Friends, I’ve shared some of this with you, but today marks 60 years since it happened — when the Klan murdered my protector. I was always the shortest kid in school, which made me an easy target for bullies. To protect myself, I got into the habit of befriending older boys who’d watch my back.
"Try this thought experiment. Think about one person you don't like or get along with. Picture that person in your mind's eye and try to remember all the things about that person that turn you off. Maybe he was mean to you when you needed some support. Perhaps she was critical, stubborn or self-centered. Maybe he talked about you behind your back.
Do you have someone in mind? I do, too. I'm thinking about a colleague I don't care for.
Now, imagine that you have a magic button on your desk. If you press the button, you'll have a wonderful, close, caring relationship with the person you're thinking about. No effort will be required to bring this change about. Just push the button, and the person you're feeling annoyed with will suddenly become your closest friend. Will you press that button?
When I do this exercise in my intimacy workshops, I ask for a show of hands. How many of you are going to press the button? There's a lot of giggling and almost no hands go up."
Power, that is sad. So few of your workshop members would want to stop the negativity? Right now, I can't think of anyone close to me I don't like. I think back when I knew a few folks like that, I would have been grateful to have a better relationship with them. Iin school, I tried hard to not bully back. The two guys who were bullies when I was in high school ended up turning out to be decent men, something I would not have predicted. Both of them separately and with no prompting apologized to me and others for their bad behavior in high school ((insulting, name-calling). I considered them friends after that. I would prefer that than enemies. The persons now I am disgusted with are Trump and Kump because of their hateful, fearmongering and resentment fostering. If the button was pushed, I would have a relationship with them unless on the other side of the button, they still plan to take over our nation for their own gains and the gains of rich white pseudo-christian men. It's hard to have a relationship with someone who has only contempt for you as so many rich white men have toward the vast majority of Americans.
The rise of contemptuous rich men and women (let's not exclude non-white SCJ Clarence Thomas) all exploded with Ayn Rand -- a Russian refugee who envied and hated America and made a fortune luring Americans into her way of thinking.
Looks like another way of writing tRump & Co (comp any) Not sure but that's how I read it. I wish Prof Reich could live another lifetime. He is a true gem. Best Regards Klare
You are right. I was thinking it was some person I was heretofore unaware of. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree . . . Why do you think he's trying to stuff his whole life and every positive thought and vital teaching into his Substack platform for us??? WE ARE THE LUCKY, LUCKY RECIPIENTS OF HIS WONDERFUL EFFORTS!!! LONG LIVE ROBERT REICH! Best regards to you, too.
Klare, Kump is my allusion to Trump's desire to be with his brown shirts, like a Hitler. I use it instead of Trump and company, or Trump and crew. They are all of a kind and know exactly who/what Trump is yet support him for the power they can get and hope to have while hanging with him, so Trump & Kump.
Thanks . . . good way of putting it in order to avoid the hideousness of it all, isn't it? You are clever! So many of us . . . and there are many people . . . who suffered grave dysfunction in our childhoods get help, we deal with it, we might "duke it out" for a while with authority figures, but we also go on to love and make some good use of our lives . . . we recover. It just boggles the mind that Trump has held on to his grievances for 78 years, pushing and shoving and lashing out at almost everyone in his path for all this time! WHY would anyone want to be so voluntarily despicable?? He could've afforded the best psychological care and counseling in the world! Perhaps that is the best definition of mental illness -- not knowing you are that sick.
Klare, I, too wonder about Trump and his sick mind, not just the dementia which has taken him on now, but his willingness to do anything for money and power. He has been despicable all his life, cheating, lying, deceiving, "stealing," then lying some more. He claims to be christian, but has maybe been in church 3 or 4 times in his life and lives by none of the actual Christian principles. He whines that everything is rigged against him when in reality, his life has been blessed with a rigged society that loves fakes, rich guys who make other people look and feel small, and some desperate people who need the negativity and bullying to let themselves feel something that seems real. We as a society need to do better, make better choices for our celebrities and those whom we choose as models. Trump uses people's vulnerability as a weapon against those very people in ways that keep them from noticing. He has even told them he doesn't care about them, only wants their votes. He was not lying then, but his cult no longer actually hears the specific words, just the tone of voice and the codes that let them know he is about to insult someone or malign Joe Biden or turn on one of his hitherto sycophants. He had 4 years in office and did nothing to help our most vulnerable people and actually made life worse for most of them until the stimulus package, but he knew Congress would not renew it past a little time because of the filibuster. I can't stand to be so negative, so hateful, so willing to lie for someone who has only contempt for everyone but himself. What a miserable life to be so inhumane!
Your absolutely correct in your practice. One must examine their dislike or fear of the 'other' until the other becomes 'no other'! That's progress, and it just requires one to rewire their thinking to enable a healthier life for themselves and those around them. Thanks for sharing this story!
Professor Reich is talking about exploiters, predators. Would pushing the button just make me blind to who they are and the violence of their actions? Or would pushing the button change them because all they really need is an empathetic friend?
The giggling in the workshops seems to be sudden self-awareness that they want to feel superior to the annoying people. Not applicable to exploiters and predators.
It's not only ego. To be their closest friend, do you have to accept their values? Are they racist or sexist or known to be hostile to other groups? I can be respectful of them as humans and not harmful, but I could not endorse their beliefs. Yes, people are annoying, that can be temporary. But when they wholly espouse an entirely different value system? Sorry, I can't kumbaya my way out of that. Vigilance is required.
The Four Great Deaths of the Therapist's Ego[T.E.A.M. where 'T' is testing... which takes 20 seconds... is required by law... 89% of US psychologists refuse to obey]🤯🤔❤️😱
What??? I am a licensed psychologist, retired, and I have never heard of either of your statements. First of all, I PASSED my licensing exam -- handily. I have never heard of anyone being licensed after failing the exam. Second of all, I have no freaking idea what the 'Four Great Deaths of the Therapist's Ego' means.
I subscribe to the writing of the late Albert Ellis:
IDEAS TO MAKE YOU DISTURBED: I must be loved and approved of by practically every significant person in my life -- and it I'm not, it's awful. People and events should always be the way I want them to be; life must be easy.
IDEAS TO HELP YOU FUNCTION EFFECTIVELY: It's definitely nice to have people's love and approval -- but even without it, I can still accept and enjoy myself. People are going to act the way THEY want, not the way I want.
This thought exercise would not have helped the three murdered humans this narrative was meant to honor. There are no "magic buttons" and the human species is biologically wired to be tribal.
I have not encountered one inimical person IRL in my 67 years for whom I have not mashed that button through the table, repeatedly: people who ruined my career with gossip, people who bad-mouthed me to my kids behind my back, people who ascribed hatefulness to me out of their own inveterate hatefulness. I'm still hammering that button; it still doesn't work.
It has but zip to do with ego, my friend, it results from the ubiquity of divisive rhetoric, lavishly financed by the interests of wealth and power. This column, for one transparent instance, was written for the purpose of assigning the evil traits of the Jim Crow south to Reich's political opposition today. I can help you with the line and the sinker, but I don't feel good about that hook. I for one would not trust an unverifiable personal story from this author if he wrote it in blood and tears.
Bob, "remembered and honored forever". I could not agree more.
Personalized history like Mr. Reich wrote today matters.
Ronald Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi. Why? He wanted racists to know he was on their side. A dog whistle to the Ku Klux Klan.
As a young man, having been indoctrinated by right wing propagandists George Will and William F. Buckley at Texas A&M, in the school newspaper, I voted for Reagan (and was not aware of where he started his campaign).
Voting for Reagan remains one of the greatest mistakes of my life. If I could have read this story in my Texas A&M School Newspaper, or stories like this (and there were many in American History), I would never have voted for a guy who promised to stand over and trickle down on me.
Now, 40 years later, I have watched as Republican policy destroyed the white middle class, given rise to far right billionaires taking direction from Putin, and seen inequality soar to earlier times in America.
The kinds of personalized history Mr. Reich wrote is incredibly valuable.
Personally, I am tired of the care, feeding and coddling of billionaires so that they can buy our government out from under us. The Republicans have an artificial majority in the House and Senate and in the states they control due to gerrymandering. They get paid handsomely to ignore the need to hike billionaire and wealth taxes to prevent the type of plutocratic dictatorship they want. We need a multiracial middle class, but the billionaires and the theocrats are determined to destroy the very idea of government of, for and by the people so that they can have a small majority of white Dominionist males dictate to the rest of us.
Loved Phil Ochs, who had - like many of his fellow musicians - a maturity beyond his years. His sensitivity to the inequalities of our society may have allowed space for the demons that caused him to take his own life, lost far too early.
I’m so sorry Robert. That piece stopped me in my tracks. I’m thinking of Mickey, and Andrew and James, and of what I can do do support people who are bullied and oppressed.
Dr. Reich, you recount in emotional reality the horrible jolt of learning of these horrendous murders, which still give me shivers. The evil skulking so openly across the land is the descendant of that same evil that killed those three men. Thank you for continuing to remind d us that the fight against the bullying and the authoritarianism is never actually finished.
In 1964, I was at Middlebury College, and a member of SNCC and ROTC. The news of their murders changed me as well. The following year I joined four carloads of Midd kids and drove to Montgomery, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King.
It was a cold slap of reality for those of us immersed in the peace, love and brotherhood of the hippie movement. We thought hugs and flowers and poetry would turn hearts--we were wrong.
I am a long-time friend of an attorney who was Mickey's college roommate, so I know all too well the horrible evil that underlay this crime and the culture that bred it. Yours is a memorable story that cannot be retold enough.
I will have to look it up and listen. I think "South Pacific" was written around the year I was born. I remember being so enamored with it as a child. Wasn't Mitzi Gaynor in the lead role? Or am I confusing two different movies?
It premiered on Broadway in 1949, with Mary Martin the lead female role. The 1958 movie starred Mitzi Gaynor. If you haven't read Michener's collection of short stories (Tales of the South Pacific), on which the play and film are based, you have a treat in store.
Thank you for refreshing my childhood memories of this! Of course the 1958 movie would make more sense of my knowledge of it! I just loved Mitzi Gaynor, I thought she was the most beautiful, talented actress ever! I will DEFINITELY get a hold of the Michener book. I desperately need something more to read about than just politics and problems! Thank you, thank you again. Such a pleasant surprise!
I think the lyrics are now in the public domain, so enjoy them. Chances are you memorized many of them already. I know I did, from playing and replaying the LP.
Fun (and ironic) fact: the "Tonkinese" who figure so prominently in the stories are actually (North) Vietnamese, who beginning in the late 19th century were hired to work on plantations in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and New Caledonia.
I was too young, and as a Canadian I neither saw it nor lived it. But I felt that something was terribly wrong. I am now a grandfather, and my 3 Daughters couldn’t understand why I wept the night Barack Obama was elected. It was all of a piece. Bless you for remembering Mickey.
So sorry for the loss, for all of us. I was in that town and saw those horrible people all around yet have some good memories of Micky. He & his friends were denied admission to a number of Meridian, MS churches one Sunday, but were welcomed by my father and St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The people who decried such abhorrence, whatever ways they did so, were also subjected to threats, harassment and violence. I left as soon as I was able to and am eternally thankful for the small group of friends and family who stood up for the rights of all people.
The sad part is with the MAGA movement services like Mickey provided are need again today with the hate and bigotry displayed by them. Thanks for the story.
And the MAGA movement is working at rapid speed to bring this all back as the rule of law. It's up to us to at the ballot box to stop the demented felonious Nazi and his disciples in Congress so that we don't have them get the power and control they so desperately want.
This brings back a lasting memory of a speech you gave at Dartmouth, where we both were indergrads, about the murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in Mississippi '64.. It was one of the best speeches I've ever heard, and I am grateful that you have helped keep alive the memory and meaning of their work.
It is and he is only the malignant pimple on the gigantic, dreadful a** that are his followers and supporters. We have to kick it with all our strength now before it sits and stinks up our country altogether.
Hi, Kathy, I read about this in Mary Trump's book, and it's vague. I think Fred used just about anybody who he felt could help him out (or out of) something, some run-in with the law over taxes or something. I think he dabbled a lot.
We never learn, do we? I see what is going on all over the world in the rise of the far right and the fascists and my hope crumbles before the onslaught. Then I see the lesson that those young me bought with their very lives - stand against the onslaught - it's all we can do. Thank you for sharing your story.
So sorry for your and our collective loss.
Freedom comes at a cost, and these men are heroes that should be remembered and honored forever.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yR7QLQphhn8C&pg=PA23
...is the same as...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/6099135/10-minute-relationship-therapy.html
🫣🤯🤔❤️😱WARNING: NOT FOR SCIENCE DENIERS🫣🤯🤔❤️😱
"Try this thought experiment. Think about one person you don't like or get along with. Picture that person in your mind's eye and try to remember all the things about that person that turn you off. Maybe he was mean to you when you needed some support. Perhaps she was critical, stubborn or self-centered. Maybe he talked about you behind your back.
Do you have someone in mind? I do, too. I'm thinking about a colleague I don't care for.
Now, imagine that you have a magic button on your desk. If you press the button, you'll have a wonderful, close, caring relationship with the person you're thinking about. No effort will be required to bring this change about. Just push the button, and the person you're feeling annoyed with will suddenly become your closest friend. Will you press that button?
When I do this exercise in my intimacy workshops, I ask for a show of hands. How many of you are going to press the button? There's a lot of giggling and almost no hands go up."
TLDR: Kill Egos.
Power, that is sad. So few of your workshop members would want to stop the negativity? Right now, I can't think of anyone close to me I don't like. I think back when I knew a few folks like that, I would have been grateful to have a better relationship with them. Iin school, I tried hard to not bully back. The two guys who were bullies when I was in high school ended up turning out to be decent men, something I would not have predicted. Both of them separately and with no prompting apologized to me and others for their bad behavior in high school ((insulting, name-calling). I considered them friends after that. I would prefer that than enemies. The persons now I am disgusted with are Trump and Kump because of their hateful, fearmongering and resentment fostering. If the button was pushed, I would have a relationship with them unless on the other side of the button, they still plan to take over our nation for their own gains and the gains of rich white pseudo-christian men. It's hard to have a relationship with someone who has only contempt for you as so many rich white men have toward the vast majority of Americans.
The rise of contemptuous rich men and women (let's not exclude non-white SCJ Clarence Thomas) all exploded with Ayn Rand -- a Russian refugee who envied and hated America and made a fortune luring Americans into her way of thinking.
Let me suggest to your reading Dr Albert Ellis's critique, "Is Objectivism a Religion?. A neglected book
Who is "Kump," Ruth?
Looks like another way of writing tRump & Co (comp any) Not sure but that's how I read it. I wish Prof Reich could live another lifetime. He is a true gem. Best Regards Klare
You are right. I was thinking it was some person I was heretofore unaware of. And yes, I wholeheartedly agree . . . Why do you think he's trying to stuff his whole life and every positive thought and vital teaching into his Substack platform for us??? WE ARE THE LUCKY, LUCKY RECIPIENTS OF HIS WONDERFUL EFFORTS!!! LONG LIVE ROBERT REICH! Best regards to you, too.
Klare, Kump is my allusion to Trump's desire to be with his brown shirts, like a Hitler. I use it instead of Trump and company, or Trump and crew. They are all of a kind and know exactly who/what Trump is yet support him for the power they can get and hope to have while hanging with him, so Trump & Kump.
Thanks . . . good way of putting it in order to avoid the hideousness of it all, isn't it? You are clever! So many of us . . . and there are many people . . . who suffered grave dysfunction in our childhoods get help, we deal with it, we might "duke it out" for a while with authority figures, but we also go on to love and make some good use of our lives . . . we recover. It just boggles the mind that Trump has held on to his grievances for 78 years, pushing and shoving and lashing out at almost everyone in his path for all this time! WHY would anyone want to be so voluntarily despicable?? He could've afforded the best psychological care and counseling in the world! Perhaps that is the best definition of mental illness -- not knowing you are that sick.
Klare, I, too wonder about Trump and his sick mind, not just the dementia which has taken him on now, but his willingness to do anything for money and power. He has been despicable all his life, cheating, lying, deceiving, "stealing," then lying some more. He claims to be christian, but has maybe been in church 3 or 4 times in his life and lives by none of the actual Christian principles. He whines that everything is rigged against him when in reality, his life has been blessed with a rigged society that loves fakes, rich guys who make other people look and feel small, and some desperate people who need the negativity and bullying to let themselves feel something that seems real. We as a society need to do better, make better choices for our celebrities and those whom we choose as models. Trump uses people's vulnerability as a weapon against those very people in ways that keep them from noticing. He has even told them he doesn't care about them, only wants their votes. He was not lying then, but his cult no longer actually hears the specific words, just the tone of voice and the codes that let them know he is about to insult someone or malign Joe Biden or turn on one of his hitherto sycophants. He had 4 years in office and did nothing to help our most vulnerable people and actually made life worse for most of them until the stimulus package, but he knew Congress would not renew it past a little time because of the filibuster. I can't stand to be so negative, so hateful, so willing to lie for someone who has only contempt for everyone but himself. What a miserable life to be so inhumane!
Kudos Ruth! Best Regards and thanks for the chuckle
Your absolutely correct in your practice. One must examine their dislike or fear of the 'other' until the other becomes 'no other'! That's progress, and it just requires one to rewire their thinking to enable a healthier life for themselves and those around them. Thanks for sharing this story!
Professor Reich is talking about exploiters, predators. Would pushing the button just make me blind to who they are and the violence of their actions? Or would pushing the button change them because all they really need is an empathetic friend?
The giggling in the workshops seems to be sudden self-awareness that they want to feel superior to the annoying people. Not applicable to exploiters and predators.
It's not only ego. To be their closest friend, do you have to accept their values? Are they racist or sexist or known to be hostile to other groups? I can be respectful of them as humans and not harmful, but I could not endorse their beliefs. Yes, people are annoying, that can be temporary. But when they wholly espouse an entirely different value system? Sorry, I can't kumbaya my way out of that. Vigilance is required.
Off topic troll blocked.
(And I would push the button, as I think most people would.)
The Four Great Deaths of the Therapist's Ego[T.E.A.M. where 'T' is testing... which takes 20 seconds... is required by law... 89% of US psychologists refuse to obey]🤯🤔❤️😱
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10sB0fqSY4fbyuRvWeSvif6HXW1gDFXru/view
The Four Great Deaths of the Patient's Ego
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K_9SkawJH6sRq-V5718NFw79j_t_SsVm/view
🤯🤔❤️😱
What??? I am a licensed psychologist, retired, and I have never heard of either of your statements. First of all, I PASSED my licensing exam -- handily. I have never heard of anyone being licensed after failing the exam. Second of all, I have no freaking idea what the 'Four Great Deaths of the Therapist's Ego' means.
I think this "Power Corrupts" guy is some kind of weird troll.
Subscribe for details, but only if you're ready to serve on our Focus Group
KillEgos.substack.com
I subscribe to the writing of the late Albert Ellis:
IDEAS TO MAKE YOU DISTURBED: I must be loved and approved of by practically every significant person in my life -- and it I'm not, it's awful. People and events should always be the way I want them to be; life must be easy.
IDEAS TO HELP YOU FUNCTION EFFECTIVELY: It's definitely nice to have people's love and approval -- but even without it, I can still accept and enjoy myself. People are going to act the way THEY want, not the way I want.
all shrinks fail licensing test and get licensed anyway:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1siAU4zUDsHK1XRhgnrnVhuLbOZQt93k8wvwqgyL7rTA/view
This thought exercise would not have helped the three murdered humans this narrative was meant to honor. There are no "magic buttons" and the human species is biologically wired to be tribal.
I have not encountered one inimical person IRL in my 67 years for whom I have not mashed that button through the table, repeatedly: people who ruined my career with gossip, people who bad-mouthed me to my kids behind my back, people who ascribed hatefulness to me out of their own inveterate hatefulness. I'm still hammering that button; it still doesn't work.
It has but zip to do with ego, my friend, it results from the ubiquity of divisive rhetoric, lavishly financed by the interests of wealth and power. This column, for one transparent instance, was written for the purpose of assigning the evil traits of the Jim Crow south to Reich's political opposition today. I can help you with the line and the sinker, but I don't feel good about that hook. I for one would not trust an unverifiable personal story from this author if he wrote it in blood and tears.
Bob, "remembered and honored forever". I could not agree more.
Personalized history like Mr. Reich wrote today matters.
Ronald Reagan began his campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi. Why? He wanted racists to know he was on their side. A dog whistle to the Ku Klux Klan.
As a young man, having been indoctrinated by right wing propagandists George Will and William F. Buckley at Texas A&M, in the school newspaper, I voted for Reagan (and was not aware of where he started his campaign).
Voting for Reagan remains one of the greatest mistakes of my life. If I could have read this story in my Texas A&M School Newspaper, or stories like this (and there were many in American History), I would never have voted for a guy who promised to stand over and trickle down on me.
Now, 40 years later, I have watched as Republican policy destroyed the white middle class, given rise to far right billionaires taking direction from Putin, and seen inequality soar to earlier times in America.
The kinds of personalized history Mr. Reich wrote is incredibly valuable.
Personally, I am tired of the care, feeding and coddling of billionaires so that they can buy our government out from under us. The Republicans have an artificial majority in the House and Senate and in the states they control due to gerrymandering. They get paid handsomely to ignore the need to hike billionaire and wealth taxes to prevent the type of plutocratic dictatorship they want. We need a multiracial middle class, but the billionaires and the theocrats are determined to destroy the very idea of government of, for and by the people so that they can have a small majority of white Dominionist males dictate to the rest of us.
And should be alive!
@ Bob Jenkins
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=cajF6s253a8
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=KrrOY0vwuPE&list=RDAMPLOLAK5uy_k5z_l7Wp1-oQZn5j1G26girpG4jKdKZik
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=UDHXJZC-i04
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQUhb2WKM6g - Paul Simon dedicated this song to the memory of Andy Goodman.
Loved Phil Ochs, who had - like many of his fellow musicians - a maturity beyond his years. His sensitivity to the inequalities of our society may have allowed space for the demons that caused him to take his own life, lost far too early.
Thank you Mr. Reich for all of your powerful posts and lessons they hold for us all.
I’m so sorry Robert. That piece stopped me in my tracks. I’m thinking of Mickey, and Andrew and James, and of what I can do do support people who are bullied and oppressed.
Dr. Reich, you recount in emotional reality the horrible jolt of learning of these horrendous murders, which still give me shivers. The evil skulking so openly across the land is the descendant of that same evil that killed those three men. Thank you for continuing to remind d us that the fight against the bullying and the authoritarianism is never actually finished.
In 1964, I was at Middlebury College, and a member of SNCC and ROTC. The news of their murders changed me as well. The following year I joined four carloads of Midd kids and drove to Montgomery, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King.
Thank you for the reminder.
John Perry
It was a cold slap of reality for those of us immersed in the peace, love and brotherhood of the hippie movement. We thought hugs and flowers and poetry would turn hearts--we were wrong.
I am a long-time friend of an attorney who was Mickey's college roommate, so I know all too well the horrible evil that underlay this crime and the culture that bred it. Yours is a memorable story that cannot be retold enough.
So very sorry. Hatred is taught, where did such deep murderous hate get instilled in some American psyches and then not in others????
see the lyrics to the song'You've got to be
(carefully)taught'from 'South Pacific'
Just what I was going to share.
R&H were wise men-they caught a lot of flak for that song
I will have to look it up and listen. I think "South Pacific" was written around the year I was born. I remember being so enamored with it as a child. Wasn't Mitzi Gaynor in the lead role? Or am I confusing two different movies?
It premiered on Broadway in 1949, with Mary Martin the lead female role. The 1958 movie starred Mitzi Gaynor. If you haven't read Michener's collection of short stories (Tales of the South Pacific), on which the play and film are based, you have a treat in store.
Thank you for refreshing my childhood memories of this! Of course the 1958 movie would make more sense of my knowledge of it! I just loved Mitzi Gaynor, I thought she was the most beautiful, talented actress ever! I will DEFINITELY get a hold of the Michener book. I desperately need something more to read about than just politics and problems! Thank you, thank you again. Such a pleasant surprise!
It was 1949 the year I was born! I have just listened to the not so many lyrics …. So very very true!! 👍
But they were determined to have that song in the play, no matter where it was being presented.
And thank you for bringing up that part again. I look forward to reading and learning the lyrics.
I think the lyrics are now in the public domain, so enjoy them. Chances are you memorized many of them already. I know I did, from playing and replaying the LP.
Fun (and ironic) fact: the "Tonkinese" who figure so prominently in the stories are actually (North) Vietnamese, who beginning in the late 19th century were hired to work on plantations in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and New Caledonia.
my typing is terrible and slow-good of you to let me post
Dr. Reich, thank you for your kind heart and continuous effort to support the good in all of us. ❤️
I was too young, and as a Canadian I neither saw it nor lived it. But I felt that something was terribly wrong. I am now a grandfather, and my 3 Daughters couldn’t understand why I wept the night Barack Obama was elected. It was all of a piece. Bless you for remembering Mickey.
Thank you for sharing this very heartfelt story. I won't let hate win.
So sorry for the loss, for all of us. I was in that town and saw those horrible people all around yet have some good memories of Micky. He & his friends were denied admission to a number of Meridian, MS churches one Sunday, but were welcomed by my father and St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The people who decried such abhorrence, whatever ways they did so, were also subjected to threats, harassment and violence. I left as soon as I was able to and am eternally thankful for the small group of friends and family who stood up for the rights of all people.
Kathryn, I am so glad your dad helped out! I am certain this became a life-changing experience for you. Thanks for sharing it.
This is an incredible essay. A very important remembrance…
The sad part is with the MAGA movement services like Mickey provided are need again today with the hate and bigotry displayed by them. Thanks for the story.
And the MAGA movement is working at rapid speed to bring this all back as the rule of law. It's up to us to at the ballot box to stop the demented felonious Nazi and his disciples in Congress so that we don't have them get the power and control they so desperately want.
Bob,
This brings back a lasting memory of a speech you gave at Dartmouth, where we both were indergrads, about the murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in Mississippi '64.. It was one of the best speeches I've ever heard, and I am grateful that you have helped keep alive the memory and meaning of their work.
Best wishes,
Mike Wolff
D '67
And this is the America Trump wants to return to?
It is and he is only the malignant pimple on the gigantic, dreadful a** that are his followers and supporters. We have to kick it with all our strength now before it sits and stinks up our country altogether.
It will not only 'stink' up but sink our country!
Think I read in a recent book that Father Fred Trump was a member of the KKK years ago?
Yes again.
Fred Trump got arrested at a Klan rally in his twenties, but while I think he agreed with their prejudices, I’m not sure he was a member.
Hi, Kathy, I read about this in Mary Trump's book, and it's vague. I think Fred used just about anybody who he felt could help him out (or out of) something, some run-in with the law over taxes or something. I think he dabbled a lot.
I think so too. Fred did much to court local Queens politicians who could help him get his planned building projects done.
yes.
We never learn, do we? I see what is going on all over the world in the rise of the far right and the fascists and my hope crumbles before the onslaught. Then I see the lesson that those young me bought with their very lives - stand against the onslaught - it's all we can do. Thank you for sharing your story.