Condoleezza Rice is conspicuous in her absence from taking a public opinion regarding the Neocon’s "politicization" smear and the Coretta Scot King funeral ceremony in Atlanta.
Secretary Rice has not to date commented on the remarks flying from pro-Administration propagandists hammering away regarding the unseemly and disrespectful behaviour of speakers that spoke of the future of the ideas for which Coretta King fought.
When she was absent from the ceremony in the Capitol Rosa Parks, President Bush excused her absence thusly:
"I want to thank the members of my Cabinet who are here. By the way, Condoleezza Rice is not here because she's with Laura." - CNN,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/16/lol.03.htmlWell, Laura was in Atlanta for Mrs. King's funeral. And, according to the Department of State website, Rice was there also:
Daily Appointments Schedule for February 6
SECRETARY OF STATE RICE:
12:00 p.m. - Attend the funeral service for Coretta Scott King, with The President, in Atlanta Georgia
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED) -
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/appt/2006/60479.htmWhat explains Rice's absence from comment on the funeral and the conduct of the speakers?
Rice herself has used memorial ceremonies and State Department sponsored speeches to "politicize" the memorials to both the Birmingham bombing victims and Rosa Parks.
What say the Secretary of State now regarding this post-funereal "tempest in a Neocon crock pot?”
Rice on the Birmingham Bombing Victims
Secretary Rice Politicized Administration Policy During her Memorial Speeches for the Birmingham Bombing VictimsCondoleezza Rice was a childhood friend of Denise McNair, one of the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing, and spoke at a memorial service in a park across from the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Murders of four Birmingham girls commemorated by Rice during her hometown visit
By: GEORGE GEDDA - Associated Press
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/10/23/news/nation/10_01_2610_22_05.txtIn a park across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, the secretary of state said that the act of terror -- coming less than three weeks after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- was meant to "shatter our dreams. It was meant to say we couldn't rise up."
"in their deaths they represent the very tragedy to triumph that we are celebrating because we were not denied," said Rice, the highest-ranking black in the federal government.
(At a visit to the Brunetta C. Hill Elementary School both she and Denise attended she commented:)
"At one point, not that long ago, the promise of democracy seemed distant here in Alabama and throughout the American South," she said in her Tuscaloosa speech.
"But when impatient patriots in this country finally demanded their freedom and their rights, what once seemed impossible suddenly became inevitable," she said. "So it was in America. So it was in much of the world. And so it will be in the Middle East."
Condoleezza Rice and the Birmingham Bombing Victimsby Margaret Kimberly
The Black Commentator
http://www.blackcommentator.com/52/52_rice.htmlRice’s keynote address at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on August 7, 2003. The speech probably would not have been worthy of discussion had she not added this little gem of self-serving hypocrisy.
"Like many of you, I grew up around the home-grown terrorism of the 1960s. The bombing of the church in Birmingham in 1963 is one that will forever be in my memory because one of the little girls who died was a friend of mine. Forty years removed from that tragedy, I can honestly say that Denise McNair and others didn't die in vain. They and all who suffered and struggled for civil and human rights helped to reintroduce America to its founding ideals. And because of their sacrifice, America is a better nation and a better example to a world where difference is still often taken as a license to kill.
"But knowing what we know about the difficulties of our own history, knowing what we know about how hard it is to build democracy, we need to be humble in singing freedom's praises. But we should not let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom. And we must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities.
"We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."
Rice on Rosa Parks
Quotes from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a memorial service for Rosa Parks at St. Paul AME Church, on October 31st, 2005:
Rice said Parks' defiance "set a revolution that made America face up to its birth defects."
"I was a little girl growing up, up the road in Birmingham, Alabama, when Ms. Parks was at the height of her activism and her protest, and, of course, we knew her as a woman of courage, and a woman of honor, and a woman of dignity."
"Without Rosa Parks, I would not be standing here today as secretary of state," Rice, also an Alabama native, said at the Montgomery church where Parks used to worship.
Secretary Rice Politicizes Administration Policy at the Rosa Parks Memorial CeremonyUSINFO.gov
http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/Oct/31-56631.htmlAmerica Pays Respects to Civil Rights Leader Rosa ParksCeremonies continue as thousands file through Capitol rotunda
By Michael Jay Friedman
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- In ceremonies from Montgomery, Alabama, to the rotunda of the nation’s Capitol, Americans continue to honor the life of Rosa Parks, whose 1955 refusal to relinquish her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the U.S. civil rights movement.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Montgomery native, spoke at an October 30 memorial ceremony before an overflow crowd at the city’s St. Paul AME
church, to which Parks belonged at the time of her arrest. "Without Mrs. Parks," the secretary said, "I would not be standing here today as Secretary of State."
"Not only did she set off a revolution of freedom and a second round of emancipation here in the United States, but she is also revered around the world," Rice added.
President Bush, first lady Laura Bush and members of Congress laid wreaths at Parks' casket during a short ceremony featuring remarks by the chaplains of the House of Representatives and the Senate.From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7965-2005Feb8.html"In my own experience, a black woman named Rosa Parks was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of the bus. So she refused to move, and she touched off a revolution of freedom across the American South.*
"Borders between countries cannot be peaceful if tyrants destroy the peace of their societies from within. States where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign, invariably pose threats to their neighbors, threats to their regions and potential threats to the entire international community.
"Our work together has only begun. In our time we have a historic opportunity to shape a global balance of power that favors freedom and that will therefore deepen and extend the peace.
"And I use the word "power" broadly, because even more important than military and, indeed, economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion and the power of hope."
* COMMENT: Contrary to Sec. Rice's claims, Mrs. Parks did not just "become tired" on the day she refused to yield her seat to a white man. Parks was putting into action the long crafted plan of the SCLC, where she worked as a secretary, to begin the non-violent civil rights protests movement.
If Mrs. Parks was "tired" of anything that day, it was (as she has stated) the way her people were living and being treated in America.
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_02_09.htmlWASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's mention of Rosa Parks and Lech Walesa 'hypocritical' after Ms. Rice invoked the American civil rights figure and Polish union leader and former president in a speech promoting President Bush's 'global freedom' initiative in Paris on Tuesday.
"Ms. Rice's speech turned hypocritical when she tried to associate President Bush's dubious effort to promote freedom and democracy with Rosa Parks and Lech Walesa," said Pat LaMarche, the Green Party's 2004 candidate for Vice President. "During the past half decade, the Bush Administration has undermined everything that these two major 20th century figures stood for."
Secretary Rice Uses Park's Example to Politicize Speech to Women of Iraq and AfghanistanTranscript: Rice Praises "Founding Mothers" of Iraq, Afghanistan (Says United States will be friend, partner in struggle for democracy) (1290)
March 8 reception at the U.S. Agency for International Development commemorating International Women’s Day
http://canberra.usembassy.gov/hyper/2005/0309/epf304.htmSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice has praised the women of Iraq and Afghanistan as the "founding mothers" of their countries, facing down terrorism and terrorists to point the way to a more democratic future...Rice compared the bravery of the Iraqi and Afghan women to that of other ordinary citizens who became famous fighting for democracy and equal rights – Lech Walesa, the Polish political leader, and Rosa Parks, the U.S. civil-rights activist.
“These are the stories of individual common people, one by one, who say, ‘Enough, enough of the humiliation of dictatorship, enough of taking away my human dignity to say what I wish, to worship as I please, to educate my children, both boys and girls,’" Rice said. “These are the sounds of those people and the actions of those people that lead to freedom for us all.”
Rice said that ensuring equality among all people is an ongoing struggle that even the United States continues to face, and she pledged that the United States would always be a friend and partner to Iraq and Afghanistan in their journeys toward democracy.
“As you go through the struggles, remember that while democracy is a difficult and long journey, it is a journey worth making,” she said. “It is the only system of liberty and freedom that gives the full expression to human creativity, to human pride and to human dignity.”
Parks Herself Speaks of Politics in her Remarks at the Funeral of Robt. Willams, a Black RevolutionaryLetter from a Black Man in Canada: Rosa Parks v. Condoleezza RiceParks stood with the oppressed of the world and Rice stood with the oppressor
by Norman (Otis) Richmond
http://www.blackcommentator.com/159/159_guest_parks_v_rice.htmlParks actually spoke at the funeral of Robert F. Williams, the black revolutionary from Monroe, North Carolina who was forced to flee to Cuba and China after being falsely accused of kidnapping a Euro-American couple during a confrontation with a racist mob. At Williams’ funeral on October 22, 1996, Parks told the congregation at a Monroe church that she and those who walked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama had "always admired Robert Williams for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work that he did should go down in history and never be forgotten."
Alabama, like all places on earth, has produced working class heroes, revolutionaries, buffoons, sell-out and idiots. Along with Parks, Angela Davis, Carl Lewis, Alma Powell (wife of former Secretary of State Colin Powell) and Condoleezza Rice are all products of the Yellowhammer State. Parks and Rice are both daughters of Alabama and are a perfect example of the class struggle taking place among African Americans.
The passing of Parks gave Rice another opportunity to discuss U.S. racism openly, as quoted by the Toronto Star during her visit to Canada. Rice referred to Birmingham as "Bombingham." She went to great lengths to celebrate her past when she toured her native Alabama with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two attended the Alabama-Tennessee football game, and Rice also showed Straw her roots in segregated Birmingham. She told the story of her "granddaddy" from Eutaw, Alabama, who was a poor sharecropper who went on to become the first "colored person" to get formal college "book learning" in the family. And she spoke of the racism she confronted, including the death of a young friend in the notorious church bombings in that city in 1963.
"Despite of my fond memories of Birmingham as a place where I was, as a child, secure, I also remember a place called 'Bombingham' – where I witnessed the denial of democracy in America for so many years," she said. "It was, after all, the city of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, where blacks were haunted by rebel yells and terrorized by nightriders and accused of burning their own homes…. And of course, it was the city where my friend Denise McNair, and three other little girls, were blown up one Sunday morning while they were going to Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church."
In the "Thou Doth Protest Too Much" Pre-King Funeral Department:
Right-Wing Press Condemn "Politicization" of Parks Funeral by Black Leaders, Does not Mention Rice's Politicization in her Memorial Ceremony Remarks.November 23, 2005, 8:41 a.m.
Death of a FuneralA political rally dishonors a pioneer.
Kathryn Jean Lopez
NRO Editor
http://www.nationalreview.com/lopez/lopez200511230841.aspRosa Parks died in late October, 50 years after her brave stand on a segregated Alabama bus. Her defiant act was the symbolic push the civil-rights movement needed. Her legacy is inspirational, but her funeral was a shameful spectacle.
In Detroit on November 2, some 4,000 gathered at Detroit's Greater Grace Temple to celebrate the life of Rosa Parks. But sometime during the tribute to Parks, the ceremony fell into a graceless political rally.
The message of Rosa Parks's courage in 1955 is a nonpartisan one. And yet, fanatical politics found their way into the ceremony via left-wing stalwarts. Al Sharpton, who has run for president as a Democrat, seemed to get moving on a pulpit strategy for another campaign at the funeral. He declared: "I heard somebody say Jim Crow is who she fought and Jim Crow is still around. But Jim Crow is old. That's not who I'm mindful of today. The problem is Jim Crow has sons."
The crowd went wild.
So was it "okay" with the Right-wing that Sec. Rice used the Memorials to the Birmingham victims and official speaking engagements to "politicize" the policies of the Bush Administration...but NOT okay that in tribute to the legacy of Mrs. King Black leaders and American presidents noted the political aims of CSK's entire life?
The only reason for the outcry from the Neoconified is that by just addressing poverty and war and racism, it automatically ties the Bush Administration to their deeds in public.
Mr. Bush had a platform at the funeral that day, just as all of the others. Had he wished, he could have used that platform to honor Mrs. King's life by offering hope and justice in the form of concrete policy, rather than just hollow platitudes and silence regarding his omissions of duty.
Secretary Rice's silence in the wake of the Coretta Scott-King Funeral smear is as deafening as her own politicizing was an oration to hypocrisy and a betrayal of the heroism of those who defined the struggle for freedom and civil rights in the South of her youth.
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