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Clinton Endorses Obama
Hillary Clinton ends her campaign by giving a resounding endorsement of Barack Obama.
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Fake Cannuck Letter and Democratic Presidential Candidate Ed Muskie in 1972
A bit of interesting democratic primary history with Ed Muskie doing the crying at this link above - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canuck_Letter
fyi amies,
"Cannucks" - French Canadians, mostly descendants of the French Voyageurs and Northeast Indian women - Metis, Quebecois, and Bois Brulle and/or Acadians, the offspring of communally living French men from Brittany and Normandy in the early 1600s and Mik'mak women, were persecuted from Maine up through Canada on the eastern seaboard for over 200 years. When America was born, the border crossed over them from coast to coast. One contentious border was Maine, with Acadians having family on both sides and longing to be reunited. My Memere Louisia Aucoin Touchette was born in the late 1890s, but she yearned to return to Acadia and talked about the dispersal in 1755 as if it were yesterday.
Our people were major players in the French and Indian Wars, War of 1812 and others when we usually took the side of our Indian relatives, not usually the winning side. The Grand Derangement in September of 1755 of Acadians, when families were separated, their property confiscated and herded on ships and dispersed to the British colonies, is the first modern example of genocide in the West. Seeing Mormon children torn from their mothers reignites that tragic ancestral memory.
What most people don't know is that the Ku Klux Klan had it's biggest activity against "Cannucks" in Maine in the late 1800s and early 1900s with a membership in Maine of over a 150,000. Read this description of the times from "Performing family stories, forming cultural identity: Franco American mémère stories" by Kristin M. Langellier
First published in Communication Studies, 53(1) Spring 2002, 56-73.
"Arguably, the Roman Catholic church both held French Canada together culturally at the same time that it hindered the social progress of its people. In the U.S., the devotion to French language and Catholic faith made Franco Americans the targets of religious hostility and racist attacks. The Anglo imagination attacked the French refusal to assimilate by challenging their whiteness. The French were characterized in an 1880 Massachusetts labor report as "the Chinese of the Eastern States" (les chinois de Pest) (Doty, 1995, p. 87), a comparison not to other white groups but to another race. Using French Canadians to argue against a ten-hour work day, the report concludes, "Now, it is not strange that so sordid and low a people should awaken corresponding feelings in the managers, and that these should feel that, the longer hours for such people, the better, and that to work them to the uttermost is about the only good use they can be put to" (Wright, 1881). Class, linguistic, and religious conflict submitted Franco Americans to two hundred years of discrimination, oppression, and poverty. In the mid and late 1880's and again in the 1920s, French Catholics were the target of cross-burnings by the Ku Klux Klan. In Maine, for example, an active and flourishing Klan in Maine, numbering 150,141, waged campaigns against the Catholic Church and foreign-language schools (Doty, 1995). Anti-French and anti-Catholic attacks suggest how larger historical forces shaped language and religion within the specific cultural formation of Franco American identity. "
Unfortunately, the Muskie "Canuck Letter" didn't increase awareness about the history and unequal status of some of America's first inhabitants.
From TouchArt.net and One Earth Blog.
P.S. Our Mik'maq ancestors arrived on the northeast shores of the Atlantic 20,000 years ago. A bit of interesting democratic primary history with Ed Muskie doing the crying at this link above - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canu... more -
Dean urges do -over voting in Florida, Michigan
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.
"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.
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So with this race so close now, we may well see these states redoing their primaries to have their delegates seated at the convention. Very interesting. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their pr... more -
GOP Immigrant-bashing is Hurting Their Party, Democrats to Reap the Benefits
This renewed xenophobia towards Mexicans will bode very badly for the GOP come the general election as Hispanics are the fastest growing minority and an influential voting demographic. And yes I say Mexicans, because the vast majority of "illegal immigrants" are Mexicans and this IS a RACIAL ISSUE--if you doubt this then you might want to ask yourself: why don't they worry about securing Canada's border? If you remember terrorists didn't go through the mexican border.
Mexicans are being scapegoated once more in the history of the United States. Know your history people, in the 1930's during the depression over a million Mexicans, including american citizens (sons/daughters of mexican immigrants) were "re-patriated" to Mexico a place that had become foreign to many of them (they WERE AMERICANS.) They were shipped in trains, boats, and many drove cars south. The journey was a dangerous and sometimes a disgusting one. Some people packed into trains having to stand in their own shit and piss for hours at a time (which eerily reminds me of the trains that took holocaust victums). Mexicans were humiliated and disrespected simply for the color of their skin.
Not to mention the way Mexicans were beaten, raped and lynched during the 1840's and 50s after the U.S. stole half of Mexico in the gravely unjust and undertaught Mexican-American War. If the GOP is so hung up on respecting the law then maybe they should honor the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo a lawful agreement, that respected Mexicans right to perseve their property, language and culture. But oh yeah, the U.S. only honors laws that align with their own ignorance, bigotry, racism and homophobia. So we see an UNNECESSARY rise in hate crimes against gays and latinos, because well, it comes down to one simple elemantry thing: they're different, and we dont like people who are different. Republicans GROW UP.
Sorry, I'm latino and I'm gay so I feel like I'm getting attacked for who I am twice as much these days.
You can read more about this history by reading this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Decade-Betrayal-Mexican-Repatriat... This renewed xenophobia towards Mexicans will bode very badly for the GOP come the general election as Hispanics are the fastest growi... more -
If Hillary wins, the Democrats might lose
If Hillary wins the democratic nomination, we may see a more united republican party come the general election because the senator can be as divisive as Bush himself when it comes to partisan politics. Are we really ready for the republican nominee in November to bring up the dreaded 90's word: "Lewinsky"? I cringe at the thought. Are we sure we want a candidate who is incapable of uniting an already divided country? Democrats can't afford to lose a third election in a row especially at such a dire time as this. If Hillary wins the democratic nomination, we may see a more united republican party come the general election because the senator can... more
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