The U.S.A. has no room to agitate for Human Rights

The Dove of Peace has already flown from U.S. Shores. 

By Rev. J.J. Purcell

I do not know where all of the race hatred that is alive and breathing like a new fire in a cotton plant is coming from throughout this country. But I know some places where people are fanning it.

Not all Whites are adversaries of Civil Rights to everyone, not just Blacks. In fact, Whites and Blacks have worked together in organizations like the NAACP (est. 1909) for more than a century. Freedom was won by Blacks in 1865 with the ending of the Civil War, but though no longer slaves in name, many Blacks were still slaves in fact.

In 1913, former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson enacted "Jim Crow Laws" in the country, which were virtually the same as the racist "Black Codes" of the mid-1800s. Then, like a storm of hope, came the 1960s and all the work done by millions upon millions of people for Blacks to finally be able to stand as equals to Whites or anyone else in this country.

Medger Evers.

John and Bobby Kennedy.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Howard Thurman.

Malcolm X.

The names can go on all day.

So, since the 1970s, civil rights organizations (like the NAACP) have busied themselves ensuring ground was not lost, educating children, taking on racist U.S. Governments when need be, and raising awareness of the mutuality of dignity in this country among everyone: Working for better tomorrows.

Today, though, Racism is back with a vengeance: The Republican Party has become the standard bearer of Racist organizations in this country, which have inspired the more Racist Tea Party. Today, police officers in any town or municipality in the U.S. have learned they may summarily execute Blacks on the streets of our country without fear of reprisal from the Court System. Apparently, the courts and governors of every state in this union do not value a Black life above a White one any longer. What's more is that the KKK is back as of today, calling itself a "Christian organization" now and it is getting more members these past months than in the past decade.

Meanwhile, just today, at the University of California, Berkeley Campus, were displayed "lynching" posters of murdered Blacks hanging from trees; horrific murders done in the 1920s by the KKK.

Racists have abandoned the Democratic Party, by and large, and have flocked to the GOP in droves because they know they have a friend in proponents of that system: the GOP would return to the days of dogs and water canons. Surely, there are token Blacks in the GOP, and what entered their mind to join a party of hate against their own is beyond me -- but it too is a fact.

I want to say that treatment of Homosexuals is also backsliding to the point it was many years ago, perhaps because finally that demographic began to get rights it has been wrongly denied for so long, like marriage.

America is a wreck, guys and gals. Atop everything, many elected Republicans at all levels, as well as their Tea Party cronies, are foretelling of an armed rebellion by them in 2016, should they not capture the White House, even after keeping Blacks from the polling places today in many places.

A bloodless war has already started, ladies and gentlemen, and it is being fueled by politics and the so-called "Religious Right," which says it worships our Lord, but instead idolizes His adversary. Truly, if there is a Devil walking among us today, he is friends with Rush Limbaugh, Ron Paul and Bobby Jindall.

I do not know where any of this is going, but I suppose individuals acting on their conscience, their common sense, might be a good start. Because this is fast becoming a place, a nation, where no one's children will be safe to pursue their lives or liberty without the scourge of race touching their lives. And, it will not be the content of one's character that will lead to success in the future, if Republicans have their way, but the color of one's skin. This is a revolting revelation. Yet, it is the one I see.

I am an older man now, whose days of stumping for candidates and causes is well behind him. Surely, though, some have got to start making a stand for sanity, kindness, and dare I say, also for humanity itself. The U.S. has become a small place -- bent with hatred. We are collectively no longer the right people to petition for human rights abroad, because we no longer enforce those rights for our citizen here.

I believe there is a great contest of wills before us: on one side evil will take the form of Republican lackeys and their sort and on the other will be those brave men and women who are not going to all "...government of, for and by the people to perish from the earth."