Indiana’s Anti-Howard Zinn Witch-hunt | Common Dreams:
" As the Zinn Education Project reveals regularly in its If We Knew Our History column, the version of U.S. history taught in the textbooks produced by giant corporations is anything but “true.” The corporate textbooks hide the breadth of U.S. military and economic interventions throughout the world; they ignore the roots of today’s environmental crises; they refuse to explore the origins of the vast wealth inequality in the United States; and the textbooks neglect the role of social movements throughout U.S. history, instead focusing on famous individuals; thus, they fail to nurture an activist sensibility—a recognition that if we want the world to be better, then it’s up to us to make it better."
Monday
Second Inaugural Address — Abraham Lincoln
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| English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Latviešu: Abrahams Linkolns, sešpadsmitais ASV prezidents. Српски / Srpski: Абрахам Линколн, шеснаести председник Сједињених Америчких Држава. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Second Inaugural Address"
— Abraham Lincoln
Saturday
American Rhetoric: Margaret Chase Smith -- "Declaration of Conscience"
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| Margaret Chase Smith, member of the U.S. Senate (R-Maine). (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
"Margaret Chase Smith Declaration of Conscience
delivered 1 June 1950"
Monday
Jessica's Buen Camino
Jessica's Buen Camino:
" One of the unexpected discoveries is that English is the preferred language of the Camino. The Italians, French, Germans, Dutch, English, Koreans, and Japanese don't know a lick of Spanish. So they all talk to each other (and to the Spaniards) in their second language: English! It's amazing that there are such deep discussions, abstract musings, and hilarious joking all happening in a second language.
"
" One of the unexpected discoveries is that English is the preferred language of the Camino. The Italians, French, Germans, Dutch, English, Koreans, and Japanese don't know a lick of Spanish. So they all talk to each other (and to the Spaniards) in their second language: English! It's amazing that there are such deep discussions, abstract musings, and hilarious joking all happening in a second language.
"
Thursday
Unions.org - ANTI UNION HATERS TO BUY LOS ANGELES TIMES
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| Los Angeles Times Magazine (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
"That’s turned Karsh into a glaring target for labor unions, liberal activists, and media advocates, who are desperate to keep the Brothers Koch—and their much feared Tea Party agenda—out of the newspaper business, particularly the Tribune’s crown jewel, the Los Angeles Times."
Tuesday
» The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Zinn Education Project
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| The Jim Crow Song Book dancer (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
"In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community — and all of us — to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America."
...ero.
Monday
You Don't Have to Ride JIM CROW!
You Don't Have to Ride JIM CROW!:
"You don't have to ride Jim Crow!
You don't have to ride Jim Crow,
On June the Third the high court said
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead,
You don't have to ride Jim Crow...
Go quiet-like if you face arrest,
NAACP will make a test,
You don't have to ride Jim Crow!"
"You don't have to ride Jim Crow!
You don't have to ride Jim Crow,
On June the Third the high court said
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead,
You don't have to ride Jim Crow...
Go quiet-like if you face arrest,
NAACP will make a test,
You don't have to ride Jim Crow!"
Friday
BookExpo America Draws 20,000 to Javits Center - NYTimes.com
BookExpo America Draws 20,000 to Javits Center - NYTimes.com:
"E-book sales are no longer growing at a nerve-rattling pace. The unpleasant and expensive price-fixing lawsuit last year, pitting the Justice Department against five major publishers, has been settled. Independent booksellers added 65 stores to their ranks in 2012, according to their trade association, despite competition from Amazon."
"E-book sales are no longer growing at a nerve-rattling pace. The unpleasant and expensive price-fixing lawsuit last year, pitting the Justice Department against five major publishers, has been settled. Independent booksellers added 65 stores to their ranks in 2012, according to their trade association, despite competition from Amazon."
Thursday
Monday
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| English: Walt Whitman. Library of Congress description: "Walt Whitman". (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
via
Bartleby's
Walt Whitman (1819–1892).
Leaves of Grass. 1900.
Prayer of Columbus
A batter'd wreck’d old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea, and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d, and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island’s edge,
Venting a heavy heart.
I am too full of woe!
Haply, I may not live another day;
I can not rest, O God—I can not eat or drink or sleep,
Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,
Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee—commune with Thee,
Report myself once more to Thee.
Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
(My long and crowded life of active work—not adoration merely;)
Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth;
Thou knowest my manhood’s solemn and visionary meditations;
Thou knowest how, before I commenced, I devoted all to come to Thee;
Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows, and strictly kept them;
Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee;
(In shackles, prison’d, in disgrace, repining not,
Accepting all from Thee—as duly come from Thee.)
All my emprises have been fill’d with Thee,
My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,
Sailing the deep, or journeying the land for Thee;
Intentions, purports, aspirations mine—leaving results to Thee.
O I am sure they really come from Thee!
The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,
The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,
A message from the Heavens, whispering to me even in sleep,
These sped me on.
By me, and these, the work so far accomplish’d (for what has been, has been;)
By me Earth’s elder, cloy’d and stifled lands, uncloy’d, unloos’d;
By me the hemispheres rounded and tied—the unknown to the known.
The end I know not—it is all in Thee;
Or small, or great, I know not—haply, what broad fields, what lands;
Haply, the brutish, measureless human undergrowth I know,
Transplanted there, may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee;
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools;
Haply the lifeless cross I know—Europe’s dead cross—may bud and blossom there.
One effort more—my altar this bleak sand:
That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted,
With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,
(Light rare, untellable—lighting the very light!
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages!)
For that, O God—be it my latest word—here on my knees,
Old, poor, and paralyzed—I thank Thee.
My terminus near,
The clouds already closing in upon me,
The voyage balk’d—the course disputed, lost,
I yield my ships to Thee.
Steersman unseen! henceforth the helms are Thine;
Take Thou command—(what to my petty skill Thy navigation?)
My hands, my limbs grow nerveless;
My brain feels rack’d, bewilder’d; Let the old timbers part—I will not part!
I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me;
Thee, Thee, at least, I know.
Is it the prophet’s thought I speak, or am I raving?
What do I know of life? what of myself?
I know not even my own work, past or present;
Dim, ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
Of newer, better worlds, their mighty parturition,
Mocking, perplexing me.
And these things I see suddenly—what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal’d my eyes,
Shadowy, vast shapes, smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.
.
..
.ero
..
.
Sunday
Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
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| Malcolm X (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
via
The Quotations Page
http://www.quotationspage.com
"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."
~~Malcolm X,
Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Malcolm_X/
..
.
Thursday
Sunday
» Mother’s Day for Peace Zinn Education Project
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| President Woodrow Wilson's Mother's Day Proclamation of May 9, 1914 (Presidential Proclamation 1268)., 05/09/1914 - 05/09/1914 (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives) |
"Mother’s Day Proclamation, 1870
By Julia Ward Howe
Arise, then, women of this day!"
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