Rosa Parks died yesterday at age 92. Over the days to come, we'll hear a lot of very-much deserved prasie for Parks' refusal to abide bigotry and her courage in the service of a cause. Unfortunately, we'll also hear a new round of recitations of the stubborn myth that Parks was an anonymous, apolitical woman who spontaneously refused to yield to authority and in so doing inspired a movement.

The truth, as Aldon Morris wrote in his book The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, is that a decade earlier in the 1940s Mrs. Parks had refused several times to comply with segregation rules on the buses. In the early 1940s Mrs. Parks was ejected from a bus for failing to comply. The very same bus driver who ejected her that time was the one who had her arrested on December 1, 1955...She began serving as secretary for the local NAACP in 1943 and still held that post when arrested in 1955...In the early 1940s Mrs. Parks organized the local NAACP Youth Council...During the 1950s the youth in this organization attempted to borrow books from a white library. They also took rides and sat in the front seats of segregated buses, then returned to the Youth Council to discuss their acts of defiance with Mrs. Parks.

This history is not hidden. But the Times' obituary describes Parks' arrest nonetheless as an event which "turned a very private woman into a reluctant symbol and torchbearer..." Parks was certainly reluctant to see too personal valoration of her as heroine distract from the broader movement. But she was not private about her politics. And her refusal to give up her bus seat was nothing new for her. As she would later tell an interviewer, "My resistance to being mistreated on the buses and anywhere else was just a regular thing with me and not just that day."

Tribute To Rosa on her 89th Birthday
portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/02/7131.shtml

The World Needs More Revolutionaries Like Rosa Parks!
portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/327364.shtml

As far as I know, the plans are moving ahead for a Wal-Mart store on the border of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in Pajaro. Do we really want THIS in our communities? Keep Wal-Mart out!

We learn much from how we present our heroes. A few years ago, on Martin Luther King Day, I was interviewed on CNN. So was Rosa Parks, by phone from Los Angeles. ''We're very honored to have her,'' said the host. ''Rosa Parks was the woman who wouldn't go to the back of the bus. She wouldn't get up and give her seat in the white section to a white person. That set in motion the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery. It earned Rosa Parks the title of 'mother of the civil rights movement.' ''

Through legal maneuvering, big business interests are attempting to shut out the poor from New Orleans and grab the land that was their home. The time to speak up is NOW.

The Washington, DC, grand jury of US Attorney Fitzgerald will obtain indictments in the outing of CIA's Valerie Plame sometime this week, sources say, and one could be George Bush's closest advisor, Karl Rove.....In Alexandria, VA, the grand jury of Paul McNulty, investigating Israeli espionage against the US, has indicted a neocon Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin and continues its work.....With these and other probable indictments, there will be trials that will EXPOSE FIXED INTELLIGENCE and ISRAELI MANIPULATION that pushed us into war.....Also, Italian officials promise to request in coming weeks the extradition of CIA man Bob Lady, a key figure in the IRAQ BETRAYAL. See how these events are converging.