Ian Stuart – The Klansmen Johnny Joined The Klan
Tag-Archive for » Ku Klux Klan «
24
Apr 2013
Category: Memphis City Council, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Neckline, Taffeta, Uncategorized
Tags: Ku Klux Klan, Memphis Tennessee, Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations, United States Comments off
12
Dec 2012
Schoolchildren in Sweden have been banned from dressing up as gingerbread men for a Christmas parade because their teachers fear the costumes could be considered racist.
Youngsters from a primary school in Laxa told their parents they had been ordered not to wear the outfits for the St Lucia celebrations on Thursday.
Traditionally, children dress as either St Lucia, or gnomes, stars, or gingerbread men for the candle-lit parade.
But heartbroken 10-year-old Mio Simiv was told he could not wear his gingerbread man costume to the celebration because it might be seen as ‘offensive’.
Angry mum Jenny Simic told local media: ‘I thought he had to have got it wrong so I called the school and they said people might find a brown gingerbread character offensive.
‘I said, well then my son won’t participate. He won’t support some Ku Klux Klan procession – because that’s what the little Lucias look like when they all come in with white hoods and white dresses.’
She later sent a text message to Mio’s teacher to see if the ban still stood.
She received the response: ‘I know what you think and what you’re writing. Unfortunately we have no gingerbread men or songs in our procession! We cannot offer gingerbread cookies because of allergies among pupils.’
A school spokesman blamed the row on a ‘misunderstanding’.
District schools head Marghareta Zetterlund claimed: ‘The children and their teachers chose the songs for the parade and they didn’t chose the gingerbread boy song, so there will be no gingerbread boys.
‘We don’t serve gingerbread cookies because of possible nut allergies. I can’t comment on who might find the costumes offensive,’ she added.
But Mrs Simiv said: ‘This is not what we were told at all. There was no misunderstanding, this is just an excuse.’
‘Why should they remove these things from a traditional celebration just because someone might be offended? You could turn that around and ask, “Why are we removing it? Aren’t brown people like us, or what? Can’t they participate?”‘
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245849/Children-banned-dressing-gingerbread-men.html
Category: Costume, Gingerbread, Gingerbread man, Lucia, Saint Lucia, Santa Claus parade, Uncategorized
Tags: Ku Klux Klan, Sweden Comments off
11
Sep 2012
A Missouri city is being sued by the Ku Klux Klan for the right to distribute racist literature by placing handbills onto the windshields of parked vehicles. And guess who is representing the white supremacists in court?
The American Civil Liberties Union – one of the oldest human right defending organizations in the US – has come to the aid of one of the oldest and most notorious American racist groups.
The Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (TAK) is being prohibited by an ordinance of the city of Cape Girardeau, MO from distributing flyers onto cars parked in public places,the Courthouse News reports.
The group claims that while it may be racist, its intentions are peaceful and they should therefore be able to exercise their right to free speech in this way. Its intentions in distributing handbills are simply to“spread its message widely,”the Klan says.
The white-supremacist group claims that the US was established by and for white men and that it should never“fall into the hands of an inferior race,”according to the TAK’s website. Meanwhile, the ACLU, representing the Klan, states on its website that it“works to extend rights to segments of our population that have rationally been denied their rights, including people of color; women; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people; prisoners; and people with disabilities.”But despite this stark difference in programs, it didn’t stop ACLU from representing a KKK chapter in court.
“TAK describes itself as ‘a White Patriotic Christian organization that bases its roots back to the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20thcentury,’”states the complaint siding with the plaintiff.“According to TAK, it is a ‘non-violent organization that believes in the preservation of the white race and the United States Constitution as it was originally written and will stand to protect those rights against all foreign invaders.’”
TAK claims that one of its most efficient ways of spreading its message is by placing flyers on parked vehicles – and this method has been used all throughout the US, including in neighboring Missouri cities.
“We just want our rights like everybody else that are guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution,”TAK member Frank Ancona told the Associated Press.“It’s just putting out informational fliers to the public to make them aware of our organization and what we stand for and things like that.”
The ACLU claims that the Cape Girardeau ordinance, which “mandates that no person shall throw or deposit any handbill in or upon any vehicle,” is unconstitutional by suppressing free speech. Even if those who practice it, do so in order to keep “white blood” pure. With the help of the ACLU,the Klan is fighting for the right to spread these ideals and more onto the windshields of parked cars across the state of Missouri.
31
Aug 2012
A major state-level teachers union accused a group promoting school choice for African-American families of supporting the notorious white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan in a series of statements on Thursday.
The Louisiana Federation of Teachers accused the Louisiana Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) of advancing a “pro-KKK agenda,” in the words of one tweet sent from the union’s official Twitter account. Another claimed that the group “endorses teaching that the KKK is good.”
09
Aug 2012
Four decades ago this month, a young lawyer from Alabama had an idea: Sue two organizations for damages stemming from the conduct and actions of their employees or members.
The organizations were the Republican National Committee and the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The individuals were five “burglars” who had broken into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972.
The lawyer was Morris Dees, who at the time was serving as campaign finance director for George S. McGovern, who would become the Democratic candidate running against Richard Nixon in that year’s presidential race. After reading that the men arrested in the Watergate break-in had connections with the RNC and CREEP, Dees contacted McGovern’s campaign manager.
“I called Gary Hart” [a presidential candidate in the 1980s], says Dees, “and I said, ‘Gary, I smell a rat here. I say, let’s sue them.’ ”
The lawsuit eventually settled for a few hundred thousand dollars—a result that displeases Dees even to this day. He thinks the recovery against the RNC and CREEP could have been in the millions.
But Dees soon found other ways to put his unique legal theory to effective use. Starting in 1980 and continuing for the next three decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which Dees co-founded in 1971, filed a series of historic and highly successful civil lawsuits seeking to hold various chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations responsible for the wrongdoings of their members. And he’s got the death threats to prove it—at least two dozen by his count.
In one of the most recent cases, the SPLC won a $2.5 million judgment against the Imperial Klans of America and its imperial wizard, Ron Edwards, for the brutal beating of a Latino teenager at a Kentucky county fair in 2006. The Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the verdict in March.
In August, the ABA will present Morris Seligman Dees Jr. with its highest honor, the ABA Medal. The association’s Board of Governors selected him as this year’s recipient in June, and he will receive the medal during the House of Delegates session at the 2012 annual meeting in Chicago. Previous recipients include Leon Jaworski, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O’Connor, and the Rev. Robert F. Drinan.
At 75, Dees doesn’t sound like he’s ready to slow down. “There’s still so much more to do,” he says. “We are doing a lot of individual cases and we have a major juvenile justice project. The schools to prison pipeline must be addressed. Klan Watch is still doing tremendous work and we have a team going to law enforcement agencies across the country doing 30 to 50 seminars a year on hate crimes.”
