Magnificent Desolation: The Apollo Rocket versus the Mule Cart (A Precursor to the Water Bill Protests in 83% Black Detroit)

It's fitting that as the 45th anniversary of the initial moon landing, the successful Apollo 11 mission culminating on July 20, 1969 with Buzz Aldrin and Neal Armstrong walking on the moon, the 83 percent black city of Detroit sees protests over unpaid water bills. [Detroit's Water Cutoffs Spark Protests: Crackdown on Delinquent Customers Draws Public Ire, Wall Street Journal, 7-19-2014]:

Detroit's crackdown on delinquent water customers bubbled over with a public protest Friday following concerns voiced by a federal judge overseeing the city's historic bankruptcy case. 

Hundreds of people descended upon downtown Hart Plaza, with many migrating from a conference for progressive Democrats at the nearby Cobo Conference Center. 

"We need more water, not less water," said Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers, addressing the crowd through a bullhorn on a makeshift stage around the plaza's obelisk-like art installation. 

Opposition has been building in Detroit for months after officials at the city's Water and Sewerage Department in March said they would shut off water service to delinquent customers. Critics, including a United Nations panel, have said that water is a basic human right, especially in the nation's largest city to file for bankruptcy protection, one year ago. 

Even so, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said this week in court that the water issue was generating bad publicity for the city and told the department to offer more repayment options.

"The Water issue was generating bad publicity for the city," said Judge Rhodes... 

From the July 31, 1969 of Jet magazine. 

Well, then tell the citizens of the 83 percent black city to pay their water bill, or else suffer the same fate as those non-black citizens across the country who refuse to pay their water utility bill: have it turned off.

Never forget, what Instrauation magazine dubbed "one of the sorrier moments in the saga of mankind was Reverend Abernathy leading a mule caravan to Cape Canaveral before the first manned moon landing. The money, he whined, should go to the poor and not be thrown away on space. (Faustian Lapse, June 1980, p. 20)

In another edition of the magazine, a writer wrote these words: 

Reporters wrote that it was "legitimate" for Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who is often treated as some kind of Negro deity, to take poor families and a symbolic mule team to Cape Kennedy to protest against the moon flight and its vast expenditure when so many earthlings live in poverty and squalor. With whites upon the threshold of the most fabulous voyage of exploration of all time, Negro poverty and white selfishness were the liberal-minority coalition's overriding consideration. The obscuring triviality of this obsessional view of the moon flight was and is truly astounding. Like all fixation or emotional arrests of the personality, it is a form of insanity - in this instance a mouse-like insanity, deliberately depreciating Nordic heroism and achievement. Once the insanity is properly implanted, it follows logically that if Ralph Abernathy's protest, which in reality was nothing more than a protest against the white man's incomparable superiority, was "legitimate," the space flights themselves were and are "illegitimate." (NASA: The Rocket versus the Mule, July 1978, p. 20 - 21)

Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the man who succeeded Martin Luther King as the chief agitator for blackness, was lauded in the pages of Jet magazine for his mule-cart procession (it should be noted this march against Apollo by blacks set the stage for the water bills protest we currently see in 83 percent black Detroit, and the mindset that marching will bend white civilization to accept any black demand). 

From the July 18, 2014 protest in 83 percent black Detroit against citizens there having to pay their overdue water bills...

Simeon Booker would write: 

Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the leader many predicted couldn't fill the shoes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., became a giant for millions of Americans at Cape Kennedy. No project he has devised reached more people and served a role as his attendance at the launching of Apollo 11.  

There wasn't much enthusiasm among American blacks to follow the moon flight. Even though NASA spent billions in one of its precise managerial operations, its directors  disregarded equal opportunity programs. NASA has one of the poorest minority hiring among U.S. agencies.  

While following the activity at Cape Kennedy, a TV viewer sees very few - if any - black engineers, scientists, or computer programmers. On top of this, the vast outlay of money ($24 billion) to put a man on the moon emptied the U.S. treasury of fund for worthwhile earthly projects - like housing, welfare, schools and jobs.  

But Rev. Ralph Abernathy followed the example of his leader, Dr. King, to keep the faith. He refused to see millions of black boys and girls "give up" on the American Dream. He had to get to Cape Kennedy. He had to call the Cape "Holy Ground." He had to conclude: "The ground will be even more holy when we feed the poor." 

He and his followers bunched together, sang We Shall Overcome - some day. They trooped from the Cape, as the only major Negro participants in the launching.  

One highlight of the Cape launching was the confrontation of Abernathy and NASA's Thomas Paine. The meeting took place in an open field just inside the center's front gate. Abernathy, leading two mules humorously named Jim Eastland and George Wallace, was followed by hundreds of poor carrying picket signs. Paine listened to Abernathy's eloquent plea for the poor. Said Abernathy: "I'm profoundly moved by our nation's scientific achievements in space, and by the heroism of the three astronauts." Calling the moonshot "one of man's noblest ventures," Abernathy said: "But I have not come to Cape Kennedy merely to experience the thrill of this historic launching. I am here to demonstrate with poor people in a symbolic way against the tragic and inexcusable gulf that exists between America's technological abilities and our social injustices."  

Pain agreed with the poor peoples goals. [Jet, Blacks Scarce as Men on Moon at Launch, 7-31-1969, p. 6-9]

That NASA didn't implement EEOC goals as a priority ahead of landing men on the moon is the primary reason Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 saw 12 white men successfully walk on the moon, courtesy of the ingenious contributions of individual white people back home on earth.

Ebony magazine would publish an equally polemic, racial denunciation of the Apollo program:

Few efforts outside of war have caused such a sustained flexing of America's scientific, technological and industrial muscle as has the race to the moon. Since the late President John F. Kennedy promised in 1961 that an American would walk on the lunar surface before 1970, the nation has spent more than $24 billion and funneled the work of small armies of scientists, engineers, technicians, production workers and laborers toward Cape Kennedy.  

To many people, the purpose of the moon program - as well as its planning and execution - have seemed as remote as the astronaut's destination. Especially to the nation's black poor, watching on unpaid-for television sets in shacks and slums, the countdowns, the blastoffs, the orbiting and landings had the other-worldly aliens - though not the drama - of a science fiction movie. From Harlem to Watts, the first moon landing in July of last year was viewed cynically as one small step for "The Man," and probably a giant leap in the wrong direction for mankind. Large segments of the rest of the population, except perhaps at the time of the first landing, were merely bored. [How Blacks View Mankind's 'Giant Step': Space scientists, laymen see space program from different perspective, Ebony, September 1970, p. 33]

No blacks, in the eyes of Ebony writers, meant the landing was "boring" or illegitimate. 

 But the lack of implementing an agenda of affirmative action and EEOC mandated hires/promotions would catch up with NASA: 

Rev. Martin Luther King and Rev. Abernathy would be proud: They'll never stop marching, demanding more and more in the process, while civilization crumbles to the black mean

For the second time this month, a Senate committee expressed doubts about the sincerity of a NASA promise to improve its record of hiring minorities and women. 

Sen. Frank Moss (D. Utah) said yesterday, after a three-hour hearing before his Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee that he intends to bring NASA back perhaps every three months to see how rapidly its record improves.  

NASA does not dispute claims that its minority employment, 5.6 percent as of last May... is the lowest of all government agencies.  

But after the agency outlined its Equal Employment Opportunity goals for 1974, several senators indicated they didn't think the goals justified NASA's statement that it was "deeply committed" to "equal opportunity." 

"I don't quite feel a sense of urgency," said Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D. Ohio). "... I feel they're modest goals, and they haven't yet been worked down to the lower levels..." 

[George Lowe, NASA deputy administrator] replied that EEO was at the top of NASA's rarity list, but could not be accomplished "overnight." 

"What's even more disconcerting is to see NASA groping for sympathy with a continuing flow apologies and explanations," said Sen. James Abourezk (D. -S.D.).  

On Jan. 11, Sen. William Proxmire (D.- Wis.) ordered NASA to report quarterly on its EEO progress to his Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees NASA's budged. He cited "... NASA's extremely poor record in enforcing its equal employment opportunity program." [Senators Eye NASA EEO Goals, Washington Post, 1-25-1974]

You can land on the moon, explore other worlds and embark on the greatest journey in man's history, or dedicate every resource availability to advancing the cause of blackness thereby retarding all of the Apollo programs successes...

The stars or Detroit...

But this would change, with the desire to travel the road to infinity derailed by a national mandate to take the road to Detroit: 

Today NASA has bowed to pervasive minority racism. The announced Space Shuttle crews are largely a human zoo of minority groups in just the right percentages of each.  

It is true the billions of dollars on Apollo could have been spent on the "cities" as the liberals and minorities wanted, but there would have been no moon landing, no spinoff technology, no glorious achievement to remind us of who we are and what we can be. Just more blacks. 

After several Apollo flights, interest in space flagged. NASA proposals for regular moon flights, a lunar base, and a manned expedition to Mars in the 1980s were turned down. NASA became a holding operation, concentrating on unmanned missions such as the Viking landing on Mars and the flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. Engineers and scientists were laid off in the aerospace industry by the droves. Even Wernher Von Braun retired from NASA in 1972. [Instrauation, The Road To Infinity: The race factor in space flight, July 1980, p. 10]

$22 trillion later... blacks still demand more. For $24 billion, the Apollo program offered a glimpse of what whites can do when freed from the shackles of forever funding the advancement of blackness. 

"Just more blacks" is what we got, with the residents of 83 percent black Detroit believing paying a water bill is now beneath them, with free water a human right... [The Consequences of the "Great Society", NCPA.org, 7-10-14]:

In the 50 years since the onset of the "Great Society," the United States has spent nearly $22 trillion and implemented 80 welfare programs with the goal of reducing poverty. How has it worked? Not well, writes Edwin Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation.Material poverty has fallen over the last half-century, says Feulner. Today, the average poor household has food on the table, not to mention air-conditioning, cable television and Internet access. However, he explains that the War on Poverty also created negative incentives:

• Welfare gave single mothers larger payments than married mothers, encouraging women not to marry the fathers of their children.

• Children who grew up without both parents in their households began to see single-parenthood as normal.

We went to the moon for $24 billion; we breed an army of individuals who collectively believe paying for water is beneath them for $22 trillion...

I'd like to know the final thoughts of Wernher Von Braun as he left his NASA office for the last time in 1972, the NASA he knew and helped build - whose mandate once was navigating man to the heavens - replaced with the goal of safely navigating black people and other minority groups into the employ of the "space" administration.

Did he see the future he'd never live in reflected in the pitiful memory of the Poor People's Campaign demands from July 16, 1969 at Cape Kennedy, when a mule cart stood next to his Apollo 11 spacecraft (with Saturn V rocket system prepared to blast it into the heavens)?

Could he have known then the future wouldn't be the building of a base on the moon, the start of man's colonization of solar system, but the colonization of formerly first world cities by a black population incapable of sustaining the first world civilization whites left behind (see Detroit, Baltimore, Newark, Gary, Camden, Rochester, Birmingham, Memphis...)?

Could he have known that on July 20, 2014, 45 years after the initial moon landing, black people ($22 trillion later) would be protesting their right to be exempted from paying water bills in the former Arsenal of Democracy?

We have completely dismantled our civilization to uplift black people (while hordes of brown people scramble across our borders at the behest of the federal government), and they still don't think that's enough.