For Black History Month, whites should begin to comprehend just how our society has oppressed its Black population ever since the first slaves were brought to our shores in 1619.

The real story is how folk music and its singers became the educating tool for the 1960s generation. Disgusted at the racism of our country as well as its materialism and addiction to war, we dreamed of creating a more perfect union we could be proud of.

The House vote turning down aid to the Contras was one result of thousands of people doing what I did to expose CIA terrorism. In the process, I learned about the US Empire, and I have been teaching these lessons ever since.

We have seen the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements. But true equality, respect and economic justice have not followed. We need a new abolitionist movement, one that tears apart the pervasive caste system that in the end, oppresses us all.

Al Gore will always be remembered for falling on his sword when the going got tough. Hopelessly compromised by their dependence on corporate money to survive, the Democrats can be counted on to go down gracefully, leaving 99 percent of Americans out in the cold.

Some have called the last two decades America's new Gilded Age. There are several similarities to the one that occurred during the 1870s. The rich have made untold billions, much of it based on low wages and tax breaks for corporations.

Our society today never achieved what the early Abolitionists had hoped and dreamed of. People of color are still mostly trapped in a vast underclass, subject to racist discrimination and violence.

Unless the citizens of the US can stop these endless wars of aggression around the world, we will have no democracy to worry about. We will have no journalists and whistleblowers to protect. Assange represents freedom of expression and the rule of law, both values that our unbridled empire seeks to eventually destroy.

Today, we have anonymous drones and private armies committing our war crimes. We are separated from the carnage. The soldiers fighting these wars are almost always from the lowest classes in our supposedly classless society.

So are there any connections between the mass murders orchestrated by the US in Korea and then again in Indonesia? If there are, historians must face the fact that genocides in Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, and Argentina are also remarkably similar.