January 2005

Stevenson High Students Involvement in the Mississippi Burning Case

Barry Bradford, a teacher at Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, had three students working to publicize the case of three murdered civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer in 1964.

With the arrest of Edgar Ray Killen for the murders, they are receiving some well earned attention.

Barry thanks the readers who contacted their Representatives. I think we should thank Barry and the three students, Sarah Siegel, Allison Nichols and Brittany Saltiel For more information go here.

From Barry:

On December 15, you were kind enough to post a request from my students,
asking your readers to write their Congressman to request a reopening of
the “Mississippi Burning” Murder Case. ?On behalf of Brittany, Sarah, and
Allison, I’d like to thank all of the ArchPundit readers who helped make a
difference!

Here is an article from the Belleville News-Democrat:

Posted on Fri, Jan. 07, 2005

Student documentarians gratified by arrest in civil rights killings
NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON
Associated Press

CHICAGO – Hundreds of miles from a Mississippi courtroom where a suspect
pleaded innocent Friday to the 40-year-old slayings of three civil rights
workers, three suburban Chicago high school students were getting
accolades for their role in publicizing the case.

Stevenson High School students Sarah Siegel, Allison Nichols and Brittany
Saltiel spent more than a year working on a 2004 documentary about the
killings. Their project included a rare phone interview with the man
arrested Thursday, reputed Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen, and
helped generate a congressional resolution last June asking federal
prosecutors to reopen the case.

“I was really happy for all the families who I knew had been waiting for
this for 40 years,” 17-year-old Siegel said Friday of Killen’s arrest. “It
was also a little saddening to know that it took 40 years for justice to
start working.”

The girls and their teacher, Barry Bradford, are humble about their part
in renewing interest in the case, which was the subject of the 1988 movie
“Mississippi Burning.”

But congressmen including Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil
rights activist who knew the slain workers, credit the students for
working to keep the case in the spotlight and unearthing new details.

“I was very inspired and very moved by the work that these three students
brought before us,” Lewis said Friday. “I think they were crucial in
bringing us to this point.”

The girls’ odyssey began in the summer of 2003, when they met with
Bradford to discuss possible projects for the annual National History Day
competition. They stopped him after his first idea: telling the story of
21-year-old James Chaney, 20-year-old Andrew Goodman and 24-year-old
Michael Schwerner.

The three young men were participating in Freedom Summer 1964, an effort
to register blacks in the South to vote and start educational programs,
when they were beaten and shot to death, allegedly by Klansmen. Their
ages, not much older than the girls, struck a chord.

“We just thought something about those three men and their dedication to
the movement really stood out,” 16-year-old Saltiel said.

Although 19 men were eventually charged with federal civil rights
violations in the case, Killen’s arrest marks the first time Mississippi
has sought murder charges.

The Lincolnshire students pored over thousands of pages of court
transcripts and interviewed former prosecutors and investigators,
witnesses, family members of the victims and government officials for
their 10-minute documentary. They also sought out Killen, now 79, for a
phone interview.

Bradford decided to conduct the interview after a Justice Department
official expressed concern about the girls having to testify in the future
in case Killen said something incriminating.

Killen didn’t implicate himself in the killings, Bradford said, but he did
say the reason civil rights workers were so hated at the time was because
people thought they were recruiting blacks to be communists.

Soon after that interview, Bradford said his and the girls’ names were
posted on a white supremacist Web site that accused them of trying to skew
the truth.

“I think it was truly a little startling to them to realize that there are
still remnants of that archaic mind-set,” Bradford said.

The students say the most rewarding part of their project was meeting with
family members of the slain men, including Goodman’s mother and Chaney’s
brother, who called them “superhero girls.”

The Most Amusing Sky Is Falling from the Right

Peter LaBarbera doesn’t disappoint with this communication to his organization concerning SB 3186:

As most of you know, SB 3186 passed both the Senate (30-27-1) and the House (65-51-1). Tragically, many legislators who consider themselves “pro-family” voted for the homosexual/transsexual bill, which now awaits the signature of an eager Gov. Blagojevich (see bottom of this email to contact the governor).

IFI was featured in about a dozen TV and radio newscasts and print media, reminding Illinois citizens of the pitfalls of giving homosexuality and gender confusion protected status in Illinois law.

The debate on SB 3186 was shallow, and only a few legislators stood up on the floor to defend traditional values. Liberal self-righteousness was everywhere on display: one state representative, Lou Lang (D-Skokie), even played theology professor, lecturing people of faith on how the true application of their religion would be to vote FOR the pro-homosexual bill. In the gospel according to Lou, sodomy is a virtue, not a sin.

It seems that for many a rationalizing liberal, supporting homosexuality (“equality for gays and lesbians”) and abortion (“the right to choose”) have become twin articles of faith. They brandish their neo-fundamentalism and neo-compassion with the rigidity of a Wahabi Muslim, even as they pat themselves on the back for being “open minded.”

Perhaps this nation and this state face a bigger problem than a misunderstanding of the “separation of church and state.” Social liberals are attempting to separate God from His natural law, pretending that THEY know better how to order human sexuality than a loving, almighty Creator. Worse yet, they PLAY GOD through the modern horror of legalized abortion.

Invariable, the pro-“gay” and pro-“choice” politicians bend Christianity (or Judaism) to fit their new creed, although they would never admit it. (They’re missing the key to life, which is letting Christianity bend us, not vice versa.) They forget, as we all are prone to forget, that God is not mocked, and that His divine and natural laws are not altered by human formulations. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

Now back to politics: the good news is that Embryonic Stem Cell Research (HB 3589) did not pass! And due to these two misguided votes on SB 3186, we now have more reasons than ever to fight for a constitutional amendment to permanently protect marriage in Illinois!

Thanks to all of you who contacted your legislators and got involved in the political process. You might want to commend or admonish your legislators for the vote they cast on SB 3186, and store it in your memory for the next election. Click on the links below to see how your senator and representative voted.

How Bad Is this for the Blagorgeous?

Pretty bad. At some level the general public might take it as a sign of independence, but let’s face it–Democrats are looking for an excuse to run against the guy and this provides that opening. As IlPundit points out, the comments are more than just a spat, Mell accuses the guy of corruption and now the Illinois press has even more reason to track down every donor with an appointment or such. And let’s face it, The Blagorgeous isn’t the press’s favorite guy.

And the coalition is hurt. In a general election the guy might do okay, but his position in the City is very bad. Mell was his biggest block of support and now that appears to be gone. The Mayor has little love for the guy and the Speaker hates him.

A primary challenge can unite downstate labor Dems, the Mayor and the Southside and make a good run at the guy. The problem is who can do it. Lisa Madigan is having a kid and such a run is nearly impossible. Hynes might be able to do it, but after his lackluster effort in the US Senate Primary, he’s not viewed as strong. He’ll be fine long term, but he probably needs to think more about how to present himself to the public. Dick Devine is a possibility and has a supporter in Jerry Costello as well as the Mayor. He’s the anti-G-Rod, though his family was generally close to Blagojevich for G-Rod’s first run for Governor. Or—convince Paul to come back.

Beating an incumbent Governor isn’t impossible, but it is tough. McCaskill did it in Missouri, but even then, Holden had horrible numbers. G-Rods seem to stay around 50% or better in approval and he has a huge warchest.

Hey, I Got An Idea, Let’s Train Assassins….

You know, it’ll work, kind of like everyone in Iraq just laying down and following an Iranian Spy on the American payroll did.

Who wants to bet if these idiots try this, we’ll end up fighting them later? The Middle East is far from Central America and there are resources beyond belief that simply didn’t exist for the Salvadoran rebels. While the idea of Soviet help (and there was some marginal help) played big in the American mind, the leftists in El Salvador had few resources compared to what the insurgents in Iraq have in an oil rich area.

More than that, the notion that the Salvador option is acceptable in any way is only possible because of the broad ignorance over what happened in El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn’t just Communists and FMLN activists who were killed, it was Christian Democratic Party members who were centrists and anti-communist. They just thought they should beat the leftists and communists at the ballot box and not kill them all.

From the Truth Commission findings

The United States Embassy reported a total of 5,639 people killed, of whom 2,330 were civilians, 762 were members of the armed forces and 2,547 were members of the guerrilla forces. Christian Legal Aid reported that during the first eight months of 1982, there were a total of 3,059 political murders, “nearly all of them the result of action by Government agents against civilians not involved in military combat”. 49 The same source reported that the total number of civilian deaths in 1982 was 5,962. 50

The death squads >51 continued to operate with impunity in 1982. On 10 March, the Alianza Anticomunista de El Salvador published a list of 34 people who had been condemned to death for “discrediting the armed forces”. Most of them were journalists. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, referring to the discovery of clandestine graves of death squad victims, reported that on 24 May the bodies of more than 150 people had been dumped at Puerta del Diablo, Panchimalco. 52 On 27 May, the bodies of six members of the Christian Democratic Party were found at El Play?n, another clandestine mass grave used by the death squads. 53 President Duarte publicly denounced the extreme right wing, holding it responsible for the murder of hundreds of PDC members and mayors. Four Dutch journalists were killed on 17 March 1982 (see the case in chap. IV

Nearly 6000 civilian deaths in a country that had less than 6 million people. Think about the impact of 9-11 in this country of over 250 million with a loss of half of that. In one year.

I don’t think anyone expects a situation like this to be an easy problem to solve or that there won’t be someone who crosses the line from time to time and that may benefit the larger cause, but you can’t create a stable democracy while destroying the rule of law. For all those screaming about moral clarity, it’s about time to stand up and point out this administration is careening out of control on the moral highway.

Worse, Christopher Dickey points out the administration is learning the wrong lessons from El Salvador.

I’ll go one step farther and point out that Jose Duarte’s Presidency provided a wedge between the FMLN and the citizenry by offering peace talks on reasonable terms, thus isolating the FMLN in public opinion. It’s hard to see how the death squads worked as much as a political alternative that reduced potential support for the FMLN.

Grunlohed? Uh, no.

The Rhodester suggests that the passage of SB 3186 will lead to Blagorgeous getting hit hard down state.

Problem with that? Yeah, since nationally 68% of Americans support job discrimination protection and 66% support housing discrimination protection, I’d say The Governor is on the right side of the public on this issue (and Illinois is more of a blue state afterall). That’s a 2000 poll, but not much has changed.

Gay marriage is a different story, but Americans tend to favor equal civil rights for all.

From the Sun-Times:

Within Illinois, Cook County and 15 cities have similar provisions: Bloomington, Carbondale, Champaign, Chicago, Decatur, DeKalb, Evanston, LaGrange, Moline, Naperville, Normal, Oak Park, Peoria, Springfield, and Urbana.

When Decatur, Moline, and Normal for goodness sakes pass such ordinances, it’s not a big deal to the general public.

And, you know Rhodes, Skip voted for it! Of course, that might just be to annoy Daniels. It’s too bad Cross didn’t.