Daily News Digest February 14, 2022
Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines are Free For the Whole World
Image of the Day:
Black History Month in the NFL
Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”, is Still True for Today’s World!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!
Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Quotes of the Day:
The Iron Curtain of the 1940s and ‘50s was ostensibly designed to isolate Russia from Western Europe – to keep out Communist ideology and military penetration. Today’s sanctions regime is aimed inward, to prevent America’s NATO and other Western allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China. The aim is not so much to isolate Russia and China as to hold these allies firmly within America’s own economic orbit. Allies are to forego the benefits of importing Russian gas and Chinese products, buying much higher-priced U.S. LNG and other exports, capped by more U.S. arms. The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages. What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? What is the need for such heavy purchases of U.S. military hardware by America’s affluent allies? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors? — America’s Real Adversaries are Its European and Other Allies
Videos of the Day:
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from th poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford to Pay!
Ukraine Another Wag The Dog? There Has Been No Proof That Russia if Preparing an Invasion!:
‘I Remember WMDs in Iraq’: Reporter Calls Out US Official on Russian Intel Claims “You just come out and say this and expect us just to believe it without you showing a shred of evidence that it’s actually true,” said Associated Press reporter Matt Lee. Veteran Associated Press reporter Matt Lee grilled a State Department spokesperson Thursday over the U.S. government’s refusal to provide direct evidence for its claim that Russia is planning to fabricate a mass casualty event as a pretext to invade Ukraine, an allegation that the Pentagon said is backed up by intelligence.” — ‘I Remember WMDs in Iraq’: Reporter Calls Out US Official on Russian Intel Claims.
“If Russia was conducting preparations for a large-scale invasion, it would have been much more If Russia was conducting preparations for a large-scale invasion, it would have been much more noticeable. Therefore, what we currently have is the military threat posed by about 127,000 Russian servicemen along Ukraine’s borders, in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, and in Crimea. This number has not increased since April, and is not enough for a full-scale offensive.” — Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Former Ukrainian Defence Minister — Center for Defense Strategies: How likely is large-scale war in Ukraine? (analysis) 01/24/2022
Trump Took “Top Secret” Classified Material to Mar-a-Lago Estate Anumber of the documents that were recently retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate were clearly marked as classified – and some were also labeled “top secret,” according to new reporting from The Washington Post. Two sources with knowledge of the documents that were retrieved confirmed reports from earlier this week that some of the documents were classified. The discovery that Trump was keeping “top secret” documents on his property in Palm Beach, Florida, long after leaving the White House, has prompted several lawmakers to call for a formal inquiry.
Barry Sheppard and Malik Miah: Republican & Demcratic Parties
What We (‘What You Mean We’) Must Do for Afghanistan The U.S. should unfreeze Afghan government assets and lift sanctions hindering the recovery of the Afghan economy and humanitarian relief efforts. We must end the U.S. economic war on Afghanistan. I have a beloved 4-year-old granddaughter. If I lived in Afghanistan, my family would be facing the likelihood that she would die. My heart breaks in pieces thinking of this. The UN estimated a million children under the age of five in Afghanistan will die this winter from malnutrition and starvation, a situation brought on primarily by the U.S., through economic sanctions and the freezing of Afghan assets in U.S. banks. How did we get to this point?
Robber Baron in Chief — Strikes Again!: ‘Death Sentence for Untold Numbers of Civilians’: Biden to Permanently Seize Afghan Assets “I can’t think of a worse betrayal of the people of Afghanistan than to freeze their assets and give it to 9/11 families,” said one person whose brother was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Humanitarians—including those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks of 2001—responded with condemnation Friday after it was reported that President Joe Biden has decided to permanently seize $7 billion of currently frozen Afghan assets even as the people of the war-torn and poverty-stricken nation suffer a broken economy, a collapsed healthcare system, and widespread starvation.
Amid Ukraine Tension, US Deploys Nuclear-Ready B-52 Bombers to UK “The West is trying to make a tragedy out of this,” said Russia’s foreign minister. Despite repeated warnings from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the U.S. is driving the rise of tensions at Ukraine’s eastern border, the U.S. Air Force has deployed four B-52 bombers with nuclear capabilities to the U.K., where one official acknowledged that the deployment is at least partially connected to Russia’s recent military activities
The “World’s Greatest Country” is Swirling Down the Drain The comments sections of mainstream US news Websites are abuzz with angry Amerikaners’ hatred of Neil Young. Young stands idiotically accused of “censorship” for making the personal moral and business decision to tell Spotify to take down his music if the company insisted on maintaining its contract with the racist podcaster and mediocre blowhard Joe “Planet of the Apes” Rogan, a self-described “moron” who has offered platforms to fascist propagandists (e.g. Andy Ngo and Gavin McInnes) while helping spread mass murderous anti-vax misinformation on Covid-19. Many if not most of the white folks losing their shit over Young’s alleged Big Brotherism are victims of the cult of Donald Trump, who regularly attacked press freedoms and demonized media not allegiant to him. Curiously but predictably enough, the palingenetic Caucasians raging at the rock-folk legend’s supposed assault on free speech show no concern over the many state laws that have been passed forbidding teachers from teaching real American history, with slavery, Jim Crow, Native American genocide, US imperialism, and capitalist oppression (among other terrible things) included. The neofascistic Red State assault on teaching actual American history is only getting started.
Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide! :
Poorest People Hit Hardest by Heat Stress New Research: 25% of the world’s people will face more heat than all the rest combined People with lower incomes are exposed to heat waves for longer periods of time compared to higher income people, due to a combination of location and access to heat adaptations like air conditioning. This inequality is expected to rise as temperatures increase, new research shows. Lower income populations currently face a 40% higher exposure to heat waves than people with higher incomes. By the end of the century, the poorest 25% of the world’s population will be exposed to heat waves at a rate equivalent to the rest of the
Ocean Heat Killing Spree The oceans of the world are undergoing a dangerous and damaging upheaval that manifests throughout scientific studies of late. Whether it’s the world’s fisheries of the Bering Strait or coral reefs of the Mediterranean Sea or emaciated Gray Whales along the Pacific coastline, study after study after study describes sudden, sharp downturns in all categories of marine life. What is going on? Global warming is the culprit of this deeply disturbing disheartening affair, and it begs the question of whether any nation/state or unified nations can do anything about it. After all, “save the whales” and “save the oceans” have been rallying cries in grocery store parking lot signature gatherings, indicative of the broad reach of public concern, for decades now but to no avail; in fact, over time as the signatures piled up, it’s only gotten worse and worse and now scary.
Michigan Beef Found To Contain Dangerous Levels of ‘Forever Chemicals’ Contamination at a small farm discovered after sewage sludge was tested for PFAS, but officials downplayed incident as ‘isolated’Cattle from a small south-east Michigan farm that sold beef to schools and at farmers’ markets in the state have been found to contain dangerous levels of PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals” that can pose a serious risk to human health. The news comes after consumer groups in 2019 warned that using PFAS-laden sewage sludge as fertilizer would contaminate dairy, beef, crops and other food products. However, at the time a Michigan agricultural regulator publicly assured the state’s dairy farmers her agency wouldn’t test milk for the toxic chemicals as they didn’t want to inflict economic pain on the $15bn industry, she said.
February Is Black History Month’
FromThe Historic Role of Police Brutality in the Black Community and African American Oppression To begin to understand, the role of the police, the following quotes By Jam Baldwin, which are still true today — they act like a army of occupation.: “Harlem (The Black Community) is policed like occupied territory.—James Baldwin” — A Report from Occupied Territory “And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover — even in a country which makes the grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty. — James Baldwin — From ‘Victim’ to ‘Threat’: James Baldwin and the Demands of Self-Respect
Why the U.S. Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Pamphlet (2021 Update) It has been half a century since Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. In the case of Malcolm X, several members of the Nation of Islam were convicted. In the case of Martin Luther King, Jr., one assassin, James Earl Ray, was convicted. Despite these convictions and ongoing efforts by government and police agencies, and various writers and pundits to put the assassinations to rest, many questions remain unanswered.In the 1970s, the public was made aware of the U.S. Government’s secret COINTELPRO program to employ informers, agents, and provocateurs to disrupt the Civil Rights Movement, the antiVietnam-War Movement, and radical and socialist organizations. One of the goals of this program was to ‘neutralize’ Black leaders like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Elijah Muhammad in order to prevent the emergence, to use the government’s term, of a Black Messiah who would unite and lead Black Americans in their struggle for equality and freedom. In other words, the United States Government had the same motive to assassinate Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Labor:
Labor Bureaucracy/Capitalists/Government ‘Partneship’ Stikes Again:
As Inflation Surges, Unions Impose Cuts IN Real Wages US inflation rose at a 7.5 percent annual rate in January as unions worked in tandem with employers and the Biden administration to reduce the real wages of workers. Surging inflation is a by-product of the policies adopted by the ruling class in the US and Europe in response to the pandemic, which has included pumping trillions of dollars into the financial markets to prop up share values. Further adding to inflationary pressures are disruptions in supply chains due to the refusal of capitalist governments to implement effective public health measures to end the pandemic. Surging inflation is a by-product of the policies adopted by the ruling class in the US and Europe in response to the pandemic, which has included pumping trillions of dollars into the financial markets to prop up share values. Further adding to inflationary pressures are disruptions in supply chains due to the refusal of capitalist governments to implement effective public health measures to end the pandemic. The massive handout of wealth to the rich requires the ever more brutal exploitation of workers to pay it back. In this, the unions are playing a central role. The unions have imposed a series of multi-year contracts with pay increases far below the rate of inflation, ensuring that workers pay the cost of rising prices through cuts to real wages. This has involved the unions intervening to prevent strikes, or where that has not been possible, to keep workers isolated to wear down their resistance.
In the case of Volvo Trucks workers in Virginia, the United Auto Workers agreed to a sellout six-year contract, locking in pay raises of below 2 percent annually for the top paid workers. At the current rate of inflation of 7.5 percent, this means a cut in real wages of nearly 30 percent over the life of the contract.
Economy:
The Fed Responds to Report that Fed Chair Powell Traded During FOMC Blackout Periods A Fed spokesperson has provided Wall Street On Parade with a detailed response to our article yesterday, which documented that trades were made in accounts in which Fed Chair Jerome Powell had a financial interest during a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in 2015 and another in 2019. Fed officials are clearly prohibited from trading before and during FOMC meetings because that is when they have insider, market-moving information. Below is the full statement from the Fed spokesperson. Following the statement, we will explain its many, serious flaws.
World:
Inflation, Instability and Insurrectionary Movements: The ‘New Normal’ for World Capitalism The pandemic has sharpened and deepened what was an already existing crisis of capitalism. We are now facing the deepest social, economic and political crisis in decades. Despite a certain recovery, the measures the capitalists were forced to take in the last period (i.e. massive amounts of state spending) are now being felt in rising inflation, resulting in a growing cost of living crisis that is provoking resentment and instability all over the world.
Poland’s Rising Strike Movement The whole of Poland is paying attention to the strike of workers at the Solaris bus factory in Bolechowo, near Poznań. Additionally, in Białystok, workers at the Bison Company have begun a rolling strike; while workers at Pudliszki (a food-processing brand owned by the multinational Kraft Heinz) also issued a strike warning. Deteriorating living conditions are paving the way for the resurgence of the organised working-class movement in the country. Last year saw the mobilisation of the public sector workers, accompanied by one of the most important events of the recent period: the victorious strike at the Paroc factory, which processes mineral wool insulation materials, in Trzemeszno. Increasingly unbearable working conditions are forcing the workers to take bolder action. Could we be seeing self-confidence finally returning among layers of the Polish proletariat?
Education, Health, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare!
Barry Sheppard and Malik Miah: Republican & Demcratic Parties
Part One, The Danger Trump Represents
The Republican Party has been thoroughly transformed. Donald Trump is in complete control.
A large part of the Republican base reveres him as the strongman who alone can set the country right. They are part of a cult, personally loyal to him, believe whatever he says, and ready to do what he wants.
Trump is now taking on a more public role, including projecting mass rallies, his preferred venue. The first one happened on January 15.
He has amassed a large fund he intends to use in Republican primaries this year in support of candidates loyal to him against any whom he thinks are not sufficiently subservient.
His renewed public efforts will continue through to the November elections for congresspeople and state offices.
This is the first stage of his campaign to run again for president in 2024.
He not only wants the Republicans in November to take back the majority in the Senate, where there is a fifty-fifty split today, but also the House, which has a slim Democratic majority — but to do so with candidates most loyal to him.
Republican legislators in states they control have passed laws that will curtail Black voting rights, echoing how Black voting right were eliminated in the South under Jim Crow. While not explicitly stated, the new laws will remove many registered voters in urban and rural areas where African Americans live.
In addition, there are laws changing how votes are counted, and giving more power to Republican-controlled state legislatures and Republican officials to change the results if they go against them in the November 2022 elections.
They will also be used to guarantee Trump will win in 2024 if he loses the popular vote as he did in 2016 and 2020. . . .
Presidents are not elected by the majority of the eligible voting population, but by an arcane procedure established in the Constitution — the Electoral College representing the states, not the voting population, elects the president.
The state legislatures name the electors allocated to each state.
The main author of the Constitution, James Madison, boasted this was done to exclude those allowed to vote. At the time, only white men who owned property were allowed to vote.
Over time, it has become the norm that in most states the candidate who wins the majority of popular votes gets all the electors from that state to the Electoral College.
This has resulted in Republicans George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 winning in spite of receiving a minority of votes cast nationwide.
With their new laws in certain most contested states, Trump Republicans can control the Electoral College to ensure his election, if, as is likely, the election is close. In 2020, Trump got about 48 percent of the vote.
If these laws were in place in 2020, Trump would have been re-elected.
To understand what Trump represents, it is useful to remember what his two campaigns, in 2016 and 2020, and his years in office, revealed.
One was his projection of himself as the authoritarian strongman needed to right America’s wrongs, right from the day he announced he would run.
Another was his open racism against Blacks, Latinos, Mexicans, nonwhite immigrants, and other people of color, tapping into white fears they were losing their position of supremacy and privilege.
His hard base was racist whites of all classes. Others who voted for him did so by ignoring his racism — that’s the best that can be said of them.
From the time he first announced his candidacy in 2016, violent racist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys knew that they would prosper under a Trump presidency.
White supremacy over Blacks and Native Americans has been a characteristic of all governments in what became the United States since colonial times.
The ruling classes, at first capitalists and slave owners, and then capitalists after the Civil War, and their political parties have been founded on and enforce white supremacy.
This was obvious under slavery, then in the Jim Crow period not only in the South but across the United States. As the Black Lives Matter (BLM) massive uprising in 2020 demonstrated, white supremacy continues to this very day.
BLM popularized the concept of institutionalized, system-wide racist oppression, which has been extended to all non-whites, Latinx and others.
The Proud Boys and other white nationalist (or white supremacist) groups that have grown under Trump are best characterized as violent incipient fascists.
Trump relied on them to “stand by” after the election and then to “stand up” on January 6, 2020, in the violent attempted coup at the Capitol Building.
Liberals and many socialists thought that the election of Biden meant that “Trump is over” and a return to “normalcy.” They have been proved wildly wrong.
Trump prepared his comeback weeks before the 2020 election, when it looked like he would lose, by declaring that he could only lose by fraud.
After the election he continued to trumpet that the election was “stolen” from him by massive fraud. He opened a new campaign to have the election reversed by legal means in state legislatures and courts, in what is known in Latin America as an “auto-golpe” or “self-coup.”
In a “self-coup” a previous ruler who losses an election simply doesn’t recognize the results and stays in power.
The violent events of January 6 were a last attempt to get Congress not to certify the election results.
They were also a demonstration that Trump was ready to use extra-legal means. He also prevented the Army from allowing National Guard to intervene for almost four hours.
Since then, his relentless campaign to continue to say the election was stolen from him by fraud has been the “rationalization” for the Republicans to pass their new restrictions on voting rights and controls over the election results in key states.
Trump and the Republicans also have road the wave of white backlash and rage against the massive, Black-led demonstrations of 2020.
The Republicans have launched a mass campaign against “Critical Race Theory” and any teaching in public schools that systematic, institutionalized racism exists in the United States. School boards and state legislatures from Tennessee to Idaho have banned teaching about racism in classrooms.
On a local level, Trump supporters have vociferously and sometimes violently intervened in school board and town government meetings against critical race theory.
Educational officials have been threatened with violence and even death.
In the weird world of Trumpism, this has been combined with attacks against mask mandates and vaccines to fight COVID, including in schools.
It also includes use of race baiting to claim whites are being discriminated against in vaccine distribution and treatment.
Trump told an Arizona rally on January 15: “The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies. You get it based on race. In fact, in New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. If you’re white, you go right to the back of the line.”
The Proud Boys have been concentrating on intervening in local disruptions to recruit.
Through this campaign Trump has intensified his control over and discipline of the Republican Party and is emerging stronger than ever.
What Trump represents is what Marxists call Bonapartism, when in a period where the capitalist parties are deadlocked in feuding and disarray, a strong man emerges who promises to set things right through autocratic means.
This can take different forms, from outright dictatorship and the dispersal of the legislature to virtual autocracy with bourgeois democratic trappings, like what is happening in Hungary today under Victor Organ, who Trump has praised and endorsed for re-election, and his spokespeople have visited.
In any case Trump and Trumpism represents an anti-democratic danger, as we are seeing developing in much of the world.
Part Two: Democrats and Biden in Crisis
While President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party establishment are opposed to the anti-democratic and authoritarian transformation of the Republican Party led by Donald Trump, their response has been weak and defeatist.
Biden and the establishment Democrats, who dominate the party, conspicuously do not defend critical race theory against the Republicans.
Biden does not even mention Black Lives Matter. The party establishment ignores talking about the institutionalized racism BLM exposed.
Biden and the Democratic Party establishment believe the wealthy and Wall Street will someday dump Trump and go back to the old Republican Party — not in the cards for the foreseeable future.
Biden is losing popular support as he appears weak. He and the Democrats are losing support among Black people by their failure on civil and voting rights.
The Democrats’ strategy is to rely on the courts and Congress while the Republicans mobilize their right-wing base to undermine democratic changes won over the decades.
Maintaining political power, no matter what, is Trump’s objective. He is advancing, as Biden and his Justice Department refuse to go after him for organizing January 6 and other crimes.
The activist groups trying to protect voting rights keep telling Biden that his approach of waiting for the Republicans to change course and go back to the way of bipartisanship, will not succeed.
Biden’s January “which side are you on” speech in Atlanta on January 11 did not outline a plan of action.
Meanwhile, these new restrictions are already being implemented. Letters are being sent to residents in Texas under its new law warning U.S. residents (allegedly undocumented) they could face criminal charges if they try to vote. Some are U.S. citizens.
The power of the federal government and executive power of the presidency is not used to challenge the Republican imposed state laws that undermine voting and civil rights, the health and safety of workers, women’s rights and more.
In the 1950s when the Supreme Court ruled that Black children could attend whites only schools, the government sent federal troops to states that refused to comply, to escort Black children to school.
Biden and his supporters so far refuse a similar course today.
He could send Federal monitors to Republican-controlled states that restrict voting rights to oversee voting.
The Federal government could take pre-emptive legal action to stop the harassment and threats to those in charge of elections. Such steps can be done without Congressional approval.
Biden, as chief of the military, could also instruct the Pentagon to vet its forces and force out white supremacists and far right veterans and active-duty military and police.
The issue of voting rights shows the failure of the Democratic Party establishment to protect the right and interests of working people and what it calls “democracy.”
What can African Americans and others expect when the next attempt at authoritarian rule inevitably occurs? Democratic Party liberals and other white allies will simply hope for the best.
Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights leadership told Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, both Democrats, the people would never stop marching and fighting until the government stop the segregationists and impose basic democratic rights for African Americans.
The Black Lives Matter leaders took this approach in building the racial justice movement against police violence and calling for radical reforms.
Today Biden represents the white moderate that King spoke about in his comments from the Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963:
”First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but ‘the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’
“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Two years later on August 6 the Voting Rights Act was passed as the civil rights movement continued in the streets and a militant left wing inspired by the words of Malcolm X and others grew.
That’s what forced “white moderates” leading the Congress to pass this historic law. It became the first time that the concept of one person, one vote included African Americans in all fifty states.
Civil and voting rights is not only a Black issue. It is the touchstone for basic human rights that benefits all working-class people—Black, white, Latino, Asian and indigenous.
It was won in a long bloody struggle over decades. That lesson is crucial today in fighting and defeating Trumpism