Civil Rights

President Obama will make his 2015 State of the Union speech tonight at 6:00pm PST and PlanetPOV will be hosting a Live Chat that will run simultaneously with his speech and the (now) three Republican rebuttals (known in some circles now as The Whiners Circle).

In a hot auditorium in Charleston, SC on July 30, 1977, I heard Dr. Martin Luther King declare: "I'm not gonna say, 'Burn baby burn'!" I'm gonna say "Build baby build!"

Almost in parallel with Climate Change, the climate of politics and world events seems to be intensified by human events, we see extremes happening more often and more swiftly than in previous years.

Instead of seeing a psychotic cop-killer for what he was, some NYPD officers, their police union and prominent Republicans are exploiting this tragedy to validate the righteousness of their racism.

In the end, no one can maintain their power because of the inverse property of power, every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. And that is our eternal job as the majority of human beings on this planet, to be that equal and opposite reaction to those who accumulate power and use it to gratify themselves at the expense of the lives and well being of others.

We shall see what decision was reached and what the reaction is. Your thoughts and comments are invited and welcome here, before, during and after the decision is announced.

The ubiquity of cell phone cameras (and the egregious actions they are continually capturing) mean that the public is seeing the way that the police behave when they are confronting people of color. One must conclude that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.

Walking around a store with an unloaded air gun that's for sale at that store when you're black allows police to legally murder you. Walking around a store with real and loaded weapons when you're white is exercising your 2nd Amendment rights.

It is 50 years since the Civil rights Movement began to grow tall. But, 50 years later, despite Federal Laws, states are still denying voting rights to American Citizens and are even using underhand means to keep the minorities 'in their place'.

April 1969. Fire Base Diamond, Vietnam.  I was ordered to go outside the perimeter and set up a listening post facing the Cambodian border. I'm with 7 other guys, we have Claymore mines, an M-60 thirty cal. Machine gun,...