Civil Rights Act 1964

Project 2025: Attack On Women, Minorities, Gay And Transgender Rights

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Project 2025, created by the right wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, is a direct attack on the civil rights of vulnerable groups, including women, racial minorities, immigrants, and gay and transgender Americans, despite Donald Trump’s claim that he has no connection to this group or project, yet another lie added to the tens of thousands he has enunciated since 2015!

It would work to ban all abortions nationwide with no exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.

It would retract the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other laws and rules that have promoted protection for racial minorities.

It would end birth right citizenship, and arrest and imprison millions of undocumented immigrants before deportation.

It would arrest and imprison all homeless people, and put a ban on Muslim immigrants.

It would repeal gay rights and gay marriage rights, and promote discrimination against transgender Americans.

This attack on vulnerable groups would set up a society in which white Christian supremacy and nationalism would reign.

It would destroy the concept of a multi racial, multi ethnic society where human rights and freedom would reign!

2024 Presidential Election Crucial As Were 1864 And 1964 Elections, And They Were Election Landslides!

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One could argue that every Presidential Election is significant in some shape or form, but certain elections stand out as turning points in the promotion of American democracy.

Such are the Presidential Elections of 1864 and 1964, and now moving forward, 2024!

In all three, the sustaining of American democracy was crucial, and in the first two cases, the results, after much concern, were massive landslides, hopefully setting the scene for 2024!

In 1864, Republican Abraham Lincoln was running for reelection in the midst of the American Civil War, with his opponent being General George McClellan, who was resentful of his firing for poor performance from Union Army leadership, and represented to many the Confederate hope of pulling out victory late in the Civil War.

Lincoln was so concerned that victory was unattainable, that he decided to replace Vice President Hannibal Hamlin with a Southern Loyalist Democrat Andrew Johnson, and the Republicans invited War Democrats into the party by changing their name to the National Union Party.

The end result was a landslide with Lincoln winning all but three states, winning 55 percent of the vote, and an Electoral College majority of 212-21!

A century later, President Lyndon B. Johnson, having succeeded to the Presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy less than a year earlier, faced the most right wing Republican contender for the Presidency in modern times, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who advocated ending the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, including Social Security, and also opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Johnson went on to a landslide victory, winning 61.1 percent of the popular vote, the all time high, and 44 of 50 states and 486-52 in the Electoral College, but with five Southern states going to Goldwater, the beginning of the political realignment that has made the South solidly Republican ever since, with only a few exceptions when Democrats nominated Southerners for the Presidency, including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Johnson went on to promote the Great Society, a massive increase in government programs, way beyond the New Deal of FDR.

Now in 2024, with the Republican Party being the most extreme right wing since Goldwater, and arguably more so, Joe Biden faces a challenge not only on a personal level, but also on overcoming the menace of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, who have repudiated the original basis of the Republican Party’s founding, opposing slavery and its expansion, and instead promoting racism and nativism 170 years after the origins of the party in Michigan and Wisconsin in 1854!

The South Dominates In Potential Republican Presidential Contenders!

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The American South was the area that revolted against the federal government, and seceded from the Union in 1860-1861, culminating in the American Civil War (1861-1865), with the Republican Party representing the Union cause, and the Democratic Party being dominant in the South.

The South remained strongly Democratic until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed under Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Since then, most of the South has become strongly Republican, and promoters of white supremacy and Christian Nationalism, to the point that most of the potential Republican Presidential contenders in 2024 derive from the South!

These include the following:

Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott of Florida
Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott of Texas
Asa Hutchinson and Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott of South Carolina
Glenn Youngkin of Virginia

These eleven Republicans are not all sure bets to run, but all have been rumored, although some seem to be backing away from doing so.

Other potential contenders come from the Northeast area of the US, including

Chris Sununu of New Hampshire
Chris Christie of New Jersey
Larry Hogan of Maryland

And finally, from the Midwest area of the US, we have such potential contenders as

Mike Pence of Indiana
Mike Pompeo of Kansas
Josh Hawley of Missouri
Kristi Noem of South Dakota
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois

And finally, we have Liz Cheney of Wyoming

March On Washington #2–1963, And Now 2021: Why Is This Necessary?

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On August 28, 1963, the March On Washington took place in Washington, DC, with the speech of Martin Luther King Jr. being the most memorable speech–“I have a dream” reverberating between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.—an appeal for civil and economic rights, and the end of racism.

At least a quarter of a million people of all backgrounds were there for that memorable event, and it was covered live on television and radio.

In the next two years, we saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other landmark legislation and actions, and we thought the issue was settled.

But now, half a century later, we have a right wing Supreme Court, Republicans in Congress, and many state legislatures negating all of the progress made in the 1960s and after.

So we are in a spiritual crisis where right wing Republican conservatism promoting racism and denial of civil rights has become the norm once again!

Today, there will be marches across the nation, not only in Washington, DC, that will call for the end of the loss of the right to vote, as is occurring in so many southern and western states, and the promotion of the restoration of the progress that was made six decades ago.

This is a struggle for peaceful restoration of basic human and civil rights, and the suppression of the ugliness of bigotry that has once again become endemic!

Joe Biden Becomes Third President (After Ulysses S. Grant And Lyndon B. Johnson) To Emphasize Racial Equity In First Months Of His Presidency

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President Joe Biden has made racial equity a landmark moment of his Presidency from the beginning, and already is perceived as being the third President to make civil rights a major goal immediately upon taking the oath.

The first President to do this was Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, promoting the concept of the 15th Amendment, granting the right to vote to African American men, and being added to the Constitution in 1870.

Also, Grant promoted better treatment of Native Americans in his Inaugural week, and is seen as the most tolerant and open minded on that issue of any President in the post Civil War years.

The second President to make civil rights a key issue immediately was Lyndon B. Johnson upon becoming President after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Johnson made the push for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had been floundering in Congress after it was introduced by Kennedy in the summer of 1963. And Johnson went on to promote also the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as the 15th Amendment had been denied for many decades in the Southern states, as Jim Crow segregation reigned.

And now, Joe Biden is pushing and promoting action, as a result of the well known discrimination in criminal justice; and in dealing with the endemic poverty in minority communities; the lack of adequate health care including in the COVID 19 Pandemic; problems of education and work opportunities and housing that persist; the need to clean the environment where often there is massive pollution in areas ignored before now; and also the difficulties faced by women, transgender citizens, the gay community, and the disabled. The purpose is to get rid of systemic discrimination against all the above groups.

One can hope that major progress on these areas of policy can be accomplished!