Every leader of civil-rights organizations who spoke at the march was @some pt under surveillance

[Are_grits_groceries]

A half century past its zenith, the civil-rights movement has been invested with the kind of moral authority that is derived only from being on the right side of history. We’ve compressed the grand scale of the March on Washington—which took place on August 28, 1963, fifty years ago this coming Wednesday—into succinct quotes, a vine of grainy footage of Martin Luther King, Jr., at the crowded dais, and a dream metaphor whose ubiquity is matched only by its anodyne appeal. There’s an easy certainty afforded to the cause that drew a quarter of a million people to the Washington Mall in August, 1963, not only because of its subsequent success in ending legal segregation and disenfranchisement but also because the fruit of its efforts is currently evident in the office of the Presidency. Yet the massive gathering in Washington, D.C., was driven by the concern that, in the nearly ten years that had passed since the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the movement had yet to achieve meaningful legislative change—and the uncertainty that it ever would.

Precisely for these reasons, it’s worth remembering the obstacles faced by the men who led the movement, the malevolent skepticism with which they were regarded by not only the forces of segregation but official establishment they were petitioning for redress. And this year, especially, it’s worth remembering that every leader of a civil-rights organization who spoke at the march was, at some point, under surveillance by the federal government.

The aggregated moral will of the civil-rights movement is responsible for the election of an African-American President of the United States—a President who, on Wednesday, will speak at an event at the Lincoln Memorial commemorating the march, and whose tenure coincides with the most expansive capacity for government surveillance this country has ever known. The moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward irony.
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/obama-surveillance-and-the-legacy-of-the-march-on-washington.html?mobify=0

[chervilant]

1. Irony, indeed!

And, one must be quite careful bringing that up herein, or risk being called some political pejorative.

[PowerToThePeople]

2. rec

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Apologists be damned, the cat is truly out of the bag.

"a President who, on Wednesday, will speak at an event at the Lincoln Memorial commemorating the march, and whose tenure coincides with the most expansive capacity for government surveillance this country has ever known. The moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward irony."

When the upscale, oh-so-sophisticated New Yorker can publish a line like that, with the obvious assumption that their readership will know exactly what is meant, and with no need for argumentation, then the apologists have well and truly lost the battle over the public perspective on the surveillance issue.