Eleven Down And Twenty Three To Go

In light of North Carolina's moratorium on executions it is
the eleventh state to halt executions until it changes the
way such punishment is adminstered. With such a high
percentage of states addressing this issue, should the other
twenty-three states that have capital punishment follow
suit? Check out the article below.



A judge Thursday blocked two executions in North Carolina, creating a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the state until it changes its lethal injection procedure.The ruling by Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens in Raleigh means that 11 states, including California, have now halted executions stemming from challenges to lethal injection.

Thursday's decision is perhaps the strongest example of the complications that have arisen from attempts by prison officials around the country to "medicalize" the execution procedure, said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno. North Carolina, like 36 other states, uses a three-drug combination to execute inmates who are strapped to a gurney.

A North Carolina law mandates that a doctor be present at executions — in part to make sure that the condemned person is fully anesthetized before being put to death. But professional medical associations and ethics boards nationally and in many states, including North Carolina, have strongly advised physicians not to participate in executions.Physicians, until recently, helped monitor a patient's vital signs at the execution chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Last week, however, the state medical board said that although a doctor could be present, any other participation violated its ethics policy. On Wednesday, state corrections officials attempted to get around that problem by telling Judge Stephens that the doctor would be present but would not supervise or participate in the injection of any drugs or the monitoring of the prisoner's medical condition.

They said the key roles would be played by a registered nurse and an emergency medical technician. But Stephens, a former prosecutor, ruled that the state's "current position is different" than the one it has taken in past executions. "This current procedure and protocol eliminates the physician's participation in an execution," and consequently it violates state law, the judge ruled.

He said prison officials could not simply change the protocol for executions without the approval of the governor and other state officials. Stephens' ruling came one day before the state was to execute Marcus R. Robinson and two days after 30 North Carolina legislators asked Gov. Mike Easley to declare a death penalty moratorium until the state thoroughly reviewed its lethal injection procedure.



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"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To learn
more and hear excerpts from this
treasured program,
click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Have Patience-Have Hope!

Now if your one that believes that patience is a virtue then the
article below should reinforce that belief.


HOUSTON — On an April night in 1975, 22-year-old college student Mike McMahan and his friend Deia Sutton were robbed at gunpoint, then shot near a riverbank south of downtown Dallas. McMahan died after one of the assailants, Ronald Chambers, bludgeoned him with the butt of a shotgun.

Sutton was left for dead after the second attacker, Clarence Williams, choked and tried to drown her in the river. She dragged herself to a hotel and called police.Williams and Chambers were arrested within days of the attack. Williams is serving two life sentences. Chambers was sentenced to death in 1976 by a jury that took 15 minutes to convict him.

Thirty-one years and three trials later, Chambers is still on death row, Texas' longest-serving death house inmate. Last week, three days before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection, Chambers won a temporary reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court, which is considering another case that could affect his.

"It's like there's no end in sight," Mike McMahan's sister, Janna, said from her home in Washington state. "There's never any peace with this, but you want to put that fight behind; you want that chapter over with. This has been never-ending, but no way in hell will I ever give up."Chambers has been on death row three times longer than the U.S. average of about a decade between sentencing and execution.

A number of inmates have been on death row for more than 20 years, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. In Texas, 15 of the 391 inmates on death row have awaited execution for more than 25 years; in California, 32 of the 655 condemned have been there more than 25 years. The longest-serving death row inmate in the U.S. is Gary Alvord, a Florida killer sentenced to death in 1974.

Though Chambers, the Texas inmate, hasn't volunteered to die or abandon his appeals, neither has he done anything to slow the case as it wound through the courts, said his lawyer, James Volberding. "This is how the system works. He has not unnecessarily dragged out his case, but here he is."


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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of its
Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear excerpts
from this treasured program,
click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Forty Years To Get To Super Bowl.

This Sunday history will be made when not one but two African American coaches battle it out for footballs highest honor, the coveted Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLI. This is history in the making at it's finest but what i'd like to know is how come it took
so long? The article below may shed some light.



The presence of two black head coaches at the Super Bowl isn't a time for African Americans to be excited, it's a time for all Americans to be ashamed. This would have been a great story back when the Roman numerals consisted of I's and Vs and Xs. But now there's an L, as in XLI, as in 41. It shouldn't have taken so long.

It's a reminder of just how slowly the wheels of racial equality move. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law three years before the first Super Bowl and here we are, more than four decades later, finally seeing its impact in this little sector of our society.

I'm happy for Chicago's Lovie Smith and Indianapolis' Tony Dungy, but I can't help but wonder how many great African American football minds that came before them could have done the same thing, had they not been explicitly or implicitly denied the chance to be head coaches because of the color of their skin.

That's why the real positive sign in the NFL was posted Monday, when the Pittsburgh Steelers named Mike Tomlin head coach. For a franchise that has had only two head coaches since 1969 to put a roster still stocked with last season's championship players into the hands of a 34-year-old African American with one year's experience as an NFL defensive coordinator — now that's a breakthrough.

A black coach reaching the Super Bowl was inevitable. A young black coach getting one of the best jobs in the league is evidence of equal opportunity. For years, one of the explanations given for the paucity of black coaching hires was that African Americans lacked long-term experience as coordinators. But Tomlin's predecessor, Bill Cowher, was only 34 when the Steelers hired him in 1992. And Eric Mangini was a 35-year-old who'd spent one year as Bill Belichick's defensive coordinator in New England before the New York Jets made him their head coach last year.

Just as I viewed the 1997 hiring of Tubby Smith to occupy the Kentucky basketball head-coaching job once held by the racist Adolph Rupp as a more important occasion than Georgetown's John Thompson's becoming the first black NCAA championship basketball coach in 1984, Tomlin's hire means more to me than Dungy's or Lovie Smith's becoming the first black Super Bowl coaching victor.

Tomlin is a living, breathing representation of Dungy's legacy, of much greater value than a silver Lombardi Trophy. Tomlin was an assistant coach under Dungy at Tampa Bay and now is the latest member of the Dungy coaching tree — which includes Lovie Smith and Kansas City Coach Herm Edwards — to get his own head-coaching job.


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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
the story of the Civil Rights movement
and the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To learn more
and hear excerpts from this treasured program,
click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Locked Out Of The Projects?

Officials in New Orleans have locked out returning residents
of low-income housing projects. Sounds to me like the perfect
way to justify urban cleansing. But check out the article below.


NEW ORLEANS — To some, the four sprawling three-story brick complexes may not look like real estate worth fighting over. But with inhabitable housing of any kind at a premium here, the fate of New Orleans' four largest public housing complexes — St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte — is at the center of another battle in the city's turbulent efforts to reshape its future.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans have approved plans to demolish these complexes, landmarks in their neighborhoods, and replace them with lower-density apartment clusters for mixed-income residents. Their decision has brought relentless opposition from former tenants who insist they want to restore their lives in their old homes.

*Residents storm gates.

Last week, residents ignored "No Trespassing" signs and stormed through unlocked gates and torn barbed-wire fences into the St. Bernard complex to clean their units. But Monday, lawyers for the city's public housing agency filed illegal-entry and property-damage claims against those trying to halt the public housing demolition. They are seeking a court order to bar entry into any of the projects without the agency's approval.

Housing officials argue that the apartments are too badly damaged to repair. They insist that redevelopment would improve tenants' lives by eliminating crime-infested dens of concentrated poverty. "People deserve better than this," said Jereon "Jerry" Brown, a Washington-based spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as he showed reporters flood-damaged and ransacked units at Lafitte last month. "If they could just be patient. A mixed-income neighborhood can better attract businesses and better schools. It's all tied together."

"It's not just about bricks and mortar," said C. Donald Babers, the New Orleans housing authority's federally appointed administrator, who accompanied Brown. "We're looking at quality of life for our families."Dressed in a tailored suit and a hat, and wearing a diamond-studded gold ring on each hand, Babers did not enter the mold-crusted apartments, citing respiratory concerns.

*'It's definitely about race'

But advocates for public housing — where about 5,100 people lived before Katrina, and where some 1,200 have since returned — insist that the complexes were safe during past hurricanes because they were solidly built of steel, concrete and brick. Many apartments escaped flooding from Hurricane Katrina.

The advocates also argue that tearing them down prevents a key segment of the city's workforce from returning, and excludes thousands from the city's rebuilding process. Nearly all the families who lived in New Orleans public housing were African Americans on low incomes.

"It's definitely about race and class," said Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of Advancement Project, a Washington-based civil rights and racial justice group that is also representing tenants in a class-action lawsuit seeking to restore them to their apartments. "If you look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina, the people who were residents of public housing were the people who were left behind at the Superdome and Convention Center, and now they are the same people who are being locked out."*



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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
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and the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To learn more
and hear excerpts from this treasured program,
click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

The Price of Good Intentions

*In her book Open Wide the Freedom Gates, Dorothy Height, one of the doyennes of the civil rights movements of the 50's and 60's, describes a meeting wherein women of the Mississippi delta talked openly about the effects of certain federal programs on their lives.

Discussing the minimum wage, one woman is quoted as saying, "When minimum wage came in, our hours were shortened. So now instead of more adequate pay, we do double the work in half the time." It is noteworthy that this meeting was not sponsored by a republican club, but the National Council of Negro Women and was moderated by Fannie Lou Hamer, another elder of the movement. Neither was the woman quoted some ivory tower intellectual or partisan gun slinger. She was one of the real-life people actually affected by minimum wage laws as opposed to so many of us that merely talk about such things in the abstract.

In very plain language, the woman in Height's story gives testimony that economic laws remain true, and their effect on the lives of people are real regardless of the pronouncements of politicians.

Amidst promises to lift legions of low wage workers out of poverty, the 110th Congress recently passed an increase in the minimum wage, a bill the president has indicated he will sign providing there are protections for business owners included in the legislation. Let us put aside for the moment the fact that the overwhelming majority of minimum wage earners do not live in poverty, do not raise families on their salaries and do not work full-time.

As the Mississippi woman's story attests, a minimum wage increase is more likely to actually harm those it is intended to help. We may wish it differently, but the laws of economics, which are neither cruel nor kind, say differently. Federal and state governments are perfectly able to set the price of labor. They are, however, unable to change the VALUE of labor and business owners, like all consumers, seek value for their money.

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Get your copy of the award winning King:

"From Atlanta to the Mountain top.

"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells

the story of the Civil Rights movement

and the life of its Drum Major for Peace,

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To learn more

and hear excerpts from this treasured program,

click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

The Many Reasons For Reparation

I often wonder if I'll be around to see compensation paid for the slavery that my ancestors endured. Well its good to see that there are other folks out there that feel very strongly about reparation for African Americans.



"Stop living in the past and move on after slavery!" This is what we often tell African Americans. Well we certainly forced them to move on. We moved on to Black Codes, Jim Crow, lynching, de facto segregation. We moved on to White knights hiding behind ghosts of themselves while religiously lighting crosses in praise of a Satan they were fooled into thinking was God. We moved on to the cities of Tulsa, St. Louis, and Rosewood where we, apparently, were unaffected by the burned and seared flesh of Black people.

We moved on to laws that upheld racial oppression over and over again. We moved on to the many Black men placed on death row because they fit the description. We moved on and made sure that Emmitt Till would not be the last fourteen-year-old Black child whose unrecognizable corpse was the price paid for supposedly whistling at a White woman. We moved on to exclude African Americans from rights of democracy by blocking avenues to employment, education, housing, and civil rights.

In the final decade of the last century the slow, consistent racial apocalypse started showing signs of even more things to come when a Black man's head was seen rolling behind a pick up truck in Jasper, Texas. By the time we racially profiled our way from Texas to New York we find a city plagued with plungers and forty-one bullets. Every time Black people have tried leaving the shackles of slavery behind, we find that we were the ones that couldn't stop living in the past.

How dare our own racial arrogance say that reparations are too much of an apology for the Black lives we've tormented. How dare we simultaneously declare that the statue of limitations has expired for African Americans yet is limitless for other people in the world whom are non-Black. Half of the nations in this world are in the midst of fighting long and hard battles to get justice for things that happened in the past. Some of these battles have roots that go back further than the birth of the United States.

African Americans' quest for justice is looked down upon in comparison to ethnic groups like Jews and Palestinians. Black people would be ridiculed as unrealistic and outlandish if they were to ask for a piece of land like the Jews and Palestinians have done and are doing. Unlike the Jews and Palestinians, at least African Americans are asking rather than forcing us through the barrel of a gun to take responsibility.

The international stage has taken issues of reparations much more seriously than we have. The Jews received statehood as a form of reparations for their brothers and sisters who were exterminated. Coincidentally, many Jews who immigrated to Israel and benefited from reparations were not even close to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Although millions of those whom the reparations were intended for died, that didn't mean that their death equaled an expired statue of limitations for their descendents who were left to deal with the psychological consequences and the nagging fear of what it means to be hunted down and collectively violated because of ethnicity.

Jews even went on to win further reparations through lawsuits against corporations such as banks. Again, these demands for justice were instigated by a generation of Jews whom had never even lived in Germany, let alone been there during the Holocaust. The Jewish experience serves as a prime example as to why reparations for African Americans are not unrealistic and outlandish.



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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top."
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
the story of the Civil Rights movement
and the life of itsDrum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To
learn more and hear excerpts
from this treasured program,
clickhere:http://www.kingprogram.net/
.

Brother Versus Brother In Super Bowl XLl

TWO BLACK MEN MAKE NFL HISTORY: Dungy and Smith to coach in Super Bowl Steelers hire African American head coach.
*History was made Sunday afternoon when the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts won their respective NFC and AFC championship games. The Colts beat the New England Patriots 38-34 after being down 21-3 in the 1st quarter. Earlier, the Bears crushed the New Orleans Saints 39-14. By winning, the Colts and Bears, whose head coaches are black, will play each other for the NFL championship in the upcoming Super Bowl.

Wait a minute, did we say both team's coaches are black?! Yes, we sure did. It'll be the first time in history that not only will an African American head coach participate in the Super Bowl, but we'll get to see 2 black coaches go head to head in sport's biggest spectacle. That means no matter what who comes out on top, a black man will coach the winning team.

"It means a lot," Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy said. "I'm very proud to represent African-American coaches, but more than that, it's about the Indianapolis Colts."

"Being the first black coach to lead this team , of course our players knew about it and they wanted to help us make history," Lovie Smith, the Chicago Bears' head coach said. "So I feel blessed to be in that position. Huge congrats from EUR to coach Dungy and coach Smith. One of them is going to be victorious on Sunday, February 4 in Miami.

Meanwhile, another black man has joined the coaching ranks of the NFL. Yesterday, the Pittsburgh Steelers named Minneapolis Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin their next head coach, replacing Bill Cowher who retired after coaching the Steelers for 15 years.

Fox Sports reports that the two sides have agreed to terms on a multi-year deal that is believed to be comparable to the four-year, $10 million deal Cam Cameron reached with the Miami Dolphins. The Steelers are expected to officially announce Tomlin as their coach today.


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Get your copy of the award winning
King:From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
the story of the Civil Rights movement
and the life of itsDrum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.To learn more
and hearexcerpts from this treasured program,
clickhere:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Yesterday's Issues-Today's Black Health Problems

http://www.reparationsthecure.org/articles/schafer1.shtmlToday's article takes a look at how our past reflects on Black folks
health problems of today.



The Survivors That slavery's survivors have suffered and continue to suffer the effects of slavery in the form of health problems far above the national average seems very clear. The problems are many: stress, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and stroke, cancer, trauma from gunshot wounds and knifings, drug addiction, neonatal deaths, obesity, and social problems such as teen pregnancies and gang affiliations.

How did it happen that a genetically dominant, self-sustaining group of independent people, who survived ocean voyages in the hold of slave ships where only 3% lived, has become this country's "sickest" people? I wondered, as an emergency room nurse, why I was seeing so many Blacks afflicted with disabling diseases when, as the descendants of the strongest survivors of the African Holocaust, they should be the healthiest of all people?

Africans were torn from their homeland, thrown into dungeons, shackled in the hold of a slave ship for months, suffered starvation, illness, pain and death. The survivors were sold like cattle to slavemasters and robbed of their dignity, their names, their heritage, and their pride. The women were raped or "bred", were separated from their men, and their children were sold at will. "House slaves" were pitted against "field slaves," light-skinned against dark-skinned, old against the young. The men were beaten into submission. Learned habits of repressed anger, frustration, dependency on the white slavermaster and fear of the white establishment continue to plague the community, passed from parents to child in some malignant heritage.


Black Realities

Today this rage and powerlessness in Black youth being raised in single parent households (and now a growing number who are being raised by grandparents because of incarcerated or drug addicted mothers) in poverty conditions, translates directly into gang affiliation, school dropout, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and early death. Rather than offering help, America fills its jails with people of color, mostly Black. According to Rev. Jesse Jackson, 1 of 3 African American men aged 20-29 is in jail or prison or on parole or probation. Now the number of Black women behind bars is growing rapidly at a rate of 1 in 5. Because of unjust sentencing laws, more than 90% of those in jail on mandatory drug sentences are young African Americans and Latinos.

Devastating to African Americans today are the social and psychological effects of slavery and the continued myth of white supremacy. Newspapers, magazines, movies and television continue to depict Blacks as negative, comedic or threatening. Michael Medved, writing in Imprimis, says, "The true power of the media is the ability to redefine reality, to alter our expectations about what constitutes normal life." This is most evident in the portrayal of Blacks in the media. Consider the perception of police. A white woman grows up believing the police are her friends; you call them if you're in trouble. A Black woman says she never ever thought the police were her friends; when they show up in the community, it means trouble. A Black man knows that he is more likely to be pulled over by the police if he is driving down the street than a white man who is driving down the street. Black Los Angeles Prosecutor Chris Darden says he's not only been mistaken for the defendant's attorney in a courtroom, but has also been thought to be the defendant because of his color.

In my emergency room experiences, I've seen this discrimination in practice. A Black man was arrested and tested for alcohol following a traffic accident because police assumed the other driver, a white man, was driving the Mercedes that belonged to the Black man. An 18 year old white girl, driving drunk and without a seatbelt, demolished a car that hit a pole. She was sent home with doting parents after a sympathetic police interview. At the same time, a Black man driving drunk, also in a one-car collision with a curb, was handcuffed and taken to jail.



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Get your copy of the award winning King:
From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of its
Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learnmore and hear
excerpts from this treasured program,
clickhere:http://www.kingprogram.net/

New Information On The Segregation Of The American Teacher

This article done by Harvard says that not all teachers are suited to
teach in our schools and is a problem that needs addressing.


Data from a survey of over 1,000 teachers in K-12 public schools across the country show that our teaching force — like public school students — is largely segregated. Teachers of different races are teaching students of very different racial composition, adding an extra dimension to growing student racial segregation.

The Civil Rights Project’s research has consistently documented the growing segregation of American public school students. Understanding racial equity in schools requires that we understand who the teachers are, whether they are products of segregated schools, what kind of schools they work in, and how faculty racial patterns relate to student segregation. There is a great deal of discussion but little systematic national evidence on the racial experiences and attitudes of teachers. This unique national survey offers us a chance to explore those issues in this and forthcoming reports.

This report shows that in an increasingly segregated national system of schools, faculty segregation tends to add to — rather than counteract — the separation of students. We see that the white teachers, who continue to dominate the teaching profession, tend to grow up with little racial/ethnic diversity in their own education or experience. Not only did white teachers, on average, attend schools when they were elementary school students that were over 90% white, they are currently teaching in schools where almost 90% of their faculty colleagues are white and over 70% of students are white.

“America’s public schools and schools of education must work to create a diverse teaching force to serve a changing nation and assure that all schools seek integrated faculties to better prepare our students,” commented Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project.
Additional findings include:

White teachers teach in schools with fewer poor and English Language Learner students. The typical black teacher teaches in a school were nearly three-fifths of students are from low-income families while the average white teacher has only 35% of low-income students.
Latino and Asian teachers are in schools that educate more than twice the share of English Language Learners than white teachers.

The South has the most diverse teaching force of any region in the country, along with the most integrated students. One-quarter of southern teachers are nonwhite, and 19% of southern teachers are African-American. Early concerns about the loss of African American teachers at the beginning of desegregation in the South no longer holds.

The West is the only region of the country with a sizeable percentage (11%) of Latino teachers. The majority of students in the West are nonwhite, with a large share of Latino students.
Nonwhite teachers and teachers that teach in schools with high percentages of minority and/or poor students are more likely to report that they are contemplating switching schools or careers.


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"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn
more and hear excerpts from this
treasured program, click
here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Students Use Civil Rights Tactics o Combat Global Warming

The article below from ABC News would make the leaders of the
past civil rights movement proud in that their strategies for
accomplishing and overcoming issues are still very potent tools.



At Middlebury College in eco-friendly Vermont, forward-thinking students convinced an austere board of trustees that one of the biggest threats to the college — and to the world — is global warming.

Armed with research and a portfolio of options, the students were a powerful voice in the college's decision to invest $11 million in a biomass plant — one that is fueled by wood chips, grass pellets and a self-sustaining willow forest.

By 2012, the college will be "carbon neutral" — producing all of its own clean energy locally. Long known for its progressive outlook, Middlebury is now at the forefront of the student "climate change" movement.

"This is a learning community and when the students became the consultants, it turned the project on its head," said Nan Jenks-Jay, dean of environmental affairs, who chaired the student-faculty carbon reduction committee. "They had the most knowledge."

Global warming is cool — so trendy, in fact, that concepts like carbon offsetting and carbon neutrality are growing in popularity on college campuses, fueled by new student activism that looks a lot like the old civil rights movement.

Carbon offsets are the new recycling. Like war bonds during World War II, they allow an American household or an institution to invest in a noble cause — new technologies to combat global warming.


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Get your copy of the award winning
King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop.
"It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells
the story of the Civil Rights movement
and the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn more
and hear excerpts from this treasured
program, click here:http://www.kingprogram.net/

Civil Wrongs: Pelosi Lobbying Reform Must Have Dr. King Rolling In His Grave

Now that she's Speaker of the House will Nancy Pelosi try to silence the voice coming from the pulpit? The article below brings light to legislation that our new Madam Speaker is trying to sneak one in while the country is distracted by war and the upcoming Presidential race.



On Monday, Americans of every political stripe took the occasion to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — in particular his efforts to mobilize blacks and other minorities into a powerful political force to effect changes in the nation’s civil rights laws. It is, however, the height of irony — or hypocrisy, depending on your point of view — that many of the very same lawmakers who claim unto themselves the exclusive right to speak for the late civil rights leader and tailor his message to fit their political whims were simultaneously working to pass legislation that would have constrained his ability to promote it himself.

Camouflaging their true intentions under the cloak of “lobbying reform,” newly installed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her forces have proposed legislation greatly expanding the scope of lobbying regulation to the point where churches, pastors, religious denominations, public interest organizations, civic organizations and other nonprofit groups would have to register — and be regulated — as lobbyists. It is precisely the sort of religious movement ginned up into a political pressure group that King so masterfully oversaw and used to advance the cause of civil rights. But under the so-called Lobbying Reform Bill, King would have been prevented from “gathering support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, as he addressed the social issues from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., he might well have had to register as a lobbyist.”

As has been chronicled before, Pelosi’s bill, which claims to target corruption, actually distills down to an effort to use the power of federal law to punish and silence critics of herself and her party while offering loopholes big enough to drive a truck through for labor unions and the sort of political organizations that characteristically back Democrats.


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Get your copy of the award winning
"King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop. "
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells the
story of the Civil Rights movement and
the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn
more and hear excerpts from this
treasured program, click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Just What Are Civil Rights?

The article below taken from Cornell Law School website is an overview of legislation passed more than one-hundred and fifty years ago. This legislation has been amended over the years most recently due to theCivil Rights Movement and Dr. King


A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, assembly, the right to vote, freedom from involuntary servitude, and the right to equality in public places. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. Statutes have been enacted to prevent discrimination based on a persons race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin and in some instances sexual preference.

The most important expansion of civil rights in the United States was the enactment of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States. See U.S. Const. amend. XIII.

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxiii.html) In response to the 13th Amendment, various states enacted "black codes" which were intended to limit the civil rights of the newly free slaves. In 1868 the 14th Amendment was passed to counter the "black codes" and ensure that no state "shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States . . . [or] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, [or] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." See U.S. Const. amend. XIV.

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxiv.html) Congress was also given the power by section five of the Fourteenth Amendment to pass any laws needed for its enforcement. During the "reconstruction era" that followed Congress enacted numerous civil rights statutes. Many of these statutes are still in force today and protect individuals from discrimination and from the deprivation of their civil rights. [[USC:42:1981Section 1981 of Title 42 (Equal Rights Under the Law)] protects individuals from discrimination based on race in making and enforcing contracts, participating in lawsuits, and giving evidence. See 42 U.S.C. § 1981.Other statutes, derived from acts of the reconstruction era, that protect against discrimination include: Civil Action For Deprivation of Rights (See 42 U.S.C. § 1983) Conspiracies to Interfere With Civil Rights (See [[USC:42:198542 U.S.C. § 1985]); Conspiracy Against Rights of Citizens (See 18 U.S.C. § 241); Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, (See 18 U.S.C. § 242); The Jurisdictional Statue for Civil Rights Cases (See 28 U.S.C. § 1443); Peonage Abolished (See 42 U.S.C. § 1994).

This Article Continues Here.



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Rights movement andthe life of its Drum
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Civil Rights History -- A Timeline

In the wake of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King's birthday, January 15, CBS News has published a timeline of the modern civil rights movement. Below is an excerpt:

May 17, 1954
School segregation is widely accepted throughout the United States until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, deciding unanimously that separated educational facilities are inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. The ruling overthrows the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had set the "separate but equal" precedent

Dec. 1, 1955
Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old black seamstress, is arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man and move to the "negro" section near the back of the city bus. The next day several black leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., stage a boycott of the bus system. The protest - called the Montgomery Bus Boycott - continues for more than a year.

Dec. 21, 1956
Basing its decision on Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court says the Montgomery bus segregation rule violates the constitution. The Montgomery Bus Boycott - and the bus system's segregation, end.

Sept. 23, 1957
President Dwight Eisenhower orders 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers and 10,000 National Guardsmen to restore order to Little Rock, Ark., and escort nine black students into the previously all-white Central High School, which was to be desegregated. Weeks earlier, then Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called in the National Guard to surround the school and prevent the black students from entering.

February 1960
The sit-in protests - a movement mostly organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - begins at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and spreads nationwide. Joseph McNeill, a black college student, had been refused service at the lunch counter. The act sparks a growing movement of nonviolent protest and forces the desegregation at many different public facilities.

May 1961
The Congress of Racial Equality begins a two-year movement of "freedom rides" in Washington, D.C. White and black people travel by bus throughout the South to challenge segregation of interstate transportation. More than 70,000 people participate in the protest and more than 3,500 are arrested.

1962
President John Kennedy, facing constant resistance from many Southern whites on integration, orders Federal Marshals to escort James Meredith to the campus of the University of Mississippi so Meredith, who is black, can enroll. A riot breaks out before the National Guard can arrive to reinforce the marshals. Two students are killed.

April 12, 1963
Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy lead a demonstration through the streets of Birmingham, Ala., and toward city hall to protest the city's segregation laws. Birmingham police turn fire hoses and police dogs on the crowds, and hundreds are fined and imprisoned, including King, Shuttlesworth and Abernathy.

June 12, 1963
NAACP leader Medgar Evers is murdered as he enters his home in Jackson, Miss. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, with both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.

Aug. 28, 1963
More than 250,000 people converge on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington to hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his memorable "I Have a Dream" speech, which urges support for pending civil rights legislation.

Sep. 15, 1963
Four young girls attending Sunday school are killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Riots break out across the city, resulting in the deaths of two more black children.

July 2, 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which intends to end discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin. It is often called the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War.

Feb. 21, 1965
Black nationalist leader Malcolm X is shot to death during a rally of his followers at a Harlem ballroom. The militant leader, who had left the Nation of Islam (Black Islam) to found the Organization of Afro-American Unity, had been in a bitter dispute with members of his former organization. Three Black Muslims are convicted for his murder.

March 21, 1965
Martin Luther King leads a successful five-day, 50-mile march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital Montgomery. Thousands of civil rights marchers joined in the walk demanding voter registration rights.

Aug. 6, 1965
Congress passes, and President Lyndon Johnson signs, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which makes it easier for southern blacks to register to vote by eliminating literacy tests as a prerequisite to vote.

Aug. 11-16, 1965
The southwestern district of Los Angeles - Watts - erupts in fire, looting and violent protests as thousands of black people take to the streets to demonstrate against long-standing social injustices. The riots leave 34 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on the balcony outside his room of the Lorraine Motel. James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the crime, but to this day questions still circulate of a conspiracy involving more people.

This article/timeline continues HERE.


Get your copy of the award winning
"King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop."
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells the
story of the Civil Rights movement and
the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn
more and hear excerpts from this
treasured program, click here:
www.KingProgram.net

Happy King Day! -- A collection of news and events surrounding today’s holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A collection of more than 600 papers, speeches and documents from Dr. Martin Luther King will go on display in Atlanta today, his 78th birthday, for the first time in history.

The exhibit - a partial display of more than 10,000 King papers and books that Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin helped privately acquire for $32 million last summer from Sotheby's auction house - will be open at the Atlanta History Center until May 13 and includes an early draft of King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech.

"Atlanta is really embracing its own history by embracing Dr. King and his legacy," Franklin said, according to the AP. "People will see the papers and be able to relate to them and experience the movement through Dr. King's eyes and through his words."

After the exhibit, all the papers will be housed at the Robert W. Woodruff Library on the campus of the Atlanta University Center, which includes Morehouse College. For MORE, click HERE.



Get your copy of the award winning
"King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop."
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells the
story of the Civil Rights movement and
the life of its Drum Major for Peace,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn
more and hear excerpts from this
treasured program, click here:
www.KingProgram.net

MLK Day Rebellion to Overthrow Black Leaders

If one NC (North Carolina) minister has his way come January 15th (Martin Luther King Holiday) some black leaders will be hearing the words of Donald Trump: "You're Fired!!!"

Tired of the disconnection between "black leadership" and the grassroot black community, Min. Paul Scott, founder of the Durham NC based Messianic Afrikan Nation has started the "MLK (Mass Leader Kick-out) Day Rebellion.

He is asking black people in cities across the country to demand that the Black leaders that are out of touch with their communities to step down by 1/15/07.

"Dr. King's message was about representing the struggling masses, not the classes, says Scott. "Many of these leaders have turned King's dream into a nightmare!"

Scott says that the disconnection of Black leaders from the everyday people has made them unable to deal with today's problems facing the Hip Hop generation such as drugs and gangs. He says that many from the Civil Rights era can't move beyond an intergrationist philosophy to a Black empowerment philosophy.

"We respect the efforts of those who fought for Civil Rights but this is a new day, we need black pride and black empowerment, says Scott. "The goal was not to integrate "White Castle Burger Joint" but to paint it black.

Scott is urging the next generation of leaders to step up and seize the moment and take responsibility for moving the community forward.

"Those in power have made a mess, it is up to the real leaders, the people you see everyday, in the streets, the activists, concerned parents, barbershop and other small business owners to take matters into our own hands."

For more information contact Min. Paul Scott at (919) 451-8283


Get your copy of the award winning "King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop." It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells the story of the Civil Rights movement and the life of its Drum Major for Peace, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn more and hear excerpts from this treasured program, click here.

Civil Rights Leaders face Challenges King Never Dreamed Of

Last spring immigration rights groups loudly demanded that civil right groups take part in immigration rights marches and endorse immigration reform bills in Congress.

They branded the immigration battle the new civil rights movement, and insisted that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive he would have backed up their claim. It’s risky to say what King would have done on that score.

Yet it’s almost certain that given King’s passionate support of the mostly Latino led and targeted farm workers movement in California, and his glowing praise of farm worker leader Cesar Chavez, he would have regarded the immigration reform fight as a bonafide civil rights battle. And that would get him in hot water today with many blacks and some civil rights groups who take great offense at comparing the immigration reform struggle to the 1960s civil rights movement. That’s just one glaring sign of how things have changed in the nearly four decades since King’s murder, and on the anniversary of the King national holiday celebration.

In the 1960s, things were much simpler for civil rights leaders. Their fight was against bigoted sheriffs and mobs. Civil rights leaders firmly staked out the moral high ground for the modern day civil rights movement. It was classic good versus evil. The gory news scenes of baton welding racist Southern sheriffs, firehoses, and police dogs, and Klan violence unleashed against peaceful black protesters sickened many white Americans. All, except the most rabid racists, considered racial segregation as immoral and indefensible, and the civil rights leaders were hailed as martyrs and American heroes in the fight for justice.

For MORE, click HERE.


Get your copy of the award winning "King: From Atlanta to the Mountaintop." It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that tells the story of the Civil Rights movement and the life of its Drum Major for Peace, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To learn more and hear excerpts from this treasured program, click here.

Honoring the King Holiday with a Commitment to Ourselves

With the King Holiday Weekend upon us, writer and speaker Christopher Cathcart has some very salient thoughts about the holiday that offer a very needed perspective. -- editor

The federal holiday honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been a part of our national landscape now for more than 20 years.

Each January, we look forward to the many public and private celebrations observing the life and legacy of this remarkable man, and now, through the efforts of some dedicated folk, we will soon be able to visit the King Memorial in the nation’s capital.

As for the special day itself, I still remember how, as a young Howard University student in the early ‘80s, I proudly joined in the demonstrations in support of the King Holiday legislation. Making the long trek from Howard’s campus to the steps of Capitol Hill to hear speeches by Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King and, of course, Stevie Wonder made me feel a part of history, a part of helping this nation open its eyes and pay a just and lasting tribute to one of our true heroes.

More than that, I hoped this annual time of reflection would offer us an opportunity to look back on Dr. King’s life and review the many sacrifices he and those who struggled along side him made so that this country could live up to its goals of equality and full citizenship for all – an effort still unfinished.

I thought we’d use this time to look at the man’s life beyond the famous “I Have a Dream” speech and drink in his countless other speeches and writings where he challenged the powers of convention with a peerless eloquence. Or review how he boldly spoke out against the Vietnam War, a move he made knowing full well it would distance him from his civil rights base, and move him even more squarely into the crosshairs of those seeking to silence his voice. (Imagine that, a leader who stood up for what he believed was right without regard to his own welfare or political standing, man those
were the days).

This holiday was supposed to be a time of remembrance and recommitment for those of us old enough to have been alive when Dr. King was helping change America, and education for the ever growing number of young people who wore born and raised well after that fateful day in Memphis in 1968.

Unfortunately, as many of us painfully know, today the holiday is often appropriated for less noble ends.

In some circles, the commercialization of the observance borders on the absurd. Leading corporations dedicate month-long advertising campaigns, even offering discounts and other special promotions in “honor” of King Day. And many day-to-day folk now look forward to the long weekend as a chance to schedule ski trips, romps to the beach, or some other romantic getaway.
Most disturbing, however, is the fact that for some it’s simply another day off from work, another chance to do – God help us – nothing.

Today, the pride and struggle that went into demanding America recognize Dr. King’s birthday is often lost in our relentless trivialization of holidays in general. I gave up counting all the promotional emails I’ve received recently informing me of some great “MLK Weekend” party I should add to my list of social outings.

If we are not careful, and as the generations that still can remember the King era pass on, we may see the complete historical re-write of the man, his times and the work he committed much of his life to, and ultimately died for.

If we allow ourselves to get too complacent, too comfortable with this special “day-off,” soon kids will be playing “March on Washington” video games, or simply reading that one paragraph about Dr. King in their history books, while barely paying attention to the obligatory annual showing of the “I Have a Dream” speech footage.

And here’s the kicker – this is happening on our watch, in our time, in our faces. While it is a fact that there are many organizations, businesses and individuals doing a wonderful job of keeping the real meaning of the man and this holiday relevant, the tide is steadily rising in the other direction.

The effort to stem the flow can’t come solely from our leaders and organizations, nor should it. It has to come from individuals who, in their own unique ways, carry on Dr. King’s legacy every day. The holiday must serve to ensure we never forget Dr. King and his work, and, more importantly, remind us of the work still to be done.


Christopher Cathcart is a Southern California based writer and speaker. Contact him via Chris@OneDG.com

In the Washington state city of Everett, MLK Day to focus on immigration issues

A holiday known for solidarity rallies and peaceful marches is a forum for debate this year as immigration issues become the focus, reports the Daily Herald in Everett, Washington about 30 miles north of Seattle.

This week's Martin Luther King Jr. Day events include a speech from a renowned Chicano labor activist, a movie and discussion of that movement, and a forum on immigrants' rights.

"It is my belief that if (King) were alive today he wouldn't make a distinction between documented and undocumented people in terms of how they are treated in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness," said Wally Webster, interim chairman of the city of Lynnwood's Diversity Commission.

Webster's commission organized a panel discussion on immigrant rights, scheduled for tonight at Edmonds Community College.

The current immigration debate mirrors the issues of the 1960s, Webster said. The similarities were never more apparent than when thousands of immigrants around the country left their workplaces to march last year to protest proposed immigration laws, he said.

"There are people who feel disenfranchised and that they do not have rights, whether you're talking about refusal to allow you to sit at a lunch counter or whether it's exploitation of labor," he said.

Others worry that King's message is being twisted to fit another agenda. King shouldn't be posthumously attached to a cause that could encourage illegal immigration, said Shawna Forde, a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, a volunteer border patrol group. Members of Forde's group plan to attend the forum to make sure that information presented there is accurate.

"We have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King Jr., and we don't like how (the holiday) is being spun this way," she said.

For MORE of this article, go HERE.

Martin Luther King Didn't Let Violence Stop His Mission

Taking a look at the Civil Rights era, CNN is reporting that from the time he first emerged as a civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived with the threat of death, but he never wavered in his commitment to non-violence.

"Dr. King made it rather clear that the cause that we were fighting for was not only worth living for, but it was worth dying for, if need be," said Fred Gray, the lawyer who helped King lead the fight to desegregate city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956.

A month after blacks began a bus boycott, a midnight caller warned King that he would be sorry he ever came to Montgomery. Three days later, his house was bombed.

Angry blacks gathered outside King's home, but Gray said, "Once he found out his family was safe and secure, he simply went out, talked to the crowd, and told them to go home, and they went."

King knew what could happen when he led demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, facing fire hoses and police dogs in an effort to desegregate downtown businesses.

Longtime aide Andrew Young said, "Going to Birmingham was to him the possibility of an imminent death."

Read MORE here.

Ex Shock Jock Star Denigrates Jesse and Martin in New Book

Ex shock jock Star is trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame by blasting civil rights icons Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. in his hate filled new autobiography, reports Page Six.

The book, "Objective Hate," is due out next month from Aquinna Satellite LLC. He blasts Jackson, "this 'Cool Daddy Cool,' stick-it-to-the-man rabble-rouser with a Ph.D. in flim flam . . . Watch him as he lives the scam and works the sham to the soundtrack of 'Pusher Man.' Sponsored by Rainbow mystical bull[bleep] and private funky dividends, he'll be sure you have not seen the last of his collection plate" - whatever that means.

Of King, Star writes: "[He's] a total hypocrite whose agenda quashed the rising spirit of anarchy in the heart of black America. As he hid behind the cross, he hated being oppressed but realized it enhanced his [stud] game . . . His mystified hypothetical dream, with no economic structure, now hangs over the Negro's head like a Mississippi noose."

Mr. Trashmouth has more to say about Madonna and the carnal attributes of certain female performers such as Mya and India.Arie. If you just have to see/read for your self what this ignorant knucklehead has to say, click here.

N.O. COPS IN KATRINA SHOOTING CASE ALLOWED BAIL: Judge’s decision is rare for those charged with first-degree murder.

The seven New Orleans police officers charged with killing two men on the Danziger Bridge while shooting at residents fleeing Hurricane Katrina will be allowed to post bail, a judge said Friday.

All seven officers entered not guilty pleas in court Friday to murder or attempted murder charges. Four of the officers face counts of first-degree murder that carry a possible death sentence. Bail is rarely given in Louisiana for a first-degree murder charge. The ruling was protested by outraged activists gathered outside the courthouse prior to the hearing.

For MORE, go HERE.