Category Archives: civil rights

A letter to President Barack Obama

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Dear Mr. President,

Roy Innis said a kindness to me years ago that significantly lifted my spirits. It was related to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a hero of mine for as long as I have memory. I’m 63. It occurred to me that the kindness Mr. Innis offered me is more accurately applied to you. Mr. Innis and I were members of a panel on a Newsradio 88 talk show in NYC in the wake of the Bernie Goetz shooting incident, December 22, 1984.

That I was on the panel with Mr. Innis was related to my experience with gun violence; I was held up and shot in the head at point blank range, August 24, 1984, the bullet remains lodged in the brain. Also, I was one of the co-founders of the NYC Chapter of Victims for Victims, a victims advocacy group, founded in 1982, by actress Theresa Saldana. Years ago, Jim Brady and I met during a Handgun Control (now Brady Center Against Gun Violence) convention. The moment was not without its humor; we agreed we were the founders of The Can’t Duck Worth a Damn Club of America.

Before I tell you what Mr. Innis said, I’d like to first, please, share a few thoughts with you.

I can’t begin to imagine what you are experiencing now, other than to point out the obvious, that we are in a democracy-gut-check wake-up call moment. Only when it happened, when this man was elected, did I realize something, nearly in an instant. The moment we are in now was bound to come. My hope is that we are witnesses to white power’s last gasp.

As for this election outcome, the fact is we the people dropped the ball. You didn’t. If even for a moment you notice your mind drifting in the direction of blaming yourself, please call it on back. Many of us, and that includes me, made the mistake of believing we were more healed on the bigotry front than we are. In short, we couldn’t help but be the flawed, sometimes dopey, and sometimes dangerous creatures, our species is capable of being.

While I wouldn’t wish your experience on anyone, Mr. President, I am grateful beyond-the-reach-of-words that history chose you when it did. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could have handled and managed the task of being the first black president with, what history will show — and many of us already know — the level of greatness you brought to the job. Your greatness, Mr. President. I’m dead serious. It’s not just charisma, a gift we’re all lucky you have, it’s your uncanny ability to manage your interaction in the moment you’re in, without taking your eye off the ball, while at the same time understanding the moment’s role, or potential role, in history. It’s like that moment in “Team of Rivals” when Mr. Lincoln was told the time had come to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, I think in Seward’s office. Lincoln had been shaking hands all morning with White House visitors. His arm and hand were a bit sore. When he lifted the pen to sign, his hand was a little shaky. He put the pen down, explaining to his staff that if his signature looked shaky, people in years to come would think he wasn’t sure about the proclamation, and, of course, he was. As you know, he waited until his hand calmed, and signed. He understood the moment he was in. Therein lies the brotherhood you have with this man.

Mr. President, you’ve recognized the moment of history you are in every step of the way with uncanny accuracy, you did your best for this country and all its people, every step of the way. And, you never lost your cool! Though, if my fantasy of dribbling, say, Ted Cruz up and down the court came true, and you were the ref, I’m willing to bet you might not call the foul, at least not right after the first dribble.

To Mr. Innis. On the panel, Mr. Innis sat to my right, Sen. Alfonse D’Amato was on my left, William Kunstler and Curtis Sliwa sat across the way. Mr. Innis proposed that civilians be trained and armed to help keep the streets safe. I disagreed, saying that I adhered to the nonviolent methods we learned from Dr. King and that arming civilians seemed to replicate the arms race. While I believed Mr. Innis’s proposal was from the heart and well-intentioned, he’d lost two sons to gun violence, I thought it misguided.

It was in the moments right after the show ended that Mr. Innis said the kindness to me, that I, Mr. President, would like to say to you. When we stood up and shook hands, I told him he was someone I admired. I told him Dr. King had always been one of my heroes, and how much I wished I could have known him. And then, it happened. Mr. Innis looked at me with a smile and said: “Martin would have been very proud of you tonight.” It was one of the most mind-blowing, beautiful things anyone had ever said to me. So, let me tell you now, Mr. President, Martin would be very proud of you. So would Malcom and Nelson Mandela. So would Rosa Parks, Medger Evers, Emmet Till, and, yes, Mr. Lincoln. All of them and more, Mr. President, would be proud of you and grateful that you are, indeed, the truly good and decent and courageous man you are.

I am one of many who genuinely love and care about you and your family. If our paths ever cross, my hope would be to shake your hand, give you a hug, and thank you in person.

By the way, the rallying cry that I am encouraging those around me to use, is: We Shall Overcome because Yes We Can. Like I said, Mr. President, Martin would be proud of you.

With great warmth and respect,

Peter S. Kahrmann

 

  • A hard copy of this letter was mailed to the president on November 18, 2016

Donald Trump: White Power’s new leader

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The white-power movement has found its leader in president-elect Donald J. Trump. Our democracy is in danger. If it is to survive, if we are to survive as our founding fathers intended, we need recognize the dangerous reality we are facing, and we can’t blink. If we do, our democracy is lost. We are fools to think otherwise.

 
Trump is an all-around bigot with facist leanings and the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party are thrilled. Every individual he is considering for his cabinet has pronoucned racist-bigot. By definition, a bigot believes some segments of the population as less worthy of rights than other segments of the population.

 
Doubling this danger, of course, is Putin-Trump bromance.

 
You don’t need a cornflake’s imagination to envision Trump and his Drumpfian Klan trying to overthrow our democracy by selling pie-in-the-sky promises to white racists while shattering our declaration of independence and constitution along the way.

Now is the time for all of us, young and old, to stand up for every individual’s right – including the individuals who are illegal immigrants – to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If you really want to be kind of country that says they don’t have these rights, and or, it is not our problem, so sorry they might suffer, and in many cases, die, then don’t tell me you’re a practicing Christian and don’t tell me you’re an American.

 
The very rights that some are so quick to deny others, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, are rights memorialized in both our Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter includes illegal immigrants, people who are not the evil, slinking, shadowy enemy the newly empowered white-power movement would have you believe. The white-power movement is in part rooted in the culturally-fabricated belief that the darker the skin, the less valuable the life.

 
It is by no means a stretch to say the Pilgrims — white people — were the beginning of the white-power movment. White settlers were essentially illegal immigrants who went on to enslave, slaughter, imprison, and steal the land from American Indians and, as if that weren’t enough, claimed to be Christians in the process.

 
Any of this ring a bell, people?

 
The only ones that slaughtered innocents were the whites. For those inclined to cite American Indian raids let me reintroduce you to reality, we attacked them, they fought back, so get a grip. Many of our black brothers and sisters, as you know, are descended from those who did not come here voluntarily: slaves. White people are the ones who stormed this land.

Now, we have elected a president, praised by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party members, who is making cabinet appointments that increases, not decreases, the roar of approval from white-power leaders. We have elected a facist who is just as willing to trample and slaughter as many white settlers were. This cretin doesn’t want to make America great, he wants to make it bigoted, white racist nation once again.

 
My father and uncle fought the Nazis in World War II. I grew up with a minister who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I’ve got good role models. I will fight, through nonviolent means, the newly empowered white power movement with all my heart and soul.

Equal rights and the wounding of others

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I take no pleasure in wounding others. None. However, no equal rights advocate gets to choose the oppressors. They are who they are. They are accountable and must be held accountable.

You can’t play favorites as an advocate. Silence in the face of oppression is never an option. Silence empowers the oppressor. Silence in the face of oppression is not in my repertoire. It never has been.

As an advocate you will inevitably wound others along the way.  But if, for example, someone denies people with disabilities a seat at the table, I am going to say so.  If a company providing services to people with disabilities  in the community  engages in community-based warehousing, I am going to say so. If a non-profit organization designed to help others offers little more than lip service, I am going to say so. If leaders from any walk of life are  are among the oppressors, I am going to say so. It’s what advocates do.

Knowing people have been wounded by my advocacy is not pleasant. There are, however, reasons I will not stop. At the top of the list, those being oppressed suffer the deepest wounds of all. And then there’s this. Knowing that oppressors have a found a way to live with themselves as oppressors has made it much easier to live with myself as an advocate.

Those who have been wounded by my advocacy should take a moment to reflect. Perhaps they will realize their wounds are self-inflicted. Those that have complained about me remind me of  someone complaining to a friend about getting a speeding ticket.  Complainer: “That S.O.B. cop gave me a speeding ticket, can you believe it?” Friend: “How fast were you going?” Complainer: “Around 70.” Friend: “What was the speed limit?” Complainer: “Forty-five.”

Sunshine is the best disinfectant and my task as an advocate is to bring things that impede or deny equal rights into the light of day.  My suggestion? Don’t speed.

It’s All Civil Rights

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Anytime anyone is being denied equal treatment under the law they are experiencing discrimination and their civil rights are being violated.

According to statelawyers.com “discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class.” Setting aside my personal distaste for the context in which the word class is being used here,  the key component of the quote is “all people”. Not just people who live with disabilities, or people who are gay or lesbian or black or Latino – all people.

The fact some do not see gay and lesbian civil rights, or disability civil rights, as civil rights issues does not make them evil. It’s simply testimony to the learning curve or, perhaps better put, awareness curve they need to travel. Many years ago I saw a documentary in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked by a white man in his fifties. Dr. King was unhurt, the man was quickly subdued and, I would presume, arrested. The audience was angry. Dr. King asked them what they would believe if they had been told every day for fifty years of life that blacks were bad.

Many of our brothers and sisters have been raised to experience people who live with disabilities as being less than others. Many have been led to believe that  people who are gay and lesbian are somehow out-of-kilter on the moral front. The fact that these beliefs are welded into the minds of too many does not give them credence or accuracy. Instead, those that live out and spread these beliefs further poison our culture’s ability to experience each other as equals, which is what we are.

The denial of equality is the denial of civil rights. It’s all civil rights

DEAR MARTIN – WORDS FOR A KING

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Dear Martin,


I have looked up to you since I was a little boy. I was only 14 years old when you were killed. I cried until my eyes were swollen and when we went to church that Sunday our minister, who had marched with you many times, told all of us that the American family had a role in your death. That this country, my country, had been crippled by the poison of racism, of hatred. He called on each of us to carry your message and work hard for your dream. To work hard for the day when children and adults were no longer judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


We are closer, Martin. We are closer. This Tuesday, the day after the day honoring you, the first African American will become the president of the United States. My eyes flood with tears of joy just writing that sentence.


The struggle for equal rights goes on on many fronts. You have been my role model in my efforts, although I have yet to reach your place of faith and spirituality. But I have held you close to my heart all these years, and having you there helps me. The price I have paid for my part in civil rights pales by comparison to the price paid by so many good and decent people. some paying with their lives, a price I am humbly willing to pay as well to assure justice and equality for all people.





Not long ago I was pushed out of a health care company because they needed to evict a voice they could not silence, a voice that insisted that the people receiving services there be treated with respect and given choice. In the scheme of things, my price was a small one.


You once said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” So true.


I don’t know what remains for me in life. But I do know that I am blessed to be on the board of an association that works with people who have survived brain injuries and I was recently appointed to a council that works heart-and-soul hard to make sure people with disabilities are afforded the chance to be as independent in the world we all live in, which includes equal rights.


God bless you, Martin, wherever you are. If you see my father and my family, give them my love and let them know I am doing my best. Perhaps they already know. I’m never quite sure about that one.


I’m going to include a link below for my readers to go to so they can see your “I Have a Dream Speech.”


Thank you, Martin, for all you’ve done for all. The struggle continues for many, and I will be in it until my last breath.


With love and respect,


Peter



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEMXaTktUfA&feature=related

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