“What is more dangerous for the economy of our democracy: To teach our high school students—the Constitution or the history of the civil rights movement?” By: ElRoyPoet, 2022

Commentary: MLK’s “I have a Dream” speech was inspired, no doubt about it! However, advocates for BLM have given up on his dream, because they perceive that no real progress has been made since the civil and voting rights laws of 1964 and 1965 were enacted. And to make matters worst, patriots are now claiming that CRT is a movement that will divide their country, when everybody knows that it was really Trump who instigated all this divisive rhetoric. Now the christian nationalists are following suit, because they’re afraid it will also destroy their religion, even though the law reads that church and state are to be separate. It seems to me, that we wouldn’t be having this controversy in the USA, if the contemptible republicans wouldn’t still be trying to cancel these enshrined acts—that 3 great american democrats (MLK, JFK and RFK) were martyred for.

“Now let us be sure that we will have to keep the pressure alive. We’ve never made any gain in civil rights without constant, persistent, legal and non-violent pressure. Don’t let anybody make you feel that the problem will work itself out… For those who are telling me to keep my mouth shut, I can’t do that… I’m not going to segregate my moral concerns. And we must know on some positions, cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there’re times when you must take a stand that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but you must do it because it is right.”
Quotes by: Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and a leader of the American civil-rights movement. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for employing non-violent civil disobedience to advance racial equality.

“To be in denial only benefits the oppressor […] Blacks must remove the shackles of mental enslavement themselves; otherwise, mental liberation will NEVER become a reality. Slavery is never abolished it is transformed, only the slave can destroy slavery. You cannot destroy slavery by becoming a part of your slave master’s culture incubator.” Excerpt from Black America Has Been Programmed to be its Own Worst Enemy. (In other words, if you assimilate, you are grafted into your new master’s culture, but if you resist, you’re obliged to return to your previous sovereign state where you must dominate to make the rules!)

“We also discuss what this history might tell us about current debates on free speech and ‘cancel culture'[…] There’s a lot of concern about the growing power of the civil rights movement. And even though “communist” is the name they give their targets, a lot of the fears are fueled by white supremacy and the fear of civil rights […] These are authoritarian movements, that like nothing less than being challenged or being questioned […] But again, anti-communists, and in the most recent iteration of Trump, just want to be right. They don’t want to be challenged.
It strikes me as ironic that they have a critique of cancel culture, when they are the ones who refuse to listen to scientists, who refuse to engage in any kind of principled discussion based on research, facts, and things we know about the world. I also think that they hide behind a demonization of social media. This is what I said earlier, sometimes the message is the message. I think people feel that “Well, Twitter and social media, have created such terrible, acrimonious cultures.” But in the research, I’ve done, these women received death threats. They received hideous forms of communication from anti-communists, political organizations and individuals.
Social media has pulled back the veil on some really terrible bullying practices. But I also think it has allowed people, for good and ill, to know that they’re not alone. One of the most terrible effects of the 1950’s blacklist was that it isolated its targets. You didn’t know who you could talk to. You couldn’t find other people who’d had similar experiences. The gatekeepers of traditional media were so fully in charge that it made it difficult to tell alternative stories.
To refer back to notions of free speech, the people who are talking about free speech, they don’t want to have a conversation. They want to have a monologue. And they’re just really angry that principled people are challenging them on their half-baked opinions.
Another thing I’m hopeful about is reinventing public education in the U.K. and the United States because it’s been so deracinated by neo-liberalism. One of the ways that you get people to agree to authoritarian regimes is by scaring them and preventing them from acquiring the tools they need to be critical.
Excerpt from How the FBI Destroyed the Careers of 41 Women in TV and Radio Podcast

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” By: Martin Luther King

“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.” By: Charles de Gaulle