"The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union left the political leadership of the United States unprepared. Military interventions had been undertaken in Korea and Vietnam with enormous loss of life, also in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and huge amounts of military aid had been given all over the world--in Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia--on the supposition that this was necessary to deal with a Communist menace emanating from the Soviet Union. Several trillion dollars had been taken from American citizens in the form of taxes to maintain a huge nuclear and nonnuclear arsenal and military bases all over the world--all primarily justified by the "Soviet threat."
According to Polifact, "the U.S. has 662 overseas bases in 38 foreign countries, which is a smaller number than the 900 bases Paul cited." And according to CounterCurrents.org, the United States has ,invaded approximately 70 countries as of June 2014. A few of the invaded countries were Kuwait, Panama, and Cuba.
"The fear of 'independent nationalism' was that this would jeopardize powerful American economic interests. Revolutions in Nicaragua or Cuba or El Salvador or Chile were threats to United Fruit, Anaconda Copper, International Telephone and Telegraph, and others."
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Friday, August 25, 2017
Monday, July 3, 2017
War = Capitalism + Nationalism x Racism (United States' Empire)
More from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn:
American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume, which is why expansion to other countries and trade for the surplus of American goods would help the American Empire profit. One argument made by a journal wrote that an increase in wages at home would solve the problem of surplus by creating more purchasing power in the country. Conquest/war with the goal of expansion was to appear like an act of generosity--helping a rebellious group overthrow foreign rule--as in Cuba where by 1898, Cuban rebels had been fighting Spanish conquerors to win independence.
War brought more employment and higher wages, but also higher prices. Foner says "Not only was there a startling increase in the cost of living, but, in the absence of an income tax, the poor found through increased levies on sugar, molasses, tobacco, and other taxes..." (p. 308)
"Americans began taking over railroad, mine, and sugar properties when the war ended. In a few yeras, $30 million of American capital was invested. United Fruit moved into the Cuban sugar industry. It bought 1,900,000 acres of land for about 20 cents an acre. The American Tobacco Company arrived. By the end of the occupation, in 1901, Foner estimates that at least 80% of the export of Cuba's minerals were in American hands, mostly Bethlehem Steel." (p. 310.)
Theodore Roosevelt said that lynching was a good thing and war was ideal for the conditions of human society to present manliness and heroism. Winston Churchill didn't want a black Republic of Cuba (against Spain) like Haiti, whose revolution against France in 1803 had led to the first nation run by blacks in the 'New World.' After the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico was taken over by U.S. military forces. The Hawaiian Islands had already been penetrated by American missionaries and pineapple plantation owners. For a payment of $20 million in December 1898, the U.S. took over Guam, and the Philippines as well. McKinley said he prayed to God to find answers in occupying the Philippines, and said that he was told that we could not give them back to Span, nor turn them over to France or Germany, that these countries were unfit for self-government and they would have anarchy, we needed to educate Filipinos by 'Christianizing' them.
Emma Goldman commented that "the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar...that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists." Mark Twain said about the Philippine war: "We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the 300 concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag...we are a World Power."
American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume, which is why expansion to other countries and trade for the surplus of American goods would help the American Empire profit. One argument made by a journal wrote that an increase in wages at home would solve the problem of surplus by creating more purchasing power in the country. Conquest/war with the goal of expansion was to appear like an act of generosity--helping a rebellious group overthrow foreign rule--as in Cuba where by 1898, Cuban rebels had been fighting Spanish conquerors to win independence.
War brought more employment and higher wages, but also higher prices. Foner says "Not only was there a startling increase in the cost of living, but, in the absence of an income tax, the poor found through increased levies on sugar, molasses, tobacco, and other taxes..." (p. 308)
"Americans began taking over railroad, mine, and sugar properties when the war ended. In a few yeras, $30 million of American capital was invested. United Fruit moved into the Cuban sugar industry. It bought 1,900,000 acres of land for about 20 cents an acre. The American Tobacco Company arrived. By the end of the occupation, in 1901, Foner estimates that at least 80% of the export of Cuba's minerals were in American hands, mostly Bethlehem Steel." (p. 310.)
Theodore Roosevelt said that lynching was a good thing and war was ideal for the conditions of human society to present manliness and heroism. Winston Churchill didn't want a black Republic of Cuba (against Spain) like Haiti, whose revolution against France in 1803 had led to the first nation run by blacks in the 'New World.' After the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico was taken over by U.S. military forces. The Hawaiian Islands had already been penetrated by American missionaries and pineapple plantation owners. For a payment of $20 million in December 1898, the U.S. took over Guam, and the Philippines as well. McKinley said he prayed to God to find answers in occupying the Philippines, and said that he was told that we could not give them back to Span, nor turn them over to France or Germany, that these countries were unfit for self-government and they would have anarchy, we needed to educate Filipinos by 'Christianizing' them.
Emma Goldman commented that "the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar...that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists." Mark Twain said about the Philippine war: "We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the 300 concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag...we are a World Power."
Strikes, child labor, lynchings, The National Guard, The Espionage Act
Paraphrased from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
At one of the mills--Polish women--shut down their looms and walked out of the mill as their wages became further reduced. Soon ten thousand workers were on strike. Because mass protests occurred in one city and the strikers grew to 50,000 workers that rioted for weeks in the streets. Martial law was then declared with 22 companies of militia and two troops of cavalry occupying the city. Mills were not working amidst of many strikers being sentenced to a year in prison and a young Syrian striker, John Ramy, was bayoneted to death.
Local authorities had passed laws to stop them from speaking; the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) defied these laws because thousands upon thousands of workers left factories to protest the dangerous conditions of their work. For example there was "dangerously broken stairways...windows few and so dirty...The wooden floors that were swept once a year...Hardly any other light but the gas jets burning by day and by night...the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. No fresh drinking water...mice and roaches...suffered from the cold...suffered from the heat...youngsters together with the men and women toiled from seventy and eighty hours a week" and including the toxins produced within the factories such as lead.
Among the strikes, protests and picketing, children were going hungry and officials were threatening to take children away. So with the help of socialist groups in surrounding regions, children were taken in temporarily. A group of 40 children assembled on February 24 to go to Philadelphia where they were met with police that filled the railroad station. The police used their clubs to beat the mothers and then were dragged into a military truck with their children. One woman that was beaten while she was pregnant ended up giving birth to a dead child. Not only did the strike confront these issues of dangerous work, low wages, but also that laws such as segregating whites from blacks in meetings was addressed as well as teachers being automatically fired when they became pregnant.
Out of this, unions were formed, workers got their jobs back, some were paid higher wages, some workers' hours were reduced from 17 hour to 9 hour work days. In this time, women's suffrage movement, and the ideas of feminism, socialism and anarchism became popularized. In 1912, women that were doctors, lawyers, architects, actresses and sculptors, waitresses, domestics all marched lining the streets. Emma Goldman spoke that women should refuse to bear children if they don't want them, women should refuse to be a servant to God or anyone, and that no one owns her body except her. Helen Keller questioned: "what good can votes do when ten elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?" And Keller joked that she would write a book titled "Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness" to her critics that told her because of her deafness and blindness that she is liable to error.
Mother Jones focused on organizing for an end to child labor where 284,000 children between 10-15 worked in mines, mills, and factories. She wrote that in 1903 in Kensington, Pennsylvania, 75,000 textile workers were on strike for better wages and shorter days. 10,000 of those strikers were little children. Jones described that some children had no hands or had a thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle, and so Jones was moved to take some of the children including their parents to march with banners that read: "We want time to play," and "We want to go to school!" Theodore Roosevelt refused to see them and many organizers were arrested for cases of free speech, pacifist speaking, defense work, and strike organizing.
While these strikes went on in the North, blacks in the South were facing much more injustice. There were lynchings every week, murderous riots against blacks. No President in history cared about the lynchings of black people, which prompted The National Afro-American Council formed in 1903. Another group formed known as the National Association of Colored Women. W.E.B. Du Bois was a voice during this time as the first person of African decent to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. Du Bois in 1915 of Atlantic Monthly wrote about imperialism of Africa and the roots of war that stemmed from the conquest of gold and diamonds in South Africa, the cocoa of Angola and Nigeria, the rubber and ivory of the Congo, the palm oil of the West Coast.
Du Bois was also the only black officer, first editor of the NAACP periodical The Crisis. This came after a race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Life got worse for many people who joined organizations, unions, or any groups that seemed to be affiliated with socialism or communism. These groups were seen as a threat to the government and corporations that manipulated the government. In fact, many riots and strikes ended with the National Guard beating or killing strikers who only wanted better pay and better working conditions.
In one instance in 1914, the murder of one coal miner who was fighting against low-pay, bad conditions, feudal domination of their lives in towns controlled by the mining companies themselves ended in the Ludlow Massacre. 11,000 miners in Colorado were on a coal strike and the National Guard used a machine gun to attack the miner's tents. Even after attempted communication between the miners and the guardsmen, the National Guard continued to fire at the tents which killed 13 people and sent women and children to run for the hills. After that, 5,000 people demonstrated in front of the capital in Denver asking for the guardsmen to be tried for murder, but this frustrated the government and 56 men, women, and children were killed.
Additionally, the Espionage Act of 1917 was used to imprison American who spoke or wrote against the war. One person named Eugene Debs spent 10 years in prison, and about 900 people went to prison under the Espionage Act during this time. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman had already spent 14 years in prison for opposing the draft for the war. Even some people were brutally mutilated for being outspoken.
There were many labor strikes in all different types of factories from shirt workers, electrical workers, broom workers, trash collectors grave diggers. Even within the rubber plant companies alone there were strikes at Firestone, Goodyear, and General Motors. The rubber plant strikers used a sit-down tactic that kept them safe and sheltered from the outside. There were 48 sit-down strikers in 1936, and 447 in 1937. With the rubber plant factories, and the biggest strikes called in the National Guard to break up the strike. Actually, 30 members of a National guard company who participated in the Fisher Body sit-down strike had not been paid. Years later, the Supreme Court even declared sit-downs illegal.
This is a reminder that this is still happening in 2017. Rioters are continually beaten and shot at by the military and police that work for the government. One example of this is the Black Lives Matter protests that always face heightened security and police brutality--not to mention the reason BLM exists because of the Black lives that consistently murdered everyday because of the White police and military. Another example is of the brutal attacks from the National Guard against the Standing Rock protesters. Many of the protesters were in sub zero temperatures all while the police/military forces blasted them with cold water and beat and shot them. One person's arm was mutilated by an officer. But what came out of that was the Pipeline started running (even after it started leaking immediately which was one of the main reasons of the protest), and instead of justice being served: people ended up going to jail and have to pay a fine for being a protester. People are still fighting for basic rights like water in Flint, Michigan. People are still fighting for better wages because of inflation of consumer goods. People are still fighting for human rights across the world because of war, poverty, rape, imperialism and neocolonization.
At one of the mills--Polish women--shut down their looms and walked out of the mill as their wages became further reduced. Soon ten thousand workers were on strike. Because mass protests occurred in one city and the strikers grew to 50,000 workers that rioted for weeks in the streets. Martial law was then declared with 22 companies of militia and two troops of cavalry occupying the city. Mills were not working amidst of many strikers being sentenced to a year in prison and a young Syrian striker, John Ramy, was bayoneted to death.
Local authorities had passed laws to stop them from speaking; the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) defied these laws because thousands upon thousands of workers left factories to protest the dangerous conditions of their work. For example there was "dangerously broken stairways...windows few and so dirty...The wooden floors that were swept once a year...Hardly any other light but the gas jets burning by day and by night...the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. No fresh drinking water...mice and roaches...suffered from the cold...suffered from the heat...youngsters together with the men and women toiled from seventy and eighty hours a week" and including the toxins produced within the factories such as lead.
Among the strikes, protests and picketing, children were going hungry and officials were threatening to take children away. So with the help of socialist groups in surrounding regions, children were taken in temporarily. A group of 40 children assembled on February 24 to go to Philadelphia where they were met with police that filled the railroad station. The police used their clubs to beat the mothers and then were dragged into a military truck with their children. One woman that was beaten while she was pregnant ended up giving birth to a dead child. Not only did the strike confront these issues of dangerous work, low wages, but also that laws such as segregating whites from blacks in meetings was addressed as well as teachers being automatically fired when they became pregnant.
Out of this, unions were formed, workers got their jobs back, some were paid higher wages, some workers' hours were reduced from 17 hour to 9 hour work days. In this time, women's suffrage movement, and the ideas of feminism, socialism and anarchism became popularized. In 1912, women that were doctors, lawyers, architects, actresses and sculptors, waitresses, domestics all marched lining the streets. Emma Goldman spoke that women should refuse to bear children if they don't want them, women should refuse to be a servant to God or anyone, and that no one owns her body except her. Helen Keller questioned: "what good can votes do when ten elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?" And Keller joked that she would write a book titled "Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness" to her critics that told her because of her deafness and blindness that she is liable to error.
Mother Jones focused on organizing for an end to child labor where 284,000 children between 10-15 worked in mines, mills, and factories. She wrote that in 1903 in Kensington, Pennsylvania, 75,000 textile workers were on strike for better wages and shorter days. 10,000 of those strikers were little children. Jones described that some children had no hands or had a thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle, and so Jones was moved to take some of the children including their parents to march with banners that read: "We want time to play," and "We want to go to school!" Theodore Roosevelt refused to see them and many organizers were arrested for cases of free speech, pacifist speaking, defense work, and strike organizing.
While these strikes went on in the North, blacks in the South were facing much more injustice. There were lynchings every week, murderous riots against blacks. No President in history cared about the lynchings of black people, which prompted The National Afro-American Council formed in 1903. Another group formed known as the National Association of Colored Women. W.E.B. Du Bois was a voice during this time as the first person of African decent to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. Du Bois in 1915 of Atlantic Monthly wrote about imperialism of Africa and the roots of war that stemmed from the conquest of gold and diamonds in South Africa, the cocoa of Angola and Nigeria, the rubber and ivory of the Congo, the palm oil of the West Coast.
Du Bois was also the only black officer, first editor of the NAACP periodical The Crisis. This came after a race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Life got worse for many people who joined organizations, unions, or any groups that seemed to be affiliated with socialism or communism. These groups were seen as a threat to the government and corporations that manipulated the government. In fact, many riots and strikes ended with the National Guard beating or killing strikers who only wanted better pay and better working conditions.
In one instance in 1914, the murder of one coal miner who was fighting against low-pay, bad conditions, feudal domination of their lives in towns controlled by the mining companies themselves ended in the Ludlow Massacre. 11,000 miners in Colorado were on a coal strike and the National Guard used a machine gun to attack the miner's tents. Even after attempted communication between the miners and the guardsmen, the National Guard continued to fire at the tents which killed 13 people and sent women and children to run for the hills. After that, 5,000 people demonstrated in front of the capital in Denver asking for the guardsmen to be tried for murder, but this frustrated the government and 56 men, women, and children were killed.
Additionally, the Espionage Act of 1917 was used to imprison American who spoke or wrote against the war. One person named Eugene Debs spent 10 years in prison, and about 900 people went to prison under the Espionage Act during this time. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman had already spent 14 years in prison for opposing the draft for the war. Even some people were brutally mutilated for being outspoken.
There were many labor strikes in all different types of factories from shirt workers, electrical workers, broom workers, trash collectors grave diggers. Even within the rubber plant companies alone there were strikes at Firestone, Goodyear, and General Motors. The rubber plant strikers used a sit-down tactic that kept them safe and sheltered from the outside. There were 48 sit-down strikers in 1936, and 447 in 1937. With the rubber plant factories, and the biggest strikes called in the National Guard to break up the strike. Actually, 30 members of a National guard company who participated in the Fisher Body sit-down strike had not been paid. Years later, the Supreme Court even declared sit-downs illegal.
This is a reminder that this is still happening in 2017. Rioters are continually beaten and shot at by the military and police that work for the government. One example of this is the Black Lives Matter protests that always face heightened security and police brutality--not to mention the reason BLM exists because of the Black lives that consistently murdered everyday because of the White police and military. Another example is of the brutal attacks from the National Guard against the Standing Rock protesters. Many of the protesters were in sub zero temperatures all while the police/military forces blasted them with cold water and beat and shot them. One person's arm was mutilated by an officer. But what came out of that was the Pipeline started running (even after it started leaking immediately which was one of the main reasons of the protest), and instead of justice being served: people ended up going to jail and have to pay a fine for being a protester. People are still fighting for basic rights like water in Flint, Michigan. People are still fighting for better wages because of inflation of consumer goods. People are still fighting for human rights across the world because of war, poverty, rape, imperialism and neocolonization.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
For centuries the world has been misled about the original source of the Arts and Sciences; for centuries Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have been falsely idolized as models of intellectual greatness; and for centuries the African continent has been called the Dark Continent, because Europe coveted the honor of transmitting to the world, the Arts and Sciences. It is indeed surprising how, for centuries, the Greeks have been praised by the Western World for intellectual accomplishments which belong without a doubt to the Egyptians or the peoples of North Africa.
More ways that history is white washed from George G.M. James' book Stolen Legacy: "For centuries the world has been misled about the original source of the
Arts and Sciences; for centuries Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have
been falsely idolized as models of intellectual greatness; and for
centuries the African continent has been called the Dark Continent,
because Europe coveted the honor of transmitting to the world, the Arts
and Sciences. It is indeed surprising how, for centuries, the Greeks
have been praised by the Western World for intellectual accomplishments
which belong without a doubt to the Egyptians or the peoples of North
Africa."
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
The Truth Behind Transgender Bathrooms by Kat Blaque
Kat Blaque makes very good points on the Transgender bathroom debate, and I have highlighted her points below which I have paraphrased from a long video which I will leave a link to her video down below for everyone to watch in full:
1. I don't see genitals in bathrooms because I'm not looking, and I'm only there to relieve myself, and that's how everyone should act in a bathroom.
2. Trans people will always exist, and the real debate around bathrooms is that people don't want trans people to exist.
3. The trans bathroom debate also suggests that trans people will harm women and girls in bathrooms, but the reality is that cis-gender men that are our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, are more likely to abuse women and girls, but we don't have a debate about separating these people in our lives away from women and girls. And actually trans people (trans women especially) are more likely to be assaulted in bathrooms.
The reality is that these people who are debating against bathroom rights are the same people that have never cared about women and children and sexual assault except in this debate to pretend their argument is a moral issue.
And also if a man wanted to sexually assault someone, why would they feel the need to cross dress and pretend to be a woman to get in a women's restroom to do so? And second of all if this was the case, this is not a trans person, this is a cis-gender male committing this crime.
Additionally, if there were transgender bathroom rights, why would that keep people from being punished if they committed that act?
4. No one will make alternative bathrooms around the world--it's not real. People will always use the bathroom that is closest to them, the bathroom that they feel comfortable using, etc. There will be social change that may work towards gender neutral bathrooms.
5. Why are you getting your information about trans people from cis-gender people?
6. It also seems that our society wants trans people to "pass" as the gender they identify, and that's oppressive.
7. Trans people have developed and evolved in so many ways beyond the understanding for a cis person that it's almost not worth explaining trans issues and trans rights. "I have this conversation for so long...your understanding my transness doesn't change my transness."
8. Everybody shits, and everybody pisses, so bathrooms are a necessity for everybody--and the people that hate trans people are those that don't want to share any space. And those people tend to be the Conservative republicans.
And even those people that I dislike (the same people that do things that are destructive) also deserve the right to a bathroom despite my dislike for them.
9. This is an economic, social, and cultural attack on trans people that sends the message that they don't deserve space.
Watch in full here: The Truth Behind Transgender Bathrooms
1. I don't see genitals in bathrooms because I'm not looking, and I'm only there to relieve myself, and that's how everyone should act in a bathroom.
2. Trans people will always exist, and the real debate around bathrooms is that people don't want trans people to exist.
3. The trans bathroom debate also suggests that trans people will harm women and girls in bathrooms, but the reality is that cis-gender men that are our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, are more likely to abuse women and girls, but we don't have a debate about separating these people in our lives away from women and girls. And actually trans people (trans women especially) are more likely to be assaulted in bathrooms.
The reality is that these people who are debating against bathroom rights are the same people that have never cared about women and children and sexual assault except in this debate to pretend their argument is a moral issue.
And also if a man wanted to sexually assault someone, why would they feel the need to cross dress and pretend to be a woman to get in a women's restroom to do so? And second of all if this was the case, this is not a trans person, this is a cis-gender male committing this crime.
Additionally, if there were transgender bathroom rights, why would that keep people from being punished if they committed that act?
4. No one will make alternative bathrooms around the world--it's not real. People will always use the bathroom that is closest to them, the bathroom that they feel comfortable using, etc. There will be social change that may work towards gender neutral bathrooms.
5. Why are you getting your information about trans people from cis-gender people?
6. It also seems that our society wants trans people to "pass" as the gender they identify, and that's oppressive.
7. Trans people have developed and evolved in so many ways beyond the understanding for a cis person that it's almost not worth explaining trans issues and trans rights. "I have this conversation for so long...your understanding my transness doesn't change my transness."
8. Everybody shits, and everybody pisses, so bathrooms are a necessity for everybody--and the people that hate trans people are those that don't want to share any space. And those people tend to be the Conservative republicans.
And even those people that I dislike (the same people that do things that are destructive) also deserve the right to a bathroom despite my dislike for them.
9. This is an economic, social, and cultural attack on trans people that sends the message that they don't deserve space.
Watch in full here: The Truth Behind Transgender Bathrooms
Monday, February 20, 2017
Land Lotteries
Of The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents by Theda Purdue and Michael D. Green: "Confronted with Cherokee refusal to negotiate removal, Georgia began awarding Cherokee land to its citizens in an attempt to force the Cherokees out. Thousands of white settlers, who believed that they had legitimate title to land, moved into the Cherokee Nation.
"Georgia had a well-established method for distributing public lands which, the state insisted, included Cherokee territory. Male residents of the state as well as widows and orphans registered for land lotteries, and certain categories of people, such as veterans, could register twice. Surveyors partitioned the land into plots and prepared plats, or maps, for each of these plots. Lottery officials pulled a name out of one hopper and a plat out of another, thereby matching winner and prize. The winner paid only a small filing fee for his or her acreage. Unlike the later federal homestead law that required people to settle the land they claimed, Georgia's lotteries placed no restrictions on the winners...As a result, lottery winners or those who bought land from winners swarmed into the Cherokee Nation." (pg. 92-93.)
"Georgia had a well-established method for distributing public lands which, the state insisted, included Cherokee territory. Male residents of the state as well as widows and orphans registered for land lotteries, and certain categories of people, such as veterans, could register twice. Surveyors partitioned the land into plots and prepared plats, or maps, for each of these plots. Lottery officials pulled a name out of one hopper and a plat out of another, thereby matching winner and prize. The winner paid only a small filing fee for his or her acreage. Unlike the later federal homestead law that required people to settle the land they claimed, Georgia's lotteries placed no restrictions on the winners...As a result, lottery winners or those who bought land from winners swarmed into the Cherokee Nation." (pg. 92-93.)
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
The connection between Indian Removal/Andrew Jackson & DAPL/Muslim Ban/Trump (45)
Of cousre what 45 is doing is not the same as Andrew Jackson's plan to force Native people to the West. But, as I was reading The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents by Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, I found this paragraph that reminded me of the connection between the Indian Removal and Andrew Jackson and 45's passing of DAPL (and Keystone) in addition to the Muslim Ban:
"In 1829, soon after the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, the Cherokee National Council petitioned the president for protection from Georgia's legislation. Citing provisions in the treaties and the Trade and Intercourse Acts, the council called on Jackson to fulfill his obligation to protect them from encroachment and interference in their domestic affairs. Jackson responded by defending Georgia's claim to sovereignty and offered the Cherokees two choices: Accept Georgia law or move west." (p. 73-74.)
"In 1829, soon after the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, the Cherokee National Council petitioned the president for protection from Georgia's legislation. Citing provisions in the treaties and the Trade and Intercourse Acts, the council called on Jackson to fulfill his obligation to protect them from encroachment and interference in their domestic affairs. Jackson responded by defending Georgia's claim to sovereignty and offered the Cherokees two choices: Accept Georgia law or move west." (p. 73-74.)
Thursday, January 5, 2017
To those who celebrate Independence Day response by Frederick Douglass
A response to those who 'celebrate' and revel in holidays such as Columbus Day and Independence Day from Frederick Douglass which remains just as relevant as 164 years ago: "What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 religions 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 the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour" (Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, p. 182.)
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn quote
For those who ask 'why isn't there a white history month?' and other absurd questions: quoting George Rawick of From Sundown to Sunup: "Indeed, the activity of the slaves in creating patterns of family life that were functionally integrative did more than merely prevent the destruction of personality...the social process out of which came black pride, black identity, black culture, the black community, and black rebellion in America."
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Born A Crime by Trevor Noah quotes
Often, and almost repetitively, when the American media talks about time travel, and going back in time, they say they would kill Hitler. Trevor Noah in his book, Born A Crime, says: "Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that's especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium's King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill on person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson" (p. 195.)
Born A Crime by Trevor Noah
From Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: "Cheese boys were in a uniquely fucked situation when apartheid ended. It is one thing to be born in the hood and know that you will never leave the hood. But the cheese boy has been shown the world outside. His family has done okay. They have a house. They've sent him to a decent school; maybe he's even matriculated. He has been given more potential, but he has not been given more opportunity. He has been given an awareness of the world that is out there, but he has not been given the means to reach it...
"Man young men in South Africa's townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up, maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill on the corner the whole day, talking shit. They're free, they've been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod." (p. 208.)
"Man young men in South Africa's townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up, maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill on the corner the whole day, talking shit. They're free, they've been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod." (p. 208.)
The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support [of the Constitution] are buffers againt the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity. -Howard Zinn
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Friday, December 23, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Being Parented by Cassie Kinney
Being Parented
Although my
family was characterized as working-class with some aspects of poverty, we were
buffered from the various institutionalized and systematic inequalities because
we lived out in the country, we are white. We did not face homelessness, racism, otherness, and we were not
conflicted by embracing cultural heritage and resisting the white majorities
standards, while assimilating and integrating into society for work, school,
healthcare, and community. Subsequently, Lamanna and
Riedmann's research reflects that typical white, working-class family upbringing, because of the
service jobs my mother and father had, authoritarian disciplinary like spanking, the
'natural growth' parenting style where I played lots of video games and watched
television extensively.
Furthermore,
my family was not characterized as middle and upper class. In some ways my
family had some characteristics of a middle and upper class family in engaging
children in extracurricular activities like clubs and sports. For example, my
youngest brother was encouraged to play baseball for a year. Although my mother
tried to get me into cheer leading, basketball, or piano like my friends, and tried to get one of my brothers to be on the Academic team, none of us
wanted to do these things. And after a year, my other brother did not want to
play sports anymore. All of my siblings are nearly addicted to gaming as adults
now. We all went to church with our grandmother but once we each turned 15, we stopped going. I think my youngest brother stopped going at a younger age because I convinced my mother that there's no point brainwashing someone that doesn't believe in god...actually none of us did, so I think my mother just wanted us to be gone for an hour each evening so her and dad could mess around....and by that I actually mean fight privately for an hour.
Additionally, Lamanna and Riedmann's research is reflective of my personal
childhood experiences on the basis of social class, race/ethnicity,
socialization, and discipline. My mother and father, both at the age of 23, had
me in 1990. Both parents are white and most of my extended family is white. I
was raised in a cramped, moldy trailer for 6 years up a hollow (“holler”)
surrounded by woods—with almost no one as our neighbors except my grandparents (father’s
parents). Both my parents were characterized as working-class despite my father
coming from family that had over a hundred acres of land that was passed down
to his parents. His parents worked in manufacturing and raised tobacco to sell.
My mother’s parents worked in factories as well, and retired as early as their
40s in life to draw disability. As characterized by the researchers, working-class
families tend to work in service positions. For example, both my mother and
father worked in manufacturing, construction, and health care jobs. Later my
father went into construction under unpredictable hours, and my mother went
back to college for nursing.
When my
mother had my three younger siblings, we moved to a small one-and-a-half story
home with several neighbors around (but still surrounded by woods.) At this
location, we moved less than a mile away from my other grandparents (mother’s
parents). For all of my life, I have lived very close to all my grandparents.
This is part of the working-class family that must live close to extended
family in order to take the burden off of the parents, and grandparents will
babysit grandchildren for free or at low cost. Finally, my mother got her BSN
to work as an RN. She worked nights, so I never saw my mother. And of course when she had day shift, she was sleeping as soon as she got home until she had to leave in the morning to avoid my father.
My father worked during the day, so he played video games and watched
television with us throughout the night. This is another illustration of the
working-class family as described in the text, where I often played outside, watched
lots of television and played video games—as well as my other siblings. Often I played with siblings, but the other half of the time I was by myself. There
were almost no moments in childhood where I read books, except maybe to look at
pictures which influenced my siblings and I to draw—and very good in fact.
Another aspect
of working-class families is the authoritarian style of parenting that occurred
in my household. My mother was more disengaged (the 'un-involved' parent) because
of her night shift. So not only did I not have help with homework, emotional
support, but also this meant that my father was the disciplinarian. For
instance, my father spanked all my siblings and I. A couple of times I remember we were told to “line
up” so all of us were spanked. Once at a young age (around 11-12), my
father locked me out of the house and made me stay on the porch at night for
five minutes. Once around the same age, I was locked in the bathroom and told
not to come out. When I think back on those same moments, it doesn't seem so bad considering there were other moments I never thought was bad then and I do now. For instance, once while my mother was at work at night, one of my brothers
and sister at the ages of 2 and 4, climbed out of a bedroom window and walked
down the end of the road with only shirts and underwear on. My father had no idea they were even gone until
two young teenage boys knocked on the door saying they picked them up to bring
them home. I'm not sure where I was, and I may have been playing video games with dad. This is an illustration of permissive parenting. From these
examples, it seems that although my father was authoritarian, he also was
permissive in the sense that there were moments where there was absolutely no
parental monitoring. My father was an alcoholic back then. Luckily, my mother
divorced my father and all of the tension, anxiety, and uncertainty
dissipated when he left. He quit drinking and now he participates in church, even plays guitar in a band.
Despite
living in a working-class family, there was not aspects of poverty-level living
that we endured. For example, as described in the text, poverty-level living families
live in rented apartments, moving from place-to-place, and struggle to provide
a few extra presents at birthday and Christmas. This was not us, because the
house we moved into, was a a bit less than 20,000 dollars. Additionally, we always had big birthdays and Christmases with lots of
little presents. I always had a big yard to play in with trees to climb. In the
early 2000s, we got our first computer—and that was certainly a luxury! However,
a characteristic of low-income and poverty-level family mentioned by the
researchers was that mental illness is common, and actually there are differently abled family members,
where my brother was diagnosed with Autism.
Something the researchers do not mention as a characteristic of poverty-level living is not having bedrooms and beds to sleep on. Actually, we didn't have separate beds growing up. It wasn't until I was 15 that I got an actual bed in my own room. I had my own rooms, but I usually slept on a blow up mat or on blankets. I think because I was the oldest and I was going through puberty that I tried to have my own space. I usually shared a place to sleep though up until then. All six of us would sleep like cats and dogs in the house--seeing who is sleeping where for the night and where there is an available spot or blanket. Often the kids slept with mom, or they slept with dad, or we took turns sleeping in the living room floor after a night of eating gross gas station pizza.
Something the researchers do not mention as a characteristic of poverty-level living is not having bedrooms and beds to sleep on. Actually, we didn't have separate beds growing up. It wasn't until I was 15 that I got an actual bed in my own room. I had my own rooms, but I usually slept on a blow up mat or on blankets. I think because I was the oldest and I was going through puberty that I tried to have my own space. I usually shared a place to sleep though up until then. All six of us would sleep like cats and dogs in the house--seeing who is sleeping where for the night and where there is an available spot or blanket. Often the kids slept with mom, or they slept with dad, or we took turns sleeping in the living room floor after a night of eating gross gas station pizza.
From my
personal experience, and based on the research, authoritative
is the most positive parenting of the four styles, because there is high
parental warmth and parental monitoring. In some ways there is freedom for the
child as well as consistent discipline that is not harsh, without excessive
control, and clearly acknowledges any misbehavior. For example, there is a
planned and conscientious parental direction with emotional support, warmth,
and nurture.
"We who believe in freedom cannot rest" -Ella Baker
Another year gone by where lives are taken and suffer because of genocide, unclean drinking water, poverty, hunger/starvation, colonization, and conquest. This is the year 2016 much like all the previous years dating back to 1492 to those horrible years of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s; and confronting 1900s and the 2000s. These centuries, these years--have symbolized the devastation of slavery, servitude, removal, holocaust, genocide of all peoples of color, and institutionalized oppression. This year, 2016, represents the culmination of its history rooted within the worldwide system.
Before the end of the US election, I was looking forward to never hearing the name that shall not be said or written. I was looking forward to the changes as our country transitioned from the first half-Black president to the countries first White female president. Well, the first female won the popular vote, and that's historic--because in our eyes: she won. But today, and the many days that lay ahead in the next eight years are a reminder that the struggle against oppression and the status quo must further motivate us that we have work to do.
Before the end of the US election, I was looking forward to never hearing the name that shall not be said or written. I was looking forward to the changes as our country transitioned from the first half-Black president to the countries first White female president. Well, the first female won the popular vote, and that's historic--because in our eyes: she won. But today, and the many days that lay ahead in the next eight years are a reminder that the struggle against oppression and the status quo must further motivate us that we have work to do.
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