Will the march to equality start again? We’ll have to see…
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Suddenly, bigotry is on the run in America. It’s as if a giant dam thrown up to block human progress has begun to spill over the top, the outpouring growing until the dam collapses, a flood of decency, fairness, and respect washing the stains of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression. Before 17 June, many Americans were already feeling revulsion towards our country’s legacy of white supremacy after seeing numerous cellphone videos of police attacking innocent blacks. Then, Dylann Roof massacred nine worshippers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston SC. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the vile nature of the Confederate battle flag, waved with pride by Roof in several photos released after the shooting, became obvious to so many people that within a week Southern politicians scurried away from that symbol of racial hatred. This is just the beginning. We’ll see more positive change soon as those who solicit votes through fear and denunciation watch America move toward its founding ideals… that all people are created equal with inalienable rights and that America does best when our government follows the six noble purposes of our Constitution, especially promoting the general welfare.
The Repulsive Flag
In the Old South, the Confederate battle flag flies above state capitals and business, appears on licence-plates and adorns apparel. Yet, less than a week after Roof murdered nine people at a church prayer meeting, Southern politicians scrambled to get rid of it. A host of retailers… Amazon, Walmart, Sears, and KMart, Target, EBay, and Etsy amongst them… said that they’d stop selling the flags while the leading manufacturer, Valley Forge Flag, said that it’d stop making them. The Supreme Court played a role, too, deciding on 18 June that Texans had no right to licence-plates embossed with that flag. Someday, I hope that the high court would uphold an administrative decision invalidating the racist trademark of the football team in the nation’s capital.
In the South, many people, including some of my paternal relatives, talk not of the Civil War, but the War of Northern Aggression. Many assert that the flag is a symbol of “Southern pride”, although it isn’t a pride shared by those Americans whose ancestors were bought, sold, and disposed of by the fewer than 2 percent of Southerners who owned slaves. After the Charleston attack, politicians who once supported the flag and its “heritage” see it now as a symbol of racists whose attack on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter ultimately cost 750,000 American lives. We should treat anyone flying that banner with all the opprobrium due anyone hoisting the old Soviet hammer and sickle (sic). It’s a flag of traitors. Those who say the flag honours their ancestors should thank the victors for their graciousness in not hanging those ancestors who were political or military officers. That would have been a lawful and appropriate response, but preserving and strengthening the union mattered more than revenge.
The sudden recognition of the Confederate battle flag as despicable comes after a cluster of videos showed unjustified police attacks on a host of black Americans who committed no crime. These include police shooting a man at a gas station in Columbia SC as he complied with orders to get his driver’s licence, cops hauling an older man from his car and beating him for driving in a white Detroit MI suburb after dark (evidently, police planted drugs in the car to justify their crimes), a police officer in North Charleston SC emptied his gun at an unarmed man running away, and a cop manhandled a 15-year-old girl in a bikini at a pool party in McKinney TX. These videos prompted widespread revulsion amongst Americans. They followed partial recognition that police harassment of black youths sparked riots in Ferguson MO and Baltimore MD.
Bigotry in Retreat
Besides this renewed popular disgust with racism, other popular upheavals against bigotry are happening too. Recent events closely followed the establishment of marriage rights to same-sex couples. This change from a fringe idea to majority embrace occurred at a speed that surprised both advocates and the dwindling cadre of opponents. Likewise, support is growing for extending legal residence and even citizenship to the ambitious people who left the violence and poverty of Central America and Mexico to find work in the USA. The detention of immigrant families at internment camps, and the forced repatriation of children who only know America and the English language, should eventually end as more Americans realise the ugly and futile response of our government.
More egalitarian changes are coming. Polls show that large majorities favour expanding Social Security, making health care universal, and raising taxes on the richest amongst us. These transformations in the offing illustrate why, in the end, a democracy with broad participation produces better results. People are misled from time to time, but reality ultimately intrudes. Today, there’s no rationally denying that not only racial injustice hobbles our once-prosperous country, it also has debt, job insecurity, runaway inequality, and creaky infrastructure. Today, incomes for the bottom 90 percent of earners have fallen below the inflation-adjusted level of 1967, even as those at the apex of the economy rake in ever more billions and fly in private jets. People are angry; they’re voicing their displeasure on the streets. The official violence required to oppress can’t continue once a majority of Americans demand that it end.
As Gandhi taught, when official violence hurls itself against innocents, it stirs something in the human heart that makes us care for the oppressed and revile the oppressors. Eventually, official cruelty must give way to kindness, peace, and progress. It eventually comes, when facts become undeniable, and enough courageous people speak truth to power. For the shrinking minority of scared and narrow-minded people clinging to their prejudices… encouraged by Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page… the next few years will be tough. For everyone else, as the Confederate battle flags come down, America’s future grows brighter.
26 June 2015
David Cay Johnston
al-Jazeera America
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/6/egalitarianism-is-on-the-march.html
Voices from Russia 
26 June 2015. A Greek View of the IMF/EU Bankster Racketeering Against Greece
Tags: Alexis Tsipras, ECB, EU, European Central Bank, European sovereign debt crisis, European Union, Greece, Greek, Greek economic crisis, Greek government, IMF, International Monetary Fund, political commentary, politics, Sovereign Debt Crisis, systemic crisis
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This follows Laggard’s comments that the Greek proposals are “not acceptable” as they don’t cut jobs and reduce salaries, but are aimed at the more wealthy in Greek society. Is there a clearer sign as to the motives of the élite?
Emilios Georgiades