No, Seriously, Don't Fuck With Rev. Barber

He brought down another repug governor who thought he could defy the people without consequence.  Bevin should surrender now before it gets worse.

Just to be clear, no previous Kentucky Governor has ever barred Kentuckians and their out-of-state guests from the Capitol.  That's because no previous Kentucky Governor, even the worst ones, threw temper tantrums of unconstitutional arrogance when anyone dared to disagree with them.

From the Herald:

A national leader of the Poor People's Campaign told a group of anti-poverty protesters Wednesday that Kentucky's policy of limiting the group's access to the state Capitol must be challenged in court.

The Rev. William J. Barber, national co-chairman of the campaign, spoke outside the Capitol during his second trip to Frankfort this month to meet with protesters. He said a Kentucky State Police policy of allowing only two members of the group into the statehouse at a time is "an old tactic from civil rights days" and courts in his home state of North Carolina have ruled its Capitol Rotunda is a public place for protesters.

"We believe the same thing will happen here when it is tested under the law," said Barber. "If you let this stand, what is next?"

Pam McMichael, team coordinator for the Kentucky campaign, said the group is exploring "the appropriate legal steps to vindicate our group's right and those of all Kentuckians."

State police recently implemented the two-at-a-time policy when several members of the Poor People's Campaign blocked traffic near the Capitol and entered restricted property around the Governor's Mansion, according to State Police Commissioner Richard W. Sanders. He said the policy would not apply to demonstrators who follow all laws and regulations.

Those regulations include obtaining a state permit to assemble inside the Capitol.

Barber said the Kentucky Constitution says nothing about needing a permit to gather inside the Capitol. He said that policy was "a smokescreen" that Gov. Matt Bevin's administration "has fed to the media."

Radicals Together

Monday is a Day ON.  You can participate in the March and Program at UK or MLK Week in Louisville.

Simon Balto at LGM:

This April 4 will mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, which means that in 2018 we will probably see even more frequent mendacious arguments from conservatives about King and what he’d think of modern America than we do in any other given year.

In his award-winning book Blood Done Sign My Name, historian Tim Tyson writes that, “In the years since his murder, we have transformed King into a kind of innocuous black Santa Claus, genial and vacant, a benign vessel that can be filled with whatever generic good wishes the occasion dictates. Politicians who oppose everything King worked for now jostle their way onto podiums to honor his memory. Many of them quote Dr. King out of context as they denounce ‘affirmative action,’ despite the fact that King repeatedly, publicly, and passionately supported that principle….[O]ur memories about what actually happened in the civil rights era are so faulty that Dr. King’s enemies can safely use his words to thwart his goals.”

Tyson’s book came out years before Black Lives Matter, and the conservative lust to use King’s legacy in precisely the way that Tyson describes has only been amplified in recent years. O’Reilly does it. Huckabee too. Newspaper columnists, etc.

The idea that King would oppose this generation’s most prominent struggle for racial justice is absurd, of course, but I appreciate Ulriksen making the point explicitly that Kaep and Michael Bennett and the rest of those who kneel and march in service of justice today are firmly in keeping with King’s legacy. In his time, King was in many ways an American radical. He wasn’t murdered for being a moderate.

Via Political Animal:

 

Veterans Know Kaepernick Is Right

Let's keep our eye on the ball.  Colin Kaepernick and the few who accompanied him starting more than a year ago had a single purpose for kneeling during the national anthem - which is still the worst anthem on the planet, an unsingable paean to violence and imperialism and just a fucking song - and that purpose was and remains this:

Protesting the police murders of unarmed black men and women.

And the general racism and inequality that pervades American society.

Not protesting the flag, which is just a fucking flag.  Not protesting the Orange Menace, as much as it deserves vigorous, widespread protest.  Not showing solidarity - that's what your union is for.

Colin Kaepernick's kneeling is about protesting racism and police brutality against black people.

Even paying attention to anything else taking place on the football field is promoting the distraction from the real issue.  Let's keep our eyes on the prize.

Bill Barnwell at ESPN:

There just isn't a strong enough case for teams to pass on Kaepernick, given the desperate public outcries for useful quarterbacks and the nature of his protests. Even if you disagree with his stance, it's bizarre to contrast his peaceful political dissent as a crime that should keep him off rosters in a league in which even marginal players embroiled with confirmed or alleged incidences of domestic and/or sexual assault can sustain careers.

Watching so many NFL teams willfully make ignorant choices and then complain about the lack of quarterback options while leaving a clearly qualified candidate on the sidelines makes it seem like the quality of decision-making in the modern NFL is far worse than the quality of play.

And veterans, who literally fought for Kaepernick's right to protest, know what the issue is.

U.S. Army veteran Richard Allen Smith felt like he was walking with a rock in his shoe all day. In the aftermath of Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem, Smith heard a lot about how he had been disrespected by what the San Francisco 49ers quarterback had done and said from a lot of folks who never served in the armed forces.

Kaepernick has been sitting during the singing of The Star Spangled Banner the entire preseason, although it was only noticed last Friday when he was dressed to play. In an exclusive interview with NFL.com’s Steve Wyche, Kaepernick explained his protest: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.”

Smith said that people burning the quarterback’s jersey “with the troops and veterans being the reason seemed ridiculous.” Being used wasn’t a new feeling. Smith said politicians and corporations often use the military and its servicemen and women for promotion. That leaves some veterans, like Smith, feeling like props for people who haven’t made the sacrifice, but want to cloak themselves in their credibility.

By writing this letter, which was written on Medium, it was an opportunity for him and other vets to counter that rationale. Although the 31-year-old works as a media strategist with the National Education Association, the letter was thought of, created and crafted as something entirely outside of his job and among some of Smith’s friends and colleagues.

One of the most important things about the letter is the diversity of the people signing it and the reasons that they are putting their names on it.

“I wanted to put something out there in the world … to say that ‘There are veterans who not only agree with Colin Kaepernick’s right to do that, but also agree with the substance of the action,’ ” Smith said. “And are willing to stand up and say Black Lives Matter and this is an important issue that we need to address in our country.

“This is an incredibly diverse list of people. I didn’t know how many signatures I was going to get – if I’m going to get five or 10 signatures on this letter. … There’s diversity in service – every branch of the service is represented here – there are black people, white people, Latinos, a Native American person on here. Gay veterans, straight veterans, female veterans, male veterans from both coast to southeast, to southwest, the heartland, pretty much any sort of identity you can imagine, it’s signed onto this letter in the form of one person or more.”

---

In 1947, former Army officer Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Robinson experienced taunts, epithets, and threats of violence for simply standing up to the status quo of segregation in America.

Since 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick engaged in a silent protest to bring attention to the state of emergency facing people of color in America, a chorus of detractors have lined up to denounce his stand, or more accurately his sit. Fans have burned his jersey. A presidential candidate suggested he leave the country. Many have claimed his protest disrespected American veterans.

Jackie Robinson isn’t here today to tell us what he would think of Kaepernick’s protest. But he did convey the same sentiment about the national anthem as Kaepernick in his 1972 autobiography, writing, “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.”

As military veterans, we write to express our support for the tradition of advocacy by athletes that is embodied by Jackie Robinson and carried on by Colin Kaepernick.

For generations, American athletes have used their public voice to force our collective attention towards the crises and issues that challenge our national conscience. Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Ariyana Smith, the Minnesota Lynx, the Missouri Tigers football team, and stars across professional sports declaring that #BlackLivesMatter, are all part of a brave tradition of protest by athletes. Far from an anomaly, athletes leading on social change has been the norm in America.

The right for those athletes, and all Americans, to protest is one we all pledged to defend with our lives if necessary. Far from disrespecting our troops, there is no finer form of appreciation for our sacrifice than for Americans to enthusiastically exercise their freedom of speech.

While we would not all personally choose to protest in a manner identical to Kaepernick, we respect and honor his choice, and whole heartedly join him in stating unequivocally that BLACK LIVES MATTER. The current state of affairs for people of color in America is unsustainable and unacceptable. According to analysis by the Washington Post, black people in America are two and a half times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white Americans. Far too often, people of color are dying at the hands of law enforcement personnel in the streets, our jails, and their homes. Indictments are rare and convictions are essentially nonexistent.

This status quo outrages us as men and women who raised our right hands and pledged to defend, with our lives if necessary, a Constitution that proclaims intent to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty.” Those ideals are simply not being upheld for all Americans.

As veterans, we implore all Americans to find your own way to challenge this status quo and advocate for “a more perfect union.” Your method of protest may not be to refrain from the traditions surrounding our national symbols, and it doesn’t have to be. You have the same right as Colin Kaepernick to choose whether and how to advocate, a right we support and served for. However you choose to use your voice, please do so with an understanding that many veterans do not condemn the protest of activists like Jackie Robinson, Colin Kaepernick and everyday Americans seeking justice. Indeed, we see no higher form of patriotism.

When Free Speech Gets Patriotic

The First Amendment guarantee of free speech was designed to protect dissent.  Political speech that criticizes government is the most patriotic speech and thus deserving of the strongest protections.

Especially when that speech - "speech" of course including action, even if silent - offends members of the ruling class and their pet storm troopers

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

A remarkable coalition of athletes, activists, and academics has come together in solidarity with Michael Bennett against the slander being put forward to discredit him by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Las Vegas Police Protective Association. Their statement of support follows.

Statement of Solidarity With Michael Bennett

We, the undersigned, stand with Michael Bennett, a professional football player with the Seattle Seahawks, philanthropist and activist, following an incident of police brutality in Las Vegas. On the morning of August 27th, a reported shooting on the Vegas strip led to chaos. Michael Bennett ran for cover, as did hundreds of others. Instead of being assisted, video and photographic evidence shows that Las Vegas police targeted Bennett, put him on the ground in handcuffs while the primary officer took out a weapon and placed it near the back of his head. According to Bennett, the officer said that if Bennett moved, he would “blow [his] fucking head off.” Bennett was then put in a police car, and after a period of time let go without charges.

We condemn this act of racial profiling and excessive force perpetrated by the Vegas police against Mr. Bennett.

This story is awful enough. The response by the Las Vegas police union has been even worse. They have issued a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calling for Bennett to be investigated for “obvious false allegations against our officers.” Instead of refuting these allegations, the police union made reference to Bennett’s protests of the national anthem, writing, “While the NFL may condone Bennett’s disrespect for our American Flag, and everything it symbolizes, we hope the league will not ignore Bennett’s false accusations against our police officers.” They are, in effect, using Bennett’s political protest as a pretext to investigate him.

Since Bennett publicized his encounter with the LVMPD, a spokesperson for the police has confirmed that it is conducting an investigation of Bennett to determine “Whether Mr. Bennett was involved in the altercation at the hotel casino prior to his detention on Las Vegas Boulevard.” This is clearly an act of retaliation against Bennett for speaking out against police brutality. It is also a gesture of intimidation against anyone else who would dare challenge the right of the Las Vegas police department to act with impunity. This is unacceptable.

Michael Bennett has been sitting during the anthem precisely to raise these issues of racist injustice that are now an intimate part of his life. Now we stand with him.

This is a threatening escalation of the blackballing being perpetrated against Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and even of the deliberate breaking of Thabo Sefolosha's leg.  The next black athlete who dares to challenge the ruling power is going to get killed.

Thanks to the Mob

When your cowardly repug reps refuse to listen to you and a few hundred of your closest friends, remember this, via Wonkette:

You can ask Carl Sandburg:

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Dissent Being Outlawed

They've tried it before, many times, and failed.  But they never had an all-authoritarian government and judiciary to support them before.

Charlie Pierce:

For example, in North Dakota, they are considering a law that would decriminalize…wait for it…"accidentally" running over protesters. From KTLA:

Rep. Keith Kempenich introduced the bill, which states that if a driver "unintentionally" causes injury or death to someone blocking traffic on a roadway, then the driver will not be liable for damages. Kempenich said he was spurred to act after Dakota Access Pipeline protesters last year moved to block public roadways, scaring some of his constituents. "It turned from a protest to basically terrorism on the roadways, and the bill got introduced for people to be able to drive down the roads without fear of running into somebody and having to be liable for them," he told CNN.

What kind of a mind comes up with this? Presumably, if he'd been in Selma in 1965, Representative Kempenich would have run down those terrorists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge because they were keeping him from getting to the Piggly Wiggly. The problem is that there's a kind of fever for suppressing dissent out in the states that has been unleashed with the inauguration of an authoritarian president.

In Minnesota, a proposed law would increase the penalties for public protest on a highway, and another proposed law would force any protester convicted of illegal assembly or public nuisance to recoup the police expenses for monitoring the demonstration. In Indiana, they're pushing a similar bill, as The Indianapolis Star reports.

An Indiana lawmaker says disturbing newscasts of chaotic and sometimes violent protests across the U.S. helped lead him to propose a bill that would direct police to use "any means necessary" to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic.

Any means, Gracie? Boy, this must be a real problem.

When asked, Tomes could not cite specific instances where protesters prevented or delayed an emergency response.

But…but…scary newscasts!

But he said he's seen troubling scenes on the nightly news and thinks people are overcomplicating the issue. "People get off track and get off on sidebars on this. It's just to get the streets opened up for traffic flow, for emergency personnel, for commerce — that's all," said Tomes, who added that he thinks protesters should get a permit if they want to block-off a street. As written, the bill would give authorities 15 minutes to "dispatch all available law enforcement officers" after receiving a report of 10 or more people illegally blocking traffic "with directions to use any means necessary to clear the roads."

But leave it to the newly insane state of North Carolina to come up with a new law dedicated merely to the protection of delicate fee-fees. The News Observer tells the tale.

The proposed legislation would "make it a crime to threaten, intimidate, or retaliate against a present or former North Carolina official in the course of, or on account of, the performance of his or her duties," Bishop said. "Because lines are being crossed," Bishop, a Republican who represents the 39th District in the North Carolina Senate, wrote in an email from his Senate campaign account.

And who is brother Bishop? Glad you asked.

Bishop was one of the sponsors of House Bill 2, or "the bathroom bill" which McCrory signed into law. The bill was criticized for nullifying local non-discrimination ordinances statewide, directing transgender people to use restrooms and locker rooms matching the gender on their birth certificate in government-owned buildings and initially revoking the right to sue in state court for discrimination.

Which, it should be said, is the reason that people are so upset with McCrory in the first place. Nevertheless, Bishop is soldiering on.

Bishop said such behavior should come with a five-year prison sentence and said he'll introduce the legislation to make it so in North Carolina, similar to an ordinance in the District of Columbia. "So should it be in North Carolina," he wrote. "This is dangerous. Jim Hunt, Bev Purdue and other governors never faced riotous mobs in their post-service, private lives, without personal security." Bishop said he also will urge his fellow legislators "to take other appropriate steps to guarantee the personal safety of Gov. McCrory by all means necessary."

These are going to be hard days for public protest and, if things keep up the way they're going, there are going to be more and more public protests. I genuinely fear for the safety of the protesters at the Standing Rock camp. But, more than that, I'm afraid that too many people don't understand the purpose of public protest anymore. We're going to have to remember that there is no provision in the Constitution providing for freedom of convenience.

More from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Thus, someone's "right" to make money (enumerated in the Bill of Rights somewhere?) would be considered superior to another's exercising 1st Amendment rights, both according to state law and Ericksen's values. If the protesters carried guns, it would become a 2nd Amendment issue and a different matter altogether. Ericksen was Donald Trump's deputy campaign director in Washington.

Calling Your Reps Now Even Easier

It's working.  Bills to sell off public land, to gut the congressional ethics office and repeal Obamacare without a replacement.

So keep calling, even and especially your most wingnutty repugs.  They're getting rattled.

 

From PZ Myers:

Here’s one easy solution: use the 5 calls service right now. Go to that site, enter your zip code, and it lists a collection of progressive liberal causes that are under assault right now, lists the phone numbers of your representatives, and prompts you through a quick phone call to register your position. It’s simple.

Oh, yeah: Make a separate call on each issue.  Then do the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next.

The Resistance: Make Them Pay

Rude Pundit:

Still, we know that not only are Republicans cowards, but they're liars and hypocrites who would dance on the corpses of dead children rather than admit their ideology has failed. They'd rather learn to breathe sand than lift their heads and walk upright because they're gonna get to kick sick people off health insurance, discriminate against LGBT Americans, and force women into back alley abortions, the trifecta of quotidian cruelty they're begging to inflict.

So how do we get through to them? Because, see, we don't have two years to wait for the congressional midterms. Hell, all we need is one terrorist event in the United States, and Trump will declare martial law because he's too dumb and deranged to know any other way to handle it.

Two plans: the first is already happening. Inundate the offices and phone lines, especially of GOP representatives. Make their lives miserable with people registering how angry they are. The reps, even in gerrymandered districts, are more vulnerable than most senators. We gotta get people running against them. Put these assholes out on the curb. And make the rest beg for mercy.

And our activism has to target people who voted for Trump. Yeah, I know, I know, they're loathsome racists or racist-adjacent. But there are a hell of a lot of them who are regretting their votes - the wayward Bernie voters, the "take him seriously, but not literally" idiots, and the ones who realized that maybe getting into a war with Mexico is a little worse than Hillary's emails.

Mostly, it all depends on the constant action of Democrats and non-aligned progressives. Make sure Republicans know that they will be held to account for what they do, not just Democrats. This is on the GOP. Make them pay.

The Resistance: Protest is Dangerous and Likely to Get More So

John Lewis got his skull fractured 55 years ago and is still marching. If it were easy, it wouldn't work.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

It really is only a matter of time before a Trumpite murders a protestor. And probably also only a matter of slightly longer time before organized violence against protestors becomes normalized.

The victim of a politically charged shooting at a public speech by Milo Yiannopoulos in Seattle is calling for dialogue and “restorative justice” rather than criminal charges.

The victim, whose attorney asked that he not be identified by name, was shot in the stomach while protesting at a speech by the rightwing provocateur at the University of Washington on Friday night. He remains in the hospital and has undergone multiple surgeries, his attorney, Sarah Lippek, said on Tuesday.

The shooter was a Trump supporter who sent a Facebook message to Yiannopoulos asking for an autograph while waiting in line for the controversial event, according to the Seattle Times.

The shooter turned himself into University of Washington police on Friday night but was released “in consultation with the prosecuting attorney’s office” and “pending further investigation”, according to police.

UW police major Steve Rittereiser declined to provide an update on the investigation but said two suspects had “presented themselves to us at the police station”. The prosecutors’ office recommended that police release them, he said.

The investigation is ongoing, but Rittereiser said “there were no outstanding suspects in this case” and that the release of the suspects “did not pose any danger to the campus community”.

He just shot someone in the gut who he didn’t like because of his politics, but poses no danger. OK.

This Is What Fearless Patriotism Looks Like

Without Patriots like this, we'd still be a British colony.

Dissent and the Military

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

 If we accept the notion that we are allowed to raise our voices, or take a knee in dissent, only by the good graces of the military, then we are also implicitly saying that the military has the right to take that ability away. 

And that’s the thing about the right to dissent: You use it or lose it. 

So again, for the cheap seats: Colin Kaepernick is trying to raise awareness about police violence. If you believe he only has the right to do that because of the US military, you are arguing that dissent is possible only if the people with the guns approve.

Cops as Whiny-Ass Titty Babies

Construction, fishing and farming are more dangerous than law enforcement, but you don't hear those workers demanding they be protected from the horrible fate of being publicly criticized.

Think Progress:

On Saturday night, four off-duty Minneapolis police officers walked off their jobs working security at a WNBA Lynx game when the players wore T-shirts with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and held a press conference focusing on healing the divide between law enforcement and the black community.

The president of the Minneapolis Police Federation, Lt. Bob Kroll, praised the action of the officers. “I commend them for it,” he said, as reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The players decided to wear the shirts after having in-depth discussions at practice during a week that saw two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, murdered by police and five police officers killed in Dallas. Castile was killed in the Minneapolis suburb of Falcon Heights.

During warm-ups, the Lynx players all donned shirts with the message “Change Starts With Us — Justice and Accountability” on the front. The back of the shirt featured the names of Castile and Sterling, the phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” and, notably, the Dallas Police Department shield.

“In the wake of the tragedies that have continued to plague our society, we have decided it is important to take a stand and raise our voices,” co-captain Rebekkah Brunson told reporters in a pre-game news conference. “Racial profiling is a problem. Senseless violence is a problem. The divide is way too big between our community and those who have vowed to protect and serve us.”

PZ Myers responded that police who don't believe in justice and accountability should be fired: 

I have to ask, what offended them? Justice? Or accountability? Or possibly it was that the names of two dead black men were listed on the back. Please be specific, Minneapolis police. Perhaps you could suggest some edits that would make acknowledging injustice and a lack of accountability palatable to you.

Meanwhile, the national effort to swaddle law enforcement in cotton wool while criminalizing First Amendment protest speeds up and gets stupider:

 

In the wake of the killing of six officers in Dallas last Thursday, legislators across the country are considering bills to offer hate crime protections to cops. Two so-called “Blue Lives Matter” bills have already been announced since the mass shooting, modeled after the law passed in Louisiana this year. But instead of making police safer, the bills may have the consequence of criminalizing protesters and groups that are already targeted by law enforcement.

In May, Louisiana became the first state to expand its hate crime protections to include police and emergency personnel. To the disappointment of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and advocates of the First Amendment, the first-of-its-kind Blue Lives Matter law enhanced the penalties for people who attack or threaten cops in the state, effectively lumping a profession into the same category as fixed or perceived traits like race, gender, and religion. When it goes into effect in three weeks, it could be put to the test right away in Baton Rouge, where protesters have taken to the streets in response to the shooting of Alton Sterling.

On Sunday, people gathered in the streets were met with police in military gear and tanks. At least one officer was filmed pointing a gun at protesters. Officers also made at least 100 arrests during the mass demonstrations, locking up peaceful protesters including activist DeRay Mckesson.

It remains to be seen if the law will have its desired effect of making police safer, but Blue Lives Matter bills that treat police like vilified minorities may gain traction in other parts of the country, following the deadly attack on officers in Dallas. And that means the people demanding an end to police violence in places like Baton Rouge could have an ever bigger target on their backs for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The Radical Who Transformed Us

Governor Lying Coward did not have a single word to say about the death of one of the most consequential Kentuckians who ever lived.  Unfortunately, some "news" outlets are attributing to Bevin a statement from the extremely obscure Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission:

"The Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Commission extends its deepest sympathy to the family of Muhammad Ali. Ali was more than just the three-time heavyweight champion: he was the Greatest. We are so proud to call him a native son and will work hard to advance the sport he loved. Rest in peace, Champ."

Democratic Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer was not afraid to publicly mourn Ali, ordering flags lowered to half-staff throughout the city. But from conservatard repug Bevin we got no statement, no flag-lowering order, just crickets.

For the man whose radical patriotism changed the nation and the world.

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

Ali was attending a rally for fair housing in his hometown of Louisville when he said:

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Damn. This is not only an assertion of black power, but a statement of international solidarity: of oppressed people coming together in an act of global resistance. It was a statement that connected wars abroad with attacks on the black, brown and poor at home, and it was said from the most hyper exalted platform our society offered at the time: the platform of being the Champ. These views did not only earn him the hatred of the mainstream press and the right wing of this country. It also made him a target of liberals in the media as well as the mainstream civil rights movement, who did not like Ali for his membership in the Nation of Islam and opposition to what was President Lyndon Johnson’s war.

But for an emerging movement that was demanding an end to racism by any means necessary and a very young, emerging anti-war struggle, he was a transformative figure. In the mid-1960s, the anti-war and anti-racist movements were on parallel tracks. Then you had the heavyweight champ with one foot in each. Or as poet Sonia Sanchez put it with aching beauty, “It’s hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was still a time when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It was a war that was disproportionately killing young Black brothers and here was this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and saying no! Imagine it for a moment! The heavyweight champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of the ring and into the arena of politics and standing firm. The message was sent.” We are still attempting to hear the full message that Muhammad Ali was attempting to relay: a message about the need to fight for peace.

Full articles can and should be written about his complexities: his fallout with Malcolm X, his depoliticization in the 1970s, the ways that warmongers attempted to use him like a prop as he suffered in failing health. But the most important part of his legacy is that time in the 1960s when he refused to be afraid. As he said years later, “Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free.” Not the fight, the reverberations. They are still being felt by a new generation of people. They ensure that the Champ’s name will outlive us all.

Bill Russell said it best in 1967. “I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali. I’m worried about the rest of us.” That is more true than ever.

Shame on you, Governor Pants-Shitter. You aren't fit to shine Ali's shoes.  And don't you DARE attend the funeral.

NOW Can His Statue Replace Davis' in the Capitol Rotunda?

It will not mean as much as if we'd done it before he died, but honoring this champion of political dissent and black power in place of the champion of treason in defense of slavery will be the best thing Kentucky has done for its citizens and the nation since refusing to secede 155 years ago.

From the Herald:

In his 20s, when the United States was in a state of racial and political upheaval, when the country was riven by marches, riots and protests, Ali molded an era by breaking the mold of the black athlete. He was an outspoken advocate of black power and religious freedom.

Despised by many Americans in the mid-1960s for joining the radical Nation of Islam, refusing to be drafted into military service for the Vietnam War and challenging the white establishment ....

SNIP

In retirement, he dedicated himself to humanitarian causes, world peace, the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Phoenix and the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. The Muhammad Ali Childhood Home Museum – the renovated house where he grew up – opened last month.

SNIP

“Ali helped raise black people in this country out of mental slavery,” former Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson once said. “The entire experience of being black changed for millions of people because of Ali.”

He made controversial decisions and remained steadfast in his beliefs despite harsh criticism, racist threats and a three-and-a-half-year suspension from boxing during his prime after he was convicted of draft evasion. Ali argued that he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

“Where do you think I would be if I didn’t shout and holler? I would be poor and down in Louisville washing windows, shining shoes or running an elevator and saying, ‘Yes, suh’ and ‘No, suh,’ and knowing my place,” Ali said of his activism.“Why does the white man care if I hate him anyhow? He’s got everything going for him — White Swan soap, Tarzan is white, Jesus is white, White Owl cigars, the White Tornado, Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs, the White House. Angel food cake is all white, but Devil’s food cake is black!”

After Ali’s exile, he began to gain acceptance from Americans who had resented him. Times were changing. Ali had been ahead of those times in his commitment to the antiwar movement and the abolishment of Jim Crow laws.

SNIP

On Feb. 17, 1966, reporters came to Ali’s Allapattah house to tell him his low draft test score had been reclassified and that he was now eligible to be drafted for the Vietnam War.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” Ali said. He refused to be inducted, citing his religious beliefs. He was stripped of his title and banned from boxing.

“You want me to do what the white man says and go fight a war against some people I don’t know nothing about — get some freedom for some other people when my own people can’t get theirs here? No Vietnamese ever called me Nigger.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs.”
Ali was maligned by the media (they continued to call him Clay) as an impudent egomaniac, and now he was unpatriotic, too. He was criticized by his idol, Joe Louis, and by Floyd Patterson.

But Ali’s words resonated with the younger generation. They saw him not only as a fighter for titles but for peace and equal rights.

SNIP

In an interview years ago, Ali described how he’d like to be remembered:

“I’ll tell you how I’d like to be remembered: As a black man who won the heavyweight title and who was humorous and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him and who helped as many of his people as he could – financial and also in their fight for freedom, justice and equality. As a man who wouldn’t embarrass them. As a man who tried to unite his people through the faith of Islam that he found when he listened to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And if all that’s asking too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxing champion who became a preacher and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/nation-world/national/article81762277.html#storylink=cpy

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Fuck "Civility:" If It's Civil, It Ain't Dissent

This article by Joan W. Scott in The Nation focuses on the academic thought police, but it applies broadly to attempts in workplaces, social events and especially politics to silence dissent with demands for faux civility.

Civility and niceness are the weapons of passive aggression, which is itself the greatest obstacle to free discussion and fact-finding.

Reminding his constituents that 2014 was the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, he called for civility in terms that should surprise anyone who has studied the First Amendment or the long history of academic freedom: “We can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin—the coin of open, democratic society.” Dirks seems to have forgotten that the Free Speech Movement was not an event characterized by civility either in its expression or in its suppression.

SNIP

Most of these provosts also “believe that civility is a legitimate criterion in hiring and evaluating faculty members,” and most think that faculty incivility is directed primarily at administrators. The survey brought into the open what has perhaps long been an unarticulated requirement for promotion and tenure: a certain kind of deference to those in power.

SNIP

As the social theorist Nancy Fraser has argued, the dissident claims of minority groups go unheard in the public sphere when they are tagged as departures from the protocols of style and decorum—dismissed as evidence of irrationality and so placed outside the realm of what is taken to be reasoned deliberation. They are, by definition, uncivil, and thus beneath contempt. Once a certain space or style of argument is identified as civil, the implication is that dissenters from it are uncivilized. “Civility” becomes a synonym for orthodoxy; “incivility” designates unorthodox ideas or behavior.

SNIP

In all of these cases, it was the expression of what was taken to be a critical or radical opinion that led to the professor’s dismissal. “Civility”—or, as in the Koch and Davis cases, the notion of “academic responsibility” (the terms are equivalent)—became the watchword for unacceptable ideas as much as for indecorous behavior. “Incivility” pertained not so much to bad manners at the table as to verbal display, to speech—the free exercise of which is one of the fundamental rights of citizens in a democracy. In all of these cases, the boundary between style and substance was blurred. Whether the speech occurred inside the classroom or outside the walls of the university was irrelevant: What counted was its acceptability according to some prevailing norm. Citing John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, the AAUP investigating committee in the Koch case pointed out that “any serious application of the standard [of academic responsibility] would tend to eliminate or discourage any colorful or forceful utterance. More likely…the standard would be reserved as a sanction only for the expression of unorthodox opinion.”

SNIP

Indeed, critical commentators on civility in the 18th century noted that it consisted of an “outward show,” somehow inauthentic, masking the reality of one’s attitudes and being. Mirabeau noted in the 1760s that civility only presents “the mask of virtue and not its face.”

SNIP

And it is preferable to treat others with respect. But criticism—even angry criticism—is not necessarily a sign of disrespect. To point out that the meanings of words are not self-evident and that they can mask as much as they reveal is to respect language and thought. The real questions are: Who is calling for civility, and to what ends? What are the effects of policing classrooms and political forums in the name of civility? What has been the history of the invocation of that word?

Equally important is the need to insist on both the meaning of free speech as defined by the First Amendment and the conventional understandings of academic freedom. A letter to Wise from the leadership of the American Historical Association, protesting the justifications for her action in the Salaita case, pointed out that while civility might be a worthy ideal, it has nothing to do with the rights of free speech. The democratic public sphere, the AHA leaders argued, must rest “on the recognition that speech on matters of public concern is often emotional and that it employs a variety of idioms and styles. Hence American law protects not only polite discourse but also vulgarity, not only sweet rationality, but also impassioned denunciation.”

Civility, in other words, is beside the point!

Fascism in Defense of Jingoism

It's demoralizing to see how public displays of worship toward national symbols have displaced public service and loyal dissent as proof of patriotism.

People who truly hated this country, who truly want to see its democratic government torn down and replaced by plutocratic and Dominionist rule would protect themselves with the most blatant demonstrations of symbol-worship.

Those are the dangerous ones.

Digby:

Here's some of that tolerance on display:

"I attempted to get up to use the restroom, rather urgently, during the 7th inning stretch as God Bless America was beginning. As I attempted to walk down the aisle and exit my section into the tunnel, I was stopped by a police officer. He informed me that I had to wait until the song was over. I responded that I had to use the restroom and that I did not care about God Bless America.

"As soon as the latter came out of my mouth, my right arm was twisted violently behind my back and I was informed that I was being escorted out of the stadium. A second officer then joined in and twisted my left arm, also in an excessively forceful manner, behind my back. I informed them they were violating my First Amendment rights and that I had done nothing wrong, with no response from them.

"I was sitting in the Tier Level, and of course this is the highest level of the stadium and I was escorted in this painful manner down the entire length of the stadium. About halfway down, I informed them that they were hurting me, repeated that I had done nothing wrong, and that I was not resisting nor talking back to them. One of them said something to the effect that if I continued to speak, he would find a way to hurt me more.

"When we reached the exit of the stadium, they confiscated my ticket and the first officer shoved me through the turnstiles, saying 'Get the hell out of my country if you don't like it.'

I think we all know what happened to those Dixie Chicks when they dared say they were ashamed of the president.

So really, all this whining about liberal intolerance and Stalinist authoritarianism because a couple of cretinous bigots want to be able to refuse to serve gays is just a teensy bit over the top considering the furious reaction one gets for saying anything the right doesn't like about guns, God or the flag around these people.