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Mary Griggs

~ The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Mary Griggs

Monthly Archives: June 2015

Marriage Equality comes to Louisiana

26 Friday Jun 2015

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Love wins!

The Forum For Equality Blog

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If you had told me even back in 2013 when the Windsor decision came out that the Supreme Court would uphold a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in all fifty states barely 2 years later, I would have been very skeptical, even in those heady times. I could not be happier to have been proven wrong! Today’s historic ruling means that same-sex couples will soon have the right to marry in Louisiana, and any same-sex couples validly married in any state will have their marriages recognized in Louisiana (or indeed, in any part of the country).

As Justice Kennedy said in the majority, “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love…

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Absolute Ruin of the Country

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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History, Racial Justice

The South Carolina and American flags fly at half-staff as the Confederate flag unfurls below at the Confederate Monument in Columbia, S.C. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Instead of simply enjoying myself at the National NOW Conference, I spent time today in an online debate about removing the Confederate flag that flies over so many Southern capital buildings.

Just having it hang there is bad enough but I find it really galling when the flag of the United States was lowered to half mast following the hate crime massacre at the historic Charleston, South Carolina church, the flag of the Confederacy continued to wave from the top of the flag pole on the Columbia, South Carolina Capital grounds.

After 150 years, that flag needs to come down from our statehouses and go to rest in a museum.

Don’t tell me that the flag is a symbol of pride. Who can be proud about protecting slavery? Or for starting a war in which 750,000 soldiers died (about two percent of the population)?

I will state it clearly – the South went to war over slavery.

Don’t believe me?

Please read words of the leaders of the successions movement and the documents from the time:

In its declaration of secession, Mississippi stated, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world … a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

In its justification of secession, Texas sums up its view of a union built upon slavery: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”

To read other states Declarations of Succession, go to Declarations of Causes of Seceding States. South Carolina’s is very interesting, as they actually argue against states rights on the issue of returning escaped slaves.

Slavery was embedded in the Confederate Constitution:

  • Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
  • Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”

Let us not mince words. The South sought to destroy the United States, not only through war but in the very act of secession. The Confederates started and lost a war that very nearly destroyed the country. The cause was unjust, the economic justification despicable. Their very actions were treasonous.

That is the real heritage of the Confederate flag.

This is hard for me. I’m speaking as someone who had members of her family who fought for the Southern side (and one who spent time in an Ohio prisoner of war camp) but I tell you there is no moral high ground here.

Even the Supreme Court has ruled that refusing to print a Confederate flag on a state license plate is not a violation of the First Amendment regarding free speech. When Texas turned down a plate featuring the Confederate flag, the board of the Motor Vehicles Department said, “A significant portion of the public,” the board said, “associates the Confederate flag with organizations advocating expressions of hate directed toward people or groups that is demeaning to those people or groups.”

If the Texas bureaucracy can see that, I would hope the rest of us can, too.

It has been a 150 years. It is time for the Confederate flags on public buildings to come down!

Here are a couple of petitions. Maybe they work but putting your name on them is just the first step.

https://www.change.org/p/all-legislators-nationwide-make-all-states-that-have-a-confederate-flag-in-a-government-building-remove-it

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/remove-the-confederate-3

The next step is working with your state’s legislature to bring them all down.

***

The quote in the title is from Virginia Senator Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter. As printed in the Congressional Globe, Senate, 31st Congress, 1st Session on March 25, 1850, he said, “What if I can show that if the object of emancipating our slaves in the South were accomplished, the infallible consequence would be the absolute ruin of the country?”

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No Stars By Night, No Sun By Day

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by marygriggs in Uncategorized

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Racial Justice

My thoughts on the conservative response to the tragic shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

With tongue firmly in cheek:

  1. When it is a white guy, it is always a lone gunman with no ties to any organized group,
  2. It is never terrorism when a white Christian does it (unless you are attempting to use the anti-gay rhetoric that liberal society hates biblical Christians so this isn’t about race at all but persecution),
  3. Young, white men who commit atrocious crimes are sick or unstable or mentally ill, never thugs
  4. ALL crimes are “hate crimes” and punishing people for thinking bad thoughts while they murder people because of the color of their skin would give certain victims ‘special rights’
  5. It doesn’t matter how many massacres there are, it is always TOO EARLY to talk about sensible gun safety
  6. It isn’t about race when a white man who has cold-bloodedly killed nine people and flees the jurisdiction is arrested without a single shot fired while a person of color, walking down the street can be gunned down by police
  7. But we’re in a post racial society because the President of the United States is black

In all seriousness, my heart grieves for the families and friends of the victims and for the citizens of this nation.

I don’t have a lot of words of my own but Charles Pierce in Esquire had a great piece – Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable. Please read and share it.

The words of Langston Hughes in his poem The Bitter River have never felt more real:

There is a bitter river
Flowing through the South.
Too long has the taste of its water
Been in my mouth.
There is a bitter river
Dark with filth and mud.
Too long has its evil poison
Poisoned my blood.

I’ve drunk of the bitter river
And its gall coats the red of my tongue,
Mixed with the blood of the lynched boys
From its iron bridge hung,
Mixed with the hopes that are drowned there
In the snake-like hiss of its stream
Where I drank of the bitter river
That strangled my dream:
The book studied-but useless,
Tool handled-but unused,
Knowledge acquired but thrown away,
Ambition battered and bruised.
Oh, water of the bitter river
With your taste of blood and clay,
You reflect no stars by night,
No sun by day.

The bitter river reflects no stars-
It gives back only the glint of steel bars
And dark bitter faces behind steel bars:
The Scottsboro boys behind steel bars,
Lewis Jones behind steel bars,
The voteless share-
cropper behind steel bars,
The labor leader behind steel bars,
The soldier thrown from a Jim Crow bus behind steel bars,
The 150 mugger behind steel bars,
The girl who sells her body behind steel bars,
And my grandfather’s back with its ladder of scars
Long ago, long ago-
the whip and steel bars-
The bitter river reflects no stars.

“Wait, be patient,” you say.
“Your folks will have a better day.”
But the swirl of the bitter river
Takes your words away.
“Work, education, patience
Will bring a better day-”
The swirl of the bitter river
Carries your “patience” away.
“Disrupter!
Agitator!
Trouble maker!” you say.

The swirl of the bitter river
Sweeps your lies away.
I did not ask for this river
Nor the taste of its bitter brew.
I was given its water
As a gift from you.
Yours has been the power
To force my back to the wall
And make me drink of the bitter cup
Mixed with blood and gall.

You have lynched my comrades
Where the iron bridge crosses the stream,
Underpaid me for my labor,
And spit in the face of my dream.
You forced me to the bitter river
With the hiss of its snake-like song-
Now your words no longer have meaning-
I have drunk at the river too long:
Dreamer of dreams to be broken,
Builder of hopes to be smashed,
Loser from an empty pocket
Of my meagre cash,
Bitter bearer of burdens
And singer of weary song,
I’ve drunk at the bitter river
With its filth and its mud too long.
Tired now of the bitter river,
Tired now of the pat on the back,
Tired now of the steel bars
Because my face is black,
I’m tired of segregation,
Tired of filth and mud,
I’ve drunk of the bitter river
And it’s turned to steel in my blood.

Oh, tragic bitter river
Where the lynched boys hung,
The gall of your bitter water
Coats my tongue.
The blood of your bitter water
For me gives back no stars.
I’m tired of the bitter river!
Tired of the bars.

We have to talk about this. We have to commit to ensuring our communities are safe from hateful acts of violence. It starts with us.

Say it with me: I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. *

*Quote from Edward Everett Hale

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