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PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2018
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
Protesting is good
for the nation’s soul
Americans have a love-hate relationship with pro
tests. Our forefathers protested against King George
by sparking the American Revolution. Among other
protests of that era, some leading citizens of Boston
dressed up as Indians and threw tea in the Boston
Harbor. Another group protesting against British
soldiers in Boston were shot, an event we remem
ber as the Boston Massacre.
We celebrate the protesting that led to the cre
ation of an independent United States, but that’s
about the only protests that
many Americans remem
ber with fondness. For the
most part, Americans have
hated protests that challenge
entrenched social or political
beliefs.
The most recent example of
that are the vile comments by
right-wing media stars (Laura
Ingraham on FOX being the
most notable) who have
slammed the Parkland teens
for their protests about gun
violence and mass killings on
school campuses. How dare those kids march and
protest against establishment adults!
This isn’t the first time in our history that estab
lishment voices have pushed back against those
who challenge the status quo.
Abolitionists in the 1800s were threatened and
beaten by mobs.
American Indians were massacred for protesting
their treatment by the American government, most
notably in 1890 at Wounded Knee.
In the early 1900s, women were arrested for
marching and demanding the right to vote.
In the 1950s and 1960s, black Americans who
protested for equality in education and civil rights
were beaten and sometimes murdered by the
establishment. After Brown vs. Board of Education
called for an end to segregated schools in 1954,
white establishment leaders created White Citizens
Councils all across the South to push back, some
times using violence. When Rosa Parks refused to
sit on the back of the bus in Montgomery in 1955 in
defiance of local law, she was arrested by the estab
lishment. Police Commissioner Bull Connor turned
attack dogs loose on young Civil Rights protestors
in Birmingham in 1963. Martin Luther King Jr. was
arrested by white establishment leaders several
times for protesting against Jim Crow.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, protests against
the Vietnam War were met with disdain by the
nation’s political establishment. Sit-ins and march
es on college campuses were common. In May
1970, four students were killed and nine wounded
by National Guard troops on the campus of Kent
State while protesting against the war. (Two of
those killed were not protesting and were just walk
ing to class nearby.)
In more recent years, February 2003, over 500,000
people marched in American cities to protest
against the Iraq War.
The common thread in all of those is that the
establishment thought the protesters were wrong
and should not be protesting.
And that wasn’t just among extremists. Many
moderate white leaders thought MLK and other
black Civil Rights leaders were trying to move too
fast for change. They hated the marching in the
streets.
The nation’s political and military leaders defend
ed the nation’s involvement in Vietnam and called
the anti-war protesters un-American or commu
nists, a view shared by many moderate Americans.
The nation’s leaders strongly defended the war
in Iraq in 2003 and many Americans thought the
cause was justified.
And yet, in every single example the establish
ment thinking was wrong.
They were wrong to oppose the abolition of
slavery.
They were wrong to oppose women voting.
They were wrong to oppose desegregation of
schools.
They were wrong to oppose allowing black citi
zens the vote.
They were wrong to defend the Vietnam War.
And they were wrong to get America involved in
Iraq.
Protest movements have multiple aspects. They
are partly designed to bring attention to an issue
among the wider public. That has been especially
fruitful in the last 65 years with the use of television
where images of people marching in the streets has
been a powerful way to put a bullseye on a cause.
But the real power of protesting isn’t in the act of
marching itself — it’s in the reaction by those who
are opposed to the protests.
Protesting often unmasks the failure of establish
ment mentality for the ugliness it really is. It was
the ugliness of Bull Connor’s dogs attacking young
black protesters which changed the dialogue of
the civil rights movement. The protesters goaded
Connor to show his real ugliness and by extension,
the ugliness of the entire Jim Crow system in the
South. (That was a strategy used by MLK and other
black leaders who knew enemies like Connor would
become violent against protesters.) Likewise, the
overreaction of President Richard Nixon and his
followers to protesters against Vietnam unmasked
the lies and shallowness of the pro-war voices.
See Buffington on Page 5A
mike
buffington
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It was a good close to
the legislative session
Georgia’s legislators gaveled things
to a close last week and for the first
time in a while, it was a session that
provided some positive accomplish
ments for taxpayers.
For the first time since at least 2002,
Georgia will not have “austerity cuts”
for K-12 public schools in the state
budget for the new fiscal
year.
On the next to last day of
the session, Gov. Nathan
Deal announced he was
increasing the state reve
nue estimate and amend
ing his budget recommen
dation to include an addi
tional $167 million for K-12
education.
That will ensure the state
is fully funding the Quality
Basic Education (QBE) for
mula and providing local
school systems with 100 percent of
the state’s share in financing for local
education.
During the Great Recession, as
legislators were struggling to bal
ance state budgets, there were years
when these austerity cuts for local
schools totaled more than $1 billion.
There were some counties in poorer
rural areas where local systems cut
as many as 48 days of classroom
instruction from the school calendar
just so they could avoid having to
shut the system down.
“Education funding cuts began
before Deal’s tenure as governor and
have impacted millions of Georgia
students since they began 16 years
ago,” said Craig Harper of the
Professional Association of Georgia
Educators. “Finally achieving full
funding of Georgia’s education for
mula is an important and welcome
achievement for Governor Deal and
his legacy.”
Legislators also took advantage of
a revenue windfall provided by the
federal tax cut act to cut the top indi
vidual income tax rate from 6 percent
to 5.75 percent. Deal said it was the
first such reduction in the top rate in
about 80 years.
“If you can’t get re-elected on the
things that we did this year, you prob
ably don’t need to be here in the first
place,” Deal joked in a brief speech
to the Senate on the session’s last
night.
There was good news for support
ers of mass transit as money was
found to float $100 million in bonds
for transit construction projects.
“This investment will go a long way
in reforming and addressing our tran
sit system needs,” Deal said.
In tandem with that funding, legisla
tors passed a bill late on the last night
of the session that will make it possi
ble to expand transit services beyond
Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties
and out into 13 Metro Atlanta coun
ties, depending upon which ones
approve a local sales tax to pay for
transit construction projects.
House Speaker David Ralston
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of the writer.
(R-Blue Ridge) and the legislative
leadership followed through on
promises to help economically belea
guered rural Georgia.
Bills were passed to allow the oper
ation of “micro hospitals” in areas
where it wasn’t feasible to have
full-blown hospitals, a think tank to
develop innovative health
care policy proposals was
created, and roughly $40
million was put in the bud
get for rural development
initiatives.
Deal also included $26
million to extend runways
at 11 airports in rural coun
ties to accommodate cor
porate jets.
“I don’t think rural
Georgia has had a better
session than it had this
year,” Ralston said after the
session adjourned.
It’s too early know if any of this will
reverse the trends that have plagued
rural Georgia, but legislators did
make an honest effort in that area.
The end of the session saw the
departure of one of the most remark
able legislators of the past few years.
Rep. Allen Peake (R-Macon) spent
the past five sessions laboring ear
nestly for the right of Georgians to
use marijuana derivatives to treat
various ailments.
He succeeded better than you
might have expected, persuading the
legislature to pass and Deal to sign
a bill legalizing the medical use of
cannabis oil. But when Peake tried to
follow that up with legislation allow
ing the cultivation of marijuana, he
fell short.
This year, Peake was able to make
marginal improvements to the current
law, getting a bill passed that would
add two more conditions to the list of
those that can be legally treated with
cannabis oil: Post-traumatic stress
disorder and “intractable pain.”
It wasn’t much but it gave Peake
a small victory as he headed back
to Macon to tend to his business
interests. I have a feeling we will hear
more from him.
Tom Crawford is editor of The
Georgia Report, an internet news
service at gareport.com that reports
on state government and politics.
He can be reached at tcrawford@
gareport.com.
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJournal.com
Mike Buffington
Scott Buffington
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Editor
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We can’t drown
in hate; we
have to swim
out of this
The Parkland High School students
leading efforts for gun reforms are a
source of hope or just another example
of division, depending on who you ask.
I see positive in them. I really do. And
I feel like that probably angers some
of you, who see exactly the opposite.
But I am pleased to see people of a
younger generation take a civic, non-vi
olent stand on an issue that is dear to
them. They didn’t thrust themselves into
a debate. No, they
were thrust into it
through literal blood
and death when a
shooter slaughtered
their friends in their
presence.
To speak up on
anything public
ly, whether you’re
left-wing, right-
wing, or anything
in between, can be
really scary if it’s
done with your real identity. Today’s
climate is not conducive to a good talk.
No, it’s a snake pit of dialogue, where
venom is shot from spitting cobras at the
eyes in hopes of disabling opponents.
We are becoming a nation of character
assassination, not character.
When we talk of our nation’s problems,
I wish we could take one step back from
particular issues and consider this: If
I win the issue but lose my soul, have
I really won? In today’s win-at-all-costs
environment, I think people gladly sell
out their character for short-term political
victory, until eventually you’re left with a
hollow hull for a soul in the long-term. I
see this as the national cancer we must
beat.
I’m dealing with a deep pessimism
about things in our country and have
been for a number of years. I want to that
to change. I desperately do. I’m exhaust
ed with it all.
But it’s easy to just expect the worst
now. I expect the worst out of our nation’s
leaders. I expect the worst behavior in
our culture. I expect people to grab all
they can get for themselves. I expect
hypocrisy at every turn. I expect division,
never harmony. I expect people cloaked
in righteousness to act unrighteously.
I expect my own anger at the world to
ricochet violently within the walls of my
own brain, making me a much lesser per
son, someone sour and quick to judge
unless I fight that urge. I expect I’ll have
to wrestle that demon the rest of my life,
because I expect the world to get worse
and worse. I expect my children and
other children will have a really rough
go in an America that is ripping loose in
many ways. I expect the shocking news
to grow less and less shocking.
The Parkland shooting was not shock
ing, not to any of us, which is a sad fact. It
was par for the course. It was just another
in a long line of what we’ll surely see
again. We are a sick country with some
kind of weird national fever that involves
guns, but is deeper, too. Guns are the
tool used to carry out a deeper problem.
Do I think the tool must be addressed?
Yes, I do, at least in the same way we deal
with traffic. We weigh risk and personal
freedom on our roads and set appropri
ate guidelines to maximize safety. That
seems reasonable to me. Both personal
freedom and safety are important. They
both deserve consideration. Neither
should completely eliminate the other.
But there’s something far greater at
play, too. It’s not merely about guns. It’s
about a national ideal of decency toward
one another that’s slipping farther from
reach.
I’ve written all this before. And these
are my tired, old arguments. But I’m
writing this because I actually found
something that shocked me.
In my ugly pessimism, I’ve grown to
expect such a wide range of nasty things.
But I did not expect a group of teenagers
to rise up after their friends were slaugh
tered and act with such passion and lack
of fear on a national stage. They face real
danger. Have no doubt, these kids went
through a gun rampage and now many
nationwide are angry with them. I don’t
care what your politics are, you have to
recognize that’s a scary place to be. It’s
why no one generally speaks up. There
is real intimidation at play. I expected
See Mitcham on Page 5A
Zach
Mitcham