I'm not changing the definition. I'm just showing you that the word can mean
different things to different people. Like the word, "success", which most
Americans equate with the accumulation of material goods and a high income.
But that's assuming that we all agree what the goal is. I don't consider
someone who earns a lot of money and owns 5 houses to be successful in what
is meaningful to me. My goals would be different.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2017 11:45 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity Quarterback
Miriam:
How convenient.
Just change the definition!
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 31, 2017, at 6:52 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
Richard,
It depends on how you define progress. If you don't define it in
material terms, but in terms of loving relationships, caring for
others, and a respect for all living things, then progress isn't
achieved at the expensive of others.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of R. E. ;
Driscoll Sr
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 10:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity
Quarterback
Miriam:
It seems to me that all progress made by any group has been at the
expense of another group- normally termed 'slaves'.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 30, 2017, at 7:54 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
any nasty racial slurs. He was talking to this black journalist as
Oh, this guy isn't stupid. He is literate and articulate. He didn't
use
politely and reasonably as you please. He just managed to omit the
fact that this western civilization which he so treasures, has always
taken what it needed from the rest of the world, that his white
culture was built on slavery and colonialism. And I suspect that when
he talks about the white nation that he wants, he actually expects to
have a hoard of low wage serfs around to care for its white citizens.
work alone when it comes to destroying the Human Species. Greed has a
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 8:00 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity
Quarterback
The unmitigated arrogance! I'm beginning to believe that Greed does
not
brother named, Stupid. While Greed goes about enticing people to do
anything for more wealth and power, Stupid works at dulling the senses
and blowing heavy fog into our brains.
I simply cannot get my head around how so many people live theirlives on this planet, yet they never question how, on the one hand we
entire
can be such wise and compassionate Beings, and at the same time be so
ruthless, vicious and Evil.
people of color.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/30/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've read and listened to several articles and podcasts dealing with
white nationalists and what they say and believe. There was a truly
amazing interview done by an African American journalist with
Richard Spencer, who is, one of the most horrifying white men I've
ever listened to. It was a very calm discussion which, if you
weren't using your brain, might have sounded rational. In it,
Richard Spencer was explaining why he believes that our society is
damaging to white people. He has, he explained, nothing against
people of color. It's just that their numbers are damaging to,
"white culture", which, he equates, with western civilization. All
he wants to do is preserve western civilization which means that our
society must rid itself of
former Great, Whiteness". Or is that, to her former White Greatness.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 1:56 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity
Quarterback
Certainly Colin Rand Kaepernick understood the very real
consequences of his actions. Indeed, the treatment of Colored
Citizens is what brought him to send his protest to the public. And
the System has responded in a manner that proves his point. His
career is squashed like a bug under foot. In the days when America
was Great, a time Trump wants to return to, Colin Rand Kaepernick's
protest would have been dismissed with the words, "That ought to
teach that uppity nigger a lesson!" But the lesson is not lost on a
growing number of Americans. Reinforced by president Donald Trump's
pardon of Joe Arpaio, the Word goes out for one and all to hear,
"Return America to her
other way.Carl Jarvis
On 8/30/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Colin Kaepernick. (photo: Jake Roth/Reuters)
NFL Plantation Owners Ban Uppity Quarterback
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
29 August 17
American Shame: Colin Kaepernick is jobless for thought crime
To watch America's structural racism at work, one need look no
further than the National Football League (NFL) and its treatment
of nonviolent unorthodoxy as expressed by Colin Kaepernick going to
one knee during the national anthem in support of the unacceptable
thought that black lives should matter as much as anyone else's. Of
course, that's still a relatively new idea in the United States,
dating from
1863 in law and still not fully accepted in much of the country.
Colin Rand Kaepernick, who turns 30 in November, is a proven
professional football quarterback who chose to become a free agent
after the 2016 season.
He led San Francisco to the Super Bowl in 2012. He is good enough
to play for most any of the NFL's 32 teams, but none have signed
him. A year ago, when unarmed black men shot by cops were getting
heavy news coverage and while presidential candidates Clinton and
Trump disparaged Black Lives Matter, Kaepernick undertook a solo
protest, sitting during the national anthem before the first NFL
pre-season game. In subsequent games, Kaepernick went down on one
knee in silent, respectful protest during the Star Spangled Banner.
Asked by an NFL Network reporter why he was doing that, Kaepernick
said:
I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country
that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is
bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the
profit.There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and
getting away with murder..
This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not
looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are
oppressed.... If they take football away, my endorsements from me,
I know that I stood up for what is right.
At the time, official football - the league, his team, his coach -
all spoke carefully about respecting Kaepernick's "right as a citizen,"
without engaging the issue he was raising. Kaepernick is bi-racial.
He was adopted by white parents and raised in Wisconsin with white
siblings.
Zeitgeist signals: Kaepernick blacklisted, Arpaio pardoned
In November 2016, a Miami Herald reporter asked Kaepernick about a
shirt he had worn showing Fidel Castro and Malcolm X with the caption:
"Like Minds Think Alike." In discussing the shirt, Kaepernick
reportedly said: "One thing that Fidel Castro did do is they have
the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their
education system than they do in their prison system, which we do
not do here, even though we're fully capable of doing that."That
sort of truth, spoken out loud, does not endear one to the
overlords of the NFL or other American authorities, especially the
ones who created and profit from the unaddressed, unending scandal
of prisons for
immigration.
A year after he first spoke out by kneeling in silence, Colin
Kaepernick is unemployed. Unarmed black men are killed by cops at a
faster rate now than in 2016, but it's not news so much any more.
Kaepernick had his free speech, now he's paying the price. The
country has moved on to a more ardent defense of free speech by
Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, anti-Semites, and other bigots.
The Trump administration is contributing to social calm and order
by setting out to give local police more military weapons, from
armored troop carriers to grenade launchers.
The ugliest sign of the country's darkening racial zeitgeist is
President Trump's pre-emptive, unprincipled, unconditional pardon
of one of America's most notorious police bigots, former sheriff
Joe Arpaio of Arizona, a man who spoke proudly of his brutal and
deadly prison system as a "concentration camp." Arpaio was awaiting
sentencing when the President interdicted the judicial process with
a hasty pardon, granted without any of the usual review and
consideration. The brief White House announcement concluded with
these
lies:
Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life's work of
protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal
intractable.Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more
than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy
candidate for a Presidential pardon.
Arpaio's record is reasonably clear that he did little protecting
of the public or the Constitution. His office operated with racist
standards that encouraged police brutality and led to prisoner
deaths from violence and neglect. Arpaio's service as sheriff was
not admirable but self-serving, obsessed with targeting Latinos
regardless of guilt, while ignoring real criminal offenses,
including domestic abuse and child abuse.
Kaepernick and the Star Spangled Banner of American irony
Some say Kaepernick is the victim of a blacklist. Others deny what
seems obviously true. One of the deniers makes much of a few other
players making similar gestures without consequences. But he leaves
out critical facts:
that these are players currently under contract and that they have
a union to defend them. He makes a point of saying that "NFL
rosters are
70 per cent Black," without wondering why NFL rosters are close to
100 per cent without any expressed social conscience. He does not
mention that NFL owners would be 100 per cent white but for some
limited partners like Reggie Fowler of the Minnesota Vikings.
American racism is structural, institutional, shameless, and
ourselves.Electing Barack Obama in 2008 didn't make the country a post-racial
society any more than electing Donald Trump in 2016 makes the
country a post-sane society. The abiding ambiguity of American
madness can be seen in our "national anthem," which has been our
national anthem less than 100 years (adopted 1931).
The Star Spangled Banner celebrates the defense of Fort McHenry in
Baltimore Harbor in 1814 in Maryland, a slave state. The attacking
British force included numbers of escaped slaves fighting for the
British on the promise of earning their freedom. Francis Scott Key,
who wrote the Star Spangled Banner, was a lifelong slave owner. A
lawyer who served as US Attorney, Key used his office to prosecute
abolitionists. In an 1837 prosecution of abolitionist Dr. Reuben
Crandall for instigating a slave rebellion, Key said in his
summation to the jury:
Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country, to permit it
to be taken from you, and occupied by the abolitionist, according
to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro?
Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community
to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon
you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?
Rendered in modern language, these are the same sentiments the
racists of Charlottesville expressed in their exercise of free
speech. In 1837, the jury acquitted Dr. Crandall. On the
Charlottesville hordes, the jury is still out.
Maybe, should our public consciousness come to grips with the
reality that our national anthem is a slave owner's paean to the
defense of a slave state, we might think more seriously about
kneeling
That might be a better way to express our hope to become, truly,
the land of the free and the home of the brave.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life
magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences.
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.
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