Friday News in late September of 2018.

It is always important to show the truth. There are meetings about to allow Dr. Ford (who have received death threats) to testify under certain terms. Also, it is important to expose Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is known for hypocritically claiming to be in favor of constitutional rights, but wants an executive branch with inordinate power. It is a documented fact that Kavanaugh made a joke about his time in high school which alluded to alcohol abuse. Another classmate, Cristina Miranda King, said that she heard stories about Kavanaugh abusing a then young teenager. Me personally, I believe Dr. Ford's story. Also, Mueller is talking with Michael Cohen on many issues for hours recently. U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke is running for the Senate in Texas. Texas is known for being a very conservative state, but O'Rourke is a progressive person. He wants Medicare for all, he supported the NFL protests, and he opposed the separation of children at the border. His opponent is Ted Cruz, who is a known extremist reactionary.

It is important to memorialize the Birthday of Sister Dorothy Vaughan yesterday. Years ago, she recently passed away in 2008. She was an African American woman who was a mathematician. She worked in NASA and in other places where computer science, technology, and complex mathematics were expressed in order for experts to promote the glorious essence of STEM fields. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to supervise a group of staff at the center. Studying computers is part of her gift and she has inspired many future generations of especially girls plus women to pursue STEM fields greatly. Vaughan is one of the women featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's history Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016). It was adapted as a biographical film of the same name, also released in 2016. She had 6 children and was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1910. She lived in Newport News, Virginia and worked in Hampton, Virginia too. It is important for us to recognize the heroes of the past, so we are inspired to make a better future for our descendants.
Rest in Power Sister Dorothy Vaughan.

The same disgraceful pattern among many in government is that some want to promote the lie that they don't have enough money to adequately help the victims of Hurricane Florence. Florence has damaged many areas found in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina. It has caused thousands of men, women, and children to be homeless. Some folks in those regions wait hours for food, water, and gasoline, yet the deficit hawks promulgate the common refrain. That refrain is that we lack the money to fund the victims of a horrible storm. Regardless of the economic growth in America now, 40% of all Americans can't cover a $400 emergency (according to a Federal Reserve Board report). This isn't fiction. This is real. 25% of all Americans have no retirement savings. Therefore, instead of poor bashing that some rich and some bourgeois types do, we should show great empathy, execute investments, and express compassion to the poor. Any society that marginalizes the poor is a society in crisis. The subsequent flooding, as a product of the Florence, constantly reveals the poverty, income inequality, and the class oppression found in America plus the globe. The vast majority of the victims of Florence also lack flood insurance. It is a fact that an economic plutocracy controls the majority of the financial wealth of the world. This must change.

Only a radical redistribution of economic and political power is necessary to cause human liberation. I'm not the only person saying this. Dr. King, before he died, said this all of the time. Malcolm X said this in 1964 and in 1965 when he criticized capitalism. Claudia Jones said this in the Caribbean and in the United Kingdom. W.E.B. DuBois has said this in his speeches and I heard his voice on YouTube before. Therefore, we are in an august class struggle and we want not only workers to have economic justice. We haven't forgotten about the victims of Maria in Puerto Rico either. The general welfare entails precisely that the social needs of the people have the preeminent priority beyond private profit. We want the rest of the poor and the homeless to have their own sense of happiness realized comprehensively.

Anti-communist extremism is not prudence, but extremism and bigotry. We have the First Amendment which says that Americans have the right to the freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and the right to protest. We have the right to the freedom of association that means that people can be Communists, capitalists, socialists, etc. if he or she desires. That freedom also dictates that people have the right to agree or disagree with Communism. Leftists? Leftists are people who  brought folks the Clean Air Act, Medicare, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, environmental regulations, and other blessings that many take for granted. Dr. King was a progressive along with other heroes like Claudia Jones, Hosea Williams, and Gloria Richardson. Leftists include many heroic people. Also, Gus Hall (who I don't agree on some issues) was a Communist so he would say something like that. Mao talked about the Black Panthers (and many Black Panthers cited Mao in their literature), but the Black Panthers never murdered millions of people. The Black Panthers confronted police brutality including racism. Fred Hampton (who was a Black Panther member) was a socialist and stood up against injustice too. I have no naivete on history. Hampton never killed anyone, he protested, and he brought people together. He was murdered by the Chicago police in a brutal fashion back in December of 1969. Fred Hampton was a hero.  Like I have mentioned before, Dr. King disagreed with Sovet-style Communism in his 1967 interview with Merv Griffin, in his 1967 speech to the SCLC, and in his last book Where do We go From Here. He did praise democratic socialism (where there would be a reconciliation among individualism and collectivism) which I have no issues with.


By Timothy