It started when I listened to Democracy Now this morning, February 1, 2010. The feature story about the new documentary, "The Freedom Riders," really hit home. No, I wasn't one of those incredibly brave freedom riders. They risked their lives--many of them gave their lives--to push this country back onto the path of democracy. I wasn't that brave. I was just starting out in college, and I was 17 (graduated from high school at a younger than normal age) and not a very emotionally mature 17 at that.

I grew up in a family that talked tolerance and spoke out against discrimination, rare in Texas in those days. Even as they taught me that discrimination was wrong, my parents revealed that they were not too comfortable with people of other races or nationalities. Still, they worked to overcome those deep southern prejudices, and that attitude rubbed off on me.

My Dad got transferred out of the state during the last couple of months of my senior year, so I ended up pre-enrolling at the local university, Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. I found myself living in a college dorm, getting dressed in my cap and gown to go graduate from high school. It was a bit strange and not too comfortable.

My best friend in those days turned out to be Frank Perry. He was older than me by 6 or 7 years, working on his master's degree in music. He was of African descent. Black. Negro, as we said in those days. But those of us living in that sleazy run down dorm during that time really didn't think much about race. There was the big fat guy, the skinny young kid (me), the eastern transplant engineering student, and Frank, the intellectual with the musical gifts. He had a bass-baritone voice that was born for the opera. After I left Midwestern for the University of Texas and then the University of Oklahoma, Frank went to Juilliard. From reading his obituary, which I only found today, I see that he went on elsewhere to get his Ph.D. He taught at numerous universities, and I would wager money that he touched hundreds of young lives as meaningfully as he touched mine.

He was tall, an athlete, and had some basketball scholarship money as I recall. He taught kids over in the segregated black side of town, where the roads weren't paved but where people never locked their doors. After he was married he and his wife provided a sofa for me to sleep on at their small house on a dirt road. We didn't have the Internet in those days. We kept in contact via the U.S. mail, but it was easy to lose touch back then. I went in the Navy and almost everything out of my past disappeared. I don't know what happened to people's addresses. Frank and I lost touch. He went on to what looks like a life well lived, an honorable, proud life with a beautiful family. His wife was gorgeous and beautiful inside, from what little I remember about those days. I didn't know her well.

Frank borrowed my car one time to go see her in Ft. Worth. Neither of us had any money, we both worked when not in classes, I barely made enough to make my $50 a month car payment and buy gas and food. He wanted to go to Ft. Worth to see his bride-to-be one time, and my logical brain determined that it would be cheaper if he took my car, and a lot faster than riding the bus. I remember that he asked if I had a gas can and I said, "No, why?" He said there was only one gas station between Wichita Falls and Ft. Worth that would sell gas to a black man and he wanted to be sure he had some spare gas so he would make it there. Getting stranded on the road could be deadly to a black man.

That was not my first encounter with discrimination in Texas. A few weeks before that discussion, Frank and I had, unintentionally, conducted what might have been the first sit-in demonstration in the state of Texas. It was certainly one of the earliest anywhere. And nobody knows about it to this day but me, and perhaps some of those rednecks at the Rexall Drug Store if they're still alive.

We had gone downtown to an office supply store to buy some good quality typing paper for a letter he wanted to look good. It was lunch time. The Rexall Drug Store lunch counter had good lunches cheap. Cheap was the primary concern for us. There were times in those days that I ate nothing but peanut butter and crackers for several days, waiting on my paycheck from the construction job I had, then later from the grocery store where I had worked in high school and then went back to in college.

So, it was lunch time, we were hungry, we had a couple of dollars between us--more than enough for a grilled cheese sandwich and chocolate shake for each of us. The Rexall Drug Store had great grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate shakes. I remember Frank was hesitant. He said, "I don't think they will serve us."

Now...I had led a sheltered life. Until we moved to Wichita Falls, we had lived along the Mexican border. Most all my friends were Mexicans. I could speak Spanish better than English when I was 7 years old. I had not learned to discriminate. There were people down there who didn't like Mexicans, but they were scorned as ignorant rednecks, for the most part. Churches in those days taught the Golden Rule to kids. The Boy Scouts taught respect for others. Most kids' parents taught the same things. I didn't know that some Americans were refused service because of their skin color. I had never seen the "Colored" and "White" restrooms because the only public buildings I had been in were schools and the college. I was really ignorant in the ways of the southern world I inhabited.

I said, "Why wouldn't they serve us? We've got money." And, we were dressed decently. I had been refused entry in places where jeans weren't allowed, but that was OK and normal.

Frank sighed and we went in and sat at the lunch counter. That was in the fall of 1960. There was sudden silence. People glared at us. The guy running the counter would not make eye contact. I started to get angry. Frank was very calm, as I remember. He had a Buddhist-like equanimity about him all the time. I said something curt to the server. A couple of the rednecks in cowboy hats started to get up off their stools. Frank said, "We're leaving." And he grabbed my arm in a viselike grip and pulled me outside and we got in my car and drove back to the campus with me yelling and screaming obscenities all the way. He didn't say much but I know he was thinking, "Now you know what it's like." There's a good chance he saved my life that day, as well as his own. They would have killed us out in the back alley. But at the time I was only angry, really angry.

Being refused service like that pushed me over the edge from being a naive kid who knew nothing to a full blown activist, and I used what meager writing talents I had to voice my disgust at the system. Two universities later I wrote for the campus paper, and reported for the Oklahoma City newspapers and always put extra effort into the stories that would expose the hypocrisy of those in power. It wasn't much but it's what I could do at the time. I wish I had been a freedom rider, but I didn't even know about it. The local newspaper avoided that kind of news.

There was another incident, the Sunday evening Frank came back from Ft. Worth with my car. He pulled up in front of the dorm, and all of us, myself and 2 or 3 others, piled in and went to the local drive-in restaurant. Drive-ins were big then in Texas. Since Frank was still behind the wheel, he drove. And it happened again. The very place where we had been many times, in my car, white and black...the bastards wouldn't serve us. A black man was driving. I guess if he was merely a passenger they would take our money.

It was a time of incredible insanity. The freedom riders, initially only a dozen of them, started a movement that made America better. What they did allowed Dr. King to do what he did. I don't know if Frank became a serious activist later on in the '60s or not. My guess is that he stayed in school and worked to educate others. He was a natural born teacher. His respect for education was second to none. He was a man who lived his principles. I only wish I had thought about googling his name and Juilliard earlier. He died last year, and I just found him today. Over the years his memory and the memory of those turbulent times would arise in my thoughts. I've never forgot that drug store incident, nor the drive-in one, nor the discussion about not being able to buy gasoline. The young affluent suburban high school students of today would find it hard to believe what America was like then. Of course, evil doesn't simply go away. Evil and mean people are like cockroaches, and if you turn off the light for one second, they come scuttling out from the cracks of darkness where they hide. Gay men have been tortured and killed in recent years much as black men were in those days of apartheid. As late as 1972, in a small town in Georgia, a film crew I was on was refused service because our crane operator was black. That was 8 years after the Civil Rights Proclamation of 1964. Black men still get stopped by cops in this area for things whites don't get stopped for. We have a black president...yet the ignorant, mean dregs of society still preach and practice hatred.

I wonder if Frank Perry--DR. Frank Perry--ever, in his mature years, thought about those days when he and the skinny white kid violated social convention and made people notice. Not that we were trying to make people notice--all we wanted to do was eat a cheap lunch at the drug store lunch counter. Something I had done many times by myself and with white friends.

Looking back, I wish we had refused to leave, had stood up to the rednecks, but I"m glad we didn't get beat up or killed because at that time in that place, it wouldn't have made a difference. And I know that Frank's life made a big difference in the lives of so many of his students over the last 40+ years. This is Black History Month, a time when all of us in my age group look back at who we were in those dark days, at what happened to us and to those we knew and loved. I remember many of the photographs of the angry, screaming whites tormenting little children in Little Rock who only wanted to go to school. I remember Lester Maddox and the ax handles...George Wallace...the governor of North Carolina who wouldn't talk to President Kennedy. And I remember the hard core Texan President Lyndon Johnson who, when he signed the Civil Rights Proclamation, called his press secretary Bill Moyers into his bedroom where, according to the story, he sat in his pajamas sipping bourbon and said, "Bill...I have just given the South to the Republican party." He was right. And yet, he did the right thing for the nation. He put America above his party, just as the freedom riders and all those thousands of peaceful protesters put America above their own lives. So if all you blathering talking head TV and radio creeps want patriotism, real and true American patriotism...you have no farther to look than the freedom riders and all those men, women and children who gave so much for the patriotic ideal of freedom and equality for all.

My regret is that I didn't keep in touch with Dr. Frank Perry, that I only found him too late to say, "Those were the days, my friend, those were the days.

I really hate it when I'm right about bad things. I have to say it: I toldja so. I have said here and in many places on the Internet and in person that I thought the Cheney/Bush administration had pushed us past critical mass in the inexorable slide into corporate fascism.

The 5-4 decision of the extreme activist Bush Supreme Court today puts the nail in the coffin. Now corporations can spend as much money as they want, say whatever they want to say--in other words, do whatever they deem necessary to defeat the candidates they want to defeat and promote the candidates they want in office to continue the U.S. policies hostile to democracies in other countries and halt restrictions on runaway corporate fundamentalism.

It is nothing less than total corporate takeover of the government. Sure, the media has been framing it all day as "unions and companies." That's pure BS. All the unions combined have only a tiny fraction of the money that's available to the giant corporations to spend to get their way. What this means is, most likely a return to a complete Republican Congress, instead of a near balance in the Senate (although in the Senate the Republicans have been able to block anything they want to block, which means everything Obama has proposed).

it also means that what Noam Chomsky has been saying for years is even more true than it ever has been: It won't make a damn bit of difference whether there's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration. The corporations will simply buy Democrats like they buy Republicans. It would take not one but three--yes three--non-right wing Supreme Court appointees to get back to an objective court. One of the decent justices is 89 years old and will no doubt be gone soon. Even if Obama is able to squeak by another non-right wing appointee, as he did with Sotomayor, that still leaves it 5-4. So then he'd have to appoint two more before he's defeated in the next election. That's not going to happen. Cheney/Bush appointed fairly right wing men, and they are going to be there until long after I'm gone.

So, the Supreme Court is a tool of Corporate America, as made painfully obvious by today's decision that flaunts 100 years of the law of the land and all the efforts of past courts to reform the law. It is a pure and simple partisan effort, no doubt planned by the right wingers for years. Newt Gingrich's and Trent Lott's thousand year Republican Reich is much, much closer to becoming reality today than it was yesterday. Oops, excuse me, that was Hitler who only wanted a thousand years. The extremist Republicans want a "permanent majority."

This perversion of American jurisprudence will have an impact on elections in every state, even in counties and cities. If a mayoral candidate is running in Kansas City and has come out in favor of more consumer-friendly local regulations for cell phone companies--hey, no problem. Sprint can simply cough up the cash to have him defeated. Some state legislator wants to control cable TV prices? Time-Warner can put in their own man. No problem. Money will do it. Unlimited money. That right wing attack group that did the fake documentary film to slam Hillary Clinton but couldn't run it 30 days before the election? They brought the case to the court and won, naturally. Now they can run all the anti-Obama lies they want. No regulation. They can tell lies, distort the truth, invent their own warped version of America, just as Fox "News" does daily...and we have no recourse. The American public is too controlled by advertising hype any more, and the once proud and free press is controlled by the very corporations who work to take freedoms from the people and give them to corporations. The people the corporations want in office will get into office.

Sure, maybe an occasional union candidate will win. But he won't last long, and he'll be totally ineffective. Look at what NBC did to Dennis Kucinich during the primaries--they changed their rules to exclude the fourth candidate when he became the fourth candidate. Why? Because they didn't want any anti-war talk during the debates. War is good for them. Or was that CBS? I dont' remember, and it doesn't matter. They're all the same, all owned by giant corporations who have no loyalty to the Constitution--only loyalty to their own greed and lust for power, which they now have.

America has gone from simply passing critical mass into the Age of Corporate Fascism. It will only get worse. You want universal health care? Don't make me laugh. Whatever bill gets passed will favor the insurance companies, not the people. You notice that we have a higher murder rate than even war zones, whereas countries with gun control don't and you think maybe it would be a good idea to have to license guns as we do with cars? Ain't gonna happen--the NRA will spend whatever money it takes to defeat any candidate who even whispers gun control. You want to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq? Too bad, the military industrial complex wants to stay there. They have more money than anybody so they will get their way. They will finance anti-democratic overthrows of governments in Latin America and whatever countries they want a more company friendly dictatorship to be in control. The evils our corporate foreign policy has done to Latin American countries for so many decades will not just continue, it will get worse. Cesar Chavez will be defeated, Evo Morales will go--the companies will pour even more money into seeing that it happens. More jobs will go to China. The minimum wage will not rise. And Social Security? It will probably be privatized and those of us getting old enough to get it...will be screwed.

Welcome to KorporateAmerika. I really didn't think it would happen in my lifetime. The damage to our society done by the Republicans since Reagan will never be undone...until America becomes a third world country.

I'm sitting here enjoying a Coke that is so good I could probably drink the entire case of 24, but I'm sipping it slowly. Like a glass of fine wine it is. Childhood memories of tingly delight.

For a long time I thought Cokes didn't taste so good any more because I'm getting old and my taste buds must be less functional these days. That was wrong, as I discovered on a recent trip to bigbox Costco.

"Hecho en Mexice," said the lettering on the box. Then in English: Made with real cane sugar.

Light bulbs went off.

That was it. In Mexico, the Cokes are still made with real sugar. Not high fructose corn syrup. Because of our socialistic system of capitalism (now there's a contradiction), ie., huge taxpayer-funded subsidies to the wealthy corporate corn producers, high fructose corn syrup is one of the cheapest commodities available anywhere. That's why it's in almost everything we eat. Check it out for yourself Read the labels. You want a loaf of bread without high fructose corn syrup, you have to really hunt and read the microscopic print to find one.

High fructose corn syrup is inescapable in our country. It's not good for you. It doesn't taste very good. It's not the same as using real sugar in a soft drink. Not that real sugar is good for you, but I have maybe 4 or 5 soft drinks a year, so I'm not gonna worry about it. When I want a Coke, I want a REAL Coke.

And, if a guy wants a real Coke in the U.S., he's got to go to Mexico. Or to a store that imports real Cokes from Mexico. Some of our corporate grocery stores here now have them, since they've discovered that we have a large population from south of the border and they spend money. I guess saying "corporate grocery stores" is a bit of a redundancy, since there are no non-corporate grocery stores in KC any longer. (Actually, there is one, a rather specialized upscale endeavor and probably not long for the region.)

The irony of something so totally and uniquely American--Coke--being made in Mexico and not available from the company's own bottlers in the U.S. is so ridiculous it's not even amusing.