Exploiting Deaths of the SC Nine Before They Can Be Laid to Rest

Judi McLeod / Canada Free Press

It’s not the trumped up battle over the 150-year-old Confederate flag that’s what the slaughter of nine victims at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is really all about.  It’s that the flag protesters seek to make a flag flap transcend the deaths of nine people in church—bypassing those tragic deaths as though they never happened.

For shame the tragedy was made political before even Susie Jackson, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, DePayne Doctor, Ethel Lance, Daniel Simmons Sr., Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, and Tywanza Sanders could be laid to rest.

For shame that #BlackLivesMatter trumps ‘Rest in Peace’ at the same moment their loved ones are prostrate in unimaginable heartbreak and grief.

Blaming their deaths on the Confederate flag is a convenient political tool for all those who keep stirring the pot of racial discord in America.

“On Friday, the White House joined the debate, saying that Obama believes the rebel flag belonged in a museum.” (Daily Mail, June 22, 2016)

If Obama sincerely wanted to mothball the Confederate flag by hiding it in the obscurity of a museum, why did he wait seven years to turn on it?

Many black men sacrificed their lives fighting on both sides of the American Civil War.  How many of the nine’s ancestors could be counted among them?

Nor is Obama the only politician willing to politicize the tragedy that took place Wednesday at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Jumping with big feet into the Confederate flag fray from the permanent sidelines where he’s been ever since presidential election defeat is Mitt Romney.  Romney, who branded the historic Confederate flag a “symbol of racial hatred”, could only join growing calls for South Carolina’s Capitol to take it down in the wake of the mass shooting, primarily because he’s got nothing to lose.

Romney already lost everything he had to lose courtesy of his ineffectual ‘nice guy’ presidential campaign against Barack Obama.

A stark contrast to the politician-led Confederate flag mob were the thousands who gathered on Saturday at the Arthur Ravenel Bridge. 

“Thousands of people marched across Charleston’s main bridge in a show of unity after nine black church parishioners were gunned down during a Bible study. (Daily Mail, June 22, 2015)

“Crowds gathered on either side of Arthur Ravenel Bridge at around dusk and then met toward the middle of the span.

“Part of the bridge was closed as people were walking, taking pictures and chatting.
When the marchers from the Mount Pleasant side and the Charleston side met on the bridge, there was clapping and singing of This Little Light of Mine.

‘It feels great. There’s so much love out here,’ said Juliett Marsh of Summerville, who was toward the front of the marchers who walked from the Mount Pleasant side.   

The ‘little light’  of the bridge marchers shone brighter than the one the politicians are trying so hard to shine.