Trayvon, voting rights expected to dominate MLK march event

[Geee]

The Hill:

Organizers say as many as 100,000 people will descend on the National Mall Saturday as a week of commemorations begin for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

 

Rally organizers have warned that a long list of recent events threaten to undo the progress made over the last half-century and return the country to the very climate of open discrimination that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. railed against 50 years ago.

 

At the top of the list are the Trayvon Martin verdict and the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act ruling.

Speakers on Saturday are expected to use the platform to urge the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court gutted in June, and repeal state stand-your-ground laws, which played a role in the Trayvon Martin case.

 

“You're going to hear them say that a lot of these issues, for whatever reason, we're still facing 50 years later,” Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) spokeswoman Ayofemi Kirby said Friday.

 

[Geee]

Pro-union message to ring out from civil rights rally at Lincoln Memorial

 

A pro-union message will be echoing across the National Mall during Saturday’s March on Washington.

 

Leaders from many of the nation’s major unions will take the podium at the Lincoln Memorial to make the case that civil rights and collective bargaining are intertwined and part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for the country.

 

But the event is also a stark reminder of how far the labor movement has fallen since King’s historic address.

 

With membership dwindling, and battles raging at the state level on the power and role of labor groups, unions are hoping the March will help them recapture the spirit of 1963, when protesters carried signs calling for “full employment” and “jobs for all.”

“Fifty years ago, the title of this was the March [on Washington] for Jobs and Freedom. If there ever was a time when jobs were relevant, it is right now,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the country's largest union.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/318583-pro-union-message-to-ring-out-from-civil-rights-march

[Casino67]

‘Rosa Parks wasn’t no ho’: Al Sharpton teaches history at #MOW50

 

http://twitchy.com/2013/08/24/rosa-parks-wasnt-no-ho-al-sharpton-teaches-history-at-mow50/?utm_source=autotweet&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter

 

The Rev. Al Sharpton is a bit of a history buff, and he’s been known to give impromptu lectures on “them Greek homos” and their appropriation of philosophy and mathematics from Africa. His area of expertise, though, is the American civil rights movement, and today he reminded an audience of thousands that Rosa Parks was not a “ho,” nor was voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer a “bitch.”

 

[clearvision]

Well the headlines say "thousands" attended. Not 10's of thousand, etc. Must be low turnout if that is the MSM headline number.

[NCTexan]

Summary of keynote speaker messages:

 

You are victims

You are not responsible

You are helpless

You deserve ____________ (fill in the blank)

We will fight for you

Vote for _________ and you will get __________ (fill in the blanks again)

 

Volunteers will help you if you are having trouble filling in the blanks.

[Geee]

Martin Luther King Is Weeping in His Grave

 

Fifty years ago this week, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and told a quarter of a million people of his dream of an American future where race didn’t matter in judging your fellow man, only the content of his character.

King, who spent most of his life as a Republican, never imagined that his descendents in the civil rights movement would make every effort to ensure that race would become the only thing that mattered and that one’s character was judged by politics, and not on any moral basis that King would have recognized.

 

Partisanship made a rude intrusion on a ceremony marking the “March on Washington” that the civil rights icon led. It could be seen as inevitable, given the fractured, dysfunctional nature of our politics, that the solemnity that should attend such an occasion was shattered by venomous lies and wildly exaggerated hyperbole, making a mockery of King’s message. It was the kind of politics that King, a political genius, didn’t need to practice. He had an unerring sense of the moral authority of the message he was bringing and the ability to project powerful images of sin and redemption that were compelling enough to literally move millions of people to change the country.

 

Not so today. Instead of moral truths, we got political lies. Instead of a spirit of tolerance, we got fearmongering and demagoguery.

 

 

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/24/martin-luther-king-is-weeping-in-his-grave/