Martin Luther King’s family asked US Park Police to eject a group of 32 Occupy Wall Street protestors from an Atlanta based memorial center that was named after the civil rights leader on Sunday.

The OWS protestors, who left New York City November 9 to march roughly 880 miles to Atlanta through Washington, and through the south, planned on holding a press conference at the Atlanta based Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change “to honor Dr. King.” The press conference was scheduled for 2 p.m., but within minutes, private security for the center asked the demonstrators to leave the outside area that was part of the MLK center.

According to the center’s online page, it was established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, and is the “official, living memorial dedicated to advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our programs and partnerships educate the world about his life and his philosophy of nonviolence, inspiring new generations to further his work.”

“The police want us to leave?” an OWS protestor asked.

“The King family is asking you to leave,” the security officer said.

“Why?” the protestor asked.

“They don’t want the center to be used for any kind of outside event or press conference for your group,” the security officer explained.

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Here’s another example that shows just how ‘accepting’ liberals are of people from all walks of life.

High School teacher Al Levie refused to accept an MLK award from Rep. Paul Ryan because, well, Paul Ryan is a conservative no matter how Levie tries to frame it. Levie stated that “Paul Ryan has no business being at an MLK event.” That’s a pretty bigoted action.

Levie’s speech can be found here.

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Here is new video from RebelPundit’s continuing coverage of Occupy the Dream, an event held at the Peoples[sic] Church of Chicago, Sunday January 15th. The following video reveals the overwhelming and until now, unseen tone of the event.

The event had little to do with Martin Luther King, Jr., or any of his larger than life accomplishments in the civil rights movement, or changing dynamic of the racial divide in America. Perhaps this is not very surprising. What it did have plenty to do with, however, was in fact, occupying the dream.

Progress Illinois even titled their coverage, “Occupy Chicago, Religious Leaders Use MLK Holiday As Means To Call For Change.” There could not have been a more appropriate description of the event.

Religious leaders, community organizers and local politicians joined Occupy Chicago to occupy the dream, occupy the church and occupy the state for one grand revolutionary extravaganza.

Community organizers even called elected officials of the Democrat Party to the pulpit to get their commitment to pushing forward the radical agendas of the groups participating in the event. State senator Heather Steans took to the pulpit to blast Republicans, with other members of the Illinois general assembly calling for progressive tax reform in Illinois. (video) And Jesse Jackson spoke of spending a “mere $900 billion” in taxpayer dollars for the federal government to directly hire 15 million workers at $40,000 per year. (video) Jan Schakowsky was also present and demanded that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share. (video)

But what was not so present at the event was a celebration of the victories the King achieved and how different the landscape of this country has become since his death. The sermon, delivered by Dwight Gardner of the First Trinity United Baptist Church of Gary, Indiana, only referred to King periodically in his address, but only to emphasize the need to “occupy the dream of King” while making tremendous calls for revolution.

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For Harry Belafonte and other progressive blacks, the reality of the Obama Presidency is bitter pill to swallow, as he detailed his ongoing unhappiness with the administration.

In a recent radio interview, Belafonte took the President to task and asked what his legacy would be in the wake of the opportunities he has been given. Mr. Belafonte’s criticism comes at a time when President Obama finds himself under increasing pressure for the far left wing of his Party, as they feel he has failed to deliver on his promises of hope and change.

For months now, President Obama has been under pressure from members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and other black activists to start addressing those problems facing the most loyal voting bloc of the Democrat Party, yet the President and his advisers have pushed back against this, claiming they are concerned about the problems facing all Americans.

Belafonte’s criticism and anger are understandable, as he and many like him thought that the Obama Presidency was going to lead to the fulfillment of all the progressive promises of the last 60 years, especially those promises made by Democrats and their sock puppet leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Belafonte and other black Democrat activists know full well that they will have a harder time turning out record numbers of black voters in any effort to reelect President Obama this time. In 2008, the narrative in the black community was that the election of Barack Obama was in part way the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, but with more than 3 years under his belt, Belafonte and others would be hard pressed to find anyone in the black community who could claim they are better off today than they were 3 years ago. (more…)

You’ve gotta feel sorry for Jesse Jackson; his time is so far gone, people don’t even remember when his time was. He reminds me a little of Willie Mays playing for the Mets in 1973–the best all-round baseball player who ever graced a baseball diamond, looking like a minor league-er, an all-time great who hung around one season too long.

Jackson is a civil rights leader desperately looking for a following to reclaim the good old days, but in his feebleness, he lives in yesterday and doesn’t quite “get” today, nor does he realize he should have hung it up after he threatened Obama’s private parts during the 2008 campaign.

Over the weekend, this shell of a leader went to help the Occupy Atlanta protest and explained his presence by slandering his friend, mentor, and the man whose dying blood he smeared all over his sweater, the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

About 60 people gathered around Jackson as he told them their movement was an extension of the last movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Poor People’s Movement.

“It’s not the size of the crowd, it’s the substance of the discussion,” that is important, he told them.

In an interview, Jackson said the protesters were voicing dissatisfaction with banks, with government policies that favor the rich, with Washington gridlock and lack of action to help average Americans.

“This is the cup running over,” he said. “People can’t take it anymore.”

A extension of  Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.??? Give me a break!! (more…)

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the latest school doing everything they can to shut down and silence any conservative voice on campus. I am an alumnus of this school who luckily had great teachers while acquiring a major in film studies (of all things). Unfortunately, there was nothing but horror stories from my friends taking courses in communication (some of which I took) and sociology. Even worse was trying to find anyone who would refer to anything conservative as something other than “controversial.” This is a university that prides itself on bringing Martin Luther King to campus decades ago when he was a “controversial” speaker. Today, controversy is anything Right of the leftist mafia on campus.

It took me a while to realize how radical the campus was because my film professors (even the far-Left ones) were willing to have civil discussions about politics, which were always pleasant and welcomed. In fact, most of them would avoid politics altogether because it wasn’t a pivotal part of the coursework in the majority of classes. What opened my eyes was the first time I saw how conservative guest-speakers were treated on campus by the students. I’ve long heard about issues of indoctrination in humanities courses, that’s not what I saw here. Instead, what I witnessed at UWM was bigger than a single academic department.

As with any conservative speaker at most universities there is always an attempt from the Left’s foot soldiers to shout down the guest in an attempt to silence their voice. When I was still a student at UWM, I attended a speech by conservative activist David Horowitz which endured consistent and disrespectful disruptions (not to mention that he was subject to an anti-Semitic cartoon being distributed around campus prior to the event). The atmosphere was even worse when former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat was invited to speak about the threats of radical Islam. Neither of these speakers are “Right-wingers” by any means, but their voice was not tolerated. Because of threats, both events required security which should not have been necessary.

On April 25th the UWM College Republicans invited Karl Rove to speak at their campus. Able to predict how the Left would try to disrupt the event, the College Republicans found a way to thwart leftist attempts to shout down an invited speaker to campus. They were able to distribute tickets themselves and through local conservative radio host Vicki McKenna. This helped fill the front rows with donors or supporters and also helped for security purposes. The reaction from the democrats and allies in the Student Association (SA) on campus was to attack the College Republicans, fighting to cut their funding.

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It is rather ironic that, last week, union bosses used the anniversary Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination to try to drum up support for the union cause. You see, even after all these years, racism and discrimination within the walls of the House of Labor is still very real. As noted by UnionFacts.com, since 2000, there have been over 4,200 complaints filed against unions for racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. In some cities, it is a bigger problem than in others. However, the one area where union racism seems to rear its ugly head the most often is with the construction trade unions, where African Americans are often excluded from work.

Systemic racism in the building trades has been built into the construction industry as Harry Alford, President & CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, has noted.

Due to the Jim Crow laws of the South, there were many Black southern craftsmen who would travel to perform their skills.  Many would go to places like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, etc. and would out compete local white contractors who could not perform as well as they did and could not settle for their affordable pricing.  It was because of this, that construction unions in the North were formed to block out Black crews from coming into communities and providing a better service for a cheaper price.  Soon after the unions were formed they set in motion the Davis-Bacon Act (named for two New York congressmen).  This act set up arbitrary labor wage scales so that Black craftsmen could no longer under price their white counter parts.  They all had to pay a certain price, prevailing wage, at a minimum and competition became no more.  With the price competition out of the way, the whites moved in through political favor and blatant racism.  This would be followed with Project Labor Agreements which meant some projects would be declared “Union Only”.  With the construction unions discriminating against Blacks, PLO’s [sic] would also mean “Whites Only”.

This exclusionary racial system is still prevalent today and has been the subject of much controversy in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. (more…)

Al Sharpton is not happy with Glenn Beck.  On The O’Reilly Factor yesterday he took umbrage with Beck’s desire to “take back the Civil Rights movement.”  Now, as I see it there are several reasons a so-called Black Community leader like Sharpton could find that language offensive.

It could be that be Al believes that the Civil Rights movement – one in which Americans of all races, creeds and backgrounds came together to forge a new national character that elevated previously down-put groups to equal legal and social footing with the majority population as a whole – is the exclusive property of African-Americans.  He said so much during his counter-rally when he commented on the date being the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A  Dream” speech on the mall. “This is our day!” Sharpton bloviated.  “And we ain’t giving it away!”

I guess the idea that those on the mall this Saturday had no right to that day came as a surprise to Dr. Alveda King who is the niece of Dr. King and was a featured speaker at Beck’s rally.  It may have even come as surprise to the late MLK himself were he alive.  He was, after all,  the man who referred in his
speech to “All God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics…” coming together.  And isn’t that what made King’s speech so special?  That his was a message of inclusion.  Not an “us versus them” but a gigantic national ”we.”  King understood that the cancer of racism destroys the entire body (America), not just the organ (minorities) it specifically targets.  In comparison, Sharpton’s comments seemed so beneath the memory of King.  So petty.  So small as to make one shake his/her head and ask what happened to this most noble of movements that began when a woman on a bus refused to give up her seat to a white man so many years ago?

And this really gets to the heart of Sharpton’s problem with Beck’s incredibly successful gathering.

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As a co-founder of the Quincy Tea Party I was appalled at the lack of social responsibility and restraint Mr. Jealous displayed in his remarks regarding the Tea Party Movement. I found myself becoming increasingly irritated when he began his political spin and roll tactics to distance himself from his statements. Motivational speaking can backfire if it is at the expense of someone else. Especially if that someone else is 20,000,000 of your countrymen.

But alas, the truth will set us free. You see, Mr. Jealous ignited the single largest surge in Tea Party membership in the movement’s history. The current membership explosion has even surpassed the surge that followed the passage of the Health Control Law. I was amazed by the email and telephone traffic generated by his unfounded remarks. I feel as though we should pay Mr. Jealous a consulting fee or give him some sort of recruiting award.

Mr. Jealous seems to be unaware that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool the Tea Party ever. This grassroots group of Americans has been abused, ridiculed, slandered, and hacked on by every form of progressive, democrat and leftist organization in existence from the day it was born. The Tea Party can take a verbal punch better than any candidate or spin doctor the left can muster. We are the grassroots equivalent of Muhammad Ali. The Tea Party is the classiest and most resilient group that has assembled in this country since the Civil Rights Movement. That being said the Tea Party Movement is about as likely to give up, as Dr. Martin Luther King was during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

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The NAACP should only propose resolutions that they have exercised themselves. The Tea Party, having only been active for a year and half, is the only group being singled out for racism in today’s society. There are races committed to the destruction of our entire nation and the Tea Party is being targeted as a threat. Perhaps it is a threat.

Could it be that the 2008 election served a greater purpose? The existence of the NAACP, and others like it, are threatened by the existence of the Tea Party. The reality is that we colored people no longer require the assistance from other Negros for advancement in 2010.

These groups run to the rescue of distressed brown people only when the media deems it newsworthy. Meanwhile, there are inner city black children who continue to grow up fatherless while sharing a neighborhood with stray bullets, drugs and a plethora of liquor stores on every corner. To my understanding of the” I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King’s intention was far from gang-banging and gangster rap.

I don’t believe that the true meaning of this nation’s creed was to move black people from one form of slavery to another. The NAACP has been completely ineffective in my lifetime, and the lack of leadership in the black community has contributed to the ability of these groups to speak on behalf of the rest of us. The ignored and forgotten society that lives among the projects has been abandoned by the likes of NAACP. And, along with other groups and individuals that rode in the coat-tails of MLK, they are irrelevant but continue to feed off of the codependence that they have created among blacks for validation.

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I condemn the NAACP. I condemn them for allowing the group to be used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement. Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential election.

I condemn the NAACP, along with every race-baiting, sinful thinking poverty pimp and addle-pated black, brown and white denier of truth. The truth is, I believe, that they conduct and have conducted themselves as if there were no God — as if there were no Constitution — as if there had never been hard-fought civil rights victories.

They have dishonored the memory of that great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Almost two-score and seven years ago, he urged us all that Abraham Lincoln was due respect for the Emancipation. King urged us to expect America to deliver to all men the “riches of freedom and the security of justice.” He urged us to come together in brotherhood. He implored us to be not bitter, nor guilty of wrongful deeds. Finally, it was King’s hope that all would be judged by content of character above all else.

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Remember the good old days of black rage, when it was common place to know better than to mess with the brothas? Many a white folk radiated a pheromone of fear around the melanistic men and women who could snap and issue a retroactive cathartic beat down at any moment if they thought whitey was trying to get mighty again.

It ain’t that way anymore…

Now white folks are afraid of how much black people are going to complain.

The NAACP has been the flagship of making the black community look like the biggest community of sissies in America, as they continually promote us as victims. For decades they’ve boo hoo’d about the white man, yet remain loyal to what has always been an oppressive party; the Democrat party.

I’ve explored the NAACP’S interactive timeline and legal milestones on their webpage, and they list the injustices of the Jim Crow laws, the bigotry of Woodrow Wilson, etc. They’re well aware of the evils perpetrated, but hesitate to call the evil doers by their name. They’re slow to acknowledge that these oppressive laws and legalities were imposed on the black community by the Democrat party.

If you dig deep into the bowels of their website there may be a reference or two about Democrat naughtiness that amounts to a lil’ pat on the boo-boo.

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I condemn the NAACP. They have allowed a small group of hard-left extremists to use the group’s past prestige to smear the diverse assemblage of Americans who comprise the tea party movement. They call the tea parties and allied organizations racists because they have become a powerful force of peaceful political dissent against our ever-overreaching government.

These extremists are using the NAACP’s historical name as a foil to obtain and retain power while indignities directed against fellow blacks disagreeing with their policies and tactics seem to be encouraged. They provide cover for their fellow progressives at the peril of fostering racism, division and class warfare.

To label peaceful political dissent as racists is akin to the behavior of the segregationists who once labeled the peaceful dissent lead by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as troublemaking. The founders of the NAACP must be rolling in their graves at the thought that dissent against an unfair system is now considered a reason for NAACP condemnation.

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Rand Paul’s controversial remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act illustrate what I have been saying for years, that Republicans would benefit tremendously from knowing and appreciating the heritage of our Grand Old Party.  That landmark legislation was the culmination of a century of efforts by Republicans to protect African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors.  Let’s look at the facts.

On his deathbed in 1874, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) told a Republican colleague: “You must take care of the civil rights bill – my bill, the civil rights bill.  Don’t let it fail.”  In March 1875, the Republican-controlled 43rd Congress followed up the GOP’s 1866 Civil Rights Act and 1871 Civil Rights Act with the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever.  A Republican president, Ulysses Grant, signed the bill into law that same day.

Among its provisions, the 1875 Civil Rights Act banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.  Sound familiar?  Though struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, the 1875 Civil Rights Act would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

During the twenty years of the FDR and Truman administrations, the Democrats had refused to enact any civil rights legislation.  In contrast, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which had been written by his Attorney General, a former Chairman of the Republican National Committee.  The original draft would have permitted the federal government to sue anyone violating another person’s constitutional rights, but this powerful provision would have to wait until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The bill had to be weakened considerably to secure enough Democrat votes to pass, so violations would be civil, not criminal offenses, and penalties were light.  Vice President Richard Nixon helped overcome a Democrat filibuster in the Senate.  The GOP then strengthened enforcement with its 1960 Civil Rights Act.

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The race issue refuses to disappear from American politics because problems tied to race persist.

Just as children are often the best witnesses to the shortcomings of parents, so the ill treated are often testimony to a nation’s shortcomings.

Sen. James Meeks (left)

The civil rights movement showed that in a nation which is free, civil, and moral, a few can create a non-violent revolution and change the world when their claims are just and moral, and when they are willing to fight and persist.

Just as that movement, starting with a few black leaders in the 1960’s, showed that our nation was sick and needed to be healed, the same thing is happening today.

A superb example is the remarkable leadership of Rev. James Meeks in Chicago.

Pastor Meeks, the spiritual leader of one of Chicago’s largest black churches, is also a Democrat senator in the state legislature.  Working with both Democrats and Republicans, and with the help of a free market think tank in Illinois, Meeks put together legislation to provide vouchers for kids in Chicago’s worst public schools to escape and attend a private school.

Increasingly, school choice initiatives around the country are being championed at the grass roots by local black leaders, often Democrats, for whom the truth is too straightforward to deny.

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Both represent ideals we Americans hold dear. But they aren’t really the same thing and as we have seen in the still acrimonious national debate over the issue of health care and the government’s proper role in providing it, the two concepts come into stark relief.  Moreover, a tension between the meaning of freedom and the meaning of equality will be tested further as President Obama and his newly muscular acolytes in Congress, still intoxicated by the success of their battering-ram legislative strategy, begin to eye other opportunities to (as our president likes to remind us) transform America.  And make no mistake about it; the transformation “party” the president is hosting has only just begun. Think card check, think cap and trade, think compensation control, think regulatory expansion and think, REALLY THINK, about the greatest search in the history of America, through every nook and cranny of our economy, for new sources of tax revenue to pay for the transformation.

To us the word “freedom” embodies the individual right of free choice. The word equality encompasses the bedrock principle that every person should have the same rights to all the protections and rights granted under our Constitution.  Thus, the rallying cry of Patrick Henry, “give me liberty or give me death” exists side by side with the proposition best enunciated by Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech where he envisioned a world “where people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”   In other words, the concept of  “equality” defined as Dr. King stated it can, and should, live side by side with the concept of “liberty (an individual’s right to personal choice as enunciated by the famous remark of Patrick Henry. But with regard to the expansion of government into the private sector the two words can run into conflict.

Those of us who were, and are, appalled by last week’s heavy-handed spectacle of one-party rule mandating the biggest expansion of government in the lifetime of almost everyone reading this essay are alarmed about the ramifications of almost tyrannical rule by a ruling class seeking to expand government into the furthest reaches of what has always been within the domain of the private citizen’s personal choices. Our friends on the left say that we are on the wrong side of history, but it is they who occupy that space.  It is they, including our president and his party, who are racing full speed backwards to emulate societies with entitlement systems that threaten to hobble one nation after another. Think Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, France, Ireland, Japan and on and on.  The governments and economies of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain are hanging on by their finger tips, more or less, counting on the healthier members of the EU (e.g. Germany) to bail them out although “not so fast” say the Germans.  We could go back into history a little further and romanticize the failed egalitarian dreams of the Soviet revolutionaries or, perhaps, Chairman Mao’s People’s Republic of China.  But the Soviet Union crashed nearly a generation ago and China abandoned Chairman Mao’s dream as soon as he died (and they have had nothing but robust economic growth to show for it).  So exactly who is on the wrong side of history here?

Make no mistake; the transformation that the left has in mind for America is nothing more than a grab for the redistribution of wealth.

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Isn’t it finally time for the behind-closed-door racial slurs to die?  If our legislators truly do represent the people, then, how is it possible that in this nation, with so many people, of so many different ethnicities and races, an individual could  be castigated for accented speech or the texture of their hair or the color of their skin?

I was born in 1958, at the cusp of one of the biggest change in our country’s ideology– the civil rights movement.  But, six years later, desegregation had still not infiltrated all aspects of our national society and in Louisiana, it had had almost no effect at all.

As  a six year old, desegregation had little impact, until the day that Bobby Kennedy came to our house and, sitting at our kitchen table, convinced my dad to “try once more” and apply to have me attend an all-white, private school in New Orleans.  That day changed my life.

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