"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and love the people doing the protecting" ~Malcom X

Reminders

A recent article at Vice News discussed the opening of a new lynching memorial in Alabama made in order to the horrors of the Jim Crow and post-reconstruction America. It was an incredibly moving article, that doesn't mince words with the details of the situations the museum attached and memorial highlight:

Most such killings happened in the South, but hundreds were documented in the North. They were the worst, most effective kind of terror, often done in broad daylight and in the presence of sometimes thousands of white people—men, women, children, who looked on as Mary Turner and others were burned alive. Turner’s eight-month-old fetus was cut from her belly and stomped on as her lifeless body was hanging upside down. In Texas, two black men were burned to death and the female members of their family were gang-raped. The murders were arbitrary and backed by the force of law and institutions at all levels of government. 

As we remember the horrors of the sins of our past, let us never forget who was the true culprit- statism.

It was through the mechanism of unjust laws, legislation, and the whim and power of politicians that allowed not only slavery to persist, but allowed the south to institute laws which enforced double standards and segregation going well into the 20th century. Sadly, today this memorial may be needed now more than ever since our general population is not only ignorant of its history, but also blind to what we witness today.

First off, the right to own a gun protects all other rights. If not for the government restricting black ownership of firearms, many of the lives lost could have been prevented. Governments throughout human history didn't disarm their population for their safety, they did so to keep them from ever taking a stand against unjust authority. NRA spokesperson and advocate for black ownership of firearms, Colion Noir, has a great phase I like to remember, "If you don’t feel the need to carry a gun because you believe the government will keep you safe, why do you care if I or anyone else decides to Carry a gun? If anyone tries to harm you, the government will stop it right? Where is your faith in government?" Any form of government that would prevent any of its citizens from protecting their rights to life, liberty, and property is an unjust force of violence and coercion and sees its population as slaves, not citizens.

Here is one of my favorite clips from the film The Free State of Jones.