Following Maya Boukai’s eloquent letter to the editor, I may be a little more blunt. Regarding where ever the MLK paid holiday decision came from it was based at best on ignorance or at worst on racism.
MLK Day is the day of freedom for the oppressed and I would include indigenous peoples. The 4th of July was not a day of freedom for these people. Enslaved people were not freed for another hundred years and yet another hundred years to gain the voting rights we all enjoy, so far.
When civil rights leaders, inspired by Dr. King, stood peacefully at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named after a confederate general and grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan) on Bloody Sunday in Selma, they were protesting the suppression of their voting rights. They were attacked with tear gas, billy clubs, men on horseback with bullwhips and vicious police dogs. That is courage.
Speaking of our current leaders. Those of us that know some history cannot help but compare now to Nazi Germany of the 1930’s. The same insane leader surrounded by the same murderous henchmen dismantling every pillar of democracy.
Today looks just like the 1930’s news reels of Brown Shirts dragging Jews out of their homes and beating them. But now it is innocent immigrants and American citizens being beaten up and executed by untrained ICE thugs.
My father, a lifelong Republican, fought the Nazis as part of the original 10th Mountain Division. He would be appalled at what is happening today.
I see Fascism raise its ugly head in my beautiful Delaware County as our County Board of Supervisors is punishing the free press for exercising its 1st amendment rights.
This national debacle lays squarely on the shoulders of the MAGA Cult. I call on all sides that believe in democracy to speak up.
Tim Mulroy
Franklin
