The World lost one of its brightest lights with the death of former South African President and Civil Rights leader, Nelson Mandela.
A living symbol of the evils of apartheid and the power of people to overcome a system designed to keep them low, much has been said of his life and his legacy. As a child in the 80's, I was raised and educated thinking of him as a hero, and cheered with the rest of the world at his election as the first non-white president of a country that until that point was the perfect picture of what leaders like King were fighting against here in the USA.
What scares me most here in the States, though, is the rush of Regressives to co-opt the legacy of a man who stood against everything they push for. White men doing everything they can to legally suppress the natural rights of non-white citizens, who push for expanding a draconian and heavily-racially biased prison system -- in which over 1.5 million people are currently kept under lock and key. The highest per-capita prison population in the world! --, who deny basic human dignity to women, who promote only the the privileges of the upper class and who have done everything in their power to undermine and unseat the American result of Mandela's work cannot in good conscience or with any validity lay claim to the promotion of the liberty and self-determination of the downtrodden championed by this great man.
Though few can go to their peace with as clean a conscience as Mandela, who achieved more than his original goals in his long life, the struggle continues around the world.
Would that the so-called Land of the Free would take up the banner in earnest, instead of using it as soiled window dressing for more political power-games among the American Aristocracy.
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