Assassination of a Nation’s Soul
What violence and threat to our democracy
has done to me
cannot be undone, it seems.
I watch the source of so much pain
fall to ground, his right ear maimed.
I wonder at the loss of feeling at such sight.
I try to feel something, anything, even fright.
Instead numbness overtakes my soul.
This does not seem the same to me
as the grief I felt for the John or Bobby Kennedy,
for Martin Luther King, Jr. or Medgar Evers;
Cheney, Schwermer and Goodman;
For Malcom X and Viola Luizzo.
Where did my compassion go?
I wish I could say I know.
Suffering is all the same.
Every human being feels its shame.
Even that I cannot feel
as layer by layer the Constitution unravels,
and freedom’s bell no longer peals.
How far my hope has traveled
beyond court decisions and hateful words
meant to appeal to nameless hordes
by those who speak only for themselves,
cheered by those who fill their empty chords.
Surrounded by narcissistic churls
whose images and taunts unfurl
across media’s many avenues,
such violence seemed inevitable.
And, all he cared about was finding his shoes
as others tried to protect his life,
he struggled against their efforts
exposing them to more danger
so he could rise within their safe embrace
and raise a fist in everyone’s face.
Still, I feel nothing.
Neither sorrow nor joy.
Neither faith nor fear.
Neither love or hate.
Neither hope nor mistrust.
Look at what this man and his supporters
have done to us!
Filed under POETRY
Playing with Austerity? By Louise Annarino, 3-3-2013
In 1964 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) was created by Sargent Shriver and William Mullins to implement President Johnson’s War on Poverty and lay the basis for his Great Society. Many of the programs initiated under the OEO continue underfunded and under constant attack within HHS.
In March,1968, Martin Luther King,Jr. was assassinated and African-Americans living in segregated enclaves within large urban areas erupted in grief and anger. But not in Indianapolis where then-presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the crowd gathered to hear a campaign speech. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCrx_u3825g
Senator Kennedy announced the assassination and then identified with the pain,grief and vengeful feelings likely to be felt, having experienced the assassination of his own brother. He called for love,wisdom,compassion and justice for those who still suffer in our country. He acknowledged that most people Black and white “want to live together and improve the quality of life,and provide justice for all human beings who abide in our land.”
Shortly after the assassination, the OEO created a pilot project to establish summer recreation programs for children in poor urban neighborhoods. The Salvation Army agreed to pay the $40 per week salary of recreation leaders for each of four anticipated programs in my small town. We four were 18 year old freshmen at OSU Newark. I was assigned to the near East-End African-American community, where the Reverend Charles Noble,Sr., pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church had agreed to allow us to use a vacant lot across the street from the church. After weeks of meeting to figure out what we do and how we would do it with no firm plans in place I had had enough. It was already May and children would soon be out of school but we had nothing to show for all of our meetings but serious frustration. I announced I would not be attending the next meeting.Instead I could be found in my assigned neighborhood should I be needed.
I first introduced myself to Rev. Noble who could not have been more displeased to see a naive young white woman coming into the community with nothing to offer. I was equally dismayed at the lot I was to use. It was huge and covered with rocks,not gravel, interspersed with rusty cans,broken bottles, and gross detritus best unnamed. Next,I walked door-to-door introducing myself to the parents and aunties,asking what they wanted to see happen on the lot,and what type of program would be most helpful. The answer: a playground for the younger kids, a basketball court for the older boys and young men,horse shoe pits and picnic tables for the community-at-large. I had no budget.
I did have S&H green stamps earned at the local A&P. I called the number on the back of the folder where Mom pasted stamps to ask how many stamps would be needed to earn swings, a merry-go-round, teeter-totters,and monkey bars. They laughed but after a few minutes of discussion decided they could help and would provide those items if I delivered several thousand coupon books to the local A&P for redemption. When I asked my uncle how to make a horse shoe pit,sand boxes, and picnic tables he said “leave it to me. The guys at the missile plant can build them for you.” And they did. But, I needed sand. So, I called a Newark sand and gravel company agreed to supply the sand for the sand boxes and horse shoe pits if I could find a truck to pick it up. A Newark truck company agreed to do so. A Newark fence company agreed to install a chain link fence around the entire perimeter. The Newark asphalt company agreed to pour a basketball court and the Newark High School basketball coaches agreed to paint the lines and install the hoops at regulation height.
The community collected every green stamp they could find and within a few days our playground equipment was on-order. Within three weeks,we had a fully functioning playground. Needing playground equipment:basketball,footballs,bats and balls,hula hoops,jump ropes etc. I played a game with two local stores. Sears agreed to match J.C. Penney’s donation of toys and raise the amount; Penneys agreed to match Sears and raise it. The Farm Store donated the shed to store all our equipment. Soon more than 200 children were regulars. Older sisters and brothers bringing little ones,even infants in strollers while their mothers worked. After the factories let out, the young men came by to shoot hoops. When I invited the A&P manager to see what they had helped accomplishment I asked if he could help with a hunger issue I had noted. A&P provided cereal,milk and fruit each morning for every child,with hot dogs and chips on friday afternoons. My girl friends’ mothers rotated baking and delivery of cookies each afternoon.
The local gang provided security. We never had a theft,graffiti art,nor vandalism on our playground. The gang leader became our martial arts trainer, and at my insistence, learned the Queensberry rules to ref boxing matches we held using my dad’s old boxing gloves. Rev. Noble visited,his eyes narrowed, taking it all in, making a brief nod my direction before returning to the church. I let out my breath!
The Army,Navy,and Airforce recruiters provided drivers and buses for field trips.
A month after the playground was completed I was fired for failing to attend meetings and immediately reinstated once the OEO regional organizer finally paid the visit I had asked for weeks earlier. Mine was the only recreation program to be implemented in our town that summer.
Why am I writing about this today? Because the republican view of private enterprise, and the democratic view of government investments as engines for productive growth are both correct. There is a place for each. Without the OEO and its efforts there would have been no playground. Without the private donations there would have been no playground. Without the Salvation Army paying my salary,and Rev. Noble’s donation of land there would have been no playground. Without the volunteer efforts and donations from so many local businesses, there would have been no playground. It took all of us working together. It took INVESTMENT of time and money, public tax dollars and private funds. A balance of government and private investment built that playground.
What is NOT acceptable is an economic development viewpoint that austerity can build a new America. It can’t build a playground,nor a country! When President Obama talks about balance,calls for increased revenue and sensible cuts to programs which don’t work, he is absolutely right. to do so. Like me, he was once a community organizer.He knows how to get things done,how to get this country moving. He is doing so despite great odds. His Organizing For Action group is the embodiment of community organization. You can get involved by clicking https://my.barackobama.com/page/s/organizing-for-action.
Cutting taxes for the wealthy does not create growth. It merely creates more wealth for the already wealthy. Working men and women, built our playground. There were no wealthy donors standing in line to build a playground for poor kids. We need tax revenue to build a nation,a nation made up of local communities and neighborhoods like the east-end of Newark. We need government involvement to stimulate people and small businesses in those communities to help rebuild the infrastructure and programs which will “improve the quality of life,and provide justice for all human beings who abide in our land,” a goal that both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King,Jr. sought to achieve. Austerity is the function of dying. If you have watched a love one die,you know exactly what I mean. I want America to live and grow.
Filed under POLITICS
annarino writes 
SYNERGY OR SERENDIPITY? RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN OFFICES OF SECRETARIES OF STATE,BY Louise Annarino,August 18, 2012
SYNERGY OR SERENDIPITY? RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN OFFICES OF SECRETARIES OF STATE,BY Louise Annarino,August 18, 2012
Synergy is two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.
The Suppression of the African-American vote deserves a blog entry all its own. I recently wrote about the general suppression of early voters in Ohio. Such behavior is disgraceful. But, suppression of the African-American vote is truly beyond the pale of thinking Americans.Perhaps no one is thinking. Perhaps the intent is not so deliberately racist as it appears. However, I find it difficult to believe what is happening in Ohio and simultaneously in so many states had not been planned.
General systems theory would remind me of serendipity; perhaps it is simply a “surprising happenstance” that the votes of those groups who so strongly supported Barack Obama in 2008 are being systemically suppressed throughout the country during the 2012 election. 95% of African Americans in the U.S., 97% in Ohio, voted for Barack Obama in 2008. “With population growth and increased voter participation among blacks, Latinos and Asians, members of all three groups cast more votes in 2008 than in 2004. Two million more blacks and 2 million more Latinos reported voting in 2008 than said the same in 2004. Among Asians, 338,000 more votes were reported cast in 2008 than in 2004.” http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1209/racial-ethnic-voters-presidential-election An even higher turn-out among these groups is expected for the 2012 election.
It is estimated no fewer than 93,000 persons voted on the week-end before the November 2008 election. Since not all county election boards keep a daily tally of voters this number may be far lower than actual votes cast. There is no way to prove the race of voters on that or any other week-end. However, we do know that African-American churches “Souls to the Polls” projects bus hundreds of thousands of African-Americans to early voting after church services on Sundays, including the final Sunday before election day. We do know that getting to the polls, early or on election day is a struggle for single mothers, students, older persons, those relying on public transportation, and those working longer hours for less pay. We have a collective a memory of who was left standing in long lines, who had to leave the lines without voting in 2004; and who formed long lines throughout the interior hallways, and out the door to wrap themselves in a line extending around Veteran’s Memorial and into the parking lot on week-ends in 2008. African-Americans stood witness as far larger percentage of voters in-line than the percentage of African-Americans living in Ohio. For African-Americans, wek-end voting is a necessity, not a convenience.
The recent efforts in Ohio,Pennsylvania and other states to make it more difficult to vote are being justified using the same arguments which were used to deny African-Americans and women the right to vote; which later were used to impose a poll tax or literacy test to deny African-Americans their place at the polls. Now, we face a bigger hurdle. The systemic institutionalization of voting rules meant to turn voting rights into mere privileges as a means of controlling whose vote will get cast,and counted.
We elected an African-American president, while white men thought they could still hold onto power. Putting a woman, Sarah Palin,on the Republican ticket was not enough to overcome the changing demographic. What’s next, a woman president? An African-American woman president? A Latino, Latina or Asian president?
I believe what we are seeing is synergy, not serendipity. Racism coupled with the power held by state Republicans to regulate voting is threatening our elections. On NPR this morning a man was questioned about his opposition to congressional candidate Christie Vilsack. His reason for opposing her, “No way. It’s a man world”. It really isn’t; not any longer. The only way to keep the U.S. “a man’s world” is to suppress the vote of those who would easily and happily live in a multicultural America.
On August 6, 2012 The Honorable John Lewis (D-GA) stated on his facebook page: “47 years ago today, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. It is a shame and a disgrace that today we bear witness to a deliberate and systematic attempt to make it impossible for some among us to vote. It is an affront to those that suffered and struggled, and especially to those who gave their lives so that others would be free to choose their own elected leaders. We must resist every effort to make it harder and more difficult for people to register and vote.” Yesterday, I listened to an interview of Congressman Lewis on CNN where he was asked whether the racist environment during his civil rights days marching with Dr. King for the Civil Rights,where he was set-upon by dogs,hosed,beaten and jailed was worse than what we see and hear today. Congressman Lewis said (I paraphrase) “It is the same. But then, it was only in the South. Today it is everywhere in the country.”
The struggle for the right of African-Americans to vote continues as we demand the restoration of week-end voting in Ohio, the removal of unobtainable documentation requirements for and end to voter ID in Pennsylvania, and a slew of other burdens and obstacles to voting across the country. If the vote of one person can be denied, the vote of every person can be denied. While it is clear what is being denied to African-American voters we must recognize it could also be denied to every voter, even to those like SoS Husted. He and his party may not always hold power. They should not forget they are simply one of us, as we are all part of the whole. The precedent he is setting treats the right to vote as a privilege to be controlled and doled out according to the whims of those in power. This is dangerous to all Americans.
Once again, African-Americans are on the front-lines defending the constitution we all love, witnesses to the need of those in power to oppress even it means their own self-destruction. We must stand together or we will fall together. As Sen.Robert Kennedy once said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” African-American,white,Latino,Asian,men,women we must stand together against the folly we are witnessing.
Leave a comment
Filed under COMMENTARY, POLITICS
Tagged as 2012 campaign, 2012 election, African-American, Barack Obama, civil rights, Congressman John Lewis, Democratic Party, election 2012, feminism, literacy tests, Obama campaign lawsuit in Ohio, Obama. Romney, Pennsylvania voter ID, politics, poll taxes, racism, Republican Party, Robert Kennedy, Secretary of State John Husted, sexism, vote ID laws, vote suppression, voters