The Men Who Fought

Down with Tyranny:

Still Treason in Defense of Slavery

These motherfuckers never quit.  That's why we need to shut them down at every opportunity.

Evan Hurst at Wonkette:

In the wee hours of Monday morning in New Orleans, workers wearing flak jackets and military-style helmets, with balaclavas over their faces to protect their identity, removed the first of four monuments to the Confederacy that the city council voted to get rid of in 2015. The military-grade armor, supplemented by snipers on nearby rooftops, was deemed a necessary precaution for the workers after death threats were made toward contractors. Just to be on the safe side, even the name of the company on the sides of the trucks hauling the monument away was covered up with cardboard, because some people really, really love the losing side in the U.S. Civil War — which, as you know, was only about tariffs and states’ rights.

The big ugly obelisk taken down Monday commemorated the “Battle of Liberty Place,” a failed 1874 coup by white supremacists during Reconstruction, and included this cheery inscription remembering — with lots of heritage but no hate at all — what a terrific time for white supremacy that was:

SNIP

Plenty of people in New Orleans are perfectly happy to see the Confederate monuments go; for a nice thinky-piece on the real historical significance of taking down these tributes to white supremacy, see this Times-Picayune op-ed arguing that the monuments themselves were a despicable revision of history in pretending the Civil War was a noble fight for freedom and self-determination — for a bunch of slaveholders. Says columnist Jarvis DeBerry,

Apparently, the crime of rewriting history is far worse than the crime of being a warmongering, secessionist white supremacist. The crime of rewriting history, to hear the monument-huggers tell it, is offensive in a way that slaveholding is not and treason is not and the decision to elevate and honor slave-holding traitors is not.

But the real revisionism, he says, was embodied by the monuments themselves, erected after Reconstruction to help advance the lie of the Noble Lost Cause, depicting the integrated city government as “usurpers” and lionizing the brave racist insurrectionists who tried to murder as many as possible.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

I know people will say, and not just neo-Confederates, that these are history and shouldn’t be torn down. But let’s be clear. New Orleans is a black city and was a black city in the 1890s. These monuments, among them some of the most imposing Confederate monuments erected, were placed there an overt symbol of post-Reconstruction white power. They were intended to intimidate African-Americans into submission. They are an insult to every African-American in New Orleans. We need to remember history, but we are not obligated to leave the public monuments of our racist ancestors there because of some vague appreciation of the past. These things are living, breathing symbols of white supremacy and they need to go. That this is happening in 2017 is all the more important.

Blantantly stolen from Juanita Jean:

Treason in Defense of Slavery Prevails in Mississippi

General Sherman had it right: put the South under martial law. Permanently.

Think Progress:

Mississippi’s state flag will include the Confederate battle emblem for the foreseeable future, after state lawmakers on Tuesday said they didn’t have enough support to remove the controversial symbol.

Here's an idea: the nation's first black president should make his last act in office cutting Mississippi off from every last dime of federal assistance, starting with its military installations, until it removes the Confederate battle flag from its state flag and all state property.

Treason Flag Down in KY; White Supremacy Still Reigns

State Fair will be fun this year, with the dead-enders parading around in their Treason Flag gear hoping to make white liberals cry and non-white Kentuckians start a fight.

Be interesting and educational if somebody made a Treason Flag census of the commercial booths to see how many vendors ignore the State Fair Board's "strong discouragement."  Count 'em on opening day, count 'em again on the last day, and keep a list to compare to next year, when they will be banned.

Linda B. Blackford at the Herald:

The Kentucky State Fair Board and Kentucky State Parks will stop selling Confederate flags in gift shops and at future events, officials said Thursday.

The fair board voted Thursday to "strongly discourage" the sale of Confederate flags at this year's State Fair and ban them at future events following a request the board received in June from the Louisville NAACP, fair board spokeswoman Amanda Storment said.

The ban will include the 2016 Kentucky State Fair, the National Farm Machinery Show and the North American International Livestock Exposition, all of which are owned and produced by the fair board.

In addition, future contracts for rental space at the Exposition Center will ban the sales.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/07/23/3957213/kentucky-state-parks-removing.html#storylink=cpy

But the real issue is what happens after the Treason Flag goes down. Because Kentucky still officially suppresses black voting by demanding ID, eliminating convenient voting locations and refusing to provide a single hour of early voting.  Kentucky schools and neighborhoods are still effectively segregated.  Police still target non-whites for "crimes" that are normal behavior when perpetrated by whites.  Black and Hispanics are still locked out of decent jobs.

 

Rev. Barber: 

The assassinations at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, followed by the public forgiveness from the grieving families, were similarly cited by several South Carolina lawmakers as their reason for voting to remove the flag. What they are really saying is that Black Deaths Matter, not our lives. Black people in the US are only deemed worthy of action in their death, not in their life. In a year that has seen thousands in the streets, young and old, black white and brown, saying to the nation, “Black Lives Matter”, the painful and dangerous message coming from South Carolina this week is: Black Deaths Matter.  That’s the painful and dangerous narrative being developed out of South Carolina; it’s a narrative that the oppressed of this land have known for a long time: Only Black Deaths Matter.  Our nation is capable of doing the right thing – such as taking down the Confederate flag in the year 2015, a flag that represents the racist, immoral, unconstitutional defense of slavery and Jim Crow – but only when Black deaths happen and are met by a response deemed acceptable by those in power. Ever since this flag was raised in 1961, to send the message that South Carolina would not honor equal protection under the law, tens of thousands of small and large protests have not been enough to move the power brokers to take it down.

SNIP

Taking down the flag is a good thing. But when we look at the voting and policy records of most of the political leaders who helped to lower it, we should be careful with equating its removal as a history-altering event.  Systemic racism is alive and well; they show no intention yet of dealing with the fundamental inequalities racism still causes in our society.

But the power of racism has a strange endurance.

SNIP

Let us be clear about what's being said: nine Black deaths may get the flag lowered, but it will not get you one pen to sign Medicaid expansion throughout the South, which would save thousands of Black lives. Black deaths will not get full voting rights, which saves Black political power and produces policies that save black, brown and poor white lives. It will not get criminal justice reform, which liberates Black lives. Nor will it get you full funding for public education, a living wage, or economic empowerment that will lift the lives of black people, minorities, and the poor. It will not get gun reform. Black deaths only get you the lowering of a low-down flag that should have never been up.  It will get you nine pens as memorabilia and a signing ceremony at the Capitol. It will get you one final insult in the promise that an undignified flag, a symbol of hate, will be lowered “with dignity and respect” as Governor Haley promised white people still committed to the Lost Cause.  And you will get this only if Black people die, and the victims’ families and extended family in the human race behave in a manner declared acceptable and ‘Christian’ by people who have supported un-Christian, immoral public policy that continues to institutionalize economic, racial and political inequality.

SNIP

The perpetrator has been caught.  But the killers are still at large.  The deep well of American racism and white supremacy that Dylann Roof drank from remains. The families of the nine martyrs challenged the schizophrenia of American morality that allowed political leaders to condemn the crime and at the same time embrace the policies that are its genesis. Many of South Carolina politicians and others in the nation are examples.  They decry the killings but steadfastly refuse to support efforts to quell their divisive rhetoric and to cease their push for policies that promote race-based voter suppression. They refuse to vote for the Voting Rights Act.  They cut funds for public education in ways that foster, re-segregation. They deny workers living wages.  They refuse Medicaid expansion. They proliferate guns. They use racialized code words to criticize the president, all in the name of taking ‘their’ country back to ‘prevent its destruction.’   When will they own up to the fact that there is a history of racialized political rhetoric and policies that directly spawn the pathology of terroristic assassinations and carnages, and of violent resistance to constitutional decisions.  

If America is serious about this moment we cannot cry ceremonial tears, while refusing to support the martyred Pastor and his Parishioners’ stalwart fight against the racism that gave birth to the crime. Gov. Haley said the people killed in that Charleston church, and the forgiving actions of their families, set the Confederate flag’s removal in motion. If that’s the case, then the actions of Black-led protests don’t matter. Black political power doesn’t matter. Only in the face of nine Black deaths, and a certain acceptable perceived response, will anything be done. If this is the standard, how many Black deaths will it take to secure restoration of the Voting Rights Act, Medicaid expansion, public education funding, living wages or criminal justice reform? I shudder to think. This nation needs counseling and redemption until Black Lives Matters. And when Black Lives Matter, then all lives will matter. The dehumanization of Black Lives dehumanizes all lives.

Fly the Flag of Treason in Defense of Slavery All You Want

On your private property.

Like the asshole displaying his racism all over Shelbyville yesterday, racing his pickup truck through parking lots with the two large confederate battle flags waving from the back.

Good for you, moron.  You're proud of being a scum-sucking racist, and we sincerely thank for you for letting the world know what you really are.

This is the best part of the take-the-flag-down movement:  racists can no longer hid their racism behind the display of the confederate battle flag and statues by governments on public property.

You want that symbol of hate, fear and stupidity displayed, you're going to have to do it on your own land, vehicle or body.  So the world can see what you really are.

Herald Editorial:

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, rid Kentucky's Capitol of Confederate President Jefferson Davis' statue.

But don't forget that some of the Republicans calling for Davis' ouster have also fanned racially tinged hostility toward our first black president for their political ends.

Or that GOP gubernatorial nominee Matt Bevin cast his 2004 presidential vote for Constitution Party candidate Mike Peroutka, who is described by a human-rights group as an "active white supremacist."

"I have a 'Peroutka for President' T-shirt from 2004 in my drawer," Bevin told The National Review in 2013.

Despite all that, we applaud Bevin, who has four adopted black children and a black running mate, and the other Republicans for wanting to cleanse the Capitol of pro-slavery symbols.

The racist massacre in a Charleston, S.C. church was the latest in a series of shocks that has awakened many white Americans to the brutality and hatred heaped on black citizens every day.

The killer in Charleston studied white supremacist web sites and proudly flaunted the symbols of racist regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia and the American Confederacy, which was led by Davis, who insisted God wanted Africans to be abducted and enslaved.

While we haven't seen a rush toward gun control in response to the Charleston bloodshed, Republican office holders across the South are hastening to remove Confederate flags from Capitol grounds and state license plates.

Symbols matter; they convey powerful messages. But actions speak louder than symbols.

That's why, if Senate President Robert Stivers, one of the Republicans calling for removing the Davis statue, is sincere, he will remove the Kentucky Senate as an obstacle to voting rights for all Kentuckians.

The disproportionate imprisonment and disenfranchisement of blacks are the living, breathing, crippling legacy of slavery and white supremacy.

More than 180,000 Kentuckians who have completed their felony sentences are still stripped of their vote. More whites than blacks fall into this category. But denying the vote to so many black Kentuckians weakens the voice of the minority community in government and renders it powerless — just what the white supremacists want.

The League of Women Voters issued a report in 2006 that said Kentucky has the country's highest rate of disenfranchising black citizens with nearly one in four black Kentuckians ineligible to vote. This was nearly triple the national black disenfranchisement rate.

Kentucky makes it harder than all but two or three states to regain the vote.

Nine times the House has approved a constitutional amendment restoring the vote to non-violent felons who have paid their debts to society.

Nine times the Senate, under Republican control, has blocked or gutted the measure.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and state House Republican Floor Leader Jeff Hoover, to their credit, have supported voting rights restoration. But the Republican Senate has not budged.

By all means, give the school-bus loads of children who tour the Capitol a new symbol of justice and equality in place of the old secessionist.

But a new statue will be a symbol of cynicism as long as the Republican Senate denies the vote to so many black Kentuckians.

When I said "Don't pray. Fight." This is what I meant.

Yeah, the flag went right back up and the racist motherfuckers arrested her for her act of civil disobedience.

That's how it always starts.  And now she's all over the innertubes.

Digby:

She has been arrested, as you can see in the video. Color of Change has a petition going to have the charges dropped. 

If you're a tweeter, here's the hashtag:

She's awesome.

 Of course there's video.

UPDATE:  Excellent post by Erik Loomis on the power of a single activist doing direct action.

Proud Southerner

You betcha the Confederate Battle Flag represents Heritage.  The Heritage of Slavery and Treason.

I say that as a child of the South whose ancestors fought on both sides in the War of Southern Treason.

I say that as the descendant of a Confederate war hero.

I say that as a proud Kentuckian whose every sight of the statue of Jefferson Davis in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort makes me want to puke.

You claim to be a Proud Southerner? Then tell the motherfucking confederates to stop defending Treason and Slavery. Doing so keeps the South poor and stupid, and all the oil in Texas never has changed and never will change that.

AynRandy's Cowardice on the Flag of Treason

Wonkette has graded the responses to what Charlie Pierce calls the Home Office of Sedition refusing to remove the confederate flag from the state Capitol grounds* by the repug candidates for president, and Rand Paul comes in next-to-dead-laste

Rand Paul:

A spokesman for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he had no comment.

Let's not forget what the Tribble-Toupeed One is refused to comment on.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

What makes the Confederate a white supremacist symbol is that the Confederacy was explicitly founded to protect slavery, and the Confederate flag was then revived as a symbol supporting private and state violence to maintain white supremacy in the South during the Civil Rights era. It’s pretty hard to argue that someone engaging in white supremacist violence is “hijacking” or “perverting” the “main symbol of the Confederacy” when white supremacist violence is what the Confederacy and its main symbol are all about.

White South Carolina native Jack Jenkins:

While the Confederate flag is certainly about heritage, it is and always has been about hate. By being part of Roof’s constellation of negative influences, the symbol of the Confederacy — and the history behind it — is once again associated with the pointless murder of people of color. A flag didn’t create Roof’s apparent hostility towards black people, but the state’s obsession with it fomented his hatred with misguided pride. A flag didn’t guide his hand as he loaded his gun on Wednesday, but it gave him a banner under which to justify his actions. And a flag didn’t force Roof to open fire on a group of unarmed African American worshippers during a church Bible study, but it was waving all the same — in license plate form — as he drove away from the slaughter.

* Way too fucking little, way too fucking late, Nikki. Burn them. Burn them all.

Here's a Practical Idea

From the Rude Pundit:

Once a year, every April 12, on the steps of the capitol buildings in all the states* that seceded from the United States, the Confederate flag should be burned. The ceremony should be attended by all the legislators, all the state's Supreme Court justices, and the governor. Then, when the embers are dying, a black man or woman, chosen by lottery, should be brought up to piss on the ashes. Every year. Just to remind anyone who supports it what the value of the garbage flag is. 

* Plus Kentucky, which never seceded but has done its damnedest ever since to join the Confederacy.

As he headlines this post: Your Support of the Confederate Flag Makes You A Traitor