I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO

A Movie Review

 

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The movie, I Am Not Your Negro, played to sold out crowds recently at the Speed Cinema here in Derby City. This movie comes at a most propitious moment in time when the American Negro is again under assault by the white ruling class now that the alt-right has taken over the White House.
It is a timely tale told by Samuel L. Jackson in the words of the brilliant novelist James Baldwin in a documentary filmed by Raoul Peck. It has been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. The film is based on Baldwin’s work, Remember This House, which details the civil rights movement and assassinations of his close friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The film expands on the work and brings it up to date to modern times and the Black Lives matter movement.

It is a powerful film well worth seeing.

Media is the Enemy

 Really?

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Donald Trump recently tweeted the above loathsome comment in his ongoing battle with the press. White nationalist, chief strategist, and senior presidential adviser, Steve Bannon, has said the press is the opposition party. Senator John McCain has described these words as the words of a dictator.

Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the sudden degradation of our liberty under the tyranny of would be dictator Donald Trump. With freedom of the press we cannot be sure of moving towards justice but without it we can be sure we are not going there.  Justice is done when the rights of the people are recognized and there is no right without freedom of expression.

We must be vigilant regarding this principle of freedom of the press which is enshrined in our constitution and is the first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Whoever does violence to the truth or to its expression eventually mutilates justice. Censorship and oppression prove that the word is enough to make tyrants tremble. Every lowly person, when he rises up from oppression, reaffirms by so acting the solidarity of all men. Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains this sense of duty. The great citizens of a country are not those who genuflect before authority, but rather those who rise up against authority, if need be, and are adamant to the honor and freedom of our great country.

You see the protest in the streets. What is beginning is a period of indomitable men and women devoted to the unconditional defense of liberty. Those who, like me, have broken with friends and family by the rejection of any complicity with parties, whether on the right or left, that justify the suppression of a single one of our liberties.

 

 

 

 

CLOWN SHOW

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The roar of the crowd

The smell of the greasepaint

Always signaled to me

The arrival of the circus

Wringling Brothers

Barnum and Bailey

May have folded

Their tents

But the Clown Show in Washington

Goes on just as intense.

Give Me Liberty!

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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-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

 

RESIST

Word of the day: Resist

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Protesters at a Rally for American Values in Louisville, Kentucky

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Protesters at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky

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Greg Fisher, Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, gave a speech in support of immigrants and refugees, but stopped short of declaring Louisville to be a sanctuary city.