Rev Martin Luther King Jr: I've Been to the Mountain Top for collective bargaining rights

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking government employees (sanitation workers) at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 — the day before he was assassinated.

He was there to lend his support to sanitation workers who were on strike, protesting terrible working conditions and low wages. Taylor Rogers and Elmore Nickelberry were among the 1,300 who walked off the job in 1968.

Rogers remembers picking up tubs of garbage that were full of holes. "That garbage would leak all over you," he says. By the time he got home, his clothes were dirty and full of maggots that had fallen on him.

"I had maggots run down in my shirts, and then maggots would go down in my shoes," Nickelberry says. "And we worked in the rain — snow, ice and rain. We had to. If we didn't, we'd lose our job. They said, 'A garbage man wasn't nothing.'"

Rogers says, "It was awful." One day, two workers, who had gone into a trash compactor to escape the rain, were crushed to death. "Sometimes you cry," Nickelberry says.

"Sometimes you get mad and get up in the morning and ... say, 'I ain't going to work.' ... I had to work because that's the only way I could feed my family."

'All We Wanted Was Some Dignity'

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89361277

See also: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/memphis-v-mlk/

http://www.afscme.org/about/1029.cfm

Vote early (and often)!

Your vote has a bigger impact in local and midterm elections. There are lots of important issues that affect your daily life. Don't wait for 2012!


Registration information here. Most states require you to register in October for November elections. Check your state's rules here.


Get your absentee ballot - information here.

'

Census 2010: We can't move forward till you send it back

No cities in Maryland make the top 50 of census returns.

That means when it's time to decide how many representatives on Congress, how much federal money for metro, how many pothole fills, how many school lunches, Maryland may not get its fair share.

Currently, Virginia and Pennsylvania have slightly better return rates. C'mon Maryland! Return your census!

Insurance pays for gun owners

Gun owners increase their risk for injury and expense when they injure themselves and their families. No evidence indicates that it increases safety. Not only that, but more often than not, they don't have the money to pay for their health care from the injury! Government health care and your insurance premiums finance their carelessness. Ironic that self-declared libertarians depend on the welfare of government.

According to Medical experts:

Many people feel that having a gun provides greater safety for them and their family. Actually, having a firearm in the home escalates the risk for death or injury, while using it to shoot someone who endangers the household is much less common. The resultant injuries, deaths, emotional turmoil, and/or disabilities lead to greater utilization of health care and legal/police services. Payment for these expenses is provided by higher insurance premiums and tax rates. This financial aspect has become a part of our country's current political concern over firearm ownership rights, gun violence or regulation, health care costs, the economy, and taxes....

The article lists mind-numbing numbers of injuries and deaths caused by guns. Of course, gun rights advocates don;t bother to contest these numbers. They argue instead that it is a cost of having the right to "a well-regulated militia" a need which they offer to meet with unregulated, untrained, unregistered or liscenced citizen soldiers regardless of whether they can hit a target the size of a barn.

Taxpayers often bear a large percentage of these financial burdens; thus this matter is a hot political topic nationally. In Kentucky in 2008, 73% of gunshot victims were uninsured, 10% were covered by governmental plans, and 17% were insured.[18] Nationally, data reported in 2001 documented that government programs pay for about 49% of this amount, 18% is covered by private insurance, and 33% by all other sources.[19] Past medical bills are reflected in future insurance rates.[2]
Gun violence costs about 2.4 billion dollars annually to the criminal justice system in America, which is almost equal to all other crimes put together.[19] Each homicide results in approximately $244,000 of incarceration expenses for our taxpayers. Indirect costs are high as well; for example, local governments across our country spend up to $100 million each year just on bulletproof vests.[19] Most of these bills are then passed on to the taxpayers.

Guns, purchased for protection, paradoxically result in increased rates of injury or death to the owners and their families. Since firearm possession is related to a high occurrence of domestic violence, restriction of access is sometimes suggested as a prevention policy. That, however, remains politically sensitive despite public wishes to reduce the costs of medical care and insurance. Availability tends to increase crime rates and the presence of these dangerous weapons escalates rates of both morbidity and mortality. Shootings are often precipitated during the commission of other crimes.[9] Clearly, guns are easily available to the at-risk population; yet gun control remains generally unpopular. Firearm possession does not appear to yield safety. Documentation evidences that the presence of guns and injuries are correlated,[17] and are thus related to medical attention and disability costs.

Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute

King's next project, after public accomodations and voting rights, was going to be economic equality. His work remains unfinished.

Read his speeches and realize you can replace his descriptions of fairness and aspirations to any marginalized groups: immigrants, gays and poor.

Here is a speech given in response to King's death by Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis, Indiana: a city that responded with NO riots. Listen to it in Kennedy's own voice here.

_________________________

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...

I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

(Interrupted by applause)

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

(Interrupted by applause)

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Robert F. Kennedy - April 4, 1968

Just two months later, Robert Kennedy was gunned down during a celebration following his victory in the California primary, June 5, 1968.

Senate wants to pay us to shop for junk

Compare the Senate and House stimulus plans:

The Democrats in the House propose to increase spending to help poor, and to save schools and public works projects that have suffered under the tax cuts and silly stimulus packages that have gotten us into this mess. The Senate wants to pay us to shop for houses and cars, buying more environmentally harmful junk from companies and banks who can use taxpayer bail-outs to pay stock options and executive bonuses.

WaPO has a helpful graphic here.

AP's Comparison of economic stimulus plans here.

ACTION: Contact Congress easily - use this link!

Catholics for Obama

"Despite what some Republicans would like Catholics to believe, the list of what the church calls "intrinsically evil acts" does not begin and end with abortion. In fact, there are many intrinsically evil acts, and a committed Catholic must consider all of them in deciding how to vote."

Although much of Catholic leadership has forsaken other moral principles for the single one that woman can control, Nicholas P. Cafardi has spoken out for those other moral principles: to reduce poverty, to protect other gifts from the Creator such as environment. Cafardi is the second high profile Catholic legal scholar who is staunchly anti-abortion yet says he supports Barack Obama. Douglas Kmiec, Ronald Reagan’s constitutional lawyer as head of the office of legal counsel for the Department of Justice, publicly argued a similar case for Obama several weeks ago.

Are you sure Ronald Reagan had a consitutional lawyer? Really?

Cafardi continued, "Last November, the U.S. bishops released 'Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,' a 30-page document that provides several examples of intrinsically evil acts: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, torture, racism, and targeting noncombatants in acts of war."

McCain's position on torture, noncombatants, and racism do not seem to disturb the people who would silence voices, such as Cafardi's, who speak out against these other evils.

McCain says Washington is broken. Does he say WHY?

Political Cartoonist Matt Davies says Republicans broke it. He hit the nail on the head.

(click here to view)

Matt Davies Journal News Sep 5, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Why Supreme Court Appointments - and Elections - Matter

From Monica Goodling engaged in criminal activity in appointing the country's lawyers based on why they "want to service George Bush," to Republicans insulting minorities everywhere by suggesting the intellect of Clarence Thomas is the best intellectual heft they have to offer the country, legal appointments in the US have reached historic low. While the crimes continue, the effect this has on the country's judicial system, and unfairly charged defendants, is far-reaching. Of course, real criminals enjoy the diversions that allow them to continue.

A new study by the NYTimes shows that:

[Legal] Practitioners are keenly award of this. The first question asked by many lawyers taking on a new case is “What judge has it been assigned to?” In recognition of how important judge selection can be, some states even allow litigants to strike the first judge assigned to a case and take a chance on doing better with a second pick.

The federal system does not provide for such challenges. Rather, in federal court, you must take the judge you get – and the judge you get (or, at least, what type of judge you are most likely to get over the long run) depends, in this age of vetting, almost exclusively on one thing – presidential elections. Another is upon us now.

Obama experience

"so his experience is essentially that of a lawyer and a state legislator. There hasn't been this empty a résumé for a presidential candidate since, uh, hmm. Abe Lincoln. Lawyer and state legislator. Whoa, and they're both from Illinois! It's almost as though God Himself is endorsing ..."

You might say times were simpler then, and experience less important. Do you mean times like the dizzying changes in transportation, caused by the interContinental railway, and the internal combustion engine? Like the earthquake in the labor market and racial and immigration forces, caused by the advent of tens of thousands of free slaves poised to enter the paid workforce to the dismay of the poorest paid Scotch and Irish in those dead end jobs?

It's shocking. I'm reminded of how Lincoln flagrantly lifted "a house divided against itself" from the Bible, thereby creating an inarguable moral and philosophical underpinning for the war he would wage to save America and to affirm, forever, the dignity of human freedom. It's like . . .

read more on Obama and Lincoln.

Hillary vs. Obama

STOP IT.

I say this as a first-grade student in the year Hillary graduated from college. When everyone said they wanted to be President, I said so too. Even teachers laughed. Imagine the power that gave to the students to deflate the dreams of elementary school girls.


Imagine the derision aimed at the smart, accompished, promising women of Wellsley in 1969, the same year. The year Hillary graduated.

An undated photograph of Hillary Rodham, center, during her days as a student at Wellesley College, from 1965 to 1969.

The women, and the men who benefit from their work, discoveries, and support, who read these words owe those women a debt that can never be paid. If you don't want Hillary, don't support her. But acknowledge this debt.

One World, One Dream for Hu Jia

This week, a Beijing court sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3 1/2 years in prison for subverting state authority and to one additional year's loss of his "political rights." He was arrested in part for co-authoring, with Teng Biao, an open letter on human rights. The Washington Post prints Human Rights Watch's translation of the Sept. 10, 2007, letter descriing the imprisonment, torture, censorship, forcible removal form homes, and exile of hundreds of thousands of people in Beijing and China.

Stem Cell research and cures 20 years behind: millions suffer

Stem cell research relied on a few donations from fertility clinics that would otherwise be incinerated. Couples undergoing in vitro fertilization have an option when their treatment is finished to donate their embryos to other couples, and many do. But some just can't face the prospect of a genetic child of their own "out there," and yet still want to help others, for example, by making a contribution to cures.

Since Reagan stopped federal funding for stem cell research in 1987, scientists in the US were prohibited even from using the microscope in a lab that received a Federal grant to view stem cells. They had to waste time and money to create duplicate labs while patients died. Their colleagues left to research outside the US, slowing collaborations, while patients died. Research in countries like South Korea with weaker oversight infrastructure produced work frought with fraud while patients died.

While patients and their families suffered for 20 years, political opportunists conjured harangues and tales of woe, of embryos created merely for destruction.

Denying the existence of the same American ingenuity,
encouraged by government funding, that invented the Internet, built a trans-Continental railroad, and salvaged our environment from pollution, financed how to make penicillin, vaccines and other "wonder drugs" widely available, they somehow got away with draping themselves in the American flag.

Now scientists can make stem cells from skin. These cells can't yet do everything that stem cells can do, but the discovery is a breakthrough. Now that we are 20 years behind studying and understanding how these cells behave, grow, and contribute to curing terrible diseases.

Rick Weiss: The big next step is to find better ways of turning on the right genes to get cells to become embryonic -- ways that don't involve retroviruses. Many scientists are talking about using "small molecules" that can get to a cell's DNA and affect which genes are turned on or off. Also important: What other gene combinations can accomplish that (the two teams used four genes each, but two are different between them and other combinations with other genes may work, too). The thinking right now is that different genes in different doses might result in stem cells that have slightly different potentials to become different kinds of tissues. Then of course there will be years of safety testing, first in animals, then in people. And then, at least, some efforts to treat diseases. Meanwhile they will be used by many scientists to study diseases in lab dishes.

From WaPo editorial:

Congress should continue to consider legislation easing restrictions on the use of discarded embryos for research. After all, this breakthrough could not have been possible without research on embryonic stem cells. The potential gains from this science are so great that all avenues should be pursued until the new technology is proven.

Save a pet, a child, a book, and help cure cancer all in one moment

On the Animal Rescue Site and other related sites in the tab at the top of the page, you can make sure a donation is made every day, for example to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on the Purple Box 'fund food for animals' for free. This doesn' t cost you a thing.

Corporate sponsors and advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate to these worthy causes in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site. Pass it along to people you know. www.theanimalrescuesite.com

Hard cases make bad law

A good article here.

The yawning divide between reality and what such laws say should happen is what produces the dilemmas that lead to amnesties. Immigration law has produced a situation where an estimated 12 million people in the country -- most of whom look, sound and act like law-abiding citizens -- are supposed to be apprehended, prosecuted and deported, a job that is not only well beyond the capacity of the police and courts, but would wreck substantial parts of the economy were it attempted.

"No one is so stupid as to think police are going to go out and round up 12 million illegal immigrants," said Husak, at Rutgers University. "Ninety million living Americans have used illegal drugs. It is inconceivable you can punish them. Downloading copyrighted music [without paying for it] -- half or more of all teenagers are guilty. No one is going to enforce such laws."

Ava in Alabama Agitating for Action

Are you there, W? A 16-year-old in Alabama articulates her courage and objections to the war in Iraq in her professional-looking videos on PeaceTakesCourage.com. She has been threatened with rape and murder for speaking out. This video, WWJD, that focuses on the injuries of children in the region, ironically and sadly has been flagged for mature audiences.



See her YouTube Videos here, including the emotional WWJD.

Iraq 101 at MotherJones

BushFlash

100 Hours Update from Congress.org

100 HOURS OF LEGISLATION

First 100 Hours

Congress.org is an extensive resource of Federal and state legislation and legislators. The site monitors votes and sends weekly updates telling you what votes are upcoming and how your representative voted on previous bills. It provides links to send your opinion. Here is the latest newsletter for this week, the second newsletter in Congress's First 100 hours.

The new Democratic House leadership intends to spend the first "100 hours" of the legislative session to vote on legislation the Democrats believe are important to the voters. Weigh in with your views on these issues and we will tabulate the results daily.

H.R. 5 - REDUCING STUDENT LOAN INTEREST RATES
Proposal: Cut subsidies to student loan providers to reduce interest rates by 50%.
Your Vote Count: Congress can count on me to Support the Bill -- Oppose the Bill

H.R. 6 - CUT SUBSIDIES TO OIL COMPANIES TO FUND RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS
Proposal: Reduce or rollback tax breaks for oil companies to fund renewable energy projects.
Your Vote Count: Congress can count on me to Support the Bill -- Oppose the Bill

LOWER MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES
Proposal: Repeal laws that prevent the government from negotiating discount drug purchases from drug companies.
Your Vote Count: 11,924 messages so far - Congress can count on me to
SUPPORT THE BILL (84%) -- OPPOSE THE BILL (16%)

100 HOUR SCORECARD

FUND STEM CELL RESEARCH Passed 253-174 VOTE RESULTS House approves funding for stem cell research.
Your Vote Count: 13,126 messages - SUPPORTED (54%) -- OPPOSED (46%)

PAY AS YOU GO RULES Passed 232-200 VOTE RESULTS House requires spending cuts or tax hikes to offset any new spending or tax cuts.
Your Vote Count: 9785 messages - SUPPORTED (74%) -- OPPOSED (26%)

ETHICS OF CONGRESS Passed 232-200 VOTE RESULTS House bans gifts from lobbyists and requires full disclosure of earmarks.
Your Vote Count: 19,112 messages - SUPPORTED (92%) -- OPPOSED (8%)

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE Passed 315-116 VOTE RESULTS House votes to increase it to $7.25 an hour.
Your Vote Count: 18,112 messages - SUPPORTED (65%) -- OPPOSED (35%)

9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS Passed 299-128 VOTE RESULTS House approves implementing the 9/11 Commission security proposals.
Your Vote Count: 10,037 messages - SUPPORTED (84%) -- OPPOSED (16%)

The Congress.org Weekly Update Editors