We allow this to happen when we ignore our responsibility; don't keep ourselves informed; and don't vote.  Haven't we had enough of this?  Aren't we going to do something about it?

There is strength in numbers.  We are many.  Let's use that power!

EDITOR'S COMMENTARY:   Rabid white supremacist are hell bent on banning books and manipulating school curriculums so that their version of history and what they believe is good or bad, right or wrong is all our young people will be allowed to learn.  "Woke" has become a dirty word to them because it denotes those who are educated & informed.

For all the above reasons and more, we decided to post to social media this listing from the Resource Library on www.womensvoicesmedia.org to provide you with an excellent resource for all aspects of the history of civil rights in America.  Please, set aside some time to educate yourself and/or to refresh your memory.  Don't allow the fascists to deprive you from other rights:  the right to read what you want and the right to be informed.

 

https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/intro

                     A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States

                    This guide offers a history of various movements by citizens in the United States to gain political and social freedom and equality. It highlights resources available through HUSL Library and HU Libraries, as well as a selection freely accessible Internet resources with a focus on authoritative content from civil rights organizations and government entities.

EDITOR'S COMMENTARY:   Rabid white supremacist are hell bent on banning books and manipulating school curriculums so that their version of history and what they believe is good or bad, right or wrong is all our young people will be allowed to learn.  "Woke" has become a dirty word to them because it denotes those who are educated & informed.

For all the above reasons and more, we decided to post to social media this listing from the Resource Library on www.womensvoicesmedia.org to provide you with an excellent resource for all aspects of the history of civil rights in America.  Please, set aside some time to educate yourself and/or to refresh your memory.  Don't allow the fascists to deprive you from other rights:  the right to read what you want and the right to be informed.

 

https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/intro

                     A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States

                    This guide offers a history of various movements by citizens in the United States to gain political and social freedom and equality. It highlights resources available through HUSL Library and HU Libraries, as well as a selection freely accessible Internet resources with a focus on authoritative content from civil rights organizations and government entities.

In a 1912 New York Times article, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was regarded as “the symbol of the new era, when all women will be free and unhampered.”[1] At the time, sixteen year old Lee was already a recognized suffragist and activist that would help to lead almost 10,000 people in the New York suffrage parade. Lee went on to become the first Chinese woman to get a PhD in economics.

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born on October 7, 1897 in Guangzhou (Canton City), China. Her father, Dr. Lee Towe, was a missionary pastor and he moved to the United States when she was four years old. Lee stayed in China with her mother and grandmother, and she studied Chinese  from private tutors. When Lee was nine years old, she won an academic scholarship called the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship that allowed her to relocate to the United States to attend school. The Lee family moved in 1905 to Chinatown in New York City, and Mabel Lee attended Erasmus Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. Lee became involved in activism and women’s rights very early on. By the time she was sixteen years old, Lee helped to lead a suffrage parade on horseback in New York City. Held on May 4, 1912, the parade started in New York’s historic Greenwich Village and was attended by almost ten thousand people.

Prior to the parade, the New York Tribune and New York Times wrote articles featuring Lee’s teenage activism and her involvement in the movement. Ironically, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese immigrants from attaining citizenship and voting. Even when the 19^th amendment was passed, Chinese women and many other women of color still did not have the ability to vote. However, Lee still strongly advocated for suffrage for women. In addition to her activism for women’s rights, Lee was also a brilliant student. While in school, she excelled in English, Latin, and mathematics. At sixteen years old she was admitted to Barnard College, the women’s college connected to the all-male Columbia University. Lee majored in history and philosophy and joined the Chinese Students’ Association. She continued her activism by writing feminist essays for The Chinese Students’ Monthly. She wrote an essay in 1914 entitled “The Meaning of Woman Suffrage,” that emphasized the importance of extending voting rights and equal opportunities to women. Two years later, Lee gave a speech at the Women’s Political Union’s Suffrage Shop entitled “The Submerged Half.” In this speech, Lee encouraged the education and civic participation of Chinese women of all ages.

By 1917, women in the state of New York were granted the right to vote. Three years later, the 19^th Amendment was passed that gave women the right to vote across the country. However, Lee and many other women of color still could not vote. It would take another almost twenty-five years for Lee to be granted the right to vote with the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. However, she continued to advocate for women’s suffrage and equal rights. Lee graduated from Barnard College and went on to receive her master’s degree in educational administration from Columbia Teacher’s College. She decided to continue her studies and attended Columbia University to pursue a PhD in economics. While in graduate school, Lee studied under well-known economic professors including; Edwin R. A. Seligman, Henry R. Seager, Henry L. Moore, Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Wesley C. Mitchell, and Robert E. Chaddock. She graduated in 1921 and became the first Chinese woman to graduate with a PhD in economics. That year, Lee published her PhD research as a book entitled The Economic History of China. Unfortunately, Lee’s father passed away in 1924, a few years after her graduation.

After her father’s death, Lee took over his role as director of the First Chinese Baptist Church of New York City. She also opened a community center called the Chinese Christian Center. This center was designed to empower the Chinese community by offering a health clinic, a kindergarten, vocational training, and English classes. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee died in 1966 at the age of 70. It is unknown if Lee ever attained United States citizenship and exercised her right to vote, but her activism ensured many other women had the ability to do so.

AUTHORS:

MLA – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Mabel Ping-Hua Lee.” National Women’s History Museum, 2020. Date accessed.

Chicago – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Mabel Ping-Hua Lee.” National Women’s History Museum. 2020. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mabel-ping-hua-lee.

A corporation does not have morals—it has a bottom line. Disney’s lawsuit against Florida is more about being able to reap profits while underpaying workers than it is about protecting LGBTQ communities.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is eager to cast himself as the new and improved Donald Trump. He has waged a relentless war against what he calls “woke ideology” by attacking the rights of vulnerable minorities to teach and learn history, to read literature, and to get life-saving medical care such as gender-affirming treatment and reproductive health care. Now, his attack on Florida’s largest corporation is being cast in the same vein of “good versus evil.”

Except that the DeSantis-Disney war ought really to be viewed as an opportunity to call Republicans out on their slavish devotion to Big Business and dare them to follow through with stripping not just the Disney corporation, but all money-hungry companies of their dependence on public financing. Both DeSantis and Disney are predatory, albeit in different ways.

Disney, a company that has deep cultural sway over Americans for being a purveyor of “magic” and “happiness,” has enjoyed a very special and extremely unusual arrangement in Orlando, Florida, where its Walt Disney World Resort occupies tens of thousands of acres named the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Since 1967, the state of Florida has allowed the corporation to govern the area and even to issue tax bonds to residents in order to pay for municipal services while being exempt from certain regulations and taxes.

Rather than viewing Disney World as “the happiest place on earth,” Sophie Weiner, writing in Popular Mechanics in 2018, explained that, “Disney World is what it looks like if you give a corporation full control over an area of land as big as San Francisco. It’s worked out great for the company, which counts on the park for 14 percent of its $2 billion yearly earnings.” Further, in 2021, the state of Florida gifted the company a massive $580 million tax break in exchange for moving about 2,000 jobs from its California locations to Florida.

But in March 2022 Disney took a stand against the Parental Rights in Education Law, which has been dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” act, prompting DeSantis’s ire. A month later Florida’s Republican legislature dissolved Disney’s special status in a law that is to take effect on June 1, 2023. DeSantis explained the move saying, “I’m just not comfortable having that type of agenda get special treatment in my state.” In other words, Disney’s special corporate arrangement would not be tolerated if it challenged his homophobia.

Except that Disney had to be pushed hard into taking such a moral stand. For weeks after the bill was announced the company was perfectly content enjoying the largesse of Florida even as activists were demanding it speak out against a law prohibiting teachings that touch on gender identity and sexual orientation to kids in kindergarten through third grade. Disney’s own workers protested their employer’s lack of courage. The hashtag #BoycottDisney began trending. The company eventually, reluctantly, reacted by suspending all its political donations in the state of Florida to both parties—not exactly the most principled stand.

To his credit, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek also made public statements against the bill and offered a $5 million donation to the Human Rights Campaign (which the group rejected).

But earlier this year Florida, realizing that dissolving Disney’s tax status would end up dumping a billion-dollar bond debt onto the public, quickly scrambled to restore the special district while muzzling Disney. A new law will allow the governor to appoint leadership positions of Reedy Creek Improvement District instead of allowing Disney to do so.

Representative Anna Eskamani, a progressive Democrat in the state legislature, told the Hollywood Reporter, “The inner workings [of the special district] stay the same. The only difference is Disney won’t challenge the governor on anything anymore.” The company was initially happy and Disney World’s head Jeff Vahle said his company was “ready to work within this new framework.”

Testing this new arrangement DeSantis has revved up his culture war, approving a rule change to expand the Don’t Say Gay bill to all grades and sending a message to LGBTQ youth that their lives don’t matter. But the new board that he appointed to govern Disney’s special district voted to nullify a company plan to expand and develop the area. It was only then that Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis claiming he violated their first amendment rights over the homophobic law.

Every step of the way Disney was happy to suck up all the tax perks and financial autonomy it could get away with, regardless of whom its host was harming. Only when its financial status was threatened has it claimed to be on the side of LGBTQ communities.

Aside from Eskamani, few Democrats have called Disney out for its hypocrisy and for reaping special financial perks, instead supporting the corporation for being a job creator. Democratic Congressional representative Darren Soto chastised DeSantis, saying, “It’d be nice if he stopped attacking Central Florida’s top employer.” He added, “We’re talking about trying to get [Disney] to invest more money to create more jobs. And this is not helpful to those efforts.”

Soto’s words suggest that he sees Disney performing a massive favor to the state by operating its resort and parks there instead of the other way around. But the sort of jobs that Disney creates is precisely what has fueled deep income inequality in the U.S. Its presence in Florida has meant thousands of poorly paid jobs that keep Floridians in a hand-to-mouth existence, unable to cope with the rising cost of living. Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor, told USA Today, “Yes, we have a lot of jobs. But they don’t pay very much. And we seem to have lost ground over time, especially when it comes to housing costs.”

One Disney worker told the Guardian, “We’re grossly, grossly underpaid for the hours that we work,” and that “[a] lot of Disney workers are barely squeaking by. You have workers with families sleeping in their car.”

Disney heiress Abigail Disney, who is an outspoken progressive, even made a documentary about the poor treatment of Disneyland workers in Anaheim, California, where the company also enjoys special tax benefits in exchange for creating jobs and where it was granted an exception to a voter-passed minimum wage increase. Just as in Florida, Disney’s California jobs are worth about as little as the taxes the company pays to the state.

In addition to constantly being granted exemptions for taxes and regulations, corporations like Disney enjoy a mythical status in the U.S. for being so massively profitable that their dollar signs obscure capitalism’s ugly underbelly.

Disney should not have control over land, resources, tax regulations, or wages. And lawmakers should not be allowed to trample over the rights of minorities. It’s not difficult to oppose both Disney’s power grab and DeSantis’s dangerous culture wars. Indeed, both positions are fully consistent with progressive ideals of protecting and furthering the rights of human beings.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Author:  Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.