Never Forget: Defining Moments Of American Injustice

I passed a sign as I drove home the other night that said, "9/11: We Will Never Forget." We should never forget that moment of our nation's history. Yet there are many events that are just as formative and just as deserving of being fixed in American public consciousness.

Let's begin with 9/11:

1. Let us never forget what happened in the wake of 9/11. The empty patriotism that engulfed our nation. The USA PATRIOT Act and other ways the government stripped us of our civil liberties. How the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program effectively made every American a terror suspect. How dissenters were branded as unpatriotic and un-American. How those who spoke out against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were silenced, and how they turned out to be right.
2. Let us never forget that we are still engaged in the occupation of two countries, one of which had nothing to do with 9/11. Let us never forget that we have caused the death or displacement of more than 7 million Iraqis. 
3. Let us never forget Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, extraordinary rendition, and the Military Commissions Act. Let us never forget the detainees who were tortured, both physically and psychologically. Let us never forget our government's trampling of domestic and international law in the name of "fighting terror."
4. Let us never forget the American soldiers, the few noble participants in our post-9/11 military adventures, and the toll the wars have taken on them. The thousands who have died in combat. The thousands who have come home physically disabled. The thousands who are haunted by TBIs and PTSD. The families who have been torn apart from multiple tours of duty. The suicide epidemic ravaging our veterans.
5. Let us never forget the evils of the Bush Administration – military, legal and economic. We are still reeling from the damage that Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Rove, Yoo and Addington have wrought upon this country. Let us never forget their names and the deeds they have done.
   Now let's go back even further into our nation's history:
6. Let us never forget the atrocities inflicted upon Native Americans. Let us never forget the forests of skeletons, the Indian Removal Act, or the Trail of Tears. Let us never forget the Indian reservations across our country, where Native Americans have been cast aside to live in squalor.
7. Let us never forget our history of slavery. That over 650,000 Africans were taken from their countries and brought to America against their will. That there were eight provisions in the US Constitution to enforce the slave system. That a slave-based economy existed in this country for over 250 years.
8. Let us never forget the Civil War, and the fact that it was about states' rights – specifically, the states' rights to maintain a slave-based economy.
9. Let us never forget that from the late 19th to the mid 20th Century, there was one lynching every four days, resulting in 4742 lynchings total. Let us never forget that lynchings were a form of entertainment for white people.
10. Let us never forget the Dredd Scott case, in which the Supreme Court held that Mr. Scott was property, not a person.
11. Let us never forget that “Separate but Equal” was the law of the land from 1893 until 1954, when the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in Brown v. Board of Education.
12. Let us never forget the continuing fight against the relics of slavery. The March on Selma, which culminated in "Bloody Sunday" as police brutally attacked peaceful marchers. The Little Rock Nine. The lunch counter sit-ins. The Montgomery bus boycott. All the acts of courage by ordinary citizens who have fought for racial equality.
13. Let us never forget the literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and land ownership requirements that were used to disenfranchise African-Americans. Let us never forget that it took nearly 100 years for the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 to effectively enforce the 15th Amendment of 1870. Let us never forget that these tactics of disenfranchisement have evolved into voter ID laws, restrictions on the rights of felons to vote, provisional ballots, and purges of voter rolls.
14. Let us never forget the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers. That his words and work are continually misunderstood and misrepresented by opponents of substantive equality. That he was fervently anti-war. That he was a critic of an unjust economic system and, at times, a critic of capitalism.
15. Let us never forget that one in three African-American men will go to prison in their lifetimes.
16. Let us never forget that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. 
17. Let us never forget that the United States is the only western that still imposes the death penalty, and that in doing so, we are in the company of Iran, North Korea, China, and Saudi Arabia. 
18. Let us never forget that the execution of juveniles was legal in the United States until 2005, and that we still execute mentally disabled people.
19. Let us never forget the women's suffrage movement, which culminated in the 19th Amendment. Let us never forget the fact that this Amendment wasn't ratified until 1920.
20. Let us never forget that violence against women used to be legal in America. That women were considered the property of their husbands. That husbands could enforce their "property rights" under the “Laws of Chastisement” and the “Rule of Thumb,” which limited the size of the switch a man could hit his wife with to the width of his thumb. That until very recently, police would respond to domestic violence against women by simply walking a man around the block to "cool off."
21. Let us never forget the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, Operation Wetback, and other overtly racist immigration policies carried out by our government.
22. Let us never forget that hate crimes against Latinos are on the rise, coinciding with racially-charged rhetoric against undocumented immigrants. Let us never forget that “illegal” is an adjective, not a noun.
23. Let us never forget that half of the United States used to be Mexico.
24. Let us never forget the Haymarket Affair, the Ludlow Massacre, Bloody Harlan and other acts of violence directed against workers fighting for the right to bargain collectively.
25. Let us never forget Matthew Shepard, Eric Mohat and the rising number of children who have been murdered or driven to suicide because of their sexuality or perceived sexuality. 
26. Let us never forget that the Defense of Marriage Act continues to deny people the basic right to marry the ones they love.
27. Let us never forget our history of overthrowing democratically-elected governments in order to implement friendly dictatorships and further the cause of gangster capitalism. Let us never forget Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
28. Let us never forget that we maintain over 900 military bases in 130 different countries.
29. Let us never forget that in 1951, Dwight D. Eisenhower used his final speech as President to warn us of the threat that the Military-Industrial Complex poses to our democracy.
30. Let us never forget that the United States spends nearly $700 billion on military expenditures, which accounts for nearly half of the world's total.
31. Let us never forget that the United States is the only country to use atomic weapons against another country. Let us never forget that we did it twice, and that we targeted civilians.
32. Let us never forget the Red Scares during the first and second World Wars, the thousands of people whose lives were ruined by blacklisting, and the civil liberties that were stripped in the witch-hunt for communists.
33. Let us remember that much of this is recent history, and that history tends to repeat itself.