Dr. King Day: A Fresh New Look

Are Americans united around the notion of a genuine celebration and acceptance of Dr. King Day as a national holiday? From the time Congressman John Conyers (D - Michigan) first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated in 1968, it took 15 years to create the federal Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday. After the bill became stalled, petitions with six million signatures endorsing the holiday were submitted to Congress. Conyers and New York representative Shirley Chisholm submitted King Holiday legislation each subsequent legislative session until Congress passed it in 1983. President Ronald Reagan, who had staunchly opposed the bill, citing its costs, and who had three years earlier kicked off his bid for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi – a lingering symbol of racial intolerance and the site where civil rights workers Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered – reluctantly signed it into law, declaring the third Monday in January National Dr. Martin Luther King Day.

Among my proudest moments was marching arm-in-arm with thousands of other peaceful demonstrators on the Washington Mall back in1982 and 1983, led by Stevie Wonder, who was a committed key figure advocating for the Dr. King national holiday. Other marchers included Dr. King’s widow Corretta Scott King, Reverend Jessie Jackson, scores of dignitaries, celebrities like Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Ossie Davis, along with us everyday citizens.

Yet still today I remain confounded that some leaders on the state and national level seem to negate the potential of this holiday as more than a mere political photo op. They marginalize its importance as a teachable moment and meaningful opportunity to embrace Dr. King’s amplified vision of William Bradford’s concept of a “beloved community” imbued with collective means by which to heal, build, and unify through service projects that promote reconciliation and tolerance. Just as he led his life in active pursuit of service to others and justice for all, Dr. King’s holiday should be active, never passive. These are the ideals out of which the American spirit and our shared values are honed, but to date these ideals seem lost on some government leaders at local, state, and national levels.

Some municipalities have allowed that any national commemoration of this celebration of the human spirit is optional and viewed it with a ho-hum attitude. Some states confine the place of the holiday to classrooms, treating it as a mere academic exercise. For example, California focuses its King Day observances largely within public school districts, encouraging “a day of reflection on Civil Rights.”

But other states take a more active stance. For example, New York State emphasizes year-long volunteerism along with cultural, artistic, and community cooperation. Beginning in 1997, the Empire State’s Community Services Initiative to Remember and Honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was established. This is a model that could well serve to show the way for other states’ involvement in creating inventive ways to honor and celebrate Dr. King though community service.

The King Community Service Initiative urges New Yorkers to strengthen their communities by extending their hands to help the homeless and to care for the less fortunate. The common thread that links the various King Community Service Initiative activities is outreach beyond conventional social boundaries to promote interracial cooperation. Community Service Initiatives offer a rare socially progressive departure from the policies of former Governor George E. Pataki, a moderate conservative Republican with an otherwise questionable record in the areas of urban education reform and civil rights administration and enforcement – areas critical to achieving socio-economic parity and harmonious race relations.

Despite the Pataki administration’s dubious record on matters of socioeconomic and racial parity, growing involvement of individuals, schools, churches, and community groups in the state; broad energized celebrations demonstrate just how far reaching an executive initiative can be for establishing the right tone and setting a sterling national example of actualizing Dr. King’s mantra of working to create the “beloved community.”

The writer, Dennis Day served on the Planning Committee for New York State’s Annual Holiday Observance to Remember and Honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday from its inception in1997.

VOTE: POLICIES IMPACT OUR LIVES!

By Dennis Day

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, by now you’ve probably heard the news story about the Tennessee man, Gene Cranick, whose house was allowed to burn to the ground as the town’s local firemen, with their hook and ladder truck in tow, stood by gazing at the inferno but refusing to sprinkle one single drop of water to dowse the flames. “Oh no, never in America,” one might respond. Or “Why would they do such a thing?”, you might ask. Well the poor guy claims he forgot to pay Obion County’s $75 annual fee assessed to defray the costs for fire protection services administered by its governing municipality, South Fulton, because the Cranick family live outside the city limits. So what the media has dubbed the No Pay/No Spray policy kicked in and Mr. Cranick’s entire house, his lifetime of accumulated, irreplaceable personal and family memorabilia, and his three pet dogs and one cat were all cruelly incinerated, even though a neighbor and Mr. Cranick both told the firefighters that they would pay whatever it took if the firefighters would please douse the flames.

This is indeed a tragic incident and many people are rightfully enraged at the specter of a homeless American family caught in the heartless vice of an inhumane, bureaucratic policy that impeded rational people from making reasoned compassionate choices in the broader service of the community.

Is this the type of lean, mean, smaller government and prescribed “value” of “individual responsibility” being touted by the Tea Partiers? Are we headed for a society in which only those who can pay can play, with no other compensatory aids to protect those most vulnerable?

Despite the victim’s inactive account status, would it not have been far more reasonable to extinguish the fire, perhaps with the citizen’s consequence being a hefty surcharge or fine paid ex post facto in addition to the delinquent $75 fee as sufficient penalty to thwart slackers in the future? Mr. Cranick asserts that he offered to pay whatever fee was accessed on the spot but his offer was rejected.

Now Obion County is beset with a dislocated family, a diminished property tax revenue base, one less water and sewage recipient account, and an added homeless-services voucher to fulfill. And there’s that menacing barrage of national negative television and press coverage of their normally placid rural Tennessee community, whose governing board and municipal Fire Chief now seem more like heartless ogres rather than Norman Rockwellian types often depicted as icons of rural life in America. So much for cost-benefit analysis – I guess those factors never figured into the policy-makers’ decision to allow the property and pets of citizens with delinquent accounts to burn down to an ash-heap.

This was an ill-conceived, ineptly crafted law and this case underscores the need for the voting electorate to take seriously the responsibility to vote in an informed way to select the best and brightest candidates available. The No Pay/No Spray policy was no doubt the brainchild of numerous discussions among elected officials with the view that slackers and scofflaws should suffer the gravest consequences and be compelled to be left at risk and outside the locale’s fire safety net. But governments are not meant to function as compassionless machines fixated on budget deficits while mindlessly and without empathy depreciating human beings. This is why every election in a democracy is an important one. In a very real sense, those who govern as our elected officials often exercise the power of life and death. Their decisions affect our lives – from the quality of the foods we consume to the safety of our work places to the air we breathe and the water we drink. So please get out and vote during this Novembers’ mid-term election!

D-Day Media Group (c) 2010

Obama Will Triumph --So Will America Commentary by Frank Schaeffer

D-Day Media has posted this important Guest Commentary by author Frank Schaeffer and fully endorses it's editorial content.

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times best selling author.
Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer

Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support
of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of
the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and
ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-
old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer
and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader)
this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President.
Why?-- because he is succeeding.

We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of
him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama's steady supporters will be proved right. Obama's critics
will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged
at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe , the Second
World War and the Depression has any president faced more
adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more
bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial
integration has any president faced a more consistently short-
sighted and willfully ignorant opposition - from both the right
and left.

As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from
some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago;
all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all
over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the
2008 election.

The left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy"--
snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and
then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was
his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was
really two countries

# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that
was unnecessary and immoral

# The worst economic crisis since the depression

# America 's standing in the world at the lowest point in history

# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture
of prisoners of war

# A health care system in free fall

# An educational system in free fall

# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions
(about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done
nothing)

# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left

# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally
irresponsible Bush administration.

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the
President's desk!

"Help" from the Right?

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and
half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans
were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to "help" our
new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he
wasn't a real American, didn't have an American birth certificate,
wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist",
was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was
a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the
elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-
subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper
sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized "tea parties" to sound
off against imagined insults and all government in general and
gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry
lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) "commentators" from
Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the
utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who
was trying to actually do something about the poor, the
environment, to diminish the number of abortions through
compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And
in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: "No!"

In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy
American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse
neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big
business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving
crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons and
evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite
them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at
all costs!

"Help" from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of
them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad
choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan
that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President's
economic policies had "failed" before the President even instituted
them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been
fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office,
they'd been "betrayed"! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to
the gay community is stronger than any other president's has been.
Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific
emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how
"disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been
translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House!
Where was the "change"? Contrary to their expectations they were
still mere mortals!

And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay
attention for longer than a nanosecond. "Governing"?! What the hell
does that word, uh, like mean?"

The President's critics left and right all had one thing in common:
impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone
reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the
white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just
couldn't imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as
they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their
president. He hadn't consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality
rather than reality defining their ideas-say, about what is
possible in one year in office after the hand that the President
had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation
that voted Bush into office. twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community - in just 12 short
months -- President Obama:

#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices
regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Restored America 's image around the globe
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort
to halt global warming
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial
system of checks and balances
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost
impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had
failed to even begin
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good
humor and patience
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and
dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting
people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and
carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the "blood of
tyrants" needing to "water the tree of liberty".
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but
explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR --
President Obama "failed"! Other than that he didn't "live up to
expectations"!

Who actually has failed...

...are the Americans that can't see the beginning of a miracle of
national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the
smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for
this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their
dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers
behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned "news" into
just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted
infantile country.

Here's the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the
help of his lefty "supporters" or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good

After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his
wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on
all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible
succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries
are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved
not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all
Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.

Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short
and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of
us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president,
please pass this on and hang in there! Pass it on anyway to ensure
that his "report card" gets the attention it deserves.