Op-Ed

Selma Marches On

Published

10 years ago

February 23, 2015

By Kim M. Keenan
NNPA Columnist

Selma. For those of a certain age, the word Selma is evocative of a time when people stood against insurmountable odds. It is an ever-lasting illustration of why the right to vote must never be taken for granted. People of all colors bled and died so that we might exercise that quintessential American right to choose our elected leaders. We must feed this spirit to a new generation so that they might experience the freedom that comes from knowing their history, so they are not doomed to repeat it.

I watched the movie Selma through the eyes of my teenager and it hit me that they do not understand who they are because they have not been afforded the luxury of understanding how we got here. Here, meaning a society with Black mayors, senators and even a president. Here, in a society with major cracks in our “post-racial” America. To see a teenager try to make sense of the bombing of four little girls in a Birmingham church is to see innocence and armor in the eyes of a young Black male eager for a post-Trayvon society.

Ava Duvernay’s Selma is more than a movie. It is a call to action to reclaim our history in our own words. When I saw it, all I kept thinking was she took the women out of the kitchen and restored them to their pivotal role in history. Today, it seems so obvious that Black women had to be omnipresent in the struggle. I still remember hearing that Dorothy Height always placed herself in the middle of the picture lest she get cropped out later when the picture was printed. Duvernay captured all of this with a subtly so exquisite, one wonders how this story could have been told any other way.

Her critics claim that she portrayed Lyndon B. Johnson as George Wallace-light, but of course, if you change the lens, you change the view. PolitiFact, the fact-checking site, affirmed that President Obama was correct when he asserted that during LBJ’s first 20 years in Congress, he opposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote.

The fact-checking site quoted Johnson biographer Robert Caro as saying, “He had been a congressman, beginning in 1937, for eleven years, and for eleven years he had voted against every civil rights bill – against not only legislation aimed at ending the poll tax and segregation in the armed services but even against legislation aimed at ending lynching: a one hundred percent record.”

Caro added that while running for the U.S. Senate in 1948, Johnson had assailed President Harry Truman’s entire civil rights program as “an effort to set up a police state.”

It was only in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination that Johnson, picking up the torch of the slain president, rose above his past. He deserves credit for that, but he did not, as some of his supporters claim, come up with the idea of the Selma-to-Montgomery March.

Let’s celebrate Black history and not let others revise it.

February is the “season of blackness,” a time when the nation lifts up our inextricable role in American history. This is fine and well, but every day we need to remember and heed the lessons of Selma. We have a Voting Rights Act that is broken. Some of us can vote easily, some of us face challenges no less daunting than poll taxes, and others have been stripped of their right to vote or even worse coerced into believing that our vote does not matter. At the heart of the American dream, whether it is educational or economic opportunity, equal justice, or net equality, is the right to vote. Until the right to vote is automatic, permanent, portable and convenient to every adult citizen, then none of us will truly be free. We have the technology, we have capacity, we need the will.

I understand why the Oscars overlooked Ava Duvernay. She is not a director from a sexy foreign country, or a darling of the one-dimensional Oscar set. She is a woman, who like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., decided to stir the pot in a world where voting rights have been unnecessarily curtailed, and unexplained murders and urban unrest is on the rise. Maybe her real reward is telling our story, raw and uncut in a world that sees Black images predominately through the lens of non-Black eyes. She is a reminder that we must tell our own stories, in our own words so that we can be reminded that history has a way of repeating itself when people forget. It does not mean others cannot tell our stories, it just means that our voice must be soar above the mix. Selma must march on.

Kim M. Keenan is the President and CEO of the Multicultural Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC). Prior to taking the helm at MMTC, Keenan served as General Counsel and Secretary of the NAACP. She is a past president of the National Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar.

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These community activations were coordinated with the San Francisco-based non-profit program “Room to Read.” Ray said he is also donating his time to read and take pictures with students to encourage their engagement and to inspire them to read more. The inspirational book “Clifford Ray Saves the Day” highlights Clifford Ray’s true story of saving a dolphin.

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The Post mentioned three weeks ago that a number of our local luminaries were coming together to support the “New Oakland” movement. As this current national administration continues to eliminate our “legacy” institutional policies and programs left and right, most communities find themselves beyond “frozen” in fear.

Well, esteemed actor, long-time Bay Area supporter, and philanthropist Blair Underwood returned to Oakland this week to speak with city leaders, community trust agents, students, the Oakland Post, and local celebrities alike to continue his “New Oakland” initiative.

This week, he kicked off his “Guess Who’s Coming to Read” literacy program in some of Oakland’s middle schools. Clifford Ray, who played the center position of the 1975 World Champion Golden State Warriors, donated close to 1,000 books. Ray’s fellow teammate Charles “The Hopper” Dudley also gave Converse sneakers to students.

Underwood also spent quality time with the Oakland Ballers ownership group and visited the amazing Raimondi Park West Oakland community revitalization site. In the 1996 TV film Soul of the Game, Underwood played the role of the legendary first Black Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson and commended the Ballers owners.

“This group of sports enthusiasts/ philanthropists needs to be applauded for their human capital investment and their financial capital investment,” Underwood said. “Truly putting their money and passion to work,” Underwood said.

Underwood was also inspired by mayoral candidate Barbara Lee’s open-minded invitation to bring public-private partnership opportunities to Oakland.

Underwood said he wants to “reinforce the importance of ‘collaborative activism’ among those most marginalized by non-empathic leadership. We must ‘act out’ our discomfort with passionate intentions to create healthy change.”

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Councilmembers Ramachandran, Kaplan, Unger Identify Funds to Save Oakland Fire Stations

Our budget crisis – one of the worst in Oakland’s history – is compounded by the fact that people do not feel safe coming to Oakland due to our public safety crisis. By investing in our fundamental public safety resources today, we can send a signal to the world that Oakland is open for business. We have such a rich and vibrant culture, arts, and food scene that is worth celebrating – but we can only showcase this if we are able to keep our neighborhoods safe. Having fully functioning fire stations are absolutely essential to these efforts.

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Councilmember Janani Ramachandran. Courtesy photo.

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There is no greater concern to the people of Oakland today than public safety. Fire stations are the bread and butter of essential city services – and every day that we have stations shuttered, we imperil the lives of our community members. In response to widespread outcry over the current and planned closure of stations, myself, along with Councilmembers Kaplan and Unger, have painstakingly worked to identify millions of dollars of new funding to save our stations. The legislation we introduced on Thursday, February 13th, will amend our budget to prevent the closure of four fire stations that are currently on the chopping block due to our budget crisis and will re-open two closed stations that have already been closed – Station 25 and 28 – in the near future. The resolution that will provide the funding to keep our stations open will go before the full City Council for a vote at our meeting on Tuesday, March 4^th at 3:30 PM – and we invite you to join us at City Hall to share your perspective on the topic.

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We recognize that there are a number of competing interests and important initiatives fighting for sparse City resources. But from my perspective, core safety services are the most pivotal functions that a City must spend its resources on – especially given the outcry we have heard around fire stations.

The fight to save our stations is not over. The resolution we introduced is a critical first step, and there are hurdles to overcome. If you support keeping our fire stations open, we invite you to be a part of the solution by making your voice heard at the March 4^th City Council meeting at 3:30 pm.

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NNPA Launches National Public Education and Selective Buying Campaign

“We are the trusted voice of Black America, and we will not be silent or nonresponsive to the rapid rise of renewed Jim Crow racist policies in corporate America,” stated NNPA Chairman Bobby R. Henry Sr. “The Black Press of America continues to remain on the frontline keeping our families and communities informed and engaged on all the issues that impact our quality of life.”

Published

1 month ago

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Oakland Post

iStock.

Washington, DC: The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), representing the Black Press of America, has announced the planning and implementation of a national public education and selective buying campaign across the nation in direct response to those corporate entities that have dismantled their respective Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) commitments, programs and staffing. NNPA Chairman Emeritus Danny Bakewell Sr. explained, “Now is the time for the Black Press of America once again to emphatically speak and publish truth to power.”

At a recent convening of NNPA member publishers and editors, a united resolve was reached that each member publication of the NNPA will begin a national public education campaign coupled with the release of research data on those American companies that are engaging in efforts to sanction racial injustice, inequitable polices, divisive leadership, and economic apartheid in America.

“We note forthrightly that Black Americans spend $2 trillion dollars annually as consumers of products and services throughout the United States,” NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. emphasized. “We now must evaluate and realign to question why we continue to spend our money with companies that do not respect us,” Chavis continued. “This now must come to an end. These contradictions will not go unchallenged by 50 million Black Americans who have struggled for centuries to ensure equality, fairness and inclusion in our nation’s democracy.”

A selective buying campaign involves exercising the right to select what we spend our money on and who we spend our money with. We are starting with targeting TARGET.

The following are some of the major American companies that have publicly retreated from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: