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17-year-old Rep. John Lewis being arrested in 1957
for using a segregated bathroom in Mississippi |
As Georgia Democratic Congressman
John Lewis observed on his Twitter feed on Saturday morning:
"57 years ago today I was released from Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman, after being arrested in the Jackson, MS bus station for using a so-called 'white' restroom during the Freedom Rides."
That was just one of many encounters with police that the 78-year-old Civil rights icon has had over the course of his position as a leader of the Civil Rights movement in America.
It's hard to believe that some state laws still barred African-American citizens from using public restrooms just thirteen years after the United States and the Allies defeated the authoritarian Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy in World War II.
But given the current state of the Republican Party under the current leadership of Donald Trump, barring black folks from using public toilets or water fountains (or voting) because of the color of their skin doesn't seem like some kind of snapshot from ancient history.
On February 19, 1942,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which authorized the federal government to forcibly remove tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent from their homes, farms and businesses and relocate them to remote concentration camps where they were interned for the duration of WWII.
As
Jonathan Katz observed in an article for Slate.com back in June, these days writers, journalists and citizens debate whether it's appropriate to call the hastily-constructed detention facilities built to house separated immigrant families incarcerated by the Trump administration, concentration camps.
Whatever name you choose to give to those facilities spread across the United States, they were created by an executive order signed by Trump.
Despite his childish attempts to blame Congressional Democrats in the wake of global condemnation for his actions.
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Japanese-Americans stand at the barbwire fence of
Manzanar under the gaze of a guard tower in WWII |
Last year Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Civil Liberties Public Education Act which authorized $3 million in state funds to educate citizens on the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
As Al Muratsuchi, the California State Assembly member who sponsored the bill observed:
"We have to remember that the incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans without any due process of law began with an executive order, much like the ones that President Trump has been issuing."
As 86-year-old
Mas Okui told New York Times reporter Inyoung Kang, the former Los Angeles school teacher returns to the remote California desert each year where he and his family were held in the Manzanar internment camp during WWII.
"The only way to teach kids about this is to teach the teachers about what happened to us. I felt it was incumbent on me, and I'll do it as long as I can."
As Kang reported, Okui leads workshop tours of Manzanar to educate younger school teachers on the importance of remembering how the U.S. government incarcerated innocent American citizens because of their nationality and racist hostility to non-whites that was so widespread on the west coast after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Considering that the Trump administration has ordered children as young as three-years-old shipped off to detention facilities hundreds, even thousands of miles from their parents, the internment of Japanese-Americans 76 years ago isn't some kind of distant past.
In fact, given a slew of troubling incidents across the U.S. that have made media headlines recently, it's pretty clear that the so-called "land of freedom" is still populated with conservatives who advocate a society segregated on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality and religion.
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| Glenridge residents Adam Bloom & Jasmine Edwards |
Just a day before I posted
my previous blog about a woman in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio who called the police on a 12-year-old black boy for accidentally pushing a lawnmower over a small section of her lawn, a man in Winston-Salem, North Carolina called the police on an African-American woman.
Why?
For using the private swimming pool in the community where she owns a home worth over a half million dollars.
Only Wednesday July 4th, as millions of Americans celebrated the nation's independence, Jasmine Edwards (or Jazmine Abhulimen as she's also known) did what many people did on Wednesday; she went to the pool with her son.
But Adam Bloom
(pictured above), the self-described "pool chair" for the Glenridge community pool was instantly suspicious.
Now
the Glenridge Community Website clearly states that
"our pool and playground area provide a relaxing environment for our homeowners and children".
But "ID Adam" took it upon himself to question Edwards' residency and demanded that she show him proof that she lived there - even after she'd already told him that she was a member of the community and entitled to use the pool.
Rather than simply apologize for his mistake, Bloom pushed the issue and called the cops, ostensibly based on his unjustified personal suspicions that Edwards and her son were trespassing on private property.
If you
watch the cellphone video that Edwards took of the confrontation with Bloom outside the gate of the pool on Wednesday, she makes the observation to both him and the two police officers that the sign outside the pool does not state that residents must show ID to use the pool facilities.
She also notes that Bloom, who comes off as a smug twit in the video, did not ask any of the white residents at the pool for their ID's, or question whether they were residents of Glenridge.
He only approached Edwards and her son, the only residents of color.
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| A photo of the Glenridge Community pool |
Overall, Officer Aaron Lazusky, one of the two police officers seen in the video was respectful and seemed to handle the situation pretty well in an effort to try and resolve the situation.
Lazusky politely asks Edwards for her pool card, swipes it to see that it opens the door and tells Bloom that should be sufficient proof that she's entitled to use the pool.
The officer also makes it a point to apologize to Edwards, which is more than can be said of Bloom - who simply walks away when she asks him if he plans to apologize to her.
Bloom only managed an attempt an apology after his (now) former employer, Sonoco Paper Products Co. quickly fired his ass after social media began ID'ing him as a company employee.
Sonoco also released a statement stating (in part) that Bloom's actions:
"does not reflect the core values of our Company, and the employee involved is no longer employed by the Company in any respect. Our core values at Sonoco are built on dignity and respect for all, and we do not condone discrimination of any kind, inside or outside of the workplace."
Now in my view, these recent incidents of white people calling the police on black people doing normal everyday stuff is evidence that the same kind of institutionalized racism that prompted Georgia Democratic Congressman John Lewis to be arrested for using a segregated bathroom back in 1957, is still very much alive in 21st century America.
These incidents are also a reflection of how the Trump administration has eroded civil discourse in this country by actively cultivating a tone of divisiveness based on race, ethnicity, nationality and religion.
Classic hallmarks of the kind of repressive authoritarian rule that the U.S. fought to end in WWII.
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| Separated immigrant kids in 21st century America |
In any organization leadership starts at the top, and it also sets the tone.
And there's no ambiguity about the kind of tone set by the Trump administration.
Including banning Muslims from some countries from entering the U.S. and separating and incarcerating the Hispanic children of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.
Those kinds of policies have sent the not-so-subtle signal to the
"Pool Patrol Paula's" and Adam Blooms of the world that it's okay to view people of color with suspicion, contempt and open hostility.
These incidents, where white people have called the police because law-abiding African-Americans are waiting in coffee shops, barbecuing in public parks where it's legal to do so, mowing a lawn or using a community pool, are in effect, attempts to criminalize African-Americans for being black.
From a purely political standpoint, it's remarkable to watch the Republican leadership in Washington shirk from using the powers of the Legislative Branch of the federal government granted to them by the Constitution to check Trump's authority.
Or publicly push back against reprehensible policies they privately agree are wrong.
Aside from the occasional tepid lip service, most Republican leaders in Congress have essentially rolled over and allowed Trump's repugnant views to define the GOP as a party.
Allowing some individuals to bring fringe, extremist views into the mainstream under the protection of the Republican umbrella.
For example, just consider some of the candidates around the country running for Congress on the Republican ticket.
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An actual campaign poster for US
Senate candidate Patrick Little |
Back in March
I blogged about Arthur Jones, the Trump-supporting former head of the American Nazi Party (really) who's running as a Republican for the Illinois 3rd District Congressional seat.
On Thursday
CNN's Marc Rod reported that Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner publicly urged Republican voters to cast votes for
"anyone but" the Holocaust-denying Jones in the upcoming mid-term elections in November.
Even the right-leaning Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz exhorted voters in the Illinois 3rd to vote for Democratic incumbent Dan Lipinski.
Out in California there's Senate candidate Patrick Little.
As
Luis Gomez reported for the
San Diego Union-Tribune back in May, the California Republican Party moved to kick Little out of it's convention in a desperate effort to distance the GOP from his anti-Semitic views.
This guy is an unapologetic white supremacist who thinks the America's problems can be attributed to a "Jewish supremacy".
If you
take a look at his Website, Little also has a flier claiming that he wants to pay African-American descendants of slaves a one-time reparation - go figure.
Don't laugh, as Gomez reported, a SurveyUSA Poll back in May showed Little getting 18% of the Republican vote in California in the race against heavily-favored incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein.
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| Holocaust-denying candidate John Fitzgerald |
Would 18% of GOP voters in California have supported a white supremacist who despises Jews as a candidate for the U.S. Senate ten or twenty years ago? MAGA in full effect.
Little isn't alone in California either.
It's been awhile since I've given out a
George Lincoln Rockwell Award, so this week's honor has to go to the Republican Congressional candidate for the 11th District of California, John Fitzgerald.
As reporter
Julia Jacobs reported for the New York Times on Friday, Fitzgerald won 1/4 of the primary vote for the CA-11th despite dire warnings about the dangers of "Jewish supremacism" posted on his Website, his admiration of Adolph Hitler and his advocating kooky Holocaust denial conspiracy theories as recently as last week.
These kinds of political candidates and the political policies of the Trump administration, along with the kinds of incidents that have taken place in pools and parks across the country recently, reflect darker aspects of American history that took place not that long ago.
And it's not from some distant past, these things are happening now.
Proof positive that the upcoming mid-term elections could be the most important in a generation.
If we hope to learn from history rather than repeat it that is.
