The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Dear Senator Edwards:
It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.
There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.
I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.
You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.
I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.
From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.
I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.
So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.
Sincerely,
Martin Luther King III
I just read this article about a dude in Lowell who had 40 POUNDS of pot FEDEXED to him AT HOME. But that's not the only funny part:
When local and state police searched his apartment they said they found baggies containing cocaine, another 10 pounds of marijuana, a bullet-proof vest under his mattress and a loaded 40-caliber semi-automatic handgun.
Under his bed they found a box with Soviet military writing on it containing 14 boxes of machine-gun rounds.
In the closet, police found an Ultimac Mac 90 machine gun with two, 30-round magazines.
They also found a magazine called High Times in the apartment.
something fascinating from an article in "Rethinking Schools," check it out:
Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.
"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.
"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."
"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use." (read more)
I think it's great, some people disagree. When I first read this I only found one response to it, written by a fairly reactionary and disingenuous conservative columnist. Now it seems this thing is getting to be a huge deal, and there are so many people talking and blogging and writing about it, it would be impossible for me to choose one or two to put up here. Just Google "why we banned Legos" and you'll get a barrage of opinions.
Anyways, I just think it's interesting that, agree or disagree with the decision to ban Legos, this thing has become exactly what the teachers feared it was - a huge allegory about society. As MRhé might say, it's pretty f-ing meta.
I spend a good amount of time trying to convince people that UMass Lowell is a great school, that it doesn't deserve its horrible reputation, and that I'm getting a super rigorous education (well, as rigorous as I can handle anyways).
I went to Worcester with my boss/professor Bob yesterday. We did some interviews and one guy drove us around the neighborhood where I went to school when I was little. I didn't tell him that until we had already left the neighborhood, because I thought telling him would be like cheating.
"That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got
to sing loud. I've been singing this song now for twenty five
minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm
not proud... or tired.
So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with
four part harmony and feeling.
We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
All right now.
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
(Excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant"
I have no idea why, but hearing this song on Thanksgiving
always makes me cry like a freakin' baby. Seriously, I don't
know what comes over me. I wish I had the kind of family that
sat down and listened to it all together, because there are
families that do that. My family, on the other hand, went to
a restaurant for Thanksgiving, which I consider to be the
gravest possible Thanksgiving sin. So I was forced to hear my
Alice's Restaurant in the car on the way to the restaurant.
Then I got lucky and heard it twice on the way home. Then
I got home and made the mistake of turning on NPR, and now
I'm seriously depressed.
I was all aggravated that I had to go to Worcester to spend
Thanksgiving with my family. This is the first year since
college that I have been home for Thanksgiving, and I would
have much preferred to spend the holiday working at the
restaurant as I've done in past years. I would bust my ass
all day from 11am to 11pm or later, never stopping for more
than thirty seconds to stuff a roll in my mouth, gulp down
some gingerale and bitters (Thanksgiving Eve what what) or
smoke half a cigarette in a single drag.
At the end of the marathon we were all sweaty, filthy, and
so beyond tired that our arms and legs felt more tingly than
achy when they finally stopped moving. We had mint jelly in
our hair, gravy in our shoes, and pecan pie encrusted our
shirt cuffs. But at the end of it all, after we all served
our last seated parties, the chefs started to dole out the
little styrofoam boxes - turkey, ham, or lamb with creamed
peas and onions, mashed potatoes, squash, and all the rest.
They always ran out of ham before the restaurant closed, but
the chefs always managed to pull one out of some mystery
location for me.
We were like people who had been stranded in the desert
getting our first taste of water in a year. We all ate
standing up in the kitchen, styrofoam boxes spread out on
every available surface, bread board, salad bar, ice chest,
cardboard box. We barely talked, but looked at each other
as if sharing the happiest secret - it was almost over.
Even though we inhaled our food in a matter of minutes,
having to go back to check on tables or give checks or
whatever, that was the closest thing to a family Thanksgiving
I ever felt.
Earlier in the day we had fought with each other tooth and
nail for forks, and screamed that someone had taken the
wrong drinks or bumped into someone. Some of us cracked
under all the pressure, some of us broke down because of evil
customers, some of us cried because we got boiling water
dumped on us. In fact, one waiter organized a trifecta bet
every holiday, in which people picked the three waitstaff
most likely to break down first. At the end of it all,
though, we were all on the same team and knew that none of
us would make it through the day without everyone else.
I missed those little styrofoam box Thanksgiving dinners
this year, and the people I used to stand around eating
them with.
Excerpt from D.E. Campbell's Why We Vote:
"On September 26, 1989, Traci Hodgson cast her ballot in Boston’s City Council election. It was the only vote cast in her precinct. For a number of reasons, the political science literature predicts that Traci should have been like the other 275 registrants in her precinct and not turned out to vote. She was only twenty-one, she had lived in Boston for less than two months, and she admitted that she was “not very familiar with the candidates running.” So why did she vote? When asked she replied, “I just think it’s important to vote. If you have the right, you ought to exercise it—whether you are going to make a difference or not” (Mooney 1989).
This book is about why Traci voted, and why she voted alone.
MADISON AND TOCQUEVILLE: A TALE OF TWO MOTIVATIONS
Our starting point in answering this question is not what did motivate Traci, but rather what did not. Clearly she did not vote to protect or advance her interests, as she admitted that she did not know enough about the candidates to select them on the basis of who best represented her. To someone with only a cursory familiarity with the study of American politics this may seem difficult to explain, as politics is typically described as a forum for the “clash of interests.” Equating politics with conflict underpins much of the political science literature and is an assumption shared by scholars working within many theoretical frameworks. I recall an introductory political science course in which a professor defined politics as the “scarcity of consensus.” In 1960, E. E. Schattschneider wrote simply, “At the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict” (2). Forty years later, Morris Fiorina and Paul Peterson note matter-offactly in their introductory textbook on American politics that “politics is fundamentally about conflict” (1998, xvi). For all the ink spilled by contemporary political scientists, however, no one has ever expressed this way of understanding politics better than James Madison in Federalist 10. Madison writes compellingly of how “the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man,” and that “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts” (1961, 79).
It does not seem, however, that Traci had her passions kindled as Madison describes. Instead, by her own account she was motivated by the glowing embers of obligation. She felt that she ought to vote, that it was her duty.
In invoking a sense of duty as a motivation to vote, Traci highlights a second, if more subtle, theme in both contemporary and classic writings on political engagement. If, in Federalist 10, Madison has written the quintessential statement on political participation as “protecting one’s interests,” then perhaps Tocqueville has written an equally quintessential description of political participation as driven by “fulfilling one’s duty.” In Democracy in America, Tocqueville observes that American political institutions lead citizens to see that “it is the duty as well as the interest of men to be useful to their fellows. . . . What had been calculation becomes instinct. By dint of working for the good of his fellow citizens, he in the end acquires a habit and taste for serving them” (1988, 512–13).
These two opposing views of politics are not merely the abstract statements of theoreticians, the political science rendition of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They also inform the writings and doings of political practitioners, with some of America’s founders as notable examples. Of course, Madison was one of the founders and, as noted, in his words we find a cogent description of how politics is inevitably defined by conflict. However, George Washington’s vision was of a republic free from strife among its citizens, in which citizens were involved in public affairs out of duty (Schudson 1998). Ironically, given their disagreements on so many other matters, Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the new republic mirrored Washington’s. Jefferson idealized a nation of small Tocquevillian communities, mentioning his ideal in almost every speech he gave (Morone 1990).
The ongoing debate between civic republican and liberal political philosophers over the nature of political life at the time of America’s founding underscores the two competing visions of democracy’s nature. In summarizing this extensive literature, James Morone writes,
[T]he dominant interpretation of liberal America focuses on the pursuit of self-interest. . . . In the republican view, the colonial and Revolutionary ideal lay, not in the pursuit of private matters, but in the shared public life of civic duty, in the subordination of individual interests to the res publica. Citizens were defined and fulfilled by participation in political community. (1990, 16, emphasis added)
The distinction between engagement driven by interests versus duty need not be seen as either/or. The very fact that evidence can be mustered to support both interpretations of the founders’ ideals suggests that neither one dominated to the exclusion of the other. Nor should we assume that the essential difference between engagement spurred by a threat to one’s interests and engagement motivated by a sense of civic obligation has faded over time. Indeed, the distinction between interest-driven and duty-driven engagement is at the core of this book, which is about contemporary patterns of public engagement in the United States."
read more...I didn't write this, which is all the more reason to read it:
Congressman John Lewis (GA-05), Chief Deputy Democratic Whip, delivers the Democratic Radio Address. In his address, Congressman Lewis celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and reflects on his own personal struggles and the struggles of everyday Americans in the 1960's to secure the right to vote for people of color. The Voting Rights Act is regarded as the seminal legislative accomplishment protecting the rights of voters of all backgrounds. It was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965.
"Good morning. I'm Congressman John Lewis of Georgia.
Just 40 years ago in many parts of the American South, it was almost impossible for people of color to register to vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses - as well as violence - were used to deny us this fundamental right.
People stood day-after-day in unmovable lines waiting on the courthouse steps trying to register to vote. And when they reached the front of the line, if they could not answer outrageous questions like, 'How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?' they were turned away. Doctors, lawyers, college professors, business owners, teachers, farmers, housewives were all told they could not read or write well enough to pass the test.
During the 1960's, the struggle to secure this most basic right involved the efforts of many brave Americans across the country. The cost was high: church burnings, bombings, shootings, and beatings.
It required the ultimate sacrifice of ordinary Americans: James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, who simply sought to register voters, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death precipitated the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. These names are forever etched in our nation's history; they died for the cause of freedom.
On March 7, 1965, I marched with 600 men and women to draw attention to Jimmie Lee Jackson's death. We left Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma and walked two-by-two down the sidewalk - not in the middle of the street - and when we reached the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge we saw a sea of blue Alabama state troopers.
We kept on marching on that bridge crossing the Alabama River. And Hosea Williams, who was leading the march with me, turned to me and asked, 'John, can you swim?' I said, 'No, Hosea, I can't swim. We're not going back. We're not going to jump. We're going forward.' And we continued to march within steps of the troopers.
We were beaten, tear gassed, and trampled by horses on that bridge. We paid a price, but that's what it took to bring voting rights for people of color in America. The events of 'Bloody Sunday,' as it came to be known, aroused the conscience of the nation. Under President Lyndon Johnson's strong leadership, the nation responded and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. President Johnson signed it into law 40 years ago today.
The Voting Rights Act provided extensive protections by prohibiting any voting practice that would abridge the right to vote on the basis of race. It effectively abolished poll taxes and literacy tests and provided for criminal and civil sanctions against persons interfering with the right to vote.
Our nation's history is one of expanding rights. In 1975, the Voting Rights Act was amended to require bilingual ballots and voting assistance in areas with significant language minority citizens. English-only ballots had the effect of serving as literacy tests for Latinos and Native Americans who were non-English speaking voters. In 1982, the Voting Rights Act was amended to protect the rights of voters with disabilities.
Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, today there are 81 Members of Congress of African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American descent, and thousands of minorities in elected offices around the country.
Our democracy depends on protecting the right of every American citizen to vote in every election. We must honor the legacy of all who died in the struggle for civil rights. We must renew our commitment to remove obstacles to the right to vote. Democrats are committed to protecting the right to vote, and will work to reauthorize and strengthen the sections of the Voting Rights Act that are set to expire.
We cannot forget that people sacrificed and died for the right to vote. They didn't die in Vietnam or Iraq. They didn't die in South America or Eastern Europe. They didn't die in Africa or Southeast Asia, they died right here in the United States, trying to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.
The moral value of our society is defined by the veracity with which we defend the dignity of humankind. We need to continue to address these needs if we want to build an interracial democracy where all Americans are treated with dignity and respect, what I like to call the Beloved Community.
I'm Congressman John Lewis. Thank you for listening."
