I wrote a poem a while back with that message but I don’t know how clear I was. It was about American citizens throwing rocks at the Exxon Corporate Office until the price of gasoline was lowered. I would not really do that. My point was, in an imaginary scenario, the police say, “Stop throwing rocks!” They call in the National Guard. “Stop this outrageous behavior!” cries the Commander-in-Chief.
But we say, “Sir, we look to our leaders to set the example. YOU are killing people over oil - that’s all we’re doing, too!”

1964 Milledgeville GA - drinking 5-cent sodeypop at the gas station - scrawny grizzled white trash squattin on his haunches (like in Faulkner) filterless cigarette dangling from his lips, say to us kids “pretty soon them niggers gonna think they deserve a job; just like a white man…gonna take our jobs away; you wait and see.” 2006, substitute spic for nigger.

I’m not familiar with the anti-Jewish sentiment that some (all?) Black leaders have - like Farrakhan and others. Maybe it’s a Black Muslim thing, I don’t know. Blacks, Mexicans, Orientals, Jews - have some antipathies that I’m not knowledgable about. The movie “Crash” comes to mind.

As does “Hoffa” and “Bound for Glory” - I wish I had a good link to summarize the struggle of union workers against all the likes of the Andrew Carnegie-type captains of industry.

And I wonder if current-day Israel wasn’t born out of the failure of unarmed pacifists being massacred by Nazis - or unarmed refugees being massacred by Marionite Christians. I wish non-violence worked - who doesn’t. I know Olmert and Nasrallah don’t want to bury any more children. But you and I have kids - if somebody hurt one of them…then I couldn’t be non-violent, could you? Could you be an Arab or an Israeli and lose a child to a bomb…and then what?

Speculatively - Wendall says to my dad “I don’t believe in capitol punishment.” Dad says “what if someone raped your daughter?” Wendall says “I’d kill the son of a bitch!”

You’re right that I was too young in the 60’s to have first-hand experience of the progress of the civil rights movement, but I’ve studied it enough to feel very comfortable with my assertion that M. L. King’s non-violent leadership made a significant positive difference. Do you not think so? Noisemakers like Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael (your namesake?) are in my opinion a dime a dozen. History is filled with them. History has given us very few like Martin Luther King.

As a child born in the 1950’s, I grew up thinking America was the greatest country on Earth. We won the two Big Wars against bad guys. The Superman TV show proclaimed that the Man of Steel fought for “truth, justice, and the American way.” When Israel became a nation again in 1948 with the help of the Allies, it became fashionable for American Christians to say, “The Jews are still God’s chosen people” and to pat ourselves on the back for whatever part we had in it.

Years ago, I was active in a Christian church. I studied the Bible quite a bit. The church and I parted ways, but I still find the Bible fascinating and lately I’ve been reading up on Judaism – the Torah, the Talmud, and so on. Of course, Judaism and Christianity are connected. One of the tenants of Christianity is that, through the teachings of Jesus, a “gentile” can be “grafted on to the Jewish vine.” In other words, I can become an “honorary Jew” in the sense that the Jews are God’s chosen people. I don’t think this refers to our nationality, but rather, what is inside of us. As the saying goes, our bodies can be seen as temples.

One of the more problematic books shared by both the Bible and the Torah Joshua. Almost everywhere else in the Bible, the Jews are victims, but in Joshua, they first spy on a foreign country with the help of a “harlot” who hides the two spies in her house, and then attack the country. And I mean, they fucking wail on this country, killing almost everybody. They take over the land. The Bible justifies this by saying that God told them to do it.

Obviously, this was a long time ago, so I’m not blaming anyone who is alive today, any more than I can blame a Japanese person for Pearl Harbor. My point is, these modern day conservative Christians can justify anything by saying that God told them to do it.