Posted on 09/23/2011 5:36:15 AM PDT by Route797
JASPER - Longtime civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory held a prayer vigil in Jasper Tuesday night in protest of Lawrence Brewer's execution. Brewer was sentenced to death and is scheduled to die Wednesday for his role in the dragging death of James Byrd Junior in 1998.
Gregory, a strong opponent of capital punishment, will conduct an 18 hour fast and vigil at the Walls Unit in Huntsville.
"When do the State qualify to kill somebody and the government qualify to kill somebody and it's all right"? said Gregrory. "It's never all right to kill somebody intentionally. There are people who kill people. They are not the State. They are not the government. I don't pay taxes to them."
Gregory's visit to Jasper came on the eve of the scheduled execution of Brewer but also during a time when tensions are high over the selection of Jasper Police Chief Rodney Pearson.
A group known as the League of Concerned Citizens, who are mostly white, wants to recall three black city council members for hiring Chief Pearson. The group says there were more qualified candidates. Council members stand by their selection of Chief Pearson.
Gregory urged the citizens of Jasper to maintain peace.
"We overcome odds bigger then this. We took on the mightiest nation in the world without guns and hatred in the greatness movement of planet Earth, our civil right movement," said Gregory.
On the other hand, the reader comments below the story indicate that Gregory made a speech at a church that doesn't seem to be so admirable.
"We overcome odds bigger then this. We took on the mightiest nation in the world without guns and hatred in the greatness movement of planet Earth, our civil right movement," said Gregory.
I'm not denying the intense and deep racism that existed, but Gregory doesn't seem to grasp that the American people didn't just say "OK, we surrender to your superiority." The American people had consciences and basic decency that the Civil Rights movement (properly) worked on.
If Mr. Gregory had to 'take on' the US, he would still be a second-class citizen. The Civil Rights movement was more like a discussion and an agreement was reached based on the admission that blacks had been treated unfairly--that's not something you can to to an opponent who doesn't already see you as a fellow human being.
There are countless counter-examples he can look to where minorities struggled for their rights and were crushed by the majority, who didn't have a basic humanity. He is welcome to look at any number of countries in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, and then tell me about 'taking on...without gun...'. If the facts were as he believes, he'd have failed.
And 18 hour fast? What, he’s skipping breakfast?
I don’t necessarily disagree but whats his stand on Obamacare? banning OTC inhalers? fuel efficiency standards that make cars into death traps? wind power mandates that will bring blackouts and possibly kill people?
How many of these people make headlines and photo ops at anti-abortion events ?
Absolutely. He deserves props for consistency, for sure.
Anyway, now I feel better about saying he's a fool.
Amuses me to hear history distorted without challenge; even people on my political side let these lies slip through. The civil rights movement didn't take on the United States! They took on a rogue, atavistic portion of the South with the help of the United States.
Then, in a manifestation of undying gratitude, they turned around and blamed the country for the injustice it helped eradicate!
He’s still beneath comtempt.
Hitler and Stalin stood by their principles and were very consistent as well.
“We took on the mightiest nation in the world without guns and hatred “
I haven’t the slightest clue what this article is about and don’t really care.
But the above quote deomnstrates that Mr. Gregory and some of his cohorts regard AMERICA as the enemy rather than the demented racists who supported segregation.
I would remind Mr. Gregory that the Civil Rights movement SUCCEEDED in the GREATEST Nation on earth because of the political statements and political philosophies of a bunch of old, dead white men who created it.
Mr. Gregory should go lose some weight - like the equivalent of whatever he weighs at present, which must be massive considering the size of his self-righteous ego.
Never liked him. He went on a hunger strike to force Nixon to end our involvement in Vietnam. Said there’d be riots if he died, shrank from hefty to weighing just over 100 pounds, we were still in Vietnam (where I was reading about his shenanigans BTW) but one day a gaunt Dick Gregory arose, took up his pallet, and headed off to Burger King.
Forty years plus and he hasn’t changed. Only line I remember from his book was how he went into a whites only restaurant and ordered fried chicken and three guys named Ku, Klux, and Klan came over to his table and threatened, “Whatever you do to that chicken, boy, we’re gonna do to you.”
He wrote, “So I picked up that chicken, and I KISSED it!”
Did he stop by Planned Parenthood to protest the factory that lives and breathes on murdering the innocent?
IMHO, Dick Gregory “ain’t never been quite right in the haid”...
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