More of Savant's Words

HEDY EPSTEIN I want to send a shout out to Hedy Eptein, German Holocaust survivor, who was recently arrested in protests against the injustice in Ferguson, MO. It seems she has had a long history of progressive struggle ever since she arrived in this country. Apparently, this German Jewish lady whose parents sent her to England (thereby saving her life, though not their own) has been involved him human rights struggles since at least the 1940s. It seems she was shocked to learn about the realities of racial segregation in this country during the 1940s. And many of the racially repressive laws directed against Blacks at that time reminded her of similar measures in Germany just prior to Hitler's the "Final Solution." I am perturbed to learn that she has a long history of activist solidarity with Black freedom struggles, but that it was only with her recent arrest that I learned of her. When I began this thread years ago to both elicit the voices of progressive whites, and to celebrate their contributions to emancipatory struggles, it was people like Ms. Eptein that I had in mind. She belongs to that tradition of the Tom Paine, Grimke sisters, the whites of the Mississippi Freedom Summer and many others who have sought justice even if it had to be at the expense of white privilege. Of course, as a European Jew in the Third Reich she belonged to the most detested and persecuted race in Europe---as we have long been in America. I can only imagine that when she saw those militarized police pitted against the Black community ---against NONVIOLENT protestors---she was reminded of the gestapo cops who turned Europe into an inferno. And perhaps she reco9gnized that the fascistic tactics directed against our people must eventually become the commonplace way in which America as a whole would be ruled if it is ignored when done in the Black community. For some Jews--unfortunatel y not all--"Never again!" never again only for the Jews. But never again can atrocities be accepted against ANY human community. She may not represent the majority of white America, but she does represent the BEST of white America....the best in all of us. May she and others like her live ad prosper until the rivers run backward

-Savant

 ________________

 learned long ago not to take what you say at face value. Suffice it to say that some African Americans might find a TRIP TO DENMARK quite pleasant. And even though I know that there is racism in Europe, I doubt that Denmark or any Western European country is more racist than the good ole USA. -Savant

 __________________

 Probably PEOPLE saw the dangers of Fascism in the 1960s because of the repression against movement which intensified in the late 60s. Students shot by National Guard, Panthers killed and railroaded, the atrocities of Mayor Daley's police during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the trial of the Chicago 7, etc. George Jackson actually believed that America was ALREADY Fascist, not just moving in that direction. But we have seen that it could get even worse, the Neoconservative movement has tried to undo the progressive accomplishments of the 1960s. So, our struggle must CONTINUE before America does become Fascist, totally and for real. In some collection of his writings, Noam Chomsky stated that if police were allowed to operate throughout the WHOLE of America as they do in Black and Latin communities, the USA would already be regarded as a fascist or police state. Take that as a warning!!! Some whites--like Hedy Epstein--have seen the writing on the wall. We had all better unite soon in defense of what freedom we have left before it's too late. Death to Fascism!

 -Savant

______________



Submitted by Brutal Truth on Tue, 09/11/2012 - 16:20.
Obama had 2 years from January 2009 through January 2011 when this country had a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, a sizeable Democratic majority in the House plus an ostensibly Democratic president. Golden opportunity to actually get off their asses and do something about the minimum wage, the Employee Free Choice Act, single-payer health care... What do we have to SHOW for it?
Minimum wage stuck at $7.25/hour -- great for business owners but absolute sh___ for the average low-wage worker. No Employee Free Choice Act because it would give the capitalist ownership class acid reflux. No single-payer health care, not even a public option, no ability to reimport affordable pharmaceuticals from Canada because that would cut into Big Pharma's profit margins. No, instead what we got was a health care "reform" bill that only Big Pharma and the HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES could love. If you don't believe me ask yourself why did the stocks of big insurance companies skyrocket as soon as word reached Wall Street that the "reform" bill was going to pass in Congress? We also have had an administration that floated a trial balloon in the Washington Post a couple of years ago suggesting they want to privatize public housing. If a white Republican president had suggested that they'd run his a___ out of town on a rail and call him the biggest racist since David Duke. But an African-American Democrat president suggests it and I hear crickets chirping. If a Republican president had ramped up the failed natural gas pipeline war in Afghanistan the anti-war protesters would have come out of the woodwork... but Obama does it and the left doesn't make a sound.
Just what exactly do you expect the billionaires' puppet and corporate (___) Obama to do in the next four years? When he has absolutely no pressure whatsoever from having to face another election? If he didn't do jack nor s____ these last four years knowing he'd have to face progressives at the BALLOT BOX in 2012 what the h___ kind of leverage do you think we'll have with him over the next four? Get real buddy, as Glen Ford and others on this blog have said before Obama is not the lesser of two evils but the more effective evil. Don't be an enabler for him. Vote for none of the above. Refuse to give your endorsement to a transparently phony and meaningless process. Refuse to lend it undeserved credibility. Otherwise you're part of the problem.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/we-know-tea-party-repubs-are-scary-are-democrats-congress-worth-defending-all
 ________________

Has anyone noticed that Assdurratin's postions here are identical with those promoted by far RIGHT wing racists. Those Voter ID laws are actually more like the poll taxes and other measures which politically disfranchised our ancestors after Reconstruction. It is no coincidence that most people blocked from voting by the new voting restrictions are Black and (increasingly) Hispanic citizens. Also notice Assdurratin's RHETORIC: "Obama the MARXIST." Only a philosophically and politically illiterate simpleton could think that Obama is a Marxist after reading Obama's writings and speeches. But then again, only a political or philosophical illiterate could read Nkrumah and not see that he was a Marxist, though Assdurratin (who claims he's an Nkrumahist) vehemently denies Nkrumah's Marxism. What a phony he is: an a___ kissing Uncle tom reactionary pretending to be a follower of a left revolutionary African statesman. And now he's DEFENDINGmeasures by his right wing white masters to disfranchise us again, a ,mere 50 years the Civil Rights Act, and 49 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Traitor go to h___!" -Savant ________________
Thanks. Now something interesting happened at my university last week. No classes yet, just some faculty meetings. In one session I an a few others were asked to share our experiences as faculty who were first time or first generation university graduates. There was myself, a brother from the "hood" of east Baltimore, and son of parents who had left the Jim Crow South, a white working class woman from a poor family for whom it was uncommon even to complete high school. A woman from Africa living in the USA, from the lower rungs of the Nigerian middle class, but whose family had never gotten anywhere near a UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. And then there was the organizer of the panel---the daughter of Holocaust survivors. All first time educated folk from underprivileged backgrounds. After telling my story, my family's struggle to secure a decent education for me and my little sis, the lady who organized the panel stated to the audience "I can really relate to Dr. Savant's story because I am also a first generation college graduate. And like Professor Savant, I am a child of people who had to escape racial persecution, and long years of poverty. My parents were also Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, like Ms. Epstein of whom Savant speaks so eloquently. They were not as poor as Savant's parents--not until Hitler took from them everything they had. And they remained poor for some time after they got to America. But they, too, had that passion for education, the same passion for at least the education of their children that Savant tells us his family and that most people in his community once had." I suggested that with the Jewish people, a "people of the book", learning (or at least love of learning) was also an ancient tradition which she inherited. At one time--not so sure about now--education was virtually a religious devotion in Black America, commonly seen as a key to collective freedom as well as personal advancement, and partly because so many whites (beginning with slaveholders) were so determined that we not be educated. But it's important that we continue to advocate education, not merely for personal economic advancement, but for personal and social liberation and freedom. Education for freedom.


-Savant