peace

Cross-posted from a Facing South article by Sue Sturgis.

With the American people still struggling to make sense of the recent shootings in Arizona and the role that violent political rhetoric may have played, we revisit the words of the minister from Georgia who we honor this weekend.
Following is the text of a sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on Nov. 17, 1957 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. Eleven months earlier, King and other civil rights activists had founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the power of African-American churches in the fight for racial justice -- a fight that was met with violence both rhetorical and very real.

In fact, the sermon was delivered a year before King was almost killed -- stabbed in the chest by a mentally ill woman who believed that King and the NAACP were communists conspiring to keep her from getting a job.

From his hospital room in Harlem, Dr. King issued a statement bearing no ill will toward his assailant, Izola Ware Curry, and hoping she would get help. King saw the incident not as an attack on one man, but as an attack of hatred.

Moazzam Begg was arrested by US and Pakistani agents in Islamabad in February, 2002. His crimes included drilling wells for drinking water and building girls’ schools in Afghanistan. For these crimes he was classified an enemy combatant. He was tortured and detained in Kandahar, Bagram and Guantanamo. During this time, his “three piece suit” consisted of leg, arm, and connecting shackles.

What is surprising in Mr. Begg’s story, is his humor. At one point, the excruciating volume of western music is turned to a Country Western review, at which the detainees express willingness to confess, with wailing and shouts, to any crime their captors imagine, if they will just stop the music.

My 2nd NC NAACP State Convention as a member of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch had many highlights today in Hickory.

The line for our luncheon featured an opportunity to talk with William J. Barber III, the son of the NC NAACP President, and a freshman physics major at NCCU. William’s focus is on opportunities to create jobs in local, alternative energy generation and transmission.

Caitlin Swain McSurley, daughter of NAACP legal redress chair, Al McSurley, is a 1L at Duke Law School, and shared ideas of defending US service personnel accused of violating interrogation standards while Bush administration officials are shielded, whose tortured standards were in clear violation of US law and treaty obligations.

Our luncheon speaker was Prof. Timothy Tyson, author of the award winning “Blood Done Sign My Name.”

In response to the recent Gaza War, a fundraising page was set up on ActBlue.com in order to contribute to elected officials who have been supportive of the peoples of Israel and Palestine. The page is called A Dream of Peace: Justice and Equality for The People of Israel and Palestine, and can be found here.

The mission of the page states "All of the people of the Holy Land need to live in peace and security. We need to support and elect candidates that are willing to stand up for the rights of the citizens of Israel and Palestine. These candidates support measures to stop violence, increase economic and humanitarian aid, actively engage in negotiation, and promote co-existence among these two Peoples."

What really separates Obama and Clinton....Vote to Enable Peace....

In which we begin an assessment of the problem of Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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