Thread: 50th Anniversary Commemoration Of 'March On Washington' To Highlight Immigration

By Elizabeth Llorente
Published August 23, 2013
Fox News Latino

Saturday’s 50th anniversary march to mark the 1963 March on Washington will focus on problems plaguing specifically African Americans, but also on other topics such as immigration and voting rights.

Speakers scheduled to address the march include immigration advocacy leaders and an undocumented immigrant brought to the United States as a minor, organizers said.

“The 1963 March on Washington. . .was the single most transformative demonstration of the 20th Century, leading to the passage of civil rights legislation that helped shape our 21st Century democracy,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the groups coordinating the march. “And 50 years later, an even broader coalition is coming together to improve our democracy once again by helping to pass, among several priorities, a critical comprehensive immigration reform bill."

“Broken immigration laws are corroding our democracy and damaging our economy by forcing 11 million immigrants to live in the shadows,” said Henderson, who took part in a conference call earlier this week with immigrant rights leaders to speak about the march.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez , a Democrat from Illinois who has been one of Congress’ most vocal proponents of a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants, said that the 1963 march and the civil rights struggles of African Americans had benefited Latinos, including himself.

"Quite simply, without the march and the movement, there is no Voting Rights Act, and with no Voting Rights Act, there is no majority Latino district carved out in Chicago in 1990," he said. "I wouldn't be on this call as Rep. Luis Gutierrez."

Among those speaking at the march will be Janet Murguia, president of National Council of La Raza, the nation's oldest Latino civil rights group.

Next week, President Obama, a living symbol of the racial progress Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed about, will stand near the spot where King stood 50 years ago and say where he believes this nation should be headed.

As civil rights activists pause to consider the great strides toward equality that the 1963 March on Washington helped to spur, they also look at the current political and racial landscape, and wonder: How much of that progress is now being undone?

The march anniversary comes just weeks before members of Congress are to return from summer recess to tackle such things as immigration.

The Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration measure in June that would, among other things, tighten border security and provide a path to legal status for many of the nation’s undocumented immigrants.

But the measure has stalled in the House, where Republicans hold a majority and many of the GOP’s most conservative members refuse to pass anything resembling the Senate bill. Some of the most staunch opponents of the Senate bill say that will not support a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, a move they see as amnesty.

But those who support a path to legal status say the United States cannot track down and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and that something must be done to bring them out of the shadows.

“Fear of deportation among long-term residents has a toxic effect on the rights of us all,” said Henderson, of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “When immigrants are afraid to report abuses in the workplace, the interests of all workers are undermined. And we know all too well that when our legal system tolerates the perpetuation of a modern-day caste system, democracy itself is compromised.”

This march anniversary also comes just two months after the Supreme Court effectively erased a key anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act, unleashing a string of restrictive voting laws and rules in several states. The court also raised the bar for consideration of race in university admissions, and made it more difficult to bring employment discrimination lawsuits.

There are other new issues, such as demands for a federal civil rights prosecution of George Zimmerman for fatally shooting unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, and abiding ones, such as persistent unemployment among black Americans that runs at a significantly higher rate than that for whites.

"A convergence of things have happened that have exposed ... the fact that we are in a pretty important moment, kind of a democratic crossroads in this country," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "Crossroads or not, you have to continue the work of pushing forward."

The observances begin Saturday with a march from the Lincoln Memorial to the King Memorial, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and King's son, Martin Luther King III. They will be joined by the parents of Trayvon Martin, and family members of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped, beaten and shot in the head in 1955 after he was accused of flirting with a white woman.

Sharpton has refused to call Saturday's march a commemoration or a celebration. He says it is meant to protest "the continuing issues that have stood in the way" of fulfilling King's dream. Martin's and Till's families, he said, symbolize the effects that laws such as the stop-and-frisk tactics by New York police, and Florida's Stand Your Ground statute have in black and Latino communities.

"To just celebrate Dr. King's dream would give the false implication that we believe his dream has been fully achieved and we do not believe that," Sharpton said. "We believe we've made a lot of progress toward his dream, but we do not believe we've arrived there yet."

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/pol...t-immigration/

Dr. King's Dream Has Been Savagely Beaten To Death Posted on August 26, 2013 by Chris Graham

The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech will arrive on Wednesday this week, marked by a speech from President Obama on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As Tavis Smiley, Famous Black Person, notes over at The Washington Post, "The president’s decision to honor the march is proper...." Absolutely true. No president who serendipity selected to have in office during the 50th anniversary of one of the world's most famous speeches, and certainly in America's top five, would dare not give a speech to mark the occasion. It was a major turning point in history, after all. However, although Dr. King had some good ideas and gave some good speeches, and although he did alter the course of America a bit more quickly than it otherwise would have been, he was not omniscient. This is why I'm confused by such statements as were made by Doug Kendall at USA Today: "Unfinished business remains on our way to...achieving Dr. King's dream...." King was not a god or even a founder of this country, so why must we follow through with his entire dream? Just because he wanted something to happen does not mean we must make it so. King cultists have turned the man into an authoritative myth whose every word they will heed and every request they will oblige, even as they march themselves off a cliff. Mr. Kendall joins his fellow leftists in integrating other, liberal agendas into Dr. King's, lamenting, "Our nation still confronts the profiling of people of color." Yes, and people of color still live up to their profiles, more so than they did in King's day. He also writes, "The incarceration rates of African-Americans remain unconscionably high." So does the violent-crime rate of African-Americans. Back again to The Washington Post, Mr. Smiley: "[Blacks are] still denied true economic freedom by institutional and structural barriers that have yet to be addressed." Well, conservatives have been trying to address those problems and liberals keep refusing. For instance, there is no economic freedom in being financially dependent upon, and therefore indebted to, the government, which is the natural consequence of being on government entitlement programs. There are more blacks on welfare than there are whites, as a percentage of their own respective races. Where's the freedom in continuing this indentured servitude to the government? Smiley also writes about "the struggle for human dignity that black men in particular endure almost daily." Indignities, one supposes, such as having your faces shown on millions of TV sets every night after you went and had yourselves a nice li'l "thrill kill" and murdered a young white man out of boredom. Indignities such as getting caught on a security camera after you bludgeoned and cracked the skull of an octogenarian WWII vet just for fun. The security footage made you look ten pounds heavier than you actually are. Oh, the indignity! Mr. Smiley is right about one thing, however: "Obama’s election in 2008 was a good down payment on King’s dream of racial equality, but it did not fulfill the dream." Of course it didn't fulfill The Dream; Obama was elected purely because of the color of his skin, not the content of his character. Whenever Republicans raised concerns over Obama's questionable character, to include his relationships with person's ranging from the shady to the downright terroristic, it was the Democrats who said such issues were off the table because of Obama's race; that it was racist to judge Obama by his character. So, no, of course King's dream has not been fulfilled; it was instead savagely beaten to death—not in the streets of the ghettos liberals created, but in the Democrats' new plantation known as Congress.

Read more: http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/08/...#ixzz2dBiA98du


Wonder what his dream would be today...beat whitie?? Well at least till whitie beats back!!!!???

by Mike Flynn 27 Aug 2013, 10:11 AM PDT
breitbart.com



This past weekend, several thousand people gathered on the National Mall to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. In the powerful address, Dr. King envisioned a society where the "content" of a man's character meant more than the "color of his skin." Events this weekend, however, prominently featured activists for amnesty for the country's illegal immigrants. It is a separate issue that tarnishes Dr. King's legacy.

Janet Murguia, President of the National Council of La Raza said at the weekend event, "We march so that everyone knows that true justice must include enacting comprehensive immigration reform."

The civil rights movement was about securing full constitutional rights for existing American citizens. Many parts of the country shamefully restricted the rights of minorities, generally black Americans. Even where the law was written to treat races equally, enforcement was often unevenly applied. King's work, and the broader civil rights movement, was addressing this moral wrong.

The amnesty movement, by contrast, is about securing constitutional rights for people who broke the law to enter the country. Advocates want to frame the debate in the context of civil rights, but it is a false comparison. The push for amnesty isn't about securing rights for immigrants, but about showing favor on people fortunate enough to live within access to a land border with the US and determined enough to ignore the nation's immigration laws.

There are currently over four million immigrants waiting in line in their home countries to enter the US legally. Shouldn't these hopeful immigrants take precedence for the simple fact that they complied with US law? What nature of "civil right" favors those who break the law over those who don't? Doesn't complying with the law give us some measures of Dr. King's "content" of character?

There is room for an overall debate on the proper amount of immigration and what measures we use to grant citizenship. Any civil right aspect of this debate, however, was buried long ago with the repeal of California's and other states' laws against Chinese and other Asian immigrants.

Even ardent opponents of the current Senate amnesty legislation aren't advocating that the nation should deny immigrants' rights. They argue that we should uphold and enforce existing law. Further, that the law ought to be applied equally to Americans and those hoping to become Americans. That is the cherished legacy of Dr. King.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...cy-for-amnesty