Musings upon this 4th of July: = = = = = = = = = = = = = Let America Be America Again, By Langston Hughes, celbrated American Poet
[ bio: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83 ] Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek - - And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean - - Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today - - O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home - - For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay - - Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again - - The land that never has been yet - - And yet must be - - the land where every man is free. The land that's mine - - the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME - - Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose - - The steel of freedom does not stain. Fromthose who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - - America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain - - All, all the stretch of these great green states - - And make America again! = = = = = = = = = = A Veteran’s Point Of View, from the Southside of Chicago: Has This Country Gone Completely Insane? Veteran Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt By MIKE FERNER http://tinyurl.com/fjk2h Yesterday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "OK, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go." "Huh?", I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about. "You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt. "Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists. Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go." Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, "Not before I finish my coffee." He insisted that I leave, but still not quite believing my ears, I tried one more approach to reason. "Hey, listen. I'm a veteran. This is a V.A. facility. I'm sitting here not talking to anybody, having a cup of coffee. I'm not protesting and you can't kick me out." "You'll either go or we'll arrest you," Adkins threatened. "Well, you'll just have to arrest me," I said, wondering what strange land I was now living in. You know the rest. Handcuffed, led away to the facility's security office past people with surprised looks on their faces, read my rights, searched, and written up. The officer who did the formalities, Eric Ousley, was professional in his duties. When I asked him if he was a vet, it turned out he had been a hospital corpsman in the Navy. We exchanged a couple sea stories. He uncuffed me early. And he allowed as to how he would only charge me with disorderly conduct, letting me go on charges of criminal trespass and weapons possession - - a pocket knife - - which he said would have to be destroyed (something I rather doubt since it was a nifty Swiss Army knife with not only a bottle opener, but a tweezers and a toothpick). After informing me I could either pay the $275 fine on the citation or appear in court, Ousley escorted me off the premises, warning me if I returned with "that shirt" on, I'd be arrested and booked into jail. I'm sure I could go back to officers Adkins' and Ousleys' fiefdom with a shirt that said, "Nuke all the hajis," or "Show us your tits," or any number of truly obscene things and no one would care. Just so it's not "that shirt" again. And just for the record? I'm not paying the fine. I'll see Adkins and Ousley and Dubya's Director of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, if he wants to show up, in United States District Court on the appointed date. And if there's a Chicago area attorney who'd like to take the case, I'd really like to sue them - - from Dubya on down. I have to believe that this whole country has not yet gone insane, just the government. This kind of behavior can't be tolerated. It must be challenged. Mike Ferner served as a Navy corpsman during Vietnam and is obviously a member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] = = = = = = = = = = = = = The court to democracy: Drop dead, citizens Steve Chapman, July 2, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/n95nd When it comes to partisan gerrymandering, the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week, two numbers are relevant. The first: five. That's how many of the 392 incumbent House members running in 2004 lost to non-incumbents. The second: zero. That's how much chance there is that the Supreme Court will stop this endless, insatiable and alarmingly successful effort to prevent voters from deciding elections. American democracy is beginning to resemble a Western movie set: authentic-looking storefronts with nothing behind them. We continue to hold elections for Congress and state legislatures, but in the overwhelming majority of districts, the winner is determined long before Election Day. The Texas plan at issue in this case was unusual in one respect. Reapportionments normally take place only once every decade - - following the census. But Texas Republicans, after gaining control of the legislature in 2003, decided there was no need to wait till 2010. So they took the almost unheard-of step of redrawing the state's congressional districts in mid-decade. The plan succeeded brilliantly - - gaining the party six additional seats and a majority of the state's delegation in the 2004 election. Last week, the Supreme Court said the new map violated the Voting Rights Act when it removed 100,000 Latinos from one district to keep a Republican incumbent in office. But it gave its blessing to the reapportionment, which a lower court described as "an abuse of power that, at its core, evinces a fundamental distrust of voters, serving the self-interest of the political parties at the expense of the public good." The Supreme Court didn't quite endorse such abuses. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, admitted that the Texas legislature acted "with the sole purpose of achieving a Republican congressional majority." But he and his colleagues concluded that it was beyond their poor brains to come up with "a standard for deciding how much partisan dominance is too much." So they decided, in effect, that nothing could be too much. Supporters of the plan were not bashful about their goal, which required moving 8 million of the state's 22 million people into new districts. The operative idea is simple: If voters don't like your pitch, don't change your pitch - - change your voters. In defending the effort in court, the state agreed that "partisan gain was the motivating force behind the decision to redistrict in 2003." Not only did Republicans succeed in getting better results in 2004, but they also assured better results for years to come. Republicans say the map is perfectly fair, because it yielded a delegation roughly reflective of the state's political breakdown: With 58 percent of the total statewide vote, the GOP got 66 percent of the seats. But the fairness is only skin-deep. The state's own expert, testifying in court, admitted that even if Democrats got half of the total vote, they would probably win no more than 38 percent of the congressional races. The Texas Republican Party insisted that the old map, which rigged things in favor of Democrats, was even less representative than the new one. But it's no solution to replace one grossly unfair partisan reapportionment with another. The winners change, but the losers - - the people of Texas - - remain the same. Nor is it reasonable for the court to stand aside while politicians turn the central element of democracy into a phony ritual. The court thinks it's too hard to decide when a gerrymander goes too far. But somehow it manages the equally thorny task of identifying when reapportionment amounts to racial discrimination. Where does the Constitution say that applying standards like "equal protection of the laws" is supposed to be easy? As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent, if a state passed a law saying "all future apportionment shall be drawn so as most to burden Party X's right to fair and effective representation," the court would strike it down. Here, though, it upheld a remap everyone knows was designed to do exactly that. Worse, it said such schemes can be implemented not just once a decade, but anytime the people in power can ram them through. The framers of the Constitution may have accepted gerrymandering as a necessary evil. But no one in those days could have dreamed how far it would be taken by unscrupulous partisans armed with modern technology intent on neutralizing the central element of American democracy. Thanks to the Supreme Court, they have only just begun. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] = = = = = = = = = = = Thank you for reading ... ~~ Suz-Q ~~ * COUNTDOWN CLOCK: http://tinyurl.com/cyvew * Presidential Quiz: http://tinyurl.com/nyrro * The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him. --- G.W.B. 9/13/01 * I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority. --- G.W.B. 3/13/02 * http://www.freedomtofascism.com * http://www.thankyoustephencolbert.org * http://www.itmfa.com * http://tinyurl.com/hx5u2 * http://tinyurl.com/9f7xk * http://iraqforsale.org * http://tinyurl.com/hvyhw * Interactive: http://tinyurl.com/cc3du * It's a secret!: http://tinyurl.com/obh35 * http://tinyurl.com/ewc2x * Mark Twain: Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. * http://tinyurl.com/jm96g * http://tinyurl.com/cfsrc ________________________________________________________________________ Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [RobsList] A progressive group that is part of http://robwire.com You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RobsList" group. 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