Juneteenth - Freedom Day

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday honoring African-American heritage and commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas in 1865.

Celebrated on June 19, the term is a combination of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 36 states.

The holiday originated in Galveston, Texas; for more than a century, the state of Texas was the primary home of Juneteenth celebrations, and since 1980, Juneteenth has been an official state holiday in Texas History

Though President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863. It had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in Texas. Texas was resistant to the Emancipation Proclamation, and though slavery was very prevalent in East Texas, it was not as common in the Western areas of Texas, particularly the Hill Country, where most German-Americans were opposed to the practice.

Juneteenth commemorates June 18 and 19, 1865. June 18 is the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived inGalveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves. On June 19, 1865, Granger read the following declaration:

‘The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.’

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, the newly freed slaves held large public celebrations and so the tradition was started to celebrate future Juneteenth activities.

Here, in Buffalo, NY the celebration of Juneteenth is held for two days every June. This year it is today and tomorrow (June 16th and 17th). It starts with a colorful, joyful parade. Thousands of people attend the event in MLK Park, which has music, plenty of good food, vendors selling African jewelry and clothing. There are booths from many local agencies such as the NAACP, Urban League, Health Services. The tradition is an important part of local history and enjoyed by all that attend.

peacesojourner

Flag Day - June 14, 2012

There are a few variations on the history of Flag Day in the United States. Here is the version that is taught here in Buffalo NY.

Sarah Hinson was born in Buffalo on February 25, 1841, the daughter of Squire and Mrs. George Hinson. Sarah was educated in the Buffalo School System, and at a private finishing school.

She began teaching in Buffalo When she was 23, in 1864, Miss Hinson transferred to School 31 on Emslie Street where she spent nearly fifty years, thirty as a teacher before becoming the school principal.

Ms. Hinson began Flag Day exercises, by teaching the children to salute the Flag and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, to instill in her pupils a proper respect for the nation's flag. She held the first ceremony in 1891 on June 14 because that was the date, in 1777, that the Continental Congress replaced the British symbols of the Grand Union flag with a new design featuring 13 white stars in a circle on a field of blue and 13 red and white stripes – one for each state.

The following year, other teachers and other schools did the same, and over the years, the idea caught on around the Country.

In 1910, Miss Hinson resigned as principal and was the first woman appointed to the Board of School Examiners, the forerunner to the present Buffalo School Board.

She served on the Board until 1916. She continued to work as a member of the Teacher's Association and as chairman of its Fellowship committee. In this capacity, Miss Hinson would visit teachers, in their homes when there was sickness or death until she died on March 20, 1926 at age of 85.

Her grave at Forest Lawn Buffalo is marked with a flagpole flying the American Flag.

Many people in the United States honor this day by displaying the American flag at homes and public buildings.

President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a nationwide observance of the event on June 14, 1916. However, Flag Day did not become official until August 1949, when President Harry Truman signed the legislation and proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day.

The American flag, also nicknamed as “Old Glory” or “star-spangled banner”, has changed designs over the centuries. It consists of 13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars. Each of the 50 stars represent the 50 states in the United States and the 13 stripes represent the original 13 colonies that became the first states in the Union.

Today is Election Day - Don't Forget to Vote.

SO YOU DON'T THINK THAT YOUR VOTE COUNTS -

DID YOU KNOW THAT JOHN F. KENNEDY'S MARGIN OF VICTORY

OVER RICHARD NIXON IN 1960 WAS

LESS THAN ONE VOTE PER PRECINCT?

GET OUT AND VOTE TODAY! PLEASE.

peacesojourner

Travel on the Fourth of July Holiday...........

Those of you who know me well, know that I do not travel on the major highways and I thoroughly enjoy puttering along to my destination by taking the scenic route.

Nothing - and I do mean nothing - could make me take a highway and be one of these cars pictured below. Just look at that backlog!

This Holiday week-end has many people traveling on the highways around the United States.

The entrance to the Peace Bridge to Canada is at the end of the road that I live on and

for the last couple of days there have been warnings that there may be a 90 minute wait to go over the bridge.

I was really happy to learn that very soon we may have another alternative to car travel. Did you know that there are plans underway for cars that can also fly AND have approval from the Federal Aviation Administration?

Here is the : The Terrafugia Transitio

This private aircraft – odd looking car has been in the news before. But the announcement that it's going into production has been greeted with excitement.

The news reports explain that the FAA's special exemption allows the vehicle to function as both a "light aircraft" and a car. Normally, for a plane to meet the "light aircraft" designation, it can weigh no more than 1,200 pounds. The Terrafugia Transition weighs 1,320, due primarily to the number of car-related safety features, like airbags and crumple zones. The "light aircraft" designation is key, because licenses for planes with that label require only 20 hours of flying time.

How does the plane-car work? So far, 70+ people have placed a deposit. The total retail cost: $194,000. Expensive, but really, can you put a price on skipping commercial flights?

I have decided to start saving so that I can be one of the first people to own a Terrafugia Transitio - no matter that I currently drive a 12 year old car with 140,000 miles on it. I could take off from my garden and soar over the Niagara river to Canada in just 4 or 5 minutes. Hmmm... would I need a passport to arrive that way? Who would be up in the sky directing all of the little flying cars ? Will there be traffic signs telling me to stay in my own lane and how about double yellow lines? Will the traffic cops be attached to their own little flying parachutes?

Well, I will let them work all of that out! Meanwhile I am staying here in my own garden for the holidays and all I have to do is look up to the sky to watch the downtown fireworks right in my neighborhood.

Hmmmmm.....what would little flying cars do if the fireworks entered their path of travel.....not to worry I won't have that $194,000 saved for a while yet - I will think all of the details through when I have the money and can purchase the car- will it come in the color blue - until then good luck to those of you who will be a dot on the highway like the cars in the pictures above.

This 4th of July week-end I am going nowhere - a cookout in the back yard is fine with me.

Happy 4th July to all - unless you are in England and, of course, we do not celebrate the fourth of July in England for some rather obvious reasons - we usually choose to ignore the whole thing :-)

peacesojourner

Haiti - One Year After the Earthquake- 1/12/11

Haiti

Delaware and Haiti are about the same size. Last year Haiti's population was estimated at approximately seven million. The country's demographic statistics reveal the effect of extreme poverty and an HIV/AIDS epidemic. These conditions have reduced life expectancy to 49.2 years, contributed to high infant mortality and general death rates, and slowed population growth.

Haiti's population is a young one, with 41 percent estimated to be between 0 and 14 years of age. Most Haitians are of African descent.

The National Cathedral - photo by David Albers

Today I heard that the people of Haiti gathered in a memorial tribute in Port au Prince, the city where so many died on that fateful afternoon one year ago. It seems that every family lost someone, a spouse, a sister, a child, a cousin or a friend in the earthquake. Haitians marched down empty, rubble-lined streets singing hymns and climbed broken buildings to hang wreaths of flowers. The nation held a minute of silence at 4:53 p.m., the moment when the earthquake ripped the ground on January 12, 2010. The government has stated its death toll estimate is more than 316,000.

Thousands gathered around the city to be with loved ones and pray. They flocked to the ruins of the once-towering national cathedral, to soccer stadium that served as an open-air morgue and later housed a tent camp, to parks, hillsides and the neighborhood centers.

Workers are still finding bodies in the rubble. Neighborhood-sized camps look like permanent shantytowns on the fields and plazas of the capital. A cholera epidemic that erupted outside the quake zone has killed more than 3,600 people, and an electoral crisis between President Rene Preval's ruling party and its rivals threatens to break an increasingly fragile political stability.

I have been wondering what it would be like to live in the earthquake portion of Haiti today. Tent camps were erected for people who lost their homes – they created little tent communities, some of them quite small, some of them very large, where an estimated one million people still live, unable to afford new homes.

If you live in a tent village with a million others what are your expenditures? No public utilities are available, no toilets, no telephones, no electricity, no running water. There is still the need for money for food and clothing.

Everyone has that desire for his or her own personal space. Many of us can seek refuge in our homes, in our bedroom. In the tent camps the living area is incredibly small, hot, constructed out of canvas and metal, and whatever else they could find. It is reported that less than 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared, only 15 percent of the temporary housing that is needed has been built and relatively few permanent water and sanitation facilities have been constructed.

The current cholera epidemic is mostly in the extreme rural areas, in the mountains and in a river valley where the outbreak began. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of people who just weren't able to get to a treatment center in time.

This past week I watched a TV documentary about a private person from the US who took his personal 60-year-old plane and got the local people, who live on a mountaintop in Haiti, to create a landing strip for his aircraft so that he could bring medical personnel and supplies to help the people who have cholera. Many lives have been saved by the actions of this one man.

Cholera victims just need rehydration and antibiotics, and most people can be taken care of. But the problem is, so many people live out in rural areas far from treatment centers. Nearly 3,000 people have died of cholera and more than 100,000 were infected.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of political turmoil. They had an election for president in the fall, but the results are still disputed months later. There were all kinds of allegations of fraud. There was violence in the aftermath of it that shut this city down a couple of days last month, in December.

Another problem that has surfaced is that on the day of the earthquake the local prison collapsed and hundreds of seasoned criminals escaped. There are reports that they are intimidating people and taking control of some areas. The police have been trying to round them up and have re-arrested about 700 who are being detained in a facility where there is no room for a man to lie down, so the inmates have to sleep standing up. They report that their legs are swollen and that there is a lot of fighting within the facility.

The United States and many other countries have helped to rally international support for Haiti’s recovery and reconstruction.

Over the past year, countless lives have been saved and many Haitians affected by the earthquake now have better access to food, water and health care than they did before the disaster. However, rubble continues to clog the streets, too many people are still living in tents, and for so many Haitians progress has not come fast enough. It has been said that helping the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere recover from one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike our hemisphere will take years, if not decades.

From the slums of Port-au-Prince to the rural Central Plateau, this impoverished country continues to need assist. Right now 90 percent of the quake devastation still remains. Many people, including orphanages still live in tents and families struggle to survive on less than two dollars a day.

The bottom line is that the people of Haiti and the volunteers are living in nightmare conditions. Poverty, illness, famine, lack of adequate water, homelessness and an unstable government. But there are consistent reports of the stamina and courage of the residents who live there. In spite of their current conditions the majority maintain a sense of dignity and hope.

What to do? What to do? I don’t have the answer to that except that we should make sure that we keep ourselves informed of the circumstances in Haiti. We can contact U.S. elected officials and the United Nations to let them know that the world is watching. We can continue to support relief efforts financially or by volunteering, and for those who believe that prayer can change things – PRAY for the people of this little country who have such strong spirits and hearts.

peacesojourner

Thoughts on Hunger and Poverty

When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of "beloved community" he was describing the ultimate goal of non-violent activism for peace and justice -- a global community of caring where poverty, hunger and injustice are no more.

Poster by Silk Oak - Syracuse Cultural Workers

*****

October 17, 2010 was recognized as the

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

The theme this year is "From Poverty to Decent Work: bridging the gap"

At this time we have more of our human family suffering from the unnecessary evil of hunger than ever before in the history of our planet.

There are millions of residents in the United States who go hungry every day. Children are going to school without breakfast, senior citizens have to decide whether to buy medicine or food and many parents are working two jobs in order to survive.

The most basic principle is the belief in the dignity of the human person. Each person is created in the image of God. Each person is precious. When we close our eyes to our neighbor we close our eyes to God. In this human family no one ought to go without the necessities of life.

Globally, over 1.1 billon people will not get enough food today. Please think about them today. Pray for them today. Then take the time to do something positive on their behalf.

Tell someone about the plight of the hungry.

Make a donation to an organization working to feed the hungry.

Volunteer to help feed the hungry at a local shelter or soup kitchen.

Contact your elected representatives to encourage them to support legislation favoring those who are hungry in a world of plenty.

Don’t let this day slip by without making a difference on behalf of the hungry.

If each of us simply does what we can, right where we are, using whatever resources we have, we can erase the obscenity of hunger in our lifetime.

*****

How marvelous is your world O Lord!

You have given us the grains of the fields, the water from the seas to sustain and feed us.

Help us to be good stewards, to care for the gift we have been given, to ensure that all have enough to eat.

As we gather today open our hearts and minds to your wisdom.

Remind us that whatever we do for those who are hungry, we do for you.

Lord, hear our prayer

*****

"I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for the spirits."

Martin Luther King Jr.

The 2010 commemoration will take place today at

United Nations Headquarters in New York.

On this day I urge you to take at least one of the actions listed above

and help to eradicate hunger and poverty.

peacesojourner

Total # of U. S. Troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan - 5,542

American Military Casualties in Iraq
Date	Total
American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03):	4408
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03) (the list)	4269
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03):	3947
Since Handover (6/29/04):	3549
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09):	180
American Wounded	Official
Total Wounded:	31865
Latest Fatality June 21, 2010
Page last updated 06/22/10 11:50 pm EDT
List of U.S. Servicemembers killed since 5/1/03
U.S. Wounded
Daily DoD Casualty Release
320,000 Vets Have Brain Injuries
War Veterans’ Concussions Are Often Overlooked
How Many Servicemembers Were Wounded?
18 Vet Suicides Per Day?
Iraqi Casualties
Others
Other Coalition Troops - Iraq	318
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan	1,134
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan	734
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq	1,457
Journalists - Iraq	338
Academics Killed - Iraq	437
Sources: DoD, MNF, and iCasualties.org
***** This week President Obama announced a change in command in Afghanistan - the nation is discussing "who said what" and expressing their personal opinions - very little was mentioned of the men and women who were killed this month, or of their families who mourn them. 87 international troops were killed this month alone. At least 51 of them U.S. soldiers, making June already the most deadly month since the war began. Take a long, slow look at these numbers of casualties of service persons and many others. Take a look at the photo of a typical 'boy next door' who is now a warrior in a far away land. What is your opinion? Let me know.