dream on

well today is Martin Luther King Jr day and I thought I'd check out some civil rights issues....

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.

can you think of anyone in 2012 who would want to deny a class of Americans their civil rights? sure you can.....it's a little power struggle.... a little tug of war... some want to deny working people the right to organize into a union, or bargain collectively because the collective power of the working class frightens them;

then there's others who would want you not to marry because your love ain't like their love..or something....either way you slice it, it's discrimination
some countries don't allow women to vote or drive cars!! some folks in the USA are still trying to stop freedom of speech, the press and assembly!!

remember America back in the 1930s in the deep south.....the pathetic racism that still exists today was addressed in the 1960s...

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed segregation in schools, public places, and employment. First conceived to help African Americans, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect women, and explicitly included white people for the first time.

strange fruit...
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

"Strange Fruit,” the haunting song about lynching in America that was written more than 60 years ago, was first recorded by the famed jazz singer Billie Holiday in 1939. Since then it has been recorded by some three dozen other performers, including black folk singer Josh White, the great jazz artists Abbey Lincoln, Carmen McRae and Nina Simone, pop performers Sting and UB40, operatic soprano Shirley Verrett, and contemporary vocalists Tori Amos and Cassandra Wilson.

“Strange Fruit” was played only rarely on the radio. This was a period in which the segregationist Southern Dixiecrats played a leading role in the Democratic Party as well as the Roosevelt administration. It would take a mass movement to finally dismantle the apartheid system that played a key role in setting the stage for lynchings. There were, by conservative estimates, at least 4,000 lynchings in the half century before 1940, the vast majority in the South, with most of the victims black. There was little outcry over these pogrom-like activities. Socialists and communists were in the forefront of the struggle against lynchings.
Anticommunist politicians generally agreed with the Southern racists that the fight for racial equality was basically a left-wing plot, and anticommunist crusades certainly did not begin with Senator Joseph McCarthy in the postwar period. In 1941, Meeropol was brought before the witch-hunting Rapp-Coudert committee, which had been set up by the New York State legislature to investigate alleged Communist influence in the public school system. He was asked if “Strange Fruit” had been commissioned by the CP, or whether he had been paid by the party to write it.

The Dixiecrats (or southern Democrats) were predominantly conservative, but the movement also included many racists and seemingly morphed into the anti-civil rights Tea Party of today....
can you imagine if all we had were white people like Sarah Palin or Wendy running around in America....I would go fucking crazy!!! you betcha....