Edmond Pettus
The guy the bridge is currently named after was born in Alabama in 1821. Let's just call that Strike one.
After the end of the Mexican-American war, this War of Northern Aggression, he moved to California, where he participated in another ethnic cleansing of Yukis and other Native Americans. That's definitely Strike Two.
In 1877, during the final year of Reconstruction, Pettus was named Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. Of Course he was. STRRIIIKKE Threeeee!
I like this way of judging the past. It seems reasonable and like a compromise. Three strikes and you don't get a statue or even a bridge. No one makes you choose any particular path.
Our founding fathers chose to exploit less fortunate people just like the industrialists in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" or the industrial farms that exploited Cesar Chavez's people in the '70s. Our country was founded by industrialists for industrialists.
These slave owning white supremacist minds are still running things. I think the key to changing the system might be hidden in the Declaration of Independence.
" That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
If you vote, you give your consent for another industrialist to manipulate the government for their benefit. You will never have any choice but to vote for the pro industrialist candidate, that's the system.
If you are only offered a version of life, liberty and happiness in very narrow terms, why give your consent? Trading one super obnoxious pro industrialist for a bumbling one is not a real option.
The working class has tried for at least 150 years to secure our rights and we've met with nothing but opposition. We can keep struggling... to not be singled out for execution or we can boycott this system that doesn't offer legitimate change.
Most of you will stampede to the Cattle Stalls of Democracy this year hoping for a $600 table scrap to fall off of Big Pharmas $5 Billion smörgåsbord. You aren't getting anything for your vote, you're only giving your consent to be governed by the industrialists.