The Baptist church, for a long time, was a thorn in America's side. Just like Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. Before King was assassinated, even the black church turned away from him. In fact, in Chicago, one conservative church refused to deal with King whereas the late Rev. Clay Evans at Fellowship opened his doors to the Movement.
It's history.
But the pollsters and media pundits lump the whole race in the black Baptist corner, and then calling on a now celebrated King, a black choir or two, and a few black male pastors, insists we are all (except those young folks) following lockstep behind Biden.
African Americans have a socialist tradition that includes the against-all-odds struggle and work and sacrifice of Paul Robeson, Pauli Murray, W.E.B. Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, Cedric J. Robinson, C.L.R. James, Angela Y. Davis, and others. The list includes Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
No one asks older blacks not in lockstep with the Democratic or Republican parties what they might think about the presidential candidates. It's safer for America to privilege one black tradition, and sear images of black choirs and black pastors onto the minds of white America whenever it's convenient, efficient for the nation. The image of the black church singing and preaching is salable whereas the image of a black community that leans socialist threatens the interests of the powerful no matter how corrupt, how vile and mean-spirit.
According to the pollsters, older blacks are standing by Biden, a man who once thought it a good idea to stand with Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, during the Reagan era, and call for a freeze "on federal spending and insisted on including Social Security in that freeze" (The Intercept), is already a winner in the black community.
So it's Biden when black lives matter?
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In the meantime, over a billion animals are dead. It's hard to imagine a billion anything, let alone animals. A billion creatures--amphibians, koalas, birds. Plants, fungi, insects. Bacteria, too. According to a report in the Washington Post , the kangaroos on Kangaroo Island are in danger of becoming extinct.
All species matter. Do we know if the Democratic candidates understand this?
What must a square foot of that fire scene in Australia be like to the wildlife inhabitants?
Humans are running just ahead of flames and smoke are mostly from the economically poor and indigenous populations.
Twenty-eight people have died.
It's perhaps more adequate to say that the life already consumed in fire and the life on the run are trying to survive other people's insistence that life is worthwhile only when profits flow from digging for fossil fuels. So what are a billion dead animals?
For Australian PM, Scott Morrison, the sun still shines. Even coal shines in his hands. There are images of Morrison holding a lump of coal. According to The Guardian, it's "a neatly shellacked lump of coal." What could be wrong with coal? Huh? It's like that water in Flint, Michigan, that Obama drank. Clean water!
The fossil-fuel industry wants Morrison in power.
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