Anybody else remember what happened 40 years ago today?

[PlanetBev]

Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered by the KKK in Mississippi. For you youngins', that would be the "Mississippi Burning" episode.

AMC is showing the movie tonight. As bad as it is now, it was pretty bad then too. One thing I do miss about those times, though, is that people were not complacent. Everybody seemed to know what was at stake, and we had a media that had some integrity. Americans have been pretty dumbed down since then.

Sad...

[HawkerHurricane]

1. I was 18 months old.

My parents had just moved to California.

[DenverDem]

2. We were changing the world for the better, then.

Things were looking up until the fascist revolution of 1980, a coup d'etat (remember the October surprise. And the whole hostage thing in Iran was a set up to get raygun in, as well).

Since then we have been sinking into the darkness of corporate globalist feudalism.

[Octafish]

3. Yes. That's one of the reasons I despised Pruneface so much!

The heart of Dixie, Philadelphia MS -- home to the klan and their evil henchman who murdered three civil rights activists, is where the fascist stooge Reagan chose to declare his candidacy. It's been downhill for American government ever since.

Remembering Reagan

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
june 10, 2004

Ronald Reagan was a paradigm shifter.

He was what Charles Derber in his new book, Regime Change Begins at Home, calls a "regime-changer," moving decisively to end the flagging New Deal era and launching the modern period of corporate rule.

Reagan changed the framework of expectations. He called into question a lot of things that had been taken for granted (such as the obligation of the government of the richest country in history to take care of its poorest people), and made it possible to consider things which had previously seemed unthinkable (for example, cutting the knees out from the powerful U.S. labor movement.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.aamovement.net/news/2004/reagan1.html

[TacticalPeek]

4. There are recent moves to bust the kluckers who did this. Hope they do.

But you youngins' should not believe that atrocious "Mississippi Burning" movie for one minute. J. Edgar Hoover's boys (unsurprisingly) did not free the black people in the South. Black folks did that themselves, with more hindrance than help from the fibbies (cf. MLK).

A much better depiction of the struggle that summer is the Turner Network Television movie, Freedom Song (2000) with Danny Glover. Very good, including a character based on one of the real heroes, Bob Moses.

[Stephanie]

5. We're not so dumb

I don't think we're dumb at all. We've got BushCO on the run. We've been on to them since day one and now the media is forced to report it because we refuse to sit down and shut up. We're not on the streets, we're on the internet. But we'll be on the streets this August.

[Eloriel]

6. There was another huge difference between now and then

There were certainly fascists in power, but they didn't control (or nearly control) everything. When I think about the two eras and try to find what's different between them (because it is MIGHTILY different now than it was then), the two things I keep coming up with again and again are that and the media (which to too great an extent also falls into the first category where mainstream and esp. broadcast media are concerned -- in order to get public opinion changed in any cohesive, even massive way, you've GOT to have broadcast media at the frontlines).

The other thing was: there was more hope and optimism. And I don't think it's because I was young then. The tenor or the times was simply different in that way, and part of it, of course, is (see first paragraph). Most days it feels utterly overwhelming to even begin to contemplate the totality of where we are now. It wasn't like that then.

My remarks about the overall zeitgeist, not the Civil Rights struggle specifically.

[Bozita]

7. Philadelphia, MS ... where Reagan chose to begin his pres campaign

... with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach.

24 years ago, not 40.

Scary place to me.