To many lynching means hanging a black person to terrorize and suppress other black people. While this kind of activity has certainly become a shameful part of America's history, whites have also been lynched.
Lynching humiliates and violates the victim publicly and serves as a warning to others. Lynching is carried out by a mob and it's actions are extra-legal. That is to say illegal, criminal. People committing a crime to combat wrong. Like having coitus to promote virginity.
Lynching in today's parlance can have results other than death. Sometimes people are destroyed in the media, sometimes wrongly. Richard Jewell comes to mind. A security guard wrongly accused of planting a bomb so he could be a 'hero' and discover it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
Mr. Jewell was vindicated eventually. I have heard one litigator express an opinion that what happened to Eric Bodenweiser was a lynching.
Eric is a colleague. He ran a campaign to be the republican nominee for the 19th State Senate District in Delaware. I was at Bodie headquarters when we learned on primary night that Eric had won a bitter and hard fought campaign. Some of the attacks on Eric seemed beyond the pale. He ran a clean campaign and the voters responded. I was proud to have worked on his campaign. With no money to give it was my contribution to breaking up the club in Dover.
While Eric and I don't agree on everything, I believed that he was truly an outsider that would not play 'go along to get along' with the corruption in our government. Sometimes described hereabouts as 'The Delaware way'. When our politicians say bi-partisan in Delaware it really really means we are getting screwed. Double.
Yes, we thought the attacks on Eric had been vicious. We hadn't seen anything yet. An accuser who just happens to a convicted felon on probation right now for a violent crime involving attempted strangulation and witness tampering decides to make 25 year old allegations. The A.G. ( comatose in many civil rights cases, as we will discuss on this blog ) jumps into action and indicts Eric for 113 felony sex crimes involving a young boy.
The media jumps all over this and chants 113 113 while most forget to report on the recent criminal history of the accuser. Not mentioned is that even though Eric's family owned a chain of convenience stores and he had access to untold numbers of children no other allegations have come out.
Eric is on house arrest, and watched his election stolen by a walk on republican who will follow the course of the man Eric beat in the primary. Vice President Joe Biden even congratulated Eric after the election because the departments of elections was not able to change the web displayed candidate name from Eric to the replacement. Joe must not have been reading any Delaware newspapers. Probably busy.
Scant reporting is done when Eric's first amendment rights are violated by a capricious order from a Judge denying Eric's request to worship at his church. Even after the Pastor files a safety plan including an escort for Eric to and from his car and the probation officer recommends the visit. Possibly cruel and unusual punishment as well. All this and the man is presumably innocent until proven guilty?
Dr. Jahi Issa could be called the victim of an academic lynching at this point in time. An opponent of management practices at Delaware State University he is arrested on March 1, 2012 when his students rally at the Martin Luther King Student Center to walk to the public board of trustees meeting. Chief Downes of DSU public safety gives a different story in court on December 4, 2012 than the narrative given by DSU spokesman Carlos Holmes to the Dover Post on March 2, 2012.
Chief Downes testifies under oath that he only touched Dr. Issa in a calming manner by placing his right hand on Dr. Issa's shoulder, whereupon Dr. Issa hit him with a forearm blow to the chest. Well, check out this video and you tell me:
Yet the state still wants to prosecute Dr. Issa to endorse the illegal actions of DSU public safety personnel. So the man is fired from his job, struggling, discredited, academically lynched.
In 1903 there was a recorded lynching in Delaware. The victim was burned. He got away and they had to throw him back on the fire and burn him again. http://thepeopleschampion.me/strange-fruit-in-dover-delaware-lynching-in-1903-made-national-headlines-while-case-remains-states-only-official-incident-on-record/
Let's talk about what's not lynching. At least officially. In Dover Delaware when you have two black men hanging from trees by their own belts in public, a racist leaflet campaign, and an assault victim with a cut under his left ear, a stab wound in his mouth, and a ligature mark on his neck? Well that ain't no lynching!
That's a couple of rare but unfortunate suicides, and a liar who is a criminal making up a story. Guess Mr. Fordham stabbed himself? I suppose that Johnny 'snipes' Clark ( who was called snipes on the street because of his affinity for firearms ) and Charles Conley ( 19 year old freshman and star athlete ) just happened to both commit suicide with their own belts in public within two years and a quarter mile of each other?
That racist flyer? Printer malfunction?
Thank goodness there's no lynching in Dover! I mean because it's not in the paper or anything is it? http://www.doverpost.com/article/20121022/NEWS/121029930 Oh wait...
Spoke to officials from Delaware's Human Relations Council today. More on that in another post. Stay tuned, because this show never ends. There will always be evil in the world. It only gets better when each of us does what we can to chip away at it.
There are those among us who will not rest until this is resolved. Then we'll find another battle I expect.
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