Penning Thoughts

This election has tried to rip apart the glue that holds our society, our E Pluribus Unum, our trust in one another, our belief that, together, we are one people, we are the United States of America. And we cannot allow the ranting, roaring, screaming words of one man separate us.

Our children, our neighbors, the world is wondering, who are we? Do we hate our neighbors? Do we attack those who may believe something I don’t? Do we approve of open sexual assault as preached by a bigoted lion? Is this what we want our daughters, our mothers, our aunts, our nieces, our sisters to experience in their workplace? On the street?

No. And we will fight with all our might, using the resources of organizations that rally the cause of justice, equality and love for our fellowman and woman.

Where can you go to wage this battle? Here are a few organizations:

The American Civil Liberties Union
The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Color of Change
Human Rights Watch
Story Corps
Lambda Legal
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Widely-respected public figures have spoken out against the fear and doubt being generated by Donald Trump; fear that could cause us to make a calamitous choice in our presidential election on November 8.

Republican-appointed (by Pres. GHW Bush) former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, four years ago, warned us,

“What I worry about is [in a crisis]… some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem. That is how the Roman Republic fell.”

“That is the way democracy dies.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, on October 19 told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “allegations of potential rigging of U.S. elections, as well as of widespread voter fraud, are baseless, serving only to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and inflame tensions.”

And former Secretary of State Colin Powell on October 26 told the Long Island Association that he will vote for Hillary Clinton. According to a member of that association, Powell “spoke about his [Trump’s] inexperience, he spoke about the messages that he’s [Trump] sending out every day to his supporters, which really paints our country in a negative light across the globe with all our allies.”

By alleging our system is “rigged,” Trump is tearing down the Constitutional fortress constructed with great care more than two centuries ago.

Don’t let anyone tell you that your vote won’t count. Our voting system is fair and is run by local officials you have chosen, not by a central network that can be shifted in one direction or another. Know that your cast vote for president is one of the most consequential decisions you face every four years.

And this process is monitored and reported to you by journalists, whose job it is to seek the truth and expose it for you; not to favor one candidate or issue over another.

Donald Trump would not exist as a national figure, if his statements had not been printed and broadcast by news organizations — known collectively as “the media” — which he continues to decry. Reporting is what journalists do: report facts and investigate people and organizations, so that we, the public, will know the truth.

Please consider what is at stake, and vote; because our democracy, right now, needs each one of us to stand up for our country.

Our country became rich and powerful, in large part, because of enslaved labor, driven by brutal treatment lashed upon men, women and children held in permanent bondage. The words below show just how evil it was:

“Ten naked little boys, between six and twelve years old, tied together, two by two, by their wrists, were all fastened to a long rope, and followed by a tall, gaunt white man, who, with his long lash, whipped up the sad and weary procession, drove it to a horse-trough to drink, and thence to a shed, where they lay down on the ground and sobbed and moaned themselves to sleep.”

The boys, black slaves, had just been “purchased from different plantations that day and were on their way to auctioned off at Richmond.”

That horrific scene was described by Frances Seward — spouse of William Seward, one member of Lincoln’s Team of Rivals — as their carriage made its way into Virginia, while on a family tour from New York.

According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Frances Seward was so upset by what she’d seen that she cut off the rest of the family trip, writing — again from Team of Rivals — “Sick of slavery and the South.”

Virginia had long before legitimized how these 10 little children could be treated, when it enacted this law in 1705:

All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion. . . shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master. . . correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction. . . the master shall be free of all punishment. . . as if such accident never happened.

- Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705

Sources:

This was slavery, in all its inhumanity, blatantly cruel. And accepted by our Nation and the people who lived here. Until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed; nearly 30 years after those little boys moaned themselves to sleep.

My great grandfather was an immigrant from Luxembourg, and I can no longer allow the hateful speech against immigrants to stand.

We are a nation founded on “the firm belief” that all persons are created equal, and that all have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no matter who we are or how we got here.

And those rights and that happiness is deserved, equally, by the indigenous people already here, and by the men and women brought to this nation, shamefully, in chains.

Millions have left their homes in other countries in search of sanctuary from religious persecution, in search of freedom, to escape tyranny.

We, the people, must reject the divisive rhetoric aimed toward those whose religion or nationality is different from ours.

The statue of Liberty beckons what we know to be true, in the words of Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Please, reject the hate spewed from the lips of fearmongers.

Please, look at these men and women who risked everything, many walked for hundreds of miles, to escape brutality.

No one should have their religion, their homeland, denigrated here.

Everyone deserves a smile, a hand, a chance.

“Welcome to the United States of America.”

Amendment II to The Constitution of the United States of America reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The only “well regulated militia” we have in 2015 is each state’s National Guard, whose history is recorded on the site of The National Guard.

The National Guard, the oldest component of the Armed Forces of the United States and one of the nation’s longest-enduring institutions, celebrated its 370th birthday on December 13, 2006. The National Guard traces its history back to the earliest English colonies in North America. Responsible for their own defense, the colonists drew on English military tradition and organized their able-bodied male citizens into militias.

The colonial militias protected their fellow citizens from Indian attack, foreign invaders, and later helped to win the Revolutionary War.

Following independence, the authors of the Constitution empowered Congress to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia.”

However, recognizing the militia’s state role, the Founding Fathers reserved the appointment of officers and training of the militia to the states. Today’s National Guard still remains a dual state-Federal force.

[Source: The National Guard]


How is it that a gun manufacturers’ lobbying group has convinced voters that each person in our nation has a constitutional right to own and use a gun?

Because the people specifically authorized that right — by our Constitution — are the men and women who serve in our country’s sole regulated militia: The National Guard.

Just weeks after our President so movingly eulogized the nine African-Americans murdered, while praying with their killer in their Charleston church; college official Sandra Bland — who happens to be African-American — was on her way to a new administrative position in Texas.

But she never made it.

Instead, she was stopped by a white Texas police officer — who made a u-turn to follow her car — for failing to use her blinker to signal a lane change, on his turf.

She tells the officer she changed lanes to allow his car to pass.

She’s an easy catch. Who will question him for pulling over a black person, a female black person in Texas?

She complies with the officer, is issued a ticket and cleared to go back on the road. But State Trooper Brian Encinia was not quite ready to end his victory over a black woman.

Rather than walk back to his car, he stays, to ask Ms. Bland to extinguish her cigarette. She refuses, stating he has no authority to make that request.

For questioning his authority to follow his illegal and laughable command, Bland — as seen in this video — is grabbed and forcefully pulled from her car, then thrown to the ground, on which a screaming Encinia appears to force her head.

Three days later, Sandra Bland’s lifeless body was found hung, in a hauntingly empty area of the Waller County, Texas, jail.

Why?

Because she refused to extinguish her cigarette; because she had the audacity to speak back to the white officer.

In police parlance, she “resisted arrest,” for refusing to follow his command.

Officer Encinia acted as one whose authority was being challenged by an “uppity” African American woman.

Tragically, horrifically, instead of starting her new job at Prairie View College, Sandra Bland is handcuffed and taken to the Waller County jail; where, mysteriously, she is found, hanging from a plastic bag, into which she — allegedly — placed her neck.

Jail officials allege Ms. Bland told them she was suicidal; yet they did not put her on a suicide watch, and claimed they found Ms. Bland dead in her cell.

Are we to believe that these white men had nothing to do with this black woman’s death? This woman who was so “uppity” to them?

Someone check the fingerprints on the sheets and plastic bags, please? And the DNA around her neck and police uniforms.

When will this stop?

White supremacists will never get over their hatred. But when will public officials stop them from getting uniforms and guns?

Because it must be done.

Forget another “national conversation.”

We need justice. Now.

This column is written in memory of Calvin Milton Jones, who died May 25, 2011.

“Has that ever happened to you?”

His face looked at me with the most serious expression I’d seen from this gentle man.

“Three times,” he said.

My friend, the late Calvin Milton Jones, had just sent me a copy of Dick Gregory’s talk to a Tavis Smiley “State of Black Union” convention center audience. Gregory, the comedian and activist, wondered aloud, that if Bill Clinton was truly “our first black president,” would he know http://electronicvillage.blogspot.com/2008/02/dick-gregory-apologizes-to-bill-clinton.html (at 1 min,50 sec.) how it felt to be a black man, driving down the road, and hear a police siren:

“Mr. President, do you know what it feels like to be a black person, to be a congresslady, to be a lieutenant governor with 12 doctor’s degrees, and driving down the street, and hear the police siren, and you start squeezing that steering wheel tight, and they pass by you, and you Thank God! Damn! You didn’t do nothin’ in the first place. Do you know what it is to be black?”

The primarily black audience was in howls, cheering with a standing ovation at Gregory’s presentation. And I realized then that the expression, “driving while black,” was so real and so common that an entire audience of hundreds had reacted, in unison and with raucous recognition, as Gregory spoke those searing words.

After I watched the video, I walked over to Calvin’s office and asked him, “Has that ever happened to you?”

He looked me straight in the eye, “Three times” … on the way to and from Washington and his hometown in North Carolina.

So this gentle and generous man … who arrived at the office at nearly five o’clock every morning — even the day before he died, sick with pneumonia — to turn on the lights, make the coffee, check the phone and computer systems, arrange the conference rooms to be sure everything was in place for the day’s meetings … told me, with those words, that he had been stopped by police officers on three separate occasions, just because they knew they could taunt another black man.

This man, Calvin Milton Jones … who wouldn’t harm a soul, who cut all the lawns in his neighborhood, because he didn’t want it to look unkempt; who, unasked, often waxed neighbors’ cars; and who would give you anything, if you were in need … this man had been pulled over three times for no other reason than the color of his skin.

Imagine how it must feel to look up into the eyes of a uniformed man, who, you and he know, could change your life in an instant.

And now, in the 21st century, with new communications technology, we have documented evidence that young black men — from Trayvon Martin’s recorded 911 attack by George Zimmerman in Florida, to Walter Scott’s recorded South Carolina murder in April — are killed with impunity by white men in authority, because these armed thugs think no one will ever find out, because they know their uniformed ‘brothers’ will never speak a word.

Authorities have brushed off criticism, calling the killers “bad apples” among otherwise good guys. Really? How is it that those apples are distributed so widely across the country, always aiming at the same black “targets”?

Unfortunate for them, we now have video phones to expose their sickening and horrendous racist terrorism. You wonder, though … if these men were the ones who were videoed, how many other badged terrorists, among us, are not?

Trayvon was killed by a single shot from the gun of a self-appointed ‘neighborhood watchman,’ who said Trayvon was, “suspicious … looks black” and, chasing Trayvon against orders, told 911, “They always get away.” But “they” (Trayvon) did not get away; and the man who hunted him down wasn’t even arrested.

Walking while black?

Author Donna Britt, commenting on the shooting death of Trayvon, said, “I don’t know what this child could have done to be safe, except not be black.”

Being, while black.

My friend and Travyon, two men — one driving and the other, walking — are stopped for being “suspicious,” for being black men.

Now we know many others have been killed.

Each man lived in the world’s lone superpower; which the rest of us tell ourselves is “the land of the free” … the “sweet land of liberty” … that exists, “under God … with liberty and justice for all.”

Perhaps it is … for some.

How sad it is to be an Arlingtonian now; to have witnessed our first negative, single-issue Board campaign since the Reagan era.

This fire first struck on January 4, 2013, with an unexpected burst of lengthy, anti-Columbia Pike streetcar rhetoric from behind the dais, at the traditional and, heretofore, cordial and pro-forma New Year’s Day, Board Meeting.

(Interestingly, at the Dec. 17 swearing-in ceremony — only 18 days earlier — this new Board member spoke not one word of the streetcar.)

The person behind this ire had turned sharply against the Democratic party from which she sought and received its 2012 County Board nomination, and — just weeks before — was elected under the label, Democrat.

Then began a campaign crafted to split our County’s sound and consensus-building leadership.

She used her Board status and media-savvy persona to construct a negative, single-issue strategy, which appeared to be opposition to the Columbia Pike streetcar project.

This strategy — call it the “Party of No” — viewed in the wake of last month’s election, now seems to have had, as its ultimate goal, the election of a candidate in direct opposition to this Board member’s Democratic party.

And on Nov. 4th a small minority — 21 percent of registered (scroll down to page 10) Arlingtonians — voted for her winning candidate.

They were voters who:

- could afford to take time-off to vote on election day,

- had the means to get to the polls,

- had the ability to obtain the requisite photo-i.d. cards, and

- heard and believed the negative clank of the “No Party.”

However, “No,” centered on one person and her electoral scion, has no deepened roots.

Those who’ve seen Columbia Pike traffic, and those who live and work along The Pike, know that the centuries-old thoroughfare is a more vehicle-strained transportation corridor than Wilson Boulevard, and has been strained long before Metro planners created the “Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.”

We in North Arlington have that fast-paced Metro — tunneled beneath Wilson, under the “corridor” — around which new merchants have blossomed and ever more residents thrive at every station stop.

With its snap, post-election decision to cancel all streetcar contracts, has our Board again made solid mass transit for South Arlington but a pipe dream?

These post-election days have been a sad, sad time for citizens and fair-minded policymakers, alike, in Arlington County, Virginia.

We cannot allow our County to be overcome by the dark clouds of the single-issue “No Party,” which, as is written in Ecclesiastes, has used its campaign as a “time to tear down.”

Arlingtonians have always had pride for our Arlington Way: propose, discuss, listen, cooperate and reach thoughtful consensus.

Now is the time to prepare for a New Year, a new “time to build up.”

Choose YES for those who have devoted years of open, all-inclusive meetings, planning sessions, budget talks — formal and informal — to prepare this well-designed mass transit project for the Pike.

YES for unity.

Let’s build a positive campaign for action.

Let’s re-cultivate for 2015.

Let’s ALL restore the bloom of hope for all of Arlington.

In 1963 I wondered, “What did Martin Luther King mean, when he said, ‘Free at last’?” because, I thought, “Black people are free, aren’t they?” If you ever thought that way, then read this, please. Fannie Lou Hamer tells you just how “free” a black person was. Was?

Fifty five years ago — on August 22, 1964 — a dramatic appeal was made to the Democratic National Party, at its national convention in Atlantic City, to seat African American Mississippians as that state’s delegates to the convention; instead of the all-white, segregationist delegation.

The most powerful testimony was given by Mississippi sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer. Her speech — spoken, not read — says volumes about the horrific treatment African Americans have suffered from hundreds of years of slavery, terror and discrimination.

This short introductory video (also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07PwNVCZCcY) gives the context for Ms. Hamer’s testimony, including how then-President Lyndon Johnson halted the broadcast of Hamer’s entire speech, for fear of its impact on white voters.

And this is the link to her full testimony, as spoken and transcribed:

Fannie Lou Hamer went on to become a member of the Democratic National Committee from 1968-1971, and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972.

Fannie Lou Hammer died in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, on March 14, 1977. She was 59 years old.

As we press other nations to have democratic elections, we still see — in the United States of America — attacks against the right for which Fannie Lou Hamer was terrorized, when she dared to seek it, more than 50 years ago.

One of Arlington’s jewels, WETA-FM radio, made an abrupt and radical move less than a month ago, when it hit the brakes on its two-year-old all-news, no music format, and, with virtually no advance notice, dropped everything to return to classical music.

But it wasn’t a return to the old WETA that the public found on its dial. No, WETA decided to be a purist, and started broadcasting nothing but classical music, with a nod to news from NPR on the hour.

The old WETA had room for not just a solid play list of classical masterworks, but also such beloved programs as Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. The new WETA jettisoned it all.

The station that had introduced Garrison Keillor to Arlington and the metro area — and brought his brilliant two-hour live program to Wolf Trap every summer — had, with no warning, hit the eject button, leaving a kindly WAMU in the District to catch Garrison before he hit the ground.

When Sunday morning came around and you tuned in for Lianne Hansen’s clever, fun and thoughtful program, Weekend Edition Sunday, you discovered she was gone, too. And now one of NPR’s finest works — produced in D.C. — has no home anywhere in the Washington broadcast market.

One minute our own Shirlington station was talk, news, talking its way in competition with WAMU, and the next it was telling you to tune over to WAMU if you missed Prairie Home and Keillor’s early weekday “Writer’s Almanac” commentary.

It’s been exactly two years since WETA announced that it would betray its classical roots and move to all news/talk because “WETA’s fall 2004 Arbitron numbers were its worst in 15 years.” In other words, ratings, the thing commercial broadcasting lives and dies for, had entered the boardroom. Founder Elizabeth Campbell, quoted in 1993 by the station’s magazine, said, “I wanted what we have, which is classical music and art” with “enough news so that people didn’t feel they were going to be cut out of news,
because they were listening to music.”

Lovers of classical music, this writer included, are delighted we have classical music back. But at the expense of Prairie Home Companion? And the best news programs on the air? Why was there not room for both?

WETA’s station director told its magazine of the Feb. 2005 shift, “This was principally and primarily a public service issue.” So, what is 2007’s move?

Observers of the classical scene here know that the region’s sole commercial classical station, WGMS, no doubt reading the same ratings charts, summarily junked its listeners last month, leaving the classical market wide open. Thus, WETA jumped for the WGMS music library and sawed off some of the best programming NPR offers.

Back in 2005 we were told the shift to all news/talk was based on audience research and an “almost unanimous approval” by its board. “The station had been considering a format change for three years,” it said then.

So, how much time was spent on this decision? From all accounts it sounds as though someone heard the WGMS announcement on the radio, frantic calls were made, deals were cut and uncut, and voila! Here, again, is classical WETA.

Yes, you have regained your soul and lived up to your founder’s hopes, but did you have to toss over so much of what our Arlington public radio station had been before? How are you going to explain this one to your listeners, when that next pledge drive rolls around?

Nick Penning is an Arlington freelance writer. His column, “Penning Thoughts,” appears in each edition of The Arlington Connection.