt that Roosevelt was not doing enough for the common man. Townsend was in that camp of those who opposed FDR's efforts for this reason. Social security actually started off as Townsend shares. FDR had opposition on the left from such people who felt that he was not doing enough for the people and opposition on the right from people who felt that he was doing too much, messin wit da money/social order of things too much. Something like what Obama is going through, but many, many, many more people liked and supported FDR. lol( Ppl can keep on thinking that it has nothing to do with race if they want to.) Who knows though? Perhaps if Obama has as many terms as FDR, maybe he'll eventually be able to get many of those things that he wants to do for people done. Who knows... Cynique said: "What's really interesting is that those who advocate spreading the wealth around, are hawking socialism in a country which owes its success to Capitalism, - as in free enterprise" Yes, that is interesting, but what I think is even more interesting is that while it is popularly noted that America owes its success to capitalism/free enterprise, it is hardly ever noted that the basis of this blossoming of capitalism and free enterprise was derived from SLAVE labor, people who were abducted, rounded up and bred like cattle who made this country so wealthy. This is not a self made nation. This is a nation that was hijacked because it was inhabited by many, many nations of indigenous Americans when Christopher Columbus brought his pirate self over here. These are the makings of the American Dream. This is the foundation on which all American freedom stands. Capitalism and free enterprise has meant the good life for some and hell for others. To this day, far too few of us acknowledge how this place was made into what it is,forced labor and cheap labor. Heck, these people did not start from scratch and build this country into a superpower from the sweat of their brows. This exploitation continues, it is not a thing of the past. Cynique said "Honesty is the best policy and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is what would make this a better world" Yes o. I agree completely and you know, I don't think that it's really that it's a matter of being complicated. It's a matter of a love of greed and ego in my humble opinion. We could change the direction of things by really investing in the minds of the children. We really could, but so many children (on both sides of the equation) are either directly or indirectly being trained to maintain the status quo. Either way, though, this is not unlike anything else in this world in that it is all about cycles. Regardless of the resistance, regardless of the readiness or a lack thereof, when it is time for a cycle to end, it comes regardless of who is wants or is ready for it. It's kind of like having the perfect cookout only for the beautiful clear skies to break out of nowhere and for the rain to start pouring down. This new cycle will come in like so, just with more fire. It no business with the readiness of man/woman. The cycles will be regardless of public opinion/popular support.

"Is that a right of life when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it is by 120,000,000 people?” Senator -Huey P. Long If only history were studied more, there would be less surprises and a lot less strategic issues. If people would study history, they would know that "today's crisis" is often old news. This address was delivered by Senator Huey Long in 1934: Radio Address by Senator Huey P. Long, of Louisiana, February 23, 1934 Ladies and Gentlemen: — I have only 30 minutes in which to speak to you this evening, and I, therefore, will not be able to discuss in detail so much as I can write when I have all of the time and space that is allowed me for the subjects, but I will undertake to sketch them very briefly without manuscript or preparation, so that you can understand them so well as I can tell them to you tonight. I contend, my friends, that we have no difficult problem to solve in America, and that is the view of nearly everyone with whom I have discussed the matter here in Washington and elsewhere throughout the United States—that we have no very difficult problem to solve. It is not the difficulty of the problem which we have; it is the fact that the rich people of this country—and by rich people I mean the super-rich—will not allow us to solve the problems, or rather the one little problem that is afflicting this country, because in order to cure all of our woes it is necessary to scale down the big fortunes, that we may scatter the wealth to be shared by all of the people. We have a marvelous love for this Government of ours; in fact, it is almost a religion, and it is well that it should be, because we have a splendid form of government and we have a splendid set of laws. We have everything here that we need, except that we have neglected the fundamentals upon which the American Government was principally predicated. How many of you remember the first thing that the Declaration of Independence said? It said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that there are certain inalienable rights for the people, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and it said further, "We hold the view that all men are created equal." Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men are created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing? Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation? That was not the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that all men are created equal or "That we hold that all men are created equal." Nor was it the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that they held that there were certain rights that were inalienable—the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Is that right of life, my friends, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it by 120,000,000 people? Is that, my friends, giving them a fair shake of the dice or anything like the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or anything resembling the fact that all people are created equal; when we have today in America thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of children on the verge of starvation in a land that is overflowing with too much to eat and too much to wear? I do not think you will contend that, and I do not think for a moment that they will contend it. Now let us see if we cannot return this Government to the Declaration of Independence and see if we are going to do anything regarding it. Why should we hesitate or why should we quibble or why should we quarrel with one another to find out what the difficulty is, when we know that the Lord told us what the difficulty is, and Moses wrote it out so a blind man could see it, then Jesus told us all about it, and it was later written in the Book of James, where everyone could read it? I refer to the Scriptures, now, my friends, and give you what it says not for the purpose of convincing you of the wisdom of myself, not for the purpose, ladies and gentlemen, of convincing you of the fact that I am quoting the Scriptures means that I am to be more believed than someone else; but I quote you the Scripture, or rather refer you to the Scripture, because whatever you see there you may rely upon will never be disproved so long as you or your children or anyone may live; and you may further depend upon the fact that not one historical fact that the Bible has ever contained has ever yet been disproved by any scientific discovery or by reason of anything that has been disclosed to man through his own individual mind or through the wisdom of the Lord which the Lord has allowed him to have. But the Scripture says, ladies and gentlemen, that no country can survive, or for a country to survive it is necessary that we keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should be held permanently by any one person, and that 50 years seems to be the year of jubilee in which all property would be scattered about and returned to the sources from which it originally came, and every seventh year debt should be remitted. Those two things the Almighty said to be necessary—I should say He knew to be necessary, or else He would not have so prescribed that the property would be kept among the general run of the people, and that everyone would continue to share in it; so that no one man would get half of it and hand it down to a son, who takes half of what was left, and that son hand it down to another one, who would take half of what was left, until, like a snowball going downhill, all of the snow was off of the ground except what the snowball had. I believe that was the judgment and the view and the law of the Lord, that we would have to distribute wealth ever so often, in order that there could not be people starving to death in a land of plenty, as there is in America today. We have in America today more wealth, more goods, more food, more clothing, more houses than we have ever had. We have everything in abundance here. We have the farm problem, my friends, because we have too much cotton, because we have too much wheat, and have too much corn, and too much potatoes. We have a home loan problem, because we have too many houses, and yet nobody can buy them and live in them. We have trouble, my friends, In the country, because we have too much money owing, the greatest indebtedness that has ever been given to civilization, where it has been shown that we are incapable of distributing the actual things that are here, because the people have not money enough to supply themselves with them, and because the greed of a few men is such that they think it is necessary that they own everything, and their pleasure consists in the starvation of the masses, and in their possessing things they cannot use, and their children cannot use, but who bask in the splendor of sunlight and wealth, casting darkness and despair and impressing it on everyone else. "So, therefore," said the Lord in effect, "if you see these things that now have occurred and exist in this and other countries, there must be a constant scattering of wealth in any country if this country is to survive." "Then," said the Lord, in effect, "every seventh year there shall be a remission of debts; there will be no debts after 7 years." That was the law. Now, let us take America today. We have in America today, ladies and gentlemen, $272,000,000,000 of debt. Two hundred and seventy-two thousand millions of dollars of debts are owed by the various people of this country today. Why, my friends, that cannot be paid. It is not possible for that kind of debt to be paid. The entire currency of the United States is only $6,000,000,000. That is all of the money that we have got in America today. All the actual money you have got in all of your banks, all that you have got in the Government Treasury, is $6,000,000,000; and if you took all that money and paid it out today you would still owe $266,000,000,000; and if you took all that money and paid again you would still owe $260,000,000,000; and if you took it, my friends, 20 times and paid it you would still owe $150,000,000,000. You would have to have 45 times the entire money supply of the United States today to pay the debts of the people of America and then they would just have to start out from scratch, without a dime to go on with. So, my friends, it is impossible to pay all of these debts, and you might as well find out that it cannot be done. The United States Supreme Court has definitely found out that it could not be done, because, in a Minnesota case, it held that when a State has postponed the evil day of collecting a debt it was a valid and constitutional exercise of legislative power. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I may proceed to give you some other words that I think you can understand—I am not going to belabor you by quoting tonight—I am going to tell you what the wise men of all ages and all times, down even to the present day, have all said: That you must keep the wealth of the country scattered, and you must limit the amount that any one man can own. You cannot let any man own §300,000,000,000 or $400,000,000,000. If you do, one man can own all of the wealth that the United States has in it. Now, my friends, if you were off on an island where there were 100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody else eat any of them. If you did, there would not be anything else for the balance of the people to consume. So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about 10 men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. They either own directly everything or they have got some kind of mortgage on it, with a very small percentage to be excepted. They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other until there is not any kind of business that a small, independent man could go into today and make a living, and there is not any kind of business that an independent man can go into and make any money to buy an automobile with; and they have finally and gradually and steadily eliminated everybody from the fields in which there is a living to be made, and still they have got little enough sense to think they ought to be able to get more business out of it anyway. If you reduce a man to the point where he is starving to death and bleeding and dying, how do you expect that man to get hold of any money to spend with you? It is not possible. Then, ladies and gentlemen, how do you expect people to live, when the wherewith cannot be had by the people? In the beginning I quoted from the Scriptures. I hope you will understand that I am not quoting Scripture to you to convince you of my goodness personally, because that is a thing between me and my Maker; that is something as to how I stand with my Maker and as to how you stand with your Maker. That is not concerned with this issue, except and unless there are those of you who would be so good as to pray for the souls of some of UK. Rut the Lord gave His law, and in the Book of James they said so, that the rich should weep and howl for the miseries that had come upon them; and, therefore, it was written that when the rich hold goods they could not use and could not consume, you will inflict punishment on them, and nothing but days of woe ahead of them. Then we have heard of the great Greek philosopher, Socrates, and the greater Greek philosopher, Plato, and we have read the dialogue between Plato and Socrates, in which one said that great riches brought on great poverty, and would be destructive of a country. Read what they said. Read what Plato said; that you must not let any one man be too poor, and you must not let any one man be too rich; that the same mill that grinds out the extra rich is the mill that will grind out the extra poor, because, in order that the extra rich can become so affluent, they must necessarily take more of what ordinarily would belong to the average man. It is a very simple process of mathematics that you do not have to study, and that no one is going to discuss with you. So that was the view of Socrates and Plato. That was the view of the English statesmen. That was the view of American statesmen. That was the view of American statesmen like Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt, and even as late as Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both of these men, Mr. Hoover and Mr. Roosevelt, came out and said there had to be a decentralization of wealth, but neither one of them did anything about it. But, nevertheless, they recognized the principle. The fact that neither one of them ever did anything about it is their own problem that I am not undertaking to criticize; but had Mr. Hoover carried out what he says ought to be done, he would be retiring from the President's office, very probably, 8 years from now, instead of 1 year ago; and had Mr. Roosevelt proceeded along the lines that he stated were necessary for the decentralization of wealth, he would have gone, my friends, a long way already, and within a few months he would have probably reached a solution of all of the problems that afflict this country today. But I wish to warn you now that nothing that has been done up to this date has taken one dime away from these big fortune-holders; they own just as much as they did, and probably a little bit more; they hold just as many of the debts of the common people as they ever held, and probably a little bit more; and unless we, my friends, are going to give the people of this country a fair shake of the dice, by which they will all get something out of the funds of this land, there is not a chance on the topside of this God's eternal earth by which we can rescue this country and rescue the people of this country. It is necessary to save the government of the country, but is much more necessary to save the people of America. We love this country. We love this Government. It is a religion, I say. It is a kind of religion people have read of when women, in the name of religion, would take their infant babes and throw them into the burning flame, where they would be instantly devoured by the all-consuming fire, in days gone by; and there probably are some people of the world even today, who, in the name of religion, throw their own babes to destruction; but in the name of our good government, people today are seeing their own children hungry, tired, half-naked, lifting their tear-dimmed eyes into the sad faces of their fathers and mothers, who cannot give them food and clothing they both need, and which is necessary to sustain them, and that goes on day after day, and night after night, when day gets into darkness and blackness, knowing those children would arise in the morning without being fed, and probably go to bed at night without being fed. Yet in the name of our Government, and all alone, those people undertake and strive as hard as they can to keep a good government alive, and how long they can stand that no one knows. If I were in their place tonight, the place where millions are, I hope that I would have what I might say—I cannot give you the word to express the kind of fortitude they have; that is the word—I hope that I might have the fortitude to praise and honor my Government that had allowed me here in this land, where there is too much to eat and too much to wear, to starve in order that a handful of men can have so much more than they can ever eat or they can ever wear. Now, we have organized a society, and we call it "Share Our Wealth Society," a society with the motto "Every Man a King." Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life, who would not be dependent upon the whims and caprices and ipsi dixit of the financial barons for a living. What do we propose by this society? We propose to limit the wealth of big men in the country. There is an average of $15,000 in wealth to every family in America. That is right here today. We do not propose to divide it up equally. We do not propose a division of wealth, but we propose to limit poverty that we will allow to be inflicted upon any man's family. We will not say we are going to try to guarantee any equality, or $15,000 to a family. No; but we do say that one third of the average is low enough for any one family to hold, that there should be a guarantee of a family wealth of around $5,000; enough for a home, an automobile, a radio, and the ordinary conveniences, and the opportunity to educate their children; a fair share of the income of this land thereafter to that family so there will be no such thing as merely the select to have those things, and so there will be no such thing as a family living in poverty and distress. We have to limit fortunes. Our present plan is that we will allow no one man to own more that $50,000,000. We think that with that limit we will be able to carry out the balance of the program. It may be necessary that we limit it to less than $50,000,000. It may be necessary, in working out of the plans that no man's fortune would be more than $10,000,000 or $15,000,000. But be that as it may, it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond that point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses. Another thing we propose is old-age pension of $30 a month for everyone that is 60 years old. Now, we do not give this pension to a man making $1,000 a year, and we do not give it to him if he has $10,000 in property, but outside of that we do. We will limit hours of work. There is not any necessity of having overproduction. I think all you have got to do, ladies and gentlemen, is just limit the hours of work to such an extent as people will work only so long as it is necessary to produce enough for all of the people to have what they need. Why, ladies and gentlemen, let us say that all of these labor-saving devices reduce hours down to where you do not have to work but 4 hours a day; that is enough for these people, and then praise be the name of the Lord, if it gets that good. Let it be good and not a curse, and then we will have 5 hours a day and 5 days a week-, or even less than that, and we might give a man a whole month off during a year, or give him 2 months; and we might do what other countries have seen fit to do, and what I did in Louisiana, by having schools by which adults could go back and learn the things that have been discovered since they went to school. We will not have any trouble taking care of the agricultural situation. All you have to do is balance your production with your consumption. You simply have to abandon a particular crop that you have too much of, and all you have to do is store the surplus for the next year, and the Government will take it over. When you have good crops in the area in which the crops that have been planted are sufficient for another year, put in your public works in the particular year when you do not need to raise any more, and by that means you get everybody employed. When the Government has enough of any particular crop to take care of all of the people, that will be all that is necessary; and in order to do all of this, our taxation is going to be to take the billion-dollar fortunes and strip them down to frying size, not to exceed $50,000,000, and if it is necessary to come to $10,000,000, we will come to $10,000,000. We have worked the proposition out to guarantee a limit upon property (and no man will own less than one-third the average), and guarantee a reduction of fortunes and a reduction of hours to spread wealth throughout this country. We would care for the old people above 60 and take them away from this thriving industry and give them a chance to enjoy the necessities and live in ease, and thereby lift from the market the labor which would probably create a surplus of commodities. Those are the things we propose to do. "Every Man a King." Every man to eat when there is something to eat; all to wear something when there is something to wear. That makes us all a sovereign. You cannot solve these things through these various and sundry alphabetical codes. You can have the N. R. A. and P. W. A. and C. W. A. and the U. U. G. and G. I. N. and any other kind of dad-gummed lettered code. You can wait until doomsday and see 25 more alphabets, but that is not going to solve this proposition. Why hide? Why quibble? You know what the trouble is. The man that says he does not know what the trouble is is just hiding his face to keep from seeing the sunlight. God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America, that have got more control over things than all the 120,000,000 people together, you know what the trouble is. We had these great incomes in this country; but the farmer, who plowed from sunup to sundown, who labored here from sunup to sundown for 6 days a week, wound up at the end of the time with practically nothing. And we ought to take care of the veterans of the wars in this program. That is a small matter. Suppose it does cost a billion dollars a year—that means that the money will be scattered throughout this country. We ought to pay them a bonus. We can do it. We ought to take care of every single one of the sick and disabled veterans. I do not care whether a man got sick on the battlefield or did not; every man that wore the uniform of this country is entitled to be taken care of, and there is money enough to do it; and we need to spread the wealth of the country, which you did not do in what you call the N. R. A. If the N. R. A. has done any good, I can put it all in my eye without having it hurt. All I can see that the N. R. A. has done is to put the little man out of business—the little merchant in his store, the little Italian that is running a fruit stand, or the Greek shoe-shining stand, who has to take hold of a code of 275 pages and study it with a spirit level and compass and looking-glass; he has to hire a Philadelphia lawyer to tell him what is in the code; and by the time he learns what the code is, he is in jail or out of business; and they have got a chain code system that has already put him out of business. The N. R. A. is not worth anything, and I said so when they put it through. Now, my friends, we have got to hit the root with the ax. Centralized power in the hands of a few, with centralized credit in the hands of a few, is the trouble. Get together in your community tonight or tomorrow and organize one of our Share Our Wealth Societies. If you do not understand it, write me and let me send you the platform; let me give you the proof of it. This is Huey P. Long talking, United States Senator, Washington, D. C. Write me and let me send you the data on this proposition. Enroll with us. Let us make known to the people what we are going to do. I will send you a button, if I have got enough of them left. We have got a little button that some of our friends designed, with our message around the rim of the button, and in the center "Every Man a King." Many thousands of them are meeting through the United States, and every day we are getting hundreds and hundreds of letters. Share Our Wealth Societies are now being organized, and people have it within their power to relieve themselves from this terrible situation. Look at what the Mayo brothers announced this week, these greatest scientists of all the world today, who are entitled to have more money than all the Morgans and the Rockefellers, or anyone else, and yet the Mayos turn back their big fortunes to be used for treating the sick, and said they did not want to lay up fortunes in this earth, but wanted to turn them back where they would do some good; but the other big capitalists are not willing to do that, are not willing to do what these men, 10 times more worthy, have already done, and it is going to take a law to require them to do it. Organize your Share Our Wealth Society and get your people to meet with you, and make known your wishes to your Senators and Representatives in Congress. Now, my friends, I am going to stop. I thank you for this opportunity to talk to you. I am having to talk under the auspices and by the grace and permission of the National Broadcasting System tonight, and they are letting me talk free. If I had the money, and I wish I had the money, I would like to talk to you more often on this line, but I have not got it, and I cannot expect these people to give it to me free except on some rare instance. But, my friends, I hope to have the opportunity to talk with you, and I am writing to you, and I hope that you will get up and help in the work, because the resolutions and bills are before Congress, and we hope to have your help in getting together and organizing your Share Our Wealth Societies. Now, that I have but a minute left, I want to say that I suppose my family is listening in on the radio in New Orleans, and I will say to my wife and three children that I am entirely well and hope to be home before many more days, and I hope they have listened to my speech tonight, and I wish them and all of their neighbors and friends everything good that may be had. I thank you, my friends, for your kind attention, and I hope you will enroll with us, take care of your own work in the work of this Government, and share or help in our Share Our Wealth Societies. I thank you. (Yes, it is 2012...but does any of this sound familiar?)

Stories such as these about the apartheid in Israel deserve to be heard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yW2WOe1SA4 And why was journalist Helen Thomas blasted for her comments about Israel? What is it that she said that was not factual? Does offense to truth change truth into anything other than what it is? For those who did not hear what she actually said, it is here: An interview with Helen Thomas about the backlash she received about her comments about Israel. (Please pardon Joy Behar's hot and botheredness.)

From: African Writing Online Toyin Agbetu, the Nigerian founder of the African rights campaign organisation, Ligali, was recently in the news for disrupting the slavery abolition anniversary ceremonies at Westminster Abbey. He had risen to protest the sanitized and elliptical official version of the abolition story in an occasion at which the Queen and royal family, the Prime Minister and many distinguished others were present. Toyin Agbetu was arrested for his action. considers his Westminster intervention in the light of a continuing struggle for African emancipation. There are iconic moments, occasions with history wrapped around them. The human story is full of such moments – in its progress, in its many wanderings. Louise Brown crying her way out of a test tube. Neil Armstrong on the moon taking one giant leap for mankind. Mandela free at last, apartheid driven from the streets. And the human genome moment. There are these kinds of marvellous moments, and there are others, also iconic, infamy reeking from their dark… Times of outstanding terror. Auschwitz revealed. Camp Delta, Guatanamo Bay. Such other iconic places from our epic concentration camp narrative. Shark Island, Namibia, its discovered skulls, bleached white, blood drained, enough to stir the rage in Citizen Agbetu. The Rape of Nanking. Rwanda screaming with the blood of its Tutsi dead. Armenians trekking to their death in Ottoman Turkey. My Lai. Bosnia. Biafra… History is not always friendly. There is perhaps too much memory, and so much of it quite hurtful. Much of life lives by removing itself from death: by not knowing, not hearing, not seeing, mostly by lying to itself. But deceit is the great poverty. A life of secrets is a life in chains. Angers that insist from the past, suppressed, become our shadows, trail our days with their dark malice, their wounding tobacco presence. A place from the human past may never know love. Many avoid there. Others like Agbetu bestride its pain, pointing and pleading, not letting go. Like every bearer of grim news, he has something to say most prefer not to hear. And there is comfort in not knowing – but also uncertainty. A forbidden place of memory is fertile ground for the farming of accursed futures. Vampire histories live after their death. Bloody histories scream for justice – or more blood. They are our inherited grief. Their poison is already in our breaths, Citizen Agbetu will have us know. We already inhale. That is not the choice. The question is when and how to exhale the deaths we live. We are defined by our iconic moments, sometimes defiled by them. Of occasion and history, recline then and regard this spectacle of one contemporary African in London. Agbetu – in all its syllables as resonant an African name as any. His heart, unyielding as his name, burns with the restlessness of his African soul in England. And it is the season of bad consciences. Two hundred years of the Abolition. Those who matter in political England are gathered in Westminster Abbey – most of Her Majesty’s government. Sobriety is the official code. People wear nobility like a fixed smile at a time like this. The Archbishop usually throws a good party. He does it on behalf of God and country, his famous Abbey awash with occasion, generosity, and good feeling. Her Majesty is also present with family. Pomp is not quite with circumstance as it can be, as it used to be. This should be about slavery not about empire. In England, however, nothing is without its echoes of empire, and Citizen Agbetu knows this. He is invited too, one of about two thousand guests at this occasion. If only he would remain silent, maintain the peace, he could be mistaken for one of the ‘High Commissioners’ present – representing Her Majesty’s postcolonial family of nations. But Agbetu is not that kind of guest. He knows there will be prayers and speeches. And the inevitable history lesson: how the British abolished slavery, 1807. The abolition story, as retold, with Wilberforce as the Christ figure, has the feel of Christmas about it. It is intended to. But in Agbetu it is not quite Christmas, not really the season of peace on earth and goodwill towards all. He is at this Westminster event on behalf of his African rights campaign group, Ligali. He knows there will be much spin on the abolition story, which will echo from the Abbey pulpit. This would be another political moment not a moment of truth. He knows even more than that. He has seen it in the eyes of the speechmakers: No one will say sorry. Around him things will move at their desired pace, and all that movement will bring no change. This event at the Abbey will happen, and others like it, all telling the tale of how a benevolent empire freed its African slaves. But no one will say sorry! They will say they wish it never happened. They will say in hindsight it was a bad thing to enslave your fellow humans. But there would be no apology. There will be words. There will be no action. They will turn to that place of pain, acknowledge it, but refuse to go there. They will leave the matter still unresolved, as potent a breeder of conflicts and bad consciences as ever. Two hundred years after the Abolition there would be no volition towards a proper and permanent settlement, towards genuine reconciliation. Two hundred years after. Rage erupts in a moment unknown. Sometimes we are warned, even prepared, but the moment of rage is all its own. Not that there is never any hint of agony in a kettle on fire, but that the pressure when it boils over happens in a moment without signposts. The rage of Citizen Agbetu was like that. He must have felt like a slave to occasion that imperial moment at the Abbey, expected to assent to a story he could neither believe nor own, a story about his people without his people in it. What uncommon thoughts might have emboldened this ordinary man to risk his life and seize the moment? Was he thinking of Sam Sharpe, Dutty Boukman, Sojourner Truth, Olaudah Equiano, Nanny of the Maroons, Queen Nzinga of the Mbundu (now Angolans), and others less known, some of them martyrs of the emancipation, ‘villains’ of the same story in which Wilberforce is hero, considered runaways or agitators and hunted to their death? In that moment before his eruption, while he yet struggled with the pressure, knowing there would be no apology, did Agbetu also think of Sarah Baartman? Born 1789, died 1816, most likely of a syphilitic condition she contracted from captors who eventually worked her in prostitution. Finally, for her, they had found a self-fulfilling role for her reputedly outstanding bottom, the reason for which she was held captive in a foreign land. Her life was worth nothing. Her bottom was the gold they traded on. Some called her “Saartje,” others, “the Hottentot Venus,” derogatory names quite appropriate for the display animal she became for circuses and scientists. In London and Paris, she was stripped, gawped at and defined by the size and appearance of her genitals. continues Or, perhaps, Sarah Baartman and other terrible details of slavery were not the thoughts to have in that happy moment at Westminster Abbey? Slave ship Captain John Newton’s meticulous 1709 log of frequent African deaths in his ship? William Lynch and his infamous 1712 advice on how to breed slaves like horses? Pirate Captain Bart Roberts, in 1722, burning his shipload of Africans, chained below deck, to avoid capture? The 1783 case of Captain Collingwood of The Zong, who threw 133 Africans overboard for insurance purposes? And the deadly racist history of Psychiatry and related medical practices? Thomas Cartwright, infamous for Drapetomania, the non-existent disease of “running away” by slaves for which the cure was frequent whippings and hard labour? Benjamin Rush, so-called ‘Father of Modern Psychiatry,’ who introduced the disease of “Negritude,” considered a form of leprosy? Eugenics and such other white supremacist ideas of racial difference? All these were too depressing to think about at the Abbey? What other African choices did he have – Citizen Agbetu? He could have been “forward-looking” instead of dwelling on slavery. Should he then have wound his mind forward to colonialism, which, in cases, continued the enslavement of Africans inside Africa? King Leopold 11 of Belgium – just one of those at whose behest African peoples were forced into dehumanizing, chattel labour, heads and limbs cut off those who opposed? And the racial experiments, gulags and genocidal acts of colonial enforcers and their intellectual justifiers? But again it was probably wrong to remember colonialism by those experiences. Better to think of it only as a civilizing mission… Is there a reason for an apology to Citizen Agbetu? What was going through his mind in that Abbey? Did he, perhaps, have a William Cowper moment: I own I am shock’d by the purchase of slaves, And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves; What I hear of their hardships, their tortures and groans, Is almost enough to draw pity from stones. I pity them greatly but I must be mum, For how could we do without sugar and rum? (Pity for Poor Africans, 1788) Or was he ‘full on’ from the beginning, and primed for his encounter with history without quibble or irony or fear, without doubt, the famous words of the old anti-slavery movement ringing in his ears: Am I not a man and a brother? The rights campaigner, Sojourner Truth, would express the same emotion in an 1851 speech to a women’s convention: Ain’t I a woman? It does come down to that foundation question, doesn’t it? Are those who oppress even remotely capable of imagining the shared humanity of those they dehumanize? Toyin Agbetu had to contest the validity of the oppressive decorum at the Abbey before he could grab his moment. Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, had similarly contested the international moment provided by his 1986 Nobel Prize award. In Sweden, when a similarly oppressive decorum dictated what might be safely said, the Nobel Literature laureate chose to seize the moment and own it for Africa. And it was a significant moment. The 1986 Nobel Literature moment was iconic as a first tribute from the world to intellectual achievement in Africa, to African intellect. And Soyinka should have played the thankful good boy in response to that belated burst of international goodwill, but he did not. He chose to be awkward, using his Nobel Lecture to champion African rights, to seek redress for the diverse historic enslavements and injustices from which the continent still suffers. In his lecture he was particularly focused on the then unfolding racial situation in South Africa. Soyinka chose the title, ‘This Past Must Address Its Present’ for his Nobel Award lecture: In any case, the purpose is not really to indict the past, but to summon it to the attention of a suicidal, anachronistic present. To say to that mutant present: You are a child of those centuries of lies, distortion and opportunism in high places, even among the holy of holies of intellectual objectivity… And to say to the world, to call attention to its own historic passage of lies – as yet unabandoned by some… Wherein then lies the surprise that we, the victims of that intellectual dishonesty of others, demand from that world that is finally coming to itself, a measure of expiation? Was Citizen Agbetu looking at the visible opulence of the Abolition commemoration ceremony and, perhaps, thinking how like that Abbey moment much of Britain, its great cities of London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, the might of its industrial revolution, the stability of its democratic experience at a time of revolutionary pressure, the early prospering of its financial systems, even the funding of its historic centers of learning, such as Oxford, and the lavish maintenance of its great country homes and estates, all owe a debt of gratitude to the slaving of Africans? He might have wondered about William Beckford, a wealthy eighteenth century owner of slave sugar plantations in Jamaica. Beckford as Lord Mayor of London and, perhaps, the first English millionaire, was quite representative of a slavery-enriched political leadership in his time, so that by 1766 at least forty members of parliament were significant beneficiaries of the trade. Is there a reason for dialogue with Citizen Agbetu? 1807, that year of parliamentary assent to a freedom movement already advanced in its course, is important for its groundswell of activism involving many ordinary people who denounced the trade in human lives. This concerted move of the social conscience for social action was motivated by many reasons other than mere pity for poor Africans. It was neither a William Wilberforce moment nor the conclusive abolition action official history has made it. British Quakers had already banned slavery among their own as early as 1760, the year Thomas Clarkson, a less heralded but effective abolitionist, was born. For the slaves at the time of the 1807 Abolition, and their children born after them, freedom was not yet. There were still freedom struggles in the Americas by distressed African slaves. There were slave uprisings in the Caribbean islands and the United States. In South Carolina, 1822, they had the Denmark Vesey uprising. So many “Gullah” or Angolan Africans wasted. They called them runaways. Runaways could be wasted on sight. The Abolition Act was actually passed in 1833 and, finally, for the enslaved by Britain the possibility of real freedom came in 1838. Even then there continued to be the dangers posed to the freedom and lives of African captives by unscrupulous slave dealers. For instance, Sengbe Pieh, a Mende man, known in United States history as Joseph Cinque, would be forced to lead other captives aboard the slave ship, Amistad, in an 1839 revolt. March 25, 1807 simply records the date of parliamentary assent to the abolition of the trade, but not the practice of slavery. Then after that the slave owners bagged their million pounds compensations and the Africans were left still bonded to those from whom they had to earn or purchase their freedom. In the end universal emancipation, begun by those earlier slave revolts, which have no grand monuments or cathedral ceremonies to commemorate them, was eventually achieved rather quietly as individual projects, each slave doing what had to be done to become free and to earn the freedom of other dear ones. Two centuries from that official 1807 date of the Abolition may seem like a long time ago, enough time for the impact of the trade on Africa to have worn off, but it has to be remembered that the Trans-Atlantic Slavery went on for about four centuries, beginning as early as the fifteenth century. Together with aspects of the colonial experience that followed, the devastating impact on Africa of slavery cannot be understated – in much the same way as you cannot successfully seek to diminish the advantages it gave to the slaving nations of Europe and America. When he began to rise from his seat at the Abbey his neighbours must have thought he was going to unburden himself. And Citizen Agbetu was, but the toilet was far from his thoughts. He had his arms raised all the time as he moved to empty his rage. Better to have those arms raised. He knew there were protection people even in the haloed hall of the Abbey. Those hidden eyes had to see he did not mean war. It serves no purpose to be just another ‘nigger’ dead. “This is a disgrace to our ancestors!” he yelled, as the Archbishop tried to engage all in a solemn prayer of atonement over slavery. “Millions of our ancestors are in the Atlantic…” Citizen Agbetu would not be cowed by either location or occasion. Archbishop Rowan Williams, a fair-minded intellectual type, was not unused to hecklers. His own fractious bishops are engaged in a ferocious moral struggle over definition and control of the Anglican centre. He would later attempt to lighten the sense of invasion others felt over Agbetu’s Abbey outburst. Agbetu, he said, represented people who had deep hurts about the oppressive history of slavery, and that had to be understood. The Church of England is itself still ambiguous about how to apologize and possibly offer reparations for its earlier historical role as slaver and justifier of slavery. It did later become a bastion of the anti-slavery movement, and, in recent times, the anti-apartheid movement. continues Agbetu would continue his unusual Abbey outing with a direct address to the Queen. Another Queen Elizabeth – Elizabeth 1 – had been monarch over a Britain, which fully engaged in and prospered from the trade in Africans. Agbetu compared the British imperial adventure in Africa to Nazi imperialism in Europe. If Jewish nationals could obtain an apology and some recompense from the German inheritors of the Nazi legacy, would Her Majesty not consider a proper British apology to the African peoples? There was never going to be any immediate response from Her Majesty, of course, and as is the nature of his kind of protest, Citizen Agbetu’s great leap into history was soon silenced several sentences after it began. Unless you are Oliver Cromwell no one lets you spew out a torrent of unpalatable truths against a reigning monarch for too long. Out of the ceremonial hall, leaving on his own terms, but surrounded by guards, Citizen Agbetu would be arrested and then conditionally released. As an iconic moment in the modern history of African emancipation struggles, Toyin Agbetu’s Westminster Abbey intervention is in rather distinguished company: There was Kwame ‘Osagyefo’ Nkrumah, in kente cloth, saying brave things about African unity at Ghana’s independence. So much hope then. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington expounding his dream of ‘one love’ and ‘one human race.’ Rosa Parks, eyes wide open, saying no by not saying yes to the segregation laws of America. And Emmett Till in an open casket chosen by his mother to show the world the disfigured head he got in 1950s America for whistling at a white girl. Emmett was young, male, behaving like a naughty boy. But he was an African naughty boy. The racial dehumanization of the African peoples has its shameful history and the leader of the Anglican Church was right: There is a reason for the rage of Citizen Agbetu. There is a reason for an apology to Citizen Agbetu. There is a dialogue waiting to begin with Citizen Agbetu. These are some of the excuses given to deny this proper closure to the shameful legacy of slavery: Slavery is of the past not of the present… You cannot hold a people responsible for the sins of their ancestors… And some of those European and American ancestors were nearly just as deprived and oppressed as the African slaves… And was historical slavery was a unique African experience? And, anyway, many African kings at the time collaborated in the slaving of African people… And, corruption is the real problem of Africa not its history of destabilization by imperial oppression… Such excuses. Would a detailed response to these excuses serve to silence those for whom the matter of an apology is defined only in racial and economic terms? Not likely. It suffices then to indicate that slavery, in its effects on both the enriched slave-holding lands and the impoverished African places of the enslaved, is still very much with us. It is still with diasporic Africans in its lasting disruptions to their sense of family, identity and direction. Institutional white supremacist prejudice towards the African peoples and the intellectual and moral justifications of that are mostly rooted in the experience of slavery. Too often the fact of corruption in Africa becomes the catchall excuse for those who wish to deny any kind of benefit to the continent from the international community. But Africans, including even their leaders, are not more corrupt than the other peoples of the world. Many Africans now live outside Africa, and know from experience and by means of locally available information that corruption is also prevalent in the political, social and economic systems of many developed nations. Mostly, the element of impunity by which corrupt leaderships carry out their activities in Africa is missing in these more economically advanced places, which usually have better funded and more dependable law enforcement systems. Individuals and institutions are generally not above legal sanction in these places. The benefit of functioning law enforcement safeguards against corruption aside, these other lands are economically powerful and stable enough to absorb levels of corrupt practices that would sink many African countries. Of course, the real difficulty for many governments of former slave-holding lands is not really whether to apologize but how to apologize without having to pay compensation. It is difficult to imagine Africans getting all they want or European and American governments giving all they should in this process. But slavery was about impoverishing one people to enrich another. Compensation is a necessary part of the healing. How to effect this can be worked out in independent people to people (rather than government to government) meetings under the guidance of the United Nations. These representative people meetings may be advised by governments but remain independent of the unequal exchanges and corrupt practices by which successive African leaderships have been pressured or persuaded to serve their people poorly in their historical dealings with explorers, slave merchants, colonial and other representatives of the imperial and industrial nations. But there is another side to the rage of Citizen Agbetu. Africa and Africans cannot in the end be a matter for others. It is a question of ownership – African ownership of the experiences, realities and fortunes of Africa, African ownership of responsibility for Africa. The remaining time of Africa is still Africa’s to employ in the construction of the African Dream. That may be easier to achieve in parts through joint venture efforts with the significant others of the international community, through a requirement that they own their historical debt to Africa and so truly commit to its reconstruction in recompense. But the Westminster Abbey experience of Citizen Agbetu demonstrates again the importance of primary African ownership of responsibility for the healing and development of Africa. Others have a role, and should own that historical role, but if they don’t, when they do or how they do, should ultimately not undermine or determine an African ownership of the African Struggle, and the African Dream. Africa is still Africa’s to win or lose, its onerous history notwithstanding. That experience of slavery, and the varying forms of colonial and continuing imperial involvement in Africa since then, can become a matter for blind, disabling anger in the conscious African – for the kind of rage that burns up itself or simply burns. It is important to know the past, necessary to address its historical ugliness, overcoming all official and informal denials of access. That was what the rage of Citizen Agbetu was about. It was about ownership, about African ownership of its part in history, about re-establishing in that ceremony at the Abbey a pre-eminent African presence and moment, taking that opportunity to say the usually unsaid in what was and always will be a profoundly African story. continues It is probably more profitable for reconstruction purposes to think of slavery, colonialism and imperialism in universal human terms rather than with a racial focus. It certainly serves contemporary African realities better. Africa is more multiracial than it ever was, and all of its peoples are part of the African Dream. Many diasporic and expatriate Africans now have complex family histories involving other racial ancestries and relationships. The troubles of Africa, for all their peculiarities, are part of a universal conflict. In that conflict, no one is born free. Individually and collectively, we are freed or enslaved more or less by what we do or fail to do to create and perpetuate our freedoms or enslavements. And there are no uncontested territories. It really is about ownership. If you fail own to yourself, someone or something will take you over. If you will not own your home, something from the street will want to control it. If you loosen your grip on your mate too much, he or she will find or be found by someone or something else. And if you are not watchful over your land, others will rule over it. It is not so much a question of power, which can be ineffectual when misapplied, as it is a question of ownership, the ability to use even minimal power appropriately in service to and control of ones fortunes. Regarding the survival of Africa – and we do not now even talk of its prosperity – there is that important issue of ownership to be resolved. Africa does not own Africa. Much of the wealth and labour of Africa is really in service of other lands, so most Africans merely tenant Africa. The life of Africa is daily bargained out to others, not just to the usual occidental suspects, but now also to the others of the ravenous global economic system, especially to the Chinese in Zambia, Congo land, the Sudan and other prostrate African places. Since the coming of foreign explorers, invaders, slavers, colonizers, contemporary imperial agents, and the punitive history left in their wake, there has not even been an authorized version of the African story. Africa is a tale retold severally in abridged versions by foreigners for the foreign reader. This is possible because the story of Africa, the making of modern Africa, is mostly recorded and filed in foreign storage. There are levels of violence. Self-violation is the purest violence of all. Those who might have loved and led Africa have been violating her. This must be part of the rage of Citizen Agbetu. As in the plantation days of slavery and under the colonial project the bonding of Africa continues, supervised by local African whiphands, who, misled by the comforts of office, consider themselves independent. But no one may truly self-own who is not self-aware. African ownership of Africa’s slave history should include ownership of African complicity in the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Saharan Trades. But it can be just as easy to live in denial of this as it would be to make more of it than we ought to. Trusting African rulers, uneducated on the full story of the human trade, divided and frequently manipulated or threatened to think themselves somehow protected and prospered by their economic and military association with the foreign slavers, were surely not on equal footing with these foreign slavers in the making of the tragedy that was slavery in Africa. Conquering slavers and oppressors everywhere in history always found some willing and coerced local collaborators. In Nazi action against the Jews of the German mainland and concentration camps, and against the nationals of France and the other occupied European places there were always these forced and friendly collaborators. The French, for all the embarrassing history of their Vichy government collaboration, know who the real aggressor of the occupation was. And that historical fact of local collaboration in German occupied-Europe, or some Jewish complicity in Nazi action against German Jews, did not act to invalidate the claims and complaints of these oppressed peoples regarding their experience. There were some Nazi sympathizers too even in free Britain. But the aggressor, the villain, was never in doubt. So must be the case with African complicity in the enslavement of Africans. This is not to make light of what is a continuing trend in the relationship of Africa with powerful foreign exploiters of African wealth and labour. It is the case that most of those who rule Africa are still intellectually unconscious, without a commitment to ending the continuing imbalance in relationship between Africa and others. It is still the case that they are too focused on the comforts of office and the symbolic power or imagined independent authority they have in their local territories. And there is still the issue of weapons flowing in from abroad, encouraging Africans to wage war on each other, and providing the African ruling elite with a sense of security and special protective relationship with their arms providers. In parts of Africa, especially in the long sectarian conflicts of West Africa, East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Sudan, African dictators and warlords have used these weapons to kill other Africans or commit them to slave labour in mines, providing the wealth with which the weapons are paid for. These are exactly the same divisive methods of corruption, coercion and collaboration used during the periods of colonialism and plantation slavery. The kind of leaders at home and traders from abroad who sold and enslaved the past of Africa are still the same kind of collaborators working together to sell and enslave its present. If no one stops them there will be no African future, not as we know it, not in an increasingly disputed world of resource scarcities, global imperial hungers and new theories of preventive warfare. Fully displaced and dispossessed, all hired out to others, that desperate African future in which the humanity and different culture of the African will again be doubted, that second slavery, the unspoken fear in the rage of Citizen Agbetu. On yet another historic moment, iconic for all the wrong reasons, someone may finally convince the world there is no longer any need for Africa, there being no lasting progress and so much beggary, its land and resources no longer its own, its peoples long surrendered to others as wage slaves or worse. And then as now there will be Africans abroad who will deny Africa, thinking themselves exempt from her misery. This Bicentenary anniversary of the 1807 Abolition Act is even more about looking at Africa now than it is about engaging the African past. And this is how to rebuild a ravaged land: First you must own the land and its truth. Abolish play, abolish the postcolonial laughter of false societies built for exploitation by others. Abolish trust, and let the era of proof begin. In these ill-governed lands let the unled now lead their leaders. Africa is wealthiest of all in people, and, as in the earlier days of the independent struggles, its success still depends on its own people of ideas. Ideas are the principal bricks. From African Writing Online GOTTA respect Brother Toyin!

ahaha It's cool, though I really am interested in knowing why you thought I was a brother... I went to the site. Very interesting. Will definitely try to check that out.

(Any familiar with the Stephen Lawrence case? So many parallels in the cases of Stephen Lawrence and Trayvon Martin. So many similarities in these cases being symptoms of a much larger, institutional/systemic problem. The Lawrence and Martin families recently met.) Source: The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4307008/Stephen-Lawrences-mum-welcomes-shot-Trayvon-Martins-parents.html Stephen Lawrence's mum welcomes shot Trayvon Martin's parents By NEIL MILLARD Last Updated: 11th May 2012 THE mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence yesterday showed his London memorial to the parents of a black boy shot dead in the US, telling them: “I know where you’re coming from.”Doreen Lawrence held an emotional meeting with Trayvon Martin's mum Sybrina Fulton and dad Tracy Martin after writing to them to express support. The 17-year-old’s fatal shooting in February sparked uproar in America, taking racial tensions there to a 20-year high after police initially failed to hold a suspect for questioning. But not before national protests at which demonstrators' placards read “I am Trayvon Martin” while waving bags of Skittles sweets – the only thing the teen had on him when he was shot. Even President Obama joined in the campaign, saying: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” One of the many touching emails the Martin family received from supporters in Britain came from Doreen Lawrence whose crusade for justice saw two of her son’s killers jailed for life this year. She said: “As soon as I heard the news about Trayvon’s death I wanted to stretch a hand over the water. I understood what they were going through. “One minute your son is walking and communicating, the next he is dead. Someone is responsible for that." Doreen told Tracy: “It’s 19 years since Stephen was killed and it was only this January that two were sentenced for his murder so it’s been a long struggle. I sort of know where you’re coming from.” Trayvon’s parents came to the UK to thank the British public for their support and toured the Stephen Lawrence centre in Deptford with Trayvon’s older brother Jahvaris. It funds courses in architecture — the field Stephen wanted to work in — in Britain, South Africa and Jamaica and provides access to education and employment programmes. Trayvon’s family were so impressed they may set up a similar legacy in the US. Tracy said: “Doreen is an inspiration to your country. Her love and support has turned tragedy to something positive.” She added: "Any parent would have been proud to have either Trayvon or Stephen as their son. Our boys changed the world.“I say to myself even if Trayvon had fulfilled his dream of becoming an astronaut maybe 1,000 people would have known about him. Through his death, the world knows him. His name will be etched in books for ever. “It’s the same with Stephen.” George Zimmerman, 28, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder over Trayvon’s death and is awaiting trial. The Metropolitan Police were branded “institutionally racist” after failing to investigate 18-year-old Stephen’s death properly. He was murdered by a racist gang in Eltham, south London, in 1993.Gary Dobson 36, and David Norris, 35, were jailed for life in January after being convicted. Police are trying to bring another “three or four” of his killers to justice. Find out more information about Doreen’s campaign and donate at stephenlawrence.org.uk or facebook.com/stephenlawrencecharitabletrust.

This is a movie about Bro. George Jackson. Wish it were just one full movie here, but having to get it in 10 parts is better than not having it to get. :-)

Troy, if you don't like America's hypocrisy, then you should go back to Africa. In fact, I find your reaction to American hypocrisy to be very un-American (might have to tap your phone ). Don't eff wit da gangstaz of democracy, you ungrateful domestic disside..., Will send a drone your way faster than George Dubya can say something idiotic!

Oh I will definitely share for sure. Hmm@ ukelele. Wonder if he was singin' "Aaaabiiyo-yooo". Yes, on a serious note, it is very sad how Bro. Malcolm was betrayed by so called brothaz, some of whom are still actively misleading the people in massive ways. Some of us do not know history to know any better. Some of us do not know better because we don't even care to know better. Govn't covert operations were so successful mainly because of the willing cooperation fueled by jealousy, envy, and zombi follow-mode.

I don't think that the problem is so much about prayer being taken out of school as it is thinking being taken out of school. Prayer in school might not be a bad thing, don't get me wrong. However, I believe that there should, more than any other campaign, be a campaign which focuses on putting thinking back in school. (George Dubya should be the poster child for WHY the now extracurricular program called "thinking" should be supported and promoted in schools.)

Greetings. The book ("Dear Dad") by Ky-Mani Marley is not a new one, but I didn't even know that Kymani had a book out until last Friday. I just happened to see it in the bookstore and I picked it up. Have any of you read this? In my opinion, it's the kind of book that can make you laugh, cry, think, and take notes for the purpose of doing your part to bring about a brighter tomorrow.

:-O OMG, I came off as a brother? Nooooo, I'm a sista. OMG, are my posts Boitumeloish? (lol That's a Cynique's Corner joke.) Is it my avatar? (If so, u don't want beef with Queen Nanny.) lol Anyway, I'm all sista, Bro. Oh yes? Have you any details to share @ Onyx Con?

The separation between Church and State in America has always made me laugh. Not just because it is a lie, but also because others stay talking about this separation yet there are examples pointing to the contrary in their faces constantly and it seems as if people have to play complete idiots to not notice that. Why is there a chaplain in the Senate? Why do they start off with christian centered prayer? Do children in public schools throughout America just "happen" to be out of school during every single major Christian holiday? ""In God We Trust" on currency? (Well that's because currency IS their god, but that's not the point at this moment.) A Bible in the courtrooms on which people, usually before they start lyin, swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God"? "Faith based" funding? The end official rhetoric often ending in "God bless America". The Pledge of Allegiance's "One nation under God"... The examples of contradictions are just about as plentiful as the politicians' reminders that they are Christian and that "America is a christian country." On a different note, these people who love to support the corrupt status quo love boast bout how dem christian but if the Jesus in their Bibles they claim they follow were around, I doubt that most of them would follow him. From what those Bibles teach, Jesus was a revolutionary, concerned with the people, not the pockets of the corrupt. Nor, according to those teachings was he a weak, passive, go along to get along leader. Whose example are they following? Sounds much more like most are followers of the examples of Scribes and Pharisees or Reverend Porkchop to me.

Wow, that was just a few days ago. Wow. I didn't know. Brother, it is really something to watch as these elders who survived this tell their story. You can see and hear the remnants of the trauma all in their faces and voices. To see the tears flow from an old man's eyes about an incident that was driven by hatred and jealousy is really something. We'd better listen, too.. as closely as we can, because these post racial society myth pushers just can't wait til survivors of chapters that don't support the golden current myth or golden past myth just di e out. They be on some Norbit's wife, ""It NEVA happened!" I hope that we have the courage to teach our children about the realities of both the past and the present. If we know it yet refuse to teach we are, in my humble opinion, a disgrace to our Ancestors.

Oh you're going to love it, love it, love it! Even the jazz all throughout it.. Please tell others, too.

This is an excellent documentary detailing the events of the Black Wall Street atrocities. Sadly, this is little known history. Please pass it on. A note about the documentary, it gets started around 5:50 time. I posted this one because it had the full version and not segments of it. The beginning is a little editorialized, but to go straight to the doc, just skip to 5:50 time. BLACK WALLSTREET (From Davey D's Hip Hop Corner) Please pass this on to the Iota Family. It's an important part of history that every Black person should know, if they don't know already. Ron Wallace: co-author of Black Wallstreet: A Lost Dream Chronicles a little-known chapter of African-American History in Oklahoma as told to Ronald E. Childs. If anyone truly believes that the last April attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was the most tragic bombing ever to take place on United States soil, as the media has been widely reporting, they're wrong-plain and simple. That's because an even deadlier bomb occurred in that same state nearly 75 years ago. Many people in high places would like to forget that it ever happened. Searching under the heading of "riots," "Oklahoma" and "Tulsa" in current editions of the World Book Encyclopedia, there is conspicuously no mention whatsoever of the Tulsa race riot of 1921, and this omission is by no means a surprise, or a rare case. The fact is, one would also be hard-pressed to find documentation of the incident, let alone an accurate accounting of it, in any other "scholarly" reference or American history book. That's precisely the point that noted author, publisher and orator Ron Wallace, a Tulsa native, sought to make nearly five years ago when he began researching this riot, one of the worst incidents of violence ever visited upon people of African descent. Ultimately joined on the project by colleague Jay Jay Wilson of Los Angeles, the duo found and compiled indisputable evidence of what they now describe as "A Black Holocaust in America." The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wallstreet," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering-A model community destroyed, and a major Africa-American economic movement resoundingly defused. The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could be expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers. In their self-published book, Black Wallstreet: A lost Dream, and its companion video documentary, Black Wallstreet: A Black Holocaust in America!, the authors have chronicled for the very first time in the words of area historians and elderly survivors what really happened there on that fateful summer day in 1921 and why it happened. Wallace similarly explained to Black Elegance why this bloody event from the turn of the century seems to have had a recurring effect that is being felt in predominately Black neighborhoods even to this day. The best description of Black Wallstreet, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be to liken it to a mini-Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans had successful infrastructure. That's what Black Wallstreet was about. The dollar circulated 36 to 1000 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Now in 1995, a dollar leaves the Black community in 15 minutes. As far as resources, there were Ph.D's residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry who also owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, a hefty pocket of change in 1910. During that era, physicians owned medical schools. There were also pawn shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, 21 churches, 21 restaurants and two movie theaters. It was a time when the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six blacks owned their own planes. It was a very fascinating community. The area encompassed over 600 businesses and 36 square blocks with a population of 15,000 African Americans. And when the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw what the Black community created, many of them were jealous. When the average student went to school on Black Wallstreet, he wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age. The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. Nepotism was the one word they believed in. And that's what we need to get back to in 1995. The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those names, you get G.A.P., and that's where the renowned R&B music group The GAP Band got its name. They're from Tulsa. Black Wallstreet was a prime example of the typical Black community in America that did business, but it was in an unusual location. You see, at the time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state. There were over 28 Black townships there. One third of the people who traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" along side the Indians between 1830 to 1842 were Black people. The citizens of this proposed Indian and Black state chose a Black governor, a treasurer from Kansas named McDade. But the Ku Klux Klan said that if he assumed office that they would kill him within 48 hours. A lot of Blacks owned farmland, and many of them had gone into the oil business. The community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand-to-hand, and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws. It was not unusual that if a resident's home accidentally burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was the type of scenario that was going on day-to-day on Black Wallstreet. When Blacks intermarried into the Indian culture, some of them received their promised '40 acres and a Mule,' and with that came whatever oil was later found on the properties. Just to show you how wealthy a lot of Black people were, there was a banker in a neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi [River]. When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made. There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm west of the Mississippi. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another brother not far away had the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family then was five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor. On Black Wallstreet, a lot of global business was conducted. The community flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. That's when the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of this country took place, and it was lead by the Ku Klux Klan. Imagine walking out of your front door and seeing 1,500 homes being burned. Survivors we interviewed think that the whole thing was planned because during the time that all of this was going on, white families with their children stood around on the borders of the community and watched the massacre, the looting and everything---much in the same manner they would watch a lynching. It cost the Black community everything, and not a single dime of restitution---no insurance claims-has been awarded to the victims to this day. Nonetheless, they rebuilt. We estimate that 1,500 to 3,000 people were killed, and we know that a lot of them were buried in mass graves all around the city. Some were thrown in the river. As a matter of fact, at 21st Street and Yale Avenue, where there now stands a Sears parking lot, that corner used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the bodies into the shafts. Black Americans don't know about this story because we don't apply the word holocaust to our struggle. Jewish people use the word holocaust all the time. White people use the word holocaust. It's politically correct to use it. But when we Black folks use the word, people think we're being cry babies or that we're trying to bring up old issues. No one comes to our support. In 1910, our forefathers and mothers owned 13 million acres of land at the height of racism in this country, so the Black Wallstreet book and videotape prove to the naysayers and revisionists that we had our act together. Our mandate now is to begin to teach our children about our own, ongoing Black holocaust. They have to know when they look at our communities today that we don't come from this.

"The Ghetto Trap" Lorraine Hansberry. A Raisin in the Sun The Ghetto Trap by Brandon Colas During 1959, in a growing neighborhood outside Chicago, Progress Development Corporation planned to sell ten to twelve new homes to blacks. When the all-white neighborhood of Deerfield discovered this, they were furious (Rosen 24). One resident, Bob Danning, explained his feelings and the feelings of his neighbors when he stated, "We're not bigots. We don't go around calling people names. And I don't think we want to deny Negroes or anybody else the right to decent homes, just as good as ours. But not next door" (Rosen 16). Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) analyzes northern racism, as expressed by Bob Danning, and its cruel effects in her play A Raisin in the Sun, which she claims is "specifically [about] Southside Chicago" (Hansberry. YGB 114). Many social issues of the 1950's, including feminism, gender roles, the black family, and the pan-African movement, as well as events within Hansberry's own life, are interweaved in this play. However, a central theme of A Raisin in the Sun reveals how racism from the housing industry, government, religious leaders, and average Americans supported the segregated housing environment of Chicago. The setting of A Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most blacks lived. These districts consisted of overpriced, overcrowded, and poorly-maintained apartments and homes. In the ghettos, crime rates were high and public services were limited. Most blacks living in the ghetto had hopes of leaving to better suburban neighborhoods, but segregated housing kept them stuck in the ghetto. The housing industry was the greatest cause of segregated housing in Chicago. Within the housing industry, many social scientists observed that "real estate agencies play the largest role in maintaining segregated communities" (Knowles and Prewitt 26). Real estate agents made enormous profits manipulating white fears of integration and black desires to escape the ghetto, as evidenced by the lucrative practice of blockbusting. A real estate agent would encourage a black family to move to an all-white neighborhood. Housing costs within the white neighborhoods were much lower than black neighborhoods, so some black family would attempt to move, despite threats from future white neighbors. After the black family moved in, nervous whites feared their property values would crash. The real estate agent would then purchase much of whites' houses for well below their market value, and resell them well above their market value to blacks wanting to flee the ghetto. This lucrative bait-and-switch procedure could double real estate agencies' profits within two years (Knowles and Prewitt 27). Whites who experienced blockbusting held hard feelings towards blacks which sometimes turned violent. Real estate agents also fostered the segregation in Chicago by developing separate housing markets for blacks and whites. In 1917 the Chicago Real Estate Board condemned the sale and rental of housing to blacks outside of city blocks contingent to the ghetto (Ralph 101). Conditions did not change in the next half-century, and blacks interested in a home or apartment were usually shown only ghettos or transition neighborhoods (Knowles and Prewitt 150). Real estate agents limited blacks' housing options by rarely offering them housing opportunities outside the ghetto. The real estate industry literally trapped the black family in the ghetto. The real estate industry was aided in segregating Chicago by unfair costs of living within the housing industry. Landlords charged black families high prices for low quality housing, and the average black family in the ghetto had to pay 10% more in housing taxes and fees than in a comparable white neighborhood (Weaver 108). Higher housing costs limited blacks' opportunities to move to better neighborhoods by taking away a large portion of their income. In addition, most white landlords did not maintain their slum property, leading to poor living conditions (Ralph 61). Many black families suffered these higher housing costs and poor living conditions within the ghetto because they could not save enough money to move to a cheaper suburban neighborhood. A Raisin in the Sun notes that the housing industry has a racist nature because of discrepancies in housing cost within black and white communities and their separate housing locations. Walter and Ruth are stunned that Mama purchases a house in an entirely white neighborhood, because moving to a white neighborhood could put their lives at risk. Mama explains why she was unwilling to stay in the black community when she states, "Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out all seem to cost twice as much as other houses. I did the best I could," also noting that the new houses built for blacks are located in their own segregated communities, "way out" (92-93). When Ruth observes to Mama that "we've put enough [money] in this rat trap to pay for four houses by now," she is not making an idle statement considering the unreasonably high costs of ghetto housing (44). Like most blacks in the Chicago ghetto, the Younger family lives in a "tired," run-down, "rat trap" (23). Neighborhood games further reveal poverty: Travis chases and kills a rat "as big as a cat" with his friends (59). The Younger's house is roach-infested, and a Saturday morning chore consists of "spraying insecticide into the cracks in the walls" (54). Like the "rat trap" of the Youngers, living conditions for blacks in the ghetto were poor. Besides the housing industry, different levels of the American government supported segregated housing within Chicago. Federal housing programs after the Great Depression favored homogenous neighborhoods in the belief that there would be less racial conflict (Knowles and Prewitt 28). The government's policy was successful for a time. Eventually, however, the blacks' poor living conditions led to social agitation. By 1964 a social scientist noted that the "failure to satisfy the Negro's urge for better residential surroundings is the crux of the racial crisis in the North" (Lubell 121). Other government policies detracted from the battle to help those in urban areas. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society dreams died in the rice paddies of Vietnam, preventing needy families in the segregated ghettos from receiving government aid needed to improve their living conditions or enter better neighborhoods. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family experienced firsthand the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. After the Hansberrys moved into a white neighborhood, their neighbors brought a lawsuit to evict them. The local Chicago government was willing to eject the Hansberrys from their new home but Lorraine's father, Carl Hansberry, took their case to court. With the help of the NAACP, he eventually won the right to stay, but never recovered from the emotional stress of their legal battles ("Lorraine Hansberry";Hansberry 21). The problem of the government which held blacks in the ghetto and which the Hansberry family experienced is implied in A Raisin in the Sun. Walter plans to chop through the government's forest of red tape to gain a liquor license by bribing a city official. He explains his reasoning to Ruth, his wife, saying, "don't nothing happen for you in this world 'less you pay somebody off!" (33). A government where graft is common is a government slow to respond to its peoples' needs-as was Chicago. Despite the poverty that the Younger family lives in, there is no mention of help or any sort of aid from the government, even to fumigate their house for healthier living conditions. The housing industry and government were major contributors to segregated housing, and white religious leaders from all areas of the United States used Christian terminology to further buttress segregation. For example, the Reverend Parker of Deerfield told his parishioners that as a Christian, he must approve of integration. But he undercut his statement by stating he did not approve of Progress Development Corporation's method to "bring integration to Deerfield" (Rosen 32). He repeatedly attacked the builders for violating the "law of love," prompting one builder to rebuke him for aiding the "cause of panic" (Rosen 33-34). Dr. G. T. Gillespie, President Emeritus of Belhaven College, a northern Christian college, stated, "The principle of segregation may be defended on biblical grounds, and is not un-Christian" (Rosen 132). Ira Harkey, a newspaper editor during the Civil Rights Movement, noted that many churches were only social events, as exemplified by a sermon entitled "God's Answer to Segregation." In this diatribe, a "devout Baptist proved through Scriptures that racial bigotry is godly and Christian" (188-191). Encouragement of segregation by white Christian leaders caused many black intellectuals to approach religion skeptically. In Young, Gifted, and Black, Lorraine Hansberry is quoted as saying, "I don't attack people who are religious at all, as you can tell from the play; I rather admire this human quality to make our own crutches as long as we need them" (185). She is tolerant of religion, but considers faith irrelevant to life in her era. Her conclusion is understandable in the light of the blatant racism of many Christian leaders. In A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha expresses the cynicism that many minority intellectuals, including Lorraine Hansberry, held towards religion in light of white Christian leadership favoring segregation. Mama tells Beneatha that she will be a doctor someday, "God willing." Beneatha "drily" replies to Mama that "God hasn't got a thing to do with it," later saying, "God is just one idea that I don't accept.. I get tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort" (50-51). Hansberry further reveals her own attitude towards religion when Mama folds over, begging God for strength, as she realizes that Walter has lost all of their insurance money. Beneatha tries to gain her mother's attention to help her, speaking to her "plaintively" (130). This implies that she is pleading with her mother as a parent to an emotionally immature child. Karl Lindner also provides a reflection of some racist Christian leaders. He is dressed professionally and described as "a gentle man; thoughtful and somewhat labored in his manner" (115). He speaks to the Youngers in a pious tone, saying, "most of the [race] trouble exists because people just don't sit down and talk to each other." To this remark, Ruth replies, "You can say that again mister," while "nodding as she might in church" (116). Hansberry shows further textual evidence that Linder represents religious leadership as Beneatha tells Mama about Linder's offer to their family. She says, "He talked about Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship" (121). Linder even sounds like the Reverend Parker of Deerfield when he states, "you've got to admit that a man, right or wrong, has the right to want to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of way" (117). Both men gently justify segregation in a religious manner. Besides the housing industry, the government, and religious leaders, personal racism on the individual level kept blacks in the Chicago ghettos. Terrified of blacks entering their neighborhoods, whites believed that integration "endangered their turf, their community, the place they called home" (Ralph 125). Moving to a white neighborhood could be deadly for black families. From 1944 to 1946 there were over 46 arson bombings within Chicago directed at black homes on the ghettos' outskirts (Weaver 96). In 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) marched against segregated housing in Chicago. In one instance, 500 black protesters marched in a white neighborhood, Gage Park, to protest segregation. They were promptly attacked by 4000 outraged whites (Ralph 122-123). Even the KKK and the American Nazi party came north to Chicago during SCLC's open-housing movement because conditions appeared ripe for recruits (Ralph 164). After Carl Hansberry sued to remain in his new neighborhood, "howling mobs" surrounded the Hansberry's house (Hansberry 20). At one point a brick hurled through their window barely missed Lorraine's head before embedding itself in their wall ("Lorraine Hansberry"). This violence, from the perspective of many whites, was unfortunate, for as long as both races remained separate, conflict was unnecessary. When integration threatened the carefully crafted white society, violence ensued. The role of individual racism within segregated housing in Chicago is an important focus of A Raisin in the Sun. When Ruth and Walter first hear the news that they will be moving to Clybourne Park, they are shocked. Walter looks at his mother with "hostility," while Ruth's stunned response is, "Clybourne Park? Mama, there ain't no colored people living in Clybourne Park." Walter becomes bitter as Ruth tries to adjust to the shock (92-93). They realize that their lives could be at risk from an irate vigilante if they move within a white neighborhood. Just as individuals' violence fought to keep Chicago segregated, violence threatens the Younger family. Fire bombings are discussed in the play by the simplistic Mrs. Johnson. She arrives to chat, and while discussing the Younger's upcoming move asks if Mama and Ruth have read "about them colored people that was bombed out of their place out there" (100). She then idiotically states, "Lord-I bet this time next month y'all's names will have been in the papers plenty-'NEGROES INVADE CLYBOURNE PARK-BOMBED!'" (102). She warns Mama and Ruth that "these here Chicago peckerwoods is some baaaad peckerwoods," an accurate statement of white Chicago's general hatred of integration [a peckerwood is a disparaging term for a white Southerner]. The characterization of Karl Linder is a scathing commentary on white Northern racism on the personal level. He appears innocuous, "quiet-looking," "middle aged," and "a gentle man" (113, 115). He explains to the Youngers that "most of the trouble [between whites and blacks] exists because people just don't sit down and talk to each other" (116). He is calm, patient, and "almost sadly" warns the Youngers that they will be in physical danger if they move into Clybourne Park (119). However, by desiring to keep the Youngers from Clybourne Park, he is implying to them, as Mama says, "they aren't fit to walk the earth" (143). Like Bob Danning, Karl Lindner says, "I want you to believe me when I tell you that race prejudice simply doesn't enter into it" (118). At the end of the play, when Walter triumphantly kicks him out of the house, Karl's true character is as weak and shallow as that of whites who openly support housing segregation. The Younger family ignores his veiled threats and concentrates on Walter, the unexpected hero. Karl's last line is a lame, "I sure hope you people know what you're getting into" (149). Carl Sandburg called Chicago America's laughing city, "proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." Bill Berry, of Chicago's Urban League, called Chicago "America's largest segregated city" (Ralph 46). A Raisin in the Sun shows through the triumph of the black spirit amidst white racism and segregation that both observations are accurate. Robert Nemiroff, in his introduction to the 1987 text, called the play "so contemporary" (13) because of Lorraine Hansberry's ability to tie social issues, including the rise of second-wave feminism, questioning of gender roles, the difficulties of the black family, and the death of colonialism, throughout A Raisin in the Sun. However, her portrayal of Chicago's segregated housing market is particularly poignant because of her accurate observation that Chicago's segregated housing existed mainly because of racism within the housing industry, the government, religious leaders, and the individual American. In Deerfield, the white community halted Progress Development Corporation's building project in court (Rosen 148). By 1962, three years from when the controversy began, Harry and David Rosen concluded, "in Deerfield, there are no Negroes next door" (159). A Raisin in the Sun is still a rebuke to suburban audiences today. For most of us, there are still no Negroes next door. Bibliography Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. New York: Vintage Books, 1969. Harkey, Jr. , Ira B. The Smell of Burning Crosses; an Autobiography of a Mississippi Newspaperman. Jacksonville, Ill.: Harris-Wolfe, 1967. Knowles, Louis L., and Kenneth Prewitt, ed. Institutional Racism in America. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. "Lorraine Hansberry." Gay & Lesbian Biography. 16 Oct. 2003 http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC. Lubell, Samuel. White and Black: Test of a Nation. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. Ralph, Jr. , James R. Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Rosen, David, and Harry Rosen. But Not Next Door. New York: Avon Book Division, 1962. Weaver, Robert C. The Negro Ghetto. New York: Russell and Russell, 1948. © Brandon Colas, October 2006

Lorraine Hansberry was a genius! The way in which she described institutionalized racism through characters in "A Raisin in the Sun" was brilliant. However, it is little known that her play, A Raisin in the Sun (though reflective of the story of the collective) was also very much reflective of her personal experiences. Link: http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=76,4,4,10 "Chicago native and author Lorraine Hansberry drew on childhood experiences to write her acclaimed novel-turned-play A Raisin in the Sun, in which a black family faces discrimination after buying a home in an all-white neighborhood. Hansberry was nearly eight years old when her father, Carl Hansberry, decided to purchase a three-flat at 6140 S. Rhodes in the white neighborhood of Woodlawn, and challenge the restrictive housing covenant that kept blacks from renting, leasing, or buying property in the community. Shortly after moving in, the Hansberrys were evicted based on the covenant. Mr. Hansberry then waged a three-year legal battle for the right to live in his home. The case, Hansberry vs. Lee, resulted in a 1940 Supreme Court decision that helped to end racially discriminatory housing covenants across the city of Chicago. Recalling the times she and her siblings would go to eat at a "whites-only" restaurant, Ms. Hansberry said, "Sometimes you were shaken a bit, but you did it because you knew your dad was going to come back you up." Her play A Raisin in the Sun has the distinction of being the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. The Chicago City Council designated the Hansberry family home a landmark on February 10, 2010 in recognition of Ms. Hansberry's contribution to the Black Renaissance Literary Movement of the 20th Century."

Spike Lee's biopic "X" is a really good movie. It tells a great deal, but this documentary, Make it Plain tells a great deal. It deals with the evolution of Brother Malcolm in ways in which many other documentaries and/or even books have not. I believe that Bro. Malcolm's evolution has really been misrepresented purposely and otherwise. This is one of the best documentaries that I have ever seen.

Oh yes indeed, life is seasons and cycles. Avoiding universal shifts in this life is like wearing a leather trench coat in winter and refusing to take it off for the the whole year. LOL Avoid the change in seasons all you want, but those seasons are still going to change and you can be hot and bothered all you wanna be, but the seasons are indifferent to your stubborness and they are sure indifferent to your hot n botheredness.lol My dear friend in Zim and I were talking just yesterday about how the reign is up. He likened it to a very muscular man who has been going to the gym everyday for all of his adult life. That muscular man gets old and he still is muscular and he just cannot understand how a young man who has not been going to the gym all of his life and does not have the muscles that he has is stronger than him and can beat him. Cynique said: "They say you can ride for miles and miles and never see anything but open land in states like North and South Dakota and Montana and Idaho and Wyoming, so maybe there exists a refuge for the white race in this country." I think that their refuge is a little higher. I think that it is another part of space. lol Wouldn't be surprised if there were a Walmart up there. They came, they saw, they colonized (the Earth). Now it is perhaps time to do the same thing on other planets. Or should I say perhaps it is now time to "try" to do the same thing on other planets.