Today people everywhere are commemorating Rosa Parks. On December 1, 1955 she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama segregated bus, and was arrested for defying the killing, spirit-destroying system of segregation. Immediately, people in Montgomery swung into action, and by the following Monday a full bus boycott was underway. Over the course of a year, the Black people of Birmingham stood up against economic and legal reprisals, jailings, and police and Klan violence – including the dynamiting of the homes of leaders of the boycott. After 381 days, the boycott was successful. Millions of people were led to change their thinking on whether the seemingly unchangeable system of segregation could be resisted and, more than that, ended. From that act of defiance and the boycott that followed, a new phase of the civil rights movement was ushered in.
We commemorate her determination to fight injustice and her courage. And we learn that the defiance of a single person, when fused with the determination and organization of thousands of people, can powerfully affect the whole direction of society.
It is beyond hypocrisy for George W. Bush to pretend to mourn her passing. Bush, who’s built his entire political career on support from the most reactionary and racist political base. Bush, whose entire presidency has bolted into a place a program that has nothing less than genocidal implications for Black people. Bush, whose actions before, during and after Hurricane Katrina made clear to all his real outlook to and program for Black people.
No, the real upholders of the legacy and spirit of Rosa Parks can be found among those who oppose and defy Bush. Listen to these inner city high school students, who are organizing a walkout for November 2, as part of the Drive Out the Bush Regime actions that day:
"Taking the first stand is what gets other people to thinking and gets others to take their stand as well. If let’s say Rosa Parks didn’t get on the front of that bus, she wouldn’t have gotten media attention, she wouldn’t have gotten her people’s attention, she wouldn’t have gotten arrested and she wouldn’t have started that bus boycott there, which forwarded the movement. If we don’t take our own stand here, and get it known among our neighborhood here so they can get their families in on it and their friends in on it, we are not going to do anything… Taking a stand takes a bit of courage – we are putting ourselves on the line of being expelled by putting this thing together in our school. Security guards and administration don’t really like this right now…"
Join with these youth, and thousands of others like them, on November 2. The world can’t wait. And these youth, and their future, can’t wait. DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!