Facebook pages aren’t just for social networking. They can promote social justice, too, according to Axel Caballero and Ofelia Yañez of Los Angeles. They’re battling anti-Latino “Tea Party racism and violence” on Cuéntame, their Facebook page. “Both Ofelia and I have seen with great sadness and frustration how Tea Partiers have unjustly and unfairly targeted the Latino community to further their political agenda,” Caballero wrote in an email from the Culver City, Calif.-based Brave New Foundation. Cuéntame is a...
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‘We have met the enemy and he is us’
The union-haters must still be in hog heaven over an AFL-CIO-sponsored poll that showed most Massachusetts union households supported Republican Scott Brown over union-endorsed Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. The margin was 49 to 46 percent. The numbers remind me again of Pogo’s apt observation: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Massachusetts AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed Coakley. She was clearly the pro-union candidate, according to Robert Haynes,...
‘Brown Democrats’
Eighty-two percent of them said they want a public option as part of the Democrats’ health care reform. Yet they just helped elect a guy who opposes the public option and the Democrats’ health care reform. They’re Obama voters who cast ballots for Massachusetts’s new Republican senator, Scott Brown. He promised to be “the 41st vote” against what the GOP slams as “Obamacare.” The 82 percent number is from a Research 2000 survey taken right after the polls closed...
Tea Baggers and ‘populist anger’
I wish the media would quit saying “populist anger” is fueling the Tea Bagger movement. It’s giving the real Populists a bad name. The Tea Baggers are on the side of millionaires. The Populists of the 1890s weren’t. I teach history, but I used to be a reporter. Good reporters dig deep when they write stories. They even read history books. Granted, there are some similarities between Tea Baggers and Populists. Tea Baggers are anti-government. So were Populists. Most Tea Baggers...
Tea Baggers and Tories
The “Tea Baggers” made LEO’s “list of the 50 grandest, most brain-bending and spirit-crushing gaffes, foibles and malicious undertakings” of 2009. LEO is short for Louisville Eccentric Observer, an alternative newsweekly — print and online — in Kentucky’s largest city. “…Folks and organizations qualify for our infamous awards because, generally speaking, they’ve betrayed the public trust,” Leo explains. “Our message is simple: Do better.” LEO doesn’t pull punches. It defines Tea Baggers as “an embodiment of all that is...
Scared turtles
It is the great unmentionable in the health care debate. It is an attitude apparently shared by many voters. The Democrats keep quiet about it because they don’t want to make voters mad. The same attitude is helping the Republicans thwart reform. But they won’t acknowledge it publicly for fear of looking bad. B. Smith isn’t scared to talk about it on his Internet blogsite, Radical Love. It is greed and selfishness, which he says are “hateful” aspects “of humanity that this debate has brought out” in much...
“…Slavery and race were absolutely critical elements in the coming of the war”
I just saw another Rebel-flag emblazoned “Heritage not Hate” bumper sticker. I suspect I’ll see more during the sesquicentennial observances of the Civil War. The “Heritage not Hate” folks claim slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. Neo-Confederates – and there are more than a few in my native Kentucky – claim that 11 slave states – the Bluegrass State not among them — seceded over “states’ rights.” I teach history. Slavery had everything to do with the Civil War. “To put...
You can’t shame the Republicans
The Republicans and Al Qaeda say President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. A former Peace Prize winner says he does. “In less than a year, with his inspiring messages of humility, dialogue and peace, President Obama has significantly lessened the tensions in the world, in the Middle East (University of Cairo speech), in relations with Russia, Iran, Venezuela,” Jose Ramos-Horta recently wrote on the Huffington PostInternet website. “President Obama’s conciliatory approach, the depth of his intellect...
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