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tom turnipseed
Progressive Activist and Longtime Common Dreams Contributor Tom Turnipseed Dead at 83
A self-identified "reformed racist' who spent decades fighting for progressive causes has died.
Mar 09, 2020
Lawmaker, political campaigner, progressive activist, and longtime Common Dreamscontributor Tom Turnipseed (August 27, 1936 - March 6, 2020) died on Friday at the age of 83.
A man who considered himself a "reformed racist" who once managed the presidential campaign of the infamous segregationist and racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Turnipseed later--"disturbed by the visceral racial hatred he saw while on the campaign trail"--recanted his bigoted ideologies and spent the remainder of his life speaking out against hatred and fighting on behalf of progressive causes.
"He was at peace and without pain, for which I am grateful," Judy Turnipseed, Tom's wife, wrote in a Facebook post in which she announced his passing. "Tom Turnipseed was my best friend, my lover, my hero for 57 years. He made me happy and sometimes he made me cry. But always he made me proud."
Tom, his wife continued, "fought for racial, social and economic justice. He set an example for us, his wife and kids, that was hard to live up to. In his honor, I will try to carry on his legacy. Tom, I will forever miss you."
In a 2010 column for Common Dreams, Turnispeed lamented the reality in which the United States had become a place where hunger and homelessness were rampant while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. He wrote:
The U.S. defense budget is $720 billion, which includes the Pentagon base budget, Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We far outstrip the rest of the world in defense spending, surpassing the next closest country by more than eight times. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the U.S. military budget accounts for 43% of the world's total military spending.
If we heed the words of Eisenhower and stop the madness we call war, if we require the wealthiest to pay their fair share, then perhaps we can end hunger and homelessness in America. There will be food, not bombs, and we will no longer destroy the hopes of our children.
Turnipseed, the Post & Courier reports,
was a South Carolina senator from 1976 to 1980, and ran for a number of other offices through the years, including the U.S. House, governor and lieutenant governor. He ran as a Democrat for SC attorney general in 1998, garnering 46 percent of the vote statewide in a race against Republican Charlie Condon.
On Saturday morning, third-term Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin lamented Turnipseed's passing.
"There is and will only ever be one Tom Turnipseed," Benjamin says. "Tom led one of the most colorful lives in South Carolina political history and left this world with an indelible mark as a fighter for social justice, as an advocate for the homeless, a proponent of peace, and as a true believe in environmental justice."
According to The State:
During his gubernatorial and congressional runs, he went door to door giving out turnip seed packets that asked for people's votes, saying he would "plant the seed of good government."
He campaigned against the death penalty, rising utility prices and redistricting plans that he believed would exclude black voters in South Carolina.
A 1982 article described Turnipseed as "dapper and charming, outrageous and impolite ... affronting his legislative colleagues by, among other things, appearing with a couple of disc jockey buddies on the floor of the Senate and singing country songs about rising gas prices."
"Tom Turnipseed was a force of nature and had a hell of a life experience," current South Carolina Democrat Party Chairman Trav Robertson said on social media. "He was the first of what is now called a progressive."
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Homeless Plan Has Good Ideas -- And Scary Ones
Homelessness is finally catching the attention of the media, everyday people and even politicians in the Midlands of South Carolina. We've heard much about compassion, humanity, respect and some sensible approaches to ending homelessness.
Jun 19, 2013
Homelessness is finally catching the attention of the media, everyday people and even politicians in the Midlands of South Carolina. We've heard much about compassion, humanity, respect and some sensible approaches to ending homelessness.
A community approach to homelessness has challenged the Midlands for years. Recently, City Councilman Cameron Runyan has led on the issue. In April, he called for several public meetings to solicit solutions from our diverse community. People responded. Every meeting was full, with all seats taken and people lining the walls, eager to speak or hear others' ideas. Council members and the mayor were there to hear from service providers such as Transitions Homeless Center, United Way, and The Free Clinic, as well as from volunteers, neighborhoods, downtown business owners and the homeless themselves. Most speakers were positive and made excellent suggestions. A few spent their time painting the homeless as subhuman pariahs who must be eliminated from the community immediately.
On June 4, Councilman Runyan presented his report, "Columbia Cares: A Vision for Addressing Homelessness," to Council and the public. The six goals Councilman Runyan synthesized from community input were aspirations most of us can agree on. The lofty ideals include bringing "humanity to the response" and meeting the "unique needs of the individuals in need."
Other goals, some more specific, are ones we can rally around: "Create opportunities for people to work." The homeless we know are crying out for jobs. Provide "public hygiene facilities." The homeless and downtown residents agree on this. "Bring accountability to those in poverty." As in the rest of the population, there are responsible homeless people and there are irresponsible homeless people who give others a bad name. "Address the root causes, not just symptoms." Yes!
We support the report's proposal of an induction center, a "one-stop-shop" triage to identify the needs of the homeless and direct them to community resources. The greater Columbia community can probably agree on that as an efficient way to assist the homeless toward overcoming the obstacles on their way to self-sufficient living.
Then comes the scary part. Councilman Runyan's plan also contains ideas that volunteers in the homeless community believe smack of banishment, exile and the questionable redirecting of personal assets. These ideas we will oppose as strongly as we support the positive ones.
Leave Town
The plan states that if the homeless violate existing laws -- such as loitering, panhandling or urban camping -- they must go to the induction center, go to jail or leave town. How convenient! Banishment is one way of clearing Columbia's streets of undesirables. The plan no doubt includes this last option of getting the homeless out of town in hopes of sending our problems away for someone else to deal with, rather than facing them ourselves. Surely those of all faiths are struck by how far afield that approach is from the admonition of our faith tradition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger.
Go to the Retreat
Scary idea number two is sending those found physically or mentally deficient to a proposed facility called The Retreat. This facility, a 100-plus-acre privately owned facility 10 to 15 miles outside of town, is referred to in the plan as the shelter of last resort. So we are separating outcasts with physical, mental and social problems from the mainstream of our culture and sending them to a "Retreat" where they will take part in a work program and be concentrated away from civil society. Makes us mindful of the giant sign across the main entrance of the Auschwitz work camp in Poland: Arbeit macht frei; labor makes you free.
Redirect Resources
The Funding the System section of the "Columbia Cares" report states that the cost of the retreat facility and other programs will be defrayed in part by "payments currently being lost" such as food stamps, housing and disability. These items will be redirected to the provider of the service. This sounds like a plan to have the residents' Social Security disability checks turned over to the provider. This will certainly require new legislation -- and the plan is appalling.
We who volunteer with the homeless will strongly support positive solutions to ending homelessness -- and will work to let the public know the whole story when plans are made concerning the homeless.
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Honoring King: Creating a Coalition for Social Justice
Jan 19, 2011
The 12th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.
Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year's crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States' and South Carolina's state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a "compromise" among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier's memorial monument in front of the State House on July1, 2000.
The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Ku Klux Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the '90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier's monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.
Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20th in Charleston with a "gala". South Carolina's secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we "celebrated" their oppression under Nazis Germany.
The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession "celebration" in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, "a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina" and printed "Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President" on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, "Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check...the white race creates everything in America". As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP's planning committee, I've raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.
The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said "We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.
Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.
Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.
John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, "we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."
Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King's legacy.
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