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Independence Day – Being an American

Posted on July 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

As I see the increasing incidences of flag displays and fireworks sales as Independence Day approaches, I cannot help but wonder of people acutally really know what the significance of July 4 is.

Ruben Navarrette has had a piece published in today’s Salt Lake Tribune from SignOn San Diego, entitled Being an American by a technicality.
Navarrette is a hispanic american. He lists the reasons why he is an American.
Here is his list – go to the article (linked above) to read his explanations:

  • I’m an American because I love and appreciate freedom, and I want people around the world to have the chance to experience it firsthand.
  • I’m an American because I don’t believe in isolationism or disengaging from the rest of the world.
  • I’m an American because my sympathies lie with the little guy (especially when he is being pushed around by the big guy) and because I won’t stomach bullies, foreign or domestic.
  • I’m an American because I reject protectionism.
  • I’m an American because I’m convinced that U.S. law exists to protect the rights of minorities — racial, religious, those with a particular sexual preference, etc. — because the majority can protect itself.
  • ‘m an American because I believe the U.S. government can’t run roughshod over civil liberties and simply lock up people and throw away the key.
  • I’m an American because I believe in the power of public education to change the lives and destinies of individuals and entire families.
  • I’m an American because I believe that, with personal rights come personal responsibilities.
  • I’m an American because I believe that the future belongs to the bold, the optimistic and the hardworking.
  • I’m an American because I believe that immigrants are our most valuable import and that we should welcome as many as possible.

    Navarrette’s ending intrigued me the most:
    an immigration restrictionist – recently took issue with something I’d written and informed me that the fact I was an American citizen was just a “technicality.”
    If that’s the case, it’s a technicality for which I’m immensely grateful.

    My comment: We are all, by default, then, American citizens by technicality because America was founded by immigrants to a land already inhabited.

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    Re: Money supercedes human needs -AGAIN

    Posted on July 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

    Earlier last month I posted about Senior Citizens being evicted from their long established homes.

    Today’s Salt Lake Tribune has a follow up story on this issue.

    This appears to be a growing trend in the real estate world. With Utah’s land values increasing, developers eye up mobile home parks for the building of luxury homes for the rich.

    It’s the seventh mobile-home-park displacement Virginia Marrufo Martinez, community organizer for Salt Lake Community Action Partnership, has assisted with since September 2001.

    I am wondering if people who purchase homes in these new developments are ever made aware of the cost of human needs to provide them the “home of their dreams”.

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    Today in history

    Posted on July 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

    (Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

    July 2

    1776
    New Jersey becomes the first Colony to grant women’s suffrage.

    1777
    Vermont becomes first American colony to abolish slavery

    1809

    Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh called on all Indians to unite and resist. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa, and Wyandotte nations.

    For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region.

    Chief Tecumseh

    1839

    Early in the morning, Africans on the Cuban slave ship Amistad, led by Joseph Cinquè (a Mende from what is now Sierra Leone), mutinied against their captors, killing the captain and the cook, and seized control of the schooner. Jose Ruiz, a Spaniard and planter from Puerto Principe, Cuba, had bought the 49 adult males on the ship, paying $450 each, as slaves for his sugar plantation.

    Slave ship

    Joseph Cinquè

    1964

    Massive demonstrations a year earlier had helped ensure passage of the Act.

    U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, thus barring discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and voting. The law had survived an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate by southern members.

    “We have lost the South for a generation,” said Pres. Johnson to an aide, immediately after signing the Act.


    1976

    The Supreme Court rules that Capital Punishment does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”.

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    Rupert Murdoch and MySpace

    Posted on July 2, 2006 | Leave a comment

    I was reading an update from David Rovics on his tour and he had a paragraph about his MySpace Account. David switched to MySpace from LiveJournal recently. Here are some links to info in today’s news about Rupert Murdoch and MySpace:
    Continue reading →

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    Fast for Peace

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | 1 comment

    Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen has a post on her Blogher Blog on Food Blogs Joining a Fast for Peace. The project encourages bloggers to either fast or engage in a virtual blog fast in a campaign designed to build pressure for withdrawing U.S. troops from the Iraq war.

    Troops Home Fast is the name of the hunger strike by CodePink Women for Peace which initiated the campaign.

    Read Kalyn’s Blogher Blog for more ideas on participating in this Fast for Peace.


    Logo designed by Laura Rebecca’s Kitchen

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    South Central Farm in Los Angeles – bulldozed for a Wal Mart

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

    A farm which has been feeding 350 families on a daily basis for the past 15 years has been bulldozed to make way for commercial development.  The land had been transformed from a desolate vacant lot to a thriving garden of edibles that benefitted the hungry in the area.

    From Infoshop News:

    On Tuesday, June 13, 2006, a combined force of sheriffs, LAPD, fire department and bulldozers raided and destroyed the South Central Farm, a community garden and farm located in southern Los Angeles. The violent eviction was met with resistance and protest, both inside and outside of the gardens. Around 45 people were arrested, including actor Darryl Hannah. Protests inside the farm had included a tree sit and a lckdown by farmers and activists. The garden was bulldozed by late in the afternoon, but protests and actions continue.
    Photo: by Marcus, L.A. Indymedia

    South Central Farmers Website

    Photos (2): South Central Farm Police Raid
    *Antidevelopment Protesters Are Arrested at Farm Site in Los Angeles
    *Hollywood stars removed from urban farm
    *Farmers Kicked Out of Community Farm in South-Central Los Angeles

     

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    Sir, No Sir! Punk Ass Crusade

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

    This came across my email desk today:

    Sir, No Sir!, a David Zeiger documentary film about the GI movement against the Vietnam War. Never before seen footage is included in the film and myths are dispelled about protestors during the era.

    The Ruckus Society has produced a
    flash presentation called “Punk Ass Crusade”    , a great little piece geared towards counter-recruitment for young people and promotion for the “Sir, No Sir!” film.

    This film is NOW being shown in Salt Lake City at the Tower Theater during these days and times:

    (2:30), 7:00
    (2:30) Fri – Sun Only, June 20 – July 2
    ———————————————————–
    In other counter-recruitment news, grandmothers for peace were arrested at a military recruiting station in Phildelphia last week for being told they were “too old to enlist”.

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    More on campaigning

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

    Yesterday I wrote about the campaign financial disclosure reports in Utah, and in particular in my race for Salt Lake County Council.

    I conducted a google search for Salt Lake County Council Candidates, inserting the names of the three candidates in my race. My name was the only one that came up with a candidate website.

    Additionally, I am the only woman in my race. A candidate’s list can be viewed here.

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    Raising Taxes for Mass Transit

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

    Yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune published the results of a poll of voters on raising property taxes to speed up the timeline for TRAX projects by 15 years. An overwhelming majority of those polled favored such an increase.

    The 2015 Transportation Alliance, a group of businesses affiliated with the Salt Lake Chamber, are pushing for a special session of the legislature to pass a 1 cent sales tax for the funding of transportation projects. This group states that a property tax increase would place an “unfair burden” on businesses. The Salt Lake County Council supports this group’s proposal.

    Here is why I don’t support that group’s proposal and why I do support a property tax increase:

    Increasing sales taxes affects who the most? Poor people. Not business or property owners who can afford such increases. If sales tax is increased, people with the least consumer purchasing power will have even less which will also affect businesses, since less people will be able to afford to purchase from them. Property tax increases, on the other hand, can be afforded by those who have higher incomes, including businesses.

    My priority would be to raise fuel taxes first, then property taxes. But raising fuel taxes doesn’t appear to be an issue being discussed, therefore I support the concept of raising property taxes.

    See more info at my campaign website, Deanna Taylor for Salt Lake County Council

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    Stop the Divine Strake Website

    Posted on July 1, 2006 | Leave a comment

    I want to remind readers that a fellow activist in Utah created the Stop the Divine Strake website and is keeping it updated. I have added it to the end of my links list in the left sidebar.

    Be sure to refer to it for updates on the Divine Strake Test.

    CANCEL THE DIVINE STRAKE! STOP WEAPONS TESTING ON WESTERN SHOSHONE LAND! END NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION!

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