Today, the airport. Tomorrow, the Rotunda.

Now, commission a statue of Ali to stand in the Capitol in Frankfort in place of the Traitor in Defense of Tyranny now despoiling the Rotunda.

From the Courier:

Muhammad Ali once said his "greatness came and started in Louisville."

Now his name will be among the first things visitors and travelers see when they fly into his beloved hometown. 

City officials announced Wednesday that Louisville International Airport will be renamed after the boxer and humanitarian often called "the Greatest."

The new name: Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.

"Muhammad Ali belonged to the world, but he only had one hometown, and fortunately, that is our great city of Louisville," Mayor Greg Fischer said.

"Muhammad became one of the most well-known people to ever walk the Earth and has left a legacy of humanitarianism and athleticism that has inspired billions of people.

"It is important that we, as a city, further champion The Champ's legacy," Fischer continued. "And the airport renaming is a wonderful next step."

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

Read this piece on Wednesday's rally to demand Gov. "I Don't Know What History Means" Bevin remove the statue of Traitor in Defense of Slavery Jefferson Davis from the Capitol Rotunda.

If you had been there, you might have noticed something unusual about the Rotunda statues, meant to honor the great men of the Commonwealth.

Here is bigger-than-life Abraham Lincoln, in the exact center of the Rotunda.

His left boot toe is shiny because 7 million schoolkids a year visit the Rotunda and just have to rub it.

Yes, of course I did.

There's a sign asking people not to do that. It doesn't work.








Here is Senator Henry Clay:

Here is Senator and Vice-President Alben Barkley:

Here is Dr. Ephraim McDowell, who performed the first successful abdominal surgery in 1809.

 

All of them are cast in bronze, all of them dark brown from time and lack of rubbing.

Then there's this one, in the fourth corner. 

That blinding white motherfucker went up in 1936, 71 years after the Traitor in Defense of Slavery - who might have been born in Kentucky but who grew up and lived the rest of his life in Mississippi - surrendered.

He doesn't belong in the People's House, for more than aesthetic reasons.

But you don't want to hang from a rope until he's gone.






Who do I want in his place?  This guy:

And Replace It With One of Muhammad Ali

There was a rally in Lexington last night at which Mayor Jim Gray was applauded for his decision to remove from downtown the statues of two Traitors in Defense of Slavery.  Meanwhile:

From the Herald:

The Kentucky chapter of the NAACP will renew its effort to remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the state Capitol Rotunda in the aftermath of deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., the group’s leader said Monday.

“It’s important for all to realize how offensive these statues can be, especially to the African-American community,” said Raoul Cunningham, who also heads the Louisville chapter of the NAACP. “We are working on a meeting in a few weeks of like-minded individuals to plot a course to take the Davis statue out of the seat of state government and put it somewhere more suitable, like the Kentucky History Museum.”

He said the state chapter has between 8,000 to 10,000 members and that he will encourage local chapters around the state to seek the removal of Confederate statues and symbols from prominent positions in their communities.

“Charlottesville has focused attention again on this situation,” said Cunningham, referring to a white supremacist rally in that city Saturday that left three dead and 35 injured.

The state NAACP was unsuccessful two years ago in trying to get the Davis statue out of the Capitol Rotunda. The state Historic Properties Advisory Commission voted 7-2 to keep it there.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article167101122.html#storylink=cpy

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

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

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

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

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