A Story About a Hurricane ......

[H2O Man]

One of the things that the election results reminded me of occured 28 years ago.

I had been one of the people who worked on the case of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter before he became a popular cause in the 1970s. For those unfamiliar with his case, or the Denzel Washington movie about it, Carter was a middleweight boxer who was convicted of a triple murder in a Paterson, NJ bar in 1967. By 1974, enough evidence of Carter's being innocent of the charges had surfaced that his defense committee had numerous high-profile "celebrities" supporting him. Bob Dylan played a song about Carter; Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali supported his cause.

Carter's conviction was overturned by the NJ Supreme Court on 3-17-76. But the prosecutors tried him again. They introduced theories of the violent nature of black folks to fan the flames of fear and hatred. They also played on the image of "Hollywood-types" supporting Carter, and a second jury convicted Carter again on 12-22-76.

All of his true supporters were sick with grief. Everything we had worked so hard for, for years, had been defeated by prejudice, fear, and lies. Friend Thom K. said, "Rubin, everything we worked on in the past nine months is gone. Everything has changed."

Rubin looked Thom in the eye and said, "Thom, you're wrong. Nothing has really changed. Everything has just gone back to the way it was."

It was a tough struggle. Rubin had to change to master change. But it worked. On 11-7-85, a federal court ruled that Carter had been denied his constitutional rights, that the prosecution had illegally appealed to racial fears and hatred, and over-turned the convictions. In the years since, that judge has spoken publicly about evidence that the prosecution hid that proved Carter was innocent. He spent 19 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit.

Rubin became a better person in prison, which is indeed a miracle. It was not because of prison; rather, he became a better person despite the prison. We need to do that to. We need to change to master change. We need to become more, in order to do more. We will do this not because of the Bush administration, but despite it.

Miracles do happen. They just take a lot of work.

[Me.]

1. Deserves A Kick

[TrustingDog]

2. thankyou. :)

sure is nice to smile.
only twice in two days now.

[TrustingDog]

3. don't interrupt an enemy while he's making a big mistake...

Napoleon.

I'm taking some comfort in this thought. If Kerry did win, he would have had one hell of a mess to clean up from all the Bush droppings. It would have been impossible, actually, especially with the republicans gnarling at him constantly.

This way Bush will surely hang himself, and possiblly his own party for years to come.

There will be much pain and more suffering for us and the world during the next 4 years of gluttony and murder, but we must abide - for there is something wonderful awaiting us...

Canada's Brian Mulroney was ousted with such a thrashing in the early 90's that the conservative party is still sniveling and whimpering in small specks of numbers ever since. Brian decimated his party - bush will too.