Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[wytheholt--- via Marxism]

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Thanks for these scenes from your life in the south, and then in LA, John. I 
wish I were in your Mao classes. I really like the episode where you are 
cussing the cop for being a cop (=oppressor) and he says he took the job to 
protect the poor and the weak, but my guess is that he, like most of them, do 
what cops are supposed to do when push comes to shove (apt phrasing) he will 
shoot you or otherwise harm you; there may be exceptions, but somehow you don't 
run up against them when you are marching or at an angry demonstration. Yes, it 
is the social roles that define us for the most part, and I have seen good 
people crumble under the pressure.

I was certainly not a born communist, nor were you, though you came a lot 
closer. I have grown into my political beliefs, slowly, haltingly, but the 
graph doggedly runs to the left. I am glad you will not change to meet the 
times. Me either. I am glad we met on this listserv. WH


> On June 19, 2020 at 1:48 PM John A Imani  wrote:
> 
> << the symbols of segregation NEED to be in museums today>>
> 
> Thanx for this.  RT.  I grew up a Bama football fan.  And remained so 
> subsequent to moving to LA in S '63 after finishing 9th grade.  My girl and I 
> went to Saban's first Bama championship at the Rose Bowl in 2010.  I missed 
> the UA's integration but my older sister knew Vivian Malone.  I missed that 
> but here are some of the things that happened while there:
> 
> I grew up in Mobile, AL until I was 15.  Went to Catholic school.  As all 
> boys thought I wanted to be a priest.  My barely older first cousin was and 
> became Monsignor before his early death from MS.
> 
> The South.  I was at a Mardi Gras parade about 10 years old.  There was 
> another black kid next to me bout the same age.  And a third kid same age, 
> white, walking in front of the coming parade and selling peanuts.  Little 
> black kid held out a dime and the white kid said "Y'all want some pie-nuts?"  
> The black kid said "Yes, sir. 
> 
> Or playing stickball and running after a well hit liner.  Getting ball 
> and throwing back to infield.  Saw a station wagon with a carload of nuns.  
> "Damn, they must be lost."  Ran over to help and got within 20ft and saw the 
> driver needed a shave. 
> 
> White man In a summer suit comes to our door.  5 or 6 years old, I open 
> it.Probably selling insurance or something.  Man looks down at me and 
> said, "Damn.  You look just like a li'l ole Jew."  I beamed at such a 
> description.  Meant I was white-like.
> 
> 15 years later at LACC, 1967.  Saw paramilitary-looking brothers slowly 
> marching in formation onto the school grounds.  In camouflage jackets and 
> holding a Red Book in their hands in their crooked arms.  I'm thinking, "They 
> must be communists or something".  I felt sorry for them.  "They don't even 
> know God". 
> 
> Two years later, I'm BMoC.  Chairman of Political Affairs.  Teaching 'Mao 
> Tes-Tung Thought ' to LACC BSU and Section 3A of the Black Panther Party.  
> Walking across main drag, Vermont Ave, and a older cop on a motorcycle says 
> "How do you do?"  I knew who the cops were from Selma and whole bunch of sht. 
>  Viciously I let out a blur of obscenities punctuated with "Pig" and "Donuts" 
> and a bunch of "Fuck You's".  The guy almost cried, saying, "I'ma Christian 
> man.  I got this job to look out for the poor and the weak."  As I told a 
> nun, I am in recontact with after my 50th class reunion in 2016, "I went from 
> 7 feet tall, to 7 inches small". 
> 
> I still hate the cops but, against all odds, there can be and are 
> exceptions.  But their prime directive is the preservation of the sanctity of 
> private property and (to paraphrase) it is not the nature of the men that 
> determine their social roles, it is their social roles that determine the 
> nature of the men.  90% of good men and women who go into that function are 
> changed from their evangelist roles that prompted them to sign on.  And these 
> only a minority of all those who go into that so-called 'profession'.
> 
> No one, today, is a born communist.  In truth, save in extreme fortunate 
> circumstances ('Red Diaper babies') we are closer to being 'natural born 
> capitalists' because of the pervasive invasive ethos that starts at birth and 
> continually bombard us with 'me-isms'.   Those of us who have changed, who 
> have moved 'leftwards', all have been through stages in life.  We all have 
> learned from these or we did not.  But we all had the chance to learn. 
> 
> What I am saying is, maybe I look at things the way I do cause of the way 
> I've been.  And I 

Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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<< the symbols of segregation NEED to be in museums today>>

Thanx for this.  RT.  I grew up a Bama football fan.  And remained so
subsequent to moving to LA in S '63 after finishing 9th grade.  My girl and
I went to Saban's first Bama championship at the Rose Bowl in 2010.  I
missed the UA's integration but my older sister knew Vivian Malone.  I
missed that but here are some of the things that happened while there:

I grew up in Mobile, AL until I was 15.  Went to Catholic school.  As all
boys thought I wanted to be a priest.  My barely older first cousin was and
became Monsignor before his early death from MS.

The South.  I was at a Mardi Gras parade about 10 years old.  There was
another black kid next to me bout the same age.  And a third kid same age,
white, walking in front of the coming parade and selling peanuts.  Little
black kid held out a dime and the white kid said "Y'all want some
pie-nuts?"  The black kid said "Yes, sir.

Or playing stickball and running after a well hit liner.  Getting ball and
throwing back to infield.  Saw a station wagon with a carload of nuns.
"Damn, they must be lost."  Ran over to help and got within 20ft and saw
the driver needed a shave.

White man In a summer suit comes to our door.  5 or 6 years old, I open
it.Probably selling insurance or something.  Man looks down at me and
said, "Damn.  You look just like a li'l ole Jew."  I beamed at such a
description.  Meant I was white-like.

15 years later at LACC, 1967.  Saw paramilitary-looking brothers slowly
marching in formation onto the school grounds.  In camouflage jackets and
holding a Red Book in their hands in their crooked arms.  I'm thinking,
"They must be communists or something".  I felt sorry for them.  "They
don't even know God".

Two years later, I'm BMoC.  Chairman of Political Affairs.  Teaching 'Mao
Tes-Tung Thought ' to LACC BSU and Section 3A of the Black Panther Party.
Walking across main drag, Vermont Ave, and a older cop on a motorcycle says
"How do you do?"  I knew who the cops were from Selma and whole bunch of
sht.  Viciously I let out a blur of obscenities punctuated with "Pig" and
"Donuts" and a bunch of "Fuck You's".  The guy almost cried, saying, "I'ma
Christian man.  I got this job to look out for the poor and the weak."  As
I told a nun, I am in recontact with after my 50th class reunion in 2016,
"I went from 7 feet tall, to 7 inches small".

I still hate the cops but, against all odds, there can be and are
exceptions.  But their prime directive is the preservation of the sanctity
of private property and (to paraphrase) it is not the nature of the men
that determine their social roles, it is their social roles that determine
the nature of the men.  90% of good men and women who go into that function
are changed from their evangelist roles that prompted them to sign on.  And
these only a minority of all those who go into that so-called 'profession'.

No one, today, is a born communist.  In truth, save in extreme fortunate
circumstances ('Red Diaper babies') we are closer to being 'natural born
capitalists' because of the pervasive invasive ethos that starts at birth
and continually bombard us with 'me-isms'.   Those of us who have changed,
who have moved 'leftwards', all have been through stages in life.  We all
have learned from these or we did not.  But we all had the chance to
learn.

What I am saying is, maybe I look at things the way I do cause of the way
I've been.  And I could be wrong.  Always that proposition exists.  But I
ain't changing unless I change.  And I don't care who likes it or not.  If
I went back to that motorcycle cop today I would be saying "I truly,
seriously and whole-heartedly do not give a fuck that you are a cop, you
are  a good man.  A good man in a god-awful career".  "I was so much older
then, I'm younger than that now."

This is why the symbols need not destroying but relegation to comrade
Wythe's museum.

JAI


On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:21 AM  wrote:

> The top Klansmen didn't have white robes, but brightly hued ones.  I
> discovered this when my grandfather died in the summer of 1953 and I was
> deemed old enough at 11 to help my dad and uncle clear out his huge old
> house.  I was allotted the task of seeing what was in the attic.  I opened
> a closet door and discovered hanging there a dust-ridden orange Klan robe
> complete with pointy top.  My deeply embarrassed dad, over my supposedly
> childish objections that this was important to history, immediately burned
> the robe along with most of the other effects of my grandfather in a
> bonfire in the yard.  I now muse about the irony that, the more important
> the rank of the 

Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[wytheholt--- via Marxism]

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The top Klansmen didn't have white robes, but brightly hued ones.  I discovered 
this when my grandfather died in the summer of 1953 and I was deemed old enough 
at 11 to help my dad and uncle clear out his huge old house.  I was allotted 
the task of seeing what was in the attic.  I opened a closet door and 
discovered hanging there a dust-ridden orange Klan robe complete with pointy 
top.  My deeply embarrassed dad, over my supposedly childish objections that 
this was important to history, immediately burned the robe along with most of 
the other effects of my grandfather in a bonfire in the yard.  I now muse about 
the irony that, the more important the rank of the Klansman, the more colored 
his robe was.  Wythe
PS -- John, when I landed the job at the University of Alabama and got to 
Tuscaloosa in September 1966, there were signs on public water fountains 
designating the proper race of a drinker therefrom.  When I left Alabama in 
2007 a group of us were working on getting actually desegregated elementary 
school classes in the state's Black Belt (the school boards were grouping the 
pupils by supposed ability, and lo and behold! almost all the most "able" 
children turned out to be white!).  Given the doggedness of continued racist 
intransigence, the symbols of segregation NEED to be in museums today, such as 
the one in Selma founded by Rose Sanders (one of my heroes, a friend, and a 
fellow worker in the desegregation trenches) which shows Selma's struggles -- 
desegregation, the marches, the bridge-crossings, the demonstrations, and the 
federal legislation such as the Voting Rights Act which has resulted from 
continuing mostly-black activism centered in Selma.

> On June 18, 2020 at 10:18 PM John A Imani via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
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> 
> << Indeed I can imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while
> the racist conditions that gave rise to them remain.>>
> 
> And indeed I can imagine a world in which the racist conditions are gone
> while these 'symbols' remain: in books and museums where they belong.
> 
> What is the effect of the sight of a Klan hood, masked conic hat and
> chewing tobacco-stained flowing was-white robe?  What comes to mind when a
> noose is tied from a prominent tree, the grace of its Spanish moss belied?
> The burning of a cross?  The signs  "Colored",  "Whites Only" on the
> restrooms, the water fountains, the lunch counters, the bus depot, the
> trains?  The Confederate flag?  More than signs.  Warnings.
> 
> 'Symbols' speak more than the picture's words.
> 
> Socially recognized, socially understood, socially enforced conventions.
> Southern blacks were almost born knowing where the back of the bus was.
> Which school to attend.  Who to let pass on the sidewalk by stepping onto
> the unpaved easement:  "Yes, Suh", "No, Ma'am".
> 
> Yes, I can imagine a world where historians' can comment in pages and
> inscribe their analyses of such 'symbols' on plaques; where students can be
> taught in our schools; where the merely curious can leaf through a book or
> walk hallowed galleries and pause and think and shake their heads in amazed
> disgust in a land where skin color itself has ceased to be the symbol.
> 
> I join comrade Wythe as a child of the South, fleeing Mason and Dixon's
> line, at the age of 15 but having seen much, enough.  I differ with and
> from the comrade only by being born black.
> 
> JAI
> 
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 6:03 PM A.R. G  wrote:
> 
> Very much appreciate Wythe's insight as a Southerner...
> Indeed I can imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while the
> racist conditions that gave rise to them remain.
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Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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<< Indeed I can imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while
the racist conditions that gave rise to them remain.>>

And indeed I can imagine a world in which the racist conditions are gone
while these 'symbols' remain: in books and museums where they belong.

What is the effect of the sight of a Klan hood, masked conic hat and
chewing tobacco-stained flowing was-white robe?  What comes to mind when a
noose is tied from a prominent tree, the grace of its Spanish moss belied?
The burning of a cross?  The signs  "Colored",  "Whites Only" on the
restrooms, the water fountains, the lunch counters, the bus depot, the
trains?  The Confederate flag?  More than signs.  Warnings.

'Symbols' speak more than the picture's words.

Socially recognized, socially understood, socially enforced conventions.
Southern blacks were almost born knowing where the back of the bus was.
Which school to attend.  Who to let pass on the sidewalk by stepping onto
the unpaved easement:  "Yes, Suh", "No, Ma'am".

Yes, I can imagine a world where historians' can comment in pages and
inscribe their analyses of such 'symbols' on plaques; where students can be
taught in our schools; where the merely curious can leaf through a book or
walk hallowed galleries and pause and think and shake their heads in amazed
disgust in a land where skin color itself has ceased to be the symbol.

I join comrade Wythe as a child of the South, fleeing Mason and Dixon's
line, at the age of 15 but having seen much, enough.  I differ with and
from the comrade only by being born black.

JAI

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 6:03 PM A.R. G  wrote:

Very much appreciate Wythe's insight as a Southerner...
Indeed I can imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while the
racist conditions that gave rise to them remain.
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Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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Very much appreciate Wythe's insight as a Southerner.

I do recall growing up the debates about the meaning of the flag,
particularly when it came up in the context of the VA Congressional
district race in 2006 between Jim Webb and that idiot who called Webb's
volunteer, an Indian-American like me, a slur. The other guy (not Webb) had
apparently been flying the Confederate flag in his office, etc.

But I think what I take the most from Wythe's comments is paradoxically not
about the flag itself -- what Wythe is describing is essentially an
unchanged historical lineage in which racism is still very much a part of
everyday life in the South (as in other parts of the country). What I take
from this is not so much that the flag, as a piece of cloth, is an
intrinsically racist symbol, but that it corresponds to a racist reality
which in turn determines the meaning of the symbol. Its meaning can only be
understood in the context in which it is used, and that context -- then and
now -- is thoroughly racialized. And I suppose the reason well-meaning
white Southerners do not see the issue or get defensive about it is because
that racist reality is one that they do not experience or only experience
as worthy of glorification, sanitized of the enslavement and subsequent
subjugation that was very clearly directed at people who are not them.

I did not know until recently that many of the Confederate monuments in the
South, including the Stone Mountain carving, are actually fairly
contemporary. Many of them were built and set up decades or even a century
after the Civil War and began popping up specifically at times that Black
people fought for their rights. I think that, more than anything, sheds
light on the purpose and meaning of these Confederate symbols.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we should not separate the meaning
of any symbol from the political reality in which it is being used
(including other symbols like the American flag, etc.). Indeed I can
imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while the racist
conditions that gave rise to them remain.

Amith R. Gupta


On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 8:11 AM Wythe Holt jr.  wrote:

> This is a strange submission, for one who, like myself, was born and
> reared a white racist in the American South, who has fought for decades to
> overcome his racism, and who has lived almost all of his life with people
> who still think the Confederacy is one of the most meaningful things in
> their lives.
>
> For my black friends, it (the Confederacy) is deeply negative -- it means
> thoroughgoing and tangible racism -- being "raced" every minute of every
> day, being subject to outlandish cruelty and, worse, dismissal as full
> human beings, being subjected to second class citizenship and overt haughty
> discrimination, a lesser level of imagined possible competence in many
> white minds and in much of the law and culture, in education, in
> government, in all walks of public and private life -- all offshoots and
> holdovers from the human slavery that most of their American ancestors
> suffered under.
>
> For a large number of my white friends, it often means unquestioning
> glorification of and identification with the white people who led the
> Confederacy in military defense of the institution of human slavery.  (NOT
> "states rights" -- the "state's right" that -- when I ask them -- these
> folks immediately first think about is the "right" to hold human beings in
> legal thralldom.)
>
> For all of these people the Confederate flag is centrally meaningful as a
> symbol of these wildly differing views and experiences of hundreds of years
> of the degradation and enslavement of dark-skinned people.
>
> This needs to be said again, and at length.  Anthema to the former
> (African-Americans), and a symbol of life and worth and deep if racist
> meaning to the latter (so-called Caucasians), is the Confederate flag.  It
> means "slavery" -- still -- to every Southerner born and bred there.  It
> means racism.  It means cruelty and overlordship.  It means defiance of the
> law, it means being a traitor to the original Constitution and government
> of the US, it means that equality is impossible and always nonexistent, it
> means that a whole group of people who are black are STILL TO THIS MINUTE
> thought to be inherently ignorant and uncivilized and inhuman by many white
> people, many of whom do not live in the South.  Look at the continuing
> murder of black men by white policemen, something which still seems to
> happen monthly or more frequently, 155 years after Appomattox.  For many
> black people it means constant struggle in their own minds and 

Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[Jeffrey Masko via Marxism]

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My father was a truck-driver and I traveled quite a bit with him and never
saw as many confederate flags in the south as I did when I did my phd work
at Penn State about 7 years ago. Coming from Pittsburgh, it's well known
that JUST BEFORE you cross the mason-dixon line, there are LOADS of
confederate flags to demarcate "where" the south *really* begins.
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Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[A.R. G via Marxism]

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Speaking from an entirely personal perspective -- I am neither black nor
white and I am not from the South (though I live there now) nor am I a fan
of NASCAR or country music, though I am a fan of classic rock which appears
to use the Confederate flag quite a bit until recently -- I am not sure it
proves anything. I am also thinking of films like Gone with the Wind. Not
only is the film a celebrated classic, the book is an international
best-seller. It was sold even in India where my dad and his college friends
read it and enjoyed it.

I am guessing it is different for Southerners, both black and white. For
people in other places I'm not sure the flag or other
Confederacy-sympathizing kitsch like GWTW hold any particular significance
at all. Maybe they should -- I mean, GWTW in retrospect is just 3 hours of
Confederate propaganda -- but I don't think my dad or anyone else in India
saw it that way. My dad took me to see it in a theater once when I was a
kid. I was confused that the slave characters were so friendly with their
former "owners," but beyond that I didn't really follow the plot and fell
asleep.

On the other hand, the author of GWTW has a house in Atlanta that now
functions as a museum to her works, that is driving distance from my
apartment. I was told by black activists in the community that in previous
decades, when the area had not been gentrified and laced with security
cameras, that activists had repeatedly attempted to burn it down.

To me the issue is that insofar as parts of American culture are indicative
of racism, it is not limited to the Confederacy. Indeed, I do detect some
degree of hypocrisy. We are expected to throw out the Confederate flag, but
we are told not to condemn the Union flag which was the flag of those who
colonized the Western parts of America where indigenous people were
brutally massacred (not to mention the wars on the rest of the world that
are ongoing). We are also not allowed to burn the Israeli flag -- in fact,
if we do so, then *we* are the racists. That is, of course, not a reason to
whitewash Confederate symbols but as someone who associates most of
American culture with racism and jingoism it is hard not to notice the
contradiction, particularly given that much of the Confederate kitsch is,
like many parts of American culture writ large, treated as banal and does
not have *apparently* racist connotations because it is mixed with so many
parts of American culture that have no apparent link to the Confederacy
(such as NASCAR or Lynnard Skynnard). I recall that when I visited Durham,
NC some time ago, the statue of a Confederate soldier had been toppled by
activists and there was simply an empty platform. But only a few feet away,
another statute for American soldiers commemorating the war on Vietnam was
left curiously untouched.

Amith R. Gupta


On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 2:04 PM Jeffrey Masko via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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>
> This  took me by surprise and I am interested how this will pan out as the
> fabric of social life is much more centered on sport and entertainment than
> on more formal institutions like police deps. Any meaningful change in
> policing must be accompanied by a win in the war of position, so to speak.
> Of course, there are virulent puritanical streaks in the U.S. left that
> dismiss sports in a opium of the masses type Frankfurt school idea of
> deluding the stupid working masses. As John pointed out, how the fan base
> reacts at large will be interesting and can be compared with how antiracist
> messaging has worked (and not worked) in world football. Also interesting
> is how dedicated the English Premier league is to honoring George Floyd,
> even having Black Lives Matter on the back of their kits.
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Re: [Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

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This  took me by surprise and I am interested how this will pan out as the
fabric of social life is much more centered on sport and entertainment than
on more formal institutions like police deps. Any meaningful change in
policing must be accompanied by a win in the war of position, so to speak.
Of course, there are virulent puritanical streaks in the U.S. left that
dismiss sports in a opium of the masses type Frankfurt school idea of
deluding the stupid working masses. As John pointed out, how the fan base
reacts at large will be interesting and can be compared with how antiracist
messaging has worked (and not worked) in world football. Also interesting
is how dedicated the English Premier league is to honoring George Floyd,
even having Black Lives Matter on the back of their kits.
_
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[Marxism] On the NASCAR's Banning of the Confederate Flag and its Social Implications

[John A Imani via Marxism]

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Comrades,

I watched the beginning of the Nascar event in Homestead, Fl.   The
announcers began with an explication as to why the action had been taken
not only to divorce the association with the previously rife displays of
the Confederate flag but to outright ban it on their cars on the tracks, in
the stands on the fans, and at any associated NASCAR sponsored social
events.  The "Dukes of Hazard" and their 'General Lee'
,
in the language of their minds, would be *verboten*

At the beginning, the NASCAR' spokesmen said what would be expected:  an
admission that *"yes, the shit we put down was fcked up...but we better
now"*.   Least that's what I heard them say.  Apologies had to come there
and have come or will come anywhere and everywhere, wherever, they have
been or are being forced to react to the momentum of the streets.  Even
some cops taking a knee.  Politicians.  Club owners in other sports.  All
talking about racism (and having to admit how wrong they are and have been,
i.e. really only affirming what could not be denied) but little about the
socio-political effects of not just racialist capitalism but the economic
discordance of capitalism itself and the tragedies it spawns and births.
It is, again, as if no one wants to tell that emperor that he has no
clothes.  All the mouthpieces speaking about racism, talking out the side
of their necks.

In spite of all the still not considered spite, I consider this change from
NASCAR's image as a most positive cultural thing.  Even significant.For
when a movement is able to win victories in battles such as these that it
has not yet even joined then that movement has momentum.  That movement is
winning.

I believe that there will be reactions from a part of their fanbase.
Peckerwoods spouting sht like "First Amendment" and sneaking 'Rebel' battle
flags into the race or proudly driving up with stars and bars on their
pck-ups and their cars.  But actions such as these are but skirmishes,
meanwhile the battle still rages even thouh the war has yet to even be
declared.  Thus at every opportunity we need to show this and that
inequity's relationship to capitalism.  As effect from cause.  As cause
from effect.  Each, with the other, in a vicious, non-virtuous,
self-reifying spiraling-'society'-downward circle further and further and...

But apart and away from this arena or that stadium and that stage,
attention needs to be paid to the construction and discussion of a plan, of
a vision of society and how it is that that would work.  Occupy became
occupy when no society-challenging demands were being promulgated,
discussed and taken to, and for, the ones who really matter, the
overwhelming numbers of us in our neighborhoods.   That is the main
battleground.  The battlefield, that in the end, dictates the outcome of
the war.  And if mere marching and mere moving and not real movement
building remains the remains of the day then this movement will be unable
to go where it needs to and ought be, could be and should be.

This does not mean that there are not already substantial gains in the
actions that began with the George Floyd murder and amplified by the BLM
movement and our multi-racial allies and comrades.  As the '50's and '60's
there were changes, real changes, victories that were won, triumphs that
were achieved (e.g. Brown v Bd of Ed of Topeka, KS, affirmative action,
college and university black and other's studies depts.  The legal right to
vote in areas where local law and cop and vigilante terrorism had
proscribed it.)

And here, today, there will be unerasable changes effected.  But as the
civil rights marchers crossing bridges in the '50s, and, the '60's civil
disturbances on Northern streets and colleges--with black militancy in our
hearts, our bodies, our visions our hair, in our fist and in our *arms*,
while leading to lasting changes, they did not bring The Change that was
seen, evoked and propagated and preached by the visionaries among us who
were only giving voice to the mass consciousness that was our soul.

After what was lost in injuries and deaths, and imprisonments and
disillusionments, the progress that was won, these changes that were made,
at best, only drew us even with the damage to the lives, the heartbreaks,
the sacrifices, the efforts that these gains cost.

But as for the NASCAR's move, where I grew up in Mobile, AL there is a
museum.  One of the exhibits is a scale replica of the CSS Alabama
 and, for a
warboat as a blockade runner, it is a most handsome vessel.