Goodbye, Rosa Parks.

Onion, old boy, no one is offended if you love JL. As many have tried to point out to you, it's all subjective. No, I do not worship at the shrine of Lennon, but if you want to, be my guest.

No, I didn't mix them up at all.

Not to be argumentative, but maybe you missed the point. The whole idea was to put myself on the side of an obviously un-winnable argument. This was my brushing up. As a lawyer, if someone is paying you good money to defend them, their actions, or their point of view you have to trudge on no matter how the deck is stacked. Not that I concede that all my points were trumped, as I dont feel that they were, but as Sydney has said this is not the place for this, and as anyone who has any awareness of the legal system knows, you cant disregard the orders of the judge.

P.S. I am thinking of starting a thread for shite like this so that it doesnt clutter up other threads that have a purpose

ok, seriously guys, if we don't all just drop it, I'm gonna lock this thread. I now insist we get back on topic.

cheers

Hm.

Some posts have implied that Mrs. Parks was an activist, that several attempts were made to make an issue of bus segregation, and that somehow the event lacks sincerity because of that. Unsurprisingly, I disagree.

Remember the nature of the battle being fought - entrenched privilege vs. human dignity in the context of identity politics. It is not easy to get people excited over abstractions.

The questions I ask myself when I consider her actions are fairly simple. Did she do this for herself, or for her agenda? In this case, her actions were pretty selfless - she didn't publish four or five ghost-written books or do the talk show circuit. What benefit accrued to her beyond her stated agenda? None, so far as I can tell.

I've watched political action groups like MADD degenerate into permanent extensions of the problems they try to address - they can't actually solve anything, or they will have no further reason to exist.

While a lot of people will disagree with me, it's obvious that civil rights here have substantially improved since 1955, and that Rosa Parks decided on her agenda, acted on it, and achieved a major success. She remained active in the NAACP for her entire life, but went largely back to private life after her time in the spotlight. Not driven by financial gain, not by celebrity.

I have to say I was rather entertained by the idea of scattering her remains among thousands of buses - but the proposition that recognizing Mrs. Parks' contribution on the occasion of her death somehow diminishes appreciation for a certain long-deceased insectile rocker is lost on me. Go figure.

To my culture, she's as much a heroine as Harriet Tubman who was responsible for the Underground Railroad which secretly transported slaves to liberty, and it is unimportant to me whether her intent was activist or not.

If so, her actions resulted in significant personal grief for quite a while; lost her job, her husband died. Not meaning to imply that any activism on Mrs. Parks' account contributed in any way to her husband's death, but it couldn't have been a swell party moment.

Rosa Parks, for whatever reason or by whatever twist of fate or will of God, was in the right place at the the right time on the right day for lighting the fuse of a big firecracker of major, and much overdue, changes in the social structure of America.

Sure, mistakes and errors were (are being) made on the quest for redress and social justice, but what do you expect from humans, perfection? Any attempt at improvement is better than none.

Don't ask me what it's like today, but I feel free...and Rosa played a major part in that feeling, so from me, thanks, Rosa.

Can we move on now? I think we've mourned enough. Much more and I'll be expecting regular checks (cheques) from her estate.

That says it all!