Great start to a wonderful weekend with the celebration of our 3rd ‘Support the PWC Economy Party.’ It was great to see everybody again. I wish everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. And, as we go about our activities this weekend let’s remember those who have served in our armed forces and especially those who have died in their service to our country.
64 Thoughts to “Happy & Safe Memorial Day Weekend to All”
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- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
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- New Dominion Project
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- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
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- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
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- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
I missed the party last night. When is the next one? Any plans?
Thanks Eric, Annabel, Unity, band and everyone for the great time last night! It was quite a treat!
We had a great time too! Thanks to Annabel and Eric for all their hard work. KG, it was wonderful to meet your beautiful girls!
Thanks, Elena! Your children are gorgeous as well and had a great time running around : ) Mr. _ from VOPS/Unity (and other organizations as I recall) was a blast! He entertained the kids for quite awhile. So thank you! You know who you are! (And it’s a good thing because I forgot your name LOL.)
Alanna….I love your hair!!!!! Can I have it? Hee hee hee
I am glad to hear all of you had such a good time last night. I am so bummed that I had to miss. I really enjoy getting together with all of you. It is wonderful to be around people who have similar views. I have always felt quite out of step with everyone else I know. I am so happy that I have had an opportunity to meet each of you.
Thanks Annabel, Eric, Elena and Alanna for your dedication and hard work. Your efforts are very much appreciated.
I hope I will be able to attend the next party, however, I will be going to California on June 29 and not returning until July 16. I am going for my Mom’s 80th birthday and to visit my two beautiful sisters.
Have a great weekend and for all of you who read and post to this blog, if you are a veteran or currently serve our nation in the military, I say THANK YOU!!!
Thanks everyone for joining us last night. We’re planning a fourth party on in conjunction with Loving Day, commemorating the 41st anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision (June 12, 1967) that legalized interracial marriage. Loving Day celebrants hosts parties all over the country each year as close to June 12th as they can manage. The parties are very popular with interracial couples looking for community support, with couples who were ahead of their time like my Mom and Dad, with interracial people like me, and people of all races who believe in the merits of diversity and social progress. My parents and I hosted a Loving Day party last year in Arlington and a BBC News team showed up to cover it. This year, Prince William County is in need of some love, so we’ll host the party at a PWC location to be announced.
Father’s Day weekend is June 13-15, and we’re afraid people will be going out of town. So, we may try to do it the weekend of June 20th instead. We’ll keep you posted.
What a perfect time to throw a party, Eric! LOVE IT!!! : )
Mrs. Loving passed away recently, about a month ago. Around that time they played archive tapes from the Supreme Court case on C-Span radio. One lawyer who argued for the Mr. and Mrs. Loving was a Japanese American, so they started talking about the Japanese race. The Justices asked him how his parents would feel if he married outside his race. He admitted that they would be uncomfortable with that.
It was incredible hearing the lawyers for Virginia arguing that the law was needed to keep the White race pure. The Supreme Court justices were interested in equality under the law and asked, “Don’t the other races, such as Asians, have a right to keep their bloodlines pure?” The State of Virginia argued that since less than one percent of the Virginia population at that time was Asian, a law was not needed to protect the purity of the Asian race because interracial marriages involving Asian Americans were rare.
Eric, I still find things like that incredible. And yet, we have people right now saying the exact same thing, as if the Loving case never happened. What kind of time warp are we in?
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and time!
Thanks so much Eric. What a great time for a party.
I have to agree with kgotthardt and I also need to say that not much has changed in Virginia in the past 40 years. I truly do feel that we have regressed in this state and in the nation.
sorry to miss it. I was not feeling well. Today I am feeling better.
To lighten up the mood, I saw this event on obamas website
“carpool to canvass”\I really wanted to find a carpool to Puerto Rico to canvasss for Obama…….
LOL! Wouldn’t you need a plane-pool or boat-pool?
pvogel, Sorry to hear you have been under the weather. Glad to hear you are feeling better.
Actually, Virginia has come a long way since 1967. When I look at the opportunities that were once shut off to college educated women in 1967 and look now at what women can do, I am totally amazed.
Many African Americans do not know what it was like to have seperate facilities or segregated schools.
Those days were a life time away. Much has changed and for the better. People are people and will always lean towards protecting the status quo and their way of life. It is the human condition. There is no one giant step for Virginia mankind. It has all been in incremental steps.
k,
I am so sorry to hear you attended the party and with REGRET I could not make it.
I looked forward to meeting you and some other new people, plus saying hello again to the people I had already met.
Oh well, you know what they say: you snooze, you loose. It was just a busy week with my pound puppy and everything else 🙂
I agree things are changing for the better. I think that this latest retrograde is a minor growing pain compared to what was accomplished in Mr. and Mrs. Loving’s day.
Red Dawn, so sad not to see you. Next party will be planned per your schedule. (=
FYI – Things I Didn’t Know Dept.
From today’s Austin Statesman –
“Wall-Mart de Mexico has more than 1,000 stores, almost 150,000
employees and 2007 revenue of $22 billion U.S.. It recently
launched a push into financial services with Banco Wal-Mart.”
The statement was in an article about the rapid expansion of the
H-E-B supermarkets (apparently the Texas version of Wegmens)
into northern Mexico
Commerce and people go both ways.
Eric,
“Red Dawn, so sad not to see you. Next party will be planned per your schedule. (= ”
Have your agent call mine…..JUST KIDDING! You leave me with no excuse to not be at the next one 🙂 I do regret not being able to attend 🙂
kgotthardt, 24. May 2008, 22:30
“Eric, I still find things like that incredible. And yet, we have people right now saying the exact same thing, as if the Loving case never happened. What kind of time warp are we in?”
You must travel in highly bigoted, racist circles if that is what your experience with people in our area happens to be, kgotthardt. I’ve lived in PWC since the early ’60s and it’s been decades since anyone in my experience has given interracial marriages a second glance. Actually, this area was far more tolerant than most even at a time when the remainder of the South, and much of the North, was experiencing extreme racial tension…it’s the reason that we’ve had such relatively large groups of LEGAL immigrants of every ethnicity grace our county over the past decades.
AWCheney,
There will and remains to be ” fill in the term” about interracial relationships or whatever.
I can say this because I have my feelings/beliefs about close friends or better yet FAMILY members.
It does exist. It is not given a second glanced out on the street ( because of the mentality … its doesn’t effect me/not my…. but when it is brought HOME, the story changes. Just like that saying you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, people will say one thing in FRONT of your face and another behind your back.
I KNOW it exists, as I face it MYSELF and that is being HONEST!
AWCheney,
In my experience, I find that hard to believe that people have been “color” blind for decades. The civil rights act was adopted in 1964. But there was not a sudden change of heart by so many that grew up steeped in racism. The KKK is on the rise recently, clearly hate still has a powerful message that attracts. I had a very serious boyfriend who was black, we broke up shortly before I met the man who would be my husband, so this was not “decades” ago. When we would go out( we both lived in Fairfax), we ALWAYS got stares, sometimes you would see people comment AND stare at us. One time, we were sitting in a restaurant, and this guy would NOT stop staring at us, all the while ignoring his wife and children. I finally asked him, very politely, if he could please refrain from staring at us, it was making me uncomfortable. His reaction was irritation and then embarrassment, but he did finally avert his gaze. If you believe there are no longer a multitude of people who still view interracial marriage as abhorant, or just simply unsettling, I do not believe that is reality and strongly disagree with you.
Good grief, parents freak out if their kids marry outside of their religion. Throw race in there and some parents are suicidal. Doesn’t matter what race they are.
Moon-howler,
Boy are you right!
Moon-howler,
Thanks for the perspective and laugh….that was priceless….I forgot about religion.
I was getting ready to finally confess after ALL these years, I kissed a black boy in the 1980’s…….Girl gone wild 🙂
Elena, 25. May 2008, 21:31
“AWCheney,
In my experience, I find that hard to believe that people have been “color” blind for decades.”
Elena, you might want to read my comment more carefully, for instance:
“Actually, this area was far more tolerant than MOST even at a time when the remainder of the South, and much of the North, was experiencing extreme racial tension…”
I also qualified my statement with “in my experience,” which is, albeit, rather extensive in PWC, going back as far as it does. My principal experience with racism goes back to the 50s when we were living in Alexandria. We had some rather racist next-door neighbors but in our house we often broke bread with blacks at our table who may have come by to pick up their paychecks (they were employees of my father), or for some other errand, and it happened to be mealtime. At least one of them was “Uncle Frank” to me because he was around so much and he asked me to call him that. I never said that “people have been “color” blind for decades (you can’t even honestly say that most people of other races are, or were, colorblind),” although many were and are…but relative to the rest of the nation, Prince William County was far better than many, if not most, places.
I need to add a codicil to that last statement in my comment: the WESTERN end of Prince William County was far better than most…the eastern end of the county tended to be very transient in those days and had its problems, but nothing like most places experienced.
AWCheney,
I have a friend who grew up in the haymarket area and she has a completely different perspective than you regarding the prevelance of racisim.
I am somewhat confused, are you saying that PWC is more diverse, than lets say, fairfax county? Are you suggesting that me and my boyfriend would not have had the same experience in Manassas or Haymarket 14 years ago as that of Fairfax?
Wasn’t there an incident with a KKK symbol and the basketball coaches of Brentsville High back in the mid 90’s?
“You must travel in highly bigoted, racist circles if that is what your experience with people in our area happens to be, kgotthardt. I’ve lived in PWC since the early ’60s and it’s been decades since anyone in my experience has given interracial marriages a second glance. Actually, this area was far more tolerant than most even at a time when the remainder of the South, and much of the North, was experiencing extreme racial tension…it’s the reason that we’ve had such relatively large groups of LEGAL immigrants of every ethnicity grace our county over the past decades.”
You cite one incident, Elena, from modern history whereas your original comment referenced the earlier days of PWC. Relative to what was going on in the rest of the country in the 60s it was really quite peaceful here in Prince William County, to the point that, during the riots in DC, they had to send people out here (several vehicles with DC tags) to try to stir things up at a teen social event (bi-racial, I might add…I don’t believe that we had a great many other races here at that time). They were quite unsuccessful, and escorted back to their vehicles…and not by the whites. That’s one incident from my recollection…I believe you’re trumped. That coach was dealt with, by the way.
Insofar as your experience in Fairfax County versus mine in Prince William, to which era are you referring? My experience here in PWC, up until the 90s before it became the bedroom community to the nation, was that neighbors knew each other, many over generations (again, I’m speaking of the Western end, which included Manassas); if you should happen to go to a home to use the phone (in the days prior to cell phones), or for some other impromptu reason, you were as likely to be invited in for a meal if they were at dinner, as not; people smiled at each other on the street and, if someone honked the horn at you, it was likely that they either recognized you or thought you were someone they knew.
How was Fairfax County in those day, Elena? I remember Fairfax County very well…my father (his company) did a substantial amount of the masonry construction on the residential subdivisions there in the 50s, 60s, and up until his death in 1973. People didn’t know their neighbors, often living like they were under siege; drugs became a big problem in the schools there LONG before we ever had any problems in this county, and gangs were non-existent here (unless you call HS cliques gangs). I’m sure that there was bigotry here, but it wasn’t flaming racism as you had in many areas of Northern Virginia, including Fairfax County. Even the integration of our schools was absolutely seamless because blacks were not centralized in any single community. They lived everywhere and were our neighbors, so they just turned the “Black” HS (Jennie Dean) into a Middle School and sent them to their neighborhood schools TOTALLY WITHOUT INCIDENT…and no busing necessary. Now, if you want to talk about the 90s when Prince William County began to be called the “Fairfax County of a decade ago,” I can see where you might have some problems.
Insofar as “diversity” is concerned, in the 70s we had large numbers of Vietnamese refugees who settled here and assimilated quite nicely, thank you. The 80s saw the El Salvadorans as the single largest immigrant group to come here and call our County home…and they also were inclined to assimilate. Of course, there were also many other immigrants from a variety of other nations who peacefully settled in our communities. Trying to paint Prince William County as someplace with a racist and bigoted history is disingenuous, particularly when trying to compare us with other communities. You can always find individual incidents if you look (no matter where you are you’re going to be able to find someone), but as a community we have been rather exemplary…and I’ve been proud to be a part of it.
AWC,
HERE, HERE!!!
Elena,
Did your friend attend PWC public shcools? We grew up here in Manassas(PWC). I attended public schools in the county. Stonewall Jackson is where I graduated from. I went to school with kids from all walks of life, religions, nationalities, and races. We all got along and I never heard racism growing up around here. I guess things must have been different in Haymarket or at a private school. I went to school with kids from Gainesville/Haymarket when nobody even knew those two places where on the map. I don’t of any of my many friends that grew up there, and I don’t think they have the perception your friend had.
“Perception is reality”
oops..meant to say
I don’t of any of my many friends that grew up there, and I don’t think they have the perception your friend had.(scratch this all together)
****************************
I have many friends that grew up out there, and I don’t think they had the same perception as your friend.
AWCheney,
I think it’s safe to say that you are truly blind if you can’t see how racist the resolution was, how racist much of the testimony in support of it was, and what it reveals about the true face of our community. Oh yes, everything was fine back in the day when whites were the overwhelming majority, minorities had very little political clout, and the blacks knew their place. All that’s changing now. The resolution is one result of bigots trying to reassert their dominance in an abusive way.
I can write more later. But I think the true challenge for PWC was this new influx of one group, i.e. hispanics to see ascertain how welcoming we were to a large group of new immigrants who look and speak differently. I think PWC failed. Fairfax clearly, overwhelmingly, has a much higher ethnic mix as they have been “urbanized” to a degree that PWC has not. I can only speak to Fairfax as my experience, that is where I grew up. But I think it is interesting that Fairfax is dealing with their “illegal” immigration issue much differently. I promised the kids I wouldn’t spend my day on the computer, but will write more later.
No Elena…the true racists are on THIS blog. This is where logic and reason AND FACTS are totally irrelevant as long as you can paint everyone else a bigot and a racist so that you can stir the pot. That’s your only fall-back position. You’re just like those guys who came here from DC “for the evening” because the radicals couldn’t get any traction here, hoping to stir up anti-black sentiment (ironically, not anti-white sentiment) and were removed by those of their own race…unceremoniously. I gotcha…and I’m gone. I’ve said my piece.
Sorry, that last comment should have been addressed to Mackie.
Not sure where you are seeing racists on this blog, AW. That would imply some of us don’t like certain people of particular ethnic origins. Speaking for myself, I respect humanity in general. I like and dislike people equally and individually. People are people. In every place in every country in every nook and cranny, there are good people, annoying people….and then, total jerks. Jerks are people who are unfair, treat certain populations worse than others, are mean spirited, and are counter-productive to human evolution.
Too many total jerks have been ruling this conversation for too long, IMHO.
I am trying to figure out who people here are supposedly racist against.
I don’t believe in calling people racists without a great deal of evidence. Usually, by then, it is just too much trouble and easier to stay away from them. Unfortunately, if we use that term too often and too frequently, it becomes meaningless when racism really exists.
There are a lot of otherwise intelligent people in the Republican Party who diminish and dismiss any and all instances of racism, not because they actually believe that racism and other forms of bigotry are no longer a problem, but because in the current climate, the very existence of such problems is an inconvenient political reality for them, and, frankly, for all Republicans thanks to the short-sighted miscalculations of a few.
Although the threat is much smaller now, there remains a hostile take-over being attempted by actual bigots (of which there very few) and partisan Republicans who are not bigots, but unfortunately believe there is short term political advantage to be gained exploiting Dobbsian anti-immigrant hysteria. The moderate side of the party feels that these people are anachronisms and embarrassments, and, that their strategy will lead to long term disaster for the party as the American electorate becomes more integrated and more tolerant, younger and better educated.
It should come as no surprise that a supporter of the Immigration Resolution would make the claim that racism is an imaginary problem. This reflects the larger battle going on within the GOP.
The Immigration Resolution was a political strategy devised by Tom Kopko (Second Alamo) for the purposes of the reelection campaign of Corey Stewart. The fact that expressions of racism fueled the Resolution, and made it possible, is an embarrassment to mainstream Republicans, especially now that it has been established that public opinion rejects such sentiment in this area and throughout the Commonwealth.
In order to take a partisan seriously on the subjects of race and racism, we need to establish first and foremost that they have no history, nor any interest in using prejudice for political gain. If they supported the Resolution, or, worse, still support it, for any reason other than lack of information, they represent an extremist wing of the party and should be interpreted in this context.
Do I have to remind everyone that the Republican nominee is John McCain??? You won’t hear John McCain denying the existence of prejudice. If not for the very real existence of prejudice, he would have been sworn in as President in Jan. 2001 (I’m referencing the “John McCain has a black baby” whisper campaign employed by Karl Rove’s extremist partisans employed for 2000 South Carolina Primary). McCain did not, and will not resort to hate-mongering to power his Presidential campaign. As recently as January, McCain’s integrity looked like his political undoing. But today, it has proven to reflect the mainstream of the party, and pointed the only feasible path to remaining competitive in our changing world.
So don’t listen to the extremists on race issues, listen to our standard bearer. The pragmatists have prevailed, and the extremists are on their way out, here, and around the country.
There are different degrees and definitions of racism, many of which white people are blind to. The only people who can credibly say that we are a color blind society, or that racism doesn’t exist, are those who have been targets previously, that is, blacks and other minorities.
Last night we went to the National Memorial Day concert at the Capitol. It was beautiful, moving, patriotic. It was a mix of music with stirring emotional stories about veterans. But in the end both my husband and I were flabbergasted. We had both noticed the same thing. All the featured stories were of white males. It was incomprehensible to us that in all the planning that went into the show, and considering that many minorities are now serving in the military and always have, that no one thought to include ANY African American or other minority family’s story, or even their face in the videos. Oh yeah, there was one black soldier in the corner of one of the videos for a second.
Forget immigrants….If I were a black person, I would have felt completed ignored. Gladys Knight was one of the performers–her son is active military–and I can only imagine what she must have been thinking. It was inexcusable.
So AWCheney, what would you call that? Is it racism? Or is it just not SEEING others?
Firedancer, that is so sad and inexcusable.
And it brings me back to local government here. Where are our minorities?
“I don’t believe in calling people racists without a great deal of evidence.” Yeah, but we have some pretty obvious racist stuff going on in this county and its led by vocal racists, IMO. It won’t stop unless we call them on the carpet for it and demand a change.
People don’t stop being racists because they are told to. You need to change the climate so it is unacceptable to be racist in public. As long as it is socially acceptable in public it stays.
You cannot change what is in people’s hearts. You just have to make them take the feelings into the shadows.
I keep going back to the Anti Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, KKK and Neo Nazi memberships are on the rise…….why? Because they have figured out that illegal immigration can be mutated into an issue that even mainstream regular folk can be outraged about and easily misled. What happens, when we have a new president, able to reach out and truly build a coalition to get legislation passed on numerous difficult issues, and a path to citizenship is accomplished, the dream act passes, and these neighborhoods are still dealing with demographic changes. What then, the idea of a resolution to deal with these issues will not be a solution. I had issues in my old neighborhood in centreville, I didn’t look to government for solutions. What happens if Anon moves to Ashburn and discovers that he may still face some of the same issues? Loudon had a HUGE increase in their latino population in the last five years.
Somehow, illegal immigrants are now responsible for every TB outbreak, MRSA outbreak, murder, rape, robbery, housing mortgage meltdown, public school failings, hospital closings, etc etc etc. The multitude of scapegoating issues alone should make people ask some simple questions about their legitimacy.
AWCheney,
I just can’t take you seriously, after all, didn’t you just recently post an article about a homeless woman, and somehow came to the conclusion that it was the fault of illegal immigrants for taking her welfare benefits and affordable housing from her, forcing her to live in her car. Talk about a farfetched connection! The article had NOTHING to do with illegal immigration, but somehow, YOU were till able to find them at fault.
Oh AWCheney,
And talk about no credibility. Since when is bringing in your “foes” children appropriate behavior? Once again, BVBL proves that nothing is off limits.
I have to give Greg credit, he did edit out the comments from Patty regarding Alanna and her children and beer.
Definately give Greg credit for that. Patty’s comments were some of the nastiest I’ve ever read in my life. Leave the children out of it. And those comments coming from someone who loves to throw the bible versus out there. Shame, shame, shame on Patty!!
You know Ruby, it must be hard, living with all that hate in your soul. I feel sorry for Patty.
Elena,
Agreed. There’s lots of time and energy wasted on hate, and it causes grey hair.
I’m having a real struggle with this statement, Firedancer, because I do see a lot of racism among minorities, as well. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Wright, has no credibility in my eyes, along with the parade of black “spiritual leaders” who have spewn anti-white hatred for decades. IMHO, the 9500 Liberty wall is a monument to “reverse racism.”
I don’t think that you can ever fully eliminate racism–to some extent, it is a part of the human condition for people to want to congregate and feel comfortable among their own kind, and to have some level of distrust against people who do not look or act like them. It’s hard to imagine that someone can be an authority on the presence/absence of racism simply because of the color of their skin, and not every person of color has necessarily been a target themselves.
I think racism exists in just about everyone, just at different points on a spectrum for different people. In a just society, people MUST control their worst impulses and treat each other with dignity and respect, but it is unrealistic that those thoughts/feelings/impulses can ever be completely eliminated in flawed human beings, and none of us can be the ultimate authority on what thoughts, feelings and attitudes can or cannot exist in other people’s minds. In a free society, people will always associate as they please, whether that is motivated by some degree of racism or not.
Sorry for the post-commute ramble.
Emma,
If it isn’t racism then it is status. I think the biggest challenge for all of us, is to step outside of a self “comfort zone”. I know it’s hard, as I include myself 🙂
I have to respectfully disagree with you in regards to 9500Liberty trying to “reverse” racism.