Motley Moose – Archive

There has been a small tempest in a teapot about the recent pronouncements made by Louisianan Keith Bardwell, Justice of the Peace who refused to marry an “inter-racial” couple.

Bardwell was interviewed on CBS two days ago and has “apologized”.  He still doesn’t see his actions as racist.  He’s sticking to his “concern for the children”.

Ironic in a state well-known for its fabled history of inter-ethnic mixing, touted world-wide as “Creole culture”, which includes its famous celebration of Mardi Gras, as well as its cuisine and music.

But then, given the long history in the state of not only forbidding marriages between “races”, and State statues which were not repealed until 1972,  five years after Loving Vs Virginia, can we only point a finger at Bardwell?  

The NY Times reported this morning:

Opening a month long meeting in Rome that will be devoted to Africa, where the Roman Catholic Church is growing most rapidly, Pope Benedict XVI warned Sunday that the continent was at risk from materialism, nihilism and religious fundamentalism.

Benedict called Africa “a great spiritual lung” for the Catholic Church, but he added that it was also subject to maladies, including the “spiritual toxic waste” of materialism and nihilism sent by the first world, which he called a new form of colonialism.

That development, he said, led to the “virus” of “religious fundamentalism, mixed with political and economic interests.”

Said a man with a megaphone outside an Obama health care rally.

There has been much discussion here about health care reform, about open racism on the airwaves and the increasing threats against the life of our POTUS. But I’m warning that the second firestorm of hate is about to roll down the mountainsides of our land like lava.  

The 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference was just held in Atlanta, with over 3000 attendees.

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, addressed the body.

At Conference, Sec’y Sebelius Confronts Urgency of HIV Prevention

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services addressed a convention of health experts who have convened in Atlanta for this year’s National HIV Prevention Conference.

The LA Times is reporting, Glenn Beck goes after Color of Change co-founder Van Jones

Glenn Beck used his popular Fox News show this afternoon to attack the background of Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor who co-founded an African American political advocacy group that organized an advertising boycott of his program.

During his 2 p.m. PDT show, Beck did not address the boycott spearheaded by Color of Change to protest the talk show host’s remark last month that he believes President Obama is “a racist.”

Instead, he spent a large share of his program suggesting that Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical. Jones now serves as a special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

This Sunday, August 23, 2009 starting at 12 noon, former members of the Young Lords Party will celebrate, with young and old, a 40th anniversary and reunion at the First Spanish Methodist Church, at 111th Street and Lexington Ave in New York’s “El Barrio” or Spanish Harlem.  The church was known to many as “The People’s Church” because members of the YLP occupied that church (twice) when it failed to serve the community, and rejected requests from congregation members and members of the community to become a place for free breakfast programs and a free health clinic for community residents. The reunion theme is “Visions of Action, Impact and Legacy”. All are welcome.

I’d like to talk a bit about that legacy, and the role of women in shaping it.  Too often when you see pictures of the Panthers, or the Lords, or AIM or other radical groups from the 60’s and 70’s communities of color the images are those of men.  

I was channel flipping (and flipping out) all day yesterday, as I lay in bed with idle time on my hands due to a toothache. Attempting (in vain) to find coverage on the tube of SoS Hillary Clinton’s discussions and remarks in the Congo on the rape of women in the region. The AP had this story:

Clinton on mission for Congo war women

Clinton will personally comfort survivors of sexual violence and meet in the town with DR Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, whom she said she will be “pressing very hard” to take action to stop the assaults.

The top US diplomat, one of the most prominent female leaders in US history, told students in DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa on Monday that the sexual violence in the country was “one of mankind’s great atrocities.”

According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 women have been raped in the eastern DR Congo since 1996 with the pace of atrocities growing even worse after troops launched the offensive in one of Africa’s most tragedy-struck nations.

While reading a pundit round-up this morning, I happened to stray from a Eugene Robinson link to Kathleen Parker’s take on the questioning of Sonia Sotomayor: The GOP’s Sotomayor Sinkhole.

I don’t usually read her.  I’ve been glued to discussion of Sotomayor, and following closely the racism in the questioning by Republicans, and probable impact of their biases on Latinos nationwide, but her piece this morning caused me to reflect on how certain Republican and Independent women may have viewed the proceedings from the perspective of gender.

As an honorary Nuyorican (New York Puerto Rican) and long time activist in the Puerto Rican community, and wife of a Puerto Rican, I’m appalled at the blatant racism of the stepped-up attacks against not only Sonia Sotomayor, but Puerto Ricans, who are US citizens.  

As you all know the latest salvos against Sonia Sotomayor concern her seat as a member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (recently renamed Latino Justice PRLDEF).  Wingers are spewing tons of misinformation about the organization, and its role in defending Puerto Ricans, and others against systemic discrimination.

Doubtful if the same wingers could get away with such open bashing of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, founded in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall, but since Puerto Ricans are a minority within a minority they have less of a national presence, and far fewer voices to defend them.

I am old enough to remember what are often called “back-alley” abortions.

My suite mate in college died in a pool of blood from one such procedure, performed by an un-trained medical student.  Back in those days (I was attending an historically black college with strict rules mandating “morality” for young women) if a female student got pregnant, she was expelled from school.  No disciplinary procedures ensued for her impregnator.  This particular tragedy took place in 1965.