Leonard Pitts For President

Herald.com | 10/28/2005 | The lessons, myths, reality of Rosa Parks: "Indeed, let a white man call our children fatherless, ill-educated thugs and we will, justifiably, rip him an orifice God never intended. Let our children say the same thing of themselves and many of us call it music and look the other way."

Time For A Refresher

Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]: "Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals."Editor's Note: With the sincere and well deserved outpouring of genuine goodwill accompanying Ms. Parks' death I have seen numerous references to "The Dream" as in "I Have One" and in "Keeping The Dream Alive" and "Remembering The Dream" which gives me hives. It's a great speech but it has been referenced so much until it has been diluted down into a Hallmark Moment. Better then to remember a piece of work that still has some teeth to it. One man's opinion...

No Time For The Wicked...

what is/Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop: "The 2006 Clarion Workshop will be held on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, from June 26 through August 4, 2006."

They Don't Call it "Misery" for Nothing or For Some Reason This Story Makes My Head Hurt

STLtoday - News - Missouri State News: "The U.S. Supreme Court this morning cleared the final obstacle that will allow a Missouri prison inmate to receive an abortion that has been delayed for weeks by a new prison policy barring elective abortions for prisoners."

Really Want To "Stick It To The Man?"

LEONARD PITTS JR.: Little to show after 10 years: "Yet I persist in believing that for African America, changing the world lies in the embrace of these and other old-school dictums. And that revolution can be as simple as having dinner as a family, checking homework and going to church on Sunday.

I thought we understood that as we gathered under that autumnal sun.

But 10 years later, it is hard to glimpse even the bare outlines of change."

Everybody Was So Quick To Believe The Worst

NOLA.com: T-P Orleans Parish Breaking News Weblog - Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated

Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated

6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center: "While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive looting and isolated gunfire, and many inside cowered in fear, the hordes of evacuees for the most part did not resort to violence, as legend has it.

'Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated,' said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. 'If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them - then that became 18.' "

Heroin Chic

Sequential Tart: Article - Feeding Kate Moss to the Lions: A Slender Sacrifice (vol VIII/iss 10/October 2005): "But designer jeans weren't the only indulgence that came to prominence during the disco era: so did newly easily accessible hard drugs, including, iconically, powered cocaine, the very drug which may get Moss kicked out of a campaign that celebrates the scene that popularized it!
Shades of hypocrisy color Gloria Vanderbilt's willingness to glamorize the aesthetics of drug abuse while ignoring the consequences until the consequences threaten their sales."

Surprised?

Bush pick described as advocate for the poor, former convicts - The Boston Globe: "DALLAS -- She hails from a conservative state and she works for a conservative president, but the Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, is highly regarded in Dallas by colleagues from across the political spectrum, as a legal-aid pioneer who helped boost the fortunes of the poor and minorities and who aided former inmates seeking to rebuild their lives after prison."