I host a daily public affairs radio show in San Francisco called Your Call. It airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM. I am also happy to report that I recently got a book deal with PoliPoint Press to write about my road trip through the heartland and the interviews I did with people about why they vote the way they do (or not). It's scheduled to be out in September.
On November 14, 1916, Margaret Sanger was arrested for disseminating birth control information at her Brownsville Clinic in Brooklyn; she was arrested again two days later for the same reason. The police shut down the clinic within 10 days.
posted by storiesinamerica @ 7:31 PM
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I'm currently writing a book about my recent six-month road trip to the so-called "red states." I also report for KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco, AlterNet and Bay Area BusinessWoman.
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From a book review of "Pandora Revisited.(War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race)...
One of Black's most interesting sections details Margaret Sanger's close ties to eugenics. Black is a fan of Sanger, believing her to have been a "visionary reformer." He also unequivocally states his support for Planned Parenthood (apparently ignoring that organization's support for late-term eugenic abortion). Thus, he clearly has no "pro-life" ax to grind, no desire to besmirch Sanger's memory. This renders his clear and impeccably documented recitation of Sanger's heartless eugenic beliefs and her tight embrace of social Darwinism -- she opposed charitable efforts to assist the poor and downtrodden -- all the more devastating.
"Sanger was an ardent, self-confessed eugenicist," he writes, who turned "her otherwise noble birth-control organizations into a tool for eugenics, which advocated for mass sterilization of so-called defectives, mass incarceration of the unfit, and draconian immigration restrictions." Not only that, but Sanger engaged repeatedly in what today would be labeled hate-speech, referring "to the lower classes and the unfit as 'human waste' not worthy of assistance," and proudly spouting "the extreme eugenic view that human 'weeds' should be 'exterminated.'" Sanger apparently never shed these odious beliefs; Black quotes speeches and comments she made in favor of eugenics as late as 1953. Such attitudes -- basically, a rejection of the sanctity and equality of human life -- led Sanger and many other eugenicists to embrace euthanasia of the unfit as another means of eugenically improving society, an approach that Black labels "eugenicide." Some (although not Sanger) went so far as to advocate the use of "lethal chambers" for the mass killing of the unfit.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-109411359.html
It is amazing to me that people are still celebrating the life of this incredibly evil woman. How ironic, when she evidently had no reverence for life herself.
Andrew Jackson attempted genocide against the Cherokee nation. His decisions led to the infamous "Trail of Tears" incident and if he'd had his way the entire red race would have been wiped out. It didn't happen because of the fact that the US gov't is a democracy so he didn't get his way. Now this genocidal man who was every inch a racial supremacist is on the $20 bill and is generally thought of as a hero. History is like that sometimes. Often, the difference between a hero and a villan depends on nothing more than who is writing the history.
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