The Defense Department’s general counsel said that he believed Martin Luther King, Jr., might have supported the current wars: I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation’…
Posts Tagged ‘Martin Luther King’
Martin Luther King Jr.: Stop the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Stop the Mugging of the Middle Class and Poor by the Wealthy
January 17th, 2011 |
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Asheville Earth Day NMS, Sal Santana, Afromotive
March 11th, 2010 |
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THE 3RD ANNUAL ASHEVILLE EARTH DAY CELEBRATES THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED EARTH DAY IN A BIG WAY
 The New Mastersounds |
Greenlife Grocery and AMJam Productions have teamed up again, and the 3rd Annual Asheville Earth Day is set to take play on Saturday, April 17, 2010. The free event for the city of Asheville will once again be held at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in Downtown Asheville, NC. This year’s event will bring back all of the industry and activism leaders in our community in environmentally conscious practices, and will also feature an amazing international music lineup that will include The New Mastersounds, Acoustic Syndicate, The Afromotive, Salvador Santana, Shane Pruitt Band and many more.
Asheville Earth Day is a day-long, family oriented event featuring a Kid’s Village where children can interact and take part in a “recycled” art project, putting our general waste to better use. The Opening Ceremony will feature a kid’s march led by our Earth Day emcee, and games and activities are welcome in the event field all day. Asheville Earth Day will also feature environmentally conscious businesses and organizations from around our region represented in our Eco-Village to educate the public on how they too can be active in protecting our earth.
The Asheville Earth Day again will include local food from participating vendors, and local beer for sale from some of our very own Asheville breweries, Asheville Brewing Company and Pisgah Brewing. The event is free to the public, and will run from 11a.m.-10p.m. The Official Earth Day After-Parties are set to take place, members of Acoustic Syndicate and Pond Farm Pickers will lead an All-Star jam at Stella Blue, and The New Mastersounds will lead a funk extravaganza at Club 828. More event information and details about the VIP ticket experience can be found at avlearthday.org.
WHAT: 3rd Annual Asheville Earth Day
WHEN: Saturday, April 17th, 2010; 11a.m.-10p.m.
WHERE: Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, Downtown Asheville, NC
ADMISSION: FREE! – VIP Experience also available online
Bullet-Proof Case (Not Ivins … The FBI Cover-Up)
February 22nd, 2010 |
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In a new post, vaccine expert Dr. Meryl Nass shreds the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins: Federal Bureau of Invention: CASE CLOSED (and Ivins did it)But FBI’s report, documents and accompanying information (only pertaining to Ivins, not to the rest o…
Fight Over “American Idol†Leads To Attempted Murder!
January 31st, 2010 |
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A Florida woman was so upset and agitated after arguing with her boyfriend over the new season of American Idol, she stabbed him.
Police in St. Petersburg have arrested Cynthia Bettis-Ware, 52, on charges of first-degree attempted murder after she stabbed live-in love Kevin Johnson, 47, before scalding him with a cup of hot chocolate, [...]
We Celebrate Martin Luther King With The Entrance Band’s “M.L.K.”
January 18th, 2010 |
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We Celebrate Martin Luther King with The Entrance Band’s “M.L.K.”
 M.L.K. |
If there is anyone in America’s rich history worth celebrating, it’s the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We honor the man on the third Monday of January each year as the date falls around his January 15 birthday.
To celebrate Martin Luther King Day we’re rocking The Entrance Band‘s song “M.L.K.” off the band’s most recent album, and we think you should too. Not only does the track have a sweet snaking guitar lead and tasty little jam, the words ring true:
Tired of being angry child/ oppression drives me wild…
But there’s a reason I sing cuz I want to hear freedom ring
And I’ll remind you all of one more thing, remember Martin Luther King
40 years since he was around/ They keep us apart just to keep us down
Our petty squabbles can’t agree the bigger picture we fail to see
We join together hand in hand to make a change sweep through the land
We can find peace and love in our hearts/ That’s where revolution starts…
I remember M.L.K. and how I wish he were here today
Was it the FBI, the CIA I still want to know who took him away
Everyday we struggle and strive to survive we fail to keep his dream alive
Close our hearts and live in fear/ Truth and justice disappear
There’s a reason I sing cuz I want to hear freedom ring
And I’ll remind you all of one more thing, remember Martin Luther King
I said it’s not enough to repeat what he said when they’re still trying defeat what he said
Not enough to praise what he did/ We have to do what he did
Times are hard I know it’s tough/ Look around you’ve had enough
I’m raising my voice can you hear me sing?/ I voted for change it didn’t change anything
I sing a song it’s true, I sing for myself and I sing for you
Cuz I want to hear freedom ring/ I sing about Martin Luther King
The Entrance Band is on tour now; dates available here.
Newport Folk Festival | 08.01 & 08.02 | RI
August 11th, 2009 |
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Words by: Bear Connelly | Images by: Jim Brueckner
Newport Folk Festival :: 08.01.09 & 08.02.09 :: Fort Adams State Park :: Newport, RI
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The Newport Folk Festival is one of the longest running music festivals in America, and this year she celebrated her 50th anniversary (the festival did not take place from 1971-1985) with a huge array of artists spanning generations, countries and languages. The deep historical context of the festival resonates highly with the artists that play here, making it quite a destination for musicians and fans of the greater folk world. Dylan went electric here and Joan Baez played the first ever festival in 1959. NWFF is located at Fort Adams State Park, a defunct Naval base nestled in the harbor of the sailing mecca of Newport, Rhode Island. The festival has three stages, the main stage sitting right in front of the fort overlooking a huge lawn that leads to the ocean, and two tents containing smaller stages also along the water. Thousands of people attend each year, setting up blankets and lawn chairs and basking in the sunshine and music for two days every August. Due to the location, boats are encouraged to pull up close and drop anchor and listen to the music while swimming and playing in the water. This is truly a festival you need to see once in your life, if not many times.
As always there were so many great bands playing that I kind of felt like a chicken running around with his head cut off in order to see them all. For some artists, I only caught a couple songs, like folk legends Baez (whose voice has sadly lowered in register over the years) and Arlo Guthrie (who is an amazing storyteller) to Joe Pug (a young working class, Dylan-esque folkie from Chicago belting tunes like “My Father’s Drugs” with a Midwest snarl). With a festival as diverse as Newport – acts range from Mavis Staples to Brett Dennen, 23-year old John McCauley (Deer Tick) to 90-year old Pete Seeger – there was something for everyone.
Here are some of the highlights from this year’s event, and you can also listen to all these sets at npr.org.
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As I walked in to the festival I headed straight for the first music I could hear. I stumbled in to the Harborside Tent to find Ben Kweller playing with a stripped down version of his band. There was Ben, decked out in a sleeveless NYC t-shirt, jeans and boots (which reminded my of that classic John Lennon pic) with a drummer and a dobro/pedal steel player. Kweller cranked through tunes like “13,” which was apparently written about a night out in Block Island, an island off the coast of Rhode Island, and “Gypsy Love” with a great sense of enjoyment at being at this historical festival. He even tried out tunes that he normally plays on piano in the spirit of guitar driven folk music. The highlight of his set was a crowd sing-along version of “Falling” dedicated to Kelly, a girl who worked at the festival that asked if he would play it, despite the lack of a piano on stage.
I haven’t really listened to The Avett Brothers but with the electricity of their live shows you don’t really need to in order to enjoy them. The North Carolina natives brought their brand of psych-emo, energetic folk-grass to the festival for the second time in as many years. The band ran through live staples such as “Paranoia in B flat Major” and “Ballad of Love and Hate,” along with new tunes off their upcoming album I and Love and You like “Kick Drum Heart” with little disparity for a newcomer. Read: their new tunes kick as much ass as their old ones.
Given the fact that Tom Morello is a Harvard educated, political junkie, effects infused shredder, I was perhaps most curious to see what he had in store for a folk festival. Morello, armed simply with a nylon string guitar (that had “Whatever It Takes” scrawled on it in black marker) and his rustic baritone voice played songs such as “Dogs of Tijuana” and “One Man Revolution.” Morello also mentioned how excited he was to play at the same festival as the legendary Pete Seeger. He dedicated his tune “The Road I Must Travel” to Seeger, who Morello believes is “a living body of justice-ness and righteousness,” and is glad that “in a world of passport carrying jackasses there are people like Seeger to balance it out.”
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Fan favorite Gillian Welch delighted the main stage crowd yet again (in the three years I’ve been, she’s been there every time) with a nice mix of songs from her entire repertoire. Apparently she and her partner, Rhode Island native Dave Rawlings, had to get a police escort from Boston just to make their set after a five-hour flight delay at LAX. Welch joked that she felt “Like Mirabelli getting escorted to the Sox game in order to catch Wakey a couple years back,” referring to Red Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli’s return trip to Fenway after being reacquired mid-season. Although sleep deprived and unkempt, they didn’t let the jetlag stop them from delivering angst melting tunes like “Orphan Girl,” “My First Lover” and “Look at Miss Ohio,” the latter featuring a blistering solo from Rawlings, who is perhaps the tastiest guitarist in Americana music today. Midway through the set, she debuted her haunting version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” to the crowd’s enjoyment.
One of the more historical acts at the festival was the gospel stylings of Mavis Staples and her energetic band. Staples’ set included a rousing rendition of The Band’s “The Weight,” which she sang at The Last Waltz with The Staple Singers 30 years ago, and “Why Am I Treated So Bad,” her father’s song written after a conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hometown heroes number one (Deer Tick being number two) played their first set of presumably many to come at Newport after a whirlwind summer that saw them playing all over the world, including sets at Bonnaroo, Hyde Park and Roskilde Festival (read about Roskilde here). Since releasing Oh My God Charlie Darwin on Nonesuch (and Bella Union in Europe) the band has been touring relentlessly and it shows. The once awkward folkies that could barely play their secondary instruments – there is a clarinet, French horn, upright bass, drums, organ, acoustic and electric guitars and crotales on stage, with all three members rotating between them for each song – have tightened their sound to captivate the audience, which overflowed the small Waterside Tent they played in. The band played some new, unreleased tunes that held water alongside older gems like “Ballad of Broken Bones” and “To Ohio.” The highlight for me came with their take on the traditional “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around” that featured guitarist/singer Ben Knox Miller on drums, Jeff Prystowsky on upright bass and clarinetist Jocie Adams showing off her electric guitar chops, all of which showcased the band’s growing versatility.
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Sam Beam played a solo acoustic set on Saturday afternoon to a packed Harborside Tent. Beam, whose wispy vocals and percussive yet intricate guitar picking was a perfect soundtrack for a sunny afternoon on the water. He started his set off with a cover of Postal Service‘s “Such Great Heights” that quickly turned into a group sing-along after he forgot the words to the chorus. Next came the stomping “Woman King,” which induced some of the crowd (mostly seated) to dance. Beam had great stage presence, talking about how “beautiful but distracting” the view from the stage was and handling catcalls like a woman in the crowd who yelled, “I want to live in your beard… because it seems like a warm place to sit,” with a quick wit. Beam closed his set with the fan favorite (and Twilight soundtrack hit) “Flightless Bird, American Mouth,” which left the audience standing and cheering for an encore. Beam sheepishly walked back on stage to deliver “Sunset Soon Forgotten,” a wonderful finger picking tune off Our Endless Numbered Days.
I was really interested in checking out the Fleet Foxes, one of the past two years’ biggest hype bands. I really like their harmonies and arrangements on the album and wanted to see if they could pull it off live. Well, they killed it. Unfortunately, their small discography lead to them basically playing their album and EP in their entirety. However, getting a main stage slot at Newport is quite a feat for such a young band. Songs like “White Winter Hymnal” and “Oliver James” oozed lush melodies and dispersed waves of their “baroque harmonic pop jams” amongst the festival-goers and aquatic onlookers.
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Saturday’s headliner (other than Pete Seeger, who closed both nights as more of an honorary guest) brought their literary folk rock to the main stage for the first time. Armed with a plethora of vocalists and rare instruments (like the hurdy-gurdy), the band ripped through a greatest hits set – they’ve been playing their folk opera, The Hazards of Love, in its entirety most nights this tour – including “The Crane Wife Part 3″ and upbeat closer “Sons and Daughters.” Mid-set the band’s Decemberists Family Players acted out a scene from the Festival’s storied past – the day Dylan went electric. Four people represented festival founder George Wein, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and a squirrel to act out a scene inspired by Seeger’s famous comments after hearing Dylan go electric (“Damn it, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now”) referring to shutting down the sound system.
For those of you who don’t know, David Rawlings Machine is just him and Gillian Welch but with reversed roles. They play his songs instead of hers and he sings lead vocals to her harmonies. These two are amazingly captivating with just two guitars and voices. Rawlings, known as a producer and session guitarist mostly, ran through wonderful cover songs ranging from Bright Eyes’ “Method Acting” to Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately,” Ryan Adams’ “To Be Young (Is to be sad, is to be high)” (which he co-wrote) to “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” The set was so fierce that the late morning crowd called for an encore, which is usually reserved for headlining acts. Dave answered the call with a foot stomping, hand clapping cover of Johnny Cash’s “Jackson.”
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Also known in the indie world for her work with the New Pornographers, Neko Case has been churning out great alt-country albums on her own for years. Supporting her latest, critically acclaimed album, Middle Cyclone (JamBase review here), Case played the main stage on Sunday. She barreled through songs from her whole repertoire including “Wish I Was the Moon,” “Hold On Hold On” and her roaring new single “This Tornado Loves You.” Not only does Case have one of the best lovesick howls in the business but her backing singer Kelly Hogan (who has also sung with Andrew Bird, The Minus 5 and Edith Frost) provided a nice layer on which Case could stray more and show off her pipes. After a standing ovation from the crowd, who spent her set in lawn chairs, Case ripped through a stellar version of The Shangri-La’s “The Train from Kansas City” as an ode to female groups of yesteryear.
Deer Tick
The second hometown favorite of the festival was the fast-rising Deer Tick. The band took the stage while leader John McCauley III stated, “I don’t know what an acoustic guitar is. Give me one and I’ll try to plug it in. Let’s do it like Dylan did!” before launching into the raucous “Easy” off the band’s latest album, Born on Flag Day. Before their second tune, “Little White Lies,” a fan from the mostly seated crowd asked, “Can we stand up? We just want to dance.” After the okay from security, chairs were moved out of the way and the littlest tent of the festival gave birth to its biggest dance party. Deer Tick plowed through their songs showcasing new, full band arrangements to previously mellow acoustic songs on their albums. Even when the solo song “A Song About A Man” was played the rest of the band sang three-part harmonies, where the last time I saw them they just left the stage. After a guest spot from singer Liz Isenberg on “Friday the XIII” and a cover of John Prine’s “Aimless Love,” the band brought down the house with a rockin’ take on “La Bamba,” which seemed very genuine and relevant despite coming from a 23-year-old white kid from North Providence, RI.
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Playing the festival for the second time, the singer-songwriter and his energetic, multi-instrumentalist band (they all play horns and some other primary instrument) closed down the Harborside Stage on Sunday. Half the band attended Brown University and his bassist was from Newport, so there was kind of a homecoming vibe to Dearland’s set. Despite suffering some tragedies within his own family (his dad, actor Anthony Perkins died from AIDS, while his mom was on board one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center), he is able to sing positive, “live in the moment” style songs that shine bright lights on to the dark zones of the human mind. Perkins, who understands the gravity of playing at such a storied festival, treated the crowd to his own gems like “Chains Chains Chains” and “Shampoo” while mixing in covers like “Weeping Mary” and “Four Strong Winds.” Set closer “Doomsday” had Elvis singing: “Man, I went wild last night…/ I don’t let doomsday bother me/ Do you let it bother you?”
Pete Seeger
It’s a rare opportunity to see a living legend these days. I felt this way when I saw Ray Charles. Pete Seeger IS folk music. Marking both his 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the festival he helped create, Seeger treated the crowd to a sing-along set that started with the help of his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger. Pete played “Turn Turn Turn” and “Midnight Special,” saying the lyrics before each line was to be sung so no one in the crowd had an excuse to not sing. It was great to hear the stories behind all these songs – this man knows who wrote the songs we all know as “traditional”! Midway through his sunset set, Seeger invited “every musician who played today” on stage for huge group versions of “Guantanamera,” “If I Had a Hammer” and the obvious closer, “This Land is Your Land.” Never again will I see Colin Meloy singing with Tom Morello, Ben Kweller sharing a mic with The Low Anthem’s Jocie Adams or Seeger himself singing with Gillian Welch and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. It’s moments like these that make the kinship, history and stature of this festival what it is today.
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Joan Baez 
Arlo Guthrie 
Sam Beam – Iron & Wine 
Del McCoury 
Brett Dennen 
Campbell Brothers 
Guy Clark 
Dala 
The Low Anthem 
Joe Pug 
Tom Morello/The Nightwatchman 
Dave Rawlings Machine 
Deer Tick 
Elvis Perkins in Dearland 
Tao Rodriguez-Seeger 
Final Song led by Pete Seeger featuring everyone!
Final Song led by Pete Seeger featuring everyone!
Final Song led by Pete Seeger featuring everyone!
JamBase | Rhode Island
Go See Live Music!
Beer diplomacy
July 29th, 2009 |
No Comments
By Nick Bryant
BBC News
To the already long list of improbable White House get-togethers – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Princess Diana and John Travolta – we will be able to add the names of a black professor and a white policeman at the centre of a national uproar over race relations.
Cambridge police sergeant Jim Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar he arrested after responding to a report of a possible break-in at Mr Gates’s home, will sit down with Mr Obama on Thursday for a conciliatory beer.
Admittedly, it is tempting to view the invitation as the ultimate conflation of the age of Obama and the age of Oprah.
Aside from the choice of beverage, there is something very daytime television, something very soft focus, something very soft sofa, about this attempt to defuse the controversy.
Mr Gates was held for disorderly conduct, after he allegedly criticised police behaviour during the incident at the scholar’s home on 16 July. President Obama – a friend of Mr Gates – got involved in the case, saying that the police had acted "stupidily".
Yet startling and novel as Mr Obama’s attempts to diffuse the controversy are, he is merely upholding a long tradition. Presidential racial politics has often been conducted with gestures, symbols and photo opportunities, and this is but the latest example of a well-worn genre.
Obvious gestures
Even since the war, when black voters – or the Negro vote, as it was then known – became a potentially election-deciding force, presidents have embraced symbolic gestures, for the simple reason that they allow them to appeal to blacks without alienating whites.
Often the gestures have been rather obvious. Sometimes they have been so subtle as to be almost subliminal.
Alert to the growing strategic importance of the black vote in key northern battleground states, Dwight D Eisenhower invited the black contralto, Marian Anderson, to perform at his 1956 inauguration. It was a gesture especially redolent with meaning, since in 1939 she had been barred from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington.
His successor, John F Kennedy, happily extended a White House invitation to the world heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson, hoping it would compensate for his stubborn refusal to offer similar hospitality to Martin Luther King.
"Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race"
Black scholar arrest angers ObamaNot to be outdone by President Eisenhower, JFK also invited Marian Anderson to sing at his inaugural, but then went a few notable steps further by dancing with black women at the balls later on that night.
This kind of imagery has also been used in reverse, using more harmful symbolism.
Ronald Reagan delivered the first major speech of his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the town memorialised in the Hollywood movie, Mississippi Burning – where three civil-rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
The subject of his speech was "states rights", for some a euphemism for white supremacy.
In 1992, the then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, famously attacked the black singer Sister Souljah; and, more infamously, made sure he returned home to Little Rock mid-campaign to oversee the lethal injection of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain damaged black man who had killed a police officer.
Fears and grievances
These kind of techniques are so commonly deployed, largely because they can have such a dramatic effect.
Even as black leaders attacked him for his timidity on civil rights, Mr Kennedy enjoyed high approval ratings among black voters, partly because they had been such full participants in his inaugural celebrations.
Nothing underscored Bill Clinton’s moderate, New Democrat credentials than his attack on a black hip-hop artist.
So history suggests that it would be foolish to underestimate the reconciliatory potential of this Budweiser moment, however dubious it sounds.
After all, conflict resolution often turns on the mutual and public acknowledgement of each side’s fears and grievances, along with the photo-opportunity that accompanies it.
By extending this invitation, Mr Obama also appears to be signalling that neither Prof Gates nor Sgt Crowley were wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong.
The beer at the White House, then, marks an attempt to balance white fears about black lawlessness, whether real or imagined, with black middle-class grievances about white racism, whether real or imagined.
Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race. To be a history-defying candidate he became a history-denying figure, and left others to attach racial meaning to his candidacy.
Since winning the presidency, however, he has been much more expansive on the issue, starting with his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago, where he located his achievement in the context of Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, the climatic moments of the civil rights era.
During his recent speech before the civil-rights group, the NAACP, he made reference to these events to emphasise his theme of black self-improvement.
"I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere," he said accusingly.
Biblical language
The Gates controversy has been harder for him to deal with because it deals with more awkward history and touches on the ambiguous legacy of the civil rights era.
White support for the civil rights movement started to wane when blacks demanded affirmative action and reparations. Conversely, racial profiling is an area where blacks feel they are still treated as second-class citizens.
This controversy not only taps into that milieu, but inadvertently brings together two unlikely protagonists: Prof Gates, one of America’s most eloquent advocates of affirmative action, and Sgt Crowley, who for five years taught a class on racial profiling at a local police academy which cautioned against stereotyping.
When you reach back into American history, you often find that racial progress has often come when the case for reform or reconciliation has been framed in Biblical language or used faith-based allegories.
Rev King’s I Have a Dream speech is the most obvious and glorious example.
Now Barack Obama is conjuring up a modern-day parable: the story of the professor, the policeman and the president. But can he turn beer into progress
Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Beer diplomacy
July 29th, 2009 |
No Comments
By Nick Bryant
BBC News
To the already long list of improbable White House get-togethers – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Princess Diana and John Travolta – we will be able to add the names of a black professor and a white policeman at the centre of a national uproar over race relations.
Cambridge police sergeant Jim Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar he arrested after responding to a report of a possible break-in at Mr Gates’s home, will sit down with Mr Obama on Thursday for a conciliatory beer.
Admittedly, it is tempting to view the invitation as the ultimate conflation of the age of Obama and the age of Oprah.
Aside from the choice of beverage, there is something very daytime television, something very soft focus, something very soft sofa, about this attempt to defuse the controversy.
Mr Gates was held for disorderly conduct, after he allegedly criticised police behaviour during the incident at the scholar’s home on 16 July. President Obama – a friend of Mr Gates – got involved in the case, saying that the police had acted "stupidily".
Yet startling and novel as Mr Obama’s attempts to diffuse the controversy are, he is merely upholding a long tradition. Presidential racial politics has often been conducted with gestures, symbols and photo opportunities, and this is but the latest example of a well-worn genre.
Obvious gestures
Even since the war, when black voters – or the Negro vote, as it was then known – became a potentially election-deciding force, presidents have embraced symbolic gestures, for the simple reason that they allow them to appeal to blacks without alienating whites.
Often the gestures have been rather obvious. Sometimes they have been so subtle as to be almost subliminal.
Alert to the growing strategic importance of the black vote in key northern battleground states, Dwight D Eisenhower invited the black contralto, Marian Anderson, to perform at his 1956 inauguration. It was a gesture especially redolent with meaning, since in 1939 she had been barred from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington.
His successor, John F Kennedy, happily extended a White House invitation to the world heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson, hoping it would compensate for his stubborn refusal to offer similar hospitality to Martin Luther King.
"Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race"
Black scholar arrest angers ObamaNot to be outdone by President Eisenhower, JFK also invited Marian Anderson to sing at his inaugural, but then went a few notable steps further by dancing with black women at the balls later on that night.
This kind of imagery has also been used in reverse, using more harmful symbolism.
Ronald Reagan delivered the first major speech of his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the town memorialised in the Hollywood movie, Mississippi Burning – where three civil-rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
The subject of his speech was "states rights", for some a euphemism for white supremacy.
In 1992, the then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, famously attacked the black singer Sister Souljah; and, more infamously, made sure he returned home to Little Rock mid-campaign to oversee the lethal injection of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain damaged black man who had killed a police officer.
Fears and grievances
These kind of techniques are so commonly deployed, largely because they can have such a dramatic effect.
Even as black leaders attacked him for his timidity on civil rights, Mr Kennedy enjoyed high approval ratings among black voters, partly because they had been such full participants in his inaugural celebrations.
Nothing underscored Bill Clinton’s moderate, New Democrat credentials than his attack on a black hip-hop artist.
So history suggests that it would be foolish to underestimate the reconciliatory potential of this Budweiser moment, however dubious it sounds.
After all, conflict resolution often turns on the mutual and public acknowledgement of each side’s fears and grievances, along with the photo-opportunity that accompanies it.
By extending this invitation, Mr Obama also appears to be signalling that neither Prof Gates nor Sgt Crowley were wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong.
The beer at the White House, then, marks an attempt to balance white fears about black lawlessness, whether real or imagined, with black middle-class grievances about white racism, whether real or imagined.
Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama deliberately de-emphasised his race. To be a history-defying candidate he became a history-denying figure, and left others to attach racial meaning to his candidacy.
Since winning the presidency, however, he has been much more expansive on the issue, starting with his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago, where he located his achievement in the context of Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, the climatic moments of the civil rights era.
During his recent speech before the civil-rights group, the NAACP, he made reference to these events to emphasise his theme of black self-improvement.
"I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere," he said accusingly.
Biblical language
The Gates controversy has been harder for him to deal with because it deals with more awkward history and touches on the ambiguous legacy of the civil rights era.
White support for the civil rights movement started to wane when blacks demanded affirmative action and reparations. Conversely, racial profiling is an area where blacks feel they are still treated as second-class citizens.
This controversy not only taps into that milieu, but inadvertently brings together two unlikely protagonists: Prof Gates, one of America’s most eloquent advocates of affirmative action, and Sgt Crowley, who for five years taught a class on racial profiling at a local police academy which cautioned against stereotyping.
When you reach back into American history, you often find that racial progress has often come when the case for reform or reconciliation has been framed in Biblical language or used faith-based allegories.
Rev King’s I Have a Dream speech is the most obvious and glorious example.
Now Barack Obama is conjuring up a modern-day parable: the story of the professor, the policeman and the president. But can he turn beer into progress
Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
US pulls plug on ticker in Cuba
July 27th, 2009 |
No Comments
Sign flashing human rights messages at the US interests section in Havana goes blank
It was smuggled through the US diplomatic pouch, secretly installed across the facade of a building overlooking Havana and given a very specific mission: to annoy Fidel Castro.
The scrolling electronic sign, a low-tech version of New York’s Time Square ticker, escalated the US’s propaganda war with Cuba’s leader three years ago by flashing human rights messages in five-foot high crimson letters. But history, or more specifically Barack Obama, appears to have pulled the plug on the billboard which flitted across 25 windows of the US interests section in Havana. The screen has gone blank – the latest indication that half a century of enmity may be winding down.
The ticker, erected by the Bush administration in January 2006, infuriated Castro and provoked tit-for-tat diplomatic jousting which further strained relations.
“It was basically a contest of which side could annoy the other the most,” said Dan Erikson, author The Cuba Wars and an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. “The US described [the sign] as a way to convey information to the Cuban people but the real purpose was to irritate the Cuban government.”
It ran quotes from Martin Luther King (“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up”) and Abraham Lincoln (“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent”) as well as the likes of Lech Walesa.
It also blamed the island’s transport crisis and material privations on the communist authorities: “Some go around in Mercedes, some in Ladas, but the system forces almost everyone to hitch rides.” Bush officials said the ticker was a way to circumvent censorship and convey hope and liberty to a tropical gulag.
Castro said it was another assault on Cuba’s sovereignty by a hypocritical imperialist bully. Soon after it appeared he marched a million people past in protest, dug up the US mission’s car park and erected anti-US billboards and 138 huge black flags to commemorate “victims of US aggression” – and block the ticker.
The revolutionary leader said there would be no contact between Havana-based US diplomats and Cuba’s foreign ministry until the sign came down. Since then he has fallen ill and been succeeded as president by his brother, Raul, and Bush has been replaced by a Democrat who has spoken of a new start with the Caribbean island 90 miles off Florida.
After Obama’s election the Cuban government expressed a desire to normalise relations and took down its billboards around the US mission, though the flags remained. In recent months the White House lifted restrictions on remittances and travel for Cuban-Americans – a slight easing of the Kennedy-era economic embargo – and resumed talks with Havana over migration and disaster preparedness. The ticker disappeared several weeks ago but was reported only today. US diplomats told visitors there were “technical difficulties” and that there were no plans to switch it back soon, according to Reuters.
There is speculation that US and Cuban officials in Havana have resumed contact. The US state department and Cuban foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
The ticker made little visible impact on Cubans but became a tourist attraction. Cumbersome technology, however, diminished its impact. The sign was slow-moving, difficult to read and lacked Spanish accents and tildes.
For instance “año”, which means year, appeared as “ano”, which means anus.
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Jarvis Coffin: That’s the way it is (again).
July 21st, 2009 |
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When I heard that Walter Cronkite had died over the weekend I thought, get ready for all the “That’s the way it was” eulogies that…
Nelson Montana: In Defense of Pat Buchanan: Why Is the Left Attacking Its Greatest Ally?
July 18th, 2009 |
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What would you call someone who opposed the war in Iraq before it was popular to, who feels that the days of American Imperialism are over and who fought for civil rights back in the ’60s? You might call him a liberal; I call him Pat Buchanan.
Mike Lux: Martin Luther King, Jr. vs. Rodney King
July 14th, 2009 |
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There are two rather fundamentally opposed ways of viewing the political process, and they are playing themselves out right now across a range of important…
We will protect air travel – Miliband
July 14th, 2009 |
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Mass air travel will be preserved even in a low-carbon Britain because the government will find deeper emissions cuts in other areas, the climate change secretary Ed Miliband said today.
Dismissing demands for punitive sanctions to curb flying, Miliband said the government was determined to ensure that airline travel remains affordable for ordinary people.
In a Guardian interview, ahead of the publication of a white paper on climate change, Miliband said air travel would become more expensive as Britain tries to meet a G8 target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050. But he said it would be wrong to impose the target on airlines, which will be covered by the European Emissions Trading Scheme from 2012 if they fly to and from the EU.
“Where I disagree with other people on aviation is if you did 80% cuts across the board, as some people have called for on aviation, you would go back to 1974 levels of flying,” he said. “I don’t want to have a situation where only rich people can afford to fly.”
Miliband spoke of the importance of flying for his constituents in Doncaster which has benefited after an RAF airbase was turned into an international airport in 2005. “People in my constituency have benefited from being able to have foreign travel which, 40 years ago, the middle classes took for granted,” he said. “There are sacrifices and changes in lifestyle necessary. But the job of government is to facilitate them and understand people’s lives and what they value.”
The pledge by Miliband echoes remarks by Tony Blair in 2007 who said it would be wrong to impose “unrealistic targets” on airline travellers. Britain has pledged to bring its aviation emissions down to 2005 levels by 2050.
Miliband’s remarks are designed to illustrate the government’s overall approach to meeting the 2050 target which will not involve imposing a blanket 80% cut on all areas of the economy. The white paper is expected to build on government plans to tolerate relatively high emissions in one area if action is taken in other areas by, for example, lagging lofts and driving less. Carbon levels have already been brought down from 1990 levels, the benchmark for global climate talks. So far they have been reduced by 22% and are due to come down by 34% by 2020, with a target of at least 80% due in 2050.
The government has already announced that will be achieved by dividing the economy into a series of sectors. The biggest is power, with others including transport, homes, work places and agriculture.
Miliband will outline on Wednesday how much carbon Britain is emitting in each area and will suggest steps to bring them down. He refused to outline the details of his white paper out of respect to John Bercow, the new Commons speaker, who has demanded ministers make announcements first to parliament. But he said his philosophy is to outline a vision of “green hope” – with jobs in green technology and a safer country – not “green despair”.
“If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare’ people would not have followed him,” Miliband said, quoting someone he met at the Guardian’s recent Manchester climate change summit. “You have to persuade people that, yes, there are costs of not acting but also there is a vision of society at the end of this: more secure, more prosperous, fairer better quality of life. All those things are crucial to persuade people to take the leap.
“All our research indicates that people in Britain are not climate change deniers. But now they are persuaded it is a problem, you have to start offering them a vision about how you tackle the problem.”
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Hope amid horror
July 11th, 2009 |
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By Komla Dumor
BBC World Service, Cape Coast
The 17th Century Cape Coast Castle overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Ghana is a testament to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.
A few metres below where I am sitting, thousands of black African captives were kept in conditions that make me shudder even to imagine.
They were chained, naked and hungry in hot filthy conditions – waiting for slave ships that would cart millions to a life of degradation and humiliation.
As I went below into the darkness of the cells, those who came through here whispered stories to me in the silence – women clutching crying babies, groans of pain, and tears, yes, so many tears.
I saw the faces of those dragged and whipped, kicking and screaming through the door of no-return into the belly of a slave ship.
This is a desolate, dark, miserable place.
I have been to the Cape Coast Castle before and it is always traumatic.
But in this place of human shame there is a light.
It is a tiny square in the corner of the high wall that the architects of this place provided to ventilate the thousands they so insensitively crammed into this dungeon – through it a single powerful stream of light shines.
No ordinary visitor
Two centuries after the first major attempt to end the slave trade, another visitor with an African father and a white American mother will stand close to where I am and perhaps battle with the same emotions.
But he is no ordinary visitor – Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.
"Coming to Ghana is, for many African Americans, the equivalent of a spiritual journey"
He is the man who is widely seen to embody the hopes a generation of black, white, Hispanic and Asian people around the world.
The people of Ghana are extremely excited about President Obama’s arrival.
His pictures are everywhere. Songs have been written in his honour.
His choice of Ghana is significant on many levels.
Ghana was the first black African country to attain independence from British rule in 1957 – an inspiration to others across the continent.
At the time, many African Americans, burdened by segregation and discrimination, looked to Ghana and its founder Kwame Nkrumah as a beacon of hope.
The story is told of Vice-President Richard Nixon – the US guest of honour at our independence celebrations – who greeted a well-dressed black man with the question: "So how does it feel to be free"
The man replied: "I don’t know… I am from Alabama."
Frustration
The local papers have been running pictures of a young Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King celebrating Ghana’s independence.
Coming to Ghana is, for many African Americans, the equivalent of a spiritual journey so common to all faiths.
Generations of African American doctors, lawyers teachers and educators still call Ghana home.
At independence, Kwame Nkrumah declared that this was "Our chance to show the world that… the black man can manage his own affairs."
Decades later we are still struggling to prove it.
The frustration runs deep across Africa, from Ghana through Nigeria to Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Contemporary politics does not take notice of something as vague as the word "hope".
The Obama presidency will be measured by how he deals with a global economic crisis, the threat of terrorism and the spiral of environmental degradation.
It would be naive for Africans to assume that the election of Barak Obama means an economic windfall for the continent or that the president does not have a strategic interest in securing this region’s oil.
That ‘thing’
Bill Clinton and George Bush both came to Ghana during their presidencies.
Nonetheless, the emotion involved with the arrival of Barak Obama is immeasurable.
What Barak Obama represents is that "thing" – the thing that Maya Angelou says "Makes the caged bird sing."
I see it in the faces of young girls from northern Ghana who carry back-breaking loads for a few cents in the markets clutching dreams of owning their own business.
I see it in the face of the taxi-driver who works extra hours so his children can go to a better school than the one he attended.
I’ve seen the same look on the face of a young doctor at Korle Bu teaching hospital who is overworked and underpaid and still delivers some of the best medical practice in Africa.
They do not want a handout, they just want a fair chance to achieve their potential.
That look is called "enyidaso" in the Akan language of West Africa.
It is the light that shone hundreds of years ago on the tear-stained faces of the human beings who passed through the Cape Coast dungeons.
Barak Obama calls it "hope."
Komla Dumor presents BBC World Service’s The World Today programme. Born and raised in Ghana, he worked for Accra-based Joy FM, Ghana’s leading commercial radio station before joining the BBC.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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