Weissman writes: "Congressman John Lewis has shamed himself. Long a hero to
now-aging activists, he sullied his long-expected endorsement of Hillary
Clinton by disparaging her opponent Bernie Sanders' well-documented
participation in the civil rights struggle as a student at the University of
Chicago."
Bernie Sanders, right, a member of the Congress of Racial Equality steering
committee, stands next to University of Chicago president George Beadle, who
is speaking at a CORE meeting on housing sit-ins in 1962. (photo: Special
Collections Research Center/University of Chicago Library)
How Low Will the Clinton Camp Go?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
15 February 16
Congressman John Lewis has shamed himself. Long a hero to now-aging
activists, he sullied his long-expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton by
disparaging her opponent Bernie Sanders' well-documented participation in
the civil rights struggle as a student at the University of Chicago.
After announcing that the Congressional Black Caucus PAC was backing
Clinton, Lewis answered a reporter's question about Sanders: "I never saw
him. I never met him. I chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee for three years from 1963 to 1966. I was involved in the sit-ins,
the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma (Alabama)
to Montgomery and directed the voter education project for six years. I met
Hillary Clinton, I met President Clinton."
Others of us know young Bernie's work and still speak highly of his student
activism for peace and civil rights. We can also point to detailed
confirmation in the Chicago Tribune, Rick Pearlstein's profile of Sanders in
The University of Chicago Magazine, and Mother Jones, which thoughtfully
reproduced pages from old editions of the student newspaper, The Chicago
Maroon.
Bernie's biggest success came as a leader of the campus chapter of the
Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), when he spearheaded a lengthy campaign
against landlords of university-owned buildings in Hyde Park for refusing to
rent off-campus housing to black students. "We feel it is an intolerable
situation when Negro and white students of the University cannot live
together in university owned apartments," Sanders told The Maroon in January
1962. As picketers left one of the residences, people yelled, "Go back to
your jungles."
Bernie's agitation led to a 15-day sit-in in the reception room of the
office of university president George Beadle, followed by continued protests
and negotiations that finally forced the university to desegregate its
housing. Sanders also led pickets against a local Howard Johnson's after the
arrest of 12 CORE demonstrators for trying to eat at a HoJo's in North
Carolina. He was arrested and fined for resisting arrest in a protest
against school segregation on Chicago's south side, and he went with several
comrades to the giant March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave
his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
"Bernie was clearly a leader," recalled Mike Edelstein, who served on campus
CORE's executive committee at the time. "He was taken seriously. You
couldn't take him for anything else because, like now, his humor is not his
foremost trait."
He was "very smart and very policy oriented," said classmate Mike Parker,
who is now in his 70s and - with Bernie's support - is leading a fight to
close down a polluting Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. "Knowing
someone like him was part of the inspiration for what we're doing here."
Less well known, Parker and some of Bernie's other comrades went to graduate
school at Berkeley and helped shape the Free Speech Movement, which was
largely about the right to advocate and organize on campus for civil rights
demonstrations in neighboring Oakland and San Francisco.
This is how progressive movements for social change take on a life of their
own, and to belittle Bernie's role insults a whole generation of activists,
black and white, who worked where we were to do what we could, all at a time
that Hillary Clinton was still a Goldwater Girl. Hillary changed, and Bernie
and Elizabeth Warren are now pushing her to change even more. But that gives
her campaign no license to let John Lewis bear false witness against Bernie
to shore up black support in South Carolina and beyond.
What makes all this even sadder is that Lewis knows firsthand the sting of
dirty politics at the highest level. Back in August 1963, when I was still a
grad student at the University of Michigan, John came to speak at a meeting
of our local Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He was scheduled to be
the youngest speaker the following week at the March on Washington, and he
was testing the bombshell he intended to drop.
"In good conscience," he planned to say, "we cannot support wholeheartedly
the [Kennedy] administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little and
too late. There's not one thing in the bill that will protect our people
from police brutality. This bill will not protect young children and old
women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful
demonstrations."
"You tell us to wait," he went on. "We cannot be patient. We want our
freedom, and we want it now."
"If we don't see meaningful progress here today," he concluded, "there will
come a day when we will not confine our marching to the South. We will be
forced to march through the South the way Sherman did - nonviolently."
Thrilled by John's presentation at Ann Arbor, a group of us from SDS stood
right by the Lincoln Memorial waiting eagerly for him to give his speech.
What we did not know, and what John learned only hours before, is that some
of Kennedy's backers refused to appear on the podium with John if he
insisted on giving the speech he had written. In the end, Kennedy's people
forced him to say what they wanted, a story SNCC leader James Forman tells
in The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Lewis confirmed most of the details
to The Washington Post.
In the end, John's attack on Bernie may not have much impact, and could well
backfire the way that Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright's remarks ended
up hurting Hillary with young feminists. Several black leaders and activists
are already endorsing Bernie as the candidate who best embodies the moral
imperative of our time, and John Lewis has only demeaned himself to score a
few cheap political points. But common decency and a proper regard for our
shared history demand that Hillary disavow his comments and that they go
beyond sterile apologies and both set the record straight.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Bernie Sanders, right, a member of the Congress of Racial Equality steering
committee, stands next to University of Chicago president George Beadle, who
is speaking at a CORE meeting on housing sit-ins in 1962. (photo: Special
Collections Research Center/University of Chicago Library)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
How Low Will the Clinton Camp Go?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
15 February 16
ongressman John Lewis has shamed himself. Long a hero to now-aging
activists, he sullied his long-expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton by
disparaging her opponent Bernie Sanders' well-documented participation in
the civil rights struggle as a student at the University of Chicago.
After announcing that the Congressional Black Caucus PAC was backing
Clinton, Lewis answered a reporter's question about Sanders: "I never saw
him. I never met him. I chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee for three years from 1963 to 1966. I was involved in the sit-ins,
the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma (Alabama)
to Montgomery and directed the voter education project for six years. I met
Hillary Clinton, I met President Clinton."
Others of us know young Bernie's work and still speak highly of his student
activism for peace and civil rights. We can also point to detailed
confirmation in the Chicago Tribune, Rick Pearlstein's profile of Sanders in
The University of Chicago Magazine, and Mother Jones, which thoughtfully
reproduced pages from old editions of the student newspaper, The Chicago
Maroon.
Bernie's biggest success came as a leader of the campus chapter of the
Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), when he spearheaded a lengthy campaign
against landlords of university-owned buildings in Hyde Park for refusing to
rent off-campus housing to black students. "We feel it is an intolerable
situation when Negro and white students of the University cannot live
together in university owned apartments," Sanders told The Maroon in January
1962. As picketers left one of the residences, people yelled, "Go back to
your jungles."
Bernie's agitation led to a 15-day sit-in in the reception room of the
office of university president George Beadle, followed by continued protests
and negotiations that finally forced the university to desegregate its
housing. Sanders also led pickets against a local Howard Johnson's after the
arrest of 12 CORE demonstrators for trying to eat at a HoJo's in North
Carolina. He was arrested and fined for resisting arrest in a protest
against school segregation on Chicago's south side, and he went with several
comrades to the giant March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave
his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
"Bernie was clearly a leader," recalled Mike Edelstein, who served on campus
CORE's executive committee at the time. "He was taken seriously. You
couldn't take him for anything else because, like now, his humor is not his
foremost trait."
He was "very smart and very policy oriented," said classmate Mike Parker,
who is now in his 70s and - with Bernie's support - is leading a fight to
close down a polluting Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. "Knowing
someone like him was part of the inspiration for what we're doing here."
Less well known, Parker and some of Bernie's other comrades went to graduate
school at Berkeley and helped shape the Free Speech Movement, which was
largely about the right to advocate and organize on campus for civil rights
demonstrations in neighboring Oakland and San Francisco.
This is how progressive movements for social change take on a life of their
own, and to belittle Bernie's role insults a whole generation of activists,
black and white, who worked where we were to do what we could, all at a time
that Hillary Clinton was still a Goldwater Girl. Hillary changed, and Bernie
and Elizabeth Warren are now pushing her to change even more. But that gives
her campaign no license to let John Lewis bear false witness against Bernie
to shore up black support in South Carolina and beyond.
What makes all this even sadder is that Lewis knows firsthand the sting of
dirty politics at the highest level. Back in August 1963, when I was still a
grad student at the University of Michigan, John came to speak at a meeting
of our local Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He was scheduled to be
the youngest speaker the following week at the March on Washington, and he
was testing the bombshell he intended to drop.
"In good conscience," he planned to say, "we cannot support wholeheartedly
the [Kennedy] administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little and
too late. There's not one thing in the bill that will protect our people
from police brutality. This bill will not protect young children and old
women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful
demonstrations."
"You tell us to wait," he went on. "We cannot be patient. We want our
freedom, and we want it now."
"If we don't see meaningful progress here today," he concluded, "there will
come a day when we will not confine our marching to the South. We will be
forced to march through the South the way Sherman did - nonviolently."
Thrilled by John's presentation at Ann Arbor, a group of us from SDS stood
right by the Lincoln Memorial waiting eagerly for him to give his speech.
What we did not know, and what John learned only hours before, is that some
of Kennedy's backers refused to appear on the podium with John if he
insisted on giving the speech he had written. In the end, Kennedy's people
forced him to say what they wanted, a story SNCC leader James Forman tells
in The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Lewis confirmed most of the details
to The Washington Post.
In the end, John's attack on Bernie may not have much impact, and could well
backfire the way that Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright's remarks ended
up hurting Hillary with young feminists. Several black leaders and activists
are already endorsing Bernie as the candidate who best embodies the moral
imperative of our time, and John Lewis has only demeaned himself to score a
few cheap political points. But common decency and a proper regard for our
shared history demand that Hillary disavow his comments and that they go
beyond sterile apologies and both set the record straight.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
