As I promised I’ve added a little more clarity to the reason why I believe the Black Movement has been killed by the “Black” Obama. I make a point of Obama’s “Blackness” because I believe it has silenced the voice of the “Black” working class. Let’s face it… who among “Black Americans” really want’s to publicly criticize the First Black President of theUnited States of America? I believe it is hurting our ability to see straight. Where are the “Black” leaders that will challenge Obama openly to do right by the people?
Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category
Help Get Out the Vote!
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Washington:
Who we are: Approve Referendum 71 is the campaign to preserve domestic partnerships in Washington State. By voting to approve, voters retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year’s legislative session, including using sick leave to care for a partner, adoption rights, insurance rights, and more.
What we need: We need phone bankers to get our supporters out to vote. Washington is an all mail-in ballot state, and we need to ensure our supporters put their ballots in the mail. Also, youth turnout is a critical component of our campaign, and youth turnout historically drops in off-year elections. So we need a lot of help to turn them out.
How you do it: Sign up here to make remote calls for Approve 71. We’ll then contact you for a training, and you can make GOTV calls.
Maine:
Who we are: The No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign is working to protect Maine’s recently-passed law legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Our opponents have put the issue on the ballot for Nov 3, 2009. Because of Maine’s early voting election laws, people are already voting at the polls, so we need help immediately to turn out our side at the polls.
What we need: We need you to devote a few hours to Call for Equality. Call for Equality is a virtual phonebank set up so that you can call Maine voters wherever you are. Much of Maine is rural, where canvassing isn’t effective, so we need to reach these voters- along with other supporters- by phone. All you need is a phone and internet connection. No experience required! We’ll provide the training, and all you need is a a few hours to help get a win in Maine.
How you do it: Click here to sign up for a training and your shift. There are lots of times available for your convenience.
Kalamazoo, MI:
Who We Are: The Yes on Ordinance 1856 / One Kalamazoo campaign is working in Michigan to support the City Commission of Kalamazoo’s twice approved ordinance for housing, employment, and public accommodation protections for gay and transgender residents. Opponents forced a public referendum on the ordinance so dedicated local volunteers, led by former Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jon Hoadley, are working to ensure voters say YES to fairness and equality and keep Ordinance 1856.
Why The Urgency: In the final weeks, the opposition has gone all out with aggressive disinformation and misleading red herrings to try to defeat the ordinance. This includes signs that say “No to Discrimination” (even though voting No actually supports continued discrimination of GLBT residents), transphobic door hangers and fliers, and now radio ads that falsely suggest that criminal behavior will become legal when this simply isn’t true. The Yes on Ordinance 1856 supporters are better organized but many voters who want to vote for gay and transgender people are getting confused by the opposition.
How To Help:
1) Help the One Kalamazoo campaign raise a final $10,000 specifically dedicated to fight back against the lies on the local TV and radio airwaves and fully fund the campaign’s final field and GOTV efforts.
Give here: http://www.actblue.com/page/3-2-1-countdown
2) If you live nearby and can physically volunteer in Kalamazoo sign up here. If you know anyone that lives in Kalamazoo, use the One Kalamazoo campaign’s online canvass tool to remind those voters that they need to vote on November 3rd and vote YES on Ordinance 1856 to support equality for gay and transgender people.
Contact voters: http://www.onekalamazoo.com/tellfriends2
Why do you hate freedom? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for some!
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Definitions
Life: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body
Liberty: the power to do as one pleases; freedom from arbitrary or despotic control
Happiness: a pleasurable or satisfying experience
The Declaration of Independence was written to explain why the colonists had the right to revolt against England and seek its independence. The colonists had no representation and their voices were not heard in their government.
Many believe that health care should not be a right, but a privilege or a luxury, I think much differently. If you look at the standard definition above, it states that life is a vital and functional being. Without proper health care for many, they would in turn be dead! Simple isn’t it? Well maybe for some, but for others they need a little more clarification. Here are 2 more definitions on why health care is not a privilege.
Vital: critical; urgently needed; absolutely necessary
Functional: fit or ready for use or service
Now many state that if health insurance was a right it would have been written into the constitution. I beg to differ. Health insurance was first created in the 1920’s at a hospital in Dallas and they called it “The Blues” to help poor people. This company later became Blue Cross Blue Shield. So if democracy is more of an idea than a static law, how come the constitution has been amended on several occasions to fit the needs of the people at the time? Here are a few examples. We now have The Federal Reserve, slavery has been abolished, women have the right to vote, blacks have equal rights, and many other things we now know as amendments.
Many people scream and yell, usually without much merit, that it is government control, yet many believe it is government protection. Without proper and affordable health care, or the denial of services by the health care cartels, tell me how will you have life if you are left to die, better yet, where is your pursuit of happiness when you are left handicapped and immobile? Where is the pursuit of happiness when these corporate behemoths are nickel and diming you to death? Well, there isn’t any.
We can also go a step further with gay marriage. Where is the pursuit of happiness when many are fighting to write them out of the constitution with blatant discrimination while they enjoy their federal government rights of tax breaks and legal protections? Many feel it is a religious right, yet in reality, it is first a federal right because they must first be licensed by the government to get married. They must also go to the government to either annul or divorce completely in the eyes of the law. If marriage was a religious right, wouldn’t they be getting divorced in a church instead of the court of law?
What if the homosexuals fought to take away your right to worship, would you not be screaming foul and state that it is your constitutional right to worship in the way you see fit? Or do you sit with a blind eye and say why should I care, it isn’t happening to me?
Many people believe in survival of the fittest, I call them the biggest fools. These fools that want to live that way fail to realize that without the medical advances some enjoy today, they probably would not be here because I bet you any money their parents or grandparents probably had some life saving surgery or medication. Yet the dumb choose to stay dumb.
So why do you hate freedom? Why are you not fighting to keep freedom intact for all and not just some?
What is a Hate Crime?
Friday, October 16th, 2009
Some people have commented about the recent incident in Florida where five boys set fire to another. They expressed their “outrage” about why isn’t it called a hate crime when the victim is white. Details revealed that this was not a “hate crime” and that race had nothing to do with the incident.
“Crimes of hatred and prejudice-from lynchings to cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues… the term “hate crime” did not enter the nation’s vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began investigating what we now call hate crimes as far back as the early 1920s, when we opened our first Ku Klux Klan case. Today, we remain dedicated to working with state and local authorities to prevent these crimes and to bring to justice those who commit them.”
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes. Following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General, the FBI has gathered and published hate crime statistics every year since 1992.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, expands existing federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and drops the prerequisite that the victim be engaged in a federally-protected activity. The language passed refers to “Crimes of Violence.” It specifically includes transgendered individuals and makes it explicit that the law does not restrict people’s freedom of speech or association.
Basis of the hate crimes reported in 2007 (FBI data) :
| Basis of Crime | % of Crimes Reported | Sub-Category | % of Category |
| Race | 52% | Anti-black | 69% |
| Ethnicity | 14% | Anti-Hispanic | 62% |
| Religion | 17% | Anti-Jewish | 69% |
| Sexual Orientation | 16% | Anti-LGBT | 98% |
| Disability | < 1% |
Note: The FBI has noticed a 30% increase of crimes against the homeless since 1999, 75% of which were perpetrated by persons under the age of 25.
Per Capita rate of hate crimes, 2005 (FBI data)
| Sexual Orientation | Incidents | Adult Population | Incidents per million |
| Gays | 621 | ||
| Lesbians | 155 | ||
| Homosexual | 195 | ||
| Total | 971 | 10.9 mil | 89.1 |
| Bisexual | 25 | 6.5 | 3.95 |
| Heterosexual | 21 | 200.4 | .10 |
- Data based on 2005 FBI hate crime report assumes adult population of 217.8 million.
- Assumes 92% of all adults are heterosexual, 5% are homosexual and 3% bisexual.
Note: Some religious and social conservatives with their own anti-LGBT agendas, believe this figure is much lower. Some LGBT groups and their supporters believe the percentage is much higher. - Assumes all victims were adults, 18 or older.
- Based on FBI data, a homosexual is about 850 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime motivated by his/her sexual orientation than is a heterosexual.
Note: The number of reported hate crimes in 2007 is 8% higher than the 2005 figures.
How accurate are these figures?
One study of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults showed that 41% reported being a victim of a hate crime at sometime during their life after the age of 16. Assuming that 8% of all adults are LGBT, at the time of the study, this means that about 7,000,000 had been victimized during their lifetime out of a total of about 17,000,000,000 individuals. This annualizes to at least 100,000 hate crimes against LGBTs per year (7,000,000 divided by 60 years).
Even this number may be a low estimate. I have been the subject of anti-gay hate crimes on three separate occasions and physical and verbal assaults twice, but they were either not reported or not treated by law enforcement as hate crimes. Many times, even if the crime is reported, the police may refuse to recognize it as such, hence the provisions in the new law, or had no law on the books in their jurisdiction to do so.
Because only about 1,500 hate crimes based on sexual orientation are actually recorded by police per year on average, one must conclude that a miniscule percentage of hate crimes are actually reported to the police by gays and lesbians.
Regarding enhanced penalties for hate crimes, according to former Chief Justice Rehnquist: “this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm…. bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”
Some people object to penalty-enhancement and federal prosecution laws because they believe they offer preferred protection to certain individuals over others, saying that “all crimes are hate crimes.” This is categorically not true. Mugging someone at random to steal a wallet or purse for monetary gain is not a hate crime. Beating someone senseless because of who they are is.
