Happy Fourth of July?

So many of the world's current spectacles remind us of the truth of the words spoken by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass back in 1852.

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour."

"The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

Watching the racist media follow the George Zimmerman proceedings, wherein the late Trayvon Martin is virtually on trial for being murdered, or the massive government hypocrisy over NSA spying, or President Obama's cluesslessly unselfaware visit to Robben Island in South Africa, or the US act of aggression in forcing down Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane over Europe, it's clear that so much in the world is just not right, so much of the myths about the United States are just so much red-white-and-blue bullshit. Some small amount of observation reveals that the Civil War that was fought to right some of the great wrongs Douglass condemned failed to rectify some of the major flaws in this nation's founding.

From 1845:

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches?”

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

So much work to be done. This fourth of July, time to recommit to a new, real revolution in America.

(You can watch the actor Danny Glover read a portion of the 1852 speech here).
 

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

“Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches?”

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

Supreme Court Voids Fourth Amendment

Apparently the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized," doesn't mean what you thought it meant.

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that "Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed," (translation: strip searched, including full body-cavity search) even if "the detainee" has been arrested only for something as trivial as a traffic violation. Of course it was a five-four vote, with the four right-wing justices joined by right-moderate Kennedy, and opposed by the four alleged right-liberals on the bench. Thus with the stroke of a pen, one of the supposed bedrocks of American civil rights, one of the very bill of rights itself, is gutted.

The New York Times reports on the case of a man arrested for speeding and held in error on an outstanding warrant: “Turn around,” Mr. Florence, in an interview last year, recalled being told by jail officials. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” Yes, that is now legal. With absolute impunity, according to the alleged final authority on the law and the U.S. constitution.

Women and black people have long understood the limitations of legal protections written two hundred years ago by a bunch of rich, white male slaveowners, but now it's clear to everybody: "The right of the people not to be searched in their persons" does not include protection from cops looking up your asshole on their whim. Not according to a bunch of crazy right-wing Republican congressmen, but according to the fucking Supreme Court of the United States. And you thought the ruling that brought us "corporations are people" was a problem.

Don't mourn, organize.

A note on the paucity of posts here in the last week: I've been busy with the real world, which is a good thing. Building for my local Occupy group, including our push for May Day celebrations, "a day without the 99%." But I've also been fuming over the Trayvon Martin case, so angry at white America's anguish over George Zimmerman I've been scarcely able to organize my thoughts. I'm not sure which rediscovery is worse: the way racism is revealed to be so deeply woven into the fabric of white American culture, or the absolute inability beyond mere denial of white Americans to even acknowledge the possible existence of that racism. From liberals like the NY Times' columnist Gail Collins suggesting the issue at the center of the Martin tragedy is "gun control," (as though limiting rope sales would have effected anything in the era of lynching), to people posting (false) pictures of an allegedly gold-toothed Martin (to what, prove he deserved to die?) that have been spread by outright fascists like Stormfront and eaten up by white Americans unwilling to understand the real world, I've been disturbed and demoralized to the point of inarticulateness. But here we are. Hopefully my voice is coming back. —ISH