Obama Unveils Rosa Parks Memorial!

President Barack Obama and members of Congress introduce the statue of famed civil rights icon Rosa Parks. For one moment in history, you see our leaders actually agree on one thing: Rosa Parks did something that changed the nation.

December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.

Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

Her fight for equal rights motivated King to prominence.

The president unveiled the Rosa Parks memorial at the hub of the National Statuary Hall. This is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story, semicircular room with a second story gallery along the curved perimeter.

For one day the Washington lawmakers had a brief moment of clarity.


President Obama and members of Congress are so far apart on issues. The Republicans want to wreck the economy because they're sore losers. And the public is feeling it. Many Black and Hispanic workers fear that if the Congress fails at solving the fiscal crisis, they'll suffer.

There is a major lawsuit on the dockets of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Shelby County v. Holder is at the whims of a partisan court. The Supreme Court will make a landmark (5-4) decision on due process. The Court granted certiorari on the limited question of "whether Congress' decision in 2006 to reauthorize section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) [sic] of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution."

If the Court strikes down any portion of the Voting Rights Act it's going to unravel all the hard work done by the Democrats during the "hot summer of 1965".

Republicans already gerrymandered districts to give their party a 2-1 advantage in general elections. Many state governors are trying to make electoral votes separate count. Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett is likely going to sign a law that breaks up the "winner takes all" strategy. It makes all the rural and suburban (likely Republican strongholds) a single vote for the candidate who pulls the most votes.

Republicans are going to make it harder for Democrats to win elections. Even though they've tried with voter suppression, voter identification laws and false cries of voter fraud, Republicans are devoted to stop progress in the name of extremism (not conservatism).