Boycott Sonic: Chamberlain even more racist than Rapid City

The Chamberlain School Board voted 4-2 to again deny the right to a graduation honor song. The Mitchell Daily Republic reports:

Two first-year board members, Marcel Felicia and Foster Iversen, voted yes. Four voted no: board president Rebecca Reimer, Leanne Larson, Jay Blum and Dallas Thompson.

Former Lee reporter for Indian Country, Jodi Rave covered President Clinton's visit to Pine Ridge in 1999 and the United Nations passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She followed lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, keeping Indian Country apprised of the litigation, ratification process, and settlement of the lawsuit bearing her name and is now writing a book about it. Her investigative work contributed to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.

Rave told readers before the 2012 election that voting means all or nothing.

With my added links, the following was lifted from her blog, Buffalo's Fire:

The race means nothing if American Indians don’t show up at the polls to vote for a candidate who represents Native interests. The 2012 elections mean everything if Native people get involved and hold candidates accountable for creating policy and passing laws that impact our daily lives. So, it makes sense that Montana would become home to Western Native Voice, a newly created, non-partisan organization based in Billings, Mont. Western Native Voice is fully staffed and has paid organizers on every reservation in the state as well as urban areas, including Billings, Havre, Missoula and Great Falls. The Western Native Voice is actively registering Native voters in a state where an estimated 46,000 American Indians are eligible to vote.

Native voters went on to make the difference putting Democrats into Montana's constitutional offices and overwhelmingly supported President Obama even in South Dakota: getting people to the polls is critical.

Thomas Shortbull is President of Oglala Lakota College in Kyle. From his op-ed in the Rapid City Journal:

Section 5 must not be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, because it is the only vehicle in some states to fight institutional racism in local and state governments. In the state of South Dakota, racism towards minorities is prevalent, and the only means of diminishing the racism is to elect more minorities to state and local governments. Recently, in Rapid City, a city councilman made a racial slur to a black journalist. The Rapid City Council never went on record to admonish the conduct of the Rapid City councilman, and this has been the pattern with elected officials not being challenged on their racism.

Dave Zirin, political sports columnist for The Nation magazine and host of Edge of Sports Radio joined Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales on DemocracyNow!

"Little Red Sambo has to go," says Clyde Bellecourt, co-founder and director of the American Indian Movement and an organizer with the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media. "The word 'Redskins' is a legacy of Jim Crow. It's a legacy of the team’s original owner, George Preston Marshall, who was an arch-segregationist," said Zirin.

Bellacourt lives in South Minneapolis.

Lawrence Sampson, Delaware and Eastern Band Cherokee, and longtime American Indian Movement activist, wrote on the Sacramento Theatre Company’s Facebook page—where a lot of discussion has been taking place: "People who know little to nothing about Crazy Horse choose to present some version of what they imagine he would say with no context whatsoever, without input from his descendants, and against the wishes of the community that holds his memory so dear. What can you expect in a country that continues to wage war against its indigenous population?” [Christina Rose, 'Crazy Horse and Custer' Play Opens Saturday Amidst Protests, ICTM]

DemocracyNow! can be heard in South Dakota at KTEQ, radio for the School of Mines and Rapid City, at 3:00 PM MST on KSFR in Santa Fe, and at 4:00 PM MST on KUNM in Albuquerque.

Rapid City is home to a Sonic franchise: boycott them.