UPDATE: "We are One" Rallies across Michigan CONTINUE thru the Year (MLK Legacy Remembered)

by: Hector Solon

Mon Apr 04, 2011 at 11:17:52 AM EDT

The "We are One" Rallies continued on April 4, 2011 across Michigan and the Country, and more are planned.

This from Governor Rick Snyder's January 17, 2011 PROCLAMATION:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan, do hereby proclaim January 17, 2011 as the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service in Michigan, and call upon the people of Michigan to pay tribute to the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. through participation in community service projects on the King Holiday and throughout the year.

Fight Back Teach-In's being held in Michigan and across the Country on April 5, 2011. In Michigan activities will be held at Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Western Michigan University

Ann Arbor (April 30, 2011) Peaceful Protest of Snyder's UofM Commencement
Kalamazoo (April 13, 2011) Community Forum on Public Education
Sterling Heights (May 5, 2011) Peaceful Protest of Snyder's Career Focus Luncheon

Follow this LINK for future EVENTS and other sites, as they are added.

Multiple organizations will continue to celebrate MLK's legacy and stand for worker and human rights, and the list of allies is getting longer as new events are in planning for throughout this year.

See you there MichLib'ers! PICTURES below...

Hillary under 60%, loses 70% of black vote, on MLK birthday primary

by: David Boyle

Wed Jan 16, 2008 at 21:07:24 PM EST

    See DetNews, the pithily-titled Michigan blacks reject HI[sic]llary;
HuffPo, Michigan Results Reveal Some Dangerous Trends For Clinton,

...the exit poll results from this strange contest reveal some troubling trends for the New York Senator. ...
    Among black voters, Clinton was crushed by "uncommitted," 26-70. If that kind of margin among African Americans continues into future primaries, she faces major problems in the heavily black January 26 South Carolina primary....

...Clinton was perfectly positioned. She had no serious opposition. She also had the strong support of top Michigan Democrats such as Governor Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.
    Usually, a prominent presidential contender running a primary campaign without serious opposition and with strong in-state support from party leaders can count on winning 90 percent or more of the vote. ...
    A remarkable 40 percent of Michiganders who participated in the primary voted for nobody, marking the "Uncommitted" option on their ballots. ...
    Ominously for the Clinton camp, the former First Lady was losing the African-American vote -- in Wayne County and statewide -- to "Uncommitted." African-American leaders such as Detroit Congressman John Conyers, who backs Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, had urged an "Uncommitted" vote. ...
    It is hard[] to believe that Clinton will get very far claiming Michigan handed her a meaningful victory Tuesday night. When two out of every five voters choose nobody rather than a prominent candidate who is running with little or no opposition, that candidate's got no reason to celebrate.

    I hate to disagree with Eric B., but despite his post title, Clinton, Romney cruise to bigger than anticipated margins (Open thread), I, not to mention DetNews, HuffPo, & Nation above, don't think Hill did too good. At. All.

    With comments like the Mich Lib one recently about needing a Caucasian fella on the ticket (Why? I'd vote for an Obama/Sebelius ticket, no white guy there), I think it is good to be sensitive, racially and otherwise, when making comments, maybe. And with the Daily Kos observations today, John Kerry:  Kicking ass, defending the right to vote, and flying to Nevada (on John Kerry's fighting the Clinton attempt to disenfranchise largely Latina/o workers' vote), and Say Goodbye to Howard Dean, (about the DNC entering the legal fray against the Clinton disenfranchisement attempt, and the likelihood of the Clintons booting Dean, in favor of Terry McAuliffe, if they win), it looks not just like a Michigan Dem struggle against Granholm/Brewer/Dingell's complicity with disenfranchisement, it looks like a national battle, of the reformers against the unworthy Establishment. I hope we'd all be on the side of the reformers.

    (While the DNC can't per se oppose the Clinton campaign, it's nice to see them at least opposing a Clinton initiative. Maybe Dean knows that not only will he be booted if the Clintons return to power, but decency itself will be booted as well.)

    --The message, as always, is, be active and take back your party. Find replacements for the people I mention above who need to be replaced. Run yourself if you have to. Be inclusive to minorities and to people in general. Promote the right over the wrong, and progress over stagnation. Keep the dream alive. MLK would expect no less of you.

Clinton disenfranchising Latinos...then pitting them against blacks?

by: David Boyle

Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 13:47:58 PM EST

    On the morning after Clinton's victory, I talked to Sergio Bendixen, one of her pollsters, who specializes in the Hispanic vote. "In all honesty, the Hispanic vote is extremely important to the Clinton campaign. [...]," he said. "The fire wall doesn't apply now, because she is in good shape, but before last night the Hispanic vote was going to be the most important part of her fire wall on February 5th." The implications of that strategy are not necessarily uplifting.
    ...he was also frank about the fact that the Clintons, long beloved in the black community, are now dependent on a less edifying political dynamic: "The Hispanic voter-and I want to say this very carefully-has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

    Ouch.
    I got the Lizza reference by reading DKos's Bob Johnson in The dark heart of the Clinton campaign: a strategy designed to make race THE issue by Bob Johnson; Johnson not only critcizes BET's own Clinton-supporting Bob Johnson for possibly raising "drug issues" about Obama, but also notes

    The question of who stands to benefit from making the campaign about race has only one answer: Hillary Clinton. ...
    Now, there is a certain irony in Lizza's noting of Camp Clinton's Hispanic strategy at the same time that Clinton surrogates are seeking to disenfranchise the culinary union members in Nevada, many of whom are Hispanic. (One would hope the Obama campaign would be quick to point out this hypocrisy.)
    But the pattern from the Clinton camp is quite clear: they want to make the campaign about race. They want to make Obama into the second coming of Jesse Jackson, 1984 & 1988.

    Well well. Disenfranchise Latina/os, then pit them against African Americans, maybe? --Perhaps not explicitly, as in printing flyers that say, "Hey Hispanics, vote against Black Barack" or something, but still...read what Ryan Lizza and Bob Johnson (of DKos) say. And such double-playing of Latina/o voters doesn't sound very nice to me.

    As for the relevance of all that to Michigan, see my earlier diary Hillary DISSES MLK. ...Big mistake, on Hillary's clumsiness or insensitivity on racial issues. It seems that the Clintons have learned little since I wrote that diary; and maybe John Conyers, and many others, are right to urge an "uncommitted" vote after all.  

Vote "uncommitted", not for racist Ron Paul (or hope-less Hill)

by: David Boyle

Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 17:12:09 PM EST

    See the poor man's Michigan Liberal, the New Republic, Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul.,

    ...Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. ("What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!" one newsletter complained in 1990. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.") In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the "X-Rated Martin Luther King" as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as "a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."
    While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. ...

    Hillary hasn't been good on MLK issues, but Paul is much worse.
    Do you want to vote for Adolf, uh, Ron Paul now? Maybe not. I hope.

    There is also the ethical issue about messing with somebody else's primary; I don't really like it, any more than I would appreciate 10 zillion Repubs crossing over and making Mike Gravel the winner. Dems should vote...DEM, etc.
    And finally, there is also the "dilution" tactical problem, i.e., one Dem thinks, "I'll vote for that loser Huckabee and he'll win the Michigan vote, haw haw", but another thinks "I'll vote for that loser Ron Paul and he'll win the Michigan vote, haw haw", so that the "loser" votes may be spread out too much and let Romney or McCain slip through anyway--and ALSO let Hillary slip through.
    This is what professionals call A Bad Result.

    See, too, Daily Kos today, cartwrightdale, Changing my vote from "Ron Paul" to "Uncommitted" (in Michigan),

    ...I stated a few days ago that Senator Clinton needs to say, on record, unambiguously and as Shermanesque as possible, that she will not challenge the Michigan delegate ban under any circumstances, and not accept delegate votes from Michigan under any circumstances.  If she won't commit to this statement, she is patently unqualified to run in the Democratic primary to begin with, as she would be advocating the strategy of stealing an election.  I spent the last day or so trying to get an answer from the Clinton campaign, and no one will commit to this statement that I've talked to so far.  Which is terrifying.  
    Therefore, I have changed my mind about the strategic advantage of voting for Ron Paul.  It is now the clear strategic advantage, if you're in Michigan, to vote "uncommitted".  Voting "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary allows the delegates to be freed up to support who they like, should the convention prove a close one.  
    Yes, most Michigan Democrats I know still plan on staying home, or voting in the Republican primary, but I hope the word gets out in time that there is a better option.  Voting uncommitted isn't the same as not voting -- it's stopping Hillary Clinton from the potential of hijacking an election with invalid delgates (should the final totals be close).  And that in and of itself is even more valuable than assuring Ron Paul keeps being a pest.

    As for Hillary, by the way: congratulations on her slim 2-point victory over Barack in NH last night, although Barack's 9-point Iowa victory over her was proportionately more impressive.
    However, as Maureen Dowd notes in Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?,

    ...Gloria Steinem wrote in The Times yesterday that one of the reasons she is supporting Hillary is that she had "no masculinity to prove." But Hillary did feel she needed to prove her masculinity. That was why she voted to enable W. to invade Iraq without even reading the National Intelligence Estimate and backed the White House's bellicosity on Iran. ...
    Hillary sounded silly trying to paint Obama as a poetic dreamer and herself as a prodigious doer. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," she said. Did any living Democrat ever imagine that any other living Democrat would try to win a presidential primary in New Hampshire by comparing herself to L.B.J.? (Who was driven out of politics by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire.)
    Her argument against Obama now boils down to an argument against idealism, which is probably the lowest and most unlikely point to which any Clinton could sink. The people from Hope are arguing against hope. ...

    Hope against hope. Heh.
    And with Hillary confirming in her victory speech that she'll get us out of Iraq "the right way", it implies she knows better than other Dem candidates what to do there. Which she didn't when she voted to send us to war there, causing far more tears in the families of our dead soldiers than she herself has shed recently; and I don't think she knows better now about Iraq, either. So much for Hillary.

    So if you want a viable change candidate like Barack Obama (cf. the other poor man's Mich Lib, the Huffington Post, Obama Wins Key Support Of Nevada's Largest Union today) or John Edwards to win--and no lawsuit knocks over the primary, and if you don't want to boycott the primary, and maybe even if you like Richardson--, vote "uncommitted" and make sure all your friends do, too, and spread the word the best you can. --Kucinich is campaigning here, so he's violating the pledge not to campaign, maybe? and who wants to vote for a dishonest candidate? And Dodd is out. And Gravel...is Gravel, God bless him.
    Ironically, then, if you are COMMITTED to change, you may have to vote UNCOMMITTED on 1/15. Funny, I know, but that's life.

    Peace.

Hillary DISSES MLK. …Big mistake

by: David Boyle

Tue Jan 08, 2008 at 14:50:15 PM EST

    See, e.g., not only the Drudge Report headline earlier this morning, "HILLARY UNLOADS: YOU'RE NO MARTIN LUTHER KING..." (linking to NYT, "The Caucus", Clinton's Civil Rights Lesson,) but multiple recommended-list diaries on Daily Kos yesterday, including DemDog, Hillary Goes Negative...on Martin Luther King, Jr!!!  [UPDATED], and Geekesque, (UPDATEDX2) Desperate Clinton:  LBJ, not Martin Luther King, is real civil rights hero. The latter diary also has several negative opinions of Hillary's words, by African-American bloggers.

    Excerpting from "Desperate Clinton":

"[from DetNews link in Geekesque diary,]

Obama challenged Clinton's claim in a weekend debate that he was raising "false hopes" about what he could deliver for the country. Obama told his audience that hope made President Kennedy aim to put a man on the moon and Martin Luther King Jr. to imagine the end of segregation. ...

    Well, Clinton had her chance to respond, and oh boy did she deliver up a doozy [from Politico link in Geekesque diary]:

"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act. It took a president to get it done.  The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president capable of action."

    Just how awful is this, on so many levels?  "It took a President to get it done?"

    NO.

    It took a nation to get it done.  It took a mass uprising to get it done.  It took brave men and women to brave Bull Connor's thugs, firehoses, and dogs.  It took an overriding popular will to see it throught.  It took courage.  It took inspiration.  It took the the blood of martyrs and patriots.""

    Amen.

    The Michigan nexus is, how is Hillary's mega-flub going to play in the state of the late, great Rosa Parks??

    I wonder what John Conyers would think...

Thank you Martin and Coretta

by: David Boyle

Mon Jan 15, 2007 at 12:15:14 PM EST

(Montgomery, Alabama, 1958)

(Somewhere, 1960)

(Broken images removed...AGAIN.)