Thursday, November 9, 2017

Anthony Bourdain's Complicated Visit to Puerto Rico for 'Parts Unknown'


Every Sunday, we live vicariously through Anthony Bourdain's globe-hopping, face-stuffing adventures on CNN's Parts Unknown. This week, he takes us to Puerto Rico; yet the crystalline waters and cheerfully colored buildings he filmed in April have since been devastated by Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on September 20. In a preface at the beginning of the episode, Bourdain includes footage of the aftermath, explaining the stark change between the Puerto Rico he experienced and the Puerto Rico now. As Parts Unknown reports, 70 percent of Puerto Ricans are still without power, and 25 percent don't have access to fresh drinking water. Even back in the spring, the focus of the episode was Puerto Rico's grim economic situation—one of the worst in the world, according to Bourdain. Now, with financial limbo compounded by natural disaster, Bourdain wonders what will become of the island nation, and the 3.4 million Americans that inhabit it. "I hope people watch this episode and get a sense of who we are talking about when we talk about Puerto Rico—and what they have lost," he wrote in his field notes.

Where in the world is Anthony Bourdain?

Bourdain's journey to Puerto Rico took him all over the island, meeting with environmental activists in Valle Costero, journalists in San Juan, and chefs in Vieques. The overarching story is one in the same: Puerto Rico, though owned by one of the most powerful nations in the world and populated by American citizens, has suffered greatly as a colonized territory. At Campamento Rescate Playuela, a camp in Valle Costero where protestors are practicing civil disobedience to stop resort construction on the beach, one of the activists told Bourdain: "We don't produce 90 percent of what we consume. That makes us a third world country. A third world country owned by the most powerful nation." Puerto Rico's already crippled economy almost entirely depends on tourism, and now, in the wake of Maria, that desperately needed income has ceased. Though Puerto Ricans are extremely frustrated with their situation (one journalist in San Juan described it as "half-assed citizenship, no voice in your own destiny"), they remain in Puerto Rico because they don't want to give up on the country they love so dearly.

What did he eat?

This episode featured pork, plantains, and seafood—a holy trinity in Puerto Rican cuisine. At Casa Vieja restaurant in Ciales, an hour's drive from San Juan, Bourdain devoured pastel al caldero (pork marinated in bitter orange, taro root, green plantain, squash, garbanzo beans) with a side of blood sausage and corn fritters. A trip to a sustainable farm on the island of Vieques treated Bourdain to a veritable feast—mesquite-grilled grouper stuffed with lobster and white eggplant, mashed plantains with sofrito, and a strong shot of pitorro, or lágrima de monte (mountain liquor). And with other traditional dishes like coconut arepas, avocado salad, and slow-roasted pork on the menu, Bourdain got a taste of the wonderfully diverse food culture Puerto Rico has to offer. Slow-roasted pork seemed to be a particular favorite of his; he watched the pig cook over the fire with almost giddy anticipation. "A great idea that will never be anything less than great," he lauded. "Put a pig on a stick and turn him slowly, slowly over a low fire." Bourdain's journey ended with the ultimate be-all end-all of the cuisine—the staple mofongo, or mashed plantains, fried and mixed with pork rinds.

Quote of the week

As always, Bourdain had a lot of quotable moments this week. But it was only fitting to pick one that showed support for Puerto Rico. "Puerto Rico is, of course, easy to love. I sure do," said Bourdain. "Firstly, because Puerto Rican culture, as a New Yorker since age 17, was part of the cell tissue of the city I've lived in so long."

After Maria

After his visit, Bourdain circled back with singer-songwriter Alfonso "Tito" Auger, who closed out the Parts Unknown episode by singing "Salimos de Aquí" (We Come From Here) with his band, Fiel a la Vega. Post-Maria, Auger considers himself fortunate. His family is safe and his house is still intact. But the magnitude of the disaster—and the painfully slow path to recovery—has now sunk in. "We don't know for real what's going on. We've been told six months, nine months, a year to get electricity back, which is the most basic, fundamental thing that we need right now to get everything else going and running," he told Bourdain. "We don't understand why during the first two weeks, things didn't move faster. We feel like there's a lot of bureaucracy going on behind the scenes."
In the meantime, Auger is working to get Puerto Rico back on its feet. Fiel a la Vega has been playing concerts at refugee centers across Puerto Rico, and also booked relief benefit shows in the U.S. mainland for later this month. Still, the singer is worried for the future of his home. "We need a leadership that defends this country, that defends our people," Auger told Bourdain. "The people feel defenseless right now, you know? I stay in Puerto Rico because I love this country and I'll die for it … but the scenario is not looking good."

How to Help

Big names such as JetBlue and chef José Andrés are both running donations. You can also give aid through the main Global Giving fundraiser here.
Come back November 19 as we continue our regular recaps of Parts Unknown, when Bourdain heads to Seattle.

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A Temporary Marriage Makes More Sense Than Marriage for Life


Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt attend the WSJ Magazine 2015 Innovator Awards on November 4, 2015. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WSJ)

In November 1891, the British sexologist Havelock Ellis married the writer and lesbian Edith Lees. He was 32 and a virgin. And since he was impotent, they never consummated their union. After their honeymoon, the two lived separately in what he called an open marriage. The union lasted until Lees' death in 1916.

This is not what most would consider a model marriage. But perhaps because of its unusualness, Ellis was able to introduce an idea that remains as radical and tantalizing today as it was in his time: trial marriages, in which he envisioned couples exploring a temporary union of varying levels of commitment that allowed them to have sex, access birth control and have an easy divorce if desired, as long as no children were involved. The idea captured the minds of many progressives, including the British philosopher Bertrand Russell and the Denver judge and social reformer Ben B Lindsey, who embraced the new economic and cultural freedoms in the post-Victorian era.

While Ellis gave this type of temporary marriage a name, others had been talking about similar unions years before, including the German poet Johann von Goethe, who entertained the idea in his Elective Affinities (1809), and the American paleontologist E D Cope, who wrote in his book The Marriage Problem (1888) that marriages should start with a five-year contract that either spouse could end or renew with a further 10- or 15-year contract and, if all still went well after that, a permanent contract.

In 1966, the American anthropologist Margaret Mead suggested a two-step version of marriage – an 'individual commitment' that would fit college students of limited means and could be easily dissolved or else converted into a 'parental commitment' if they were ready and willing to take on the obligations of children. In 1971, the Maryland legislator Lena King Lee proposed a Marriage-Contractual Renewal Bill so couples could annul or renew their marriage every three years. In 2007, a German legislator proposed a seven-year contract; in 2010, a women's group in the Philippines proposed a 10-year marital contract; and in 2011, Mexico City legislators suggested a reform to the civil code that would allow couples to decide on the length of their marital commitment, with a minimum of two years.

Clearly, lifelong marriage was due an overhaul. Despite all the talk, however, no laws were ever passed, and the idea of renewable marriages remained just that – an idea. But temporary marriages have actually been successfully practised for centuries, among Peruvian Indians in the Andes, in 15th-century Indonesia, in ancient Japan and the Islamic world, and elsewhere. And it appears that we might be ready to put them into practice again.

In a recent survey, many Millennials indicated that they'd be open to a 'beta marriage', in which couples would commit to each other for a certain number of years – two years seemed to be the 'right' amount – after which they could renew, renegotiate or split, as Jessica Bennett wrote in Time magazine last year. While it wasn't a scientific survey, it points to a willingness to see marriage as something other than 'until death', which, in fact, it is not. In 2013, 40 per cent of newlyweds had been married at least once before, according to the US think tank the Pew Research Center. Since 10 per cent of first marriages don't even make it past five years, a renewable marriage contract makes more sense than ever.

Our current contract – 'until death' – might have worked when people didn't live all that long (according to the American sociologist and author Stephanie Coontz, the average marriage in colonial times lasted under 12 years); or when many women died in childbirth, freeing men to marry multiple times (which they did); and when men of means needed women to cook, clean and caretake, and women needed men for financial security. But that isn't why we marry nowadays. Still, we congratulate couples on their anniversaries and get nostalgic as the years add up – 15, 25, 50, 75. Are they years of wedded bliss? Not always; many long-term marriages are loveless and sexless, and sometimes full of anger and resentments. But if they make it until a spouse dies – success!
Longevity alone shouldn't be the marker of a happy, healthy marriage. Rather than staying in marriages 'until death', renewable marriages would allow partners to tweak their marital contract accordingly, or agree that it's beyond tweaking and end it without the shock or drama of a contentious divorce or lingering doubts about what went wrong. And as the late Nobel-winning economist Gary S Becker noted, if every couple had to personalise their marital contract based on what they consider important, there would be no more societal stigma or judgment over what are essentially private decisions.

If society is truly concerned about the decline in marriage, perhaps it's time to rethink 'until death'. And if brides- and grooms-to-be truly want a happy marriage, then it is time for them to take responsibility for defining their goals and expectations in a renewable contract, and stating – out loud or on paper – 'I choose you again' as often as they mean it.
Vicki Larson
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This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

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The Spiritual Consequences of Alcohol Consumption


By Zahrah Sita

Although it is mass produced, mass promoted, legal, and ingested by a multitude of people all over the world, most people don't ever consider or understand the spiritual consequences of drinking alcohol.

Let's begin by taking a look at the etymology of the Word alcohol. Etymology means the root of the word… where it is derived from.



The word "Alcohol" comes from the Arabic "al-kuhl" which means "BODY EATING SPIRIT", and gives root origins to the English term for "ghoul". In Middle Eastern folklore, a "ghoul" is an evil demon thought to eat human bodies, either as stolen corpses or as children.

The words "alembic" and "alcohol", both metaphors for aqua vitae or "life water" and "spirit", often refer to a distilled liquid that came from magical explorations in Middle Eastern alchemy.

In the words of writer and health enthusiast, Jason Christoff –  "In alchemy, alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its' use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies (why do you think we call certain alcoholic beverages "SPIRITS?"). That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul (we were sent here with) leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage. Our bodies are cars for spirits. If one leaves, another can take the car for a ride. Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity."

I became aware of this phenomenon years ago when I was given a spiritual vision. In this vision, I was transported as an observer above a popular bar and nightclub. Above the venue where a variety of ghoul-like entities. Inside the bar were people drinking alcohol, socializing, dancing, and so on. I watched as certain people became very drunk. I saw their souls, while connected through a thread, exited the body. I understood that the soul was leaving the body because of the great discomfort of being in a body highly intoxicated with alcohol. When the soul exited the body, other non-benevolent entities entered or latched on to their vacant shells. Once the entities took hold of the body, they used the body to play out all kinds of dark acts, such as violence, low-level sexual encounters, destructive behaviors, rape, and more.

Years later, while reading a book called Mans Eternal Quest, by Paramahansa Yogananda, this spiritual master clearly explained the exact same thing as I was shown in the vision.

I began to look back over my life and remember situations where I saw dark spirits hanging around people who had become very drunk. Let me elaborate a bit when I say I saw these entities … I have had the abilities of clairvoyance (the ability to perceive things beyond the natural range of the senses … which can include: ESP, extrasensory perception, sixth sense, psychic powers, second sight; telepathy, and more) , clairaudience ( the ability to perceive sounds or words from outside sources in the spirit world), and the experience of being a spiritual intuitive and empath since childhood. I have the ability to see energies and spiritual manifestations that most people don't see. As I looked back over my life I could remember many incidents of encountering non-benevolent spirits in the presence of intoxicated individuals. I also have had experiences of looking into the eyes of a few people who were surely "possessed" by dark energies that were not their own.

I also remember a psychology course I once took. In part of this course, we studied advertising and the effects on humans. We looked at the advertising for alcohol. A master teacher of this subject illuminated the fact that most alcohol advertisements are embedded with hidden messages and images – not typically perceivable to the common sight, yet perceived through the subconscious. Knowing how powerful the subconscious is in our decision making, feelings, reactions, beliefs, etc., the slick sales teams of alcohol (as well as tobacco and other products) used this sinister technique to trick us into buying their products and joining the societal cult of mental apathy and cultural obedience. Many of these hidden messages and images were extremely sexual – working to influence some of the basest urges and primal nature of humans. Let this example bring you to a place of curiosity and questioning. Why have the marketing teams felt the need to trick us and coerce us through subliminal messages to buy products that are harmful to the human body and to our soul?

How many times have you or someone you know, after becoming quite intoxicated with alcohol, behaved in a manner uncommon to them? Perhaps you experienced the changing of voice, violence, sexual promiscuity, ingesting of harmful substances, destruction to property, conflictual behavior, and other negative expressions. Consider these experiences and ask yourself – is this the manifestation of light, love, and positivity? Do these occurrences represent a path of consciousness and health?
It is a known by many that ingesting alcohol depresses the nervous system, kills brain cells, is toxic to the liver, weakens the immune system, and has many other harmful effects.  We are taught that long-term alcohol use can lead to unwanted weight gain, diseases of the liver, lowering of intelligence, and negative effects on hormones. Drinking alcohol while pregnant can lead to birth defects, mental retardation, and deformities in the developing fetus. Yet still, it is mass promoted and supported by our mainstream culture. Have you ever considered that alcohol is a slick tool of the supporters of the Matrix (global mind control and oppression program) to keep people on a path of disempowerment and sickness?

We have to ask why is alcohol legal throughout most of the world, yet in many countries, and specifically the United States, psychedelics are illegal. The conscious and safe use of psychedelics or "visionary medicines"are known to assist in mind expansion, to initiate spiritual experiences where people have communed with the divine, healed numerous physical and spiritual ailments, increase intelligence, help to re-pattern the brain in a positive way, assist people in aligning with their soul's purpose, and have inspired many people to create great works of art and other innovative creations. It seems that these substances would definitely be banned and discouraged if there truly is an agenda seeking to oppress the human potential and keep us "in the dark" regarding who we are as spiritual beings, our innate potential, and the path to empowerment.

As we strive to heal, awaken, and transform our world – I pray that we wise up to the dirty trick played upon humanity in regards to alcohol. Non-benevolent forces have wanted to keep us oppressed, disempowered, and asleep.

How many of us have seen families broken and lives lost because of alcohol and alcoholism?
Do you think it makes us smarter or healthier or overall better people?

It's time to change things.

Let's stand behind replacing the rampant abuse of alcohol with more health enhancing practices and activities –
and learn how to live awakened and empowered lives!

Before I close this writing, I want to share a little more about the history of the word alcohol. There have been some people who look into the etymology and discover this explanation –
"alcohol (n.)  – 1540s (early 15c. as alcofol), "fine powder produced by sublimation," from Medieval Latin alcohol "powdered ore of antimony," from Arabic al-kuhul "kohl," the fine metallic powder used to darken the eyelids, from kahala "to stain, paint."

Paracelsus (1493-1541) used the word to refer to a fine powder but also a volatile liquid. By 1670s it was being used in English for "any sublimated substance, the pure spirit of anything," including liquids. Sense of "intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor" is first recorded 1753, short for alcohol of wine, which was extended to "the intoxicating element in fermented liquors." In organic chemistry, the word was extended 1850 to the class of compounds of the same type as this."

Upon further research, we can find that in ancient Egypt, the eyes of both men and women were lined top and bottom with a thick black powder known as kohl, kajal, or mesdemet. The outlined eye resembled the almond-shaped eye of the falcon god Horus observed in the Eye of Horus glyph. It was believed that this shape invoked the god´s protection and warded off evil spirits.
Yet if one were to dig deeper, as a true scientist, researcher, or truth seeker does, you will also discover these interesting facts…
  1. Dr. Rachel Hajar, an accomplished modern-day editor, author and medical advisor, while researching an article on alcohol for her online medical journal, found additional meanings in ancient Arabic texts;
  1. Al kol: Genie or spirit that takes on varied shapes or a supernatural creature in Arabic mythology.
  1. Al kol: Any drug or substance that takes away the mind or covers it."
  1. The word alcohol is also linked to the fixed star in astronomy known as Algol- also known as "the Demon's head."
  1. The current Arabic name for alcohol (ethanol) is الغول al-ġawl – properly meaning "spirit" or "demon".
It is not a coincidence that alcohol has often been referred to as spirits. There is a deep history behind this intoxicating substance. There are layers of information throughout our culture, sometimes we have to look below the surface of things to find the fullness of truth. I encourage you to deeply consider the information shared here, look at the effects of alcohol in your life, in the lives of the people you know, and in society at large. Make conscious, informed, and health enhancing decisions. The more people who awaken to truth and seek health and liberation from mind control agendas, the more likely we are to make positive changes and co-create a world we feel good about living in.
Source: TheCostaRicanNews.com By Zahrah Sita

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Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Report Sheds Light On How Many People Die From Overdosing On Marijuana


November 8, 2017

Marijuana legalization has been the talk of North America for years now. It's arguable that one of the biggest campaign promises made by Canada's new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was his goal to legalize cannabis countrywide. In the US, cannabis is legal in some form in 23 states, and with that we see a staggering number we should all consider. The number of Americans who fatally overdosed on cannabis in 2015 was: 0.
No one. Not a single person.
This of course is a huge increase from the year before which was also, zero. So it begs the questions: why is marijuana illegal? And why are other substances like alcohol and pharmaceuticals legal, yet they actively contribute to killing people in large numbers?
Hemp and cannabis became illegal back in 1937 for an all too common reason, it threatened the businesses of powerful people. You can grab the full ridiculously political story on that in an article I wrote about hemp and how they used cannabis to outlaw it back in 1937.

Legal Dangerous Substances

I'm not going to be one to say that it's the substance's fault all the time, because it's not. I'm also not going to say whether things need to be legal or illegal right now. Instead I'm going to focus on the reality of what is happening.
Alcohol is legal, and very accessible in our society. It's seen as a good time and something we can drink daily to relax after work. This year, the substance has aided in killing Americans at a rate that hasn't been seen in roughly 35 years according to the Washington Post.[1] Reports state that more than 30,700 Americans died from alcohol-induced causes in 2015. This number does not include those who died as a result of alcohol related deaths like drunk driving or other accidents. If it did, the number would be close to 100,000.
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According to a 2006 report in American Scientist, "alcohol is more lethal than many other commonly abused substances." The report goes on to also mention:
Drinking a mere 10 times the normal amount of alcohol within 5 or 10 minutes can prove fatal, whereas smoking or eating marijuana might require something like 1,000 times the usual dose to cause death.
But it may not be fair to say that marijuana doesn't have downsides because clearly it does. It's speculated that it can cause brain developmental challenges in people under the age of 25 who smoke regularly, as it affects grey matter and it can of course also lead to drugged driving which can also be dangerous.[3] But are the dangers as bad as alcohol? And can we truly compare therapeutic values? What about when we look at pharmaceuticals?
Here are 2 graphs from the National Institute on Drug Abuse:
Looking at reported cases in the US, we see that prescription drugs prescribed by a doctor, as well as pain reliever addictions, have led to a combined 42,000 or so deaths in 2014. This is even more than alcohol! Strictly from a statistics point of view, prescription drugs, while having value in other areas, come with a great number of downsides and also happen to be the biggest business. Is there a conflict of interest in handing out these drugs when the ability to make money is attached? Do more drugs than are needed enter our society? The obvious answer is yes, when you look at how often drugs are not only wrongly prescribed, but are also the first option to fix something fickle before we even look at the potential behind lifestyle changes.

Public Demand

Although the public in North America in general seems to be pushing for the legalization of marijuana, it is still opposed heavily. Some groups include the pharmaceutical lobby, who would lose big in profits, as well as police unions who would lose federal budget for the war on drugs. You can begin to see our society runs less on common sense and more on political and monetary rigidity with groups all working against each other in their own interest.
But to be honest, legalization is a whole other topic, because I believe it is not quite as good as people hype it up to be. Some challenges that would come in include who controls marijuana growth, the quality of what is made available, and the manipulation of that product.
Interestingly enough, among all 2016 presidential contenders, Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only one who outright supports the legalization of marijuana. As of now the substance is classified as a Schedule 1 drug, up there with heroin and LSD. (which is a whole other topic of discussion)

Final Note

Entirely blaming a substance for the cause of people's deaths and addictions is not an effective way of looking at the problem, nor is regulation of those substances going to be the answer in helping people. We have a large disconnect in our society in helping people with mental, emotional, and physical challenges and we are obsessed with isolating issues into black and white when most of the time they are not. I believe many of these deaths are a sign of other challenges in our society that we are opposed to looking at such as a lack of enjoyment and fulfilment in our jobs, not doing what we love, not processing our emotions, treating illness as purely physical and so forth. Until we can address many of these factors and implement solutions, we will always be creating addicts who find substances to get addicted to in order to compensate for other areas of their lives. This isn't to say things like alcohol and prescriptions drugs are good and therefore should be so easily available to people, but more so to suggest that we all look at the full picture.


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Thousands of cave paintings discovered on an uninhabited island shed light on an early human civilization

Original Puerto Rican Art

By On 10/30/17 at 11:01 AM

A huge collection of rock art has been discovered in the deep, dark chambers of the cave systems on Puerto Rico's Mona Island.
The incredible collection was unveiled following three years of exploration and surveys by researchers from the U.K. and Puerto Rico. Researchers traveled into around 70 cave systems in a bid to discover more about the indigenous population living on the island before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493.
Humans are thought to have first arrived on Mona Island between 3000 and 2000 B.C. Its population expanded with the emergence of the Taíno culture between the seventh and 11th centuries A.D. The 7-by-4-mile island is currently uninhabited.


Charcoal drawn face. Project El Corazon del Caribe
In the latest paper, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers found the cave systems had some of the greatest diversity of rock art from indigenous populations across the whole Caribbean. They found thousands of different motifs drawn, painted and scratched onto subterranean walls.

Indigenous rock art from Mona island, Taino "sun" motif. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Study co-author Alice Samson, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, U.K., said this is the first time any of the rock art from the island's extensive cave systems has ever been dated. Their initial findings show some of the images date to at least the 13th century, showing people were exploring the subterranean landscape long before the Europeans arrived.
She told Newsweek that at the moment, they have only dated a very small selection of the rock at found on Mona Island—the current research provides a foundation for a far wider interpretation of how humans were using caves in the Caribbean hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.

Charcoal drawn face and its reflection. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Images found in the Mona Island caves included human, animal and nature motifs. "For the millions of indigenous peoples living in the Caribbean before European arrival, caves represented portals into a spiritual realm, and therefore these new discoveries of the artists at work within them captures the essence of their belief systems and the building blocks of their cultural identity," co-author Jago Cooper, from the British Museum, said in a statement.
Analysis showed a variety of techniques were used to create the rock art. Some were painted, drawn with charcoal or scraped into the walls using either their fingers or finger-sized tools. Scientists plan to investigate the artistic choices that went into the design, location and choice of material further.

In this image, the artist uses the contrast between the darker cave wall and the white design. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Initial findings suggest indigenous people were visiting the dark zones of caves specifically for the purpose of producing rock art. There is evidence of people making complex paints from plant gums. "This is evidence for the assemblage of a pre-prepared art-kit," the researchers wrote.
Concluding, they add: "An important step in understanding rock art anywhere in the world is the reconstruction of the social and cultural context of its production and use. To this end the excellent preservation on Mona has shed light on a widespread practice allowing for the first time to date Caribbean cave art and reconstruct native paint recipes and techniques."

The paint on this example has been thickly applied with the fingers. Project El Corazon del Caribe
A series of figures. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Anthropomorphic figures. Project El Corazon del Caribe
A "crying" face motif on the cave wall. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Indigenous finger-fluted motifs on cave ceiling. Project El Corazon del Caribe
The team has only dated a small fraction of the rock art so far. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Design possibly representing a stylized feather head ornament. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Geometric design with overlapping marks. Project El Corazon del Caribe
Figure motif. Project El Corazon del Caribe

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In 1898, White Supremacists Killed 60+ African Americans in One of Deadliest Mass Shootings in U.S.



If anyone has doubts about the illness called white supremacy, read this and other posts and other reports to learn there is really only hate from fear that drives it all...guns don't kill but hate does through any means it can...

https://www.google.com/search?q=white+supremacist+kill+in+1866&oq=white+supremacist+kill+in+1866&aqs=chrome..69i57.17407j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8Guests
  • Rev. Dr. William Barber
    president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. He's the leader of Moral Mondays and the author of The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement.
The Las Vegas attack on Sunday has been called the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Bishop William Barber joins us in studio for an extended interview to discuss another, less known mass attack: the infamous Wilmington massacre of 1898, when white supremacists seized armed control of the North Carolina town and killed at least 60 African-American residents, drove hundreds more out of town, burned down the local African-American newspaper and installed a former Confederate officer as the new mayor. Barber also discusses gun violence and violent policies in the aftermath of the Las Vegas attack.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we turn to Part 2 of our conversation with Bishop William Barber. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas. Sunday night's massacre by 64-year-old Stephen Paddock at a country music festival left 59 people dead and 527 others wounded. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was suspending a bill that would make gun silencers widely available. Ryan appeared to leave open the possibility that lawmakers would take the bill up again later in the fall. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected calls Tuesday by some Democrats for new gun control laws in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre. At the White House on Monday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was not the time to talk about gun control.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we're going to Part 2 of our conversation with Bishop William Barber, presented with the Andrew Goodman Foundation Hidden Heroes Award "for courageously defending the moral values of American democracy," presented with it on Tuesday night, joining us now, though we've interviewed him a number of times, for the first time in our studio here in New York.
It's great to have you with us to continue this conversation, Bishop Barber. Respond to the Las Vegas massacre.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: First of all, deep, deep sadness. I had a member of my staff at Repairers who had someone that was actually in the crowd, and so it touched very personally.
I'm deeply concerned, in several ways, about the conversation. First of all, for those who say we shouldn't politicize this right now, I agree; It shouldn't be politicized, it should be a moral issue; and it shouldn't be now, it should have been long before now. What is this commitment that we have to guns? What is this strange psychosis that when these things happen, we want to blame everything but the guns? What kind of stranglehold does the NRA—what kind of bloodthirst commitment do we have?
And, you know, this culture, American culture, we have to own, has been—had a history of violence. I know you've been very careful to say this is the worst lone gunman, but there have been other instances throughout history where you've had a massive number of people.
But I'm concerned, deeply, if killing children—remember when that happened?—didn't change us; if congressmen on both sides of the aisle getting shot didn't change us; if the best we can do, or certain extremist politicians can do, who claim they are pro-life, can say we might suspend silencers, but we'll bring it back up.
And as I heard the president's press person say—I think she was asked would silencers—you know, would there still be silencers? She said something to the effect it wouldn't have really made a difference. So, you mean if the people couldn't have heard the shots, and if he had had the ability to let off 500 or 600 rounds unheard, it wouldn't have made a difference? I mean, what—the only purpose for a silencer is to kill people. It's not something used in hunting.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, that's how the police found him.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: That's how the police found him.
AMY GOODMAN: That's how people looked up and saw he was shooting—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: —from high—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Exactly, exactly, exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: —he was shooting from a high story of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah. And I just keep—how much more death do we have to see? How much more of this commitment to violence? Now, as a preacher, I'm reminded of the scripture in the Bible, two of them—one that's in Ezekiel, which says your politicians have become like wolves whose policies devour the people. The second part of the scripture says, "And your preachers have covered up for the politicians." Where are all the so-called white evangelicals now? Where are you? You know, where are you when policies about healthcare are passed that are going to destroy people's lives? Where are you when people aren't getting a living wage? Where are you now with gun violence? Where are you, Franklin Graham and others? Where are you now? I think Jesus said something like "If you live by the sword, you die by the sword." Where are those voices now? And that's a great concern in this country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we had a reporter on just yesterday from The Guardian who had done an investigation of gun ownership in America, and they concluded that 3 percent of gun owners in America own almost 50 percent of all the guns. That's just a very small group of people—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —that basically have these amazing arsenals. And yet they have such influence over how gun legislation is—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —is developed in the country.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: And isn't it strange when you look back in history, when you had, for instance, the Black Panthers carrying guns, and Ronald Reagan was governor. All of a sudden they wanted gun control. You remember that?
AMY GOODMAN: Right, when the Black Panthers marched on the state Capitol—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: You remember that? That's right. That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: —in Sacramento, California.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Now you have people that want to have—be able to carry concealed weapons on legislative floors. They want all these open gun laws. You can buy as many as you want. I think in Nevada the guns could be taken right into a hotel. But at this point, the conversation should be about life versus death. The problem is, we've got this deep moral problem. And that is that it's not just about guns being violent. We are having debates in this country right now over passing violent policies.
Remember—Coretta Scott King said something we ought to remember. She was asked one time, "What do you think about violence, since your husband was assassinated?" And Coretta gave a very profound answer. She said, "Violence is not just the killing of my husband." She said, "Violence is denying kids education. Violence is denying people healthcare. Violence is denying people wages. Violence is taking people's culture." And then she said, "Even an apathetic attitude that doesn't address these other forms of violence is a form of violence." We truly have got to decide in this country, and it's going to have to be a mass movement that helps us decide, whether we're going to focus on violence or nonviolence, not in terms of protesting guns, but even in terms of the kind of public policy that's being pushed.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned that we have said this is the largest massacre by a single gunman in history. So talk about history, Bishop Barber.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: History. If you go back to the 1800s, right after slavery, the Reconstruction movement, but then what was called the Deconstruction movement, 1872, the founding of the Ku Klux Klan, was about violence. And a lot of that violence was directed toward whites, trying to get them not to work with African Americans. If you look at the period of time between 1898 to the 1920s, deep violence. Black men were hung at an average of one per day. There were no laws against lynching. You have the Wilmington riots and coup d'état, duly elected black and white people run out of office, black people killed, in 1898. You've got the Springfield riots in—
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, stick with Wilmington.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Also, Juan, you wrote about this in your book News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media. It's an astounding story that most people don't know about.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Astounding, yeah. November 10, 1898—and by the way, let me just put a hook on this. Most of the so-called Confederate statues were raised, 80 percent of them, from 1898 to 1922. 1898 was the Wilmington riots. 1922 was the year, I think, before Leonidas Dyer from St. Louis entered a bill into Congress to make an anti-lynching bill, that passed in the House. He was a Republican—of that day, not this day. And it failed in the Senate.
Now I'll go back to 1898. November 10th, after two years of violent propaganda, led by Charles B. Aycock, who became governor of the state of North Carolina, and Josephus Daniels, who was the owner of The News & Observer, they began to say, if we don't remove these black and white fusionist politicians from office, our white women and white children will be under threat. And they did it to the point that by November 10th there was so much vile in the political atmosphere, listen, so much vile in conversation and language, that the language led to the violence.
AMY GOODMAN: What was so unusual about North Carolina and its politics at the time?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: What was so unusual at that time is by—and from 1878 to around 1872, and then later on, North Carolina had more African Americans in the Legislature than it has today. It was extraordinarily progressive. In the first four years, they rewrote the Constitution. They made public education a right, which is not even a right in the federal Constitution. They passed equal protection under the law before equal protection was passed in the 14th Amendment. They opened up voting—of course, for men, not for women. They were even talking about labor rights. They put in the Constitution that every person had a right to the fruit of their own labor. They said that the first principle of a Christian and a civilized society was beneficent provision to the poor. They put that language in the Constitution. The—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, this was an alliance of African Americans and—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Fusion politics.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —and white Republicans, for the most part.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right, Republicans of that day.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Of that day, right.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Lincoln Republicans. You have to say that, because sometimes—and that's how we modeled the Moral Monday movement, off of fusion politics, intersectional politics. And it was powerful. And it was happening all over the South. But by 1896, you had Plessy v. Ferguson. 1883, you had the overturning of the 1875 Civil Rights Act. And there was this push to recodify and institute fully white supremacy, white nationalism, into the laws.
And so, Wilmington was a powerful city. It was 50 percent African-American. The wealthiest man in North Carolina was an African American in Wilmington. And it was the closest port to Africa and Europe. And Wilmington would have ended up being Atlanta, that kind of city. And it was targeted. We can shut it down. And so, white supremacists got together. Newspaper, politicians ran a campaign. And on November the 10th, they brought a Gatling gun into Wilmington. They burned down the black newspaper, that was led by the mulatto's son—he was a white governor, he had a black mama—burned it down. And they went on a killing spree. And it was endorsed by churches. Some preachers stood in their pulpits and said, "If we have to fill the Cape Fear River with the blood of the"—I won't say the word—"then let it be, so that we can return the government to its right ownership of the white man."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: They not only ran the African-American elected officials out of town, they—as I recall, they installed a former Confederate officer as the new mayor—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: That's right. That's right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —in the coup that they organized.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: They organized a coup, because the goal was to—they had already begun to take over the Legislature, to some degree, by re-entering Jim Crow—entering Jim Crow laws in voting. But after that riot, they sent telegraphs all over the country—this riot predates the Springfield riots—saying, "This is how you return power." And by 1902, the last congressperson—black congressperson was from North Carolina. His name was George White. He was put out of the United States Congress, and it took 90 years.
Now, here's the—here's one of the curious things about this, Amy. It took 90 years for North Carolina to have another black person in the United States Congress. Voting went to almost zero in the black community. And what people don't know is that there was so much fear—right?—around what had happened that it just froze. So all of the progress of Reconstruction was turned back, was turned back. And it was tied to this massacre.
AMY GOODMAN: And Josephus Daniels became—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: He was rewarded secretary of the Navy.
AMY GOODMAN: Woodrow Wilson.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Woodrow Wilson, who also played Birth of a Nation in the Oval Office.
AMY GOODMAN: Which became this recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: That's right, because it glorified the Ku Klux Klan, and it said—told lies about fusionist white and black politicians. And he played it in the Oval Office. The statue in Charlottesville, that we have recently been talking about, was raised really in celebration to Woodrow Wilson, the white supremacists believing we have a friend in the White House, right?
AMY GOODMAN: He would later become appointed, by FDR, the ambassador to Mexico.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: OK, that's right. So there's a lot of this history to go around. Charles B. Aycock becomes governor. They claim that he was the educational governor, but you know what he did? He went to whites and said, "If you don't want your children to be like these black children, because we're going to make it so you have to have a certain educational level to vote, you better let me raise taxes on your property." So he used a race argument to get white Southerners who were racist in North Carolina to allow him to raise taxes off their property to build public schools.
AMY GOODMAN: So go back to the massacre—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: —that day. How many people are believed to have died?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, there's some estimates that say 2 to 3 percent of the city. There's some that say there were at least 60 African Americans alone that were shot and killed. We don't know how many people were killed, because they had to run into the swamp or could have been drowned, couldn't—bodies may have never been found.
And it was not written in history. This is the thing I wanted to get to. This was not put into history books until, in the 1980s, Dr. Tim Tyson and a senator, who later died, a black senator from Wilmington, began to force and push it. Irv Joyner, who works with me, was a part of that team.
So you're talking about when the discussions were around which counties would be covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, you know, those counties are not covered, those counties in that part of the state of North Carolina. We only have 40 counties that were covered. So the argument is, there really wasn't that much white supremacy in the other 60 counties. Those counties weren't covered, because the testimony of what happened in Wilmington and what happened in southeast North Carolina was not a part of the testimony before the Congress when the decision was made about which counties would be covered under preclearance.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: It wasn't until about a hundred years later that they established a commission—right?—in North Carolina—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: A hundred years, that's right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —that uncovered all the facts. And all these newspapers then did public apologies—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —for their role in instigating the violence.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: And we still haven't talked about the number—the people whose land was stolen and taken, who were thrust into poverty. Again, you're talking about people who were doing very well, black people in Wilmington. So it is a horrific story. But it ought to remind us of what can happen when you have vile, racist, xenophobic language coming from the highest levels of the government.
AMY GOODMAN: And Josephus Daniels, in the newspaper, because a lot of people couldn't read—
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —used cartoons?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: He used cartoons, political satire. But the cartoons—one of them has a picture of a black person with a top hat on like Abraham Lincoln, but he has vampire teeth and vampire claws. In one hand, he's holding a white woman. In the other hand, he's pushing back white men. And, of course, the image there would be that if we don't stop these black politicians, your women and your children are at risk, which has always been a tool of racists and white nationalists and white supremacists.
That is why, today, it concerns me that—the way in which too much of the corporate media let Trump and his allies off. That is why I'm deeply concerned today when we have a Charlottesville, and everybody focuses on the death of the young girl. And we should. My god, ugly, mean, a violent death, running through a crowd with a car. But the problem is, when we stop there and we—and people denounce the hate, in that moment, which almost everybody will do—I mean, Trump had a problem doing it, but almost everybody, politician, has political sense enough to say, "I'm against that." But being against that doesn't mean you are against the white nationalist sentiments that led to that, you see? And so you can actually be against that kind of hate. We had white politicians that signed off on the apology of Wilmington, but none of them have talked about we need to expand preclearance coverage to all of those counties.
That is why I think media—and I love what Democracy Now! does, but we've got to get also the other media to begin to look at the policies of white supremacy. That's why it bothers me that—it's not that Trump used racism and code words and overt words, not just coded words, to win the presidency and to stir up certain racial fears. It's that he did it with such ease and almost with the corporate media, and even his opponents, not knowing how to call him out on it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you, because we had on—in relationship to Charlottesville, we had on Wes Bellamy, the young councilman in Charlottesville, who actually originally introduced the legislation to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee—first African American elected to the City Council of Charlottesville. And—
AMY GOODMAN: What's interesting, Juan, is you met him in Austin well before all of this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right, well before all this stuff happened, in a conference of progressive local officials. And he told a story that he not only was able to get the vote for the statue, but initially the City Council was rebuffing him, because he was only one African American on the council, and he couldn't get the votes. So he told them, "OK, you don't want to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. Give me a reparations package." And he insisted on a pool of money to begin to provide scholarships and job training and all of this money for the African-American community of Charlottesville, and the council gladly gave him that, rather than vote on the statue.
AMY GOODMAN: Eight million dollars.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right, $8 million. And I said to myself, "Wait a second. Everybody's talking about reparations at the national level. What if this idea of reparations at the local level started being introduced in city councils in areas where there were large African-American majorities?" So Bellamy gets the package, and then, a few months later, he's able to win over a couple more votes, and then they pass the Robert E. Lee statue. So he got both. And that's when the Klan started mobilizing and targeting Charlottesville.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah. Well, it says a couple of things. Number one, the fact that he raised the issue of reparations is very important. It also says something about the power of these statues and why people need to understand that they were not raised immediately after the Civil War, but these statues were raised to celebrate the recodification of white supremacy and the resurrection of white supremacy in the law.
But then, I think it also says the reparations that—the scholarships are great, but we also have to have a repeal of the laws that perpetuate the kind of systemic racism and classism. And we need black, whites and brown people committed to understand how racism hurts everybody. For instance, 20—over 20 states, mostly in the South, resisted Obamacare, Medicaid expansion. Now, why did they name it Obamacare? That is to racialize it, right? It's the Affordable Care Act. So, most of the Southern states resisted, and you could hear in their language of state legislators—"This is going to help these lazy people that are not doing"—when, in fact, most of the people are working. They racialized the Affordable Care Act. But in North Carolina, for instance, 346,000 of the people that would have been helped are white. When I went up to Appalachia in North Carolina, in Mitchell County, and shared with them, "Do you realize a thousand people in this county would have healthcare?"—and this county is 99 percent white, 89 percent Republican—ain't no black people up here. So, they use racialized arguments to pass policies that hurt everybody. That is something that we've got to begin to do. I wish that in the healthcare debate we had talked about lives being lost and we had called it racist and classist.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that President Trump is a white supremacist?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: I do. And I think he's a white nationalist. And when you look at the policies—now, again, I'm talking about policy. People say, "Well, you don't know what's in his heart." I know what's in the heart of his policies. And, as I've said, it's not just about the statues. It's about the statutes. And I don't think he's the only one that, in terms, embraces white nationalist, white supremacist ideology.
Now, having said that, what do I mean? White nationalists are against—are for voter suppression. Mr. Politician, Trump, Ryan, McConnell, any of them, Tim Scott, where do you stand on restoring the Voting Rights Act? Since it was 52 years, and we have less voting rights now than we had 52 years ago. And we've had 1,562 days of filibuster. White nationalists are against healthcare for everybody. Mr. Politician, where do you stand on healthcare for everybody? White nationalists are against the immigrant community and against immigrant justice. Mr. Politician, I don't need to know if you've got a black friend. Where do you stand on immigrant justice? Mr. Politician, 54 percent of the African-American community make less than a living wage. Sixty-two million Americans make less than a living wage. The majority of people without a living wage are white. The majority of poor people are white. But in per—but within the race, more black people. Where do you stand on addressing poverty? Because, you know, white supremacists and white nationalists don't believe in living wages for everybody.
If you do that kind of analysis, you either are a white supremacist or white nationalist, or you're engaged in policies that embolden and encourage white supremacy, which is why I believe Unite the Right chose Charlottesville, because just like that statue was raised to celebrate a white supremacist in the White House, I believe the reason they chose that statue, that was actually commissioned in 1917, the year after Woodrow Wilson played Birth of a Nation, that it was a signal. Richard Spencer said in one of his speeches that it was Trump's talk about immigrants that basically said Trump is my man.
But it's not just Trump. And that's the last thing I want to say. We've got to be very careful, because there's not a penny difference between the policy of Trump, the policies of Ryan, the policies of McConnell. It's style. You know, Tim Scott, who's black, from South Carolina, went in to talk to Trump about racism. But Tim Scott is not for restoring the Voting Rights Act. Tim Scott is against—was against the Affordable Care Act and expansion of Medicaid.
AMY GOODMAN: Who the White House called Tom Scott.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right. I mean, excuse me—yeah, right, the White House called him—I don't know why they did that, but… You know, in his state, that needs—so, we've got to have a real conversation about racism and poverty. And if we have it, I think we can connect black and white and brown people in a way that can be transformational. That's what this Poor People's Campaign is going to be about.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can we talk about what you did with Moral Mondays, for people around the country who might not have heard of this movement in North Carolina? In the end, there was a Republican sweep in the 2016 election, for example, of governors around the country. You actually succeeded in getting a Democratic governor elected in North Carolina.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah. The Moral Monday movement, that was built on top of seven years of the Forward Together Moral Movement, that eventually ended up with nearly 200 coalition partners around a—what we call a 14-point agenda with five clear areas—economic sustainability addressing poverty and labor rights; educational equality and public education for every child; healthcare for all; protecting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and women's health; addressing the injustices of the criminal justice system that affect black, brown and poor white people; and demanding equal protection under the law; protecting women's rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights; and voting rights, not only protecting them, but expanding. Those were our goals.
And by doing that, we took the model of 1800s and worked and built fusion politics. We challenged Democrats. People don't know President Obama would have lost in 2008 if we had only had one day of election. He won because of same-day registration, early voting, which was an outgrowth of the movement. In 2013, extremists came into office, like Trump, and they began, day one, first 50 days, rolling back everything—healthcare, money for public education, going after voting rights. Some people said, "We'll just wait 'til the next election." But a group of us said, "No, we don't wait 'til the next election. We have to challenge this now." They said, "Well, they have a supermajority. They're going to vote against us." OK, they're going to vote against us. But they can't vote in the dark. They can't vote undercover. We have to let people know. We have to show a unified fusion face on these issues.
And lastly, the first time, we had 17 people to go in—black, white, Jew, Muslim, Christian, a woman with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair that they ended up arresting, who was fighting for healthcare. That led to more than a thousand people getting arrested over the next 30 weeks—people of all different races, colors, creeds and party. It put a broad face on the problem. We learned this year, Amy, in a study, that the governor was about at 60 percent at that time. First five weeks, his numbers went down to under—to 40-something. By the seventh or eighth week, he was down to 39 percent, or something like that, and never recovered. The Legislature's popularity was driven to 19 percent. And because we kept at it—it wasn't one rally. It wasn't one tweet. It was constant moral challenge, civil disobedience. We also added a legal challenge to the laws. We added a voter registration challenge. And so, by 2016, in a state that Trump won, and in a state where they took 150 of our early voting sites, we not only won the—we not only saw the governorship—and we never endorsed anybody. We endorsed a change in consciousness. Governor is sent home. For the first time, we have two African Americans on the state Supreme Court. And an African-American candidate won 70-some counties, on a Supreme Court, in the state—in a state in the South. The AG's Office went to a progressive. And there are many, many other victories. And we're not through. We're not through.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Again, as you lead your Poor People's Campaign, you're making a major announcement on what date?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: December 4th. Dr. Liz Theoharis and myself and people from all over the country, from 25 states and the District of Columbia—hope I can come back and tell it right here on Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: And why December 4th?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: That was the day that Dr. King announced the Poor People's Campaign in 1967. And also during that week, he preached a sermon called "The Meaning of Hope." So we're taking some of the best from that, but also adding to it the work that Kairos Center has done for over 10 years, work that Repairers—I mean, the moral work that's gone on for the last 12 years, and we're combining all of that and reimagining, because the last thing we need—and I say this to all my brothers and sisters of faith and in the movement, tell black, white, brown, Jewish, whoever you are—the last thing we need is another commemoration. We don't need to commemorate. We need to reimagine and reconsecrate and engage in a sustained movement, not just one rally, one tweet. Those are all important, but now we need a sustained movement where our goal is, first, before we can change the policies, is to change the moral imagination and the moral narrative of this country.
AMY GOODMAN: You're fond of quoting Nell Painter, the Princeton professor. What did she say?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Nell Painter said that Trump's election is as American as apple pie. It is the call and response of this American democracy. You have to call for justice. You have a period of it. And then you have a pushback, a response, that's often vile, violent and vicious and is very regressive. So nobody should say we've never seen this before. We've seen it before. And we've overcome it before.
AMY GOODMAN: Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, leader of the Moral Mondays movement, author of The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement.
This is Democracy Now! To see Part 1 of our conversation, go to democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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