[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, APR 16–22  
[[link removed]]


 

xxxxxx

[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ U.S. Torture Exposed, not Punished (in 2009), Dixie Demands
“Bread or Blood!” (1864), Wasn’t That a Time? (1959), Justice
Delayed Isn’t Justice (1989), An Unforgettable Song (1939), Why the
U.S. Lost in Vietnam (1969), How the U.S. Was Built (1889) _

, Courtesy of American Civil Liberties Union

 

_U.S. TORTURE PLANS EXPOSED, BUT NOT PUNISHED_

15 YEARS AGO, on April 16, 2009, the 3-month-old Obama administration
made the first public release of redacted versions of the
blood-curdling memos written in 2002 by the so-called Department of
Justice in an effort to create the fiction that it was legal to use
torture to interrogate suspected terrorists. 

The Torture Memos proved one thing: that a staff of clever and
unprincipled attorneys is capable of using double-talk to produce a
written justification for any action, no matter how illegal it might
be in fact. And -- when the political wind is blowing in the right
direction -- not only get away with it but be rewarded with a lifetime
appointment as a federal judge.

The Obama Justice Department's refusal to consider prosecuting any of
the authors of the Torture Memos, or to even to ask the state bar
associations with jurisdiction over the authors (all or who were
practicing lawyers) to investigate them for what even the Justice
Department concluded had been gross professional misconduct (which
would have put the authors in danger of disbarment), remains a blot on
the Obama administration's human rights record to this day.
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

_SAVANNAH CITIZENS DEMAND “BREAD OR BLOOD!”_

160 YEARS AGO, on April 17, 1864, in Savannah, Georgia, a large crowd,
most of whom were women – many of them armed – marched through the
city streets crying “bread or blood!” and forcefully expropriating
food wherever it could be found.

During 1863-65, at least scores of similar “bread riots,” occurred
in cities throughout the Confederate states. Records of such events
are far from complete, but it is clear that there was widespread
hunger in many Southern cities as a result of both inadequate food
production and of the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the Confederacy’s
ports.

To what extent such militant displays of dissent were purely the
result of lack of food and not more broad-based opposition to
secession will never be known, but it is safe to say that a very
substantial number of citizens of the South’s larger cities were
antagonistic to slavery and the war being fought to preserve it. Many
landless Southern city-dwellers believed that secession could only
benefit the owners of land and enslaved people. 

Similar episodes of anti-confederate civil unrest took place in
Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, and Milledgeville (all in Georgia),
as well as Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, Salisbury and High
Point, North Carolina, and Mobile,
Alabama.[link removed]
[[link removed]]

_WASN’T THAT A TIME? _

65 YEARS AGO, on April 18, 1959, an 11-week strike by 14,000 United
Auto Workers members in seven states came to an end when the union won
most of what it was demanding from the employer, Allis-Chalmers, one
of the country’s largest machinery manufacturers. The new contract
included a substantial wage increase, additions to the company
contributions to pension and supplemental unemployment benefits, and
increased health and accident insurance benefits. 

The strike, and the way it ended in a clear union victory, was not
headline news, because in 1959 there was nothing unusual about a
victory by the striking workers at a major national employer. How
times have changed.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED_

45 YEARS AGO, on April 19, 1989, five New York City teenagers under
the age of 17, who were guilty of nothing except being Black, were
arrested and accused of having raped and nearly killed a Central Park
jogger. The fact that the five were both in fact innocent and also as
entitled as anyone to the presumption of innocence did not prevent the
police from beating confessions out of them, and then using the
“confessions” to convict them. 

In 2002, another person confessed to having raped and beaten the
jogger single-handedly. His confession was backed up by DNA and other
crime-scene evidence. By that time each of the innocent convicts had
served their time, so their freedom was not at issue.  But they
sought, and obtained, more than $40 million to compensate them for
their victimization. 
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

_AN UNFORGETTABLE SONG ABOUT THE UNSPEAKABLE_

85 YEARS AGO, on April 20, 1939, blues singer Billie Holiday made the
first recording of Strange Fruit, an unforgettably poignant protest
against lynching, with words and music composed by Abel Meeropol in
1937. 

This is the haunting lyric:

“Southern trees bearing a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is a fruit for the crow to pluck
For the rain to wither, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop."

That recording sold more than one million copies, the best selling
release in Holiday’s long career. You can hear a 1959 performance by
Holiday here: [link removed]

_ONE OF THE REASONS THE U.S. LOST IN VIETNAM_

55 YEARS AGO, on April 21, 1969, one of the first well-documented
cases a fragging took place in South Vietnam when a fragmentation
grenade was thrown into a Marine Corps office at Quảng Trị Combat
Base, killing a Marine First Lieutenant; after an investigation a
Marine Private pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and was sentenced
to 40 years' imprisonment. 

During the latter years of the U.S. military occupation of South
Vietnam, breakdown of military discipline was widespread; from 1969 to
1972, there were at least 900 fragging assaults resulting in at least
99 fatalities. During 1971, the last full calendar year of the war,
fraggings took place at the rate of one per day. The arrest and
conviction of the perpetrators of fragging was quite rare, because it
was so difficult for military authorities to identify them. Only 10
fraggers were convicted of murder. 
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_THE WAY AMERICA WAS BUILT_

135 YEARS AGO, on April 22, 1889, a new chapter in the genocidal
behavior of North America’s white settler regime began to unfold
when an estimated 50,000 people simultaneously invaded a 2
million-acre swath of what is now central Oklahoma and took over land
that had been solemnly deeded by the U.S. government to Native
Americans less than six decades earlier. Each homesteader had the
right to stake a claim on a 160-acre plot; by the end of the day,
nearly all of the available 2 million acres had been claimed. Most of
the Native Americans whose territory was overrun received no
compensation for their losses.
[link removed]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]