If you real­ly want to know just how far America has trav­eled from its despi­ca­ble & shame­ful racist past, these images explain it. America’s race prob­lem is not get­ting bet­ter, it is get­ting more entrenched.

IN AMERICA THIS IS UNFORGIVABLE

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH FELONIES FOR KNOCKING ON A DOOR

IN AMERICA THESE HOODLUMS, THUGS, AND ANARCHISTS ARE DESCRIBED AS PATRIOTS

IN AMERICA SERVING YOUR COUNTRY AND COMMITTING NO OFFENSE, GETS YOU THIS 

IN AMERICA IF YOU ARE WHITE MURDERING SEVERAL PEOPLE GETS YOU THIS

In America, a white cop who fires seven (7) bullets into the back of a Black man, paralyzing him from the waist down, has nothing to worry about. He is back on the job.
Department policy!

It is depart­ment policy!
How many times have you heard that state­ment after a cop shoots, injury, or kills some­one, usu­al­ly a per­son of color?
But how on earth can police (depart­men­t’s pol­i­cy), what­ev­er they are, super­sede state law?

This is a ques­tion that needs answers; the pub­lic deserves answers; the real­i­ty is that no one both­ers to ask these ques­tions because only cer­tain peo­ple are los­ing their lives at the hands of the police.
How does a Police Department get to set pol­i­cy that defies com­mon sense, decen­cy, is moral­ly and legal­ly wrong.…. well, every­where else, just not in the United States?
In America, whether there are protests on the streets or not, regard­less of the lack of atten­tion to it, police kill three (3) liv­ing breath­ing human beings every day.
But the killings by white police, do not tell the whole sto­ry, in the rare instance that the vic­tim mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vives despite the bar­rage of bul­lets fired into their bod­ies, noth­ing hap­pens to the state-spon­sored killers.

That is exact­ly what hap­pened in Wisconsin.….….Rusten Sheskey, the cop who put sev­en (7) bul­lets into Jacob Blake’s back in August of last year, is now back on the job.
Kenosha police respond­ed to a “report­ed domes­tic inci­dent” on Aug. 23 when Sheskey, who is white, fired sev­en rounds at the 29-year-old Blake, Black, as he opened and leaned inside the driver’s side door of a parked SUV.
All of this as Derek Chauvin is being tried for mur­der, and anoth­er white cop mur­dered Daunte Wright.

As the debate about police mis/​conduct rages at least in con­sci­en­tious cir­cles, I have giv­en the ques­tion much con­sid­er­a­tion and researched why we con­tin­ue to see these instances of police vio­lence with­out any end to them.
In my search for answers, I have been led away from the easy sug­ges­tions of more and bet­ter police train­ing by those who exploit these issues for rat­ings and clicks on the one hand and those on the oth­er side in the Black com­mu­ni­ty who speak in infan­tile terms about this issue by rais­ing hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, employ­ment, and oth­er social issues, as if being prop­er­ly housed, edu­cat­ed, and employed, have stopped police from mur­der­ing inno­cent unarmed black men and women.
The myr­i­ad instances of unlaw­ful vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or by police for minor infrac­tions speak to a sense of impuni­ty, as it does to the sys­tem that makes it almost impos­si­ble for offi­cers to be held account­able for their crimes.
Even in the most extreme cas­es in which the sys­tem can­not twist itself any fur­ther to jus­ti­fy the atroc­i­ties they commit.

It is a com­plex web of deceit, lack of account­abil­i­ty, and racist atti­tudes cre­at­ed to keep African-Americans sub­ject­ed to a dif­fer­ent form of slav­ery that does not result in forced labor on cot­ton plan­ta­tions, one that is far less vis­i­ble in its sav­agery but is no less destruc­tive in its full execution.
In that com­plex web, leg­is­la­tors leg­is­late against seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion, oth­ers who sign them into law, courts that val­i­date them, and the police who enforce them.
In addi­tion to the cul­ture of racism on which the sys­tem was built, pro­pa­gan­da war­fare is waged by the media and Hollywood in their glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of cop-cul­ture, in films, and on tele­vi­sion. Anything is per­mis­si­ble as long as the good guys get the bad guys.
The pre­sump­tion of inno­cence nev­er makes it into the con­ver­sa­tion when the bad guy’s imagery, whether on tele­vi­sion or in films, con­tin­ues to be the Black guy. The resul­tant out­come is a pop­u­la­tion social­ized into accept­ing bru­tal­i­ty and death on peo­ple of a dark­er hue as a nec­es­sary part of ensur­ing their own safety.
There is no sep­a­ra­tion between either of those groups. The same vot­ers sup­port them all; their abil­i­ty to col­lude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in small towns and in back­woods munic­i­pal­i­ties, makes a mock­ery of the word jus­tice; it opens up to the world the hypocrisy of America’s posi­tion on human rights.
It is a sys­tem so despi­ca­bly tox­ic and com­plic­it that cops who mur­der inno­cent blacks are almost assured of get­ting their jobs back on the rare occa­sion they are fired. If not by the same depart­ment, a depart­ment that wants to show it agrees with the mur­der­ous tac­tics that cop displayed.
“Come over here; we will hire you, Sheriffs and local police depart­ments adver­tise we will stand with you.” In some cas­es, the mur­der­er cop gets pro­mot­ed by the same depart­ment that hired him/​her in the first place; the same depart­ment gets to decide his inno­cence, usu­al­ly with the local pros­e­cu­tor’s com­plic­i­ty and their pro-police grand juries.

At the top of this sys­tem that destroys black lives as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy sits the United States Supreme Court. The Court is the final arbiter of all legal issues. So it bears exam­in­ing how judi­cious the court has been in its delib­er­a­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of the laws under the constitution.
As we begin that process of exam­i­na­tion, it bears men­tion­ing that the doc­trine of (qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty) that was just last week vot­ed down by the Maryland Legislature last Saturday was cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court, like a shield that allowed police nation­wide to get away with mur­der and oth­er vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted against the pub­lic and has giv­en them the impuni­ty that we see play­ing out in their racist and reck­less assault on the citizenry.

In April of 2015, Sean Rosenthal writ­ing for the Foundation For Education, wrote the fol­low­ing. What makes a Supreme Court deci­sion bad? And what are the worst prece­dents hand­ed down by our high­est court?

State author­i­ties in Virginia will inves­ti­gate an encounter cap­tured on body cam­era that appears to show a police offi­cer threat­en­ing to exe­cute a Black Army offi­cer dur­ing a traf­fic stop, offi­cials said Sunday.

The announce­ment from the Virginia State Police came after Gov. Ralph Northam said he was “angered” by the inci­dent, which occurred on Dec. 5 on a road about 30 miles west of down­town Norfolk.

“Our com­mon­wealth has done impor­tant work on police reform, but we must keep work­ing to ensure that Virginians are safe dur­ing inter­ac­tions with police, the enforce­ment of laws is fair and equi­table, and peo­ple are held account­able,” he said.

Northam added that he would invite the U.S. Army offi­cer, Lt. Caron Nazario, for a meet­ing to dis­cuss police reform.

In a state­ment, a state police spokes­woman said the department’s super­in­ten­dent had been in touch with the gov­er­nor and Rodney Riddle, the police chief of Windsor, where the con­fronta­tion occurred.

“At Chief Riddle’s request and the Governor’s direc­tive, the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation is ini­ti­at­ing a thor­ough and objec­tive crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the Dec. 5, 2020 traf­fic stop con­duct­ed by the Windsor police offi­cers,” she said.

Windsor’s town man­ag­er said in a state­ment that an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that the offi­cers who pulled Nazario over — Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker — did not fol­low depart­men­tal pol­i­cy. They were dis­ci­plined and ordered to take addi­tion­al train­ing, said the man­ag­er, William Saunders.

Gutierrez was lat­er fired, Saunders said.

“The town of Windsor has remained trans­par­ent about this event since the ini­tial stop, and has open­ly pro­vid­ed doc­u­ments and relat­ed video to attor­neys for Lt. Nazario,” he said

The department’s super­in­ten­dent had been in touch with the gov­er­nor and Rodney Riddle, the police chief of Windsor, where the con­fronta­tion occurred.

“At Chief Riddle’s request and the Governor’s direc­tive, the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation is ini­ti­at­ing a thor­ough and objec­tive crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the Dec. 5, 2020 traf­fic stop con­duct­ed by the Windsor police offi­cers,” she said.

Windsor’s town man­ag­er said in a state­ment that an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that the offi­cers who pulled Nazario over — Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker — did not fol­low depart­men­tal pol­i­cy. They were dis­ci­plined and ordered to take addi­tion­al train­ing, said the man­ag­er, William Saunders.

Gutierrez was lat­er fired, Saunders said.

“The town of Windsor has remained trans­par­ent about this event since the ini­tial stop, and has open­ly pro­vid­ed doc­u­ments and relat­ed video to attor­neys for Lt. Nazario,” he said.

In a fed­er­al civ­il law­suit filed last week, Nazario said he was dri­ving in a new­ly pur­chased Chevrolet Tahoe when he encoun­tered police on U.S. Highway 460 in Windsor. He was in uni­form at the time of the stop.

Nazario, who is Black and Latino, con­ced­ed in his com­plaint that he did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly pull over. He instead put on his emer­gency lights and con­tin­ued for anoth­er 100 sec­onds, dri­ving under the speed lim­it, so he could safe­ly park in a well-lit gas sta­tion park­ing lot less than a mile down the road.

That’s when Windsor police Officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker pulled guns on Nazario, who was accused of dri­ving with­out license plates, accord­ing to the law­suit and body cam­era footage.

Nazario insist­ed he fol­lowed police com­mands to keep his hands out­side the win­dow, but offi­cers alleged­ly became agi­tat­ed when he asked what jus­ti­fied the esca­lat­ed pullover.

“What’s going on? You’re fix­in’ to ride the light­ing, son,” Gutierrez said, accord­ing to the law­suit and body cam­era video.

“This is a col­lo­qui­al expres­sion for an exe­cu­tion, orig­i­nat­ing from glib ref­er­ence to exe­cu­tion by the elec­tric chair,” Nazario’s attor­ney Jonathan Arthur wrote in the lawsuit.

Virginia recent­ly out­lawed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but put pris­on­ers to death via the elec­tric chair for more than a cen­tu­ry. The last pris­on­er to meet that gris­ly fate was Robert Charles Gleason Jr., 42, who plead­ed guilty to two prison mur­ders and threat­ened to con­tin­ue killing until he received the death penal­ty. He was elec­tro­cut­ed on Jan. 16, 2013.

Nazario told police that he was “hon­est­ly afraid to get out” of his SUV, video of the inci­dent showed, before Officer Gutierrez replied, “Yeah, you should be!”

Footage also showed Nazario being pep­per-sprayed mul­ti­ple times, “caus­ing him sub­stan­tial and imme­di­ate pain,” the law­suit said. It also led to “sub­stan­tial prop­er­ty dam­age to Lt. Nazario’s vehi­cle and choked Lt. Nazario’s dog, who was sit­ting in the rear of Lt. Nazario’s vehi­cle, secured in a crate,” accord­ing to the suit.

“Gutierrez respond­ed with knee-strikes to Lt. Nazario’s legs to force an already com­pli­ant and blind­ed Lt. Nazario down on his face osten­si­bly to hand­cuff him

Arthur wrote. “Notwithstanding the fact that Nazario was on the ground and in tears, Gutierrez and Crocker con­tin­ued to strike Lt. Nazario.”

The offi­cers lat­er warned Nazario not to com­plain about their treat­ment of him, threat­en­ing to crim­i­nal­ly charge him, the law­suit said. If the lieu­tenant would “chill and let this go,” then no charges would be filed, accord­ing to Arthur.

Nazario was ulti­mate­ly not crim­i­nal­ly charged or cit­ed for any traf­fic vio­la­tion, his attor­ney said. A new vehi­cle tag was clear­ly vis­i­ble in Lt. Nazario’s rear win­dow, Arthur claimed.

The offi­cers could not be imme­di­ate­ly reached for com­ment through pub­licly list­ed phone numbers.

A town man­ag­er told the Virginian Pilot that the offi­cers still work for the police department.

I wish I had a dol­lar for every stu­pid com­ment I hear when police bru­tal­ize and kill inno­cent unarmed peo­ple. “Police need more train­ing.” “The police need bet­ter train­ing.” “The police need bias train­ing.” Yadda, yad­da, yadda.
Me, I have no such sil­ly mis­con­cep­tion about what real­ly is hap­pen­ing with American policing.
American polic­ing is white suprema­cy on steroids; it is that sim­ple. They do not care that there is a world­wide spot­light on them, begin­ning with the unlaw­ful slaugh­ter of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, up to the uncon­scionable pub­lic lynch­ing of George Floyd last year by a white sociopath wear­ing a cop uniform.
The Michael Brown killing was not where it began; nei­ther was the six­teen bul­lets in the back of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and it cer­tain­ly has­n’t been the pub­lic lynch­ing of George Floyd. This is a cen­turies-old prob­lem that has result­ed in the loss of untold black lives at the hands of white police.
As I have repeat­ed­ly said, this abuse of Black peo­ple began with tak­ing our ances­tors from Africa by rapa­cious & vio­lent sociopaths, enslaved and bru­tal­ized, and con­tin­ued through slave patrols. It mor­phed into some­thing called polic­ing that was designed to pro­tect whites from the grow­ing Black population.
The very foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of polic­ing were specif­i­cal­ly designed to be anti­thet­i­cal to African-Americans. For those rea­sons, I con­tin­ue to con­tend those prin­ci­ples [must] be decon­struct­ed if there is to be any sem­blance of jus­tice in America.
This process will not be accom­plished by expect­ing white men and women to help to decon­struct this igno­ble process that has giv­en them an unfair advan­tage for centuries.

Much like the wan­ton and sense­less mass shoot­ings that have become an accept­ed part of pop­u­lar cul­ture, police vio­lence against African-Americans has been as accept­able as apple pie.
They beat and kill black peo­ple for any and every­thing, walk­ing, talk­ing, run­ning, dri­ving, eat­ing, sleep­ing, sit­ting, breath­ing, and what­ev­er else comes naturally.
Of course, for those read­ing this from out­side the United States, all of these nat­ur­al things are like­ly to get African-Americans jus­ti­fi­ably mur­dered by police.
Or so says the white juries that find them not guilty on the rare occa­sion that they are charged crim­i­nal­ly with mur­der­ing some­one. Worse yet, the hand-picked white grand juries that are primed to return no true bill do so with effec­tive dis­patch. In case you are won­der­ing if bench tri­als are bet­ter for the aggriev­ed par­ties, the answer is no; they are worse; that’s why cops always opt for bench tri­als; the judges are the worst.
The move by Maryland’s Democrats in the state leg­is­la­ture to over­ride Gov. Larry Hogan’s ® veto of the police account­abil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion was the first in the nation.
Hogan, on Friday night, vetoed a slate of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform bills that the General Assembly had passed on Wednesday. But Democrats hold a veto-proof major­i­ty in each cham­ber of the state leg­is­la­ture and had said the vetoes would be scrapped after they vowed to imple­ment new law enforce­ment account­abil­i­ty mea­sures fol­low­ing a string of high-pro­file police killings of unarmed Black men, includ­ing George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
The bills’ pas­sage does away with the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, which pro­vid­ed police pro­tec­tions, includ­ing remov­ing com­plaints after a cer­tain amount of time had passed and a five-day wait­ing peri­od for offi­cers accused of mis­con­duct to speak to inter­nal investigators.
Maryland Democratic Legislators should be com­mend­ed for hav­ing the grit to brush aside Hogan’s veto, and for send­ing a strong mes­sage with their over­ride.https://​www​.bal​ti​more​sun​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​b​s​-​m​d​-​p​o​l​-​s​a​t​u​r​d​a​y​-​s​e​s​s​i​o​n​-​2​0​2​1​0​4​1​0​-​e​y​f​r​b​x​r​l​e​v​h​r​v​o​h​r​m​4​3​l​b​n​t​v​y​q​-​s​t​o​r​y​.​h​tml

As I said in a pre­vi­ous arti­cle, there is no such thing as a good Republican. Hogan sells him­self as a mod­er­ate, but he only does so to win in lib­er­al Maryland; when the chips are down, and they are required to stand against injus­tice, they revert to their white­ness and stead­fast­ly refuse to dis­man­tle the police state that sup­ports black oppression.

Rest assured that what Democrats did in Maryland will not become a trend in the oth­er 49 states, no mat­ter how lib­er­al they say they are. New York, the sup­posed lib­er­al icon, just decrim­i­nal­ized marijuana.
Across the coun­try, Republicans at all lev­els of the food chain have decid­ed that their hatred of Blacks tran­scends com­mon sense. They would rather drain the pool than share it.
Police in one hick town in Virginia decid­ed to pull over an SUV they claimed did not have tags. The Brand new Chevy Tahoe was being dri­ven by an Army sec­ond lieu­tenant in uni­form, who just hap­pened to be black.
Never mind that the new vehi­cle did have a tem­po­rary plate in place. The Military offi­cer, U.S. Army 2^nd Lt. Caron Nazario, slowed his vehi­cle and con­tin­ued for about two min­utes, after which he pulled up at a well-lit gas station.
The two imbe­ciles with guns drawn com­menced pep­per spray­ing and threat­en­ing Lieutenant Nazario.

I con­tin­ue to make a case for vot­ing in every elec­tion. There is a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing among far too many of our peo­ple about how the process works. Sure it is impor­tant to turn out to vote for the Presidential can­di­date of your choice, but you must vote in all elec­tions at the state and local lev­els. In the state leg­is­la­tures, the igno­ble race laws were enact­ed; in the state leg­is­la­tures, those laws [must] be repealed, as the Democratic leg­is­la­ture in Maryland did on Saturday.
Regardless of whom you elect President, if you do not uproot the racist Republicans at the state lev­el, the racist pro-police & vot­er sup­pres­sion laws will not only [not] be repealed, they will be rein­forced with even more des­per­ate Jim-crow laws as we have seen in Georgia after the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions, and in dozens of oth­er states across the nation.
African-Americans in the state of Maryland may have some­thing to say about the idea that their indi­vid­ual votes do not count, as far too many of our peo­ple are pre­dis­posed to believ­ing and saying.
It is through the process of vot­ing at the grass­roots lev­el, elect­ing can­di­dates who share your val­ues, that this mon­strous sys­tem will be uprooted.
It is because they under­stand the pow­er of your vote, as evi­denced in Maryland on Saturday, as evi­denced in the elec­tion of two Democratic US Senators in the heart of dix­ie Georgia why they are try­ing to stop you from voting.
It would help if you did­n’t fall vic­tim to the charm offen­sive of local Republicans. They come to your church­es, they show up at events that are impor­tant to you, they seem far less mean and hate­ful than the hate­ful nean­derthals in Washington DC, don’t they?

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​o​n​-​e​v​e​r​y​-​i​s​s​u​e​-​w​h​e​n​-​b​l​a​c​k​s​-​a​r​e​-​t​o​-​b​e​n​e​f​i​t​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​a​y​-​h​e​l​l​-​no/

But are they any dif­fer­ent? It is how they man­age to get elect­ed; the charm offen­sive, cou­pled with you opt­ing out of non-pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, gets them elect­ed, even in deep-blue states.
The longer that you allow them to get elect­ed, the longer you will con­tin­ue to see this sup­port for police vio­lence against our people.
Even on the sim­plest of issues like right­ing bla­tant wrongs, on issues where there is evi­dence that laws and poli­cies have brought untold harm to African-Americans, local Republicans, like their nation­al coun­ter­parts, vote against restora­tive jus­tice. On sim­ple issues like right­ing the wrongs of mar­i­jua­na arrests in states like New York, where police for decades destroyed the lives of count­less young men of col­or through fraud­u­lent, dis­pro­por­tion­ate, and racist arrests and incarcerations.
When the (Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act) came up to right some of those wrongs, every Republican in the state­house vot­ed against it.
Let me sim­pli­fy this. Despite the wrongs that police did and con­tin­ued to do to black peo­ple using the mar­i­jua­na laws when a bill came up to end the crim­i­nal­iz­ing of mar­i­jua­na use, every sin­gle Republican vot­ed to keep the law in place.…. every one of them.
How then do you stom­ach them show­ing their faces among you, smil­ing like they are your friends, know­ing that they con­tin­ue to leg­is­late against you at every turn?

.

.

.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

THERE IS NO PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE HERE; WE WATCHED MURDER IN REALTIME.

Derek Chauvin’s pub­lic lynch­ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a gut-wrench­ing & bru­tal con­tra­dic­tion for many of us who grew up lis­ten­ing to the upbeat mes­sages of faith, hope, and grace from Televangelist Billy Graham, and the beau­ti­ful singing of George Beverly Shea, out of the Twin-cities.
Separate and apart from the glis­ten­ing lights and tall majes­tic build­ings, the lure of America was shaped by our belief in the good of America shaped by those sermons.
Unfortunately, the mes­sages of faith, hope, and grace and the beau­ti­ful songs of praise papered over a sor­did and ugly exis­tence of hatred that the world is just now get­ting to see through the mar­vel of mod­ern technology.
As I watched in hor­ror in real-time the cal­lous & care­free mur­der of mis­ter Floyd, I was shocked beyond words at the sys­tem that made it pos­si­ble for any per­son, much less a cop, to believe for a sin­gle sec­ond that he has that kind of authority.
But it was not only a shock that I felt; it was hor­ror, sad­ness, but most of all, a sense of anger that made me scared of myself, and for myself…

Any sys­tem that would give any per­son the slight­est belief that it is okay to treat anoth­er human being in that man­ner is not a sys­tem; it is a shit­stem that must be over­turned and recre­at­ed from the ground up. It is not cliché to con­clude that the entire sys­tem is on tri­al. Neither will a con­vic­tion of the mon­sters who killed George Floyd mean there’s equal jus­tice in America for peo­ple of col­or; in fact, regard­less of the out­come, it will demon­strate that there is no jus­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Black Americans.
The idea that a so-called jus­tice sys­tem would allow a defense of drug use as a [cau­sa­tion] for Mister Floyd’s death after we clear­ly saw Derek Chauvin mur­der him in cold blood is a trav­es­ty that should be record­ed for posterity.
We can talk about this tri­al as remov­ing the white sheet that hides America’s dis­gust­ing hatred and geno­cide of Black peo­ple, but does this demon­ic wicked­ness res­onate in a world in which wicked­ness is an admirable virtue?

THERE IS NO PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE HERE

There is no pre­sump­tion of inno­cence in actu­al terms here. This case was not inves­ti­gat­ed, and we are work­ing toward deter­min­ing guilt or innocence.
We saw the dis­gust­ing mon­sters snuff out the life of a liv­ing, breath­ing, talk­ing, beg­ging, plead­ing, dis­traught, dying, hand­cuffed human being.
We wit­nessed oth­er con­cerned human beings ask, beg, cajole, demand that they allow him up so that he could breathe.…..
Not one of the degen­er­ates in uni­form did a sin­gle thing to stop the sav­age assault on mis­ter Floyd’s humanity.
They cal­lous­ly con­tin­ued their das­tard­ly act of mur­der until the life was drained from him, and even when there was no more move­ment from him, they kept up the assault, com­plete­ly unper­turbed about his well-being or any ensu­ing consequence.
Yet the very same shit­stem grant­ed them bail. It allows Derek Chauvin to wear a suit to this fraud­u­lent tri­al. Allowing that two-bit mur­der­er to wear a suit human­izes him, there should be no def­er­ence giv­en that socio­path­ic despot; how many cas­es have we wit­nessed with black defen­dants wear­ing prison clothes?
Who wor­ries about the way juries will per­ceive black defen­dants? How do racist white juries per­ceive black defen­dants, are they grant­ed human­i­ty much less deference?
He deserves no such deference.

The white man decid­ed that he dis­cov­ered the land he hap­pened upon, nev­er mind those peo­ple liv­ing there for thou­sands of years before he got up off all fours.
Once he real­ized that he would not fall off the edge of the world, his way of think­ing was that his­to­ry began when he start­ed to real­ize what oth­er races had known for thou­sands of years.
His atti­tude to land was that it was for him to take and secure as his. His atti­tude to the peo­ple he encoun­tered liv­ing on & off the land in the Americas and Africa has been that they are intel­lec­tu­al­ly infe­ri­or to him because they lacked the rapa­cious­ness and demon­ic mur­der­ous traits that he possesses.
And so he chopped off as many heads as he could, mur­dered and muti­lat­ed every­one that did not look like him, and took what­ev­er he wanted.
The doc­trine of dis­cov­ery was born.
Gun pow­der, a Chinese inven­tion, would be used to sub­ju­gate the oth­er peo­ples of the world, the world from then on was sub­ject­ed to a reign of ter­ror since the ear­ly four­teen hun­dreds. That reign of ter­ror for peo­ple of col­or per­sists today.

The sys­tem built on the geno­cide of Native Americans & African-Americans and the hun­dreds of years of the most grotesque form of human enslave­ment in human his­to­ry is the one that enabled the pub­lic slaugh­ter of George Floyd.
Derek Chauvin et al. com­mit­ted the actu­al killing, but it was the sys­tem that autho­rized and val­i­dat­ed it.
The same sys­tem gives hope to Chauvin and the mil­lions of despi­ca­ble mon­sters who sup­port him. It is a sys­tem built on the most socio­path­ic arro­gance, a self-appoint­ed supe­ri­or race the­o­ry that has to come from a deeply dark sense of inferiority.
And why not? Long before he knew that he should prob­a­bly cook his meat or bathe, the rest of the world was already long steeped in phi­los­o­phy, med­i­cine, astron­o­my, sci­ence, edu­ca­tion, and travel.
So, the last race to come into the light appoints itself the mas­ter race, mas­ter over what was cre­at­ed long before he got up off all fours.
But a leop­ard can­not hide its spots.….the detached indif­fer­ence with which Derek Cauvin squeezed the life from the already hand­cuffed George Floyd should come as no sur­prise to the world now.
What the world got a glimpse of on May 25, 2020, was only one small iter­a­tion of the unimag­in­able ter­ror that African-Americans have been exposed to by the American state from the begin­ning of its exis­tence and even before.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

You ever noticed that the peo­ple ask­ing the ques­tion, is get­ting a col­lege degree worth the price are the peo­ple who have mul­ti­ple col­lege degrees sit­ting in beau­ti­ful tele­vi­sion studios?
Some even try to sell the idea that it is elit­ist to get a col­lege edu­ca­tion. The strat­e­gy is to dis­suade mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties from get­ting an under­grad­u­ate degree, much less a grad­u­ate degree.
The cost of a four-year col­lege edu­ca­tion is already through the roof. If you lis­ten to politi­cians talk about this issue, you would think that the gov­ern­ment is pow­er­less about doing some­thing about it, at least at state colleges.
If you make the fees too much for the aver­age fam­i­ly strug­gling to get by, the kid may not be able to get into col­lege unless he can nav­i­gate the web of oth­er ways avail­able to low-income families.

We live in a cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem; I say ignore the cost and get the edu­ca­tion, wor­ry about the cost after you get the degree.
A ris­ing tide rais­es all boats, the elites who run the gov­ern­ment wants things to remain as they are. They Love to talk about; “our way of life.”
The unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that their way of life means us on the ground, their knees on our necks; we will not have that anymore.
They know they can­not keep Blacks out of col­leges any­more, but they darn sure can try to dis­cour­age us through high­er col­lege tuition costs and their cam­paign to dis­suade us.…you ever hear them try­ing to tell us that home­own­er­ship is not all it’s propped up to be?

Anyway, back to the edu­ca­tion thing, here is where I am going with this; most of us saw the video of Georgia State Police act­ing like the Nazi Gestapo they tru­ly are when they arrest­ed Rep. Park Cannon on March 25 after she knocked on the door to Gov. Brian Kemp’s office while he was speak­ing about the vot­er sup­pres­sion bill the Nazi Republican clowns in that leg­is­la­ture passed.
Rep. Park Cannon, a Democrat from Atlanta, was arrest­ed March 25 after she knocked on the door to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s office while he was on live tele­vi­sion speak­ing about the vot­ing bill he had just signed into law. Police charged her with obstruc­tion of law enforce­ment and dis­rup­tion of the General Assembly. She was released from jail lat­er that evening.

Representative Cannon polite­ly knocked on a door.

What the Gestapo nev­er both­ered to think about as they were arrest­ing Rep. Cannon and think­ing of pil­ing on bogus felony charges as they are wont to do, is that the per­son mak­ing the pros­e­cut­ing deci­sion would be anoth­er edu­cat­ed black woman.
“After review­ing all of the evi­dence, I have decid­ed to close this mat­ter,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in an emailed state­ment. “It will not be pre­sent­ed to a grand jury for con­sid­er­a­tion of indict­ment, and it is now closed.”
Before we go any fur­ther, let me show you the edu­cat­ed black queen who got to make that deci­sion; here is District Attorney Fanni Willis.

↓ ↓ ↓

Education is pow­er; your ene­mies are count­ing on your con­tin­ued fail­ure to take advan­tage of the pow­er with­in you. They hope you will con­tin­ue to think that District Attorney Fanni Willis’s pow­er posi­tions are only for whites.
Rest assured, if a white male occu­pied ms. Willis’ office, Representative Cannon, would be defend­ing her­self from the trumped-up bogus charges the dis­gust­ing lying Gestapo concocted.
Now that you can see the direct ben­e­fits of get­ting an edu­ca­tion, I hope for the love of God that you will con­tin­ue to stay alert and pay atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing in your life in [your] country.
Yes, it is as much yours as it is theirs, if not more so.
Own it.

These dis­gust­ing trai­tors attacked their own coun­try on behalf of a wannabe dictator.

Much of what they have been doing in the dark is now out in the light; the pris­ons are filled with Blacks, many of whom com­mit­ted crimes that war­rant­ed their incar­cer­a­tion. Many are there inno­cent­ly as we have seen the Gestapo arrest­ed a polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for knock­ing on a door, then attach­ing trumped-up felony charges to her.
Ask your­selves, how many inno­cent peo­ple do they put in jail dai­ly, using bogus charges like the ones attached to Rep. Cannon?
It is for those rea­sons that I, for one, say DEFUND THE POLICE. There are Democrats out there talk­ing about not using the term ‘defund the police’ because it stirs up conservatives.
Who gives a rat’s ass about stir­ring up those despi­ca­ble deplorable[sic] whose oxy­gen is hatred?
Why would I care about the feel­ings of such hate-filled people?
Was that love they showed to the police on January 6^th, 2021? I don’t think so. Their faux sup­port for police is based sole­ly on the fact that police con­tin­ue to abuse the peo­ple they hate.
So please spare me the cau­tion and care­ful­ness about their feel­ings, huge chunks of each of the over 18,000 police depart­men­t’s bud­get should be cut away, and those funds used to build up mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing col­lege edu­ca­tion for the poor.
Close the for-prof­it pris­ons; when peo­ple are edu­cat­ed and have some­thing to live for, they are far less like­ly to engage in criminality.
DEFUND THE POLICE NOW.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

South Carolina Democrats shot back after a Republican House mem­ber post­ed online that he planned to vote against a hate crimes bill because he believes that white peo­ple have been “vil­i­fied by the left.”

S.C. Rep. Victor Dabney, a fresh­man law­mak­er from Kershaw County, post­ed about his plan to vote on Facebook Wednesday morn­ing, hours before the House met to con­sid­er a num­ber of bills includ­ing a hate crimes bill.

The bill, which passed the House Wednesday, would specif­i­cal­ly allow pros­e­cu­tors to seek addi­tion­al penal­ties for crimes com­mit­ted on the basis of hate because of a person’s actu­al or per­ceived race, col­or, reli­gion, sex, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der, nation­al ori­gin or phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­i­ty. Under the bill, for vio­lent crimes like mur­der, assault, armed rob­bery or crim­i­nal sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the penal­ties could be increased by up to five years impris­on­ment and an addi­tion­al fine up to $10,000.

Currently, South Carolina does not have its own hate crimes law. If a crime is com­mit­ted on the basis of hate, state pros­e­cu­tors can only pros­e­cute the crime itself. However, fed­er­al offi­cials could choose to step in and charge the offend­er under the fed­er­al hate crimes law.

Lawmakers ulti­mate­ly vot­ed 79 – 29 to pass the bill, with Dabney vot­ing against it.

Hello Patriots. As you read this post, please remem­ber that I was elect­ed by you to stand up for you, not to bow down to…
In his post, Dabney said he would not “bow down to the ‘Left,’ ” and vote in favor of the bill.

“I am 63 years old and have spent my entire life watch­ing our soci­ety give in to the lib­er­als, and it’s nev­er enough,” Dabney post­ed. “Our entire way of life has been vil­i­fied by the left; it’s our white­ness and our ‘straight­ness’ that keeps get­ting in the way.”

Dabney said he thinks white peo­ple are “con­stant­ly remind­ed that we are the prob­lem because of our skin color.”

“We are the rea­son that blacks can’t seem to suc­ceed in our soci­ety,” Dabney wrote. “We are the rea­son that black crime rates are ten times that of oth­ers. We are the rea­son that the black fam­i­ly unit has been destroyed and most young black chil­dren don’t have a father fig­ure in the home. It’s all because of the light col­or of our skin, at least that is what I am told on a reg­u­lar basis.”

Dabney’s words sparked back­lash from Democrats across the state, with some call­ing his words racist.

S.C. Democratic Party Chairman called for Dabney to be removed from his com­mit­tee assign­ments at the State House.

“This is the face and future of the Republican Party,” Robertson tweeted.

Sen. Mia McLeod, D‑Richland, said only those in places of priv­i­lege accuse oth­ers of “reverse racism.”

“Rep. Dabney hasn’t been tar­get­ed (because) of his race,” McLeod tweet­ed. “My sons & I have. My con­stituents have. Tragically, Sen. Pinckney & 8 of his parish­ioners have,” she said, refer­ring to the nine African Americans who were killed at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church by a white suprema­cist gun­man. The vic­tims includ­ed a state senator.

“Race-based hate is real,” McLeod added.

McLeod and Robertson’s tweets received dozens of retweets.

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison, who ran for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Lindsey Graham, called out Dabney on Twitter in a tweet that received more than 500 retweets and near­ly 2,000 likes.

“This is a Republican mem­ber of the SC leg­is­la­ture. Read his words & feel his hate,” Harrison tweet­ed. “It is these type of folks draft­ing laws about vot­ing & hate crimes.”

Dabney called the accu­sa­tions of racism “ridicu­lous.”

“They don’t know me,” Dabney told The State in an interview.

Dabney said he made his post to point out that dis­cus­sions of race often come up on the House floor. He said that House Democrats bring up race “with­in min­utes,” when dis­cussing con­tro­ver­sial issues.

“It comes up near­ly every day on the floor,” Dabney said. “It seems like that’s their go-to.”

“It should be some­thing that you keep pri­vate and I keep pri­vate,” Dabney said.

Associated Press

Are you watch­ing the Derek Chauvin mur­der trial?
No? .….….….…Me neither!
I have tak­en the posi­tion that there is no need to watch this tri­al because we all know what the out­come must be right?
I mean we all wit­nessed a man mur­dered in real-time; so the tri­al should be a for­mal­i­ty before the guilty ver­dict is ren­dered right?
Right!!!

MY SHORT & TO THE POINT VIEWS ON THIS CASE BELOW 

One of the ques­tions that I ask par­tic­u­lar­ly of peo­ple of col­or is, why don’t you take a more active vot­ing posi­tion? Last year one 60-some­thing African-American man told me that he did not get into white peo­ple’s busi­ness, speak­ing of voting.
Normally I would try to tell some­one like that why it’s impor­tant to vote, but where there is no floor, where do you stand?
I told myself some things are best left alone; I was not going to make a dif­fer­ence in that kind of darkness.
It is easy to gloss over the strug­gles that African-Americans have waged to gain the right to vote. A right that white men bestowed upon them­selves and them alone. Yes, at one time, they did not even allow their white women to vote. No, even if her dad­dy left her wealth, her hus­band had great pow­er over her inher­i­tance. She could not pur­chase prop­er­ty or do what she pleas­es with her own money.
It would be easy for some­one to auto­mat­i­cal­ly assume that because of those strug­gles, African-Americans would be attuned to the pow­er of vot­ing, or at the very least be enlight­ened by the war that the white pow­er struc­ture has waged to pre­vent them from voting.
Unfortunately, this is not so, but to be fair Black women have been loy­al sol­diers in the strug­gle to reg­is­ter and get oth­ers to vote.….…… Today Charles Schumer owes his Senate Majority Leadership to Stacy Abrams and oth­ers who worked to deliv­er not one, but two Democratic US Senate seats in Georgia, the heart of Dixie.

One of the mis­con­cep­tions that exist at the local lev­el, is that local Republicans are some­how less evil than nation­al Republicans. As if nation­al Republicans are from Mars.
Black vot­ers are fooled into think­ing that they can live with local Republican elect­ed lead­ers, not under­stand­ing that Republicans’ harm begins at the local level.
Like ground­hogs, they bur­row into the heart of our every­day lives, exist­ing in pre­tense, they vis­it our church­es, they pre­tend to be friends by throw­ing a few bones, but their inten­tions are nefarious.
On the issues that are of the great­est sig­nif­i­cance and impor­tance to African-Americans, Republicans at all lev­els are uni­tar­i­ly opposed.
No exceptions!!!
Please make no mis­take about it; vot­ing is not sole­ly about oppo­si­tion to a hate­ful white-suprema­cist agen­da. It is also about wolves-in-sheep­’s-cloth­ing-democ­rats who can­not get elect­ed with­out the African-American vote, but who vote in sup­port of a white suprema­cist Republican agen­da as soon as they are elected.

The New York Legislature recent­ly Voted to Legalize Adult-Use Marijuana; the Bill was signed into law soon after by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Over sev­er­al decades America’s war on drugs has wrought untold suf­fer­ing and death on African-Americans and oth­er Black and brown peo­ple, as police live out their blood-lust of hatred on inno­cent peo­ple they did/​do not like.
Using dra­con­ian stop & frisk, traf­fic stops, and raids on Blacks’ homes and prop­er­ty, police across the United States have filled jails to the over­flow­ing, feed­ing the hun­gry beast of mass incar­cer­a­tion as police plant drugs and engage in all kinds of abu­sive and dead­ly prac­tices against African-Americans.
Police have wrecked count­less lives and filled ceme­ter­ies with the bod­ies of those they killed in botched drug raids, in many instances hav­ing entered the homes of inno­cent peo­ple using bad intelligence.
The sad fact is that for the most part, those drug laws were the brain-child of Republicans and so-called mod­er­ate Democrats.
Although there is con­sis­tent data that shows that African-Americans do [not] con­sume drugs or alco­hol in greater quan­ti­ties than whites or any oth­er racial group, police have used drug enforce­ment to exact a dra­con­ian assault on peo­ple of color.
The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act passed the NYS Senate recent­ly by a vote of 40 – 23.
All 20 Republicans vot­ed against the Bill’s pas­sage, even with the knowl­edge of the destruc­tion that the nation’s drug laws have caused on Black people.
Let that sink in African-Americans, the next time they come into your church­es to tell you about them­selves and seek your vote, or to lull you into a false sense of secu­ri­ty because you refuse to be informed by the facts.

In addi­tion to the Republicans, who have act­ed in lock-step with their coun­ter­parts in Washington DC, three (3) wolves- in- sheep-cloth­ing ‑democ­rats vot­ed [no] to the Bill’s passage.
Anna Kaplan, a Long Island State sen­a­tor, was one of the Democrats who vot­ed against the bill, using the flim­sy excuse that there is still a lack of tech­nol­o­gy to detect impaired driving.
“I have long-held con­cerns and have spent the last few weeks speak­ing with con­stituents,” Kaplan said. “Long Island already leads the state in traf­fic fatal­i­ties.”
Here is the thing, there is zero evi­dence in that state­ment that the traf­fic fatal­i­ties on Long Island have any­thing to do with mar­i­jua­na. Many fac­tors may be respon­si­ble for those traf­fic fatal­i­ties, includ­ing reck­less and dan­ger­ous dri­ving, poor roads, and even impaired dri­ving from alco­hol or syn­thet­ic drugs favored by the whiter pop­u­la­tion, the fur­ther out on Long Island you venture.
Under the new law, police will no longer be able to use the smell of cannabis to jus­ti­fy search­es. New Yorkers with con­vic­tions for mar­i­jua­na use will have their records auto­mat­i­cal­ly and imme­di­ate­ly expunged.
Tom, an African-American man (not his real name) who worked for years as a Corrections offi­cer and has recent­ly retired, told me the only rea­son that New York state passed this law is ‘mon­ey.
I told him that even though I was just as cyn­i­cal about the motives behind the new law’s pas­sage, I was buoyed at the restora­tive jus­tice that may be derived from it…

Speaking of money…

The state will also be cre­at­ing the Office of Cannabis Management, which will set up reg­u­la­tors and licens­ing distributors.
Cannabis prod­ucts will be sub­ject to a 9 per­cent state tax and a 4 per­cent local tax. The local tax would be split, with 1 per­cent going to coun­ties and 3 per­cent going to cities, towns, and villages.
All cannabis tax­es would be direct­ed to the “New York State Cannabis Revenue Fund.” The rev­enue would cov­er the costs to admin­is­ter and enforce the program.
After that, 40 per­cent of the remain­ing mon­ey would go to a com­mu­ni­ty grants rein­vest­ment fund, 40 per­cent to edu­ca­tion, and 20 per­cent to drug treat­ment and pub­lic edu­ca­tion programs.
The idea we are told is to help heal the com­mu­ni­ties that have been dev­as­tat­ed by America’s war on drugs, which real­ly has been just one iter­a­tion of America’s war on African-Americans.
That con­cept of heal­ing is fraught with prob­lems as gen­tri­fi­ca­tion has changed the faces of the com­mu­ni­ties that were once the com­mu­ni­ties that were turned upside down by the aggres­sive polic­ing and the infu­sion of syn­thet­ic drugs aid­ed by ele­ments of the very said government.
So it fol­lows that the peo­ple who live in the expen­sive brown­stones in Harlem today are not the peo­ple who were dev­as­tat­ed by the drug wars.

Black vot­ers who are fooled into think­ing that local Republicans are harm­less must under­stand that in our coun­ty of dutchess, the coun­ty exec­u­tive Marc Molinaro, pres­i­dent of the State County Executives Association, said instead of leav­ing it up to the state to admin­is­ter and dis­trib­ute those funds, more fund­ing should be direct­ed straight to counties.
It is safe to say that if Marc Molinaro had a vote in the state sen­ate, he would have opposed the bill the same way that Sue Serino did.
My call to Serino’s office to hear direct­ly from her why she opposed the bill was met with an auto­mat­ed mes­sage that direct­ed me to leave a mes­sage or email her.
I did neither!
However, her web­site fea­tured the fol­low­ing statement.
“At a time when we have all been told repeat­ed­ly to ‘fol­low the sci­ence,’ sci­en­tif­ic and oth­er con­cerns put forth by pub­lic health offi­cials, law enforce­ment, and mem­bers of our school and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties have been ignored so the state can prof­it off a bill that unfor­tu­nate­ly remains dan­ger­ous­ly flawed.
Unlike with alco­hol, cur­rent­ly, no accu­rate road­side sci­en­tif­ic test exists to detect mar­i­jua­na in an impaired dri­ver, mak­ing it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to deter impaired dri­ving and even more dif­fi­cult to hold those who dri­ve while impaired account­able for any harm they may cause. A lack of avail­able detec­tion meth­ods will also pose a num­ber of health and safe­ty chal­lenges in the work­place — whether on a con­struc­tion site, in a health­care facil­i­ty, or else­where. Most impor­tant­ly, while this bill intends to legal­ize only adult-use recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na, I remain incred­i­bly wor­ried about the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences it will have on our kids.
I gov­ern by lis­ten­ing, and I have spent sig­nif­i­cant time lis­ten­ing to those on both sides of this debate. While I under­stand and respect the points all have offered, [sig­nif­i­cant health and safe­ty con­cerns] remain unad­dressed in this par­tic­u­lar bill. Therefore, I could not in good con­science sup­port its pas­sage at this time.” 

Serino’s response is a clas­sic Republican talk­ing point. One that engages in a cir­cu­lar nar­ra­tive that gives law enforce­ment sup­port when­ev­er the ques­tion of law-enforce­ment abuse and the need for restora­tive jus­tice comes up. It is the very same faux nar­ra­tive that cre­at­ed the Republican war on drugs in the first place. It is a shock­ing act of dis­re­spect to the mil­lions of African-Americans who have been incar­cer­at­ed and insti­tu­tion­al­ized and killed due to the war on drugs over the decades that this war was first autho­rized as an assault on Black people.
Last year as the entire world reg­is­tered out­rage at the bla­tant mur­der of George Floyd by Minneopolic cops Derek Chauvin and oth­ers, Sue Serino was gloat­ing on social media about the police groups that endorsed her.
I point­ed out the insen­si­tiv­i­ty of the social media post in a point­ed response.
In response, Serino again reit­er­at­ed the same gib­ber­ish about being proud of law enforce­ment sup­port with­out address­ing the role the said law enforce­ment has played in oppress­ing seg­ments of the population.
There should be no mis­take about their inten­tions when they default to sup­port of law enforce­ment or [sig­nif­i­cant health and safe­ty con­cerns]  when chal­lenged on the harm law enforce­ment has wrought on peo­ple of color.
Supporting good police offi­cers who do their jobs with pro­fes­sion­al­ism and respect, and work­ing to remove bad cops, and right­ing the wrongs they do are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive tasks, both are fun­da­men­tal­ly necessary.
It has noth­ing to do with con­cerns for health and safe­ty, but every­thing to do with secur­ing blocs of cop vote, and cur­ry­ing favor with police unions.
Here in the coun­ty of Dutchess, the County Sheriff, the Judges, Police brass, County Political lead­er­ship, the city’s Mayor are all cut from the same Republican cloth.
A vote against The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act was a vote against restora­tive jus­tice for African-Americans in New York state.

A Statement from Governor Cuomo before he signed the bill into law

A state­ment from Attorney General Letitia James.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.