You don’t defeat politically motivated violence by politicizing the laws used to prosecute it.
Murder is always murder most foul. We criminalize rape, assault, vandalism, and criminal threats because they harm a citizen – not a super-citizen held in some special regard by the government.
Remarks of Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
NAACP Centennial
New York, New York
July 16, 2009
It is an honor to be here, in the city where the NAACP was formed, to mark its centennial. What we celebrate tonight is not simply the journey the NAACP has traveled, but the journey that we, as Americans, have traveled over the past one hundred years.
It is a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery. It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; and when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.
It was in this America where an Atlanta scholar named W.E.B. Du Bois, a man of towering intellect and a fierce passion for justice, sparked what became known as the Niagara movement; where reformers united, not by color but cause; and where an association was born that would, as its charter says, promote equality and eradicate prejudice among citizens of the United States.
From the beginning, Du Bois understood how change would come – just as King and all the civil rights giants did later. They understood that unjust laws needed to be overturned; that legislation needed to be passed; and that Presidents needed to be pressured into action. They knew that the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation had to be lifted in the courtroom and in the legislature.
But they also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynching, rallying against violence, and walking instead of taking the bus. It would come from men and women – of every age and faith, race and region – taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; taking seats at Greensboro lunch counters; and registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that they might never return.
Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union. Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies. Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, governors, and Members of Congress serve in places where they might once have been unable to vote. And because ordinary people made the civil rights movement their own, I made a trip to Springfield a couple years ago – where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged – and began the journey that has led me here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America.
And yet, even as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past one hundred years; even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks – we know that too many barriers still remain.
We know that even as our economic crisis batters Americans of all races, African Americans are out of work more than just about anyone else – a gap that’s widening here in New York City, as detailed in a report this week by Comptroller Bill Thompson.
We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anyone else.
We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a jail.
And we know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African-American community here at home with disproportionate force.
These are some of the barriers of our time. They’re very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations. They’re very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers; when Charles Hamilton Houston and a group of young Howard lawyers were dismantling segregation.
But what is required to overcome today’s barriers is the same as was needed then. The same commitment. The same sense of urgency. The same sense of sacrifice. The same willingness to do our part for ourselves and one another that has always defined America at its best.
The question, then, is where do we direct our efforts? What steps do we take to overcome these barriers? How do we move forward in the next one hundred years?
The first thing we need to do is make real the words of your charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there’s probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today.
But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. (Only Muslims, Latinos, Blacks & Gays experience discrimination. Not whites Jews or Christians according to Obama) By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos (Is that a veiled reference to the racist discriminating Sotomayor?) made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights. (Um What about Christians Obama? Their right to not pay for abortions which is against their beliefs?Oh, Christians do not count…I see)
On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination must not stand. Not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America.
But we also know that prejudice and discrimination are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.
These are barriers we are beginning to tear down by rewarding work with an expanded tax credit; making housing more affordable; and giving ex-offenders a second chance. These are barriers that we are targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, and through Promise Neighborhoods that build on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone; and that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and support to get there.
But our task of reducing these structural inequalities has been made more difficult by the state, and structure, of the broader economy; an economy fueled by a cycle of boom and bust; an economy built not on a rock, but sand. That is why my administration is working so hard not only to create and save jobs in the short-term, not only to extend unemployment insurance and help for people who have lost their health care, not only to stem this immediate economic crisis, but to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within reach not just for African Americans, but for all Americans.
One pillar of this new foundation is health insurance reform that cuts costs, makes quality health coverage affordable for all, and closes health care disparities in the process. Another pillar is energy reform that makes clean energy profitable, freeing America from the grip of foreign oil, putting people to work upgrading low-income homes, and creating jobs that cannot be outsourced. And another pillar is financial reform with consumer protections to crack down on mortgage fraud and stop predatory lenders from targeting our poor communities.
All these things will make America stronger and more competitive. They will drive innovation, create jobs, and provide families more security. Still, even if we do it all, the African-American community will fall behind in the United States and the United States will fall behind in the world unless we do a far better job than we have been doing of educating our sons and daughters. In the 21st century – when so many jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or more, when countries that out-educate us today will outcompete us tomorrow – a world-class education is a prerequisite for success.
You know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools. There’s a reason Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown. There’s a reason the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It’s because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.
Yet, more than a half century after Brown v. Board of Education, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across this country. African-American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math – an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way on civil rights. Over half of all African-American students are dropping out of school in some places. There are overcrowded classrooms, crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children – black, brown, and white alike.
The state of our schools is not an African-American problem; it’s an American problem. And if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich can agree that we need to solve it, then all of us can agree on that. All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from the cradle through a career.
That is our responsibility as the United States of America. And we, all of us in government, are working to do our part by not only offering more resources, but demanding more reform.
When it comes to higher education, we are making college and advanced training more affordable, and strengthening community colleges that are a gateway to so many with an initiative that will prepare students not only to earn a degree but find a job when they graduate; an initiative that will help us meet the goal I have set of leading the world in college degrees by 2020.
We are creating a Race to the Top Fund that will reward states and public school districts that adopt 21st century standards and assessments. And we are creating incentives for states to promote excellent teachers and replace bad ones – because the job of a teacher is too important for us to accept anything but the best.
We should also explore innovative approaches being pursued here in New York City; innovations like Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School that are challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate’s degree or college credit in just four years.
And we should raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs. Today, some early learning programs are excellent. Some are mediocre. And some are wasting what studies show are – by far – a child’s most formative years.
That’s why I have issued a challenge to America’s governors: if you match the success of states like Pennsylvania and develop an effective model for early learning; if you focus reform on standards and results in early learning programs; if you demonstrate how you will prepare the lowest income children to meet the highest standards of success – you can compete for an Early Learning Challenge Grant that will help prepare all our children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.
So, these are some of the laws we are passing. These are some of the policies we are enacting. These are some of the ways we are doing our part in government to overcome the inequities, injustices, and barriers that exist in our country.
But all these innovative programs and expanded opportunities will not, in and of themselves, make a difference if each of us, as parents and as community leaders, fail to do our part by encouraging excellence in our children. Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves.
We have to say to our children, Yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands – and don’t you forget that.
To parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework.
And it means we need to be there for our neighbor’s son or daughter, and return to the day when we parents let each other know if we saw a child acting up. That’s the meaning of community. That’s how we can reclaim the strength, the determination, the hopefulness that helped us come as far as we already have.
It also means pushing our kids to set their sights higher. They might think they’ve got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can’t all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. I want them aspiring to be President of the United States.
So, yes, government must be a force for opportunity. Yes, government must be a force for equality. But ultimately, if we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own destiny, each and every day.
That is what the NAACP is all about. The NAACP was not founded in search of a handout. The NAACP was not founded in search of favors. The NAACP was founded on a firm notion of justice; to cash the promissory note of America that says all our children, all God’s children, deserve a fair chance in the race of life.
It is a simple dream, and yet one that has been denied – one still being denied – to so many Americans. It’s a painful thing, seeing that dream denied. I remember visiting a Chicago school in a rough neighborhood as a community organizer, and thinking how remarkable it was that all of these children seemed so full of hope, despite being born into poverty, despite being delivered into addiction, despite all the obstacles they were already facing.
And I remember the principal of the school telling me that soon all of that would begin to change; that soon, the laughter in their eyes would begin to fade; that soon, something would shut off inside, as it sunk in that their hopes would not come to pass – not because they weren’t smart enough, not because they weren’t talented enough, but because, by accident of birth, they didn’t have a fair chance in life.
So, I know what can happen to a child who doesn’t have that chance. But I also know what can happen to a child who does. I was raised by a single mother. I don’t come from a lot of wealth. I got into my share of trouble as a kid. My life could easily have taken a turn for the worse. But that mother of mine gave me love; she pushed me, and cared about my education; she took no lip and taught me right from wrong. Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities. I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities. I had the chance to make the most of life.
The same story holds for Michelle. The same story holds for so many of you. And I want all the other Barack Obamas out there, and all the other Michelle Obamas out there, to have that same chance – the chance that my mother gave me; that my education gave me; that the United States of America gave me. That is how our union will be perfected and our economy rebuilt. That is how America will move forward in the next one hundred years.
And we will move forward. This I know – for I know how far we have come. Last week, in Ghana, Michelle and I took Malia and Sasha to Cape Coast Castle, where captives were once imprisoned before being auctioned; where, across an ocean, so much of the African-American experience began. There, reflecting on the dungeon beneath the castle church, I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.
But I was also reminded of something else. I was reminded that no matter how bitter the rod or how stony the road, we have persevered. We have not faltered, nor have we grown weary. As Americans, we have demanded, strived for, and shaped a better destiny.
That is what we are called to do once more. It will not be easy. It will take time. Doubts may rise and hopes recede.
But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge, then I know young people today can do their part to lift up our communities.
If Emmet Till’s uncle Mose Wright could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters in our own families.
If three civil rights workers in Mississippi – black and white, Christian and Jew, city-born and country-bred – could lay down their lives in freedom’s cause, I know we can come together to face down the challenges of our own time. We can fix our schools, heal our sick, and rescue our youth from violence and despair.
One hundred years from now, on the 200th anniversary of the NAACP, let it be said that this generation did its part; that we too ran the race; that full of the faith that our dark past has taught us, full of the hope that the present has brought us, we faced, in our own lives and all across this nation, the rising sun of a new day begun. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. End transcript
I received this shocking info. regarding an extremely disturbing Sotomayor connection in an e-mail from the ever so diligent Larwyn. Sotomayor’s racist remarks of the past (as despicable as they are) pale in comparison.
A website that opposes Lyndon LaRouche and other cult leaders has issued a
statement (http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/sotomayor.htm) questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s judgment in running workshops over the past four years for the Development School for Youth, a wing of ex-LaRouche disciple Fred Newman’s All Stars Project youth charity, which Sotomayor has supported in other ways since at least 2003.
The DSY is Sotomayor’s “favorite project,” according to the Obama administration–which may not be aware that the DSY and its > All Stars parent organization are both dominated by Marxist psychotherapist Newman, who has become notorious for championing sexual relationships between therapists and patients, and has organized his own “Social Therapy” patients into a clandestine political entity that former members say is a destructive cult.
The LaRouche Watch statement and backup documents discuss the cult’s use of Newman’s writings on “friendosexualism” to indoctrinate teens, its history of defending the National Man-Boy Love Association and various high-profile child abusers, its use of Social Therapy techniques and the Social Therapy philosophy in designing and conducting its programs, its use of Social Therapy group sessions to manipulate and intimidate young people, its record of anti-Semitism, and the fact that its charities and
clinics are controlled by way of Newman’s International Workers Party, which is ever on the lookout for new young recruits.
Says Dennis King, the expert on political cults who runs the LaRouche Watch site: “It would have taken no more than five minutes of due diligence via Google for Judge Sotomayor to find out this group is wrong for kids, wrong for adult volunteers, and totally inappropriate for a Federal Circuit Court judge. Did she ever both to check? Or does she know EXACTLY what the group is like, and simply sees nothing wrong with it?”
“Either way,” King says, “this is an important issue to ask about at the
confirmation hearings. For if Judge Sotomayor could hang around with this
outfit since the early 2000s without noticing anything odd, she may not have the judgment or common sense to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
- A menu of 16 newspaper and magazine articles (over a 30-year period), 3
policy reports, 7 articles by former members, and an award-winning 2005 TV
news series, all affirming that the Newman group is extremist and/or cult-like.
- Dennis King’s in-depth, exhaustively referenced “Report to the City”
(http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/devloan.htm) on the dubious history of the
Newman group’s work with children and teens dating back to the early 1970s.
- Newman’s own statements defending sexual relationships between therapists and their patients.
Every one of these documents could easily have been found on the web by Judge Sotomayor–if she’d bothered to look.
I popped on over to the aforementioned Lyndon LaRouche Watch and grabbed an excerpt from:
“How is it that Sotomayor, a Federal Circuit Court judge (and a former prosecutor), could work with the youth program of this sicko cult-racket for four years and not spot anything wrong?”
According to Daily News columnist Errol Louis, Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor has worked as a volunteer workshop leader for the past four years with the Development School for Youth (DSY), a branch of the Newman-controlled All Stars Project (the latter is a multifaceted youth charity that works with kids of all ages). Louis quotes the White House as saying that the DSY is Sotomayor’s “favorite project.”
The relationship may be somewhat deeper. In answering a questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor has revealed that she gave a speech to a DSY graduating class in 2003–two years earlier than the time line provided by Louis. And Sotomayor even provided the committee with the text of her 2003 speech(pdf.), which uses a bit of Social Therapy jargon:
“We all have to work and to perform our lives….I hope you hold on to the memory of each time you performed in this program and felt good about yourself and about the group you have been part of.” (emphasis added)
Sotomayor continued: “Look at me. Look at Dr. Fulani and Pam Lewis [longtime Newman aides who play an important role in the All Stars Project--DK]. Look at all of the people who have led you in workshops. These can be your lives.” This remark plus the intrusion of jargon earlier in the speech suggests that Sotomayor may already have been working with the DSY for some time. And it’s disturbing that Sotomayor would have held up Lenora Fulani, whose anti-Semitism was widely known, as a role model for youth.
To determine the exact extent to which Sotomayor is influenced by the likes of Fulani and Pam Lewis is no academic question. For the Newman group is a lot nuttier–and nastier–than most of the media is willing nowadays to acknowledge.
Newman lives communally in a Manhattan townhouse with his “communist wives” (as one former member has called them) and other past and/or present patients. He and his inner core of therapists assiduously work to recruit naive young people and troubled adults into their clandestine “International Workers Party” (or whatever they call it nowadays) which is devoted to infiltrating politics, education, the arts–and even high society–in the interests of an eventual revolution.
The cult’s history of anti-Semitism is indisputable: for instance, Newman called the Jews “storm troopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over” in a 1985 speech praising Louis Farrakhan, wrote and produced a play in 1989 about the “dirty [Zionist] Jew,” and sponsored at the All Stars’ theater in 2004 a play that blamed the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom on alleged Jewish thuggery. (He has never apologized for or retracted any of this.)
Didn’t Sotomayor ever learn, in her years as a lawyer, the importance of due diligence? If she’d bothered to spend five minutes on Google in the mid-2000s, before continuing to lend her good name to this crew, she would have uncovered the above–and much more–information: more than enough to set off alarm bells in the head of any person with sound judgment.
For instance, she would have found:
…..
An Anti-Defamation League study (”A Cult by Any Other Name,” 1995) which skewers the Newmanites for their unethical therapy, their anti-Semitism and their totalitarian ideology.
My 2006 report here that traces the history of the Newmanites’ grotesque exploitation of (and use of social therapy in dealing with) children and teenagers back to the early 1970s, and describes the cult’s defense of the National Man-Boy Love Association in the 1980s (see documentation here) and of high-profile child molesters such as Tony Alamo, Kodzo DoBosu and David Koresh in the 1990s. (If Sotomayor had read this report she also would have learned about the support given by the IWP’s in-house legal and public relations firms to unlicensed Brooklyn daycare operator Sue Simmonds, whose center was closed down after little girls in her care developed venereal diseasesincluding gonorrhea of the throat. Sotomayor might even have noticed that a co-owner of the PR firm that defended Simmonds was, as of the time Sotomayor started working with All Stars/DSY, a member of the charity’s IWP-dominated board–he would later serve for awhile as the board’s chairman.)
….
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Read this report! Even if you intend to vote for Sotomayor, she should be required to explain her involvement with Fred Newman’s charity cult-racket.
Conservative girl next door. I am a pissed off red head.
Fear my wrath, or come along for the ride. Choose your side.
Free will, truth and the freedom of speech are my weapons of choice.
"...But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy."
- Flemming Rose
"lan astaslem"
I will not submit.
I will not surrender.
A Refresher Course...For Those In Denial
"Above all, the devil cannot stand to be mocked" - C.S.Lewis
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