The Role of Discipline

When I sit in the loft of my home I am surrounded by the accolades bestowed on Crossland High School. Crossland is the high school in Prince George’s County, Maryland that I served as Principal from 2004 until 2013. The honors include three citations from the Governor of the State of Maryland, two citations from the State’s General Assembly, another citation from the Prince George’s County Council, and a feature article printed in the Washington Post. By no means do the honors stop there. We were also featured on the United States Department of Education’s “Doing What Works” website, named “School of the Year” for the National Capitol Region, praised by the Heritage Foundation from the political right and the Center for American Progress from the political left, and received an invitation from Michelle Obama for 50 of our students and staff to visit the White House. In other words, we did some really great stuff at Crossland.

In 2004, Crossland High School, with its 2100 students, was the worst of twenty-two high schools in Prince George’s County. The school was dangerous. The quality of the educational program was poor. The morale of its students, parents, and the surrounding community was poor as well. Hopeless was an accurate description of the school and all of its stakeholders. More than 65% of the students qualified for free and/or reduced meals, the government’s benchmark for poverty. In 2004, 15% of its students passed the State’s high school assessment for Algebra, 22% passed in English.

Crossland received all of the accolades mentioned above because we were able to change a culture of mediocrity, distrust, intimidation, and fear into a culture of respect for the individual, service to the community, and the pursuit of excellence. By 2013, test scores in Algebra had steadily increased to a passing rate of 76%, and English scores had improved to 78%. Students taking Advanced Placement classes had increased from 30 to more than 750. The school had been approved as an International Baccalaureate school, and 90% of its Seniors had applied to four-year colleges with at least a 70% acceptance rate for four consecutive years.

During my first year as Principal at Crossland my fellow Principals’ in the County teased me about having a pool to decide on when I would be fired. I quickly developed a reputation for being a very strict disciplinarian. We had many suspensions, so many in fact, that the other Principals were sure that the parental complaints would eventually result in my professional demise. Some of my students took to describing me as “Joe Clark”, the notorious Principal depicted in the movie “Lean on Me”.

The suspensions were the result of four simple rules that were put in place as soon as I arrived at the school. They were;

1.       No Profanity

2.       No Loitering

3.       No Class Disruptions

4.       No Fighting

All of the above violations resulted in suspensions. Initially, no one believed that such rules were possible, not until violators started going home. Eventually, the profanity that had been commonly used in classrooms and hallways ended, and respectful conversations became the norm. Eventually, the hallways became empty when classes were in session. Eventually, class disruptions ended, and teachers were able to teach, and students were able to learn. Eventually, the constant fighting ended, and students no longer were afraid for their safety while in school.

The rules, and the consequences for breaking those rules, were the only way that we could establish an environment that was conducive for teaching and learning. Once that was established, everything else was possible.

However, this was not a ”Zero Tolerance” environment. Our teachers, security, and administrators exercised discretion on a daily basis. The only zero tolerance situations were established by the Board of Education, and one of those was an automatic request for expulsion for any student bringing a weapon to school.

The “Principal’s Leadership Team”, was a special group of students at Crossland. They were my student advisory group, composed of one member from every student organization in the school. The members were personally selected by me at the beginning of each year. I met with them monthly, and we would have lunch and discuss everything that was going on in the school. We took field trips to Gettysburg, Pa., Monticello in Virginia, Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, and yearly trips to either Montreal, Quebec City, Niagara Falls, or Toronto in Canada. They were outstanding students, outstanding people, they were my student leaders. Membership on the Principal’s Leadership Team was something that was considered to be a tremendous honor. Our graduates wore a special collar on graduation day to indicate their membership. Some of the students that were selected as freshmen remained on the team for four years. They were in effect, leaders of leaders.

At the conclusion of one of our meetings, one of my senior students, a young lady that had been on the team for four years asked to speak to me in my office. When our meeting was over she got up to leave and when she picked up her purse a large knife fell on the floor. For several seconds neither one of us said a word. She knew the rules. Everybody in the school knew that if you were caught with ANY weapon it was an automatic expulsion. She was a senior. She was an honor student. She was already accepted to college. Her financial aid was already in place. I finally said, “sweetheart…what were you thinking???” She started to cry as she told me how she had been threatened, and was carrying the knife for protection. I picked up the knife and placed it in my desk drawer. I knew what I was supposed to do. I did not know what I was going to do. I told her I would talk to her the following morning, and sent her home.

I did not request the expulsion. I told no one what had happened. The student graduated, went to college, and graduated. Today she is married and a mother. I kept her knife in my desk drawer until I retired in 2013.

I’m glad I did not do, what I was supposed to do.    

How Obama Destroyed the GOP

The Republican Party is at war with itself. Thirty-five percent of the party faithful is enamored with Donald Trump, the bigoted, xenophobic, vulgar, narcissistic, ignorant, billionaire racist from New York. The other seventy-five percent of the faithful can’t agree on who to support for President instead. The conventional wisdom at this point, is that Trump will win the Republican nomination for President, or all hell will break loose at the Republican Convention in Cleveland this Summer.

 I believe that if Trump gets the nomination, the rest of the Party will form a third party and run someone else for President. I also believe that if there is a brokered convention, and the powers that be somehow manage to give the nomination to someone else, Trump will leave with his middle finger in the air, take his thirty-five percent of old white people, uneducated white people, poorly educated white people, bigots, racists, and Obama haters, and run for President on a third party ticket himself.

Either way, the Republican Party, as we know it today, will cease to exist.

Ironically, that could be a good thing for all of us, Republicans included. Believe it or not, it’s happened before, to the Democrats, for similar reasons.

In 1948, President Harry Truman (a Democrat) ordered an end to discrimination in the military. More than two million Blacks had served in World War II, and Truman decided that they deserved equal pay and the same benefits from the Veteran’s Administration that white veterans were getting. Truman’s executive order, in effect, was the beginning of the modern struggle for civil rights.

Since the end of the Civil War, the former Confederate States had been a literal block vote for the Democratic Party. They were, understandably, totally opposed to the Republicans, the “Party of Lincoln”, the man responsible for freeing their slaves, killing their sons, taking their wealth, and destroying their way of life.

When the Democrats nominated Harry Truman for a second term during their convention, the Southern Democrats were incensed. A few days later they held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama. Out of that convention the “State’s Rights Democratic Party” was born. They would come to be known as the “Dixiecrats”, and their nominee for President would be the true-blue segregationist from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond. Twenty years later, Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” would use the fierce anger and percolating racism of southern whites resulting from the Civil Rights Movement, and the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s support of the movement to completely transform the “Solid South” from a Democratic “block vote” to a Republican one.

So, what does Barack Obama have to do with what’s happening now?

As of today, Donald Trump has won 12 states. Among them are Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, with Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina yet to vote (Trump is leading the polls in all of them). The only former Confederate state he did not win is Texas, where Ted Cruz, a Texas Senator, prevailed, and Trump placed second.

Few will admit it, but it is nevertheless true. In all of these states, “Race” trumps everything. The Civil War was never reconciled, and at least thirty-five percent of the population truly believes “The South will Rise Again”.

The election of Barack Obama, a Black man, as President of the United States was unacceptable in the former Confederate States. The Republican Party today “IS” the former Confederate States. They cannot win a national election if they lose any one of them. That is the reason why so many believe the President is not an American, that he is a Muslim, that he is deliberately trying to destroy the American way of life. That is the reason why the Republicans vehemently opposed everything he tried to do, even when he adopted their own ideas. That is why they have disrespected him and the office he holds. They are in agreement with Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who famously ruled that a Black man had “No rights that a white man was bound to respect”.

It is because of Obama that the “tea party patriots” were created. Hatred of Obama fueled the insanity espoused by the National Rifle Association. It is because of Obama that the Republicans were able to dominate off-year elections, promising their followers that they would stop Obama no matter what. They were able to win state legislatures, governorships, the U.S. Senate, and solidified a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. All of them ran against “Obama”. All of them were going to “stop” him. None of them did.

As Donald Trump would say, all the President did was “win, win, win”. He won on healthcare, immigration, Iran, the debt limit, climate change, Cuba, same-sex marriage and deficit reduction. He added 14 million new jobs, with more than 70 consecutive months of job growth, reducing the unemployment rate from over 10% to 4.9%. He saved the automobile industry, rescued the economy, and provided health insurance for 20 million people that would otherwise not have it.

The confederate, uh, Republican faithful are tired of losing, especially to people that are less than them, like Blacks and Latinos, and Muslims, and Syrians. They like Trump because he says what they’re thinking. They don’t like the Republican establishment because they lied to them, tricked them, hoodwinked them. They fell for the Okey Doke. The Republicans said they would put the Black guy in the White House in his place, the faithful gave them their votes, and they didn’t do what they said they would do.

The Confederates were once all in with the Democrats. When the party decided to do the right thing on equality and human rights, they split, and the Republicans welcomed them with open arms. This Summer, they will split again, unfortunately (for them), there will be no future as a majority party available.

As a result, America will be a better place. The body politic will be healthier. The recurring viral infection of racism, bigotry, homophobia, and xenophobia will go into recession. Unfortunately, some day, it will be back. Both parties have been infected by this cancer, who knows which party it will reappear in?

In the meantime, we can thank Barack Obama for destroying the cancer this time.  

Antonin Gregory Scalia

Often when we find ourselves in difficult or stressful situations we will depend on our formative years to decide what to do or say. I was shocked by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I find it impossible to remember a single legal opinion that he espoused that I agreed with. In fact, many of them I found to be personally repugnant and insulting. Nevertheless, I can hear my grandmother speaking to me right now… I can see her intense, gray-green eyes penetrating my soul, I can literally feel her tender touch on my face as she quietly says, “Charlie, if you can’t say something good about somebody, don’t say nothing at all”. So, I won’t say anything else about Justice Scalia. I will not say my “thoughts and prayers” are with his family, because that would be a lie, and I wish so many other people would stop telling that mindless lie. I do wish his wife and children well. I have known the grief of death too many times to wish that pain on anyone.

What motivates me to talk about Justice Scalia’s death is not the man himself, but the nation’s reaction to it. It is the knee-jerk opportunism, bigotry, obstructionism, and racism that emerged literally before his body could make it to the funeral home that is disgusting to me.

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution clearly states that the President shall have the power to appoint Supreme Court Justices with the advice and consent of the Senate. There is no ambiguity about it. There has never been any question or debate about it. Until now.

The republicans now feel that since the President is in the last year of his second term, none of that stuff in the constitution really matters any more. They think that President Obama should not appoint anyone to replace Scalia, and if he has the audacity to do it anyway, they will not consent. Period. Forget about it.

The republican candidates for President are saying, “we’ll have an election in about 11 months, let the American people decide who should appoint the next Supreme Court Justice”.

My millennial daughter would say, “What just happened?”

Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968. Since then, there have been 17 people confirmed as Supreme Court justices. The average time it took to confirm them was 57 days, or less than two months. The longest confirmation was for Clarence Thomas, (99 days, or 3 months). The shortest confirmation was for Warren Burger, (17 days, or 2 weeks!).

Time, is obviously not the problem. So why? Why are the republicans doing this? Is it opportunism? Bigotry? Obstructionism? Racism? There is a case to be made for each. Scalia was the most rock-solid conservative of them all. He was their ideological leader. To replace him with another liberal could literally change everything in America.

I can understand why the republicans would freak out over replacing him with a liberal justice. All of the things that they stand for would be potential defeats for them if they were decided by such a court. Abortion rights, LGBT rights, and immigration executive actions would probably all be confirmed. Decisions on Voting Rights, Gun Control, campaign finance (Citizen’s United), and affirmative action could potentially be reversed. Future challenges to the Affordable Care Act would be dead in the water.

 I understand. I feel their pain. If I were a republican, I would probably vote against such a potential judge too.

But that’s the point. I might vote against that judge, but I would not stand up and say the President should not even nominate anyone. I would not say I was against that person before he or she was even nominated.  I would not say “delay, delay, delay”. I would not say that we should let the American people decide. The Constitution says the President shall appoint, and the Senate shall provide advice and counsent. Besides, the American people did decide when they elected President Obama. Twice.

It is words and actions like these that validate the charges of obstructionism against the republicans. Every republican senator swore an oath to uphold and defend the constitution. To refuse to hold confirmation hearings and hold a vote on any President’s Supreme Court nominee would be unprecedented and a violation of the oath that each of them swore.

Of course, the on-going Presidential campaign adds opportunism to the problem. What better way to generate additional enthusiasm among the tea-party faithful? What better way to demonstrate your disgust and disrespect for the foreigner that has been illegally occupying the White House for the last seven years? What better way to demonstrate your determination to “take our country back” and “make America great again” than to tell the Kenyan-born secret Muslim in the White House that he’s already dismissed?

The republicans could have taken the high road. They could have allowed the process to play itself out. They could have expressed their condolences for Justice Scalia, allowed the President to nominate someone to replace him, held tough, but respectful hearings, sent the nomination to the floor, and voted no. They then could have respectfully encouraged the President to send another pigeon to be slaughtered. Dean Smith’s four corners offense could not have run the clock out more effectively. But that’s where the bigotry and racism took over.

They could not fight the temptation to put the President in his place. Again. The adrenalin created by their hatred of the President would not allow them to wait, to reason, to act responsibly. They couldn’t wait until after the funeral.

They couldn’t even wait for the body to get to the funeral home.

Hatred is a bitch.

Coach Lee

I met Charles Lee when I was fourteen years old. He was the head football coach at Benjamin Russell High School in Alexander City, Alabama.

The year was 1967, and I was caught in the middle. I was caught between white people and Black people, integration and segregation, childhood and manhood, the religious and the secular, education and ignorance. I had decided to become one of a few Black kids to integrate Benjamin Russell, and Coach Lee would very soon become one of the most important people in my life.

I am not an easy person to know. Not then, not now. It takes a little effort. It takes courage, maybe even determination. I will not willingly share my innermost thoughts. I will not easily or quickly trust anyone.  Gullibility does not exist within me. I can walk away from anything and anyone. I have no fear of acting or being alone.

Coach Lee is a legendary figure in Alabama high school sports. His wrestling teams dominated the state for more than a decade. His football teams were consistent winners as well. Before retiring, he was also an athletic director, high school Principal, and selected to the Alabama High School Athletic Hall of Fame. As an incoming freshman athlete from the Black school across town, Coach Lee had a special interest in me. As the gate-keeper for the dream I had of playing varsity football at Benjamin Russell High, I had a special interest in him. Coach did not spend a lot of time with freshmen, we had our own coach and played our own games, but I noticed him watching us carefully, especially when we scrimmaged against the varsity.

My relationship with my father was non-existent, because I did not know who he was. I grew up under the impression that my step-father was my dad, which illustrates the kind of relationship I had with my mother. Obviously, today, I’m done with anyone that lies to me. However, when I was fourteen none of this was known to me. Like most children of that age, if my father couldn’t stand the sight of me, and my mother was ambivalent, it had to be my fault, right? My mother did not admit to me the truth about my parentage until I was 27 years old. Of course, by that time my real father was dead, and the psychological portrait was complete.

Coach Lee was a very organized man. Everything we did during practice had a purpose. We had a routine that became ingrained in all of us, so that by the time we were seniors, we could practice without the coaches. We always had short term and long term goals, Coach Lee inspired us, motivated us, and made us laugh. We learned to work together, he emphasized how all eleven players had a role to play on every play, and success depended on everybody doing their individual job. Coach Lee despised a quitter. To him that was the worst thing anybody could be. Every year during Spring practice he would push us to our physical and mental limits, to find out who the quitters were, so we could get rid of them before the season started in the fall. It was Coach Lee who instilled in me the importance of not dropping the ball. He made it clear that everybody on the team were working to gain possession of that ball and to move it across the goal line, and to simply drop it, and give it back to the other team was simply unacceptable.

I will always remember the way he talked to us before, during, and after games. He helped me understand the symbolic importance of wearing our uniform, representing our school, city, parents, alumni, and friends. I learned to accept that responsibility. I learned it wasn’t just about me. In later years, I realized how important it was that coach would chew us out, embarrass us even, in the locker room, but never, ever in public.

Prior to the 1969-1970 school year, I was tempted to leave Benjamin Russell High and go back to the Black school I had come from. After the tumultuous year of 1968, most of the Black people I knew were encouraging me to do that. Martin Luther King had been killed. The Black Power protests had occurred at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. The Black Panthers were prominent, Robert Kennedy had been killed, the inner cities were burning from rioting, and the Viet Nam war was raging. Some of the people that I called friends were telling me if I stayed at Russell I was an Uncle Tom. I was 16 years old, and I didn’t know what to do, so I asked Coach Lee. When I told him what was going on, he told me I should stay. He then told me something no one on my side of town knew at the time. A decision had been made to close the Black school for the 1970-1971 school year. If I left, I would have to come back after one year anyway. He then reminded me that I had shown the courage to start something in 1967, and I needed to find the courage to finish it now. He told me he knew I was not a quitter, that I had never disappointed him before, and not to start now. I stayed.

I had another memorable conversation with Coach Lee after my senior year. I had been offered a scholarship to play football at Alabama State University, an HBCU (Historically Black College/University) in Montgomery, Alabama. When I talked to Coach Lee about it he said, “Charlie, why don’t you go to Auburn”? The thought of going to Auburn had not occurred to me before that moment. That question changed my life. That question also encapsulates what Coach Lee thought of me. He made it clear to me that he thought I was as capable of success as anybody else. He made it clear that he believed in me.

Today I realize that so many of the things that Coach Lee instilled in me I have tried to instill in others. I have repeated many of the same words he said to us in Alabama to my teachers and students in Maryland. He has had a profound effect on me professionally and personally. I realize now that so many of the things he taught me and showed me were the things that every son needs to get from his father.

For some reason, I have been thinking of my football coach often lately. Coach Lee died on a Friday, May 28, 2010. I will always love him.

He was the father…… I never had.   

The Fierce Urgency of ... 1967

She was a beautiful little girl, fourteen months old. She had an exuberant smile, with plump cheeks that begged to be kissed. Her name was Maleah Williams. On Christmas Day, in an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Maleah and her mother were outside celebrating Christmas with almost a dozen other children and their parents.

Maleah’s mother, Tylena Williams described what happened next. “….. I saw a car drive through the parking lot, then back up a hill before stopping near a set of dumpsters… then a man inside the car started spraying bullets into the yard below… he just started shooting and I started running… I felt my body being so warm and my baby was just bleeding so much and gasping for air, and I kept telling her I love her, please don’t leave me.” 

Maleah had been shot in the head. She would die three days later.

Maleah was not alone. According to the Washington Post, twenty six other people were shot and killed on Christmas Day, 2015. They would include a barbershop owner in Alabama, a grandfather in Texas, and a young couple in Ohio. In addition to that, 63 other people were injured by gunfire. Not to mention suicides. Incredibly, more people died on Christmas Day in the United States last year than the number of people killed in gun homicides for the entire year in Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Estonia, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Iceland combined.

Today, 45 of the 50 states have “open carry laws”, which allow citizens to openly carry firearms on the streets. Imagine what would happen if a group of determined Black men were to listen to police calls on police scanners, rush to the scene of black people being arrested with law books in hand and inform the person being arrested of their constitutional rights? What if those men also happened to carry loaded weapons (in accordance with the law) which were publicly displayed but were careful to stand no closer than ten feet from the arrest so as not to interfere with the arrest?

This is exactly what happened in Oakland, California in 1967. The California legislature responded to these “Patrols” with the “Mulford Act”, which banned open carrying of loaded firearms in California. The law was supported by the governor of California, Ronald Reagan. The bill’s conservative sponsor, Don Mulford, also a republican, argued as late as 1989 that “openly carrying a gun is an act of violence or near violence”. The bill also had the support of the NRA.

On May 2, 1967, a group of thirty young Black men and women arrived at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. They were armed with shotguns, but were careful to keep them pointed towards the sky. As they neared the entrance to the building, they were noticed by the Governor, Ronald Reagan, who was speaking with a group of children. Reagan turned and ran. The group continued into the building and eventually arrived on the Assembly floor, which was debating the Mulford Act. Bedlam ensued. Many of the legislators dived under their desks screaming “don’t shoot”. Security guards responded immediately, surrounding the group and pushing them out into a hallway. Reporters were everywhere, clamoring for information. They all seemed to be asking “who are you!!!” As the group was ushered into an elevator, one of them, a 16 year-old named Bobby Hutton replied, “We’re the Black Panthers. We’re Black People with guns. What about it?”

Less than a year later, On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Hutton would be killed in a gun battle with Oakland police. He would be shot more than 12 times after he had surrendered and been stripped down to his underwear to ensure that he was unarmed. More than 1500 people would attend his funeral. More than 2,000 would attend a rally held after the funeral. Those in attendance included Marlon Brando and James Baldwin. Bobby Hutton was 17 years old.

The Mulford Act is still the law in California. California is one of only five states that still prohibits the open carrying of guns. The law was not conceived in ideology. The law was motivated by the fear of Black people with guns threatening the police and the lawmakers themselves not with actual violence, but the mere possibility of violence. Fear demands an immediate response. The fierce urgency of now.

Today, the National Rifle Association is a fierce opponent of any and all laws that might restrict in any way the purchase or ownership of guns. The NRA owns the United States Congress. They bought it fair and square with campaign contributions. They control it with fear. They use the same methods many parents in the South used on their children, I would often hear my parents say, “I brought you into this world (congress), and I’ll take you out”. Republican politicians wear their “A+” grades from the NRA like a badge of honor. They will not be moved by that bullet in Maleah Williams head on Christmas day.

But, as quiet as it’s kept, the NRA, for most of its existence, supported gun control. In the 1920’s the NRA proposed legislation requiring permits for concealed weapons, adding five years to prison sentences for crimes committed with guns, banning non-citizens from buying hand guns, requiring gun dealers to turn over sales records to police, and creating a one day waiting period to purchase a gun. The NRA helped Franklin Roosevelt draft the first federal gun controls; 1934’s National Firearms Act and 1938’s Gun Control Act. These laws imposed high taxes and registration requirements on machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers, making it all but impossible for average people to own them. Gun makers and sellers had to register with the federal government and convicted felons were barred from gun ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld these laws in 1939. The Gun Control Act of 1968 came in the aftermath of the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, the Black Panther’s visit to the California Legislature in 1967, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassinations in 1968. The law added a minimum age for gun buyers, required guns have serial numbers, and excluded the mentally ill and drug addicts from owning guns. Only federally licensed dealers and collectors could ship guns over state lines. People buying certain kinds of ammunition had to show ID. The NRA supported all of these measures.

Today, on this national holiday on which we dedicate our thoughts to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it seems as if we live in what seems to be an alternative universe. During the great March on Washington in 1963, in his iconic speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Dr. King spoke of the “Fierce Urgency of Now”. That “Urgency” of 1967, to make the nation’s people safe by addressing the violence of guns cannot be found. As I celebrate, commiserate, contemplate, where we go from here on this very special day, I think of the victims, not just the high profile mass killings that make the national news and set the twitter world afire, but the Maleah’s and their parents, the daily carnage that makes our nation the most violent in the history of the world. None of us are safe. We must find the courage to fix this.

As Dr. King said on that historic day in Washington, “Now is the time…..”

Now is the Time.  

Apocalypse Now - Part II (The Trump Card)

On April 1, 2015, I wrote the words italicized below. The post was about George Corley Wallace and the people that voted for, supported, followed, and idolized him. The post was about why they identified with what he espoused, and why that group of people now comprise the base of the Republican Party. 

 For Wallace, the "problem" was the Blacks, integration, civil rights, and the "pointy-headed bureaucrats" in Washington that were determined to impose their will on the good people of the south.

Today, the "problem" is the Muslims, Mexicans, Syrians, Blacks, gays, and Islamic terrorists that are determined to kill us all and destroy western civilization.

Wallace would use his unique form of demagoguery and scare tactics to become Governor of Alabama. He would run for President and carry five southern states, winning 46 electoral votes, using the same racist messages on the nation at large.

The Republican Party has continued to use racial politics since 1968 to flip the former confederate states from a Democratic stronghold to their own impregnable base of operations. However, what was once accomplished with coded words, a wink, a nod, and the power of the local purse, has been laid bare by the brash, egomaniacal, billionaire bigot from New York.

The old white people, the white people that did not finish high school, and the white people that did not go to college, are the base of the Republican Party. They are the Tea Party Patriots. The Republicans cannot win the presidency without them, and the base is pissed. They are supporting Donald Trump because he fearlessly, clearly expresses their fears and frustrations, their prejudices and bigotry. 

That’s what George Wallace did. Wallace was too extreme for the Democratic Party, so he ran for President as an independent. His believers voted for him anyway.

Recent polling suggests that more than 65% of the Republican base will do the same for Trump.

There is no way out for the Republicans. They created this monster. The apocalypse is upon them.

April 1, 2015

The date was January 14, 1963. Fifty two years ago. The streets of Montgomery were packed with visitors from all over the state. Many others were there from other states. The local, state, and national media were there as well. The occasion was the inaugural address of the newly elected governor. The speech had been written by Asa Carter, founder of the local Ku Klux Klan. The editors of the local daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, had urged the fiery young governor-elect to remove the fateful passage from the speech, but their request was denied. He stood on the portico of the Capitol building, looking down on the mass of people stretching down the boulevard known as Dexter Avenue. Surely, he was aware of the symbolism. This was the same place that Jefferson Davis had stood as he was sworn in as the first (and only) President of the Confederacy. 

And then, he said it.

“Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us have done, time and again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny….and I say….Segregation today….Segregation tomorrow….Segregation forever!”

Five years later, the man that said these words would run for President as an Independent. He would carry 5 states, including Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. He would garner 46 Electoral votes, 13.5% of the total vote, and 9.9 Million votes. In other words, he was not alone in his sentiments or his vision for the future of America.

It would be foolish to think that this point of view on diversity, that was so demonstrably prevalent 50 years ago no longer exists. 

Xenophobia, homophobia, and racism are all fueled by fear. So what are so many people in America afraid of? Why the intolerance? Why so many voter suppression efforts? Why so many reactionary laws targeting the LGBT community? Why so much animosity toward immigration reform efforts?

According to the US Census Bureau, the percentage of the American population classified as white was 75.1% in 2000. In 2010 it had decreased to 63.7%. At the current rate, it is estimated that in less than thirty years America will no longer be a country where white people are in the majority. In 2005, only 28% of the American public supported same-sex marriage. Today, more than 50% of the public supports it, thirty seven states have legalized it, and a conservative Supreme Court seems primed to make it the law of the land.

America is changing. Rapidly. And “Change”, is scary.

The number of Americans that are 65 years or older is larger than it has been at any time in the country’s history. According to the 2010 census, more than 40 million Americans are 65 or older. They make up 13% of the total population. They also make up the base of the Republican Party. They grew up in the sixties. Many of them did not go to integrated schools, do not socialize with minorities, and did not compete against them in the workforce. They are very resistant to the change that is occurring in America today.

The firestorm generated by Indiana’s religious freedom law is the latest example of the conflict between competing views of America’s future, the old and the new, “segregation forever” or “I have a dream”.

The differences are real, deeply ingrained in the fabric of our nation’s culture. They will not go away easily, if ever. It is a cultural divide that was settled, but not forgotten, by civil war. Economic forces have forced the Indiana legislature to reconsider its effort to clothe its bigotry in subtle legislation. The same forces have prompted the governor of Arkansas to reconsider his legislature’s similar effort. Nevertheless, every Republican presidential candidate did not hesitate to weigh in on the side that the Republican base demands. They know that they cannot win a Republican primary without pleasing the base.

I am reminded of the first shots fired at Fort Sumter.

Once, George Wallace was asked why he started using racist messages. He is quoted as having said, “I tried to talk about good roads and good schools, and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*****s, and they stomped the floor.”

They stomped the floor. They stomped the steps. They stomped the street and they stomped the grass in Montgomery….On January 14, 1963.

The minorities are coming. Will the older, white Americans allow it to happen? Or will they take America with them, to their graves?

The Myth of Reagan

When I heard the first news reports that National Airport in Washington, D.C. would be renamed "Ronald Reagan National Airport" I immediately embarked on the five stages of grief. Denial and anger kicked in almost simultaneously. I think I skipped right over bargaining and eventually settled into depression. Although this happened in 1998, I'm still fighting with acceptance.

So what’s my problem?

My issues with Reagan began when he announced his second campaign for the Presidency. In 1980 he made a speech at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the place where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964. Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were buried in an earthen dam by the ku klux klan. Their murders would help to galvanize the nation in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Reagan went there and made a speech in support of "States Rights". He might as well have pissed on their graves. Any one from the South knows what "states’ rights" means. This was the Confederacy's politically correct excuse for starting the civil war. This was their rationale for slavery itself.

Reagan would also go on to tell an audience in Atlanta that "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine", and describe the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as "humiliating to the South". If there remained any doubt about how Reagan felt about equality and human rights, he made his feelings clear in 1986.

The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was passed by Congress in 1986. It imposed sanctions on the racist, minority South African government that was violently enforcing strict racial segregation. The law outlined five preconditions for lifting the sanctions that would essentially end the system of Apartheid. The law enjoyed the support of the entire civilized world.

Ronald Reagan vetoed it.

The US Congress overrode the veto and the Bill became law. The Senate voted 78 to 21, and the House voted 313 to 83. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa in 1991.

As quiet as it's kept, the Reagan administration was one of the most corrupt in American history. More than 100 members of the Reagan Administration were convicted, indicted, or resigned while under investigation during Reagan's eight years in office, including some of his most prominent aides. The list includes Edwin Meese III (Attorney General), Lyn Nofziger (Senior Aide), Michael Deaver (Senior Aide), Caspar Weinberger (Secretary of Defense), James Watt (Secretary of the Interior), Ray Donovan (Secretary of Labor), Elliot Abrams (State Department), Robert McFarlane (National Security Advisor), Oliver North (White House Staff), John Poindexter (National Security Advisor), Alan Fiers (CIA), Clair George (CIA), and Duane Clarridge (CIA).

On December 21, 1982 President Reagan signed an appropriations bill that included the Boland Amendment. The amendment made it illegal for the United States to provide assistance to the Contras, a group in Nicaragua that was trying to overthrow the Marxist Nicaraguan government.

In 1985 the Reagan administration agreed to secretly supply anti-tank and other weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for Iran's help in obtaining the release of six Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. The administration then took the money generated from the sale of these arms and gave it to the Contras in Nicaragua, a clear violation of the law that Reagan himself signed just three years earlier. Subsequent investigations resulted in several indictments, convictions, resignations, and pardons of high ranking administration officials. Reagan himself was forced to testify under oath, and incredibly answered "I don't remember" 130 times.

Many Americans are familiar with the phrase "once a Marine, always a Marine". I was once a marine, and on a Sunday morning in October of 1983 I experienced a spasm of anger that I will never forget. On that day, 241 American servicemen, 220 of them marines, died when an Iranian suicide bomber crashed a truck filled with explosives into their barracks while most of them slept. They were in Beirut, Lebanon on a "peacekeeping" mission.

Reagan responded two days later by ordering an invasion of Grenada, a small island in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. The US sent more than 7,000 troops to "rescue and protect" 61 American medical students on the island. The United Nations condemned the military action as "a flagrant violation of international law" by a vote of 108 to 9. A similar resolution failed in the Security Council as a result of a veto by the United States. Seven Democratic Congressmen introduced an unsuccessful resolution to impeach the President.

The entire Granada operation lasted less than three months. Reagan declared victory against the spread of communism. The United States suffered 19 killed and 116 wounded. More than 5000 medals and commendations were awarded to the participants. Meanwhile, the 241 servicemen that died in their bunks in Lebanon were out of the headlines.

The most baffling part of the revisionist history enveloping Reagan has to be his stewardship of the American economy. Has everybody forgotten what REALLY happened to the economy during those eight years??? How could they forget "Black Monday", October 19, 1987 when the stock market crashed by 508 points (22.61%)? Have we forgotten prime interest rates of 20%? Have we forgotten home loan interest rates of 16%?  That’s what was happening in the "Reagan Years". The Reagan years also saw unemployment rise to 10.8%, the highest rate since the Great Depression!

Reagan, today's patron saint of the conservative movement, increased federal spending by 80% during his eight years in the White House, doubled the federal deficit, MORE than doubled the national debt, and raised taxes seven of the eight years he was in office. Had he not, the deficits would have been much worse.

 Imagine what would have happened if this was the record that the Obama administration was leaving with us.

  Somehow, for some reason, the American people, the American press, and the American intelligentsia have allowed the Reagan loyalists to create and perpetuate a myth of historical proportions and sell it to America and the world.

Simon Hoggart, writing in "The Observer" said this about Reagan, "His errors glide by unchallenged. At one point....he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is very acceptable this year."

 If we really need another hero, is this the best we can do?