Honoring King: Creating a Coalition for Social Justice
The 12th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.
Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year's crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States' and South Carolina's state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a "compromise" among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier's memorial monument in front of the State House on July1, 2000.
The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Ku Klux Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the '90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier's monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.
Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20th in Charleston with a "gala". South Carolina's secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we "celebrated" their oppression under Nazis Germany.
The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession "celebration" in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, "a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina" and printed "Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President" on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, "Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check...the white race creates everything in America". As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP's planning committee, I've raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.
The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said "We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.
Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.
Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.
John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, "we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."
Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King's legacy.
We are at a crossroads
This country and this world are at a monumental crossroads. US voters have an opportunity to beat back the forces of fascism and confront the billionaires who are rigging the economy, our media system, and our democracy, making it increasingly impossible for ordinary people to get by. We’re not just talking about the election. We’re talking about what must be done once these fascist elements are vanquished from power. We need a bolder set of solutions than what either major party has so far been willing to offer and a working-class movement ready to fight like hell for it. Trump didn't emerge from nowhere. The conditions that fueled MAGA authoritarianism were created by decades of radical neoliberal economic policies and a corrupt political system dominated by corporate interests. They slashed taxes on the super-rich, promising that the benefits would trickle down. They said giveaways to the corporate titans would make life more affordable for the rest of us. It was all bullshit. And when a bitter, betrayed populace searches for someone to blame, right-wing demagogues have little trouble finding scapegoats. People know when they're being lied to, but you won't hear any of this from the corporate media. Only independent journalism—powered and funded by people who believe in building a better world—can deliver truly trustworthy daily news. Our Fall Campaign is underway, and we need your help. To power our newsroom through the rest of the year, we need to raise $125,000 by midnight on October 31. So if you share our vision, please contribute whatever you can to sustain our work. |
The 12th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.
Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year's crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States' and South Carolina's state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a "compromise" among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier's memorial monument in front of the State House on July1, 2000.
The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Ku Klux Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the '90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier's monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.
Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20th in Charleston with a "gala". South Carolina's secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we "celebrated" their oppression under Nazis Germany.
The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession "celebration" in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, "a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina" and printed "Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President" on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, "Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check...the white race creates everything in America". As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP's planning committee, I've raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.
The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said "We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.
Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.
Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.
John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, "we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."
Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King's legacy.
The 12th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.
Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year's crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States' and South Carolina's state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a "compromise" among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier's memorial monument in front of the State House on July1, 2000.
The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Ku Klux Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the '90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier's monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.
Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20th in Charleston with a "gala". South Carolina's secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we "celebrated" their oppression under Nazis Germany.
The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession "celebration" in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, "a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina" and printed "Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President" on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, "Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check...the white race creates everything in America". As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP's planning committee, I've raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.
The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said "We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.
Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.
Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.
John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, "we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."
Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King's legacy.