Mary Neal's Black History Month 2011

Black History Month is an opportunity to learn about and solute people with the courage and tenacity to battle oppression. Man’s innate yearning for freedom drives exploited people all over the world to fight tyranny. "I say to our Iranian friends: Let your people march, let your people speak, release your people from jail, let them have a voice!" Vice President Biden’s warning to Iran received thunderous applause at the University of Kentucky on February 11, 2011, the day after Egypt’s dictator was forced into exile by angry protestors. That was also good advice for America, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate and private prisons and jails thrive in an otherwise depressed economy. Indeed, prison profiteering is directly responsible for the depressed economy in the U.S.A. Imprisoning 2.3 million people costs taxpayers over $50 billion per year while funds for education and other social programs are being slashed. Job losses mount as Fortune 500 companies, federal and state governments use over a million prison laborers to avoid unions, minimum wage and worker safety laws. Unpopular wars continue in part because all military uniforms, canteens, tents, and other essential items are produced in prisons, and many lawmakers are themselves prison owners/investors. Sadly, 1.25 million inmates are mentally ill people who would have been treated in hospitals or community care programs if funding for psychiatric care had not been slashed in the 1960’s and rendered vulnerable Americans into cruel incarceration for offenses ranging from simple vagrancy to murders, due to their lack of treatment. Numerous innocent people are serving time but denied DNA tests or new trials to present compelling evidence of innocence. America also has a number of political prisoners who were convicted on false charges during and after the civil rights movement to curtail their advocacy for freedom and justice.

Everyone should be concerned about 37 missing prisoners who are perceived leaders of the labor strike that occurred in six Georgia prisons from December 9-16, 2010. Thousands of black, white, and Latino inmates staged the largest prison rebellion in American history by refusing to exit their cells and work for free for seven days. The inmates said they are forced to work up to seven days a week hungry, and they demanded enough food, an end to brutality, and other humane changes. The strikers were nonviolent, but guards were not. Perhaps one of the missing prisoners is now accounted for, as several guards face criminal charges for beating a prisoner so badly that he is hardly recognizable and requires extended hospitalization. Slavery is alive and well in the prison industrial complex – all races eligible. Hopefully, cruelty will not spark violent prison riots that endanger inmates, guards, National Guardsmen, and property. People should be mindful that America incarcerates children as adults, over half of the inmates in this country were not imprisoned for violent crimes, and prisons now warehouse our most vulnerable citizens – the mentally ill. See my Twitter tweets for Governor Deal’s phone number. I am KoffieTime on Twitter. If you try to follow me, I will try to follow you back. If you join my followers, check from time to time to see if you are still following me. Some people have to join my followers several times due to cyberstalkers who remove their names. Although news about the December prison labor strike was suppressed in mainstream media, San Francisco Bay View and a few other publishers carry information about that ongoing human rights struggle. Google “37 missing inmates.” Furthermore, Georgia executed two of the three condemned prisoners who were killed within the last five months using faulty anesthesia purchased from a one-man wholesaler operating in the back of a British driving academy. America’s supply of the sodium thiopental, one of three shots administered for lethal injections, is diminished. The three prisoners died in agony, paralyzed so they could not even groan, including Brandon Rhode, a mentally challenged young white man. Be reminded that Troy Davis, a likely innocent man, awaits execution in Georgia, repeatedly denied a new trial by jury. Davis is already prohibited from groaning by a gag order to prevent him from saying, “I’m innocent. Please help.” (Google “Stop Agonizing Executions in the U.S.A.”)

BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE March 9 – No Shopping on the 9^th of each month during 2011. During the civil rights era, public protests coupled with boycotts inspired businesses and the government to be fair. It takes both. The famous bus boycott showed the bus company that it must either stop discriminating against black patrons or close down. Peaceful demonstrations are effective, but many people do not participate because of disabilities, lack of courage or inclination, and limited time and resources to travel. Americans are coming to realize that high unemployment, budget cuts on social programs, high incarceration, never-ending wars, and other problems the nation faces are directly tied to corporate greed. People who wish to support economic justice, stronger environmental protection laws, an end to war, abolition of the death penalty, decriminalization of mental illness, an end to racial and class prejudice within the justice system, or protest erosion of Constitutional rights should join the BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE on March 9, 2011 – No Shopping. People should unite and address unethical business practices financially. The shopping moratorium will repeat on the 9^th day of each month throughout 2011. The one-day boycotts will not irreparably harm our fragile economy, but if enough people learn about the BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE and participate, this will be a very strong nonviolent protest. The BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE is Americans’ 9/11 attack on corporate greed. Virtually everyone can participate merely by making no purchases on the 9^th of each month in 2011. Individuals and organizations should help notify the public about the BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE by announcing it on websites, radio and public television, to friends and family. But participation can also be anonymous – just do it!

The world cheered Egyptian protestors during the weeks they united to face down the army and police to gain freedom from a tyrannical regime. Vice President Biden’s warning to Iran that the peoples’ rebellion against oppression would spread was well founded. Egyptians’ courage and success sparked protests in other countries and America. Wisconsin workers protest the weakening of their union and serious cuts in education and other services. Workers in Atlanta met at the Capital on Saturday 26 to support the Wisconsiners and take a stand for economic justice. Interestingly, Egypt’s victory and other uprisings occurred during Black History Month. The protests are reminiscent of civil rights demonstrations that weakened Jim Crow and largely ended overt racial discrimination in America.

I grew up in Fayette County, Tennessee, one of the famous civil rights battlegrounds. In 1960, hundreds of sharecroppers were evicted their homes after some tried to register to vote, forcing them to live in tents on a black farmer’s land. Their settlement was called “Tent City.” The Tent City photograph above was taken by famed civil rights photojournalist Ernest C. Withers. His pictorial history of the civil rights era chronicles the quest for equality by African Americans in the South. Withers traveled throughout the area filming my neighbors in Fayette and Haywood Counties, people who were determined to gain eligibility for jury selection following an elderly black man’s wrongful conviction by an all-white jury. Prejudice whites objected to the black sharecroppers becoming voters. The ensuing battle lasted for years and led to the first lawsuit filed under the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

If I could change one thing about Black History Month programs, I would include more about whites and Jews who participated in abolishing slavery and weakening Jim Crow. Student protestors traveled to Somerville, Tennessee from northern universities and colleges during the Tent City episode to support the sharecroppers’ quest to ascertain the right to vote. United Auto Workers and the ACLU helped. A white man in Fayette County anonymously donated the first tents that the evicted sharecroppers used. Contributions came from people nationwide who were concerned about justice and willing to sacrifice to help the sharecroppers have shelter and food as they stood for civil and human rights. People of all races and backgrounds realize that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (MLK). One cannot judge who are friends or enemies based on racial or ethnic distinctions. Ernest Withers, photographer of the Tent City photo at this article, proved that.

In September 2010, Ernest Withers was exposed as having been an FBI informant under the COINTELPRO program. Wikipedia describes the program: “COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological warfare, planting false reports in the media, smearing through forged letters, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, extralegal violence and assassination. Covert operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971; however, the FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception. The FBI's stated motivation at the time was ‘protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.’”

Systemic racism in the 1960’s and today is played out in the justice system. I believe one of the largest COINTELPRO operations against minorities in modern America is The (Johnnie) Cochran Firm fraud. The law firm that was founded by Johnnie Cochran is now owned/managed by apparent white racists and black Confederate soldiers who misuse their position as legal agents for certain minority clients to reduce or eliminate payouts by government entities and certain corporate defendants in civil actions after police brutality and murders or corporate wrongdoing. My interest in improving the justice system began when The Cochran Firm pretended (under contract) to be my family’s wrongful death attorneys in 2003 after the secret incarceration and murder of my mentally, physically handicapped brother, Larry Neal. The lawyers lied to us via U.S. Mail fraud about legal action they were not actually taking to bring suit against Memphis/Shelby County Jail for Larry’s wrongful death. We did not discover the lawyers’ fraud until the end of the statute of limitations.

The Cochran Firm has been sued repeatedly in recent years by clients for fraud and malpractice and by its former attorneys alleging racism and fraud after being fired or forced out of the firm following Johnnie Cochran’s death. None of the lawsuits against the devious law firm were allowed to proceed to a jury trial, to my knowledge, and they are given little to no media coverage lest other legal consumers be warned. The injustice system will go to any extreme to protect its investment in The Cochran Firm, which is actually allowed to plead “not guilty by reason of nonexistence” when sued by clients for fraud. Presumably, The Cochran Firm also misuses the attorney/client privilege to extract information from its unsuspecting clients that it shares with its real clients. The Cochran Firm does good legal work sometimes, just as Ernest Withers took nice photographs. Not every case is assigned to the "defraud the client" file drawer, or the program would self-destruct. More information about The Cochran Firm fraud is available at my blog – FreeSpeakBlog – and in this article. Also visit our website - “Wrongful Death of Larry Neal.”

The Tent City saga started in 1959 when a black man named Burton Dodson was wrongly convicted for the murder of a white man who was killed in 1940, Oil Burow. Burow was a participant in an angry mob that descended on Dodson’s home to kill him because Dodson had brawled with a white rival over a black woman they both desired. The Jackson Sun gives a thorough account of the events that led to Tent City and details of the civil rights struggle that ensued. Access the link at the photograph above for the full Jackson Sun report. A brief excerpt is below:

1959: Burton Dodson trial in Fayette County for alleged murder of white man in 1940. Dodson and a white man were both involved with a black woman. They fought over her. On May 23, 1940 in the early morning hours, Sheriff W.H. Cocke and a number of "deputies" descended upon Dodson's home and ordered him to surrender. He refused, so they began firing. Dodson's wife and children were on the ground outside the house. Dodson ran west and fired back. The white man, Oil Burow, was shot as he stood east of the house, down a hill and behind a tree. Dodson escaped, but was found in St. Louis 18 years later. A deputy testified that white men shot at Dodson from trees and tops of buildings as he attempted to escape. He said he doubted that Dodson fired the shot and described the angles and directions. But Dodson was convicted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to 20 years, later reduced to 10. He was in his 70s at the time. This trial fueled the determination of blacks to be able to vote so they could serve on juries. The one black registered voter called for jury duty pleaded illness and did not show up.

America’s injustice system continues discrimination against African Americans, incarcerating 1 in 9 young black males and 1 in 100 black females. In fact, 1 in 30 people in America (overwhelmingly minorities, poor whites, and the mentally ill of all races) are imprisoned or on standby for incarceration as parolees and probationers. In Georgia, where I live, the rate is 1 in 13. Although blacks comprise only 16% of the population, 41% of inmates on death row are black. But discrimination in the justice system is not limited to blacks. Latinos are also disproportionately incarcerated. Prison investors intend for Latinos’ numbers behind bars to rise sharply by enacting harsh immigration laws providing for illegal aliens to be imprisoned rather than deported. That means a larger prison debt for American taxpayers (already staggering, at $50 billion per year) and a substantial increase for prison owners and investors who would not only have larger checks from taxpayers but also more free laborers to continue displacing American workers. Whites are incarcerated at a lower rate than minorities, but the rate of arrest for lower middle class and poor Caucasians is also escalating. Elitists’ quest for dominance and free labor is boundless, especially regarding poor whites and minorities. Legislators are considering making menthol cigarettes illegal, the type that 80% of African American smokers use. If it passes, many people who currently have no criminal history may become eligible for arrest.

“A 2008 USA Today/Gallup poll found most Americans said racism was widespread against blacks in the United States. This included a slim majority of whites (51%), a slightly higher 59% of Hispanics, and the vast majority of blacks (78%). Americans also see racial discrimination as a major factor in four specific problems facing the black community -- lower average education levels for U.S. blacks, lower average income levels for U.S. blacks, lower average life expectancies for blacks, and a higher percentage of blacks serving time in U.S. prisons.” (Gallup)

Time changes some things, but “history” does not mean “bygone.” Courageous blacks who participated in the justice struggle in Fayette County and throughout the South and their descendents now have a political voice. Withers, who documented their quest on film, was exposed in September 2010 as having been an FBI informant. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program employed many such traitors who worked from within the civil rights movement to limit exposure of human rights violations in America and derail the pursuit for social and economic justice. Operatives like Withers ingratiated themselves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders to learn their plans and then make clandestine reports to the government. They performed other assignments to keep people subjected to oppression, including falsely testifying against activists to facilitate their arrests. This resulted in deadly confrontations with police and wrongful convictions such as happened to numerous Black Panther Party members and other political prisoners, some of whom have now been incarcerated for nearly four decades.

J. E. Hoover, who headed the FBI, believed it was imperative for America to maintain the existing social and political order (white dominance) and prevent the rise of a black Messiah. COINTELPRO embarked on an infowar to restrain the release of information about the freedom movement that was going forth in rallies, at marches, and in print. The FBI spread misinformation designed to create distrust among leaders of social movements and limit support from liberal whites and conservative blacks by labeling leaders “dangerous dissidents.” Some of the same methods were used against people who organized student protests against the Viet Nam War.

The infowar has moved to the Internet where the FBI has operatives work at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and most other social networks. The same infowar that was waged against Dr. King and others who fought for justice during the civil rights era continues on the Internet, especially after the Jena6 demonstration a few years ago, which was completely organized online. Over 20,000 protestors from all over the country met in a small Louisiana town where black children faced excessive sentencing after confronting white students who hung nooses to denote a “whites only” area on their high school campus. As more Americans use their First Amendment rights to publish news and viewpoints on the Internet that mainstream media under-reports or censors altogether, elitists' assault against free speech online intensifies.

There is much controversy about the “Internet kill switch,” which can be used by the president to shut down the Internet. But online shopping is booming, and shutting down the Internet would cost corporate America substantially. Therefore, there is another proposal (threat looming) to issue each American a unique Internet I.D. number. Everyone would be required to input his/her Internet I.D. number in order to go online. Passwords for your various Internet networks would no longer be used. You and Big Brother would have complete access to every online communication, including every email you send and receive, personal banking information, etc. It would not be necessary for the government to present a warrant to Internet providers to access Americans’ browsing history and personal Internet files. Human/civil rights activists could then be monitored and their electronic communication easily interrupted like mine has been for several years. There would be no more opportunity to leak documents and films to Wikileaks anonymously, and Internet businesses would fear no reprisal from Anonymous or other cyberstalkers if they punish someone like Julian Assange for publishing secrets. Americans who transgress and become human/civil rights activists can find their Internet I.D. number does not work for certain sites or at all.

Videos at my YouTube channel – jkempp703 – show illegal censorship at popular Internet networks that is used to limit the effectiveness of my advocacy for justice and compassion to disenfranchised people of all races, particularly mentally disturbed Americans. We have hundreds of videos that captured my censorship and acts, and I uploaded some randomly, including the following films:

1. PRISON LABOR PROFITS. I published an article entitled “Prisons Earn $878 Million Per Year Poisoning Inmates and Guards” at NowPublic.com. When I forwarded notice of the article to Care2 groups, an unseen hand changed the amount prisons earned to just $8 million to reduce exposure about the tremendous profits prison profiteers get while avoiding minimum wage and worker safety laws.

2. TWITTER POSTS 3 HOURS BACK. When I publish tweets at Twitter, where I am KoffieTime, my tweets were not being published to my followers as I posted them. Rather, they were going among tweets that had posted from 1 to 3 hours prior to minimize exposure of the human/civil rights issues I tweet about. On December 6, 2010, over 11,000 of my tweets suddenly disappeared – three days before the Georgia inmates’ labor strike that authorities knew inmates planned. They were reinstated in February 2011 after many complaints about censorship.

3. MLK’s FINAL SPEECH EDITED TO CHANGE HISTORY. In December 2008, I discovered that Dr.King’s final speech, his Mountaintop address, was fraudulently edited in 80% of the online text presentations. References to “dogs” and “water hoses” had been deleted, as had Dr. King’s references to “illegal injunctions” against demonstrators. Although my complaints about the disinformation were also censored, I hope corrections have been made.

4. GANGSTALKING MARY NEAL. I filmed the red, yellow, and green paint that gangstalkers used to outline my yard and draw arrows in the street pointing to my residence. The day after that vandalism, two helicopters stood still over our rooftop for 30 minutes (probably using the paint as a marker), and my elderly mother feared we were going to be bombed for asking WHAT HAPPENED TO LARRY NEAL and advocating for mental illness to be decriminalized in America.

No one should be targeted for harassment or endangered for using their First Amendment rights, especially not while many of us have relatives and friends "spreading democracy" in foreign lands, fighting in wars that cost financially challenged Americans trillions of dollars and many young lives. We are fast approaching the point where petitioning our government for a redress of grievances on any matter whatsoever is treated as homeland terrorism – even if inquiring why one's sick brother was secretly arrested and murdered in this land of “equal justice.” In addition to being stalked and censored, we are persecuted with poverty. Our justified lawsuit against Shelby County Jail after Larry’s secret incarceration and murder was never actually filed by The Cochran Firm, which worked for the jail behind our backs. Our lawsuits against The Cochran Firm for defrauding us were dismissed by judges who ruled falsely that (1) there is no Cochran Firm office in Georgia and (2) The Cochran Firm’s fraud against my family is “immaterial.” How outrageous is that? My emails to/from employers are prohibited. Advertisement income from my articles was impeded because gangstalkers clicked the ads more times than were reasonable in 2009, and my advertising accounts were canceled. Before filing suit against The Cochran Firm, which I did not know was COINTELPRO at the time, I made a decent income as a legal assistant at major law firms. Until I publish my book, we are on Food Stamps. As it is with many black people and an increasing number of whites who need entitlement programs, injustice is the cause, and caring for victims of corporate greed becomes another taxpayer burden.

Black History Month celebrations commemorate blacks who were successful in breaking through barriers to make accomplishments in human/civil rights, science, the arts, sports, media, corporate enterprise, and government. But I continually ask representatives, black and white: 'WHY DO YOU IGNORE A 21ST CENTURY LYNCHING and KKK-type recrimination against the victim's family for asking for justice after a lynching?' There is absolutely nothing historic about Jim Crow. The apology and grave are EMPTY - a joke, and half the people laughing are black.

In June 2010, Black police officers were sent to threaten me with arrest me if I kept telling people about Larry Neal’s lynching and asking for fairness to Kathryn Johnston’s family in their civil suit against Atlanta following the 92-year-old woman’s murder by police in 2006 - the world’s worse no-knock warrant case. I complied with the officers' illegal demand, knowing that some protesters against injustice in America already suffer internment as political prisoners on bogus criminal charges like Lynne Stewart, a 71-year-old activist attorney. It is ironic that my free speech rights were violated in Atlanta, a city with many black representatives, like Mayor Kasim Reed and Rep. John Lewis, who was awarded the President’s Medal of Freedom for civil rights advocacy during Black History Month 2011. The cover-up regarding Larry’s murder was done by Memphis Shelby County officials, many of whom were black.

The Johnnie Cochran Firm fraud against my family and the United States Justice Department allowed Shelby County to submit false records to the federal government that omitted Larry Neal’s name in order to hide his murder and avoid the necessity of prosecuting murderers and accomplices in government. Yet, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Holder, also a black man, refuses to respond to my family’s Freedom of Information Act requests for records and accountability or protect my constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of press or end the in-person stalking I experience. Unfortunately, African American leaders were more interested in uplifting the downtrodden when that was a condition they shared. Perhaps now they are prison investors. While authorities allowed Larry’s lynching without accountability, potentially innocent men like Troy Davis and others await the needle. While officials give speeches about how far the nation has come since slavery and the civil rights era, the ugly truth is blacks have lost ground to pit bulls, whose deaths are investigated and vigorously prosecuted. The injustice system, under some of the people who sharecroppers slept in cold tents to elect, will not agree that a handicapped black man's murder while under secret incarceration deserves justice. What did the Voting Rights Act really accomplish?

As founder/director of Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill, an online advocacy organization, I promote removing 1.25 million sick people from cruel incarceration into psychiatric hospitals or mandated outpatient treatment programs with subsistence assistance (AOT programs), depending on their offenses and reasoning. Making that change would eliminate discrimination against people based on their health status, reduce prison costs by at least $25 billion per year, create safer communities where mental patients are given preventive care rather than withholding treatment until crimes happen, and restore many people to wholesome lives. Psychiatry has made many advances within the last few decades. Mental illness is now like other chronic diseases such as diabetes that require medical monitoring and ongoing drug therapy. Success was already proved by AOT program participants in New York who experienced better than 85% reduction in their rates of homelessness, arrests, hospitalizations, and incarcerations after becoming program participants as compared to their circumstances three years before joining the program.

Assisted outpatient treatment programs are far less expensive and more humane than jailing America’s most vulnerable citizens (often in cruel solitary confinement cells, which is more expensive than internment in the general prison population), but not all psychiatric patients qualify. Those who have done violent crimes and some who lack the reasoning to survive outside a protected environment may need permanent hospitalization. AOT programs and long-term hospitalization would not burden taxpayers because of the $25 billion annual savings on prison costs. In fact, billions could be returned to state and federal budgets to forestall cuts on other needed programs. Savings and safer communities could be realized immediately if all mental patients being released from incarceration and hospitals were ordered into assisted outpatient treatment programs. That would stop the revolving door to prisons and hospitals for hundreds of thousands of people. Moreover, it would stop the mental health crises that lead to hospitalization and imprisonment.

Until recent years, I believed that America had “overcome” systemic racism and classism to a much greater degree than it has. I thought human trafficking ended in the 1800’s when slavery was supposedly abolished and that this country was much closer to being a true democracy than it is. My censorship and stalking in-person and online made for a rude awakening – my “red pill.” Many of our decision makers are prison profiteers, unfortunately, and criticisms and suggestions regarding the justice system might directly impact their stock portfolios. Consequently, I may have more COINTELPRO agents following me and censoring my communication than Dr. King had, partly because more money is invested in such projects now than ever before. Google “citizens police.” Secondly, setting up 30(?) Cochran Firm offices with clandestine purposes throughout America was a large investment.

Johnnie Cochran probably attracted COINTELPRO and the determination was made to take over his law practice when he began to manifest signs of being a “black Messiah.” Below are some of Cochran’s accomplishments (or offenses, depending on one’s perspective) during his final years:

1. In 1995, Cochran led the defense team that exonerated O.J. Simpson;

2. Cochran won numerous other high-profile criminal and civil cases, usually defending blacks, co-stared in a popular television justice show; did cameo roles in movies, and became the lawyer of choice for elite blacks as well as the “common man,” especially for clients seeking restitution after police violence;

3. Cochran signed a partnership agreement with an Alabama law firm with the vision of taking The Cochran Firm nationwide. Cochran stipulated that The Cochran Firm would dispense with criminal defense and only accept clients in civil action cases, according to Shawn Chapman Holley, a former Cochran Firm attorney who worked with Cochran for 17 years but was among the lawyers who were forced out of the firm after his death (Google “Controversy at The Cochran Firm” and hear her NPR interview).

4. Cochran was on the defense team that exonerated Elmer Gerard "Geronimo" Pratt, former minister of defense for the Black Panther Party who was incarcerated 27 years for a murder he did not do. The defense team subpoenaed and received records regarding the covert FBI COINTELPRO program, which was allegedly responsible for Pratt’s wrongful conviction. Although the records Pratt’s lawyers received were heavily redacted, there was enough negative information about unethical and illegal actions to prompt a Congressional investigation, and the COINTELPRO program was officially terminated.

5. In 2002, Cochran announced that he and others were organizing a Reparations Dream Team to seek restitution for descendents of African slaves in America.

6. In 2003, Cochran joined the Tulsa Reparations Council’s legal team pro bono to file suit for the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots. He saw that case as a step toward suing the U.S. Government and corporations that used slave labor.

7. In 2005, Cochran died, and his lawyers and staff were reportedly terminated or forced out of the firm.

"We have an obligation to fight hard and leave no stone unturned to find justice," Cochran said. "It's been too long coming, so we must act urgently."

In Fayette County, Tennessee people boycotted because sharecroppers who tried to register to vote in 1959 were evicted from their homes and forced to live in tents as punishment. Retailers in Somerville, Tennessee and other nearby towns had a list of people to whom they refused to make sales as punishment for activism. Consumers who supported justice for the sharecroppers retaliated by staging a shopping boycott that to demonstrate that unethical business practices did not pay. Consumer power – boycotting – was used frequently during the civil rights era to effect positive social change. During the labor movement, factories were prevented from manufacturing goods and getting them to the market by strikers who wanted safe working environments and fair wages. Shopping boycotts during the civil rights era and labor strikes during the labor movement limited income for corporate America and eventually triumphed over injustice. I believe the collective strength of consumers can still be victorious against economic and social oppression. The shopping boycott on March 9, 2011 will be the first BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE, when everyone can support change by refraining from shopping. Elitists recognize the power of boycotts for nonviolent social reform. Therefore, plans for the national shopping moratorium are censored. I made plans on the phone (which is tapped) to have youths pass out flyers announcing the BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE at the Black History Parade in Atlanta that was scheduled for Saturday, February 26. The parade was cancelled. On Sunday, February 20, I was prevented by the Internet censorship force from making the following comment to a post by Scott Camil on Facebook. He wrote about the workers’ protests in Wisconsin, and I tried to respond thusly:

Unity is the only thing that works for oppressed people. Americans are too divided along racial and economic lines and should harness our collective strength to overcome oppression. That is how we accomplished the 40-hr work week, minimum wage laws, women's suffrage, slavery abolition, and successes during the civil rights movement - Unity in Action. Join the SHOPPING BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE on March 9, 2011. Buy no groceries, gasoline, clothes, electronics, or anything whatsoever on March 9 to show you are fed up enough to stand up. When Americans show Big Business that we mean business, things will change. Appeals to conscience do not work, because business has no conscience. It only cares about money, so keep yours on March 9 – attack corporate greed that is obliterating the middle class and victimizing indigent people. The injustice system remands millions of poor Americans and immigrants to prisons to charge taxpayers $50 billion annually for their incarceration and furnish Fortune 500 companies with inmate laborers to avoid paying union wages. America’s jobs are shipped overseas and behind bars while workers are continually laid off. BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE on March 9 and the 9^th of every subsequent month throughout 2011.

SOMEHOW LYNCHING IS WORSE WHEN BLACKS PARTICIPATE IN THE COVER-UP THAT FOLLOWS.

In small Southern towns like Somerville, Tennessee, all the people know each other. In the segregated South, those who were greatest in the black community were indeed "servants," as Christ told His disciples they must be at the Last Supper. Black leaders - small business owners, teachers, ministers, landowning farmers - risked their lives to stand up for homeless sharecroppers. Things have changed now. How hard it is for me to understand black lawyers at The Cochran Firm tricking my elderly mother into a contract they never intended to honor in order to allow Shelby County Jail to escape accountability for Larry's murder! I still cannot fathom officials, especially African Americans, in high government offices and the media ignoring my brother's lynching and our terrorism as retaliation for asking for records and accountability. I was shaped by persons in Fayette County, Tennessee with high ideals of self-respect throughout my developing years. I hope my sharing this Black History report on their courage and persistence in the face of prejudice and danger helps terrorists understand why gangstalkers driving by my home and barking like dogs out of their car windows to mock our justice quest - which we call "DOG JUSTICE" - will not deter our righteous pursuit for open records and equal justice regarding my murdered brother and The Cochran Firm Fraud against my aged mother and family. Google “DOG JUSTICE BY MARY NEAL.”

When it became obvious that Larry’s secret arrest and murder was condoned by the United States Justice Department, I began warning other Americans that the “inalienable” right to life is quite alienable. Before there is a number 2876392 and other long numbers that were branded on Jews in Germany, there is always a number 1. I did my best over the last few years despite censorship to publish the fact that Larry “went missing” but was actually detained in secret government custody for weeks until he emerged as a naked corpse in a body bag, and explanation and records are denied. Government crimes that are not addressed escalate. In 2009, Mitrice Richardson, a young college graduate in California who suffered from depression, was arrested during a mental health crisis and her family never saw her alive again. Her bones were recovered nearly a year later. Now 37 Georgia inmates who dared to ask for humane incarceration are also missing. In these last days, people are without natural affection, but authorities should be made to obey the law and respect humanity.

As bad as racism was in the 1960's when COINTELPRO suppressed citizens' public complaints about systemic prejudice that relegated a whole race of people to the back of the bus, literally and figuratively, it is even worse to have a family member lynched and have records withheld and justice denied with so many blacks in public office across the country. At least in the bad old days we thought we knew who was who. My Fayette County neighbors suffered for months and some for years living in tents to secure the right to vote in the 1960’s, but THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT DID NOT MAKE AN APPRECIABLE CHANGE. People who think there is too little bipartisanship in government should ask authorities, “WHAT HAPPENED TO LARRY NEAL?” They all agree on “no comment.” Likewise, representatives from major political parties, black and white, agree on much legislation that Americans find objectionable. Consider the cooperation among media, government agencies, and civil/human rights organizations evident in my family’s denial of records and accountability for Larry’s lynching for seven years. I wrote a poem and published it online called, “Elite Integration.” It is time for We the People of all races to unite and use our collective consumer power to protest injustice.

A democracy requires authorities as well as the citizenry to obey the law. The government should not allow and certainly not facilitate stalking and censoring me for asking for justice, and it should not have happened during the civil rights movement. "It's something you would expect in the most ruthless, totalitarian regimes, '' said D'Army Bailey, a retired Memphis judge and former activist who came under FBI scrutiny in the '60s. The spying touched a nerve in black America and created mistrust that many still struggle with 40 years later. "Once that trust is shattered that doesn't go away, '' Bailey said. (Memphis Commercial Appeal Ernest Withers report, Sept. 12, 2010) Perhaps Judge Bailey did not consider that to trust government is to doubt the Word of God. Revelation states plainly that before the end, there will be no governments that respect civil/human rights. Instead, there will be a One World Government that begins as a benign entity but becomes a cruel dictatorship. It will happen, but it does not have to happen on our watch.

Many elitists seem to view the earth as one Big Business and consider all of God's creation, including people, as being mere commodities. At the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, it will be revealed that the earth is the Lord's and all the fullness thereof. Like the 1960 Fayette County landowners, God has eviction papers for people who disobey Him. They will be exiled to a warmer climate.

I hope you had a happy Black History Month and that you found this article educational and inspiring. If so, please share the link. Remember that "history" does not mean the same as "bygone." While we celebrate yesterday's victories each February, let us be cognizant of hard lumps that yet remain in the melting pot that is called America - home, sweet home. U.S. history has many heroes of all races, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds, but our future depends on more coming forward. Jesus Christ, the world's greatest human rights advocate, invites, "Whosoever will, let him come."