civil rights 
Thu Jul 01, 2010 at 10:25:41 AM EDT
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Other than the opportunity to overeat at BBQs and getting a paid day off from work, I am not into celebrating the 4th of July. We all know the background story: Thomas Jefferson, wielding a pen, blows apart the relationship between Britain and its American colonies, eloquently extolling freedom and equality in the Declaration of Independence. Except that of course he owned slaves. And he had a long-term relationship with one of those slaves, Sally Hemings, with whom he had several children. And then those children were denied their heritage, not to mention remained stripped of their equal rights for many generations.
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Tue Apr 20, 2010 at 15:28:50 PM EDT
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Early this morning, we lost Dorothy Height, who fought for civil rights and greater equality and opportunities until her death at age 98. She once said, "I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom.... I want to be remembered as one who tried." There can be no doubt that she will be. Her words, from the Washington Post's obituary: stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.
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Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 00:58:58 AM EDT
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I was intrigued by this headline of a Salon column: Too Much Tea Party Racism. The piece in Salon focuses on several racist and homophobic incidents that occured at yesterday's anti-health care rally at the Capitol, which seems to be anchored by tea partiers. In part: ...it's worth more of my time to say what many resist: The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement's origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore.
Leads me to wonder, how much racism is too much? How do you determine if racism is fundamental to the movement or just attracts racists?
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Wed Dec 17, 2008 at 11:56:05 AM EST
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On a recent Sunday the NYTimes published an op-ed by Caitlan Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz titled "Showdown in the Big Tent." THE attitude of white, liberal Hollywood toward African- American churches has long been one of almost participatory respect. Whether it’s Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, or the Blind Boys of Alabama on the iPod, or a serious — reverential — mention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference over dinner, the understanding is clear: the black church is a foundational institution in the history of the civil rights struggle, and its music (although it makes reference to Jesus Christ as a personal savior) is smoking hot. It was only recently that the A-list discovered that this love is unrequited. Last month, Proposition 8 passed, making gay marriage illegal in California, and the demographic that lent insult to injury was the state’s African-American voters. ... Left-leaning California’s horror about this newly revealed schism between two of its favorite sons is a situation that cries out for a villain, but the one that liberal white Hollywood has chosen for the role probably won’t make it all the way to the third act. “It’s their churches,” somebody whispered to one of us not long after the election; “It’s their Christianity,” someone else hissed, rolling her eyes. Apparently the religion espoused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is now the enemy, at least among the smart set, and if this sounds like a regional issue, it’s not.
The next day, this photograph graced the cover (top of the fold) of the NYTimes.
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Fri Nov 14, 2008 at 10:19:54 AM EST
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After the crushing blow of Prop 8 passing in California and similar actions from Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas – it was nice to see the front page of the New York Times yesterday morning. Check out the great photo… 
Equal rights to marriage started in Connecticut on Wednesday. Last month, the state’s highest court ruled that excluding gay couples from marriage was unconstitutional. Of course, the California Supreme Court made a similar ruling six months ago, until voters decided otherwise on Nov 4.
Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote an excellent letter in response to the ballot initiative loses… “Now is the time to be constructive with our hurt and disappointment. This weekend, thousands in all 50 states will take to the streets with one common goal in mind—full equality for all—let us not forget that our cause is one of civil respect rooted in justice and fairness. Marchers will call not only for justice for LGBT families, but for an end to all the oppressions that hold our nation back and give the false impression that our differences are more profound than what we have in common. To locate a Join the Impact rally near you, visit http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/.”
Read Joe's entire letter here. Tomorrow – Saturday, November 15 – protests have been organized in every state to promote love and equality. Read Join The Imact's mission statement here. NYC’s protest will take place at 1:30pm at City Hall.
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Tue May 06, 2008 at 10:40:13 AM EDT
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Its being reported pretty widely today that Mildred Loving passed away this past weekend. Mrs. Loving, of Loving v. Virginia fame, was the woman, along with her husband Richard, who challenged the miscegenation laws, leading to a Supreme Court ruling allowing inter-racial marriage in America in 1967. 
As the NYTimes notes: ...under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races. Virginia’s law had been on the books since 1662, adopted a year after Maryland enacted the first such statute. At one time or another, 38 states had miscegenation laws. State and federal courts consistently upheld the prohibitions, until 1948, when the California Supreme Court overturned California’s law. Though the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in the Loving case struck down miscegenation laws, Southern states were sometimes slow to change their constitutions; Alabama became the last state to do so, in 2000.
This case has been of great interest to me for many years, not least because I was born in 1968 to parents who, in many southern states, would have been considered in violation of these race-mixing laws (I have a photo prominently displayed in my office of my grandfather in his segregated 3rd system schoolroom in Texas in the 1920's - White, Negro & Chicano). In recent years I've had many opportunities to work on Jews of Color issues (for a fantastic book on this topic, see Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz's "The Color of Jews," in which I have a bit part). Its important to remember that a substantial part of the Jews of Color story in this country
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Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 18:27:31 PM EDT
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In a movie house on the upper west side on that April evening, long before gentrification and only just minutes before the sky fell. I was in the balcony. Suddenly the movie went down, there was noise in the lobby, and soon police were all over the place. Soon I felt like they were chasing me: only weeks later, at Columbia, I fearfully found my way up between 116th and 120th street as police cavalry turned the university into a jail yard. Just the prospect of violence was enough to bring out the guns. Then came Bobby K, the Convention in Chicago...
1968. The year of loss and poor judgment. The loss was cumulative, from south to north, and it was from the head down- leadership slain. If a generation of leaders had there lives taken from McCarthy to Mississippi, from Little Rock to King, and soon Kennedy. I won't list the losses between nor refer in detail to the hundreds missing in action whose names are known only to their friends who were out of the house when death arrived.
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Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 14:07:41 PM EDT
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The night before his death, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recalled the story of Exodus. In a stirring valedictory, Dr. King reminded striking sanitation workers and their supporters at the Mason Temple that the Israelites wandered forty years in the wilderness before they finally reached the Promised Land. "I may not get there with you," he predicted, but "I have seen the Promised Land."
While many Americans are familiar with the Exodus story, few realize that the Promised Land Dr. King envisioned in his Mountaintop speech was not just an America free from segregation. It was an America transformed; a nation that offered equal economic opportunity to all its citizens. Forty years after Dr. King lost his life, we must ask ourselves: What is America doing to keep Dr. King's vision of equal economic opportunity alive?
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Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 13:24:16 PM EDT
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Forty-years ago today, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, on Erev Pesach, which this year falls on April 19th. - In "Portraits of History," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has collected stories of several people who knew MLK about that time.
- And finally, here is Rabbi Arthur Waskow's personal account of his experiences that day.
One year to the date before his death, 41 years ago, the Rev. gave this speech at Riverside Church in NY. Forty years later, there is still so much of his dream left to be fulfilled.
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Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 15:38:38 PM EDT
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On April 4, 1968, I was a senior in college, home for Spring break in South Florida. There I was born, raised, attended segregated public schools, and worked though our synagogue on integration and voter registration in the African-American Liberty City ghetto of Miami. Our family was preparing for a Passover Seder that would link our observance with the battles we had fought in our community on behalf of equal justice for all. Even before Arthur Waskow published the first Freedom Seder; the following year, Martin Luther King was part of our family Passover tradition and the cause of civil rights was the Exodus struggle of our time. His assassination saddened and angered us, but his life and his words continued to motivate us to persevere, even if we ourselves might never reach the Promised Land.
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