CHEERS to DIANE NASH!

Thank God one person has the courage to stand up and not go along with the hypocrisy! Thank God ONE person had the nerve to speak out and tell it like it is! Diane Nash, civil rights activist and Selma organizer who led the original march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge was scheduled to march on Saturday, March 7th but refused at the last minute when she saw George W. Bush was to help lead the 50th anniversary ceremony. Nash decided not march, saying Bush is “an insult to those who believe in nonviolence”. “I think the Selma Movement was about nonviolence and peace and democracy and George Bush stands for just the opposite, for violence and war and stolen elections,” said Nash.

Nash co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with her then, husband James Bevel and a handful of others. Their work initiated the Alabama Voting Rights Project which gave birth to the Selma to Montgomery marches.

Nash also pointed out the Bush Administration’s use of torture and said, “this was not an appropriate event for him”. “George Bush’s presence is an insult to me and to people who really do believe nonviolence,” she said while expressing concern that the non-violent legacy of Selma would become “confused”.

An outspoken proponent of nonviolence, Nash is also responsible for helping create the original Nashville lunch counter sit-ins as well as the desegregation efforts of the Freedom Rider bus. President Kennedy appointed Nash to a National Committee that prepared for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because of her leadership.

Nash also said she did not know if nonviolence would work back in the 1960’s. “Now we know that it does.” Nash felt the 50th anniversary should be a celebration of nonviolence that according to her, “was definitely one of the most significant social inventions of the 20th century”.

Although, I was disappointed that she didn’t also mention Obama who has done nothing but carry out the policies of the Bush Administration and who is actually worse than Bush in perpetrating crimes against humanity in unjust “wars” in the Middle East while imprisoning more whistleblowers under the “Espionage” Act than any other president in history. At least she pegged one guy right.

Israel is “our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy,” Obama recently said to a Chicago audience, assuring them that “we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs.” Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel “deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza.” As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Obama was asked about his message for the Venezuelan people in an interview with WLTV Univision 23 in Miami on Thursday and said, “the most important thing is to remember that the future of Venezuela should be in the hands of the Venezuelan people. We’ve seen from Chavez in the past authoritarian policies, suppression of dissent.”

But Obama saying Chavez has “authoritarian policies” and “suppression of dissent”? Look who’s talking!

A Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday found that 33% of Americans see Obama as the worst post-war president, while just 8% consider him the best. Another 28% see former President George W. Bush as the worst. Richard Nixon, the only American President ever to resign in disgrace, was picked the worst by 13%, according to the poll.