Cracker Barrel Attacker Troy Dale West, Jr. Indicted on Felony Charges

Excuse me is this 2009 or 1929?

Yesterday, hundreds of supporters were on hand at the Clayton County Court in Georgia for the indictment of a 47 year-old white Georgia resident named Troy Dale West, Jr. on charges he viciously beat Tasha Hill, an African-American Army reservist, in front of her 7 year-old daughter.

The incident occurred outside of a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Morrow, Georgia at about 7:30pm on Wednesday September 9th. The case has been referred to the FBI's Civil Rights Division to determine whether or not the incident is a hate crime.

Witnesses and Atlanta television station WSBTV reported that West allegedly erupted when Hill asked him to "please be careful, that door almost hit my daughter" after he slammed the door open on his way out of the restaurant, nearly striking her daughter. In response to Hill's request, West simply exploded, using his fists to hit Hill in the face then throwing her to the ground and striking her in the head several times and kicking her in the body while repeatedly calling her a "fucking black nigger bitch".

Horrified witnesses watched as Hill's 7 year-old daughter desperately tried to get back through the glass doors to help her mother while the assault was taking place.

Click the link above, or click play on the upper right side of the page to hear Hill's account of what happened. Local Atlanta news reported that the Cracker Barrel employees were very cooperative in helping the victim and police/EMTs who arrived on the scene, so kudos to Cracker Barrel.

Given the realities of America's complex racial history, it's not a shock that the election of an African-American president has stirred deep-seated resentment by some Americans.

What IS shocking and repugnant to most people is to see people of any color, religion or race violently channel that resentment onto a mother and her 7 year-old child. The Clayton County DA was so incensed, she is prosecuting the case personally.

The anger, violence and hate displayed by West should concern ALL Americans, it's an unfortunate part of the fabric of our nation that's as much a threat as the economic crisis or terrorism - Troy Dale West, Jr. is the real terrorist.

W. Horace Carter - Courageous Newspaper Man Who Challenged the KKK Dies at 88

There was a time when the power of print newspapers and the men and women who published and wrote them wielded immense power and influence to shape America's cultural identity and define the nation's zeitgeist.

On Sunday the New York Times reported the passing of W. Horace Carter, an 88 year-old newspaper publisher who demonstrated moral courage and fierce determination in his efforts to confront the spread of the Ku Klux Klan and their violence in his North Carolina community in the 1950's.

Carter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist/editor who generously gave back to his alma mater the University of North Carlina at Chapel Hill.

His passing might not make waves in today's mainstream media spotlight, but his contributions to America's cultural evolution and fight against racism will be forever felt. According to Carter's paper the Tabor-Loris Tribune, his Klan campaign resulted in the prosecution of 254 KKK members, 62 of whom were sentenced to prison.

There were many journalists who displayed extraordinary courage to report on the Civil Rights struggle in America at great risk to themselves and their families.

If you're interested in learning more about their heroic efforts, I'm still in the process of reading Hank Robert's and Gene Kilbanoff's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation.

W. Horace Carter's lasting legacy will be his tireless efforts to open the nation's eyes to the realities of prejudice and racism, continuing the fight to bring the freedoms and rights contained in the Declaration of Independence to all Americans.

Conservative Attacks on ACORN - Part of a Broader GOP Agenda Against Low Income Families?

In the wake of film-makers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles' video of ACORN members from different offices supposedly advising them, dressed/posing as a "couple", (O'Keefe dressed as a pimp and Giles as his prostitute looking to learn how to conceal cash earnings and hide underage sex slaves from foreign countries) has become the latest symbol of government waste and fraud on Capitol Hill.

But is it? Reality check.

O'Keefe and Giles will never be confused with Woodward & Bernstein and "the couple" were actually sent in to "set traps for ACORN to lie", according to Andrew Breitbart founder of the BigGovernment.com Website where the video first appeared.

In television interviews James O'Keefe claimed none of the ACORN offices he visited at any point kicked him out when he asked his staged questions. That's a lie.

O'Keefe's partner an "aspiring journalist" Hannah Giles is the daughter of right wing media Website columnist Doug Giles - she didn't bother showing up to a CNN television interview looking into the "couple's" self-described prostitution scandal.

According to MediaMatters.org, reps from both the Baltimore and Philadelphia ACORN offices not only asked O'Keefe and Giles to leave, they also filed police reports about the incidents.

In a recently posted video available on Youtube (or watch it by clicking play on the upper right of this blog) the Philadelphia office director for ACORN Katherine Conway Russell asserts that James O'Keefe lied about who he was in order to gain entrance to the ACORN office.

So why are so many Congressmen so fired up about ACORN?

In response to this questionable video evidence, yesterday a majority of House Democrats and Republicans moved to cut federal funding for ACORN by passing H.R. 3221 - a recently added rider to the bill would cut off ACORN's funding.

Why would a rider on ACORN funding be hidden inside a bill for student aid?

Save for the fact that Barack Obama was a community organizer for the embattled group early in his career (prompting the GOP to seize on it as ammunition to discredit him and ridicule his record) I doubt many Americans would even have heard of ACORN, if not for the GOP's media attacks and misinformation campaign.

The Website of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, describes it as a organizational platform centered around the needs of low-to-middle income families; but to hear some of the preachy Congressional rhetoric being tossed around recently, one might be led to think it's a cadre of satanists or some kind of socialist cult.

ACORN deals with a range of issues including affordable housing, living wages and affordable tax preparation services among other things.

ACORN started in the early 70's as a group seeking rights for welfare recipients. Their efforts to register voters during the 2008 presidential elections drew the ire of Republicans apparently disturbed at the thought of low and middle income American citizens exercising their right to vote.

Do sketchy contrived videos of undercover "journalists" strolling into ACORN store-front talking to a few members of a nationwide organization with thousands of volunteers automatically mean the entire organization is a fraud? Maybe not.

But the reality is that an organization is responsible for the people who work there; while ACORN has in fact done a lot to help economically disadvantaged people all over the country, the management should have done a better job training their employees and volunteers who staff their offices.

By not doing so, they've simply given conservatives an opportunity to mock and deride sincere community-based efforts to assist low and middle income Americans already on the periphery of our society.

Joe Wilson Isn't Going Away

As she has in the past, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd struck the tone for the week with a Saturday September 12th column exploring the meaning behind Joe Wilson's recent outburst against President Obama on the floor of the US Capitol.

Wilson's initial brush-off of demands to personally apologize to the House of Representatives and the President have evaporated with the growing controversy over allegations that his boorish behavior is representative of many Americans who simply don't accept Obama as President because of his skin color.

Former President Jimmy Carter went further, suggesting at a speech at the Carter Center that Wilson's comments "were based on racism".

The charge prompted Wilson's oldest son Alan (a candidate for State Attorney General) to dispute charges that his father was a racist.

Slowly the media seems to be giving more serious examination of how race impacts the way people see the president and his policies and what role racist beliefs might have on policy issues on the government's plate.

The House (both Democrats and Republicans alike) voted to demand an apology from the embattled South Carolina Congressman, but it's not just politicians.

I listened to a number of listener calls to NPR answering the question of why the issue won't go away. The vast majority expressed the feeling that not only was accusing the President of lying wrong, but also indicative that the US public has had enough of the juvenile character attacks on the President from Republicans who seem less interested in solutions for the American people than slandering Barack Obama and torpedoing his political agenda.

I don't hate Joe Wilson but it's hard to listen to his insistence that he's not a racist when, as Dowd pointed out, he was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who defended flying the Confederate flag over the South Carolina state capitol.

If there's an upside to this episode it's that the media spotlight and the attention of many Americans is now focused on the realities of our nation and how race impacts our perception; Joe Wilson's comment shows that it does.

Geraldo Weighs in on Immigration Fear Tactics and More

The Leonard Lopate show had an interesting Monday afternoon conversation/interview with always media-friendly Geraldo Rivera, who's latest focus is illegal immigration.

The Fox News contributor (and discoverer of Al Capone's secret safe...) was on to promote his latest book The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity.

He had some interesting observations on race in America today and the prejudice that underlies much of the extreme anti-immigrant hysteria in America. While there were a number of anti-Geraldo comments posted on the Leonard Lopate Show/WNYC.org Website, Geraldo actually raised a few interesting points.

I give him credit for being one of the few media personalities to offer commentary on how Obama's race is impacting the political opposition he's facing on health care legislation, mainstream media only seems offer up cursory analysis on the issue.

He also pointed out the fact that the many who are sympathetic to the quasi racist Minute Man militia movement, responsible for a growing number of murders in the US, rally around the need to defend America from a terrorist attack from the Mexican border.

He noted that there have never been terrorist attacks from the Mexican border. But (according to him) there have been more than 20 terrorist associated infiltrations from the Canadian border, so how come Minute Man groups don't seem to be killing Canadians?

Have there been terrorist attacks or incursions from Canada against the US? I'm not saying there haven't been, but I can't recall hearing about them.

Interesting that a man who used the last name Rivers in college changes his name to Rivera and eventually writes a book on Hispanics in America.

"Liar!" South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson Shocks Congress in Front of Millions

Republican anger over the impending health care bill spilled onto the floor of the packed Senate chamber during last night's Presidential address to both houses of Congress.

Joe Wilson, a 62 year-old Republican representative from South Carolina left attendees and millions of television viewers speechless when he yelled out "Liar" or "You lie!" after President Obama debunked an oft-repeated but false accusation that the new health care bill would grant illegal immigrants access to government health benefits.

The FactCheck.org Website has already dismissed the illegal immigrant health care access charge as a myth.

Wilson's tactless emotional outburst prompted a rapid-fire reaction from online media and the soon-to-be embattled Congressman's official Website was "Down for maintenance" soon after he was identified as the heckler du jour.

I was watching the speech live on NBC and both Vice-President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi looked shocked, Pelosi appeared to examine a seating chart after the comment in an effort to identify who said it.

The crude posters depicting Obama as a Nazi seen in health care rallies across America pale in comparison to Wilson's outburst, which seriously calls into question Republican's desire for honest and meaningful debate on the health care issue and will likely threaten Wilson's Congressional seat.

History buffs will recall that emotionally unstable politicians aren't new to South Carolina. Back in 1856 it was Preston Brooks a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina famously used a thick Gutta-Percha walking stick with a gold tip to viciously beat Senator Charles Sumner unconscious and bloody after taking offense at a speech Sumner made attacking Southern politicians (including President Franklin Pierce and Brook's relative, Senator Andrew Butler) for sympathizing with slavery advocates supporting bloody pro-slavery rioters in Kansas.

GOP supporters and right-wing fringe media blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin will deny the comments had anything to do with Obama being an African-American, but I can't recall ever seeing a politician call a sitting US president a liar in front of the House and Senate and millions of television viewers.

Democratic Obama supporters didn't waste time crying about it and Republicans still seem to ignore the power and reach of Internet media: A viral message urging supporters to visit the ActBlue Website to donate to the campaign of Democrat Rob Miller who is running against Joe Wilson in South Carolina's 2nd District reached my e-mail inbox about 12:58am EST.

As of 3:30am about six and a half hours after the conclusion of Obama's speech the site has raised over $40,000 for Miller under the banner of "defeating the man who yelled 'liar". Joe's gotta go.