Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ResistanceRoots

1/ Reconciliation and a just lasting peace, whether between nations or a divided country, requires both grace and toughness. Perhaps no leader understood this better than Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Lincoln ended his 2nd inaugural with famous words (Cont)
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2/ words:
that included, "With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up all the nation's wounds ..."

Lincoln was also tough and ready to hold traitors (Cont)

3/ accountable. But he also knew that unless our wounds were bound, both black and white would be worse off. Blacks, of course, would be victims of white supremacist violence and institutional racism. And many whites would suffer as the wealthy exploited racism as a means (Cont)

1/ Fellow resisters, up to January 20, 2025, events are going to test us. Let's stay calm, always act with courageous integrity, and remain persistently vigilant. We should not overreact with irrational exuberance to good news until our democracy (Cont)
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2/ is secured. Likewise, we should not reflexively assume the worst with every setback. Jack Smith's case from what we know is strong. And judge Aileen Cannon being assigned to it might actually work to our country's advantage. It's not so easy to "fix" a strong case like (Cont)

3/ Smith has with the whole world watching. Meanwhile, Trump/Putin Republicans won't be able to whine about the DC venue or an Obama appointed judge. Either way, we must NOT sit back and wait for multiple prosecutions to save us. Rather, we must continue to resist GOP (Cont)

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1/ At Thanksgiving in 2019, I warned my cousin that if defeated, Trump and his supporters would react as Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party did to his capture and trial in 2003. Just as there was no way Hussein and his core Sunni supporters would (Cont)
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2/ ever let its majority Shia population peacefully move on without him, Trump and his MAGA cultists would be ready to wage civil war. And we damn near had one. Trump's assclowns nearly pulled it off. Suppose Trump had succeeded on January 6th? Could you have just (Cont)

3/ accepted his coup and moved o with your life as if nothing had happened? Contrary to our pacifist image, millions of America's silent majority would've risen up against Trump's GOP MAGA Baathists and their AR-15s. Trump and his armed cultists would've, in turn, pursued (Cont)

1/ Starting with FDR, we liberals became too icon dependent. Unless a political personality such as JFK or Obama inspired us, we, too often, disengaged. In 2020, we we rallied to defeat evil. But otherwise worthy and capable public servants such as (Cont)
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2/ Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton did not benefit from the passionate activism they deserved. Meanwhile, Republicans didn't necessarily need to be inspired by an iconic figure such as Ronald Reagan to engage. As the cliche went, "Democrats fall in love and (Cont)

3/ Republicans fall in line." Yes, Gore and Clinton won the popular vote and were screwed by the electoral college. And yes, their media coverage was absurdly unfair. But the carping about their perceived imperfections by Democrats made the elections close enough for (Cont)

Today in history, 1966: James Meredith is shot one day into his solo civil rights march from Memphis, Tenn. to Jackson, Miss.. The civil rights activist undertook his “March Against” Fear” to encourage African Americans to register to vote. /1

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Meredith had gained notoriety in 1962 when he became the first student to integrate the University of Mississippi. The governor of Mississippi defied a court order to block his entrance, but Meredith ultimately began classes and graduated with a degree in political science. /2

When a sniper’s bullet sent Meredith to the hospital, other civil rights leaders continued the march in his honor, with the Deacons for Defense and Justice serving as armed escort. Meredith recovered and rejoined the march, which had become much larger than he had planned. /3

1/ There is an entrenched history of false moral equivalences and gaslighting liberals in our politics. George McGovern is an instructive example. This dude flew 35 missions as a B-24 pilot in WWII and was married to one woman for 64 years. But... (Cont)
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2/ he also dared to promote peace and confront economic and social injustice. To be sure, McGovern was a flawed politician. Yet this patriot and family man from South Dakota was portrayed as a symbol of unpatriotic decadence. Indeed, Newt Gingrich often attacked Democrats (Cont)

3/ as "decadent George McGovern liberalals" to lead his far right political insurgency. Gingrich was a draft dodger who had cheated on his terminally ill first wife. We have seen this sort of gaslighting over and over again. George W Bush, a toxic mediocore man of little (Cont)

1/ Life and career of longtime GOP Senate leader and 1996 POTUS nominee Bob Dole is instructive on the GOP's descent from respectability to depravity. Dole was someone I never liked but had at one time respected and even (Cont)
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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole

2/ admired. Dole grew up in rural Kansas during the Depression. He enlisted in the army in 1942 and was wounded on the battlefield in Italy in 1945. As a result, he had limited mobility in his right arm and numbness in his left. Simply put, there's no denying Dole's valor. (Cont)

3/ And Dole overcame his injuries to lead an important and distinctive life. He joked that when he decided to run for office in 1950 for the KS House, he did so as a Republican because there were more of them in his district. Dole was elected to the U.S. House in 1960 and (Cont)

1/ Rise and fall of Joe McCarthy is instructive in understanding today's GOP. McCarthy epitomized the ascension of toxic mediocrity. He was an intel officer for a dive bomber squadron in WWII. Although his claims of heroism were exaggerated ... (Cont)
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2/ McCarthy was promoted to major. He was elected a WI senator during a GOP 1946 wave. Initially, McCarthy gained little traction or attention. Simply put, he wasn't very good at his job. But in February 1950, McCarthy's fame skyrocketed when he claimed to have a list of (Cont)

3/ communists in a spy ring working in the State Department. His claims were bullshit. But McCarthy got off on the attention, and his lies kept coming with claims of communist infiltration of the Truman administration. McCarthy also accused various politicians of communist (Cont)

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🧵Many of us know of Jim Crow Laws(JCL) that were enacted after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. For the uninformed, it was a caste system that relegated Black people to second class citizens that lasted 100 years. What (cont)

blackthen.com/jim-crow-etiqu…

many people were taught or only know of JCL is that it was about segregation and voting restrictions. For the record, it was more than that. What if I told you that JCL created a mindset for many people that still exists today?

How? Well, there (cont)

time.com/5775300/segreg…

were rules of "racial etiquette" not written into law that were the norm. In one example, Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended whites. Another example was if a White person was driving, the(cont)

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Jeff Roush

@JeffRoushPoetry

The US Constitution took effect on March 9, 1789. Its Preamble lays out the goals for the nation that would operate under it. And if you read it, it’s clear the current GOP is working against every one of them. (Thread)
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1. To “form a more perfect Union” requires learning from past and present to come together more perfectly. Republicans are attacking history and current factual information to divide us.

2. To “establish Justice” is to create and defend our laws and institutions in ways that are just. Republicans are fighting reform efforts, supporting murderers and insurrectionists, and attacking our federal law enforcement agencies.

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🧵Washington, DC -The Snow Riot began on August 11, 1835. It was a racist attack by young White men who terrorized Black Washingtonians. They were reacting to the story that a young enslaved man named Arthur Bowen carried an axe (cont)
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into his enslaver's bedroom. She was not harmed. The mob attempted to lynch Bowen, and attacked Black businesses and institutions, starting with a restaurant owned by Beverly Snow-a free Black man. It is important to note that (cont)

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Francis Scott Key (yes, that guy!) played a part in the Snow Riot as he was part the anti-abolitionist movement and an enslaver himself. See the attached article for details.

The attack on Black businesses and homes continued for several days. (cont)

npr.org/2012/07/05/156…

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New Orleans, LA-July 23, 1900, three White police officers, Sergeant Jules C. Aucion, Joseph D. Cantrelle, and August T. Mora, found Charles and his roommate, Leonard Pierce, sitting on a porch in a predominantly white (cont)

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neighborhood. There was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the two Black men. The ongoing harrasment from the police resulted in a shootout. Charles fled to his home. Police interrogated Pierce as to Charles' whereabouts. As the police (cont)

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approched his home later that evening, Charles shot and killed two officers, including a police chief. He fled the scene which led to a manhunt. Numerous events of lawlessness and civil unrest as mobs of Whites roamed the city to terrorize the (cont)

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“America has power, but not justice.
In prison, we were victimized as if we were guilty.
Given no opportunity to explain, it was really brutal.
I bow my head in reflection but there is
nothing I can do.”

We don’t know who wrote this, but we know why. /1

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It is one of more than 200 poems carved into the walls of the Angel Island immigration station by Chinese detainees. Called the Ellis Island of the West, the station was built in San Francisco harbor in 1910 to control the entry of Asian immigrants into the U.S. /2

Angel Island processed a half million immigrants from 80 countries during its 30 years of operation. Most were from China and Japan. Some 175,000 were detained there due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which strictly limited immigration for Chinese people. /3

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Dallas, TX - On March 10, 1910, Allen Brooks was lynched while awaiting court proceedings. He was accused of raping Mary Beuvens, a young White toddler in late February 1910. He proclaimed his innocence as there was no proof (cont)

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he committed a crime. Brooks was taken to jail and formally indicted a day later. He was moved to several jails outside the city limits due to concerns for his safety. He was returned to the Dallas courthouse where a mob of hundreds gathered. (cont)

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After easily penetrating a human pillar of more than 100 law enforcers, the mob pushed its way through, demolishing doors to overrun the courthouse. A frenzied search for Brooks led to a jury room, where he was discovered hunkered down in a corner. A rope was tied around (cont)

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🧵August 15, 1868-Franklin, TN. In what is to believed to be the first lynching of a Jewish person in America; store owner Samuel Bierson was murdered along with Lawrence Bowman, a Black man who was Bierson's clerk. (cont)

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A group of masked men-the KKK, appeared at the front and rear doors of Bierfield's store. They forced him outside and shot Bierfield five times, four times in the head at point-blank range, and then left him for dead in the middle of the street. (cont)

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Bowman was injured in the violence, and later died of his wounds. Another Black man who was present in the store somehow managed to escape. A local newspaper cited that Bierfield was a murdered and deserved his execution. This was of course false(cont)

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🧵 March 9, 1892, a mob in Memphis, TN lynched Thomas Moss and his business partners Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell. This is historically referred to as The People's Grocery lynching. The incident was a result of the (cont)

daily.jstor.org/peoples-grocer…

success of the Black-owned grocery store and a White grocer whose store had served the community before the black grocery arrived, felt threatened by the store. In fact, the People's Grocery thrived-serving both White & Black patrons. Of course (cont)

executedtoday.com/2020/03/09/189…

that did not sit well with William Barrett, the other grocer. It all came to a head when two boys (one White, one Black) got into a fight in front of People's Grocery. The White child's father arrived & began beating the Black child. Will Stewart & Calvin McDowell came to (cont)

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🧵WARNING! This thread has articles that contain very disturbing and graphic photos. There is no intent to glorify a lynching. This is for educational purposes only.

Jessie Washington was lynched by a mob in Waco, TX on May (cont)

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16, 1916 after his conviction for the murder of Lucy Fryer. As per sources, Washington confessed to the murder; however it was known that he was illiterate. His confession to the murder was coerced. Soon after a jury found him guilty, a mob of up (cont)

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to 2,000 men seized Washington, chained him, beat him and dragged him to the town square, where he was burned. There was a celebratory atmosphere among Whites at the spectacle of the murder, and many children attended during their lunch hour. (cont)

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Norwegian polymath and Nobel Prize laureate Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen died on this day in 1930. His humanitarian efforts after WWI led him to develop the “Nansen passport,” which enabled refugees to cross borders legally. /1

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Before WWI, Nansen was a scientist who studied marine life, and an adventurer who undertook numerous Arctic voyages. In these voyages he contributed to the development of modern oceanographic equipment, and also designed expeditionary and scientific equipment. /2

After WWI, Nansen became one of Norway’s delegates to the League of Nations. H turned his boundless energy toward organizing the repatriation of about 500,000 prisoners of war, where he saw horrible suffering. His efforts led to the repatriation of almost 428,000 prisoners. /3

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🧵On the morning of July 29, 1910 in Slocum, TX, several groups made up of 30 to 40 White men indiscriminately murdered Black people. It all began when a white man reportedly attempted to collect a debt from a (cont)

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well-regarded Black citizen, a confrontation occurred. Hard feelings lingered. Rumors spread, warning of threats against Anglo citizens and plans for race riots. On July 29, 1910, White mobs organized and began hunting and shooting Black people (cont)

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as fast as they could find them. Survivors of the bloodshed spread the word, and Blacks began fleeing. The White mobs followed Blacks into the surrounding forests and marshes and shot many victims in the back as they fled. Several bodies were (cont)
timeline.com/slocum-massacr…

Today in history, 1893: Workers for Pullman Palace Car Co. go on strike, protesting 25% wage cuts without decreases in rents and costs at the Pullman company town. It led to a large-scale strike and boycott that disrupted rail traffic for months. /1

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The American Railway Union wanted to support the Pullman workers, but they didn’t exactly work on the railroads. The ARU decided it would ask its members to refuse to connect or disconnect Pullman cars from trains unless the company made concessions. /2

When switchmen began the boycott, they were fired and replaced with nonunion workers. This caused other ARU members to walk out in solidarity. By the end of June, 125,000 workers quit, leaving traffic tied up or stopped on 29 railroads. /3