Shane Mage
"Note by Hunter Bear:
Of course, I'm quite pleased with the rejection of gun control yesterday in the Senate -- and so are a vast number of others concerned with the preservation of civil liberty. I've said quite a number of times in the past few years that the "gun issue" should be left completely alone.
I have a few thoughts and observations.
The ostensibly "liberal" pundits -- and I don't see them as bona fide liberals -- who reported this gun rights victory struck me as about as objective in their reporting as Holiness preachers who've just seen their flocks partying and dancing in saloons on Saturday night.
The Obama et al. news conference that followed the Senate votes was hardly gracious. And it brought to mind something of almost half a century ago on a street in Raleigh, North Carolina following Goldwater's massive defeat in early November 1964.
I was, of course, in the Northeastern North Carolina Blackbelt on that election day, based at our headquarters at Klan-ridden Enfield where our phone was ringing continuously. And, to some extent, I was also out in the county. Our successful private voting case in Federal Court the previous May had resulted in several thousand Blacks and some Indians registering and voting for the first time since Reconstruction in Halifax County and the positive ramifications had spread widely in that general region into which we were soon to move our organizing operations. Eldri and I had already voted absentee.
The results of that election in, I stayed around for hours, in case there was a racist backlash, before making a fast predawn trip to Raleigh to get Eldri, with Maria and pregnant with John, to the grocery store and to get some cash for the family from the bank before returning to the battle front. The United Klans had scheduled a post- election rally to be held a few nights hence in a timber-surrounded field about a mile from Enfield. We had already pressured the very resistant Governor into providing state highway patrol protection for the Black community before, during, and after that forthcoming affair -- and we had done so by threatening to openly use, if necessary, our Second Amendment rights. (As it turned out, most of us kept firearms handy in any case but, essentially, just out of sight,)
Groceries gotten, I headed for the branch bank. As I walked down the street toward it, I saw an older Anglo man walking toward me. His face looked like he'd smiled once a couple of generations back. Suddenly, three older white teen boys rushed across the street to him.
One shouted at the man, "Mr ____, Mr ___, "What happened?!"
With a face now darker than the hinges of Hell, he snarled one word: "N______ers."
Yes, indeed, African Americans did play a significant role in the 1964 election. But so did a truly vast number of other people.
The NRA and other gun rights groups did indeed play a most positive and effective role in yesterday's victory. But so did a truly vast number of other gun rights people committed to civil liberty.
Hunter (Hunter Bear)
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO www.hunterbear.org (social justice)
See the new expanded/updated edition of my "ORGANIZER'S BOOK." It's the inside story of the rise of the massive Jackson Movement -- careful grassroots organizing, bloody repression, sell-out and more. It also covers other organizing campaigns of mine through the decades since Mississippi. It's replete with grass-roots organizing examples and "lessons." And it has my new 10,000 word introduction. Among a myriad of positive comments and reviews: ". . .a local activist's important account of the deleterious effects the involvement of national organizations can have on indigenous protest movements." (Historian David Garrow.) http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
See the related: http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm
Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]: http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm"