FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF NINE ELEVEN

NINE ELEVEN
Wednesday, September 11, 2002

THIS MORNING THIS COUNTRY REMEMBERS 9/11 AND VOWS NEVER TO FORGET. AS A NATIVE NEW YORKER I FEEL ANGRY AND HURT AT THE ATTACK ON THE TWIN TOWERS I ADMIRED AS A SYMBOL OF NEW YORK’S GREATNESS. AS A HUMAN BEING I ALSO FEEL THE PAIN OF ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO LOST LOVED ONES ON THAT DAY. I WILL NEVER FORGET, AS WE ALL SHOULD NOT.
BUT AS A AFRICAN AMERICAN I FEEL A SENSE OF SHAME THAT THIS COUNTRY CHOOSES TO FORGET THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MY ANCESTORS AND BRETHREN THAT DIED, PACKED LIKE SARDINES, ON SLAVE SHIPS. THE THOUSANDS THAT DIED WHILE SLAVING IN THE COTTON AND SUGAR CANE FIELDS OF THE SOUTH AND THE CARIBBEAN. THE HUNDREDS THAT WERE MURDERED BY HANGING, WHIPPING AND TORTURE AT THE HANDS OF SLAVERS.
WHY DON’T WE REMEMBER THEM?
THE PAIN I FEEL FOR THOSE WHO DIED ON 9/11 DOES NOT EQUAL THE PAIN I FEEL EVERYDAY FOR THOSE WHO HAVE DIED AND CONTINUE TO DIE FROM THE CHEMICAL WARFARE THAT HAS BEEN WAGED AGAINST THIS COUNTRY FOR OVER HALF A CENTURY. A WAR THAT HAS KILLED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS: BLACKS, CAUCASIANS, HISPANICS AND OTHERS.
THIS WAR THAT WE KNOW WHICH COUNTRIES ARE WAGING IT: AFGHANISTAN, TURKEY, FRANCE, ITALY, COLOMBIA, PERU AND MEXICO. AND THE CHEMICALS THAT THEY ARE USING: HEROIN, COCAINE AND HANNIBIS. BUT THIS COUNTRY CHOOSES NOT TO ATTACK THESE COUNTRIES THAT ARE WAGING CHEMICAL WARFARE BUT CHOOSES INSTEAD TO TALK TO THEM AND GIVE THEM AID.
THIS COUNTRY IS WORRIED THAT SADDAM HUSSIEN WILL ATTACK HIS NEIGHBORS, OUR “FRIENDS AND ALLIES”, WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS. YET WE HAVE BEEN UNDER ATTACK FOR DECADES FROM CHEMICALS JUST AS DEADLY AS ANTHRAX OR SMALLPOX.
I WISH THIS COUNTRY COULD FEE THE PAIN THAT I FEEL FOR THOSE DYING EVERY DAY FROM THE CHEMICALS OF HEROIN, COCAINE AND OTHER EXOTIC DRUGS AND FOR THE LOVED ONES THAT WATCH THEM SLOWLY DIE.
JOSEPH D. BOONE, CITIZEN

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

STANDING FOR JUSTICE: MISSISSIPPI and the TILL CASE

Standing For Justice
Mississippi and the Till Case

"Before Emmett Till's murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me - the fear of being killed just because I was black." From Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody's autobiography.

Black Monday. that was what southern segregationists came to call the day the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education. "On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court's decision," said Mississippi senator James Eastland. "You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent [and based on] sociological considerations."
In Linden, Alabama, state senator Walter C. Givhan railed against the NAACP campaign to end school segregation. What, he asked his white audience, is the real purpose of the campaign? "To open the bedroom doors of our white women to Negro men."
When the Supreme Court handed down its decision, it did not include instructions on how the order was to be implemented. Desegregation began almost immediately in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, bout most of the nation waited for the Court to provide specific instructions on how to end school segregation.
A year later, the Court still had not acted. Instead, the justices asked the lower federal courts, closer to the local school districts, to ensure that those districts "admit to public schools on racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the [black children]."
To many blacks, the Court's delay and the vague wording of its eventual decree were a bitter disappointment. "I remember the great elation that I had-how wonderful I felt the country was and the Constitution [after the 1954 ruling]...," said one civil rights attorney. "I felt and equally strong sense of depression and bitterness a year later when the Court came out with the "all deliberate speed' formulation. I had the feeling that we'd won a hollow victory."
President Eisenhower distanced himself from the Court's actions. "It makes no difference whether or not I endorse it," he said. "The Constitution is as the Supreme Court interprets it and I must conform to that and do my very best to see that it is carried out in this country." But later he commented that his appointment of Earl warren was "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made." He told one of his aides in the White House, "I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress in the South at least fifteen years."In Mississippi, unarguable the most supremacist and segregated state in the country, whites' anger over the ruling fueled violent segregationist backlash. Gangs of whites committed beatings, burnings, and lynchings-murder by mob. The Supreme Court decision also spurred the formation of a new kind of white hate group, composed of urban, middle-class whites determined to fight desegregation. They called themselves the Citizens' Council, and civil rights activists dubbed them the "white-collar Klan," after the Ku Klux Klan.

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Friendship Is A Strange Thing......Marcie Simpson

Friendship is a strange thing .
We find ourselves telling each other the deepest details of our lives... things we don't
even share with our families.
But what is a friend? A confidant? A lover? A shoulder to cry on? An ear to listen? A
heart to feel?
A friend is all of these things and more. No matter where we met, no matter how long
we've been together... I call you a friend.
A word so small, yet so large in feeling, a word filled with emotion, a word overflowing
with LOVE.
Truly great things come in small packages. Once the package of friendship has been
opened, it can never be closed.
It is a constant book always waiting... waiting to be read... and enjoyed. We may have our
disagreements... we may have our disappointments... we may argue... we may concern
one another.
Friendship is a unique bond that lasts through all tribulations and part of each of us goes
into our friendships... our humor... our experiences... our tears.
Friendships are foundations... necessary for life... and love.
Women are like Apples
Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't
want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy.......
The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're
amazing.
They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to
climb all the way to the top of the tree.
Share this with other women who are good apples, even those who have already been
picked!

Now Men....
Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the shit out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

Doesn't that just warm your heart....????


PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS