Last year, I wrote a little something on July 4th.
Here's some more history to consider:
"The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"
"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."
--Fredrick Douglas - July 4th, 1852
complete speech here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html
read by James Earl Jones, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tTkHJWxfP0
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Ghosts of America’s past: Reflections on Independence Day 2015
Published time: July 04, 2015 16:00
Activists hold placards as they take part in a vigil in what organizers said was in "remembrance of black women and girls killed by the police," in Union Square, Manhattan, New York (Reuters / Elizabeth Shafiroff)
It’s the Fourth of July in America, and gay marriage has just been legalized by a Supreme Court ruling, the Confederate flag is being displayed on public property and Black churches are being set afire.
“If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive,” John Steinbeck wrote in “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939).
Meanwhile, the police continue to kill African Americans without accountability. The government has developed flying killer robots that are able to assassinate people from the sky. The National Security Agency is recording the phone calls, emails, and internet activities of millions of US citizens. Beyond American borders, our leaders are psyching us up for bigger confrontations with Russia and China, as US military forces pour into the Pacific.
The above paragraphs sound like the opening of an apocalyptic science fiction novel. However, it’s all true. And it gets worse.
The Angry, Poor Millennials Are Getting Political
Underlying it all is an economic crisis. The so-called “recovery” has missed a big section of the country. The good-paying industrial jobs that once defined the US “middle class” have been eliminated. Young people with record amounts of student debt are stuck in a low-wage economy, often living off their parents. US popular discourse bemoans this generation of “millennials” who “just can’t get their lives together.” Young mid-Westerners and Southerners are fleeing to the coastal areas in order to find jobs. Life in much of the Rust Belt has simply become unlivable.
Despite not being as inclined to buy houses and cars or get married at the rate of previous generations, the young millennials seem to be far more interested in politics. In 2011, they slept in tents around the clock at Occupy camps protesting the power of the wealthy “1 percent.” Now, a few years later, young millennials are shutting down highways and bridges in opposition to police brutality, as the new rallying cry is “Black Lives Matter!” The increasingly active new generation of low-paid workers with student debt is much more favorable to once forbidden political ideologies like socialism. ) Libertarianism, anarchism and communism all have a slew of new adherents as well.
In the background, starting just a little more than a week after the July 4 holiday, the US military will begin a series of military exercises in the southwestern states codenamed “Operation Jade Helm,” which has been explained to the public as rehearsal for “unconventional warfare” on US soil. “Unconventional warfare” is military-speak for armed insurrections among the population. The US Army Green Berets, US Marines Special Operation Command, US Navy Seals, and US Air Force Special Operations Command will be in nine different states practicing “counterinsurgency” tactics.
more here:
http://rt.com/op-edge/271693-independence-america-history-violence/
-Spyda
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