CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A MOMENT OF SILENCE?

I am incredibly saddened at the death of Rosa Parks, a pioneer in the civil rights movement and a hero of the first order.

I am also horrified that the number of U.S. military deaths officially reached 2,000 and counting.

And I am wondering when the reporters covering these two stories will make the intimate connection between the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

Ms. Parks's death will undoubtedly spark a rash of articles assessing the state of racial equality today. No doubt, we Americans have come a long way when we (99% of us anyway) look with disgust at a segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama that required a black woman to give up her seat for a white man.

But "civil rights," as defined by the modern civil rights movement, went far beyond the Mongtomery buses and the Topeka classrooms, spreading far into the fields of Vietnam and into the inseparable bonds between racial minorities in America and the peoples of the so-called third world.

In this regard, we have regressed when considering the apathy that blankets our country when our leaders send 2,000 Americans -- disproportionately young, poor, and people of color -- to die in a senseless war that has taken the lives of 100,000 brothers and sisters dehumanized as the enemy. Rosa Parks undoubtedly inspired a new generation of activists, but Cindy Sheehan is, sadly, one of the few who have taken the torch to connect the struggle for civil rights with the struggle to end our war in Iraq.

Any article about Rosa Parks that fails to focus on more global issues of equality is, in my opinion, missing the point.

--Junichi