January 18, 2012
Justices Rule for Inmate After Mailroom Mix-Up
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that an Alabama death row inmate who missed a filing deadline thanks to a mix-up in the mailroom of a prominent New York law firm must be given another chance.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority in the 7-to-2 decision, said “no just system” would allow the missed deadline to be held against the inmate, Cory R. Maples, in light of how he had been treated by lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, who handled his case without charge after he was convicted of murdering two people in 1997. The decision allows lower federal courts to consider Mr. Maples’s claim that his trial court lawyers were ineffective notwithstanding the missed deadline in the state court system.
“Maples was disarmed by extraordinary circumstances quite beyond his control,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.
In a concurrence, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. described what had happened to Mr. Maples as “a veritable perfect storm of misfortune,” starting with the oddity that much of it was attributable to lawyers from “one of the country’s most prestigious and expensive” law firms.
“I have little doubt that the vast majority of criminal defendants would think that they had won the lottery if they were given the opportunity to be represented by attorneys from such a firm,” he added.
Yet two lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell failed to inform Mr. Maples when they left the firm. Nor did they tell the court from which they were awaiting a ruling in his case. When two copies of that ruling were sent to the firm, it returned them unopened.
Justice Ginsburg’s opinion included a critique of Alabama’s capital justice system. At the time of Mr. Maples’s trial, court-appointed lawyers in capital cases were paid $40 an hour for time in court and $20 an hour otherwise, with a $1,000 cap on out-of-court work.
Mr. Maples was convicted of murdering two companions after a night of drinking. “His inexperienced and underfunded attorneys,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct and woefully underprepared for the penalty phase of his trial.”
At one point the lawyers apologized to the jury, saying that they “may appear to be stumbling around in the dark.” Even so, the jury’s vote recommending the death penalty was 10 to 2, the minimum required under Alabama law.
Justice Ginsburg was also critical of how Alabama handles challenges to convictions. Alabama is nearly alone among the states, she wrote, in that it “does not guarantee representation to indigent capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings.” Instead, the state relies on volunteer lawyers from public interest law firms and from the pro bono practices of major firms.
Two young associates from Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York office, Jaasi Munanka and Clara Ingen-Housz, filed a post-conviction petition in state court in August 2001, arguing that Mr. Maples’s trial lawyers had been ineffective. The next summer, they left the firm.
In May 2003, the state court denied the petition, and a clerk sent copies of the ruling to the two lawyers. Sullivan & Cromwell’s mailroom returned the envelopes unopened. One was stamped “Returned to Sender — Attempted Unknown,” the other “Return to Sender — Left Firm.”
The deadline for an appeal came and went, and state and federal courts ruled against Mr. Maples’s request to waive the deadline.
The usual rule in post-conviction proceedings is that a lawyer’s mistakes are imputed to the client, on the theory that the lawyer is the client’s agent. “We do not disturb that general rule,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.
What was different here, she said, was that the lawyers had abandoned their client, severing the agency relationship. “Moreover,” Justice Ginsburg said in announcing the decision from the bench Wednesday morning, Mr. Maples “lacked any clue that he had better fend for himself.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented. Justice Scalia said Mr. Maples was represented throughout, as other Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers had taken action when they learned of the missed deadline. Justice Ginsburg responded that “the record is cloudy” on this point, adding that the firm operated under “a significant conflict of interest” at that point.
Justice Scalia noted that an Alabama lawyer, John G. Butler Jr., had also represented Mr. Maples as local counsel and had also received a copy of the ruling. Justice Ginsburg said Mr. Butler had been Mr. Maples’s lawyer in name only, in order to satisfy a requirement of Alabama law concerning out-of-state lawyers.
Justice Scalia acknowledged the majority’s “understandable sense of frustration.” But he said the majority opinion in the case, Maples v. Thomas, No. 10-63, had provided a road map to other death row inmates. “The trick will be to allege,” Justice Scalia wrote, “not that counsel was ineffective, but rather that the counsel’s ineffectiveness demonstrates that he was not a genuinely representative agent.”
Justice Ginsburg wrote that the decision was limited and straightforward.
“In these circumstances,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “no just system would lay the default at Maples’s death-cell door.”
Friday, January 20, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Death Row Inmate “Trapped … Abandoned Without a Word of Warning” by Sullivan & Cromwell – Supreme Court Provides Relief From Malpractice
Clara Ingen-Housz (now with another law firm in Hong Kong)
Jaasi J. Munanka (now with another law firm in Denver)
Do some very large corporate law firms objectify their clients in their pro bono cases. Did Sullivan & Cromwell commit legal malpractice that almost killed a client?
The United States Supreme Court found this week that two New York Big Law Firm lawyers (from Sullivan & Cromwell)(above) “abandoned” their Alabama Death Row client when they left the law firm for new jobs without ever telling him, and without securing other counsel for him, leaving him “trapped” and “abandoning him without a word of warning.”
The Sullivan & Cromwell mailroom sent two court orders back to the court, marked return to sender. As a result, the death penalty inmate missed his deadline to appeal from denial of post-conviction relief for inadequate counsel.
Based on Sullivan & Cromwell’s “abandonment,” our Supreme Court reversed all of the lower courts. If it had not, Mr. Maples would have died at the hands of SULLIVAN & CROMWELL’s notion of “pro bono” legal counsel.
Do large American corporate law firms routinely “go through the motions” on pro bono work – enough to attract awards, but not enough to matter in the lives of the people they help?
What is the meaning of pro bono work at large corporate law firms?
How can pro bono law standards be improved so this never happens again?
What do you reckon?
Read this excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, decided earlier this week, in MAPLES v. THOMAS, COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 565 U.S. ___ (2012)
… Two out-of-state volunteers represented Maples inpostconviction proceedings: Jaasi Munanka and Clara Ingen-Housz, both associates at the New York offices ofthe Sullivan & Cromwell law firm. At the time, Alabama required out-of-state attorneys to associate local counselwhen seeking admission to practice pro hac vice before an Alabama court, regardless of the nature of the proceeding.Rule Governing Admission to the Ala. State Bar VII (2000)(hereinafter Rule VII).3 The Alabama Rule further pre-scribed that the local attorney’s name “appear on all no¬tices, orders, pleadings, and other documents filed in thecause,” and that local counsel “accept joint and several responsibility with the foreign attorney to the client, to opposing parties and counsel, and to the court or adminis¬trative agency in all matters [relating to the case].”Rule VII(C).
allowing the two New York attorneys to appear pro hac vice on behalf of Maples. App. to Pet. for Cert. 255a.Given his lack of “resources, available time [and] experi¬ence,” Butler told the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, he could not “deal with substantive issues in the case.” Ibid. The Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys accepted Butler’sconditions. Id., at 257a. This arrangement between out¬of-state and local attorneys, it appears, was hardly atypi-cal. See Justices Brief 36 (“The fact is that local counsel for out-of-state attorneys in post-conviction litigation mostoften do nothing other than provide the mechanism forforeign attorneys to be admitted.”).
With the aid of his pro bono counsel, Maples filed apetition for postconviction relief under Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.4 Among other claims, Maplesasserted that his court-appointed attorneys provided con¬stitutionally ineffective assistance during both guilt and penalty phases of his capital trial. App. 29–126. He alleged, in this regard, that his inexperienced and under¬funded attorneys failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct, and woefully un¬derprepared for the penalty phase of his trial. The State responded by moving for summary dismissal of Maples’ petition. On December 27, 2001, the trial court denied the State’s motion.
Some seven months later,
Munanka and Ingen-Housz associated Huntsville, Ala¬bama attorney John Butler as local counsel. Notwith¬standing his obligations under Alabama law, Butlerinformed Munanka and Ingen-Housz, “at the outset,” that he would serve as local counsel only for the purpose of allowing the two New York attorneys to appear pro hac vice on behalf of Maples. App. to Pet. for Cert. 255a.Given his lack of “resources, available time [and] experi¬ence,” Butler told the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, he could not “deal with substantive issues in the case.” Ibid. The Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys accepted Butler’sconditions. Id., at 257a. This arrangement between out¬of-state and local attorneys, it appears, was hardly atypi¬cal. See Justices Brief 36 (“The fact is that local counsel for out-of-state attorneys in post-conviction litigation mostoften do nothing other than provide the mechanism forforeign attorneys to be admitted.”).
With the aid of his pro bono counsel, Maples filed apetition for postconviction relief under Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.4 Among other claims, Maplesasserted that his court-appointed attorneys provided con¬stitutionally ineffective assistance during both guilt and penalty phases of his capital trial. App. 29–126. He alleged, in this regard, that his inexperienced and under¬funded attorneys failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct, and woefully un¬derprepared for the penalty phase of his trial. The State responded by moving for summary dismissal of Maples’ petition. On December 27, 2001, the trial court denied the State’s motion.
Some seven months later, in the summer of 2002, both Munanka and Ingen-Housz left Sullivan & Cromwell. App. to Pet. for Cert. 258a. Munanka gained a clerkship with a federal judge; Ingen-Housz accepted a position withthe European Commission in Belgium. Ibid. Neither attorney told Maples of their departure from Sullivan &Cromwell or of their resulting inability to continue to continue to represent him. In disregard of Alabama law, see Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 6.2, Comment, neither attorney sought the trial court’s leave to withdraw, App. to Pet. for Cert. 223a.Compounding Munanka’s and Ingen-Housz’s inaction, noother Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer entered an appearance on Maples’ behalf, moved to substitute counsel, or other¬wise notified the court of any change in Maples’ represen¬tation. Ibid.
Another nine months passed. During this time period, no Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys assigned to Maples’case sought admission to the Alabama bar, entered ap-pearances on Maples’ behalf, or otherwise advised the Alabama court that Munanka and Ingen-Housz were no longer Maples’ attorneys. Thus, Munanka and Ingen-Housz (along with Butler) remained Maples’ listed, and only, “attorneys of record.” Id., at 223a.
There things stood when, in May 2003, the trial court,without holding a hearing, entered an order denying Maples’ Rule 32 petition. App. 146–225.5
5One of Maples’ attorneys observed, without contradiction, that the trial court’s order was a “word for word copy of the proposed Order that the State had submitted [with] its [December 2001] Motion to Dismiss.” Id., at 300.
The clerk of the Alabama trial court mailed copies of the order to Maples’ three attorneys of record. He sent Munanka’s and Ingen¬Housz’s copies to Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York ad¬dress, which the pair had provided upon entering their appearances.
When those copies arrived at Sullivan & Cromwell, Munanka and Ingen-Housz had long since departed. The notices, however, were not forwarded to another Sullivan & Cromwell attorney. Instead, a mailroom employee sent the unopened envelopes back to the court. “Returned to Sender—Attempted, Unknown” was stamped on the enve¬lope addressed to Munanka. App. to Reply to Brief in Opposition 8a. A similar stamp appeared on the envelopeaddressed to Ingen-Housz, along with the handwrittennotation “Return to Sender—Left Firm.” Id., at 7a.
Upon receiving back the unopened envelopes he had mailed to Munanka and Ingen-Housz, the Alabama court clerk took no further action. In particular, the clerk didnot contact Munanka or Ingen-Housz at the personal telephone numbers or home addresses they had providedin their pro hac vice applications. See Ingen-Housz Veri¬fied Application for Admission to Practice Under Rule VII,
p. 1; and Munanka Verified Application for Admission toPractice Under Rule VII, p. 1, in Maples v. State, No. CC– 95–842.60 (C. C. Morgan Cty., Ala.). Nor did the clerk alert Sullivan & Cromwell or Butler. Butler received his copy of the order, but did not act on it. App. to Pet. forCert. 256a. He assumed that Munanka and Ingen-Housz, who had been “CC’d” on the order, would take care of filing an appeal. Ibid.
Meanwhile, the clock ticked on Maples’ appeal. Under Alabama’s Rules of Appellate Procedure, Maples had 42days to file a notice of appeal from the trial court’s May 22,2003 order denying Maples’ petition for postconvictionrelief. Rule 4(a)(1) (2000). No appeal notice was filed, and the time allowed for filing expired on July 7, 2003.
A little over a month later, on August 13, 2003, Ala¬bama Assistant Attorney General Jon Hayden, the attor¬ney representing the State in Maples’ collateral review proceedings, sent a letter directly to Maples. App. to Pet.for Cert. 253a–254a. Hayden’s letter informed Maples of the missed deadline for initiating an appeal within theState’s system, and notified him that four weeks remained during which he could file a federal habeas petition. Ibid. Hayden mailed the letter to Maples only, using his prison address. Ibid. No copy was sent to Maples’ attorneys ofrecord, or to anyone else acting on Maples’ behalf. Ibid.
Upon receiving the State’s letter, Maples immediately contacted his mother. Id., at 258a. She telephoned Sulli¬van & Cromwell to inquire about her son’s case. Ibid. Prompted by her call, Sullivan & Cromwell attorneysMarc De Leeuw, Felice Duffy, and Kathy Brewer submit¬ted a motion, through Butler, asking the trial court toreissue its order denying Maples’ Rule 32 petition, thereby restarting the 42-day appeal period. Id., at 222a.
The trial court denied the motion, id., at 222a–225a, not¬ing that Munanka and Ingen-Housz had not withdrawnfrom the case and, consequently, were “still attor-neys of record for the petitioner,” id., at 223a. Further¬more, the court added, attorneys De Leeuw, Duffy, andBrewer had not “yet been admitted to practice in Ala¬bama” or “entered appearances as attorneys of record.” Ibid. “How,” the court asked, “can a Circuit Clerk in Decatur, Alabama know what is going on in a law firm inNew York, New York?” Id., at 223a–224a. Declining toblame the clerk for the missed notice of appeal deadline, the court said it was “unwilling to enter into subterfuge in order to gloss over mistakes made by counsel for the peti¬tioner.” Ibid.
Maples next petitioned the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of mandamus, granting him leave to file an out-of-time appeal. Rejecting Maples’ plea, the Court of Criminal Appeals determined that, although the clerk had“assumed a duty to notify the parties of the resolution ofMaples’s Rule 32 petition,” the clerk had satisfied that obligation by sending notices to the attorneys of record atthe addresses those attorneys provided. Id., at 234a–235a. Butler’s receipt of the order, the court observed, sufficed to notify all attorneys “in light of their apparent co-counsel status.” Id., at 235a–236a (quoting Thomas v. Kellett, 489 So. 2d 554, 555 (Ala. 1986)). The Alabama Supreme Court summarily affirmed the Court of Criminal Appeals’ judg¬ment, App. to Pet. for Cert. 237a, and this Court denied certiorari, Maples v. Alabama, 543 U. S. 1148 (2005)
,,, As amici for Maples explain, a significant conflict of interest arose for the firm once the crucial deadline passed. Brief for Legal Ethics Professors et al. as Amici Curiae 23–27. Following the default, the firm’s interest in avoiding damage to its own reputation was at odds with Maples’ strongest argument—i.e., that his attorneys had abandoned him, therefore he had cause to be relieved from the default. Yet Sullivan & Cromwell did not cede Maples’ representation to a new attorney, who could have made Maples’ abandonment argument plain to the Court of Appeals. Instead, the firm represented Maples through briefing andoral argument in the Eleventh Circuit, where they attempted to cast responsibility for the mishap on the clerk of the Alabama trial court. Given Sullivan & Cromwell’s conflict of interest, Maples’ federal habeas petition, prepared and submitted by the firm, is not persuasive evi¬dence that Maples, prior to the default, ever “viewed himself” as repre¬sented by “the firm,” see post, at 4, rather than by his attorneys of record, Munanka and Ingen-Housz.
…. “The cause and prejudice requirement,” we have said, “shows due regard for States’ finality and comity interestswhile ensuring that ‘fundamental fairness [remains] the central concern of the writ of habeas corpus.’” Dretke v. Haley, 541 U. S. 386, 393 (2004) (quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 697 (1984)). In the unusual circumstances of this case, principles of agency law andfundamental fairness point to the same conclusion: Therewas indeed cause to excuse Maples’ procedural default. Through no fault of his own, Maples lacked the assistanceof any authorized attorney during the 42 days Alabama allows for noticing an appeal from a trial court’s denial of postconviction relief. As just observed, he had no reason to suspect that, in reality, he had been reduced to pro se status. Maples was disarmed by extraordinary circum¬stances quite beyond his control. He has shown ample cause, we hold, to excuse the procedural default into which he was trapped when counsel of record abandoned himwithout a word of warning.
III Having found no cause to excuse the failure to file atimely notice of appeal in state court, the District Court and the Eleventh Circuit did not reach the question of prejudice. See supra, at 10–11. That issue, therefore, remains open for decision on remand.
* * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court ofAppeals for the Eleventh Circuit is reversed, and the caseis remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Why BRUCE MAGUIRE Is Still a Lugibrous Goober Who Knows Not that He Knows Not That He Knows Not!
See quote below.
Both BRUCE MAGUIRE and his twin brother have been County Commissioners.
BRUCE MAGUIRE and other pro-developer tools were defeated in recent elections.
BRUCE MAGUIRE has been fairly quiet lately.
His latest quote (below)typifies the genre of "thought" from this cognitive miser.
IN HAEC VERBA -- Quote from Former County Commissioner BRUCE MAGUIRE from this week's Folio Weekly
BRUCE MAGUIRE (Right) with Virginia Whetstone Maguire
BRUCE ALMIGHTY
"When will the liberals realize and accept that Obama's actions are nothing more than power grabs to make us all subservient to him and the government?"
-- Former St. Johns County Commissioner Bruce Maguire, in an apparently unironic Facebook post.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Robert F. Kennedy Spoke About Poverty, Inequality and the Absurdity of Some Misguided Americans' Obsession With thethe Gross National Product
Remarks of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968
Robert F. Kennedy
University of Kansas
March 18, 1968
This text was transcribed for the convenience of readers and researchers from a recording in the library's holdings. It reflects Robert F. Kennedy's speaking rhythms, the starts and stops and repetitions of his oral performance. It is not an exact setting down of every utterance Robert F. Kennedy made on the occasion, which would include the "ers" and "ums" and other delay sounds that are an inevitable part of an individual's speech patterns. Furthermore, as with any transcription, there is an unavoidable element of interpretation. Interested researchers are invited and encouraged to come in and listen to the recording themselves.
Thank you very much. Chancellor, Governor and Mrs. Docking, Senator and Mrs. Pierson, ladies and gentlemen and my friends, I'm very pleased to be here. I'm really not here to make a speech I've come because I came from Kansas State and they want to send their love to all of you. They did. That's all they talk about over there, how much they love you. Actually, I want to establish the fact that I am not an alumnus of Villanova.
I'm very pleased and very touched, as my wife is, at your warm reception here. I think of my colleagues in the United States Senate, I think of my friends there, and I think of the warmth that exists in the Senate of the United States - I don't know why you're laughing - I was sick last year and I received a message from the Senate of the United States which said: "We hope you recover," and the vote was forty-two to forty.
And then they took a poll in one of the financial magazines of five hundred of the largest businessmen in the United States, to ask them, what political leader they most admired, who they wanted to see as President of the United States, and I received one vote, and I understand they're looking for him. I could take all my supporters to lunch, but I'm - I don't know whether you're going to like what I'm going to say today but I just want you to remember, as you look back upon this day, and when it comes to a question of who you're going to support - that it was a Kennedy who got you out of class.
I am very pleased to be here with my colleagues, Senator Pierson, who I think has contributed so much in the Senate of the United States - who has fought for the interests of Kansas and has had a distinguished career, and I'm very proud to be associated with him. And Senator Carlson who is not here, who is one of the most respected members of the Senate of the United States - respected not just on the Republican side - by the Democratic side, by all of his colleagues and I'm pleased and proud to be in the Senate with Senator Carlson of the State of Kansas.
And I'm happy to be here with an old friend, Governor Docking. I don't think there was anyone that was more committed to President Kennedy and made more of an effort under the most adverse circumstances and with the most difficult of situations than his father, who was then Governor of the State of Kansas - nobody I worked with more closely, myself, when I was in Los Angeles. We weren't 100 percent successful, but that was a relationship that I will always value, and I know how highly President Kennedy valued it and I'm very pleased to see him - and to have seen his mother, Mrs. Docking today also, so I'm very pleased to be in his State.
And then I'm pleased to be here because I like to see all of you, in addition.
In 1824, when Thomas Hart Benton was urging in Congress the development of Iowa and other western territories, he was opposed by Daniel Webster, the Senator from Massachusetts. "What," asked Webster, "what do we want with this vast and worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts. Of deserts of shifting sands and of whirlwinds. Of dust, and of cactus and of prairie dogs.
"To what use," he said, "could we ever hope to put these great deserts? I will never vote for one-cent from the public treasury, to place the west one inch closer to Boston, than it is now." And that is why, I am here today, instead of my brother Edward.
I'm glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: "If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow." And despite all the accusations against me, those words were not written by me, they were written by that notorious seditionist, William Allen White. And I know what great affection this university has for him. He is an honored man today, here on your campus and around the rest of the nation. But when he lived and wrote, he was reviled as an extremist and worse. For he spoke, he spoke as he believed. He did not conceal his concern in comforting words. He did not delude his readers or himself with false hopes and with illusions. This spirit of honest confrontation is what America needs today. It has been missing all too often in the recent years and it is one of the reasons that I run for President of the United States.
For we as a people, we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States. But I don't want to run for the presidency - I don't want America to make the critical choice of direction and leadership this year without confronting that truth. I don't want to win support of votes by hiding the American condition in false hopes or illusions. I want us to find out the promise of the future, what we can accomplish here in the United States, what this country does stand for and what is expected of us in the years ahead. And I also want us to know and examine where we've gone wrong. And I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.
This morning I spoke about the war in Vietnam, and I will speak briefly about it in a few moments. But there is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam.
It is, at a root, the root of all of it, the national soul of the United States. The President calls it "restlessness." Our cabinet officers, such as John Gardiner and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don't think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.
Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators. Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children. I don't think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America.
Our young people - the best educated, and the best comforted in our history, turn from the Peace Corps and public commitment of a few years ago - to lives of disengagement and despair - many of them turned on with drugs and turned off on America - none of them here, of course, at Kansas - right?
All around us, all around us, - not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations - but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed - the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past - rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair - cries which the President's Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder - rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States.
And if we seem powerless to stop this growing division between Americans, who at least confront one another, there are millions more living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown - but I have seen these other Americans - I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States - with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.
I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.
That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that - for the first American, for this minority here in the United States. If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school and feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody's going to care for them, nobody's going to be involved with them, and nobody's going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves or kill themselves - I don't think that's acceptable and I think the United States of America - I think the American people, I think we can do much, much better. And I run for the presidency because of that, I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, nor labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.
I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also.
I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms - without heat - warding off the cold and warding off the rats.
If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world. From the beginning our proudest boast has been the promise of Jefferson, that we, here in this country would be the best hope of mankind. And now, as we look at the war in Vietnam, we wonder if we still hold a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and whether the opinion maintained a descent respect for us or whether like Athens of old, we will forfeit sympathy and support, and ultimately our very security, in the single-minded pursuit of our own goals and our own objectives. I do not want, and I do believe that most Americans do not want, to sell out America's interest to simply withdraw - to raise the white flag of surrender in Vietnam - that would be unacceptable to us as a people, and unacceptable to us as a country. But I am concerned about the course of action that we are presently following in South Vietnam. I am concerned, I am concerned about the fact that this has been made America's War. It was said, a number of years ago that this is "their war" "this is the war of the South Vietnamese" that "we can help them, but we can't win it for them" but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that's unacceptable.
I don't accept the idea that this is just a military action, that this is just a military effort, and every time we have had difficulties in South Vietnam and Southeast Asia we have had only one response, we have had only one way to deal with it - month after month - year after year we have dealt with it in only on way and that's to send more military men and increase our military power and I don't think that's what the kind of a struggle that it is in Southeast Asia.
I think that this is a question of the people of South Vietnam, I think its a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling its worth their efforts - that they're going to make the sacrifice - that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and I think the development of the last several years have shown, have demonstrated that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, to say that we're going to destroy all of South Vietnam because we have a commitment there. The commander of the American forces at Ben Tre said we had to destroy that city in order to save it. So 38,000 people were wiped out or made refugees. We here in the United States - not just the United States government, not just the commanders of and forces in South Vietnam, the United States government and every human being that's in this room - we are part of that decision and I don't think that we need do that any longer and I think we should change our policy.
I don't want to be part of a government, I don't want to be part of the United States, I don't want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: "They made a desert and they called it peace."
I think that we should go to the negotiating table, and I think we should take the steps to go to the negotiating table.
And I've said it over the period of the last two years, I think that we have a chance to have negotiations, and the possibility of meaningful negotiations, but last February, a year ago, when the greatest opportunity existed for negotiations the Administration and the President of the United States felt that the military victory was right around the corner and we sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, in February 8th of 1967 virtually asking for their unconditional surrender, we are not going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong anymore than they're going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the United States of America. We're going to have to negotiate, we're going to have to make compromises, we're going to have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. But people can argue, "That's unfortunate that we have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front," but that is a fact of life. We have three choices: We can either pull out of South Vietnam unilaterally and raise the white flag - I think that's unacceptable.
Second, we can continue to escalate, we can continue to send more men there, until we have millions and millions of more men and we can continue to bomb North Vietnam, and in my judgment we will be no nearer success, we will be no nearer victory than we are now in February of 1968.
And the third step that we can take is to go to the negotiating table. We can go to the negotiating table and not achieve everything that we wish. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people, but the other, the other alternative is so unacceptable. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people and that the United States government must accept, is that the National Liberation Front is going to play a role in the future political process of South Vietnam.
And we're going to have to negotiate with them. That they are going to play some role in the future political process of South Vietnam, that there are going to be elections and the people of South Vietnam, are ultimately going to determine and decide their own future.
That is the course of action, that is the course of action that I would like to see. I would like to see the United States government to make it clear to the government of Saigon that we are not going to tolerate the corruption and the dishonesty. I think that we should make it clear to the government of Saigon that if we're going to draft young men, 18 years of age here in the United States, if we're going to draft young men who are 19 years-old here in the United States, and wer're going to send them to fight and die in Khe Sanh, that we want the government of South Vietnam to draft their 18-year-olds and their 19-year-olds.
And I want to make it clear that if the government of Saigon, feels Khe Sanh or Que Son and the area in the demilitarized zone are so important, if Khe San is so important to the government of Saigon, I want to see those American marines out of there and South Vietnamese troops in there.
I want to have an explanation as to why American boys killed, two weeks ago, in South Vietnam, were three times as many - more than three times as many, as the soldiers of South Vietnam. I want to understand why the casualties and the deaths, over the period of the last two weeks, at the height of the fighting, should be so heavily American casualties, as compared to the South Vietnamese. This is their war. I think we have to make the effort to help them, I think that we have to make the effort to fight, but I don't think that we should have to carry the whole burden of that war, I think the South Vietnamese should.
And if I am elected President of the United States, with help, with your help, these are the kinds of policies that I'm going to put into operation.
We can do better here in the United States, we can do better. We can do better in our relationships to other countries around the rest of the globe. President Kennedy, when he campaigned in 1960, he talked about the loss of prestige that the United States had suffered around the rest of the globe, but look at what our condition is at the present time. The President of the United States goes to a meeting of the OAS at Montevideo- can he go into the city of Montevideo? Or can he travel through the cities of Latin America where there was such deep love and deep respect? He has to stay in a military base at Montevideo, with American ships out at sea and American helicopters overhead in order to ensure that he's protected, I don't think that that's acceptable.
I think that we should have conditions here in the United States, and support enough for our policies, so that the President of the United States can travel freely and clearly across all the cities of this country, and not just to military bases.
I think there's more that we can do internally here, I think there's more that we can do in South Vietnam. I don't think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment. I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"
So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago, I ask for your help and for your assistance. If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
And when we win in November, and when we win in November, and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America - I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: "Joy was in those days, but to live." Thank you very much.
Robert F. Kennedy
University of Kansas
March 18, 1968
This text was transcribed for the convenience of readers and researchers from a recording in the library's holdings. It reflects Robert F. Kennedy's speaking rhythms, the starts and stops and repetitions of his oral performance. It is not an exact setting down of every utterance Robert F. Kennedy made on the occasion, which would include the "ers" and "ums" and other delay sounds that are an inevitable part of an individual's speech patterns. Furthermore, as with any transcription, there is an unavoidable element of interpretation. Interested researchers are invited and encouraged to come in and listen to the recording themselves.
Thank you very much. Chancellor, Governor and Mrs. Docking, Senator and Mrs. Pierson, ladies and gentlemen and my friends, I'm very pleased to be here. I'm really not here to make a speech I've come because I came from Kansas State and they want to send their love to all of you. They did. That's all they talk about over there, how much they love you. Actually, I want to establish the fact that I am not an alumnus of Villanova.
I'm very pleased and very touched, as my wife is, at your warm reception here. I think of my colleagues in the United States Senate, I think of my friends there, and I think of the warmth that exists in the Senate of the United States - I don't know why you're laughing - I was sick last year and I received a message from the Senate of the United States which said: "We hope you recover," and the vote was forty-two to forty.
And then they took a poll in one of the financial magazines of five hundred of the largest businessmen in the United States, to ask them, what political leader they most admired, who they wanted to see as President of the United States, and I received one vote, and I understand they're looking for him. I could take all my supporters to lunch, but I'm - I don't know whether you're going to like what I'm going to say today but I just want you to remember, as you look back upon this day, and when it comes to a question of who you're going to support - that it was a Kennedy who got you out of class.
I am very pleased to be here with my colleagues, Senator Pierson, who I think has contributed so much in the Senate of the United States - who has fought for the interests of Kansas and has had a distinguished career, and I'm very proud to be associated with him. And Senator Carlson who is not here, who is one of the most respected members of the Senate of the United States - respected not just on the Republican side - by the Democratic side, by all of his colleagues and I'm pleased and proud to be in the Senate with Senator Carlson of the State of Kansas.
And I'm happy to be here with an old friend, Governor Docking. I don't think there was anyone that was more committed to President Kennedy and made more of an effort under the most adverse circumstances and with the most difficult of situations than his father, who was then Governor of the State of Kansas - nobody I worked with more closely, myself, when I was in Los Angeles. We weren't 100 percent successful, but that was a relationship that I will always value, and I know how highly President Kennedy valued it and I'm very pleased to see him - and to have seen his mother, Mrs. Docking today also, so I'm very pleased to be in his State.
And then I'm pleased to be here because I like to see all of you, in addition.
In 1824, when Thomas Hart Benton was urging in Congress the development of Iowa and other western territories, he was opposed by Daniel Webster, the Senator from Massachusetts. "What," asked Webster, "what do we want with this vast and worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts. Of deserts of shifting sands and of whirlwinds. Of dust, and of cactus and of prairie dogs.
"To what use," he said, "could we ever hope to put these great deserts? I will never vote for one-cent from the public treasury, to place the west one inch closer to Boston, than it is now." And that is why, I am here today, instead of my brother Edward.
I'm glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: "If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow." And despite all the accusations against me, those words were not written by me, they were written by that notorious seditionist, William Allen White. And I know what great affection this university has for him. He is an honored man today, here on your campus and around the rest of the nation. But when he lived and wrote, he was reviled as an extremist and worse. For he spoke, he spoke as he believed. He did not conceal his concern in comforting words. He did not delude his readers or himself with false hopes and with illusions. This spirit of honest confrontation is what America needs today. It has been missing all too often in the recent years and it is one of the reasons that I run for President of the United States.
For we as a people, we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States. But I don't want to run for the presidency - I don't want America to make the critical choice of direction and leadership this year without confronting that truth. I don't want to win support of votes by hiding the American condition in false hopes or illusions. I want us to find out the promise of the future, what we can accomplish here in the United States, what this country does stand for and what is expected of us in the years ahead. And I also want us to know and examine where we've gone wrong. And I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.
This morning I spoke about the war in Vietnam, and I will speak briefly about it in a few moments. But there is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam.
It is, at a root, the root of all of it, the national soul of the United States. The President calls it "restlessness." Our cabinet officers, such as John Gardiner and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don't think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.
Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators. Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children. I don't think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America.
Our young people - the best educated, and the best comforted in our history, turn from the Peace Corps and public commitment of a few years ago - to lives of disengagement and despair - many of them turned on with drugs and turned off on America - none of them here, of course, at Kansas - right?
All around us, all around us, - not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations - but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed - the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past - rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair - cries which the President's Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder - rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States.
And if we seem powerless to stop this growing division between Americans, who at least confront one another, there are millions more living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown - but I have seen these other Americans - I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States - with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.
I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.
That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that - for the first American, for this minority here in the United States. If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school and feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody's going to care for them, nobody's going to be involved with them, and nobody's going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves or kill themselves - I don't think that's acceptable and I think the United States of America - I think the American people, I think we can do much, much better. And I run for the presidency because of that, I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, nor labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.
I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also.
I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms - without heat - warding off the cold and warding off the rats.
If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world. From the beginning our proudest boast has been the promise of Jefferson, that we, here in this country would be the best hope of mankind. And now, as we look at the war in Vietnam, we wonder if we still hold a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and whether the opinion maintained a descent respect for us or whether like Athens of old, we will forfeit sympathy and support, and ultimately our very security, in the single-minded pursuit of our own goals and our own objectives. I do not want, and I do believe that most Americans do not want, to sell out America's interest to simply withdraw - to raise the white flag of surrender in Vietnam - that would be unacceptable to us as a people, and unacceptable to us as a country. But I am concerned about the course of action that we are presently following in South Vietnam. I am concerned, I am concerned about the fact that this has been made America's War. It was said, a number of years ago that this is "their war" "this is the war of the South Vietnamese" that "we can help them, but we can't win it for them" but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that's unacceptable.
I don't accept the idea that this is just a military action, that this is just a military effort, and every time we have had difficulties in South Vietnam and Southeast Asia we have had only one response, we have had only one way to deal with it - month after month - year after year we have dealt with it in only on way and that's to send more military men and increase our military power and I don't think that's what the kind of a struggle that it is in Southeast Asia.
I think that this is a question of the people of South Vietnam, I think its a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling its worth their efforts - that they're going to make the sacrifice - that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and I think the development of the last several years have shown, have demonstrated that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, to say that we're going to destroy all of South Vietnam because we have a commitment there. The commander of the American forces at Ben Tre said we had to destroy that city in order to save it. So 38,000 people were wiped out or made refugees. We here in the United States - not just the United States government, not just the commanders of and forces in South Vietnam, the United States government and every human being that's in this room - we are part of that decision and I don't think that we need do that any longer and I think we should change our policy.
I don't want to be part of a government, I don't want to be part of the United States, I don't want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: "They made a desert and they called it peace."
I think that we should go to the negotiating table, and I think we should take the steps to go to the negotiating table.
And I've said it over the period of the last two years, I think that we have a chance to have negotiations, and the possibility of meaningful negotiations, but last February, a year ago, when the greatest opportunity existed for negotiations the Administration and the President of the United States felt that the military victory was right around the corner and we sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, in February 8th of 1967 virtually asking for their unconditional surrender, we are not going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong anymore than they're going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the United States of America. We're going to have to negotiate, we're going to have to make compromises, we're going to have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. But people can argue, "That's unfortunate that we have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front," but that is a fact of life. We have three choices: We can either pull out of South Vietnam unilaterally and raise the white flag - I think that's unacceptable.
Second, we can continue to escalate, we can continue to send more men there, until we have millions and millions of more men and we can continue to bomb North Vietnam, and in my judgment we will be no nearer success, we will be no nearer victory than we are now in February of 1968.
And the third step that we can take is to go to the negotiating table. We can go to the negotiating table and not achieve everything that we wish. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people, but the other, the other alternative is so unacceptable. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people and that the United States government must accept, is that the National Liberation Front is going to play a role in the future political process of South Vietnam.
And we're going to have to negotiate with them. That they are going to play some role in the future political process of South Vietnam, that there are going to be elections and the people of South Vietnam, are ultimately going to determine and decide their own future.
That is the course of action, that is the course of action that I would like to see. I would like to see the United States government to make it clear to the government of Saigon that we are not going to tolerate the corruption and the dishonesty. I think that we should make it clear to the government of Saigon that if we're going to draft young men, 18 years of age here in the United States, if we're going to draft young men who are 19 years-old here in the United States, and wer're going to send them to fight and die in Khe Sanh, that we want the government of South Vietnam to draft their 18-year-olds and their 19-year-olds.
And I want to make it clear that if the government of Saigon, feels Khe Sanh or Que Son and the area in the demilitarized zone are so important, if Khe San is so important to the government of Saigon, I want to see those American marines out of there and South Vietnamese troops in there.
I want to have an explanation as to why American boys killed, two weeks ago, in South Vietnam, were three times as many - more than three times as many, as the soldiers of South Vietnam. I want to understand why the casualties and the deaths, over the period of the last two weeks, at the height of the fighting, should be so heavily American casualties, as compared to the South Vietnamese. This is their war. I think we have to make the effort to help them, I think that we have to make the effort to fight, but I don't think that we should have to carry the whole burden of that war, I think the South Vietnamese should.
And if I am elected President of the United States, with help, with your help, these are the kinds of policies that I'm going to put into operation.
We can do better here in the United States, we can do better. We can do better in our relationships to other countries around the rest of the globe. President Kennedy, when he campaigned in 1960, he talked about the loss of prestige that the United States had suffered around the rest of the globe, but look at what our condition is at the present time. The President of the United States goes to a meeting of the OAS at Montevideo- can he go into the city of Montevideo? Or can he travel through the cities of Latin America where there was such deep love and deep respect? He has to stay in a military base at Montevideo, with American ships out at sea and American helicopters overhead in order to ensure that he's protected, I don't think that that's acceptable.
I think that we should have conditions here in the United States, and support enough for our policies, so that the President of the United States can travel freely and clearly across all the cities of this country, and not just to military bases.
I think there's more that we can do internally here, I think there's more that we can do in South Vietnam. I don't think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment. I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"
So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago, I ask for your help and for your assistance. If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
And when we win in November, and when we win in November, and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America - I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: "Joy was in those days, but to live." Thank you very much.
Washington Post: Supreme Court says people can sue telemarketers, others in federal court over nuisance calls
By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, January 18, 12:30 PM
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is keeping telemarketers and other businesses on the hook for nuisance phone calls, letting those annoyed by the disruptions sue in federal as well as state courts.
The high court’s decision Wednesday involves a lawsuit claiming a debt collector harassed a man with repeated recorded calls.
Marcus Mims of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he kept getting the calls from Arrow Financial Services LLC, which was trying to collect a student loan debt for Sallie Mae. He sued for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed by Congress to ban invasive telemarketing practices.
Mims’ lawsuit was thrown out by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that Congress did not explicitly give permission for federal lawsuits in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, although the law does say people can file in state courts. Other federal courts ruled differently and let lawsuits move forward.
The high court said in a unanimous opinion that federal lawsuits are allowed under the law.
“Nothing in the text, structure, purpose or legislative history of the TCPA purports to deprive U.S. district courts of the jurisdiction they ordinarily have,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court.
The case now goes back to the appeals court in Atlanta.
The case is Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 10-1195.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is keeping telemarketers and other businesses on the hook for nuisance phone calls, letting those annoyed by the disruptions sue in federal as well as state courts.
The high court’s decision Wednesday involves a lawsuit claiming a debt collector harassed a man with repeated recorded calls.
Marcus Mims of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he kept getting the calls from Arrow Financial Services LLC, which was trying to collect a student loan debt for Sallie Mae. He sued for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed by Congress to ban invasive telemarketing practices.
Mims’ lawsuit was thrown out by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that Congress did not explicitly give permission for federal lawsuits in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, although the law does say people can file in state courts. Other federal courts ruled differently and let lawsuits move forward.
The high court said in a unanimous opinion that federal lawsuits are allowed under the law.
“Nothing in the text, structure, purpose or legislative history of the TCPA purports to deprive U.S. district courts of the jurisdiction they ordinarily have,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court.
The case now goes back to the appeals court in Atlanta.
The case is Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 10-1195.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
St. Augustine celebrates King Day -- Eubanks: Build a strong foundation for the future
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with pickets on Washington Street, St. Augustine, Florida, June 1964
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reacts in St. Augustine, Fla., after learning that the senate passed the civil rights bill, June 19, 1964. (AP Photo) Photo: STF, Anonymous / Beaumont
Read more: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/photos/article/Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-His-life-in-pictures-956071.php#ixzz1jl9L3zZu
Posted: January 16, 2012 - 11:45pm
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
Eubanks: Build a strong foundation for the future
The “gallant memories” of 400 years of black struggle for freedom by “dreamers and doers” should inspire future leaders, keynote speaker Gerald Eubanks said Monday at the 27th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration breakfast.
Eubanks, 71, a retired St. Johns County educator, asked his fellow African-Americans to make a positive impact.
“Or would you prefer to be mere spectators?” he said. “Stay connected. The result of our remaining an extended family is a mutual sense of self-worth and pride, and a lifetime of camaraderie.”
The slave revolts that began in the 1600s only ended at the Civil War, and he was “delightedly shocked” to read of them.
“Don’t forget your history and heritage,” he said.
Eubanks also praised the “foot soldiers” of the Civil Rights struggle of 1964, and he unrolled a long list containing the names of those who fought for freedom and justice.
“Some of them are here today,” he said, and he quoted from the poem “Invictus”: “My head is bloody, but unbowed.”
The event was sponsored by The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee of St. Johns County and its president, Sonee Carswell.
Temple Bet Yam’s Rabbi Mark Goldman compared King to a modern-day biblical prophet, “who heard and responded to the divine call, ‘Let my people go!’ He climbed mountains of human potential and his heavenly voice spoke truth to power. That’s his legacy. Together, let’s never deviate or detour from that path.”
St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles spoke of the city’s efforts to build a new Civil Rights Museum in town by 2014 to commemorate the non-violent marches opposed by racist crowds and the resulting publicity that helped lead to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Almarene T. Loundes said King had all the traits of a great leader: intelligence, confidence, charisma and determination to carry out his mission. “He was a man of integrity, a rare trait for leaders these days,” she said. “Reflect and act on Dr. King’s legacy. We’re here not only to celebrate the great man’s dream, but to live it as well.”
Music was provided by a young, professional Christian band, One Voice.
Diane Chase, a former Civil Rights foot soldier, said Eubanks graduated Excelsior High School in 1955 and graduated Morehouse College in 1959 — where he went to speeches made by King.
Eubanks earned his master’s degree in education from the University of North Florida.
He spent 30 years in St. Johns County schools and started several theater companies.
In his talk, Eubanks used props, as a professor would to make examples for students. At one point he compared unshucked ears of corn to one without its husk and showed that the kernels were different colors.
“Never judge anything by its cover or color,” he said. “Have dreams. But most importantly, follow those dreams. We must not continue to expect exceptions to be made for us. And you must not allow anyone to define you by race.”
He said part of the reason for failure in any community is a lack of initiative, planning and goal-setting.
“We must acquire a reality base and be willing to face the truth,” he said. “Truth is a very bright light. We have a new Three Rs now: respect, responsibility and restraint.”
Monday, January 16, 2012
It took one letter! (To start the ball rolling on the "largest environmental cleanup in history, which is still going on." Keep asking questions!
Check out the Knoxville News-Sentinel article (below) on our Appalachian Observer newspaper's Freedom of Information Act request, which led to the "largest environmental cleanup in history, which is still going on."
It took a one page letter, which I wrote and our Publisher, Ernie Phillips and I signed. No other journalist or public interest group or government agency would do it.
In dealing with unaccountable organizations, just remember, "Keep asking questions!"
It's what our Founding Fathers had in mind. You'll be glad you did!
It took a one page letter, which I wrote and our Publisher, Ernie Phillips and I signed. No other journalist or public interest group or government agency would do it.
In dealing with unaccountable organizations, just remember, "Keep asking questions!"
It's what our Founding Fathers had in mind. You'll be glad you did!
Knoxville News Sentinel: Secret Cold War project results in largest US environmental cleanup
By Frank Munger
Sunday, December 18, 2011
OAK RIDGE — The exuberance of winning World War II — and playing a pivotal role — had barely died down when Oak Ridge received another secret assignment with national security on the line.
The Y-12 plant, which had enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was asked to support development of lithium fuel for an arsenal of new super bombs.
These thermonuclear weapons would make the bombs that ended the war look like firecrackers, and they soon became the focus of a spiraling, ferocious arms race with the Soviet Union.
The Oak Ridge plant began the development work in 1950 and within a couple of years started experimenting with different processes to separate isotopes of lithium. The goal was to selectively concentrate the lighter lithium-6 isotope for use in fusion-type weapons, which became known as hydrogen bombs.
The lithium work was code-named "Alloy Development Program."
Most of the processes required the use of mercury, especially Colex (an abbreviation for "column exchange"), which proved to be the most successful. Some of the same big buildings that had been used for uranium enrichment during the Manhattan Project were converted to Colex production facilities.
Millions of pounds of mercury were essential to the project, according to a Y-12 report.
President Dwight Eisenhower signed the executive directives that allowed much of the nation's mercury reserves to be shipped to Oak Ridge in the 1950s.
Mercury is a slippery, elusive metal, and it wasn't contained very well at Y-12. Leaks were commonplace in the pipes that pumped mercury under pressure. There were system failures and waste discharges.
And there were big-time spills. According to documents posted on a Department of Labor website, there were five mercury spills between 1956 and 1966 at Alpha-4 and Alpha-5 — two of the Colex production facilities — that totaled between 285,500 and 500,000 pounds. One of those spills occurred in March 1966 during the removal of processing equipment from Alpha-5.
Plant reports and historical accounts indicate that Y-12 officials were highly aware of mercury's toxicity and took a number of precautions to limit workplace exposures to the metal, which vaporizes at warm temperatures and becomes a breathing hazard. Air sampling was used to evaluate conditions, and workers were reportedly taken out of mercury work areas if multiple tests of their urine showed they'd been overexposed.
Workplace health and safety standards weren't up to today's standards, but they undoubtedly got more emphasis than environmental protection in the 1950s and '60s.
East Fork Poplar Creek received the brunt of discharges. There are varying reports of how much mercury likely entered the creek, but it's estimated at somewhere between 240,000 and 280,000 pounds.
Oak Ridge Historian Bill Wilcox said the big releases of mercury were in the early part of the lithium project.
"The (Colex) plant started in 1955, and in 1958 we changed the process so that the amount was reduced down to a low amount," said Wilcox, who chaired a mercury task force put together by Union Carbide, the government contractor, in 1983.
"The Colex waste-handling was changed to reduce the amount of mercury (lost). We were worrying about it, it turns out, for economic reasons. So we changed the process and got most of that fixed."
Wilcox said it's important to realize that mercury in the environment wasn't considered a big deal in the United States until about 1970, after information spread about the disaster at Minimata, Japan, where thousands of people were affected by methylmercury from a chemical factory that poisoned the fish and shellfish supplies.
Rising concerns
Y-12's lithium project was a secret, as were other classified activities associated with production of nuclear weapons. Lithium processing was halted in 1963, after a glut of the bomb-making material had been stockpiled for future use. But it was another 20 years before the public became aware of the Y-12 work and mercury's large-scale presence in Oak Ridge.
In 1977, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Jerry Elwood authored a report that noted elevated levels of mercury in Poplar Creek fish, and he recommended an investigation of upstream sources in East Fork Poplar Creek. But no action was taken and the report's distribution was limited to internal use.
In 1982, ORNL research biologist Steven Gough took unauthorized samples of vegetation in East Fork and sent them to his brother, who worked at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. The samples showed high levels of mercury. Gough left the lab in part, he said, because of the fuss his unapproved research created. While his information was not made public until the next year, it reportedly prompted a formal sampling in East Fork.
In November 1982, based on limited sampling but solid results, the state of Tennessee posted the East Fork Poplar Creek as a health hazard because of mercury pollution.
The news created a buzz of interest, and environmental regulators, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, were starting to get tougher.
At the time, DOE officials said the mercury deposits in East Fork were probably the result of the 1966 spill of 100,000 pounds of mercury at Y-12.
The most shocking news, however, came on May 17, 1983, when the Department of Energy — responding to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Appalachian Observer, a weekly newspaper — released a declassified version of a document that gave a more realistic look at the pollution potential. The report stated that about 2.4 million pounds of mercury had been lost during the operations or was otherwise unaccounted for.
Some of the numbers were later refined and revised downward, but the impact of the mercury revelations was immense and long-lasting.
Suddenly, everything was questioned.
Why hadn't the government told Oak Ridge residents — or environmental regulators, for that matter — about the mercury pollution that unwittingly had been spread around town when the city dredged the creek for flood control and used the sediments as topsoil, even at school sites? What other environmental hazards were under wraps on the sprawling reservation that had been a heavily guarded enclave for nuclear research and production since the wartime Manhattan Project?
Congress wanted to know more, and U.S. Reps. Al Gore Jr. and Marilyn Lloyd, each of whom headed a subcommittee with interest in DOE and the environment, hosted a congressional field hearing in Oak Ridge.
The mercury revelations proved to be a springboard for further environmental investigations, not just at Oak Ridge but at Department of Energy operations around the country — including the Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, Ohio, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and many other sites.
The legacy of pollution from the government's World War II and Cold War work on nuclear weapons became a national scandal, resulting in the largest environmental cleanup program in U.S. history that's still going on today.
Scripps Lighthouse
© 2012 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online
Sunday, December 18, 2011
OAK RIDGE — The exuberance of winning World War II — and playing a pivotal role — had barely died down when Oak Ridge received another secret assignment with national security on the line.
The Y-12 plant, which had enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was asked to support development of lithium fuel for an arsenal of new super bombs.
These thermonuclear weapons would make the bombs that ended the war look like firecrackers, and they soon became the focus of a spiraling, ferocious arms race with the Soviet Union.
The Oak Ridge plant began the development work in 1950 and within a couple of years started experimenting with different processes to separate isotopes of lithium. The goal was to selectively concentrate the lighter lithium-6 isotope for use in fusion-type weapons, which became known as hydrogen bombs.
The lithium work was code-named "Alloy Development Program."
Most of the processes required the use of mercury, especially Colex (an abbreviation for "column exchange"), which proved to be the most successful. Some of the same big buildings that had been used for uranium enrichment during the Manhattan Project were converted to Colex production facilities.
Millions of pounds of mercury were essential to the project, according to a Y-12 report.
President Dwight Eisenhower signed the executive directives that allowed much of the nation's mercury reserves to be shipped to Oak Ridge in the 1950s.
Mercury is a slippery, elusive metal, and it wasn't contained very well at Y-12. Leaks were commonplace in the pipes that pumped mercury under pressure. There were system failures and waste discharges.
And there were big-time spills. According to documents posted on a Department of Labor website, there were five mercury spills between 1956 and 1966 at Alpha-4 and Alpha-5 — two of the Colex production facilities — that totaled between 285,500 and 500,000 pounds. One of those spills occurred in March 1966 during the removal of processing equipment from Alpha-5.
Plant reports and historical accounts indicate that Y-12 officials were highly aware of mercury's toxicity and took a number of precautions to limit workplace exposures to the metal, which vaporizes at warm temperatures and becomes a breathing hazard. Air sampling was used to evaluate conditions, and workers were reportedly taken out of mercury work areas if multiple tests of their urine showed they'd been overexposed.
Workplace health and safety standards weren't up to today's standards, but they undoubtedly got more emphasis than environmental protection in the 1950s and '60s.
East Fork Poplar Creek received the brunt of discharges. There are varying reports of how much mercury likely entered the creek, but it's estimated at somewhere between 240,000 and 280,000 pounds.
Oak Ridge Historian Bill Wilcox said the big releases of mercury were in the early part of the lithium project.
"The (Colex) plant started in 1955, and in 1958 we changed the process so that the amount was reduced down to a low amount," said Wilcox, who chaired a mercury task force put together by Union Carbide, the government contractor, in 1983.
"The Colex waste-handling was changed to reduce the amount of mercury (lost). We were worrying about it, it turns out, for economic reasons. So we changed the process and got most of that fixed."
Wilcox said it's important to realize that mercury in the environment wasn't considered a big deal in the United States until about 1970, after information spread about the disaster at Minimata, Japan, where thousands of people were affected by methylmercury from a chemical factory that poisoned the fish and shellfish supplies.
Rising concerns
Y-12's lithium project was a secret, as were other classified activities associated with production of nuclear weapons. Lithium processing was halted in 1963, after a glut of the bomb-making material had been stockpiled for future use. But it was another 20 years before the public became aware of the Y-12 work and mercury's large-scale presence in Oak Ridge.
In 1977, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Jerry Elwood authored a report that noted elevated levels of mercury in Poplar Creek fish, and he recommended an investigation of upstream sources in East Fork Poplar Creek. But no action was taken and the report's distribution was limited to internal use.
In 1982, ORNL research biologist Steven Gough took unauthorized samples of vegetation in East Fork and sent them to his brother, who worked at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. The samples showed high levels of mercury. Gough left the lab in part, he said, because of the fuss his unapproved research created. While his information was not made public until the next year, it reportedly prompted a formal sampling in East Fork.
In November 1982, based on limited sampling but solid results, the state of Tennessee posted the East Fork Poplar Creek as a health hazard because of mercury pollution.
The news created a buzz of interest, and environmental regulators, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, were starting to get tougher.
At the time, DOE officials said the mercury deposits in East Fork were probably the result of the 1966 spill of 100,000 pounds of mercury at Y-12.
The most shocking news, however, came on May 17, 1983, when the Department of Energy — responding to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Appalachian Observer, a weekly newspaper — released a declassified version of a document that gave a more realistic look at the pollution potential. The report stated that about 2.4 million pounds of mercury had been lost during the operations or was otherwise unaccounted for.
Some of the numbers were later refined and revised downward, but the impact of the mercury revelations was immense and long-lasting.
Suddenly, everything was questioned.
Why hadn't the government told Oak Ridge residents — or environmental regulators, for that matter — about the mercury pollution that unwittingly had been spread around town when the city dredged the creek for flood control and used the sediments as topsoil, even at school sites? What other environmental hazards were under wraps on the sprawling reservation that had been a heavily guarded enclave for nuclear research and production since the wartime Manhattan Project?
Congress wanted to know more, and U.S. Reps. Al Gore Jr. and Marilyn Lloyd, each of whom headed a subcommittee with interest in DOE and the environment, hosted a congressional field hearing in Oak Ridge.
The mercury revelations proved to be a springboard for further environmental investigations, not just at Oak Ridge but at Department of Energy operations around the country — including the Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, Ohio, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and many other sites.
The legacy of pollution from the government's World War II and Cold War work on nuclear weapons became a national scandal, resulting in the largest environmental cleanup program in U.S. history that's still going on today.
Scripps Lighthouse
© 2012 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online
Sunday, January 15, 2012
In the words of our City's patron saint, Saint Augustin of Hippo, "An unjust law is no law at all."
The patron saint of our Nation's Oldest European-founded City, Saint Augustine of Hippo, wrote that "an unjust law is no law at all. Rulers who enact unjust laws are wicked and unlawful authorities. In The City of God, Saint Augustine explains that a civil authority that has no regard for justice cannot be distinguished from a band of robbers. "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?"
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ON SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE
The credit belongs to the [person] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Protesters Welcome Vilano Beach PUBLIX, Invite PUBLIX To Pay Florida Farmworkers a Living Wage
Yesterday, protesters greeted PUBLIX’s new Vilano Beach store with eight hours of protests, starting at 8 AM and ending after 4 PM.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW),joined by Occupy St. Augustine, International Workers of the World (IWW) and local faith-based activists, held informational picketing on the sidewalk in front of the PUBLIX at the Vilano Beach Town Center.
Sadly, PUBLIX refuses to join other large organizations, including grocery and fast food chains and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, in paying one cent more per pound of tomatoes to assure farmworkers a living wage.
PUBLIX customers and employees, with few exceptions, were friendly and courteous. PUBLIX management refused to discuss the issue, refused to accept correspondence and refused to discuss the issues with the CIW. They also refused to accept a jar of pennies offered to help defray the additional penny a pound it would take to pay farmworkers a living wage.
In talking with people, we emphasized that PUBLIX is a good store, and this is our only beef with public.
We got supportive words and gestures from PUBLIX customers.
I observed only a few soreheads (less than ten). Two were one-percenters who actually yelled at us to “get a job.” Another said, “shame on you.” And four said, “Get a life.”
We’re hoping that, when PUBLIX agrees to pay one cent more for pound of tomatoes, that Florida’s farmworkers will “get a life.” Back-breaking stoop labor for piecework is contrary to the genius of a free people – it is immoral for PUBLIX not to agree to pay farmworkers a living wage.
When someone in a military-style assault SUV screams and yells and tells farmworker rights activists to “get a life,” I am wondering what they had in mind? “Get a life” is a cliché, an idiomatic American English free of content, used by four “idiots” (that was the term in ancient Athens term for people who disdained involvement in politics).
The American Heritage Slang Dictionary says “Get a life” means to “Acquire some interests or relationships of one's own. For example, Stop sitting around and complaining—get a life.” [Slang; late 1900s].
None of us were sitting around and complaining – this is our country, and our views will be heard and heeded. Farmworker rights will be respected and not neglected. It is up to us.
Robert Kennedy said in 1966: "It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. For there is much to dissent from. .... We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich. ... We dissent from the conditions and hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin. ... We dissent from the monstrous absurdity of a world where nations stand poised to destroy one another, and men must kill their fellow men. ... We dissent from the sight of most of mankind living in poverty, stricken by disease, threatened by hunger and doomed to an early death after a life of unremitting labor. ... We dissent from cities which blunt our senses and turn the ordinary acts of daily life into a painful struggle. ... We dissent from the willful, heedless destruction of natural pleasure and beauty. ... We dissent from all these structures – of technology and of society itself – which strip from the individual the dignity and warmth of sharing in the common tasks of his community and his country."
We’re Americans – and we take care of our own. We don’t leave people behind. We don’t turn our backs on human suffering. We fought a war that ended slavery. We defend farmworkers from slavery. We indict farmers that subject farmworkers to slavery. We don’t tolerate soulless mega-corporations that exploit farmworkers. That’s what distinguishes Real Americans from the people Teddy Roosevlt referred to as “those timid souls” – self-aggrandizing narcissists who have never stood up for anyone’s rights, and don’t give a fig about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Obviously, those four crabby PUBLIX customers who yelled “Get a life” wish us to have crabbed lives like theirs -- materialistic lives that care not a fig for other people's misery.
Authoritarians, they wish to tell us what to say and what to think, and not to care for our fellow man and woman. Assumedly, they are dull Republicans who know not that they know not that they know not – cognitive misers who are part of ROBERT BORK’s AMERICA.
ROBERT BORK is WILLARD MITT ROMNEY’s top legal advisor. My first boss, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, once said, “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
We’re excited by the positive reactions at PUBLIX’ Vilano Beach store yesterday between 8 AM and 4 PM. As FDR once said, after appearing at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in 1944 (my mother was there),” I felt the crowd, and it warmed me.”
As Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, “We’ll be back!”
Here are photos from other CIW protests at other PUBLIX stores, including photos of Stetson Kennedy picketing, and links to Edward R. Murrow's 1960 CBS documentary, Harvest of Shame (especially for the "lady" who screamed, "Shame on you!":
The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year. Come join us!
PUBLIX is a fine store, and a well-run company. My only beef with PUBLIX -- shared by my mentor, the late KKK-buster Stetson Kennedy -- is that PUBLIX won't agree to pay an additional penny per pound of tomatoes to see that farmworkers are paid a living wage. Other large companies -- including Taco Bell (Yum! Brands) have agreed to the reasonable proposal.
Before he died, earlier this year, Stetson Kennedy was picketing and boycotting PUBLIX.
The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW),joined by Occupy St. Augustine, International Workers of the World (IWW) and local faith-based activists, held informational picketing on the sidewalk in front of the PUBLIX at the Vilano Beach Town Center.
Sadly, PUBLIX refuses to join other large organizations, including grocery and fast food chains and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, in paying one cent more per pound of tomatoes to assure farmworkers a living wage.
PUBLIX customers and employees, with few exceptions, were friendly and courteous. PUBLIX management refused to discuss the issue, refused to accept correspondence and refused to discuss the issues with the CIW. They also refused to accept a jar of pennies offered to help defray the additional penny a pound it would take to pay farmworkers a living wage.
In talking with people, we emphasized that PUBLIX is a good store, and this is our only beef with public.
We got supportive words and gestures from PUBLIX customers.
I observed only a few soreheads (less than ten). Two were one-percenters who actually yelled at us to “get a job.” Another said, “shame on you.” And four said, “Get a life.”
We’re hoping that, when PUBLIX agrees to pay one cent more for pound of tomatoes, that Florida’s farmworkers will “get a life.” Back-breaking stoop labor for piecework is contrary to the genius of a free people – it is immoral for PUBLIX not to agree to pay farmworkers a living wage.
When someone in a military-style assault SUV screams and yells and tells farmworker rights activists to “get a life,” I am wondering what they had in mind? “Get a life” is a cliché, an idiomatic American English free of content, used by four “idiots” (that was the term in ancient Athens term for people who disdained involvement in politics).
The American Heritage Slang Dictionary says “Get a life” means to “Acquire some interests or relationships of one's own. For example, Stop sitting around and complaining—get a life.” [Slang; late 1900s].
None of us were sitting around and complaining – this is our country, and our views will be heard and heeded. Farmworker rights will be respected and not neglected. It is up to us.
Robert Kennedy said in 1966: "It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. For there is much to dissent from. .... We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich. ... We dissent from the conditions and hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin. ... We dissent from the monstrous absurdity of a world where nations stand poised to destroy one another, and men must kill their fellow men. ... We dissent from the sight of most of mankind living in poverty, stricken by disease, threatened by hunger and doomed to an early death after a life of unremitting labor. ... We dissent from cities which blunt our senses and turn the ordinary acts of daily life into a painful struggle. ... We dissent from the willful, heedless destruction of natural pleasure and beauty. ... We dissent from all these structures – of technology and of society itself – which strip from the individual the dignity and warmth of sharing in the common tasks of his community and his country."
We’re Americans – and we take care of our own. We don’t leave people behind. We don’t turn our backs on human suffering. We fought a war that ended slavery. We defend farmworkers from slavery. We indict farmers that subject farmworkers to slavery. We don’t tolerate soulless mega-corporations that exploit farmworkers. That’s what distinguishes Real Americans from the people Teddy Roosevlt referred to as “those timid souls” – self-aggrandizing narcissists who have never stood up for anyone’s rights, and don’t give a fig about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Obviously, those four crabby PUBLIX customers who yelled “Get a life” wish us to have crabbed lives like theirs -- materialistic lives that care not a fig for other people's misery.
Authoritarians, they wish to tell us what to say and what to think, and not to care for our fellow man and woman. Assumedly, they are dull Republicans who know not that they know not that they know not – cognitive misers who are part of ROBERT BORK’s AMERICA.
ROBERT BORK is WILLARD MITT ROMNEY’s top legal advisor. My first boss, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, once said, “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
We’re excited by the positive reactions at PUBLIX’ Vilano Beach store yesterday between 8 AM and 4 PM. As FDR once said, after appearing at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in 1944 (my mother was there),” I felt the crowd, and it warmed me.”
As Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, “We’ll be back!”
Here are photos from other CIW protests at other PUBLIX stores, including photos of Stetson Kennedy picketing, and links to Edward R. Murrow's 1960 CBS documentary, Harvest of Shame (especially for the "lady" who screamed, "Shame on you!":
The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year. Come join us!
PUBLIX is a fine store, and a well-run company. My only beef with PUBLIX -- shared by my mentor, the late KKK-buster Stetson Kennedy -- is that PUBLIX won't agree to pay an additional penny per pound of tomatoes to see that farmworkers are paid a living wage. Other large companies -- including Taco Bell (Yum! Brands) have agreed to the reasonable proposal.
Before he died, earlier this year, Stetson Kennedy was picketing and boycotting PUBLIX.
The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year.
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