Parade or Protest? By Eric Smith

The is a question I keep asking myself over and over and over again and that question is how many of those who protested over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner stayed home and didn't vote on Election Day in November of 2014? How many of these protesters organized boycotts & picketed local business known to support the the officers of those who killed Brown & Garner and supported causes and shared the racist mindset of those officers?

In other words, were these demonstrations more parade than protest? My personal feeling is that it was the former for as of now nothing has changed and nothing seems about to change anytime. Now I will never be critical of people hitting the streets in protest against injustice but unless those protests are backed up by the waging of economic war against the powers that be who's conduct and attitudes led directly to the injustices that sparked these protests, nothing will change anytime soon, if at all.

I recall an incident in New Orleans back in late 1990 when I served as a marshal in a protest against the pending first Gulf War. As I led a column a young African American man ran up next to me waving and grinning from ear to ear. I was impressed by his apparent enthusiasm and said as much to him until he said "Oh I don't care about the war. I just want to be on TV man!"

I hate to say it but the fact that there has been no major followup in terms of administering an economic hit on the power structure and the fact that voter turnout in key urban areas by people of color was so low, convinces me that many who marched were motivated not by a desire to effect meaningful & lasting change but rather out of a desire to use those demonstrations as a means to get their 15 minutes of fame; to appear on TV.

That is the impression I have gotten from these past few months and it is certainly the impression I got from the Wall Street protests of several years ago. I have yet to see how this current crop of protesters have incorporated the lessons of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, of the Sit In Movement & Freedom Rides of 1961, of the Birmingham demonstrations of the Spring of 1963, and the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; namely the combining of peaceful nonviolent protests with the waging of economic warfare against the powers that be in order to effect meaningful, lasting change.

Yes, these protests have provided people with a peaceful means of dissipating their anger to the point where widespread violence is far less likely but if it stops there; if our public expressions of anger over injustice remains more parade than protest, then these injustices will continue no matter how many marches there are.

I'm sick and tired of hearing token talk; of people raging on social media and talk about how bad things are and yet finding a reason, any reason, to stay home & not vote on Election Day, and then conveniently blaming the Koch Brothers and GOP for rigging the system. You know in the old days, black people flooded the polling places even though they knew damn well that not only would they likely be turned but also be the victims of violence and even suffer death.

I haven't seen that kind of devil may care dedication on the part of these protesters today. Their forebears at least showed up no matter what the powers that be did. Unlike the case with so many today, they certainly did not use the barriers put up to prevent them from voting as an excuse not to try to vote at all and they certainly did not care what other people thought or said about them when they decided to wage economic war against that very power structure which oppressed them.

So again, what will it be; parade or protest. If it is the former then we need only continue to do what we are doing now; to flood the streets chanting "No Justice! No Peace!" the next time a Michael Brown or Eric Garner is killed and then once the media attention span has run its course and the TV cameras have been taken away, return home and resume our lives as though nothing has happened; leaving our unjust system intact and waiting to claim its next victim.

If it is real protest in which we are engaged, then we will do what our forebears did and combine our marching feet with the inflicting of real economic pain on the powers that be and exercising our true power at the polls by voting in numbers that reflect our actual strength. The time for talk in general and for token talk in particular, is long past over. If we are really serious about change then we must work for it and that work involves the combining the use of economic & political might (voting) with nonviolent demonstrations. Otherwise, all we will do is continue to march in parade whenever anything bad happens; our chants of "No Justice! No Peace!" full of sound & fury but in the end signifying and changing absolutely nothing.

Open Letter to Joe Scarborough. By Eric Smith

An Open Letter to Joe Scarborough
Morning Joe
MSNBC

Dear Mr. Scarborough:

My name is Eric Smith; a proud member of a group, #Uniteblue you have just nationally demeaned as being comprised of extremists and hatemongers. Now I should be surprised by your comments directed at us but I am not because by you being a proud member of the Republican Party who knows more about extremists and hatemongers than you do. After all hate is your base as the picture included in this picture clearly illustrated.

You and your fellow Republicans defend individuals like this who wave the Confederate flag in front of a White House that houses the first African President of the United States as being a simple expression of free speech yet you smear my group #Uniteblue as being composed of hatemongers & extremists even though our sole reason is to support President Obama & his agenda and by that I mean support equal pay for equal work for women, an end to voter supression based on as now being solely practiced by your Republican Party, a raising of the minimum wage so hard working Americans should not have to continue to suffer the trauma & indignity of remaining in poverty even though they work several jobs and play by the rules.

We in #Uniteblue support extending unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed so they can continue to support themselves and their families while they continue to seek regain the ranks of the gainfully employed; ranks (jobs) they lost due to your beloved GOP's destructive economic policies that sent this country into a Great Recession and would have led to a second Great Depression but for this current president and the sane economic policies of sharing the wealth as the responsibilities that both he and #Uniteblue so heartily support.

We support the Affordable Health Care Act because we believe that affordable health care is a matter of life and death for millions. We in #Uniteblue support common sense gun laws for the same reason which is funny when you think about it because you belong to the so called Right to Life Party but support policies that end lives whereas the policies we in #Uniteblue support in the form of affordable health care and common sense gun laws both sustain and save lives.

Yet according to you and your ilk it is we who are the extremists and the hatemongers. Again it is funny considering how your party has had no problem giving voice to the crazies who say that President Obama was not born in the United States and is thus not eligible to be president. It is your party which has not called out those haters who have substituted the word ROPE for HOPE in images of President Obama with a noose around his neck while an effigy of the President of the United States is hanging from a tree.

I find it very amusing that you recently celebrated the life & legacy if Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, while commorating the 100th Anniversary of the opening of Chicago's venerable Wrigley Field. I find it interesting because if your party, your Republican Party, has its way, then people who look like Mr. Cub will lose their right to vote. People who look like Mr. Cub will again have to drink at separatee water fountains and use separate restrooms. Why, because that is what your party's base believes in; that's what they are about and you being a Republican these days can no more separate yourself from that than one can separate the stink from manure.

So if you want to call we in #Uniteblue extremists then go right ahead because to people like you and your party who clearly believe in the exact opposite of what we do, then we in #Uniteblue are extremists; we are extremists in the sense that we not only believe in but believe in fighting tooth and nail for equal pay for equal equal work, for an end to voter suppression based on race, for women's reproductive rights, and a raising of the minimum wage. We are extremists in the sense that we fight for what we believe in and we are hatemongers in the sense that we call out the hatred; be that hatred grounded on racism, sexism, or homophobia, of those who oppose us.

Yet more to the point, when we speak we speak from the heart and we speak for free. We have created our own bully pulpit and by calling us out you have given us a national forum. Unlike you Mr. Scarborough our voices will not be muted once we stop making money for those who provide us a forum for your forum is limited to a network; our forum is America and our audience is the American people and the American people; being ultimately about full equality & fair play will continue to listen to and learn from us in #Uniteblue long after they have tuned you and your beloved party out.

We in #Uniteblue stand on the right side of history and we stand on the right side of history because we stand united with the people. We in #Uniteblue stand for freedom for all rather than freedom for the few for we know that whenever freedom is limited to the few there is no real freedom for anybody. So in the final analysis Mr. Scarborough if we in #Uniteblue are extremists then so too is justice, full equality, and fair play. If we are as you say hatemongers, then so too is love; love for our fellow citizens who are less fortunate and those noble ideals of Equal Opportunity and Equal Justice for All that makes America so great.

Unlike you and your fellow Republcians Mr. Scarborough who repeatedly pay mere lip service to your love of Liberty and who have long since mastered the art of preaching what you don't practice in regards to it; we in #Uniteblue do practice what we preach when it comes to Liberty for again we believe in and fight for freedom for all; we fight to secure it for those for whom it is still too often wrongly denied; people of color, women, gays, the middle class, and the poor. That's who we are and nothing said will ever take away our pride or prevent us from proudly proclaiming who we are and what we stand for; for who we are and what we stand for is something good, it is something decent, and it is something great for who we stand for and who we stand with is each other; other of course being America and from where I sit Sir that is neither the mark of an extemist or a hatemonger. It is the proud emblem of a patriot.

Sincerely,

Eric Smith

Proud member of #Uniteblue

Why I Support #UniteBlue. By Eric Smith

I am a proud member of a group called #UniteBlue and I say proud because these are some of the most upstanding decent people I have ever had the privilege of knowing on Facebook or off. They all stand for and fight for all the right things as far as I'm concerned; equal pay for equal work, a raising of the minimum wage, extension of unemployment benefits, an end to voter suppression, and support for women's reproductive rights among other things.

These people are anything but radicals and are operating nowhere near a fringe unless the fringe can be defined as a place where people believe in justice and fight for fair play. Now even though I have a Twitter account, Twitter is not really my thing and I use it very, very sparingly.

However today or yesterday some Twitter Twit who works as a talking head at a very prominent network tweeted some very vile and nasty things about #UniteBlue. Of course, because this person does occupy a somewhat prominent position in the mass media, people in my group are understandably very upset and taking what this Twitter Twit said very seriously and quite personally. Even though I love #UniteBlue and am a proud member of it I am not the least bit offended by what this person said and I certainly don't take anything he has to say about anything seriously or personally. I mean I don't watch him on TV and I certainly don't follow him on Twitter because he doesn't strike me as being all that relevant. Now I'm not going to say this person's mental elevator is a full express but it sure as hell isn't a local either because anyone who would say about #UniteBlue clearly has an elevator that skips some floors.

As such I'm not going to mention this fellow's name because he's not worth the time and I'm certainly not going to embarrass the network he works for by mentioning his name in the same sentence as that network because overall this network does a fantastic job and is entitled to have a "mistake" in its employ if it chooses as this not to be named individual most certainly is.

So to my fellow members of #UniteBlue don't dignify this stupidity by reacting to it or demanding an apology that cannot possibly be anything other than insincere. Our job; our only job, is to get people to the polls this election year and beyond; to render the Republican Party and the Far Right extinct. That's our job; to make the GOP the political equivalent of the Passenger Pigeon. That's it. All of this other stuff is just a needless distraction and is neither worthy of our attention or our time. We answer what was said about us today by getting people registered to vote and to the polls. Period. So move on my friends at #UniteBlue and just say to yourselves "Mistake who?" and leave it at that.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Voter-Registration-2014/563067973807503?ref=hl

Rhetoric versus Reality. By Eric Smith

With me, whenever rhetoric clashes with reality, reality always wins. Therefore when those in the Republican Party say that it is not racist, that it does not coddle racists, that it is not fueled by the mantra of white supremacy and white privilege, what I have before me is this rhetoric on the one hand and reality on another.

That reality is among many other things the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.

All of this reality; all of this racial stereotyping; this pandering to this latent fear that white people in this country have had from before the beginning of this Republic, is part & parcel of the Republican Party & the Far Right's agenda. It motivates its base to act on the most primal & primitive of human instincts; fear and jealousy; creating a false narrative of grievance and of being wronged.

A clear acknowledgement of this reality is seen in the Republican Party's never ending efforts to trot out people of color as its spokespersons because the reasoning of the GOP & the Far Right is simple; if they can can get people of color to support policies that are indeed racist, and grounded in white supremacy then of course they can in turn argue that their policies & practices are not racist; are not grounded in white supremacy because a person of color is defending it.

Yet the fact that the Republican Party feels compelled to recruit people of color to defend its policies is proof positive that it is indeed the Party of Racism & White Supremacy because no white person needs a black person to say that they are not racist if racist they are not. The fact that these people in the GOP & the Far Right feel compelled to use people of color to defend their policies is proof positive that they are racist & believe in white supremacy.

They have not recruited the likes of Dr. Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Herman Cain to speak for them because of the content of their character. They have recruited them to speak for them because of the color of their skin; because they believe that the color of their skin will shield them from the charges of racism that is the reality of voter suppression, the scapegoating of young African American males as being criminals & inherently dangerous, the promotion of this falsehood that poverty is a matter of choice and is confined to our inner cities & dominated by people of color; that rampant drug use, sexual promiscuity, is a black thing.

To them these black people they have speaking for them are the political equivalent of a legitimate business set up as a front by criminal enterprises in order to shield their illegal activities. They are an attempt to hide the truth; to conceal from the public at large their racism & belief in white supremacy that is at the heart of the GOP & the Far Right's agenda.

Of course they will continue to deny this. They will continue to accuse me and anyone else who points this out of race baiting & playing the race card. Yet understand this and understand it well; whenever Republicans accuse people like me & others of race baiting and playing the race card, all it is is rhetoric and empty rhetoric at that for for the reality is that these people do promote racism; that they are believers in white supremacy. Their rhetoric of denial is what they preach. The racist reality of the people & policies they support is what they practice. What are YOU going to believe? Their rhetoric or their reality?

Understanding One's Limits. By Eric Smith

Too many people have an exaggerated sense of the power of personal persuasion; particularly their own. There is this mistaken belief on the part of too many that every problem can be talked to a solution, and that every crisis can be rationally reasoned away. There is this sense that if we say something long enough and loud enough, that eventually everyone will come to see things our way and deal with them as we would deal with them and this is true of everything from the treatment of mental illness to questions of war & peace themselves.

Yet such is not the case. It has not and never will be for while times change and technology & knowledge advances, human nature at heart remains the same and by that I mean every human being has the capacity for both great love and depraved cruelty. Every human being has within them the capacity to be violent or nonviolent, and every human being has a physical & psychological breaking point; a point past which all rational thought & logic disappears and where our most primal and basic instincts takes full and complete control of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

This is true of everybody and as such it is invariably those who are most cognizant of their potential to lose control who are most capable of always maintaining it for they more than anyone else are most alert to those warning signs that personal control is in imminent danger of being lost. We must, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the afternoon of April 5, 1968 learn to "abandon the vanity of our false distinctions." We must dis-enthrall ourselves of the false belief that the power of reasoned, logical thought is absolute and again come to terms with the reality that however advanced we humans may be in regards to all other living things, that we are at heart imperfect beings; forever struggling to survive and make some sense of an often irrational, violent, and depraved world.

Our time among the living is invariably short. We are all condemned to be consigned to memory far sooner than we think and in most cases even desire. So as each passing second brings us ever closer to that moment of our final departure it would seem to me that our dwindling time alive would be far better spent spending more of our remaining hours spending less time trying to make sense of the world and more time trying to make more sense of our own individual lives.

It is great and noble to try to improve the lives of others but it makes no sense to ignore ourselves in the process; to condemn ourselves to the twilight of perpetual anger and personal distress as we fret over the problems facing the world; most of which we have zero power to control or solve to our liking. Do what you feel you must do to help improve the lives of others in any way possible but remember always that it is not an exercise in selfishness to seek whatever joy & personal satisfaction for your own lives that you can; it is merely exercising basic common sense for what is the point of even being alive if one cannot find some pleasure in the very act of living?

In the final analysis we are all born alone and we will all die alone. No one else has ever experienced birth as we ourselves have experienced it and no one else ever has and ever will, experience dying as we are all destined to experience death. We are all ultimately defined not by our limitations but by what degree we have transcended them according to our natural abilities, motivations, and desires, and life ultimately being about the art of the personal, in the end it will be ourselves and ourselves alone who will make the final determination as to whether or not the life we have lived has been a success or a failure.

The Sin of Starvation. By Eric Smith

When people, for whatever rhyme or reason, are unable to acquire food to eat; when they become hungry & malnourished, their immune systems weaken, thus making them weaker and more susceptible to disease and as a result of this they inevitably become sick and they die; if not from starvation itself, then from the inevitable illnesses arising out of being malnourished. These are the facts; they are beyond dispute and not open for debate and therefore to willfully deprive people of their ability to eat as the Republican Party is doing now with its slashing of food assistance to the poor and the most needy; is not only committing a moral crime in the fact that the Republicans are actually killing people; they are also violating both our nation's Declaration of Independence and its Constitution which states that we are all "endowed with certain unalienable rights; among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

When one is denied the ability to eat they are denied all three for there can be no "life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" when one is forced to go through life hungry. This country throws away more food in a day than many nations in the world produces to feed their citizens over the course of a year. To deny the hungry food to eat is no different than denying a person in an emergency room life saving care because of an inability to pay. If we ever started doing this; if children died because they were turned away from a hospital's ER because their parents or guardians couldn't pay the hospital bill on the spot, these same Republicans who are so gleefully denying food assistance to the most needy among us, would be among those who raised the loudest of protests over the cruelty of such a practice.

Yet what they are doing now in cutting food assistance to the most needy among us is no different and is in many ways it is far worse for to perish from hunger is to die a most slow and painful death; especially if one is a child. Now if America did not and/or was incapable of producing enough food to ensure several times over that every last one of its 300 million plus citizens could be properly nourished, then the policies they pursue in cutting food assistance while no less cruel, could conceivably be slightly justified as a cost saving measure.

Yet that is not the case. On farms all across the land unused grain is rotting, unsold livestock is being being butchered & sold to feed other livestock and hungry people in other nations. Restaurants make the rats & other vermin fat off the food they daily discard while in many of those very same back alleys where the rodents feast, men, women, and children, sleep and go hungry for lack of a roof over their heads and their inability to buy that very food which the nearby vermin feast on for free.

This is the Republican Reality; this is the Republican Party's version of an ideal America, and it is a sick, twisted version indeed; one that is totally undeserving of a nation of savages, let alone that of the greatest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. A child can't learn if its hungry and a man and woman can't work to their full potential if they are malnourished; that is true of any living thing.

It is therefore in our vested national interests to ensure that every last one of our citizens is afforded the chance to eat; to take in proper nourishment regardless of economic status or race. This is what we must do or we must stop pretending being what we are not; a nation that cares, that believes in the sanctity of human life, for our acts of charity abroad mean absolutely nothing if we do not first act charitably on behalf of those who are most needy here at home. Feed Americans first Republicans for your fellow Americans are your first priority as they are the priority of us all.

Think less of Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Timbuktu for a minute and more of your fellow Americans in need. Share some of your compassion with the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit to name but a few. Stop doing the right things for people abroad for all the wrong reasons and start doing the right thing for the right reasons for your fellow citizens here at home. A nation that is well nourished and well fed is a nation that is truly strong and so when people support policies that starve their fellow citizens; especially for partisan purposes; they are not being patriotic; they are acting as terrorists for deliberately starving someone is an act of terrorism against that person for to force that person to endure hunger is to force them to face terror, endure suffering, and face the terrible prospect of a long and painful death.

This is your reality Republicans. This is what you are now doing to your fellow citizens and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves patriotic Americans who are compassionate? Sorry, but your words are worthless at this point. If you think that denying food to the hungry is acceptable in any way shape or form then you are not patriotic, you are not truly American, and you are certainly not compassionate. That's just the way it is and that's just the way you are and there's not a damn thing you can say at this point that will change that.

America's dilemma. By Eric Smith

For those now fretting over the apparent weakness of President Obama in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine ask yourself this question. Is this particular conflict worth the very real risk of seeing a mushroom cloud rise over New York City for make no mistake any armed conflict with Russia (or China for that matter) will eventually lead to a nuclear exchange. That's just how it is and we need to keep this in mind; especially now.

Now there's a another thing we need to keep in mind here. Ukraine is on the Russian border whereas Iraq is nowhere near ours. Our moral standing in calling for nations to respect the sovereignty of other nations and refrain from unilateral military aggression ended permanently when President George W. Bush went against over two hundred years of American precedent and not only invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq but did so under false pretenses.

As horrible as the Russian military aggression is Ukraine is, it doesn't come close to rising to the level in terms of being a violation of international law that was America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Russians can make, however dubious, a claim that instability in Ukraine poses a clear and present danger to the security of Russia itself. Never in a million years could America make such a claim against Iraq.

Before invading that country America could at least take the moral high ground and claim that such acts of unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation was morally wrong and a blatant violation of international law. President Bush forever destroyed this country's moral standing to make such a claim in 2003 and in so doing forever handicapped & compromised future presidents ability to properly address the very kind of aggressive conduct now being practiced by Russia's President Putin without being willing to go to general war and wiping out the whole world in a nuclear Armageddon.

That is precisely where this country is now because of the jingoistic policies of the Bush Administration a decade ago. As is the case with individuals so too is it with nations; if one wants to be taken seriously then one must practice what they preach and not preach what they don't practice. For over two hundred years America refrained from the practice of unilaterally invading a sovereign nation. It was part of our national DNA not to partake in preemptive war and as such we were on firm moral footing to call out the very kind of aggressive conduct the Russians are engaging in Ukraine.

We do not have that footing, that moral standing, now and we do not have it because an American president by the name of George W. Bush launched a preemptive war against a sovereign nation not to protect American lives and interests but solely to satisfy a personal vendetta. So if you want to blame anyone for this current state of affairs blame Bush because it was his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without cause or justification that forever ruined America's moral standing to call out other nations for unprovoked aggression that put President Obama and American prestige in the untenable position it is today.