If it bleeds, it leads. If it burns, it churns. One burning trashcan gets more media attention than 10,000 peaceful protestors. So why do the few dozen of us show up outside our congressman’s office every Friday? What can we possibly accomplish? Trent Kelly has shown himself in thrall to DJT, so what are we trying to do? Well, we are screaming in pain. We are trying to control our anger.
In my four score and two years, the automatic assumption that we had rights did not even come up. Of course we did. Senator McCarthy, among others, tried to throw a wrench into that sense of peace, but they were all beaten back. “I know my rights” was, in itself, never challenged.
The Solid South was a Democratic stronghold. Then, “our rights” were, by various means, extended to Black people. LBJ, a Democrat, betrayed the South by signing the civil rights bill. It did not take long for the Solid South to shift from blue to red after that. That swing made the Republican Party strong enough to squeak out election victories and ultimately pushed us into a government willing, and apparently able, to strip away the rights we took for granted.
I find it interesting, and ironic, that the extension of our rights to our Black population is leading, seemingly unstoppably, to the destruction of those rights for all of us.
Bill Gillmore
Columbus
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