Got MLK? I Have a Dream: Free at Last!

Take a moment to read what was written in our time...in our history...the history we didn’t know we were making. Did Martin Luther King, Jr., know he was making history when he delivered this powerful speech at the Lincoln Memorial?

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution.

FEDERALIST PAPER No. 7

The Same Subject Continued
(Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States)
For the Independent Journal.
by Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

IT IS sometimes asked, with an air of seeming triumph, what inducements could the States have, if disunited, to make war upon each other? It would be a full answer to this question to say--precisely the same inducements which have, at different times, deluged in blood all the nations in the world. But, unfortunately for us, the question admits of a more particular answer. There are causes of differences within our immediate contemplation, of the tendency of which, even under the restraints of a federal constitution, we have had sufficient experience to enable us to form a judgment of what might be expected if those restraints were removed.

Territorial disputes have at all times been found one of the most fertile sources of hostility among nations. Perhaps the greatest proportion of wars that have desolated the earth have sprung from this origin. This cause would exist among us in full force. We have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the boundaries of the United States. There still are discordant and undecided claims between several of them, and the dissolution of the Union would lay a foundation for similar claims between them all. It is well known that they have heretofore had serious and animated discussion concerning the rights to the lands which were ungranted at the time of the Revolution, and which usually went under the name of crown lands. The States within the limits of whose colonial governments they were comprised have claimed them as their property, the others have contended that the rights of the crown in this article devolved upon the Union; especially as to all that part of the Western territory which, either by actual possession, or through the submission of the Indian proprietors, was subjected to the jurisdiction of the king of Great Britain, till it was relinquished in the treaty of peace. This, it has been said, was at all events an acquisition to the Confederacy by compact with a foreign power. It has been the prudent policy of Congress to appease this controversy, by prevailing upon the States to make cessions to the United States for the benefit of the whole. This has been so far accomplished as, under a continuation of the Union, to afford a decided prospect of an amicable termination of the dispute. A dismemberment of the Confederacy, however, would revive this dispute, and would create others on the same subject. At present, a large part of the vacant Western territory is, by cession at least, if not by any anterior right, the common property of the Union. If that were at an end, the States which made the cession, on a principle of federal compromise, would be apt when the motive of the grant had ceased, to reclaim the lands as a reversion. The other States would no doubt insist on a proportion, by right of representation. Their argument would be, that a grant, once made, could not be revoked; and that the justice of participating in territory acquired or secured by the joint efforts of the Confederacy, remained undiminished. If, contrary to probability, it should be admitted by all the States, that each had a right to a share of this common stock, there would still be a difficulty to be surmounted, as to a proper rule of apportionment. Different principles would be set up by different States for this purpose; and as they would affect the opposite interests of the parties, they might not easily be susceptible of a pacific adjustment.

In the wide field of Western territory, therefore, we perceive an ample theatre for hostile pretensions, without any umpire or common judge to interpose between the contending parties. To reason from the past to the future, we shall have good ground to apprehend, that the sword would sometimes be appealed to as the arbiter of their differences. The circumstances of the dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, respecting the land at Wyoming, admonish us not to be sanguine in expecting an easy accommodation of such differences. The articles of confederation obliged the parties to submit the matter to the decision of a federal court. The submission was made, and the court decided in favor of Pennsylvania. But Connecticut gave strong indications of dissatisfaction with that determination; nor did she appear to be entirely resigned to it, till, by negotiation and management, something like an equivalent was found for the loss she supposed herself to have sustained. Nothing here said is intended to convey the slightest censure on the conduct of that State. She no doubt sincerely believed herself to have been injured by the decision; and States, like individuals, acquiesce with great reluctance in determinations to their disadvantage.

Those who had an opportunity of seeing the inside of the transactions which attended the progress of the controversy between this State and the district of Vermont, can vouch the opposition we experienced, as well from States not interested as from those which were interested in the claim; and can attest the danger to which the peace of the Confederacy might have been exposed, had this State attempted to assert its rights by force. Two motives preponderated in that opposition: one, a jealousy entertained of our future power; and the other, the interest of certain individuals of influence in the neighboring States, who had obtained grants of lands under the actual government of that district. Even the States which brought forward claims, in contradiction to ours, seemed more solicitous to dismember this State, than to establish their own pretensions. These were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. New Jersey and Rhode Island, upon all occasions, discovered a warm zeal for the independence of Vermont; and Maryland, till alarmed by the appearance of a connection between Canada and that State, entered deeply into the same views. These being small States, saw with an unfriendly eye the perspective of our growing greatness. In a review of these transactions we may trace some of the causes which would be likely to embroil the States with each other, if it should be their unpropitious destiny to become disunited.

The competitions of commerce would be another fruitful source of contention. The States less favorably circumstanced would be desirous of escaping from the disadvantages of local situation, and of sharing in the advantages of their more fortunate neighbors. Each State, or separate confederacy, would pursue a system of commercial policy peculiar to itself. This would occasion distinctions, preferences, and exclusions, which would beget discontent. The habits of intercourse, on the basis of equal privileges, to which we have been accustomed since the earliest settlement of the country, would give a keener edge to those causes of discontent than they would naturally have independent of this circumstance. WE SHOULD BE READY TO DENOMINATE INJURIES THOSE THINGS WHICH WERE IN REALITY THE JUSTIFIABLE ACTS OF INDEPENDENT SOVEREIGNTIES CONSULTING A DISTINCT INTEREST. The spirit of enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no occasion of displaying itself unimproved. It is not at all probable that this unbridled spirit would pay much respect to those regulations of trade by which particular States might endeavor to secure exclusive benefits to their own citizens. The infractions of these regulations, on one side, the efforts to prevent and repel them, on the other, would naturally lead to outrages, and these to reprisals and wars.

The opportunities which some States would have of rendering others tributary to them by commercial regulations would be impatiently submitted to by the tributary States. The relative situation of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey would afford an example of this kind. New York, from the necessities of revenue, must lay duties on her importations. A great part of these duties must be paid by the inhabitants of the two other States in the capacity of consumers of what we import. New York would neither be willing nor able to forego this advantage. Her citizens would not consent that a duty paid by them should be remitted in favor of the citizens of her neighbors; nor would it be practicable, if there were not this impediment in the way, to distinguish the customers in our own markets. Would Connecticut and New Jersey long submit to be taxed by New York for her exclusive benefit? Should we be long permitted to remain in the quiet and undisturbed enjoyment of a metropolis, from the possession of which we derived an advantage so odious to our neighbors, and, in their opinion, so oppressive? Should we be able to preserve it against the incumbent weight of Connecticut on the one side, and the co-operating pressure of New Jersey on the other? These are questions that temerity alone will answer in the affirmative.

The public debt of the Union would be a further cause of collision between the separate States or confederacies. The apportionment, in the first instance, and the progressive extinguishment afterward, would be alike productive of ill-humor and animosity. How would it be possible to agree upon a rule of apportionment satisfactory to all? There is scarcely any that can be proposed which is entirely free from real objections. These, as usual, would be exaggerated by the adverse interest of the parties. There are even dissimilar views among the States as to the general principle of discharging the public debt. Some of them, either less impressed with the importance of national credit, or because their citizens have little, if any, immediate interest in the question, feel an indifference, if not a repugnance, to the payment of the domestic debt at any rate. These would be inclined to magnify the difficulties of a distribution. Others of them, a numerous body of whose citizens are creditors to the public beyond proportion of the State in the total amount of the national debt, would be strenuous for some equitable and effective provision. The procrastinations of the former would excite the resentments of the latter. The settlement of a rule would, in the meantime, be postponed by real differences of opinion and affected delays. The citizens of the States interested would clamour; foreign powers would urge for the satisfaction of their just demands, and the peace of the States would be hazarded to the double contingency of external invasion and internal contention.

Suppose the difficulties of agreeing upon a rule surmounted, and the apportionment made. Still there is great room to suppose that the rule agreed upon would, upon experiment, be found to bear harder upon some States than upon others. Those which were sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States to withhold their contributions, not to be embraced with avidity; and the non-compliance of these States with their engagements would be a ground of bitter discussion and altercation. If even the rule adopted should in practice justify the equality of its principle, still delinquencies in payments on the part of some of the States would result from a diversity of other causes--the real deficiency of resources; the mismanagement of their finances; accidental disorders in the management of the government; and, in addition to the rest, the reluctance with which men commonly part with money for purposes that have outlived the exigencies which produced them, and interfere with the supply of immediate wants. Delinquencies, from whatever causes, would be productive of complaints, recriminations, and quarrels. There is, perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation, as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.

Laws in violation of private contracts, as they amount to aggressions on the rights of those States whose citizens are injured by them, may be considered as another probable source of hostility. We are not authorized to expect that a more liberal or more equitable spirit would preside over the legislations of the individual States hereafter, if unrestrained by any additional checks, than we have heretofore seen in too many instances disgracing their several codes. We have observed the disposition to retaliation excited in Connecticut in consequence of the enormities perpetrated by the Legislature of Rhode Island; and we reasonably infer that, in similar cases, under other circumstances, a war, not of PARCHMENT, but of the sword, would chastise such atrocious breaches of moral obligation and social justice.

The probability of incompatible alliances between the different States or confederacies and different foreign nations, and the effects of this situation upon the peace of the whole, have been sufficiently unfolded in some preceding papers. From the view they have exhibited of this part of the subject, this conclusion is to be drawn, that America, if not connected at all, or only by the feeble tie of a simple league, offensive and defensive, would, by the operation of such jarring alliances, be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars; and by the destructive contentions of the parts into which she was divided, would be likely to become a prey to the artifices and machinations of powers equally the enemies of them all. Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.

PUBLIUS.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Although reminiscent now, the mood of Joyce Carol Oates’s short story seems appropriate today. The story tells of the adventures of a teenage girl, its title a perfectly timed metaphor as we forge ahead into an uncertain future. Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) dedicated this work to Bob Dylan. It allows the reader a glimpse into the thoughts of a young writer of her time. Below is the fourth and last installment.

For continuity, here is the last paragraph from the previous installment: "Shut your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend said, his face red from bending over or maybe from embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots. "This ain’t none of your business."

"What–are you doing? What do you want?" Connie said. "If I call the police they’ll get you, they’ll arrest you"

"I promise not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I’ll keep that promise," he said. He resumed his erect position and tried to force his shoulders back. He sounded like a hero in a movie, declaring something important. He spoke too loudly and it was as if he were speaking to someone behind Connie.

"I ain’t made plans for coming in that house where I don’t belong but just for you to come out to me, the way you should. Don’t you know who I am?"

"You’re crazy," she whispered. "She backed away from the door but did not want to go into another part of the house as if this would give him permission to come through the door. "What do you...You’re crazy, you..."

"Huh? What are you saying, honey?"

Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not remember what it was, this room.

"This is how it is honey: you come out and we’ll drive away, have a nice ride. But if you don’t come out we’re gonna wait til your people come home and then they’re all going to get it."

"You want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said. He held the radio away from his ear and grimaced, as if without the radio the air was too much for him.

"I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you’re deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This little girl’s no trouble and’s gonna be nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain’t your date–right? Don’t hem in on me. Don’t hog. Don’t crush. Don’t bird dog. Don’t trail me,"

he said in a rapid meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the expressions he’d learned but was no longer sure which one of them was in style, then rushing on to new ones making them up with his eyes closed. "Don’t crawl under my fence, don’t squeeze in my chipmunk hole, don’t sniff my glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!"

He shaded his eyes and peered in at Connie, who was backed up against the kitchen table. "Don’t mind him honey he’s just a creep. He’s a dope. Right? I’m the boy for you and like I said you come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bring them in this?"

"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.

"Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with the chickens and stuff–you know her?" She’s dead!"

"What?"

"You know her?" Arnold Friend said. "She’s dead."

"Don’t you like her?"

"She’s dead–she’s–she isn’t here any more--

"But don’t you like her, I mean you got something against her? Some grudge or something?" Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness. He touched the sunglasses perched on top of his head as if to make sure they were still there. "Now you be a good girl."

"What are you going to do?"

"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said.

"But I promise it won’t last long and you’ll like me the way you get to like people you’re close to. You will. It’s all over for you here, so come on out. You don’t want your people in any trouble, do you?"

She turned and bumped against the chair or something, hurting her leg, but she ran in to the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it–the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend were stabbing her again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked into this house.

After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall.

Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That’s a good girl. Put the phone back."

She kicked the phone away from her.

"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."

She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.

"That’s a good girl. Now you come outside."

She was hollow with what had been fear, but what was now just an emptiness. All that screaming had blasted it out of her. She sat one leg cramped under her and deep inside her brain was something like a pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her relax. She thought, I’m not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.

Arnold Friend said, in a gentle–loud voice what was like a stage voice, "The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is canceled out. This place you are now–inside your daddy’s house–is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?"

She thought, I have got to think. I have to know what to do.

"We’ll go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice and it’s sunny," Arnold Friend said.

"I’ll have my arms tight around you so you won’t need to try to get away and I’ll show you what love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid alright," he said.

He ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as it would have the day before.

"Now put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we know better, be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?–and get away before her people come back?"

She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn’t really hers either.

"You don’t want them to get hurt" Arnold Friend went on. "Now get up honey. Get up all by yourself."

She stood.

"Now turn this way. That’s right. Come over here to me–Ellie, put that away, didn’t I tell you?

You dope. You miserable creepy dope," Arnold Friend said. His words were not angry but only part of an incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen, and let’s see a smile, try it, you’re a brave, sweet little girl and now they’re eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting over an outdoor fire, and they don’t know one thing about you and never did and honey you’re better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you."

Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in towards each other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn’t want to make her self-conscious.

She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.

"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said, in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.

American Indicators: Civil Liberties, Crime, & Drugs

American Indicators
CIVIL LIBERTIES, CRIME, & DRUGS
Road signs compiled by the Progressive Review

Read this page all the way down to see lots of statistics on American crime, drug usage, and criminal justice.

http://prorev.com/statscl.htm

A Letter from Dot Calm to her Senator: PLEASE Raise Minimum Wage!

Dear Senator:

Thank you for your response of December 19, 2006 regarding minimum wage.

As we know the minimum wage has not been considered for the past ten years. By ignoring the minimum wage for such a long time the American worker finds himself at great financial loss. Increasing it a mere $1.10/hr hardly addresses the problem. Even increasing it to $7.25/hr is marginal, although many states have taken it upon themselves to do exactly that.

The Starbucks, Wal-marts, McDonalds, et al., will survive an increase in minimum wage. They've enjoyed a stagnant one way too long. America must pay its middle class workforce a living wage, especially since most who fall in this category are single mothers trying to raise a family.

As our country drifts to a service economy it is important to maintain a realistic minimum wage. We must avoid turning our country into a plutocracy. We must heed the warnings of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a truly great American.

This country is unique in that it enjoys a restricted vibrant economy. It is essential that she strive to lift all boats by treating her working force respectfully. If the minimum wage was reviewed whenever congress increased its own salaries, there would be an end to this very serious problem.

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Either click on the three-dot link by the title of this post or watch the video by clicking here!

Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Lyrics by U2

One man come in the name of love
One man come and go
One man come, he to justify
One man to overthrow

In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love

One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed on an empty beach.
One man betrayed with a kiss

In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love

(nobody like you...)

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love...


Courtesy of www.azlyrics.com

The Traitor and the Bloodless Coup

A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments. He appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

A murderer is less to fear.

--Cicero Marcus Tullius

Have You Read This Geneva Convention, Mr. Bush?

TVNL Editor's Comments: Have You Read This, Mr. Bush?
Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

Read this line by line.

You will be absolutely stunned at how many provisions of this Geneva Convention have been totally violated by George W. Bush and his war party. Everyone down to the field commanders are clearly guilty of war crimes based on this one convention. As you read, you will be hard pressed top find even a single clause in which the Bush administration’s cabal has been compliant. It is simply stunning. And what will become clear to you by the time you finish reading this is that our criminal corporate media have been complicit in these crimes in that they have ignored them, even though it is their responsibility to hold our administration accountable to the people of this nation and to the laws of the land!

After watching George W. Bush conduct his affairs and speak in public for the past six years or so, I am not so sure he can actually read. Well, let’s just say I am not sure about how goodly he understands things like words and stuff. But I think that, no matter how difficult it may be, Mr. Bush may want read this--or at least ask his lawyer to read it. But then again, this career criminal has nothing to worry about as long as we have a corporately-owned Congress and media who have no interest in running a legal and legitimate government. Otherwise, Bush would have been arrested many times over for election fraud, conspiracy to commit mass murder on 9/11, etc.

Anyway, just read this, Mr. Bush. It is a no-brainer when it comes to shining a light on the crimes that you have committed.

The document is to long for me to include in this piece, so please click here and read the entire documents. I am sure you will be absolutely stunned at the level of violations you will be able to identify.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm

Perhaps because I did not grow up in Nazi Germany or communist Russia, I can not imagine a more criminal and corrupt government than the current U.S. administration. Then again, it may just be because there has actually never been a more criminal administration. Think about it!
–– Jesse, Editor of TVNL

"These are the times that try men's souls."

--Thomas Paine

This simple quotation from Founding Father Thomas Paine's The Crisis not only describes the beginnings of the American Revolution but also the life of Paine himself. Throughout most of his life, his writings inspired passion but also brought him great criticism. He communicated the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as easily as to intellectuals, creating prose that stirred the hearts of the fledgling United States. He had a grand vision for society: he was staunchly anti-slavery, and he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization and social security for the poor and elderly. But his radical views on religion would destroy his success, and, by the end of his life, only a handful of people attended his funeral.

Islamic Fascism

Islamic fascism, the term adopted by journalist Stephen Schwartz, is intended to refer to Islamist extremists, including terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. The term has gained wide currency in the United States, particularly among neo-conservatives. Since the term is both pejorative and coined by critics of militant Islamist groups, there are no self-identified Islamic fascists. The most recent appellation is by President Bush describing assorted cells of British Muslims of Pakistani origin in England.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution.

FEDERALIST PAPER No. 2

Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence
For the Independent Journal.
by John Jay

To the People of the State of New York:

WHEN the people of America reflect that they are now called upon to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propriety of their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view of it, will be evident.

Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers. It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, or that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national government.

It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties. However extraordinary this new doctrine may appear, it nevertheless has its advocates; and certain characters who were much opposed to it formerly, are at present of the number. Whatever may be the arguments or inducements which have wrought this change in the sentiments and declarations of these gentlemen, it certainly would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new political tenets without being fully convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.

A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and wellbalanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.

This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects. Still continuing no less attached to union than enamored of liberty, they observed the danger which immediately threatened the former and more remotely the latter; and being persuaded that ample security for both could only be found in a national government more wisely framed, they as with one voice, convened the late convention at Philadelphia, to take that important subject under consideration.

This convention composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task. In the mild season of peace, with minds unoccupied by other subjects, they passed many months in cool, uninterrupted, and daily consultation; and finally, without having been awed by power, or influenced by any passions except love for their country, they presented and recommended to the people the plan produced by their joint and very unanimous councils.

Admit, for so is the fact, that this plan is only RECOMMENDED, not imposed, yet let it be remembered that it is neither recommended to BLIND approbation, nor to BLIND reprobation; but to that sedate and candid consideration which the magnitude and importance of the subject demand, and which it certainly ought to receive. But this (as was remarked in the foregoing number of this paper) is more to be wished than expected, that it may be so considered and examined. Experience on a former occasion teaches us not to be too sanguine in such hopes. It is not yet forgotten that well-grounded apprehensions of imminent danger induced the people of America to form the memorable Congress of 1774. That body recommended certain measures to their constituents, and the event proved their wisdom; yet it is fresh in our memories how soon the press began to teem with pamphlets and weekly papers against those very measures. Not only many of the officers of government, who obeyed the dictates of personal interest, but others, from a mistaken estimate of consequences, or the undue influence of former attachments, or whose ambition aimed at objects which did not correspond with the public good, were indefatigable in their efforts to pursuade the people to reject the advice of that patriotic Congress. Many, indeed, were deceived and deluded, but the great majority of the people reasoned and decided judiciously; and happy they are in reflecting that they did so.

They considered that the Congress was composed of many wise and experienced men. That, being convened from different parts of the country, they brought with them and communicated to each other a variety of useful information. That, in the course of the time they passed together in inquiring into and discussing the true interests of their country, they must have acquired very accurate knowledge on that head. That they were individually interested in the public liberty and prosperity, and therefore that it was not less their inclination than their duty to recommend only such measures as, after the most mature deliberation, they really thought prudent and advisable.

These and similar considerations then induced the people to rely greatly on the judgment and integrity of the Congress; and they took their advice, notwithstanding the various arts and endeavors used to deter them from it. But if the people at large had reason to confide in the men of that Congress, few of whom had been fully tried or generally known, still greater reason have they now to respect the judgment and advice of the convention, for it is well known that some of the most distinguished members of that Congress, who have been since tried and justly approved for patriotism and abilities, and who have grown old in acquiring political information, were also members of this convention, and carried into it their accumulated knowledge and experience.
It is worthy of remark that not only the first, but every succeeding Congress, as well as the late convention, have invariably joined with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America depended on its Union. To preserve and perpetuate it was the great object of the people in forming that convention, and it is also the great object of the plan which the convention has advised them to adopt. With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the importance of the Union? Or why is it suggested that three or four confederacies would be better than one? I am persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy. That certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet: "FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS."

PUBLIUS.

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Nota bene:
The Constitution mentions IMPEACHMENT 6 times.

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Free Speech Zones

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Free speech zones (also known as First Amendment Zones and Free Speech Cages) are areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech in the United States. Although such zones were first instituted by the Clinton administration, they gained more attention after the WTO Meeting of 1999 and have been used vigorously by the George W. Bush administration. Civil libertarians claim that Free Speech Zones are used as a form of censorship and public relations management to conceal the existence of popular opposition from the mass public and elected officials. There is much controversy surrounding the creation of these areas—the mere existence of such zones is offensive to some people, who maintain that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution makes the entire country an unrestricted free speech zone. The Department of Homeland Security "has even gone so far as to tell local police departments to regard critics of the War on Terrorism as potential terrorists themselves."

History

Free speech zones were used aggressively in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, after a bid to keep protestors out of downtown Boston was abandoned due to harsh media criticism of its dictatorial implications. The free speech zones organized by the democratic leadership were boxed in by concrete walls, invisible to the Fleet center where the convention is held and criticized harshly as a “protest pen” or Boston’s “Camp X-Ray.”

Free speech zones were used aggressively in New York at the 2004 Republican National Convention, after a bid to keep protestors out of the whole city was abandoned due to harsh media criticism of its dictatorial implications.

Prominent examples of recent free speech zones are those set up by the Secret Service, who scout locations where the president is scheduled to speak, or pass through. Officials will target those who carry anti-Bush signs and escort them to the free speech zones prior to and during the event. Reporters are often barred by local officials from displaying these protestors on camera or speaking to them within the zone. Protestors who refuse to go to the free speech zone are often arrested and charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. A seldom-used federal law making it unlawful to "willfully and knowingly enter or remain in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting" has also been invoked.

Legality

The Supreme Court has ruled that picketing and marching in public areas has some degree of protection under the First Amendment, but less than that afforded to pure speech due to the physical externalities it creates. Regulations for such activities, however, may not target the content of the expression.

Notable incident

Free Speech zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event. When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us. The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Police detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine 'people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views.

Criticisms

The Bush administration has been criticized by columnist James Bovard of The American Conservative for requiring protestors to stay within a designated area, while allowing supporters access to more areas. According to the Chicago Tribune, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal court in Washington D.C. to prevent the Secret Service from keeping anti-Bush protesters distant from presidential appearances while allowing supporters to display their messages up close, where they are likely to be seen by the news media. Regarding free speech zones, U. S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock has commented that, "One cannot conceive of what other design elements could be put into a space to create a more symbolic affront to the role of free expression.”

Do you know?

Your Congress person? Your Senators? Names of all the Supreme Court Justices? Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Do you know the members of the cabinet of this administration?

Bush Self-Spoof Video

This is good for a laugh.

On April 29, 2006 at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, Bush invited a Bush impersonator named Steve Bridges to share the dais with him. The premise was that the impersonator was Bush's conscience, interpreting Bush's words with what he really meant. A 20-second sound and video bite hit the newscasts, but this is the whole enchilada.

Click here to see the White House Correspondents' Dinner video.

Proud?

We are Americans...we don't do these things...we don't get even...we set an example...a good one...that is what makes us Americans...and we're proud of it...we're not "gooks"...we're not "nazis"...we're Americans...a cut above those who would take advantage of helpless prisoners...that is easy to do...we are Americans...we leave punishment to the courts...otherwise, we would all carry weapons...we would kill...or be killed...we would say: screw the courts...that's not for us...we're Americans...we're better than the rest...no time to wait for trials...Geneva? Screw that! We know how to deal with the enemy...we're Americans...and proud of it! Or are we?

PNAC's Plan for America Doesn't Benefit America!

Look, folks...our country is being taken down a dangerous road...we must no longer remain ignorant of what our beloved America has been subjected to...it is no longer a matter of political party...or which party is winning...which is losing...think back to Abu Ghraib...it was no aberration...and it happened on our watch...why?

And don't blame the troops!

There is a more pervasive movement taking hold...please educate yourself by reading alternative news...with the internet, there is no reason to accept the dumbed-down version being fed to us like pablum to a baby...

Pay down your credit cards or be held hostage by the financial monsters...stop following, start leading...pay attention! Listen to “Democracy Now!”

Google “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC)...it is important to learn about PNAC and what they have in mind for America...it may not be what you have in mind...

The Republican party we all knew and loved half a century ago IS NOT the same party today...the new conservatives (neocons) have worked through the Republican party...their plan has been developing for years...and they DO NOT include a working middle class...

Watch the pharmaceuticals...they have become powerful...hence, stand-alone "temples"...one more extravagant than the last...no concern for expense...sky's the limit...read about pharmaceutical profits...at the expense of ill Americans across our country...seniors splitting pills to make do...anyone daring to mention universal health care will be laughed out of politics...be ridiculed...America is the ONLY developed country without universal health care...but all the politicians have excellent health care...and dental care...

Be alert...remain vigilant...read alternative news...start here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Loose Change

To view Loose Change, either click on the three-dot link by the title of this post or click on the link below. Then decide for yourself. The video is unnerving, especially to those of us familiar with the two majestic structures that graced the New York skyline:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=
7866929448192753501&q=loose+change+recut

Revisiting 9/11...Again
from TVNL--November 15, 2006

The information in Loose Change appears plausible while the formal 9/11 Commission Report leaves so many questions unanswered. By merely focusing on the crash site of Flight 93, it is unbelievable that no physical evidence survived...this while we have witnessed unprecedented developments in forensics. Today, scientists examine dental records, skin, blood, etc., for clues from all kinds of wreckage. Why then are there no measurable traces of Flight 93? It is as preposterous a tale as one spun from a Roswell, NM, alien site.

Multiple discoveries related to the events of 9/11 (the seven accused hijackers who surfaced alive!), and the smoking guns, all deserve criminal investigation of George Bush and/or his administration. Just don’t depend on US corporate media to do the investigating; they are still out to lunch.

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CONTACT YOUR SENATORS & REPRESENTATIVES:
DEMAND THE RETURN OF HABEAS CORPUS!

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Torture: It's as American as Apple Pie

The most recent smoking gun came in the form of two documents that indicate George W. Bush personally approved transporting prisoners, none of whom were tried in a court and most of whom were never charged with a crime at all. The sole purpose was to torture them. These memos are scathing. The United States, under this administration, violated international and domestic human rights laws. These are just more examples of how Bush stood in front of this nation and lied over and over again. These are serious issues and should be investigated with as much vigor as the blue dress.

We are witnessing another example of a coordinated effort to control information by our media. This news is obviously of national import but continues to be ignored by corporate media. Is this a coordinated effort? Is there no managing editor who is a real journalist? One who will put this country first? A journalist with enough courage to print the discovery of these memos as a front page or lead story? A journalist brave enough not to bury important news in the middle pages of our newspapers or subjugate them to crawler status?

Wake up, America...before it’s too late!

Sometimes I feel I’m being too hard on this evil administration and the puppet president. Then I’m snapped back to reality after finding another bit of evilness. Seems this nightmare won’t end til the entire cabal is eradicated from our government. Looks like we won’t have to worry about
eradicating them from our country. They are making their own plans.

Ever Hear of a No-Knock Warrant?

Village Voice

New Yorkers Tell Their Tales of Botched Raids
by Rivka Gewirtz Little
June 18th, 2003 1:00 PM

A thundering boom in her Brooklyn apartment exploded into Jeanine Jean's sleep. Shrieking, she grabbed her crying six-year-old son and the phone, and leapt into the closet. Somehow smoke was filling her home. She frantically dialed 911. But that was futile, because it was the NYPD who had by then broken down her front door, and tossed a stun grenade into the apartment in a botched search for guns and a man nicknamed "Danger." They found neither.

It was 1998, long before Harlem resident Alberta Spruill, 57, suffered a fatal heart attack when police lobbed a stun grenade into her home this May 16. In Spruill's case, officers were seeking drugs and a man who lived elsewhere, who they later realized had already been arrested. Except for the cardiac arrest, the two incidents seem incredibly parallel. Yet they are identical to scores of similar stories emerging over the last two weeks from individuals in communities of color who have fallen prey to faulty and excessive police raids.

Two weeks ago, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields established a hot line beckoning victims of faulty no-knock raids. "While I have heard of these situations, the reality is people in decision-making roles—the mayor, the police commissioner—don't get this," she told the Voice. "They don't hear it, they don't get it, and they don't believe it." In fact, the mayor and police commissioner apologized for Spruill's death and claimed responsibility. Still, the barely advertised hot line received 110 responses in the first week. Resembling the backlash before the stop-and-frisk shake-ups of the '90s, these complaints indicate, at least anecdotally, that communities of color are experiencing harsh treatment from the police, this time behind their own doors.

It also appears that the NYPD, the city's five district attorney's offices, and criminal judges may not be doing enough to prevent these botched raids. Until Spruill's death, the NYPD had done nothing to stem the number of incidents, despite receiving a memo from the Citizen's Complaint Review Board (CCRB) in January noting the high number of raid complaints. Last March, the NAACP also approached NYPD commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the raids.

Assistant district attorneys and judges are the check-and-balance system for the police. And it is questionable whether ADA's and judges—responsible for reviewing police evidence before approving warrants for these "no-knock" raids—are being sufficiently critical of each request. Civil liberties advocates are demanding to know if they are settling on the word of shifty confidential informants (CIs) without seeking enough corroborating evidence from presenting officers. Last week a judge refused to unseal the affidavit with evidence supporting the Spruill warrant, said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration (OCA). That affidavit could show whether there was adequate evidence beyond the CI testimony. Race, many believe, is also suspected to be a factor in the warrant process. "You know they are not going to do this in Trump Plaza," said attorney Richard Montelione, who represents Jean in a case against the city.

Presenting numbers backed up by incomplete data, Kelly testified before a City Council hearing this month that about 13,000 warrants were issued between January 2001 and May 2003, the vast majority being no-knock. He estimated approximately 10 percent—or about 1,300—yielded no evidence or arrests. Council member Peter Vallone Jr., the chair of the public safety committee, who sees the need for some policy reform, said many of the 1,300 might be cases of removed evidence and that the numbers could be worse.

Looking to deflate claims that no-knock raids occur more often in communities of color, Kelly explained at the hearing that warrants are issued in neighborhoods in which crime statistics are the highest. Also at the meeting, Mary Bardy, a white woman from Queens, was invited to testify as to how she and her family were held to the floor with guns to their heads.

Just 24 hours after the City Council meeting, Fields held an independent hearing that told a more complex story. Dozens of black and Latino victims—nurses, secretaries, and former officers—packed her chambers airing tales, one more horrifying than the next. Most were unable to hold back tears as they described police ransacking their homes, handcuffing children and grandparents, putting guns to their heads, and being verbally (and often physically) abusive. In many cases, victims had received no follow-up from the NYPD, even to fix busted doors or other physical damage.

Some complainants reported that they had filed grievances with the CCRB and were told there was no police misconduct. Unless there is proven abuse, the CCRB disregards complaints about warrants that hold a correct address but are faulty because of bad evidence from a CI. A June 9 Newsday article alleged that many former CCRB members now say the committee recognized the problem with warrants months before they reported it to the commissioner. Many also noted the policy of turning away complaints about raids with the right address.

Fields is seeking more in the way of policy change than Kelly or Mayor Michael Bloomberg are offering. She praised the mayor for quickly taking responsibility for Spruill's death even before the chief medical examiner's office called it a homicide. She also said that Kelly's prompt reassignment of commanding officers in that precinct was a good start. But Fields fears other policy changes, including a database that will track all warrants, tougher oversight of warrants issued, and a stiffer evidence requirement, won't be closely monitored. And the changes don't address how police behave in raid situations. "What guarantees that even if new procedures are followed, there is going to be a sense of humanity and sensitivity in how you respond to innocent victims?" she asked. In an alarming percentage of stories, victims complained of police laughing at them while they were face down with guns to their heads—and some described nasty debasements, including one officer allegedly urinating in a pitcher of iced tea in a victim's refrigerator.

More specifically, Fields wants to see stricter requirements for confidential informants. And she said there may need to be a select group of judges—10 or 20—who are allowed to issue warrants and will be held specifically accountable. That would eliminate police from seeking "any judge they can get up off the bench or out of bed," she said. In the Jean case, it was a Queens judge who approved the Brooklyn raid. Finally, Fields sees a severe "lack of coordination" among police, D.A.'s offices, and the judges—apparent in the Spruill warrant, which was issued after the arrest had already been made.

Civil liberties advocates are looking for all three tiers of the criminal-justice system to truly observe the so-called Aguilar-Spinelli test. Most cities base their warrant procedure on the case law that requires police to prove the CI's truthfulness in asserting, for instance, that there is existing danger in an apartment. The affidavit in Jean's case includes only CI testimony, without other police evidence. Montelione's later deposition of an officer involved in the raid has not brought forth any more evidence, tying the case up in court for years. In a recently reported case of a botched raid in the Bronx, police burst into an apartment, apprehending a young mother and father who were bathing their infant. They later learned the CI had been referring to an apartment one floor up. "If police had talked to the managing agent in the building, they would have known the right apartment. Everybody in the building knew who they were," said Francis Alberts, a former Bronx ADA, who is now handling the case against the city on the Bronx case.

For the moment, it will be hard to spur politicians into action without real data proving exactly how many people have been victimized. Donna Lieberman, head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, has requested data from the OCA, including how many no-knock warrants are requested, granted, and denied. Court administration spokesman David Bookstaver said he has been "swamped" by the same request, but the office doesn't track the information—hence the importance of Kelly's proposed database. Still Norman Siegel, former head of the NYCLU, who is representing a raid case that will be filed in federal court, is requesting statistics for warrants dating back 10 years. Lieberman is also requesting that the CCRB release all no-knock complaints.

In the meantime, victims are becoming increasingly agitated. One raid victim, Orlando Russell, said he "used to be an upstanding citizen," but now "any cop walking in without an invitation better have a body bag."

Voice of a Fellow American

by Stephen Heller

Diebold cannot be trusted to run elections in America. They have shown they can’t be trusted. Americans must NEVER again allow a private corporation to run their elections in secret, using secret machines and secret software. The only thing that should be secret about our elections is the ballot.

Americans must insist Congress enact Federal legislation requiring that all voting machines have a voter verifiable paper ballot, be run on open source software code, be subject to inspection by independent computer experts, and that each election have a random sample ballot recount. America must stop behaving like a banana republic. Only then will we have a chance of restoring true integrity to American elections.

Meet Alice Walker

Writer (1944- )

Recognized as one of the leading voices among black American women writers, Alice Walker has produced an acclaimed and varied body of work, including poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and criticism. Her writings portray the struggle of black people throughout history and are praised for their insightful and riveting portraits of black life, in particular, the experiences of black women in a sexist and racist society. Her most famous work, the award-winning and best-selling novel The Color Purple, chronicles the life of a poor and abused southern black woman who eventually triumphs over oppression through affirming female relationships. Walker has described herself as a womanist--her term for a black feminist--which she defines in the introduction to her book of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, as one who appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility, women's strength...and one who is committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Read Ms. Walker’s entire biography; it is quite interesting.

Veto Definitions

Veto (V)--Power vested in the Executive to prevent permanently or temporarily the enactment of measures passed by a legislature.

Pocket-Veto (PV)--An indirect veto of a legislative bill by the Executive through retention of the bill unsigned until after adjournment of the legislature.

Line Item Veto (IV)--In government, the line-item veto is the power of an executive to nullify or "cancel" specific provisions of a bill, usually budget appropriations, without vetoing the entire legislative package. The line-item vetoes are usually subject to the possibility of legislative override as are traditional vetoes.

Veto Override (VO)--Congressional enactment of a measure over the executive's veto. A veto override requires a recorded two-thirds vote of those voting in each house.

Amendatory Veto (AV)--An act making appropriations for a fiscal year for maintenance of the Departments, Boards, Commissions, and Institutions.

Reduction Veto (RV)--Double-Tongued Dictionary: A growing lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, new words, and more.

Conditional Veto--Discouraging major companies from doing business, thereby eliminating the creation of new jobs, facilities and all the associated economic benefits.

Style and Form Veto (SF)--An act to revise the definition of the periods of service.

Are Pharmaceuticals Getting Too Powerful? You Be The Judge.

Universities once opposed patents for any academic research. Yale University's 1948 policy on patents stated, "It is, in general, undesirable and contrary to the best interests of medicine and the public to patent any discovery or invention applicable in the fields of public health or medicine." That policy was later abandoned and Yale now holds a key anti-AIDS drug patent jointly with Bristol Myers. Facing massive global protest, Yale last year agreed to relax its patent rules, but the fact that universities routinely now balance who will live and die against their own profit motive is a degradation of their public purpose.

This corruption of academic science is pervasive and the costs are extremely clear, but what is remarkable is how easy it would be to end. Federal and state governments still supply the overwhelming percentage of university research funding. If all such funding was conditioned on ending non-disclosure agreements and on barring the licensing of government-funded results to private industry, the public would benefit both scientifically and financially. We've paid for the knowledge once. We shouldn't have to do so again in increased costs of medicine and increased deaths due to suppressed knowledge.

Terrorist? Insurgent? Freedom Fighter? Liberty? Puppet Government? Free Market?

Intriguing words, all. They are being used freely today. Not by our media. Remember, they’re still out to lunch. So who exactly talks about how these words affect every American?

What is a terrorist? Who is implementing the terror and on whom?

Or a Freedom Fighter?

Or a puppet government and how puppet governments affect this country?

What are free market principles? Are they, in fact, advantageous to multi-corporations because of the lack of rules or regulations in a free market model? Are the American people at a disadvantage?

Framing an Issue

By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter October 27, 2003

BERKELEY -- When the Republicans controlled the Senate, the House, and the White House as well as enjoyed a large margin of victory for California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was clear that the Democratic Party had to learn a few things. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why. Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them.

In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the few progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S. The institute offers its expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help progressives understand how best to get their messages across. As a recipient of the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters & Science, Lakoff is the author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, first published in 1997 and reissued in 2002. He is taking a sabbatical this year to work on several Rockridge Institute research projects.

In a long conversation over coffee at the Free Speech Movement Café, he told the NewsCenter's Bonnie Azab Powell why the Democrats just don't get it, why Schwarzenegger won the recall election, and why conservatives will continue to define the issues up for debate for the foreseeable future.

Why was the Rockridge Institute created,
and how do you define its purpose?

I got tired of cursing the newspaper every morning. I got tired of seeing what was going wrong and not being able to do anything about it.

The background for Rockridge is that conservatives, especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their world view and getting it out there. Progressives have done virtually nothing; even now at the new Center for American Progress, the think tank that John Podesta (former chief of staff for the Clinton administration) is setting up.

Rockridge's job is to reframe public debate, to create balance from a progressive perspective. It's one thing to analyze language and thought, it's another thing to create it. That's what we're about. It's a matter of asking 'What are the central ideas of progressive thought from a moral perspective?'

How does language influence the terms of political debate?

Language always comes with what is called framing. Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like revolt, it implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.

According to Lakeoff, conservatives understand what unites them, and they understand how to talk about it. They are constantly updating their research on how best to express ideas.

If you add the word voter in front of revolt, you get a metaphorical meaning that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like voter revolt--it is something that most people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by reporters and very often, by the campaign people themselves.

Here's another example of how powerful framing is. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's acceptance speech, he said, When the people win, politics as usual loses. What's that about? Well, he knows that he's going to face a Democratic legislature, so what he has done is frame himself and also Republican politicians as the people, while framing Democratic politicians as politics as usual-- in advance. The Democratic legislators won't know what hit them. They're automatically framed as enemies of the people.

Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?

Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and the Manhattan Institute after that. There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

Why haven't progressives done the same thing?

There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do. And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the strict father system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the nurturing parent has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause; don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development. So there's actually a structural reason built into the world views that explains why conservatives have done better.

Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the strict father and nurturing parent frameworks.

Well, the progressive world view is modeled on a nurturing parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence and fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative world view, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline--physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self_reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society
that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure
that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. –George Lakoff

So, project this onto the nation and you see that, to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones–those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant--and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, spoil people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.

From that framework, I can see why Schwarzenegger appealed to conservatives.

Exactly. In the strict father model, the big thing is discipline and moral authority, and punishment for those who do something wrong. That comes out very clearly in the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policy. With Schwarzenegger, it's in his movies: most of the characters that he plays exemplify that moral system. He didn't have to say a word! He just had to stand up there, and he represents Mr. Discipline. He knows what's right and wrong, and he's going to take it to the people. He's not going to ask permission or have a discussion; he's going to do what needs to be done, using force and authority. His very persona represents what conservatives are about.

You've written a lot about tax relief as a frame. How does it work?

The phrase tax relief began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for relief. For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add tax to relief and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

Tax relief has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

So what should they be calling it?

It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same it. There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists--vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues--you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.

So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.

It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country--the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.

What are some other examples of issues that progressives should try to reframe?

There are too many examples, that's the problem. The so-called energy crisis in California should have been called Grand Theft. It was theft; it was the result of deregulation by Pete Wilson, and Davis should have said so from the beginning.

Or take gay marriage, which the right has made a rallying topic. Surveys have been done that say Americans are overwhelmingly against gay marriage. Well, the same surveys show that they also overwhelmingly object to discrimination against gays. These seem to be opposite facts, but they're not. Marriage is about sex. When you say gay marriage, it becomes about gay sex, and approving of gay marriage becomes implicitly about approving of gay sex. And while a lot of Americans don't approve of gay sex, that doesn't mean they want to discriminate against gay people. Perfectly rational position. Framed in that way, the issue of gay marriage will get a lot of negative reaction. But what if you make the issue freedom to marry, or even better, the right to marry? That's a whole different story. Very few people would say they did not support the right to marry who you choose. But the polls don't ask that question, because the right wing has framed that issue.

Do any of the Democratic Presidential candidates grasp the importance of framing?

None. They don't get it at all. But they're in a funny position. The framing changes that have to be made are long-term changes. The conservatives understood this in 1973. By 1980, they had a candidate, Ronald Reagan, who could take all this stuff and run with it. The progressives don't have a candidate now who understands these things and can talk about them. And in order for a candidate to be able to talk about them, the ideas have to be out there. You have to be able to reference them in a sound bite. Other people have to put these ideas into the public domain, not politicians. The question is, 'How do you get these ideas out there?' There are all kinds of ways, and one of the things the Rockridge Institute is looking at is talking to advocacy groups, which could do this very well. They have more of a budget, they're spread all over the place, and they have access to the media.

Right now the Democratic Party is into marketing. They pick a number of issues like prescription drugs and Social Security and ask which ones sell best across the spectrum, and they run on those issues. They have no moral perspective, no general values, no identity. People vote their identity; they don't just vote on the issues, and Democrats don't understand that. Look at Schwarzenegger, who says nothing about the issues. The Democrats ask, How could anyone vote for this guy? They do because he puts forth an identity. Voters know who he is.

The Draft: No Solution to Social Inequality

By Steve Gilliard, AlterNet
Posted November 22, 2006.

Progressives are drawn to Charlie Rangel's call for a draft, but a draft only inducts people. Class determines what job they will be assigned once they are in the military and, often, how happy they will be.

As recently as August, word that the Marines were calling up their last line of reservists had reignited draft chatter for the first time since Rangel's previous draft push during the run up to the 2004 elections. "This move should serve as a wake-up call to America," said Jon Stoltz, former Army captain in Iraq and head of VoteVets.org, who called it proof that our military is overextended and one of the last steps before resorting to a draft.

There's a temptation among progressives and liberals to view the draft as a potentially positive force, both in bringing about an end to the war and in leveling the playing field in terms of whose children actually have to fight. Unfortunately, to the extent that it ever was true, this simply isn't the case anymore. The draft will only pull more unfortunate men and women from the ranks of the under-privileged and under-represented.

Man set himself on fire to protest Iraq war

A letter, a will, and a friend left coping with suicide
By BILL GLAUBER
bglauber@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 13, 2006

Bruno Johnson spreads the two-page note on the bar at his Palm Tavern in Bay View and stares at the worn paper, folded and refolded countless times, passed from hand to hand, friend to friend.

Bruno Johnson of Milwaukee holds a letter from his friend Malachi Ritscher of Chicago, which Johnson received a few days after Ritscher committed suicide Nov. 3. Ritscher set himself on fire to protest the Iraq war and sent the detailed letter to Johnson to help put his affairs in order.

Photo/Joeff Davis/www.joeff.com

Malachi Ritscher (center) holds a war protest sign during a 2003 demonstration in downtown Chicago. He posted a suicide note and self-written obituary online.

Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today.

- Malachi Ritscher,
in his online suicide note

Johnson stares at the words, instructions about bank accounts, credit cards, computer passwords, next of kin, a giant collection of jazz recordings and a neon-purple 1997 Plymouth with 107,000 miles parked north of Grand Ave. in Chicago. And that final chilling sentence, the one that still gets to Johnson: "sorry about the mental-illness thing, it's not something I would have chosen for myself."

"I had a sense it was probably explaining his death to me," Johnson says now, in the middle of the afternoon, his soft, melancholy voice matching the soft autumn light.

On Nov. 3, Johnson's friend, Malachi Ritscher, 52, of Chicago died of self-immolation near an exit ramp off the Kennedy Expressway in downtown Chicago.

Ritscher, according to a suicide note posted on a Web site, was protesting the war in Iraq.

But nobody heard.

Initially, the event was treated like an auto accident, which backed up rush-hour traffic, grist for live television coverage.

"As horrified Friday-morning commuters watched, a man apparently doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire along the Kennedy Expressway near a 25-foot-tall Loop sculpture titled 'Flame of the Millennium,' " the Chicago Sun Times reported the next day. Police told the newspaper that a "homemade sign was found near his charred body that read, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.' "

Only after Johnson received the note on Nov. 6, along with a set of house keys and a will, were friends and authorities able to put the pieces together, to match Ritscher with the unfathomable event.

The gesture wasn't just futile, or even drained of all meaning. For days, it simply did not register.

Finally, the Chicago Reader, an alternative newspaper, picked up the story, pointed to the suicide note, tried to make sense of what occurred.

But none of it makes sense to Johnson.

He is a big man, 6-foot-9, built like a tight end, with tattoos on his arms. But he is gentle, too. He doesn't understand what happened or why.

"I can't speak for him," Johnson says. "In a jealous sense, I feel cheated. I miss a friend."

They met 20 years ago, at some music venue in Chicago, Johnson recalls, brought together by a shared passion for punk music and jazz.

Ritscher, a maintenance engineer at the University of Chicago, became something of a fixture on the Chicago jazz scene. For years, he set up microphones and recorded gigs in smoky bars, Johnson says. If bands wanted the master, Ritscher gave it to them at no charge.

Johnson, who runs a small record label named Okka Disk, distributed some of the works.

Ritscher, who changed his first name from Mark to Malachi in 1981, lived a life filled with highs and lows, according to his self-written obituary, titled "out of time." A marriage ended in divorce. He was estranged from his son. He battled alcoholism but was sober for 16 years.

He explained his opposition to the war in a rambling "mission statement" in which he implored the reader to "judge me by my actions."

"When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed," he wrote.

Disturbingly, he claimed that one morning in 2002, with a knife "clenched in my hand," he passed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on a Chicago street and "was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He didn't act.

He concluded, "Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today."

Johnson says the act "was futile."

But he wants to remember his friend. So do others.

Sunday night, at a music studio above a Chinese restaurant on the north side of Chicago, dozens of Ritscher's friends and family gathered. They ate cinnamon buns from Ritscher's favorite bakery. They looked at photos of Ritscher tacked to a wall, dark-rimmed glasses, dark eyes and a poker face. His parents, both in their 80s, appeared shellshocked, shuffling across the carpeted floor, greeting Ritscher's friends.

Some jazz was played. Memories were shared.

Johnson holds tight to those memories. He also has access to the recordings Ritscher made of jazz concerts in Chicago, some 3,000 of them over the years. Eventually, a committee will be formed, the collection culled, the best works turned into CDs in Ritscher's memory.

And Johnson has the note, folded so many times and handed to so many friends, instructions about books and tapes, the house with a mortgage, and the hot sauce in the refrigerator.

And there's not a word about the war.