Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Chicago Sun Times Letter to the Editor....more cries of wolf

I get the feeling that Rev. Jackson didn't pen this letter.
Somebody is just using his name. 

Violent white supremacists threaten basic civil rights — and our lives

The federal government can largely stamp out domestic terrorism — or fan the flames.

By Jesse Jackson  Aug 26, 2019, 3:22pm CDT

Karina Cardoso and Linda Nevarez hold their cellphone flashlights up during an Aug. 4 vigil in El Paso for the victims of the Walmart shooting. Lola Gomez/American-Statesman.
Every right we have fought for and won since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his monumental “I Have a Dream” speech 56 years ago this Wednesday is under unrelenting attack and in grave peril — from the right to drink fresh water and breathe clear air, to the right of workers to organize for better wages and safer conditions to the right to vote without interference from “enemies foreign and
domestic” to the rights of women, children, the LGBTQ community and immigrants.

But it’s not just our rights that are in danger.

It is our very lives.

After the horrendous mass shooting in El Paso, Texas by a white supremacist — who drove more than 600 miles to the city with the explicit purpose of slaughtering Latinos in response to the mythical “invasion” President Donald Trump and the right ranted about — new attention has been paid to the growing violence of white supremacists.

In the few weeks since El Paso, six white supremacists have been arrested for plotting violent attacks. The Anti-Defamation League reports that white extremists killed 50 people last year — people of all races.

Some compare the threat posed by white supremacists here at home to the terrorist threat posed by ISIS or al-Qaida. What too often is overlooked, as MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes noted in his show last Friday, is that white terrorist violence has been part of the American experience from the beginning.

Hayes notes that the first real terrorist cells in the U.S. arose after the Civil War as a response by white southerners to the freeing of slaves. When slaves became free men, the power of the white establishment in the South was threatened.

The reaction was violent — with community leaders joining to create terrorist cells — most of which became known as the Ku Klux Klan. To preserve white dominance, the Klan launched a wave of terror against blacks and their white allies across the South, including lynching, murder, abduction and rape.

Hayes cites the 2,000 murders in the state of Kansas in the lead-up to the 1868 election, designed to terrorize potential black voters, with the explicit aim of sustaining white power.

When Ulysses S. Grant became president, Congress passed legislation in 1870 — the Enforcement Acts — that empowered the federal government to respond to the wave of terror.

For the first time, the newly created Department of Justice began prosecuting the Klan in federal courts, backed by federal troops on the ground in the South. They made great progress against the Klan until a political compromise that led to the withdrawal of federal troops and the reassertion of “states’ rights.”

That opened the floodgates to a wave of terrorist attacks launched by the Klan and others against blacks that enforced apartheid across the south.

White terrorism goes hand in hand with slavery.

White slave owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and on constant guard against slaves running away to seek their freedom. Slave patrol militias — made up of volunteers from the leading slave-owning families of the South — were created to police the plantations, to track down runaway slaves and to put down any insurrection.

Again, violence — from whipping to murder — was employed routinely by the slave patrols.

The Second Amendment — the right of people to join militias and bear arms — was added to the Constitution in large part to protect the right of slave owners to sustain the slave patrol militias.

In 1788, when Virginia met to consider ratification of the Constitution, slave owners attacked the Constitution for giving the federal government the right to organize militias.

At the time, slaves outnumbered the white population in much of eastern Virginia.

James Madison wrote the Second Amendment largely to protect the rights of slave owners to enforce the reign of terror against slaves in the South. It had nothing to do with the right of individuals to bear arms, because blacks — free or enslaved — were prohibited from owning and bearing arms across the South.

Today when demagogues like Trump fan the fears of an “invasion” of Latinos and blacks that he believes will erode white dominance, white supremacist violence is once more on the rise.

As Hayes argues, when the federal government acts to condemn and to prosecute this domestic terrorism, it can largely stamp it out. But when it fans the flames or turns its back or leaves it to the states that terrorism can easily get out of control.

Today, America is still wrestling with how and whether it will grow out of its racial divides.

By fanning the flames of those divides, Trump is dangerously choosing to feed an increasingly violent white supremacist reaction.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

15 comments:

  1. Anonymous8/27/2019

    When 13 percent of the population is committing 70 percent of the violent crimes and it is not addressed by leaders in the Black Community their silence speaks volumes. When their constituency is responsible for thousands of shootings a year in Chicago his silence speaks volumes. Point out the terrorism in your own back yard and condemn it and maybe you will be taken seriously. Otherwise STFU.

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    1. Anonymous8/27/2019

      The Soros backed (financially)activist groups in conjunction with an overly cooperative media have successfully won over the next generations with their socialist programs. Nowhere is the concept of responsibility for oneself addressed. Its the third party-once removed blame game. This year the left has pivoted on "white-supremacy". Black on black crime? Blame it on white privilege. Gang shootings in Englewood? Lack of investment in underserved communities. Come on. Rather than waste time reading another of Jesse Jackson's ghost written columns, take a few minutes and listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzHd5bmEdU4. He makes incredible sense and lays the problem at the doorstep where it belongs.

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    2. Anonymous8/27/2019

      Excellent grasp of what is actually happening.

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  2. Anonymous8/27/2019

    He missed why there are over 1800 folks(people) shot in Chicago this year.

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  3. Anonymous8/27/2019

    Jesse Jackson has been a Chicago Sun-Times commentator for years. His column is not a letter to the editor.

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    1. Anonymous8/27/2019

      You can tell Jackson doesn't write those columns, if he did, The sentences in each paragraph would rhyme.

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  4. J.J. Sr. hasn't had an original thought since he smeared himself with MLK's blood after his assassination to make it appear that he was right there when it happened. I'm guessing that the Times own drunken wife beater Neil Steinberg is Jackson's ghost writer, this story smacks of one of Steinberg's own diatribes against the Right & Trump

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    1. Anonymous8/27/2019

      Outstanding, common sense words about jess. As for neil, you got him right where it hurts.

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    2. Anonymous8/28/2019

      Jesse writes his own columns.

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    3. Anonymous8/29/2019

      And the Kardashians date white guys

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  5. Anonymous8/27/2019

    Nothing to say about the black on Asian, Hispanic and Caucasian crime is that not terrorism too?

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  7. Anonymous9/03/2019

    Violent black criminals threaten my civil rights!

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