Red Hen Exploring Our Conditions explores issues and concerns in our Communities with a Focus on Community Responsibility and Civic Engagement.
#TeamRhino #SaveTheRhino #SaveFive
Raising Awareness to protect our #WildLife, Please take the pledge:
I would like to join #TeamRhinodotorg in the fight against rhino poaching to ensure a future for people and vulnerable wildlife on our planet:
I will never buy or promote any products made of rhino horn, as I know that demand drives poaching.
I will be a committed advocate to support rangers and others on the frontlines of rhino conservation.
I will share my passion about rhino conservation and recruit my friends and family to become involved.
I will urge my government to continue championing efforts to stop rhino poaching at home and abroad.
I will stand with IRF to help save rhinos from extinction. teamrhino.org
Take a stand with me and stop the war on women and men who enjoy having consensual sex when we want how we want!! Times are a changing and sex workers all over the world are uniting to demand our human rights to be who we want to be. Your support is needed to end sexual slavery aka the rape culture that wants to point fingers and label sex workers as not fit for society.
Please write and/or call in to support New Hampshire Bill HB1614 to decriminalize prostitution!
Dear Friends,
You may have heard the exciting news that a Bill is being put forward to decriminalize prostitution in New Hampshire. NEWS This is the first bill that we know of that is proposing decriminalization in the US! The sponsors have said it was influenced by the groundbreaking Amnesty International policy supporting decriminalization.
HB1614 has been introduced by three women legislators, two Democrats and one Republican. It “legalizes consensual sex between consenting adults and makes solicitation of sexual contact involving a person under 18 years of age or through the use of force and intimidation a felony”.
On Thursday January 28 there will be a hearing on the Bill at the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.
We are in touch with one of the sponsors of the Bill. Please consider writing in or calling them to make your case in support of decriminalization.
Points to make in your letter may include that decriminalization would:
·Increase safety as sex workers could work together and more easily report violence;
·Enhance health as sex workers could more easily access services and wouldn’t be deterred from carrying condoms for fear that they will be used as evidence of prostitution;
·Free up police time to focus on the investigation of violent crimes such as rape and domestic violence rather than the policing of consenting sex (particularly important as the Committee is primarily made up of former and current law enforcement);
·End criminal records which bar sex workers from getting other jobs. This is crucial for anyone who may want to leave the sex industry and is unable to.
You may also want to raise that rising poverty is increasing the numbers of women, particularly mothers, going into prostitution and that tackling poverty and providing resources would be much more effective.
New Zealand successfully decriminalized prostitution in 2003 and a government review showed positive results: no rise in prostitution; women able to report violence without fear of arrest; attacks cleared up more quickly; sex workers more able to leave prostitution as convictions are cleared from their records; drug users treated as patients not criminals.
In August, Amnesty International’s voted “to protect the human rights of sex workers, through measures that include the decriminalization of sex work”. This appears to have been an impetus for this legislation.
Please see below the list and emails of committee members to send your letters to or call.
US PROS will be going to New Hampshire to testify in support of the bill next week so we’ll send a report when we get back.
If you had health coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or another source in 2015, you may have to include information about it when you file your federal taxes. If you didn’t have coverage, you may have to pay a fee.
If you were enrolled in a plan through the Health Insurance Marketplace in 2015 and used premium tax credits to lower your monthly payments, you must file a federal income tax return for 2015 — even if you usually don’t file or your income is below the level requiring you to. (The premium tax credit is sometimes called a “subsidy,” “discount,” or “savings.”)
You’ll get Form 1095-A by early February
If anyone in your household was covered by a Marketplace plan in 2015, you’ll get Form 1095-A, Health Insurance Marketplace Statement.
It includes information about Marketplace plans anyone in your household had in 2015.
It comes from the Marketplace, not the IRS.
You’ll get it in the mail by early February. If you have an online Marketplace account it’ll be there too — maybe before it comes in the mail.
You’ll use information from your 1095-A to complete Form 8962, Premium Tax Credit. This is how you’ll “reconcile” — figure out if you used the right amount of tax credit during the year.
You’ll need to “reconcile” your premium tax credit
If you had a 2015 Marketplace plan and used premium tax credits (also known as “subsidies,” “discounts,” or “savings”), you’ll have to “reconcile” when you file your federal taxes. This means you’ll figure out if you used more or less tax credit than you qualify for. You'll compare two figures:
The amount of premium tax credit you used during the year. (This was paid directly to your health plan so your monthly payment was lower.)
The premium tax credit you actually qualify for based on your final 2015 income.
If you had other health coverage, you won’t get a 1095-A
Depending on what kind of coverage you had in 2015, you may get a different form — 1095-B or 1095-C. Or you may not get any form.
If you get a 1095-B or 1095-C, you don’t need to include it when you file your federal taxes. Read the instructions on the back of the form and keep it in a safe place with your other tax documents.
If you didn’t have any health coverage in 2015, you must pay a penalty or claim an exemption
The penalty for not having coverage in 2015 is $325 per adult or 2% of your household income, whichever is higher. Learn more about the 2015 penalty.
Exemptions from the requirement to have coverage are available based on health coverage or financial status, certain hardships, some life events, and membership in some groups. Learn about exemptions from the health coverage requirement.
Life's ignorance fixed on selfish dependent behaviors has a history of repeating oppressive systems on vulnerable human beings. All eyes are on the human rights violation caused by the policing going on in The United States of America. To understand the "Policing Mentality" we need to understand the origins of policing.
A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing
The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.
Policing was not the only social institution enmeshed in slavery. Slavery was fully institutionalized in the American economic and legal order with laws being enacted at both the state and national divisions of government. Virginia, for example, enacted more than 130 slave statutes between 1689 and 1865. Slavery and the abuse of people of color, however, was not merely a southern affair as many have been taught to believe. Connecticut, New York and other colonies enacted laws to criminalize and control slaves. Congress also passed fugitive Slave Laws, laws allowing the detention and return of escaped slaves, in 1793 and 1850. As Turner, Giacopassi and Vandiver (2006:186) remark, “the literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.”
The police brutality has hit home and i too am in shock and wondering what type of people take an oath to serve and protect, yet totally disregards all lives as humans that matter. How did the us against them mentality become our reality. i learned from retired Philadelphia police Capt. Ray Lewis, "One of the aspects of a personality is a degree of sensitivity and compassion," he said. "Unfortunately, they do not hire those people that score high on sensitivity. They reject them believing those people will quit because they can't handle the blood and guts on the street. They view that as wasted training money. "What they don't realize is that hiring the insensitive individual is going to result in brutality cases, and when those cases go to court, that's where they lose millions," Lewis said. "It's pennywise and pound foolish."http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Ex-
Urban cities like Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore to name a few are under federal investigation for human rights violations caused by policing. You can read the 91 points recommendation for Philadelphia here http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0753-pub.pdf
Police who are paid with our tax's dollars are upset that we the people are demanding transparency and accountability for our tax dollar supported service and protection. So how the police have totally separated themselves from the rest of society and have become outsiders is the most damaging move away from safe environments.
As state legislatures convene across the country, police unions and their lobbyists have begun a nation-wide campaign to preserve – and, where possible, expand – “Blue Privilege” in its various guises, from efforts to criminalize video-recording police to the preservation of the officially sanctioned larceny called “civil asset forfeiture.”
Police unions in Maryland are pressuring the state legislature not to override last year’s gubernatorial veto of a package of bills that would decriminalize possession of marijuana paraphernalia and place restrictions on the practice of asset forfeiture. Senate Bill 528 would establish a $300 threshold for cash seizures, redefine “presumptions and … certain burdens related to forfeiture of money” (which is to say, it would place the burden on the state, not the property owner), and prohibit the transfer of confiscated property to federal control “unless there is a federal criminal charge or the owner consents.” That last provision would impede the pernicious practice of “equitable sharing,” in which seized property or cash is handed over to the Feds as a way to prevent victims from seeking redress through state courts; the Feds then keep a small portion and kick back the rest to the state or local agencies that confiscated it.
When faced with public criticism over the abuses associated with narcotics prohibition – of which asset forfeiture is the outstanding, but hardly the only, example – police unions and the professional associations they control, plead helplessness: They only enforce the laws, rather than writing them, their spokesmen tell the public. Yet in Maryland, as elsewhere in the country, law enforcement lobbyists are actively intervening to prevent reforms that would rein in those abuses.
Will make it illegal for police departments to release the names of police officers involved in shootings or in incidents of excessive “use of force” until they are charged with a crime. If an officer is not charged with a crime, victims, family members and the general public will not be able to find out the name(s) of the questioned officer(s) until an investigation is completed, and they will then have to go through the “Right to Know” process which takes additional time. An officer’s name can still be withheld.
"This controversial piece of legislation encompasses everything that is bad governing. The legislation is supported by special interests groups in the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police and the State Troopers Association. There were no hearings or time dedicated for public input. The bill remained dormant in the House Judiciary Committee until November 10, where it was sent to the floor with a unanimous 25-0 vote, and then cruised through the House with a 162-38 vote."
We, the people have been excluded and our voices are not even a consideration. This is NOT Due Process. We, the people and the undersigned demand this "legislation" be REPEALED IMMEDIATELY! We also demand a statement from Pa Governor, Tom Wolf as to why this "secretive" bit of legislation is pending and may be PA State Law. Repeal Pennsylvania House Bill 1538
Contact these Representatives and let them know how you feel!!
State RepresentativeRuss Diamond
State RepresentativePatty Kim
State RepresentativeJason Dawkins
State RepresentativeJoanna McClinton
State SenatorRob Teplitz
State SenatorJudith Schwank
State RepresentativeBrian Sims
The tensions running through our nation is deeply rooted in quite kept derogatory racist practice. The Fraternal Order of Police was supposed to be organized to serve and protect us taxpayers not judge and kill us. Racism is such an ugly practice and detrimental when that practice becomes the fuel that creates self centered laws. Racism creates the us and them mentality. There are good people and bad people, good police officers and bad police officers. Black New York City Police officers often think that they are being racially profiled by their white colleagues, according to a shocking new report by Reuters.
The wire service interviewed 25 black male officers, ten current cops and 15 retired. With just one exception, they said that they have been victims of racial profiling by police, both when wearing the uniform and while off duty. For its article, Reuters identified racial profiling as “using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.”
In the article, Reuters equates what they experience as the same type of racial profiling that cost Eric Garner his life after he was swarmed by police officers and one applied a choke hold to him.
The black police officers said their experiences included being pulled over by police for no reason (multiple times for most), being stopped and frisked, thrown into prison vans, and being physically assaulted and threatened. Black cops say that they’ve had their heads slammed against vehicles and guns brandished in their faces.
“The black officers interviewed said they had been racially profiled by white officers exclusively, and about one third said they made some form of complaint to a supervisor.”
“All but one said their supervisors either dismissed the complaints or retaliated against them by denying them overtime, choice assignments, or promotions. The remaining officers who made no complaints said they refrained from doing so either because they feared retribution or because they saw racial profiling as part of the system.”
How can we make policing work for the safety of all and end the racial profiling? We can learn and implement the strategies of the closely knit Shomrim communities. Shomrim(Hebrew:שומרים), orShmira(Hebrew:שמירה), (lit. "watchers", "guards", "protection") are organizations of proactive volunteerJewishcivilian patrolswhich have been set up inHaredicommunities in neighborhoods across the United States and Britain (and in many other countries) to combatburglary,vandalism,mugging,assault,domestic violence, nuisance crimes,antisemiticattacks, and to help and supportvictimsof crime. They also help locatemissing people.
Shomrim volunteers are unarmed and do not have the authority to make arrests, other than citizen's arrest. They are effective in tracking and detaining suspects until police arrive.[1][2] Occasionally some Shomrim members in the USA have been cited for using excessive force against suspects, particularly those from outside their community.[3][4][5]
In Brooklyn,[6]Baltimore,[7] and London[8][9] many residents call Shomrim prior to the police due to the former's faster response time.[10]However, the volunteer patrol in New York has been criticized by the New York City Police Department for not always notifying police when a call comes in.[3] In London however, the Hackney Police Borough Commander Chief Superintendent Matthew Horne complimented Shomrim on this point, saying that "they will generally know when is the time to call us. They don't tend to waste our time and they don't let people go".[11]Additionally, Brooklyn Shomrim organizers have been accused of withholding information on suspected child molesters and other Jewish criminals, in keeping with an interpretation of the Torah prohibition against mesirah (informing on a fellow Jew to the non-Jewish authorities).[12][13][14]
Shomrim have on many occasions received awards and commendations from the police for their work.[15][16][17][18]
highest concentration of Hasidic Jews outside of Israel. It was called Borough Park and there was a neighborhood watch with some similar roles as the police and it was called Shomrim.
When one of my housemates had trouble with a peeping Tom they took care of it in their own way and never happen again
They confronted the man at his house in front of his family, and his father was a very important rabbi
When director Ava DuVernay decided to helm the Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma, she noticed something missing from the script.
"When I first came on board the project, the women were not there at all," she told Melissa Harris-Perry in an MSNBC interview.http://mashable.com/2015/02/05/civil-rights-women/#Ql9pDAq0Kiq6
Wednesday January 23, 2013 4pm Cecil B. Moore Branch Library, 2320 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, i attended the Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice with the Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters– Co-sponsored by: Moonstone Art Center, Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries. Very interesting conversation about the history of the Philadelphia Freedom Fighters. I learned from Mr. Larry Ribon that media changed the fight for African American human rights movement into the African American civil rights movement.
Doing further research on Ida. B. Wells i learned that she started the NAACP to give voice to people of color only for the conformed African American men to take the organization from her. The lives of W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells often ran along parallel tracks. Both used their journalistic writing to condemn lynching. Wells and Du Bois seemed to disagree on the story of why her name did not appear on the original list of NAACP founders. Du Bois implied that Wells had chosen not to be included.[39] But, in her autobiography, Wells complains that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells
Further research into the civil rights movement reveals those challenging conversations of
the African American man versus the African American woman. I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. Conceptualized
Reduced to sound bites and videoclips, Martin Luther King's image has become one of a starry-eyed dreamer and conformist, contends Dyson (Making Malcolm, etc.) in this attempt to reclaim the man he views as heroic and flawed from biographers, conservatives and cultural pundits who, Dyson maintains, have molded King's myth to fit their own political agendas.
Dyson tackles such difficult issues as the exclusion of women activists from civil rights organizing. He also deals adeptly with King's adulterous liaisons, his disillusionment with whites, the accusations of plagiarism against him and the troubles in King's marriage. His attempt to resurrect King as an evolutionary and revolutionary thinker who was not ""down"" with the status quo brings home that his stance on economic equity and the Vietnam War intensified the FBI surveillance that Dyson believed led to his death. In the end, Dyson successfully proves how vital King's true political views and personality are to struggling and frustrated black youth today. (Jan.)http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-86776-2
Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement used to be easy. These days, however, when educators assign research projects about the struggle to end U.S. apartheid, students are likely to stumble upon resources that contain disturbing and seemingly adverse information.
One such resource is Michael Eric Dyson's recently released I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. Conceptualized and written for today's "hip hop" youth, this new biography delves deeply into allegations about King's chauvinism and promiscuity as well as into sexism in the Civil Rights Movement generally. In this way, the text complicates the commonly held, one-dimensional perceptions of King and the struggle to end segregation.
Teachers can handle resources like I May Not Get There with You in several ways. We can revert to lecturing about the Civil Rights Movement, telling students only what we may want them to know. We can assign research projects and then wait for students to ask questions about the allegations, hoping that they never do. Or we can assign research projects, anticipate students' discovery of controversial materials and then provide a framework for classroom discussions about the allegations.
After reading or hearing about books like Dyson's I May Not Get There with You, many students may question the very heroes whom they have admired from a very young age. Others may be tempted to discount the Movement's heroes or even the Movement itself. But by talking with students about the allegations, educators not only can help students reclaim the importance of the Movement and the contributions of its leaders, they also can help students recognize their own capacity to do good works.
The following points are designed to help teachers of the upper grades navigate classroom discussions about King's alleged promiscuity and chauvinism, as well as sexism in the Movement generally; they are not intended to simplify a complicated issue.
Point #1: Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement did not exist in a vacuum.
Dyson quotes civil rights activist Bernard Lee as saying: "Martin … was absolutely a male chauvinist. He believed that the wife should stay home and take care of the babies while he'd be out there in the streets." This sentiment -- that a woman's primary role is as a homemaker or caretaker -- certainly is not limited to King, to other black leaders in the Civil Rights Movement or to the black community.
In 1963, for example, Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women, published The Feminine Mystique, which exposed the strict and confining gender roles instilled in U.S. society in the 1950s and 1960s -- and, arguably, today. A frank and troubling exploration of the white housewife's daily existence, The Feminine Mystique revealed how white girls were socialized to marry and then live vicariously through their husbands and children, without establishing their own identities or interests. Further, the volume identified the ways in which society justified and perpetuated this system of male domination -- mainly through reinforcement of unquestioned societal assumptions about gender via media outlets, schools, houses of worship and other venues.
The sexism that was present in the Civil Rights Movement was a continuation of oppressive mentality that existed in the larger U.S. culture, which was and is a white, male-dominated culture.
Point #2: The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement never intended to end all forms of oppression in the U.S
Movement leaders set out to tackle one specific type of oppression -- racism -- focusing primarily on racial segregation. The Civil Rights Movement accomplished what it set out to do; it secured equal legal rights for people of color in the U.S. The value of the Movement's success cannot be overstated.
Oppression, however, is a complex system of isms and phobias that work both independently and in coordination with one another. The term "African Americans" denotes a racial group in the U.S., but that racial group also includes members of other marginalized identities, such as women, gay men and lesbians, people with disabilities, poor people and others. Thus, while African Americans are united in their experience of racial oppression, they also struggle against sexism, homophobia, ableism, classism and other forms of oppression. Likewise, many members of these other groups benefited directly from the Civil Rights Movement's successful effort to dismantle racial segregation.
King himself recognized the intersection of race and class in the black experience and spent the last years of his life working for economic justice. Had an assassin's bullet not cut him down, King may well have advocated for other forms of equity. His wife, Coretta, has served as a spokesperson for both women's and gay rights in the years since her husband's death.
The Civil Rights Movement sought to secure equal protections for people of color in the U.S. The struggle was about racism and racial segregation; we should not presume that it was about anything else.
Point #3: The Civil Rights Movement has served as a model for other social justice movements.
Although the Civil Rights Movement did not deal explicitly with issues like sexism, it has provided a paradigm for other groups interested in challenging oppression. In Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, editor Lee Ann Bell argues:
The Civil Rights Movement fired the imagination of millions of Americans who applied its lessons to an understanding of their own situations and adapted its analyses and tactics to their own struggles for equality. For example, Native American, Chicano and Puerto Rican youth styled themselves after the African American youth in SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] and the Black Panther Party. The predominantly White student antiwar movement drew directly from the experiences of the Black freedom struggles to shape their goals and strategies. Early women's liberation groups were spawned within SNCC itself as black and white women applied the analyses of racial inequality to their own positions as women, as did Latinas within the Puerto Rican Youth. The gay liberation and disability rights movements also credit the Civil Rights Movement as a model for their organizing and activism. Poor people's movements and welfare rights likewise drew upon this heritage.
By providing a replicable platform, the Civil Rights Movement has impacted and vicariously lent its support to almost every subsequent effort for social change in the U.S.
Point #4: Women contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.
Although sexism limited the roles that women could play in the Civil Rights Movement, we should not devalue or minimize the impact of female activists in the struggle to end U.S. apartheid. Books like Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965clearly establish the ways in which women contributed to the Movement's success. Indeed, it relied heavily on women and their labor to secure its goal.
The most well-known female activist of the civil rights era is Rosa Parks, fondly known as "the mother of the Civil Rights Movement." It was Mrs. Parks, of course, who refused to vacate her bus seat to make room for a white man. Her single act of defiance on a cold winter day in 1955 drew national attention to the plight of blacks in the Jim Crow South and resulted in a 381-day bus boycott that succeeded in forcing the desegregation of the Montgomery, Ala., public transportation system.
Following her display of courage, Mrs. Parks did not exactly rise through the Movement's ranks as one might expect. In fact, by the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, many people were unaware of her contribution to the Movement. She recalls her experience in that march: "[The young people] didn't know who I was and couldn't care less about me because they didn't know me." For many, Mrs. Parks had faded into the background, spending the years subsequent to the bus boycott working in a sewing factory in Detroit. In 1965, she joined the staff of newly elected Michigan Congressman John Conyers and served as his aide until her retirement in 1988 at age 75.
According to her biographer, historian Douglas Brinkley, Mrs. Parks has only recently begun her assent back into the national spotlight, receiving the credit that she is due. On June 6, 1999, 44 years after that fateful day on a Montgomery bus, President Clinton presented Mrs. Parks with a Congressional Medal for Lifetime Achievement.
In the years since the Movement, Mrs. Parks has spoken publicly about the dangers of sexism. When she met Pope John Paul II in St. Louis, Mo., in 1999, she shared these words with the pontiff: "My lifetime mission has been simple -- that all men and women are created equal under the eyes of our Lord." In the spirit of her activist mantra "quiet strength," this simple sentence was Mrs. Parks' way of challenging women's secondary status in the Catholic Church.
Mrs. Parks' story illustrates that, although sexism limited the roles that women could play in the Movement, their contributions were crucial. Further, her long-standing work for justice reminds us that many of the Civil Rights Movement's female activists have continued the struggle against racial oppression and have gone on to combat multiple forms of oppression, sexism included.
Point #5: Martin Luther King Jr. and other male Movement leaders remain heroes.
Although King and other male Movement leaders participated in seemingly contradictory behavior (advancing racial equality, yet subjugating women), they are heroes. What is a hero? One of the best definitions comes from the Giraffe Project, a nonprofit organization that finds, commends and publicizes the efforts of people who "stick their necks out for others." Heroes, according to the Giraffe Project, are people who take risks for the common good: "By risk, we mean the possibility of losing a job, health, safety, significant amounts of money, or acceptance by the community or by peers. By common good, we mean that [the actions] benefit many people."
History will never tell us what would have happened had women served in prominent leadership positions during the Civil Rights Movement, but it does reveal clearly that Martin Luther King Jr. and other men took risks for the common good. Indeed, many of these activists met death and imprisonment while advancing this nation's promise that "all men are created equal."
Point #6: By acknowledging the imperfections of the Civil Rights Movement's male leaders, we recognize not just their humanity, but ours as well.
In his impressive volume, Soul of a Citizen, Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time, author and scholar Paul Loeb explores the ways in which everyday citizens excuse themselves from activist efforts. He writes:
Chief among the obstacles … is a mistaken belief that anyone who takes a committed public stand, or at least an effective one, has to be a larger-than-life figure, someone with more time, energy, courage, vision or knowledge than a normal person could ever possess. This belief pervades our society, in part because the media tends not to represent heroism as the work of ordinary human beings, which it almost always is. ...
Loeb continues:
As a result of such images, many of us have developed what I call the perfect standard. Before we will allow ourselves to take action on an issue, we must be convinced … that we have perfect understanding of it, perfect moral consistency in our character, and that we be able to express our views with perfect eloquence.
King and other Movement heroes were just like the rest of us -- flawed. In U.S. culture, role models are often expected to be superhuman or to possess character beyond reproach. But heroes are not perfect; they are people. We must find a way to embrace human weakness and human accomplishment at the same time. If we do not, what do we say about our own capacity to serve the common good?
Conclusion
No amount of context can offset the disturbing revelation that King and other male leaders not only ignored sexism but were complicit in it.I May Not Get There With You may leave readers embarrassed by the sexism that seemingly permeated the Civil Rights Movement. One is tempted to ask, "Why must Dyson soil the reputations of these leaders? Why must our memories of the Movement be polluted? Couldn't he just leave well enough alone?"
It is Dyson himself who responds most eloquently to these questions. He writes:
King's failures were significant, but they pale in comparison to the majestic good he did. As King knew, character should never be judged in Manichaean terms. Human striving to do right must balance human wrongdoing, since, at its best, life is a tattered quilt of the good and the bad. King lived a life obsessed with helping others. He loved when he was hated. Her forgave when he was despised. ...
If he could forgive his enemies and friends for their faults, we can forgive him his. We need not idolize King to appreciate his worth; neither do we need to honor him by refusing to confront his weaknesses and his limitations. In assessing King's life, it would be immoral to value the abstract good of human perfection over concrete goods like justice, freedom, and equality -- goods that King valued and helped make more accessible in our national life.
Indeed, by looking into all aspects of King's character (some would say disparaging his character), Dyson builds a new vision of the Movement and casts its leaders in a new light. The result is powerful: As we begin to see King and other male activists more clearly, we also begin to see ourselves as their peers. We are imperfect, yet capable of enacting enormous good. Dyson's portrayal of the Movement not only is more honest than other historical accounts, it is perhaps more inspiring.
IN THE ROOT Ahmad speaks: "We gathered because we wanted to discuss ways to dismantle the patriarchy within. We pinpointed key ways to stand in support of black women survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence. We also vowed to be conscientious of our socialization into a society that prizes misogyny and sexism, and strategized ways to move from theory to praxis and from talk to action".-Ahmad Greene http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/01/stand_with_her_black_men_as_anti_rape_activists.html?wpisrc=topstories
