RIP, Dennis Hopper (reciting Kipling)

The late Dennis Hopper when he appeared on "The Johnny Cash Show," September 30, 1970. As Mr. Hopper points out prior to the reading of the Rudyard Kipling poem, "If" is the middle word in life.



*tip of the hat to Fung-Lin Hall.

Iddybud's Connections [Pearltree]

Universal Child Annie Lennox

Momentary Prophets (video)

Iceland Volcano - Lightning (photo)

Photo: National Geographic

I'm A Social Justice Christian (video)

Walden Beat (video)

US Rep. Honors Victims of OK City Bombing, Warns Congress Against Overblown Rhetoric

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-04) issued the following statement on the House floor, regarding H.Res. 1206. This resolution commemorates the victims who died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on April 19, 1995:

"Madam Speaker, today I rise to remember the victims of the 1995 terrorist attack in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. This act of American terrorism was committed by a man who viewed the federal government as such a threat that it justified mass murder.

"I applaud my colleague from Oklahoma for her resolution because it serves as a reminder that right-wing, anti-government extremist groups are on the rise today.

"Only two weeks ago members of a so-called Christian militia in Michigan were arrested by the FBI for plotting to kill law enforcement officers in the hopes of inciting an
anti-government uprising.

"A national civil rights organization has documented a growing number of hate groups in America and states they are ‘driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration ... the economic meltdown, and the climb to power of an African American president.'

"Or, in one word - racism.

"Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center states, ‘Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing...'

"Today, Mr. Potok states, ‘as the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas,
aided and abetted by commentators and politicians...'

"Only last month a Fox News commentator, with Members of Congress next to him, rallied a Tea Party crowd by disparaging Congress and calling the crowd ‘all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here' to the crowds cheers and applause.

"When Members of Congress compare health care legislation to ‘government tyranny,' ‘socialism,' or ‘totalitarianism' - in the hopes of scoring political points is like pouring gas on the fire of extremism.

"The Members of this House Democrats and Republicans - have a duty and an obligation to end the dangerous name-calling that can only inspire the extremist militias and phony patriots.

"In the most free, prosperous and greatest democracy on earth it is time to return to a civil, decent debate of public policy.

"I don't want another ‘Oklahoma City' to ever take place again.

"Just as we would not give aid and comfort to al-Qaeda, let us not allow the words of elected leaders give comfortable excuses to extremists bent on violence.

"Words have power for both good and evil. I implore my colleagues to temper their rhetoric and not allow the words of a Member of Congress to be used by any violent militia or hate filled phony-patriots to perpetrate violence.

"The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing were women at work, men waiting in line for government services, and children in a day care center. Families were torn apart and struggled to heal. A community was devastated but is again filled with hope and memories.

"I hope with this resolution every Member of Congress will reflect upon the victims of Oklahoma City as well as our duty as elected federal leaders in a proud and free country.

"Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks, and I yield back my time."

*Congresswoman Betty McCollum serves on the House Appropriations and Budget Committees.

Garden Walk (video)

Come take a walk with me through the beautiful blooms in the Susie Harwood Garden on the campus of UNCC Charlotte (N.C.)
~ Jude

Holocaust Remembrance Day

IN HONOR OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY


"Memory is what shapes us.
Memory is what teaches us.
We must understand that’s where our redemption is."


~ Estelle Laughlin, Holocaust Survivor




WAYS TO REMEMBER - [Each Of Us Has A Name]

NoDa Arts District, Charlotte, N.C. (photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell)

NoDa Arts District, Charlotte, N.C.
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell

Doorway (photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell)

"Every doorway, every intersection has a story."
~ Katherine Dunn
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell

Communities Organizing in Charlotte, Then and Now

Si Kahn watches the panel discussion
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell

There was a gathering of Charlotte's community organizers on Friday evening at the Levine Museum of the New South. The panel speaking at the program "Communities Organizing in Charlotte, Then and Now" centered their spirit of sharing upon the life lessons of legendary singer/songwriter/organizer Si Kahn, who lives in Charlotte and has recently released his book "Creative Community Organizing - A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice." Donna Red Wing, who is taking over for Kahn after 30 years as Grassroots Leadership's Executive Director, started the program by stressing that grassroots community organizing campaigns were different than Astro-turf organizing campaigns that are formally planned by an organization and often funded without transparency - and designed to mask their origins to create the impression of being spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior.

The program was opened by David Crowe and Kali Ferguson, each taking turns reciting four selected narrations from Si Kahn's new book, set to music composed especially for the occasion by Crowe. Moderator Tom Hanchett told about his organizing days in Chicago - the place where President Obama was also a community organizer.

ROOTS IN THE 60s:
CIVIL RIGHTS AND GETTING OUT THE VOTE

US Rep Mel Watt was the first panelist to speak, saying that he hadn't been in Charlotte, but instead at Chapel Hill, during some of the years considered to be crucial to the Civil Rights movement. However, his introduction to organizing for justice came earlier - in his high school years when he was a student bus-driver during the early days of desegregation busing after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. He told the story of how he, with the support of other student bus drivers, confronted, demanded, and successfully convinced a high school principal to get them new buses instead of what he called the "hand-me-down" buses in which they'd been responsible for driving fellow students to school. This, he said, was preparation for managing his first successful political campaign in 1974 for Harvey Gantt/City Council (when he'd had no prior experience in politics whatsoever). He spoke about a heartbreaking Harvey Gantt-for-Mayor primary campaign in 1979 vs. Eddie Knox that taught him important lessons about organizing, having lost by a mere 95 votes. Rep. Watt called this particular campaign one of his most exciting in which to have been involved because of the impact he saw it had had on the African-American community, telling the story of one elderly woman he'd encountered on the way to the polls saying proudly that she was on her way to vote for "her Harvey." Watt saw the power of unity - even in the face of disappointing defeat. He credited Si Kahn's advice to see justice as a process; never knowing if you're actually winning or losing; never losing faith that, whatever small part you're playing, you're making a difference and you're making progress.

l-to-r: moderator Tom Hanchett, Rep. Mel Watt, Lyndall Hare, Alfreda Barringer, Myra Clark, LaWana Mayfield
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell

EXPANDING THE DREAM

Lyndall Hare, consultant with Charlotteans for a Free Southern Africa, an anti-apartheid group who organized protests against loans by local business to the South African government, preparing speakers and protests. She recalled a woman with whom she'd organized in Johannesburg telling her that the key to successful community organizing is to have regular meetings. She'd said, "When you have three people in the same room, you're organizing."

EMPOWERING NEIGHBORHOODS

For Alfreda Barringer, a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow, a journey to community organizing began with the simple act of becoming involved with her daughter's Girl Scout cookie campaign. Having her heart and mind opened for her family's sake, she became increasingly concerned when she saw her children being bused to three different Junior high schools. Wanting to understand why, she attended her first Homeowner Association meeting asking, What can we do?" - and receiving the reply "What can YOU do?" From that time, she led others to care about the effects of white flight and disinvestment from her Sugar Creek neighborhood which had depleted the quality of public life and economic force of the area. From her community's organizing came tangible and positive results - the MLK Jr. High School, the Sugar Creek library, and assistance for low-income families to relocate from flood plain areas. Crime and safety issues are still a challenge, but Barringer stressed the necessity of active and sustained leadership and the motivation for community organizing which, for her, was simply wanting a better neighborhood.


ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION

Myra Clark spoke about her work as the Executive Director with the Center for Community Tranistions, a not for profit with a mission of strengthening the community by helping people with criminal records find a healthier and more productive way of living. Their work provides employment and transitions services, supports alternatives to incarceration, and restores and strengthens family bonds. With about 97% of those incarcerated returning to the community, most are released with little or no resources of any kind. Research has shown that finding and retaining employment are major factors in preventing a return to prison. [Real-life stories of the success of the program can be seen here] Myra Clark spoke about success she'd seen with the coordinating efforts of different community groups, citing an example of how eyes of the County Commissioners were opened to advocacy issues through MORN - a coalition of agencies and organizations that are working to address the needs of former prisoners re-entering society and the workplace. It is in this spirit of abundance and cooperation that success and real change can be found. When people come together, the need for unnecessary competition and duplicated efforts are left behind.

BLACK-BROWN COALITION-BUILDING TODAY

LaWana Mayfield [Mecklenburg Justice Project Coordinator] and Ruben Campillo [Advocacy Coordinator for the Latin American Coalition] spoke together about their joint efforts to build a Black-Brown coalition in Mecklenburg County. They cited the rapidly changing demographics in North Carolina (and in the South). The benefit of a coalition of this kind is coming to better know and understand your neighbors and the community concerns you share. Bridging division for the sake of finding commonality brings more efficient progress and justice. The coalition's appeal surrounds the expansion of social horizons, making room and opportunity for real and meaningful change. Mr. Campillo said that there was great power in the telling of each person's own story, inspiring others and increasing self-understanding as well as community understanding. Connections, when enhanced by such stories, can be a powerful force in change-making. Both Campillo and Ms. Mayfield spoke at length about a campaign to end Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g), a section of Immigration law that causes undue injustice not only to the undocumented in this country, but to their spouses and their children. The law deputizes local and state police to enforce immigration law after entering into a Memorandum of Agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [I thought of the 2007 film titled "The Visitor" which isn’t specifically about 287(g), although its plot would lend much empathy and understanding about the effects of 287(g).] Last Friday, the DHS Office of Inspector General issued a damning critique of the federal 287(g) program. Congressman Watt added that he was committed to decreasing the vulnerability of families by doing away with 287(g).


BUY SI KHAN'S BOOK:





WATCH SI KAHN SINGING THE PRO-IMMIGRATION SONG "HUTTO"



Charlotte Then
[from photobucket.com]


Charlotte Now
photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell

Mount Vernon Nonsense

The Mount Vernon Statement (or "Fear the Change!- Bring Back Male White Supremacy!")

WNYC Video - "New York 2009"

Produced by Beth Fertig, mixed by Wayne Shulmister, and edited by Karen Frillmann. Online montage by Stephen Nessen.

source: WNYC News Blog

Moulitsas v Tancredo - Fighting for the Soul of America

Here's MSNBC's David Schuster asking ex-GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo some tough questions. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos totally upsets Tancredo's apple cart while presenting his point of view.


I think, in his elitist mind, Tom Tancredo fancies himself a King facing down a peasant like Markos Moulitsas. I don't feel one bit sorry for Mr. Tancredo here. When faced with an uncomfortable truth about the past that may, in his mind, hurt his future political power and standing, Tancredo runs away as if he is above the truth. In the 18th Century, that kind of elitism is what we fought against when we fought for and became a nation of our common hopes. Over the past two decades, there has been so much incivility that has been LED and PROMOTED by the likes of the right wing, including current House minority leader John Boehner, ex-Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Tancredo, and company - and they are complete hypocrites and elitists to think that the truth can't rightly be presented right back to them after so many years of following SCOTUS Clarence Thomas' advice that civility often must be"left behind in the pursuit of civic virtue."

This is a fight for the soul of America and we must not fear our necessary honesty if it means a threat to the destruction of the virtues we personally cherish.

Boehner and GOP lead Teabaggers as hypocrites

Currently down 81 seats in the House and 20 seats in the Senate, Republicans represent a minority of Americans in Congress. However, they continue to contend that they stand with mainstream America in opposing the Democrats' "tax and spend" agenda, including health care reform. [Real Clear Politics]

Under our U.S. system, political legitimacy is now and has always MEANT to come from democratic elections.

Teabaggers are being led by high-powered elected leaders in the halls of Congress aiming to destroy the very system that got them where THEY are. What hypocrites! They ask citizens to ignore the will of the People, hoping to wipe clean the memory of the political capital legitimately due to the People who elected and who support the President and a Congress that is willing to work toward common goals.

You may dismiss John Boehner as crazy (or stupid) - but don't be fooled. Here is a House Minority Leader INCITING a revolution that is destructive to the legitimacy of the system that facilitates our good faith laws.

Teabaggers don't want their leaders to act in good faith toward the common goals of citizens. They express a will to KILL common goals. It means more to them for a progressive-friendly President to fail than to actually find ways to save our economy and increase the safety net for millions of American citizens who live paycheck to paycheck praying no one in their family gets seriously ill because they know the costs to cover health care for such an illness will economically finish them off.

Boehner and his ilk see gain in the next electoral cycle as paramount to working for the People. MSM, infected with a curse of "moderate bias" - are not tackling the story to help us see things as they are. The GOP is willfully going rogue. It's hurting our country terribly at a time when we face years of fighting economic disaster due to the ideology of the Far Right who sought to drown (and nearly have succeeded in drowning) our government - yours and mine - in the bathtub of their own politics and self-interest. Hypocrisy often comes from a desire to hide from others actual motives or feelings. Boehner and his right wing Company in Congress are not hiding their completely party-biased motives very well while willfully rebelling in complete denial about the People's right to expect their political will to be carried out by those they elect. I can just imagine what the people in Boehner's home district who voted for Obama last Fall must be thinking of the orange-faced hypocrite right now.


WHAT IS BOEHNER IS LEADING? HE EITHER DOESN'T KNOW OR REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE HATRED HE IS ENCOURAGING!

Huffington on Obama, Plouffe, and Media - One Year Later

When Arianna Huffington says, in her most recent column where she discusses President Obama one year after his election and 2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's new book, "Most of the attention the book has gotten so far has focused on the so-called sexy parts," I am reminded of just how valuable she (and HuffPo) are in a media environment where we are NOT, as we SHOULD be if the Fourth Estate was fulfilling a solemn implied promise to citizens, called upon to be critical thinkers, but instead prodded and assaulted with sexy tidbits from otherwise useful books. Imagine what the greater public is failing to learn for all of Mr. Plouffe's efforts. Commitment to selling ads and editing what passes for news in accordance with sales is obviously the Fourth Estate's main implied promise as things stand. I hope a new model for the news platform at which I expect we'll arrive after the digital revolution has revealed new economic opportunity will bring best practices in journalism back. Leave endless gossip for The National Enquirer!

Virginia Foxx NC-5 Does Not Represent the Mayberry I Know

This is so sick it's hard to believe it's not a schtick. Health care costs must come down or this already-struggling U.S. economy will be dragged down in a disastrous way. Don't these blabbering one-track minded ideologues care about what happens, in reality, to the American families who will suffer the brunt of sure hardship if Congress members continue to refuse to work in a serious manner with one another and if they continue support doing nothing to curb ever-rising costs? They're looking more like clowns every day. Cue up "The Entry of the Gladiators."

Andy Borowitz Quote [Sarah Palin]

"Tuesday Gratitude Thought: This is the one-year anniversary of Sarah Palin not being elected."

~ Andy Borowitz