Free Kelley Williams-Bolar Now!

Thanks Facebook friends for sharing this story.  The Grio reports that:

"Few things in life are as simple as black and white. And it doesn't take a lawyer to understand the theory of mitigating circumstances, which can diminish the severity of a sentence handed down to a defendant. Kelley Williams-Bolar, a black mother living in the projects of Akron, Ohio, and her father Edward L. Williams were convicted last week of felony. She was convicted of fraud, for a very common practice often utilized in many lower income communities: she simply used a relative's address to send her children to a better (read: white) school district. Williams-Bolar was sentenced to ten days in jail, and quickly taken into custody. After her release, she will serve two years probation, and is required to serve eighty hours of community service. The judge's apparent rationale; you break the law, you suffer the consequences, end of discussion."

Due to structural inequality, many African Americans are economic hostages. Since they cannot afford to escape to affluent neighborhoods, they are forced by residency requirements to send their children to inferior, segregated, failing schools in poor inner city communities.  No one should be compelled to send their children to violent, drug infested schools. 

Consequently, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated.  As Malcolm X said, "When you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in an area where you have to have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. When you get a poor education, you are destined to be a poor man and a poor woman the rest of your life."

Quality education should be a civil and human right for all citizens.  The quality of one's education should not be determined by race, income or zip code.  Unjust laws that promote the cycle of poverty must challenged, opposed and abolished.

In some respects, Ms. Williams-Bolar is a modern day Rosa Parks. Like the legendary Rosa Parks, Ms. Williams essentially engaged in an act of civil disobedience to challenge an unjust law.  As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, 

"How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." 

I encourage all people of goodwill to join the effort to free Kelley Williams-Bolar.  She should be immediately pardoned and released.  Also, her criminal record should be expunged.  Click this link for more information about how you can help.

Obama Appeals to His Base and the Opposition

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Without doubt, President Barack Obama is one of the greatest orators in American history. The beginning of President Obama's State of the Union address was similar to his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

He attempted to transcend race, religion and party affiliation. Obama focused on things that matter to all Americans. Obama asserted that:
"We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled."

His speech also emphasized American exceptionalism and patriotism. President said, "What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook."

President Obama discussed a wide range of topics. The President called on Congress to stop giving billions to oil companies. He urged Congress to use that money to invest in clean energy. According to Obama, that will spark technological innovation and stimulate job growth. Obama touted his Race to the Top education program. He renewed calls for immigration reform and investment in America's infrastructure.

His speech was moderate and balanced. He brilliantly attempted to please his base and Republicans at the same time. For instance, Obama mentioned eliminating government regulations that hinder business. However, he stated that he will continue regulations designed to protect the American people. He expressed a willingness to further compromise on health care reform, but he vowed prevent health insurance companies denying coverage based on preexisting conditions. Obama stated that he was willing to eliminate any unnecessary programs, but he promised not do it on "the backs of the most vulnerable citizens."

This compromising approach raises several concerns. Health care reform is already diluted. There is no public option. Millions remain uninsured.  There is no need for any additional compromise on that issue. The Republicans do not have enough votes in the Senate to repeal health care anyway. In addition, despite his promise to protect the most vulnerable citizens, the President mentioned the possibility of cutting Medicaid and Medicare.

I was pleased to hear the President state that the nation cannot afford to make tax cuts for the top 2% permanent. Hopefully, the President will vigorous fight any attempt to further extend tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires.

If this nation is serious about reducing the deficit, the United States must end the extremely costly occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Contrary to the President's happy talk about Iraq, the war rages on. In the past week, over 170 people  have died in bombings. During the State of the Union address, the President promised to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011. However, past government statements suggest that American troops will remain in Afghanistan indefinitely.

Republican and Tea Party Responses to the STOU

Rep. Paul Ryan (R) delivered the Republican Party's official response to the President's State of the Union address.

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Proclaiming that the Tea Party is a dynamic force for evil good, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R) delivered the Tea Party's response.

Domestic Terrorists Plant Bomb at MLK Parade

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The Spokane Review reports that:

"As Reiswig and her co-workers snapped photos of the police robot examining the backpack at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Main Avenue, posting some of them to their Facebook pages, the Spokane bomb squad was coming to a frightening realization. The backpack was equipped with a powerful bomb, positioned to inflict maximum blast damage toward the intended route of Spokane’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day march through downtown.

“Then we saw the officer in a bomb suit. At that point, we decided that maybe we should back away from the windows,” she said.

The FBI confirmed Tuesday that the Swiss Army-brand backpack contained a bomb that could have caused “multiple casualties” and credited Spokane city employees who noticed the suspicious bag and alerted authorities in time to re-route the parade. A $20,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible."
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Tea Party Groups Seek to Rewrite African American History

"If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature,  it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."  English abolitionist Thomas Day

Tennessee tea party groups seek to romanticize American history by deleting or glossing over this nation's ugly legacy of kidnapping, selling, enslaving, beating, raping, castrating, and lynching black people.  As stated on Think Progress, the Commercial Appeal reports that:

About two dozen tea party activists held a news conference, then met with lawmakers individually to present their list of priorities and “demands” for the 2011 legislative session that opened Tuesday.

Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

...The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

"Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,” said Rounds, whose website identifies him as a Vietnam War veteran of the Air Force and FedEx retiree who became a lawyer in 1995."

The Declaration of Independence states that: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

The Founding Fathers obviously did not consider us to be "men".  Many the framers of the U.S. Constitution, including Bassett, Blair, Blount, Butler, Carroll, Jenifer, Jefferson, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington, Madison and Franklin, owned slaves. While hypocritically preaching democracy and equality, the framers practiced the most grotesque form of oppression and exploitation. 

In their eyes, we were viewed as property, not people. In Notes of the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson describes Africans as physically and mentally inferior to whites:

"Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species....They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous."

To ignore that history is to ignore reality.  The Tennessee Tea Party's mis-education campaign is just another racist effort to negate the history, humanity, pain and suffering of black people.  This nation was built as a result of our enslavement, blood, sweat and tears.  We will not allow this country to forget it!

Honor MLK By Joining Today's Struggle for Equality and Peace

By celebrating the life of our dear, beloved brother, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we celebrate the struggle of the people. Instead of simply taking a day off from work, we should embrace and join the struggle. As the great revolutionary Pan Africanist Kwame Ture told us, we must be organized.

In order to be organized, we must join civil rights and anti-war organizations. Join the NAACP, National Action Network, Color of Change, National Urban League or any other progressive organization fighting for equality. Don't talk about. Be about it.

President Obama Honors the Victims of the Tucson Tragedy

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