I haven’t been watch­ing the Derek Chauvin mur­der tri­al I must admit, but some­thing on tele­vi­sion caught my ear this morn­ing as I was get­ting ready for work.
It was the way the judge pre­sid­ing over the tri­al of the mur­der­ous cops spoke to a young female EMT& Minneapolis fire­fight­er Genevieve Hansen, who cor­rect­ly pushed back at Chauvin’s lawyer.
Could he have been any clear­er in his con­tempt for the fact that the young EMT was giv­ing what he knew was a pow­er­ful and dam­ag­ing account of what she watched as a pro­fes­sion­al whose job it is to save lives?
So before we go any fur­ther, it is impor­tant to state that this is not the George Floyd mur­der tri­al. It is the Derek Chauvin mur­der tri­al. George Floyd was mur­dered in real-time as the world watched.
Dereck Chauvin killed him in real-time as the world watched.
There is noth­ing con­vo­lut­ed or com­plex about it. That’s what hap­pened unless you are will­ing to sus­pend what you saw and believe anoth­er iter­a­tion of why white police offi­cers can­not be con­vict­ed of the mur­der of Blacks.
Unless you want to con­tin­ue to believe that the old American law that a Black man has no right a white man is oblig­at­ed to respect is still the law.

The young firefighter/​EMT’s had every right to be testy, but this is some­thing that escaped the tri­al judge as he lec­tured the young woman, who clear­ly was emotional.

In his cross-exam­i­na­tion Tuesday after­noon, defense attor­ney Eric Nelson again honed in on the crowd’s behav­ior, ask­ing fire­fight­er Genevieve Hansen if she would agree that her own behav­ior became loud­er, more frus­trat­ed, and upset.

“More des­per­ate,” Hansen replied.

Nelson asked whether Hansen would agree that stress­ful sit­u­a­tions can affect peo­ple’s mem­o­ry. Hansen replied, “absolute­ly,” adding that’s why it’s a good thing the video exists. In a tense exchange, Nelson asked whether the bystanders were becom­ing angri­er over time. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any­body be killed, but it’s upset­ting,” Hansen replied.
Later, fol­low­ing anoth­er tense moment when Hansen com­plained she had­n’t been allowed to fin­ish her answer, Judge Cahill issued a stern warn­ing to Hansen that she should answer Nelson’s ques­tions and refrain from being argu­men­ta­tive. “Do not argue with the court, do not argue with coun­sel,” Cahill said before adjourn­ing court for the day.
I decide when you are fin­ished answering”.
Totally uncalled for in tone and tenor.

Seventy-six (76) years ago, in a South Carolina court­room, anoth­er judge sat as the tri­al judge in anoth­er case of bla­tant abuse of pow­er by police. Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard, 26, was beat­en and blind­ed by a police chief and oth­er vio­lent, racist thugs in police uni­form. Woodard was trav­el­ing by bus to see his fam­i­ly; he was dressed in his mil­i­tary uni­form, hav­ing just returned from a long stretch at war.
Woodard asked the white bus dri­ver if he could stop so that he could relieve him­self, the dri­ver refused, and an argu­ment devel­oped. “Sit down boy”, the imbe­cil­ic dri­ver told Seargant Woodard. The dri­ver stopped at the next town and report­ed the exchange to the police, who prompt­ly ordered Sergeant Woodard off the bus and imme­di­ate­ly com­menced beat­ing him.
Sergeant Woodard was charged with a litany of trumped-up charges and con­vict­ed. The police chief was even­tu­al­ly charged with Sergeant Woodard’s blind­ing, but the all-white jury, in typ­i­cal fash­ion, set him free after delib­er­at­ing for only a few minutes.
Sounds Familiar?
See the sto­ry below.

https://mikebeckles.com/isaac-woodard-jr-blinded-by-white-cops-in-north-carolina-in-1946/

The tri­al judge, in that case, Judge J. Waties Waring, dis­agreed with the rul­ing. Judge Waring would become an inte­gral part­ner in the fight for social jus­tice dur­ing the civ­il rights fights of the 1960s.
Judge Waring’s recog­ni­tion of the wrongs in the American jus­tice sys­tem 75 years ago should not be con­sid­ered a sign that we live in bet­ter times.
The American Justice System was built as a bar­ri­er between whites who enjoy all of the priv­i­leges of a free soci­ety and Blacks who are to be kept sub­ju­gat­ed and in their place as sec­ond-class citizens.
To ensure that the sys­tem works as planned, they cre­at­ed the con­cept of ‘polic­ing,’ which is an off­shoot of slave-catching.
They empow­ered them to do what­ev­er they feel is nec­es­sary to keep Blacks in their place.
For those rea­sons, white juries have stead­fast­ly refused to con­vict white police offi­cers who mur­der Black Americans. They see the actions of those uni­formed killers as doing [exact­ly] what they asked them to do.
It is a sys­tem that can­not be changed with per­sua­sion; it must be vig­or­ous­ly tack­led stri­dent­ly at the bal­lot box and over­turned, and a new sys­tem cre­at­ed in its stead.

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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. 

On Feb. 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, 26, had just returned to the U.S. from fight­ing abroad in World War II and was on a Greyhound bus en route to his home in Winnsboro, S.C., when he asked the bus dri­ver if he could pull into a rest stop for a bath­room break. The dri­ver refused, and the two got into a ver­bal argu­ment. At the next stop in Batesburg, S.C., the dri­ver ordered Woodard off the bus, and police offi­cers, includ­ing Batesburg police chief Lynwood Shull, took Woodard into custody.

The exclu­sive clip above fea­tures Woodard’s drama­ti­za­tion describ­ing how he was blind­ed on April 23, 1946, affidavit.
The police­man asked me, ‘was I dis­charged?’ When I said, ‘yes,’ that’s when he start­ed beat­ing me with a bil­ly near across the top of my head. After that, I grabbed his bil­ly, wrung it out of his hand. Another police­man came up and threw his gun on me, told me to drop the bil­ly, or he’d drop me, so I dropped the bil­ly. He knocked me uncon­scious. He hollered, get up. When I start­ed to get up, he start­ed punch­ing me in the eyes with the end of his billy.

Orson Welles, at the time a promi­nent radio announc­er, pub­li­cized the inci­dent, rais­ing aware­ness among white Americans. The NAACP helped Woodard embark on a speak­ing tour to help peo­ple see the real­i­ties of police bru­tal­i­ty up-close. In August 1946, enter­tain­ers Billie Holiday and Woody Guthrie and box­er Joe Louis head­lined a ben­e­fit con­cert at Harlem’s now-defunct Lewisohn Stadium to raise mon­ey for Woodard and his fam­i­ly. The event drew a crowd of 20,000 and raised $10,000 for Woodard and his fam­i­ly (about $132,835 in Feb. 2021).

“I spent three-and-a-half years in the ser­vice of my coun­try and thought that I would be treat­ed like a man when I returned to civil­ian life, but I was mis­tak­en,” Woodard told the audi­ence. “If the loss of my sight will make peo­ple in America get togeth­er to pre­vent what hap­pened to me from ever hap­pen­ing again to any oth­er per­son, I would be glad.”

In November 1946, in a tri­al over whether exces­sive or unnec­es­sary force was used on Woodard, Batesburg police chief Shull claimed he only hit Woodard once. An all-white jury acquit­ted Shull after delib­er­at­ing for 30 minutes.

However, the fed­er­al judge who presided over the case, Julius Waties Waring, didn’t think the out­come was fair. The case was a polit­i­cal awak­en­ing for him, accord­ing to Richard Gergel, a South Carolina fed­er­al judge who start­ed research­ing Woodard’s case a decade ago and who brought atten­tion to how it influ­enced future land­mark civ­il rights cas­es in his 2019 book Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring. Waring described the case as a “bap­tism by fire” that led him to issue opin­ions in favor of civ­il rights cas­es for years afterward.

For exam­ple, Waring’s dis­sent­ing opin­ion in Briggs v. Elliott (1952) — in which 20 Black par­ents in Clarendon County, S.C., sued for equal edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren — argued school seg­re­ga­tion was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al per the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court came to the same con­clu­sion in Brown v. Board of Education, which cleared up five school seg­re­ga­tion cas­es, includ­ing Briggs after Waring encour­aged NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to appeal the deci­sion as a direct attack on segregation.

Woodard’s blind­ing was also a polit­i­cal awak­en­ing for future civ­il rights lead­ers. Student Nonviolent Coördinating Committee co-founder Julian Bond’s ear­li­est mem­o­ry of racial vio­lence saw news­pa­per pho­tographs of Woodard with ban­dages over his eyes at the age of six, pho­tographs he would remem­ber for “as long as I live,” per his 2021 posthu­mous­ly-pub­lished col­lec­tion of lec­tures, Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.

Crucially, Woodard’s blind­ing spurred President Harry S. Truman to take action. NAACP leader Walter White recalled in his mem­oir that when he told Truman about Woodard’s blind­ing, Truman stood up and exclaimed, “My God! I had no idea it was as ter­ri­ble as that! We’ve got to do some­thing!” In Dec. 1946, a month after the acquit­tal of the Batesburg, S.C., police chief, Truman cre­at­ed a pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion on civ­il rights. In 1948, per its rec­om­men­da­tion, he signed an exec­u­tive order call­ing for the deseg­re­ga­tion of the U.S. mil­i­tary and cre­at­ing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services.

“The Department of Justice had been some­what timid in doing any­thing about the wide­spread denial of basic rights to African Americans in the South and across the coun­try, but with­in two years of Woodard’s blind­ing, the Department of Justice would begin fil­ing briefs in the United States Supreme Court in seg­re­ga­tion cas­es, argu­ing that this Court should act against seg­re­ga­tion,” says Mack.

As for Woodard, he wouldn’t receive dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits from the Army until 1962. To sup­port his fam­i­ly, he bought prop­er­ties in the Bronx, N.Y., and lived there until he died in 1992 at the age of 73. In 2019, a his­tor­i­cal mark­er about Woodard went up in the city where he was blind­ed, now called Batesburg-Leesville.

Woodard stayed out of the spot­light, but the trau­ma of the inci­dent always stayed with him. In a Sep. 16, 1982, inter­view with the pub­lic affairs TV pro­gram Like It Is, Woodard said he was frus­trat­ed that the police offi­cer who blind­ed him kept his job. But he didn’t allow it to lose his faith in human­i­ty. “Everybody ain’t bad,” as he put it.

When the host Gil Noble asked him what he want­ed future gen­er­a­tions to learn about America from what hap­pened to him, Woodard replied, “People should learn how to live with one anoth­er and how to treat one anoth­er. Because after all, we all are human beings, regard­less of color.”

By Aymann Ismail

Around the city, many Black res­i­dents had a grim pre­dic­tion for the out­come of the George Floyd case — but also some hope.

In Minneapolis, few can get any­where near the Hennepin County District Court. It looks more like a bar­racks than a cour­t­house now. The build­ing, where open­ing argu­ments begin on Monday for Derek Chauvin’s tri­al in the death of George Floyd, has been sur­round­ed by mil­i­tary-grade barbed wire and fenc­ing, and it’s guard­ed by National Guard sol­diers scat­tered across the perime­ter. Dozens of cam­era crews are posi­tioned out­side. Recently, as jury selec­tion in the case began, there was an eerie qui­et all around. People on both sides of the bar­ri­cades stared at one anoth­er warily.

The only sounds in the area came from the occa­sion­al light rail and, on that day, the dis­tant howls of about 300 pro­test­ers who marched near­by, fol­lowed by dozens of pho­tog­ra­phers and jour­nal­ists. I fol­lowed the echoes of peo­ple chant­i­ng “Do the right thing!” to find them. Local orga­niz­er Toussaint Morrison was at the helm. “Let me tell you some­thing about this build­ing right here. It is undoubt­ed­ly going to affect every sin­gle Black youth in this state,” he said when they made it to the court. “What’s on tri­al is the val­ue of a Black man’s life, and I don’t need the Hennepin County gov­ern­ment to let me know if I’m valu­able or not. The ver­dict can go either way.”

Morrison wasn’t the only one who seemed to be gird­ing him­self for the even­tu­al ver­dict. As I spoke to Black res­i­dents around Minneapolis, they all had one pre­dic­tion. “He ain’t going nowhere,” one man, Jaleel, told me about Derek Chauvin. “And I hate to say this in front of all these peo­ple out here protest­ing, but they’re not going to get him.”
Jaleel, who asked not to use his last name, was born in Minneapolis and has nev­er lived any­where else. (“It’s not a bad place. It’s a good place to live. It might get cold as shit, but it’s a good place to live,” he said.) He said he knew George Floyd well — and he can’t con­vince him­self that Chauvin will be held respon­si­ble for Floyd’s death. He’s espe­cial­ly wor­ried about what could hap­pen in that event. “They’re going to find some way to get a hung jury, and they’re going to tear this moth­er up again,” he said.

Nearby, Katina, who stood with fel­low pub­lic school teach­ers behind a ban­ner for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, told me she’s not espe­cial­ly polit­i­cal­ly active, but came to the ral­ly to set an exam­ple for her stu­dents. “We want to make sure that they keep hope in their mind. And that maybe jus­tice just might be served, pos­si­bly?” She didn’t sound so sure her­self. When I asked the out­come she was expect­ing at the tri­al, she gave me a care­ful look and said, “Just hav­ing hope is a good thing.”
Like many oth­er teach­ers across the coun­try, Katina said she wor­ries about the men­tal health of her stu­dents, but is espe­cial­ly wor­ried for kids in Minneapolis, who are expe­ri­enc­ing “com­pound­ed stress” due to the tri­al. She’s low­ered her expec­ta­tions for her stu­dents’ abil­i­ty to stick to the cur­ricu­lum vir­tu­al­ly and is hope­ful that a year of protests like this one is teach­ing them in anoth­er way. “Even if they’re not learn­ing English or social stud­ies, they’re learn­ing the his­to­ry of America, and watch­ing things change,” she said.

Inside the Hennepin County court, he told me he noticed some­thing pecu­liar. “I was there in the media room watch­ing the tri­al. One of the things that I noticed is that the pros­e­cu­tor, the pros­e­cu­tor attor­ney, and the defense attor­ney share sim­i­lar con­cerns,” he said. “They want to impress upon peo­ple that the sys­tem works. They want peo­ple to accept the real­i­ty of the sys­tem, that a per­son isn’t guilty until the sys­tem says he’s guilty. You can see him com­mit a crime, but there’s a sep­a­rate set of rules here. We also know that that’s not true. When you talk to Black peo­ple, that only holds true for wealthy peo­ple and the police.”At George Floyd Square that week, locals mourned the death of anoth­er man who was shot only steps from where Floyd died. Tommy McBrayer, a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er, was resigned when we spoke. “It’s trag­ic. I’m still feel­ing that trau­ma in my body. It’s been a roller coast­er, men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly,” he said of the past nine months, adding that the death of his friend recent­ly and Floyd’s death are intrin­si­cal­ly tied. “I think Black folks will nev­er get jus­tice. We’re liv­ing in a white America where noth­ing has ever been jus­ti­fied. Even if you think I’m wrong, the proof is every­where. We’re still only three-fifths of a per­son.” I asked if he wor­ried about the trial’s out­come. “You can only con­trol so much,” he said. “Of course I wor­ry.” But if there is anoth­er upris­ing, he said he still felt con­flict­ed about the last one: “I don’t think we got any­thing out of it, because we were just mess­ing up our own neigh­bor­hood, but doing noth­ing is eas­i­er. It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly better.”

Carmen Means, anoth­er local orga­niz­er, told me she’s also expect­ing a “not guilty” ver­dict, but she’s think­ing of the tri­al and ver­dict from anoth­er per­spec­tive. “I’m a mama, so the jus­tice isn’t just for me. I have sons, and when you have chil­dren, your stance has to be dif­fer­ent. Will it be heart­break­ing beyond belief? Absolutely. But I have to remain hope­ful.” Even so, she said she couldn’t say for sure how she’ll react. “I’ve nev­er watched that tape in its entire­ty, the 8 min­utes, 46 sec­onds — I couldn’t, and I can’t. But sec­ond­hand trau­ma is real, and I don’t know how my body will respond. And what­ev­er way my body responds, I’ll give it space for that.”

Some of you may recall me say­ing from time to time that I fun­da­men­tal­ly believed for years now that African-Americans have fall­en asleep in their beliefs that the war has been won against racism.
I was nev­er con­vinced that there was any gain not won by the sheer pow­er of arms that could not be reversed.
When you depend on the same peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly abused you for hun­dreds of years to find the bet­ter angels with­in them­selves sud­den­ly, your path to jus­tice becomes even more tedious.
When there are no bet­ter angels (in fact, there are no angels at all), with­in those on whom you depend to do the right thing, yet you con­tin­ue to wait for those bet­ter angels, even a sin­gle angel to emerge from the dev­ils, then.….….….….….…..

The Trump vot­er fraud, stop the steal lie, was a cal­cu­lat­ed move designed to steal the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020 that even Republican offi­cials deemed the fairest elec­tions ever.
But the dark and murky intent behind the Trump lie was far more sin­is­ter than just the plan to steal the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions; it was designed to lay the ground­work for an all-out assault on vot­ing rights across the country.
When Black Americans vote, Democrats win. Republicans do not get the Black vote because they are opposed to Black autonomy.
But the fix was in for the new­ly found pow­er African-Americans were flex­ing, [par­tic­u­lar­ly after they came out in num­bers and elect­ed Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American President in 2008, and again when they showed out and elect­ed a Jew and a Black preach­er in the heart of ‘dix­ie.’
Barack Obama was re-elect­ed in 2012, but by 2013, the Republican major­i­ty on the US Supreme Court led by Chief jus­tice Jon Roberts a Reagan admin­is­tra­tion lawyer opposed to vot­ing rights, evis­cer­at­ed Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in its June 25, 2013, rul­ing. … The Court declared that the Fifteenth Amendment “com­mands that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or col­or, and it gives Congress the pow­er to enforce that command.

Writing for Politico Magazine in August of 2015, Ari Berman wrote; Just months before Roberts came to Washington, the Supreme Court had sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed the scope of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. As a young lawyer, Roberts eager­ly took up the con­ser­v­a­tive cause, becom­ing a key foot sol­dier in the effort to pre­serve that deci­sion and weak­en the VRA. It was a fight Roberts would con­tin­ue decades lat­er when he replaced Rehnquist as chief jus­tice and authored the major­i­ty opin­ion in a land­mark case gut­ting the VRA in 2013. Fifty years after the pas­sage of the land­mark civ­il rights law and 35 years after he first worked so hard to dis­man­tle it, Roberts remains at the cen­ter of an impas­sioned debate about vot­ing rights in America, one that shows no signs of end­ing any­time soon.
John Roberts clerked for William Rehnquist; an avowed ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Berman wrote, “Rehnquist’s oppo­si­tion to civ­il rights laws on fed­er­al­ism grounds and the rebrand­ing of that oppo­si­tion as prin­ci­pled “col­or blind­ness” would become a sta­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive jurispru­dence on civ­il rights issues.
In 1952, as a 28-year-old clerk to Justice Robert Jackson, William Rehnquist wrote; “It is about time the Court faced the fact that the white peo­ple of the South do not like the col­ored peo­ple,” “The Constitution restrains them from effect­ing this dis­like through state action, but it most assured­ly did not appoint the Court as a soci­o­log­i­cal watch­dog to rear up every time pri­vate dis­crim­i­na­tion rais­es its admit­ted­ly ugly head.”
John Roberts, the present Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was indoc­tri­nat­ed by the Rehnquist ide­ol­o­gy. It was that hatred for Black-Americans’ civ­il rights that led to John Roberts and his cronies strik­ing down Section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has led to this new Jim Crow 2.0 attack on the rights of African-Americans & Native-Americans to vote.

Section 4(b) con­tains the cov­er­age for­mu­la that deter­mines which juris­dic­tions are sub­ject to pre­clear­ance based on their his­to­ries of dis­crim­i­na­tion in voting.
Section 4(b) of the land­mark 1965 Act man­dat­ed that offi­cials in states like Alabama, which has made it dif­fi­cult and in some cas­es impos­si­ble for minori­ties to vote, could pass no elec­tion laws that impact­ed vot­ing unless the law passed Federal clearance.
By strik­ing down sec­tion 4(b), John Roberts and his cabal on the high­est court flung the doors wide open for states to embark on a new set of vot­er-sup­pres­sion laws like the ones we are wit­ness­ing in Republican-run states, and the law passed by the Republican leg­is­la­ture in Georgia and signed by their Governor Brian Kemp sur­round­ed by white men under a por­trait of a slave plantation.

The American Democracy is now caught up in a cyclonic whirl­wind of anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic activ­i­ties engi­neered by Republicans, geared at wip­ing out lit­er­al­ly all of the gains achieved by the civ­il rights strug­gles over 50-years ago.
Regardless of what even­tu­al­ly occurs in response to the Jim Crow laws Brian Kemp signed, those chal­lenges will end up, you guessed it,(a) before John Roberts, a man whose life’s work has been open oppo­si­tion to the right of African-Americans to vote,(b) the same man who vot­ed to strike down sec­tion 4(b), Neil Gorsuch who ille­git­i­mate­ly sits in the seat in which Merrick Garland should be, Brett Kavanaugh who it is alleged no real FBI back­ground check was done on for alleged improp­er actions against women, the likes of Amey Coney Barrett who was ille­git­i­mate­ly foist­ed on to the court, Samuel Alito & Clarence Thomas a negro who thinks he is white.
This is fur­ther enhanced by the timid­i­ty of the Democratic Party and indi­vid­ual elect­ed mem­bers of that par­ty based on that par­ty’s iden­ti­ty politics.
Frozen in fear of los­ing their per­son­al seats, indi­vid­ual politi­cians like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly place their own polit­i­cal sur­vival over the agen­da of the vot­ers who elect­ed them to office.
So even when the Democrats have the major­i­ty, seri­ous and con­se­quen­tial issues like vot­ing ‑rights, end­ing the fil­i­buster in the Senate, and adding more jus­tices to the supreme court to right the wrongs per­pe­trat­ed on the nation by Mitch McConnell in the Merrick Garland case can­not get done.
Republicans know that Democrats are squea­mish; they know they are afraid to go bold and big even when most American peo­ple vot­ed them into pow­er to do the big, bold things.
Stricken with fear of the minor­i­ty par­ty and divi­sion in their ranks, the Democrats who now con­trol the White House, the Senate, and the House, are unable to pass their agenda.
Republicans could care less; when they have the pow­er, they change the rules to suit them­selves and ram through their agen­da while the Democrats whine like puny babies.
When Democrats do not do the same, Republicans make the case that, ‘see when you elect them, they do noth­ing, so elect us.’ And they are again giv­en the pow­er to cause more harm.
In addi­tion to that, Democratic vot­ers refuse to vote In off-year elec­tions; this gives Republicans con­trol of state leg­is­la­tures and the abil­i­ty to define con­gres­sion­al dis­trict lines and auton­o­my on state laws, even in so-called blue states.
For exam­ple, in Georgia, the same vot­ers who gave Joe Biden the state in 2020 and elect­ed two demo­c­ra­t­ic US Senators also have the pow­er to elect Democrats. Still, they sit on their hands and allow Republicans to wield pow­er they should not have as a minor­i­ty party.

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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. 

Kim Janey made his­to­ry when she became the first woman ever to become may­or of Boson Macchachutes on Tuesday, March 23^rd, 2021.
The new act­ing may­or promised “a city­wide agen­da of recov­ery, reopen­ing, and renew­al” and high­light­ed city con­tract reform and polic­ing reform among the areas she wants to focus on.

Congratulations to this beau­ti­ful strong black woman. We salute you, Mayor Janey.

A Fox News report crit­i­ciz­ing Vice President Kamala Harris for not salut­ing the mil­i­tary hon­or guard at Air Force Two got plen­ty of back­lash on Tuesday. Critics ripped the con­ser­v­a­tive news chan­nel for stir­ring up false out­rage, point­ing out that the vice pres­i­dent is not in the mil­i­tary chain of com­mand and was not vio­lat­ing pro­to­col. Fox News wrote in a report on its web­site of Harris “appear­ing to break with prece­dent and fail­ing to salute the hon­or guard” when board­ing the plane. It includ­ed insult­ing tweets from for­mer NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik and right-wing radio host Charlie Kirk, who showed a video of a recent Air Force Two approach and accused Harris of being dis­re­spect­ful to men and women in uniform.

Then who would jump in with a fact-free & mis­guid­ed com­ment, olé Bernie Bernard Kerik, for­mer con­vict­ed felon and for­mer NYPD Commissioner of police

Bernard B. Kerik. @BernardKerik

·Mar 22

DISGRACEFUL:

@VP

Kamala Harris refus­es to salute the hon­or guard at the steps of the air­craft. It is a clear demon­stra­tion of her dis­like for those in uni­form, both law-enforce­ment and military.

The old Felon should still be locked up but was par­doned by anoth­er crim­i­nal, seek­ing rel­e­vance was fact-checked immediately.\

Ex-Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden were seen on video salut­ing hon­or guards when they were vice pres­i­dent, Fox News not­ed. But Dick Cheney, who served as veep under GOP President George W. Bush, is shown else­where on video not salut­ing.
Many on Twitter point­ed out that Harris was not break­ing pro­to­col because she is a civil­ian and not in the chain of command.
Even the com­man­der-in-chief is not required to salute. The late President Ronald Reagan began the prac­tice as a “mat­ter of cour­tesy,” U.S. Naval War College pro­fes­sor Tom Nichols wrote.
“There is no over­ar­ch­ing instruc­tion or reg­u­la­tion that requires the President or Vice President to return hand salutes from mem­bers of the Armed Forces,” Pentagon press sec­re­tary John Kirby wrote to HuffPost in a state­ment on Wednesday. “Vice President Harris has made very clear her respect and admi­ra­tion for the men and women of the mil­i­tary, as well as their families.”

Many on Twitter jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fact check Fox News:

Geoff @GeoffFrck

·10h

It’s not pro­to­col. Fox News con­sis­tent­ly fails to tell the truth.

POX @xpjupiter

She is not in the chain of com­mand. Then again, you know this. You want to stroke dis­cord and hate for clicks and ratings.

VP is a civil­ian. Fox News isn’t news.

You should real­ly review the pro­to­col. She is not required, nor should she feel com­pelled to salute.

Actually, she’s gone back to prece­dent as she is not in the COC.…»»

The fore­gone were only a few of the Twitter fact-checks that hit the old con­vict­ed crim­i­nal Bernard Kerick. One would think that this embar­rass­ment to police offi­cers every­where would shut his pie hole and find a hole to crawl into but no.…
Bernard Kerik worked from 1982 to 1984 as chief of inves­ti­ga­tions for the King Faisal Specialist Hospital’s secu­ri­ty divi­sion in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Six mem­bers of the hos­pi­tal secu­ri­ty staff, includ­ing Kerik, were fired and deport­ed after an inves­ti­ga­tion in 1984 by the Saudi secret police.^[12] In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Kerik wrote that he was expelled after a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion with a Saudi secret police inter­roga­tor; how­ev­er, in 2004, after he was nom­i­nat­ed Secretary of Homeland Security, nine for­mer employ­ees of the hos­pi­tal told The Washington Post that Kerik worked with a hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor to sur­veil peo­ple’s pri­vate affairs, lead­ing to a scan­dal part­ly based on Feteih’s use of “the insti­tu­tion’s secu­ri­ty staff to track the pri­vate lives of sev­er­al women with whom he was roman­ti­cal­ly involved, and men who came in con­tact with them. (w)

Bernard Kerik joined the New York City Police Department in 1986. He first met Rudolph Giuliani in 1990, and dur­ing the 1993 New York City may­oral elec­tion cam­paign, he served as Giuliani’s body­guard and dri­ver.
As Rudolph Guiliani’s water­boy serv­ing as the NYPD’s com­mis­sion­er, Kerik had a tense rela­tion­ship with the FBI; he was accused of bla­tant abuse of power.
The New York Times report­ed that: “Behind the scenes, Bernard Kerik ruled like a feu­dal lord, many for­mer employ­ees have said. He had tak­en up with a woman who was a cor­rec­tion offi­cer; he was accused of direct­ing offi­cers to staff his wed­ding. He befriend­ed the agen­cy’s inspec­tor gen­er­al, whose watch­dog respon­si­bil­i­ties require keep­ing an arms-length rela­tion­ship, and the inves­ti­ga­tor attend­ed his wed­ding.” On one occa­sion, Kerik sent homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tors to inter­view and fin­ger­print sev­er­al Fox News employ­ees whom Kerik’s pub­lish­er, Judith Regan, sus­pect­ed of steal­ing a neck­lace and mobile phone.

Bernard Kerik plead­ed guilty in Bronx Supreme Court on June 30, 2006, to two ethics vio­la­tions (unclas­si­fied mis­de­meanors). Kerik acknowl­edged that he accept­ed a $250,000 inter­est-free “loan” from Israeli bil­lion­aire Eitan Wertheimer and failed to report it dur­ing the time he was Interior Minister of Iraq. Kerik first met the bil­lion­aire, whose vast hold­ings include major defense con­trac­tors. Kerik took a four-day trip to Israel less than two weeks before September 11, 2001, to dis­cuss counter-ter­ror­ism with Israeli officials.

On November 8, 2007, Kerik was indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury in White Plains, New York, on tax fraud charges and mak­ing false state­ments to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment about the $250,000 he received from Wertheimer. Prosecutors fur­ther accused Kerik of receiv­ing about $236,000 from New York real estate mogul Steven C. Witkoff between 2001 and 2003. Some of the New York charges were dropped in December 2008, but Kerik was then re-indict­ed on the same charges in Washington, D.C.

On November 5, 2009, Kerik plead­ed guilty to eight felony tax and false state­ment charges, specif­i­cal­ly two counts of tax fraud, one count of mak­ing a false state­ment on a loan appli­ca­tion, and five counts of mak­ing false state­ments. He was sen­tenced to forty-eight months in fed­er­al prison and three years super­vised release (pro­ba­tion). Criminal defense attor­ney Michael F. Bachner rep­re­sent­ed Kerik. He sur­ren­dered to the U.S. min­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison camp in Cumberland, Maryland, on May 17, 2010. He was dis­charged from fed­er­al cus­tody on October 15, 2013, and after serv­ing five months’ home con­fine­ment, his super­vised release con­clud­ed in October 2016.

Donald Trump par­doned his ser­i­al criminal.
This is what is known about the crim­i­nal, Bernard Kerik, we do not know what he did and was not pros­e­cut­ed for, but this is the punk that crit­i­cizes the vice-pres­i­dent of the United States.

One crit­i­cal les­son that I have learned in my life is to lis­ten more and talk less. I real­ized this many years ago as I lis­tened to peo­ple tell their sto­ries when I was involved in law-enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tions. I real­ized ear­ly that if I lis­tened more and allowed peo­ple to talk, they would tell me what­ev­er I need­ed to know.
I also learned that if you real­ly want to get to the truth, you must allow peo­ple to explain their side of the sto­ry, and if you do, you will walk away with a good idea if they are lying.
After all, it is good to lis­ten, even a bro­ken clock is right twice each day, so there is that.

I said the fore­gone to speak a lit­tle on a sub­ject that I have no train­ing or exper­tise on.….… the sub­ject of vaccines.
Across the globe, coun­tries are going through vary­ing stages of the COVID-19 virus and its variants.
Like pret­ty much all of the oth­er coun­tries, the United States, my adopt­ed home, and Jamaica, my coun­try of birth, are expe­ri­enc­ing their own prob­lems with curb­ing the virus.
Two of the issues that have seri­ous­ly impact­ed how cit­i­zens treat the warn­ings from the experts in the United States have been (a) politi­ciza­tion by the Donald Trump régime & (b) mis­trust of vac­cines by cer­tain pop­u­la­tion segments.
Trump believed that if he down­played the dan­ger the virus posed, he would be able to fool the pop­u­lace, and he would cruise to reelec­tion vic­to­ry in 2020. It did not turn out that way, and as a result, over half a mil­lion peo­ple died, many arguably who would not have died had he done due dili­gence to inform the coun­try about the dan­gers of the dead­ly virus.
Donald Trump’s lies caused his sup­port­ers, more than a third of the pop­u­la­tion, not to take the dis­tanc­ing and mask rec­om­men­da­tions seri­ous­ly. In addi­tion to that, he held mass ral­lies geared at his reelec­tion that experts said were super­spread­er events.

There are now sev­er­al vac­cines on the mar­ket; the Biden admin­is­tra­tion promised that in his first one hun­dred days in office, 100 mil­lion peo­ple would be vac­ci­nat­ed due to his one mil­lion per day pledge.
But with a nation of 330 mil­lion and a huge swath of the pop­u­la­tion leary of vac­cines, how will the new pres­i­dent accom­plish that goal?
New data show that a major­i­ty of white men say they will not accept the vac­cine. If the men aren’t will­ing to take the vac­cine, it is prob­a­bly fair to assume that a large per­cent­age of the women in their lives will also refuse to take the vaccine.
For some white men, the rea­son for their refusal to accept the vac­cine may be their free-spir­it and a refusal to con­form to any­thing that has a hint of a gov­ern­ment man­date. Others may be refus­ing to take the vac­cine on reli­gious grounds.
Then there is the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, rough­ly 40 mil­lion peo­ple that the American Government has burned at dif­fer­ent stages with vac­cines and treat­ments designed to destroy them.
How will this 40 mil­lion come around to trust­ing a gov­ern­ment that has done so much harm to them?

One of the strongest argu­ments that the anti-vax crowd has in its arse­nal is that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er allowed a tragedy to go un-exploited.
I sup­pose that if you do not believe that, you are not pay­ing atten­tion. After the September 11h 2001 attacks, George Bush and his cronies gave us the Patriot Act, a law which all but took away what lit­tle free­doms we had left — — This was done under the guise of keep­ing us safe.
A recent Pew Research Center sur­vey found that only 72% of Americans would prob­a­bly or def­i­nite­ly get a coro­n­avirus vac­cine if it were avail­able. And that fig­ure is even low­er among Black Americans, at 54%.
Writing for quartz Olivia Goodhill said the fol­low­ing; Meanwhile, the same US Public Health Service was con­duct­ing the infa­mous Tuskegee Study. As part of a pur­port­ed study on syphilis, Black men in Alabama were lied to, denied treat­ment, and left to die. “If Black peo­ple were sus­pi­cious of the polio vac­cine, it’s because eugen­ics was still hap­pen­ing in this coun­try at the time,” says Terence Keel, pro­fes­sor at UCLA’s Institute for Society & Genetics and depart­ment of African American stud­ies. Forced or coerced ster­il­iza­tions of poor, Black women were so com­mon they were known as “Mississippi appendectomies.
Medical racism is still preva­lent today. Black and Latino peo­ple have been killed by coro­n­avirus at dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high rates across the US. And racial dis­par­i­ties are evi­dent across the med­ical field as a whole: Death rates from breast can­cer are 40% high­er among Black women than white women, for exam­ple, while Black moth­ers die in child­birth at three to four times the rate of white women.

As we pon­der these facts, it becomes even more imper­a­tive that we rec­og­nize how impor­tant it is that every per­son is allowed the time and space to make their own deci­sion about tak­ing the vac­cine, even as we are cog­nizant of the impli­ca­tions of non-action.
Many peo­ple, includ­ing those on the right, are extreme­ly wary of the gov­ern­men­t’s propen­si­ty to overreach.
People want to be able to make that deci­sion for them­selves with­out gov­ern­ment man­dates. As I said before, even a bro­ken clock is right twice each day.
Many Trump sup­port­ers are the worst mes­sen­gers to be con­vey­ing the mes­sage that soon we will not be allowed on air­planes and in restau­rants or gov­ern­ment build­ings or any­where else for that mat­ter, unless we can all pro­duce a CODID ‑Passport.
But are they wrong?
So you have nev­er heard of a covid-pass­port? This is a term already being bandied about in European cap­i­tals, so make sure that you sat­is­fy those require­ments before you decide to book your European vacation.

Jamaicans are prob­a­bly one of the few nations of blacks that can­not be accused of not read­ing. Well, let me rephrase that. Not all of us are vora­cious read­ers, but we are all vora­cious con­sumers and dis­sem­i­na­tors of information.
It fol­lows, there­fore, that peo­ple in Jamaica would have strong opin­ions on the use of vac­cines based on their own per­cep­tions of what hap­pened to American Blacks at the hands of their own gov­ern­ment through the use of vaccines.
Every indi­vid­ual will have to choose whether they want to accept a vac­cine hop­ing that they will be inoc­u­lat­ed against a poten­tial­ly dead­ly virus with­out know­ing the poten­tial long-term con­se­quences to their health or hope that they will not get the virus.
Some believe the virus was cre­at­ed so that peo­ple could be forced to take a vac­cine with ele­ments that give the gov­ern­ment con­trol of their lives.
The idea that gov­ern­ments are con­sid­er­ing lim­it­ing peo­ple’s move­ments unless they have a COVID-Passport adds fuel to that fire.
People of faith adamant­ly believe they are liv­ing the prophe­cy of the Bible; in Revelation 13:17, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name.
Since no one is forc­ing those who are will­ing and accept­ing of what the vac­cine has to offer not to take it, should­n’t those who think oth­er­wise be afford­ed the same respect?
Even if you believe they are yahoos who are far too unin­tel­li­gent to be rea­soned with, don’t you believe they have a right to their beliefs?
I do !!!

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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. 

Donald Trump made mar­gin­al gains with some Black and Hispanic vot­ers in 2020 that some of us may find incom­pre­hen­si­ble, not so for me.
At the height of the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign sea­son, last year pol­i­tics was on every­one’s tongue; what I heard from my cus­tomers as a small busi­ness own­er, may have been the key to Trump’s suc­cess in get­ting at least more black peo­ple to vote for him.
Don’t for­get that Donald Trump sup­port­ed the addi­tion­al $1400 in stim­u­lus mon­ey going out to Americans. Whether his sup­port was based on what peo­ple were going through, or saw it as a poten­tial pay­off to get votes is up for dis­cus­sion and debate.
The fact that Donald Trump got more Black and Hispanic vot­ers in the last gen­er­al elec­tions than his Republican pre­de­ces­sors is sec­ondary to the point I’m mak­ing today.
Despite Donald Trump’s open­ly racist and xeno­pho­bic views, he man­aged to get some with­in the two vot­ing blocs, (Blacks & Hispanics) to vote for him. This tells us that if the Republicans cared about being an open and inclu­sive polit­i­cal par­ty, it could com­pete for all American cit­i­zens’ votes.
Clearly, there will be some vot­ers in all cat­e­gories and groups of vot­ers, regard­less of defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, who will sell their souls on the promise of a few bucks; Judas Iscariots cer­tain­ly showed us that.

The Republican par­ty does not want to com­pete for Hispanic vot­ers, and worse yet, it has no inter­est in com­pet­ing for the African-American votes. Republicans do not like Black peo­ple, so they have no inter­est in com­pet­ing for the Black vote.
The Republican par­ty, and by the par­ty, I mean, ‘the peo­ple in it,’ lit­er­al­ly hate Black people.
They nev­er had a prob­lem with Black peo­ple get­ting gunned down inno­cent­ly by police; they have no issue with the dis­parate and unjust sys­tem that keeps Blacks teth­ered to the bot­tom of the bar­rel; in fact, they rev­el in it.
They find them­selves on the oppo­site side of every issue that is impor­tant to African-Americans.
Republicans can do so and open­ly pass leg­is­la­tion that obvi­ous­ly and bla­tant­ly lim­its the Black vote, because of the built-in advan­tages the par­ty has nation­al­ly in the two United States Senators per state & the elec­toral col­lege, which all but guar­an­tees Republican wins, if they man­age to con­tain the black vote.
Donald Trump is a leg­end to Republican elect­ed offi­cials and their new­ly homog­e­nized and con­cen­trat­ed white vot­ing bloc. Trump demon­strat­ed that they do not need any­one in their par­ty if they are will­ing to do what it takes to bring the racist white vote around.
The silent white racists have always been there; Trump knew it and proved it. The unprece­dent­ed lev­els of nean­derthals who crawled out of the prover­bial caves to cast votes in the last elec­tions, some of them for the first time, are evi­dence of Trump’s mag­net­ic pull as a racial magnet.

Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates before the 1960s weren’t too con­cerned about the Black vote; Blacks scat­tered across the coun­try were not going to be impact­ful to nation­al elec­tions. Their num­bers could only make a dif­fer­ence along the mar­gins, or so they thought, as long as they con­tain and lim­it their right to vote.
However, the growth and con­cen­tra­tion of the black vote in large cities and coun­ties across the coun­try, helped by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, have caused a pan­icked response from Republicans that harkens back to the peri­od after reconstruction.
New vot­er sup­pres­sion laws and poli­cies enact­ed by Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try to lim­it and stop Blacks from vot­ing have tak­en on new urgency after Donald Trump lost the pres­i­den­cy in 2020.
This time Republican leg­is­la­tors are not try­ing to hide their inten­tions; they open­ly say the new laws and poli­cies are designed to stop peo­ple from voting.
South Carolina US Senator Lindsay Graham and oth­ers have argued, if they do not stop peo­ple from vot­ing, the Republican par­ty will cease to exist.
And so the Republican par­ty is on a course to end this democ­ra­cy as we know it, and install in its place an auto­crat­ic régime that will keep in place a white ethnostate.

The Republican par­ty does not want to build a coali­tion that includes Black vot­ers; doing so runs counter to its goals and aspi­ra­tions. The par­ty of Steve King, Steve Scalise, Matt Gaetz, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has no place for blacks.
They would rather burn this exper­i­ment down and gov­ern over the ash­es of a weak­er, more dis­tort­ed ver­sion of it. One in which their pale skin gives them the sense of supe­ri­or­i­ty they crave, but know in their hearts they do not have.
The imbe­cil­ic Wisconsin Joe McCarthy (2.0) Ron Johnson’s com­ments on the Capitol insur­rec­tion is the best win­dow that I have seen that char­ac­ter­izes what the Republican par­ty is today.
Ron Johnson voiced what I felt; that capi­tol insur­rec­tion­ists were not there to hurt Republicans like the igno­rant Wisconsinite; they were there to hang Mike Pence; they were there to mur­der Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pro­gres­sives like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and others.
Ron Johnso said he had no fear of them; these were patri­ots who love their coun­try, they loved police offi­cers, they would nev­er break the laws. But if he saw Black peo­ple demon­strat­ing to have jus­tice, to avoid being gunned down by KKK mem­bers in police uni­forms, that would invoke fear in him.

The shame­less imbe­cile from Wisconsin speaks to what Republicans want to take America back to, Sunday pic­nics where the lynch­ing of black peo­ple was the main attraction.
In the eyes of this men­tal lit­tle per­son, American patri­ots are peo­ple who beat cops to death with flag­poles, fire extin­guish­ers, and what­ev­er else they could get their hands on. None of what they did was a crime; they wore shirts that say they sup­port the police, they love their country.
Patriots to Ron Johnson are white mili­ti­a­men who bear-spray cops, break down doors, smash fur­ni­ture and destroy moments, steal doc­u­ments, shit in the halls of our democ­ra­cy to over­turn an elec­tion deemed by patri­ot­ic Republicans as the fairest elec­tions ever.
Great job Wisconsin, you gave the nation Joe McCarthy; you allowed Paul Ryan and Scott Walker to poi­son the coun­try fur­ther; one would have thought that you would have bet­ter taste than to foist this pathet­ic rel­ic of an embar­rass­ment on the rest of us. But then again, you chose [that] over Russ Feingold, so there is that.

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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. 

MINNEAPOLIS — The Minneapolis City Council unan­i­mous­ly approved a $27 mil­lion set­tle­ment with the fam­i­ly of George Floyd, whose death in police cus­tody last year sparked a sum­mer of unrest and a racial reck­on­ing over law enforce­men­t’s treat­ment of Black suspects.
The set­tle­ment stems from a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit filed by the fam­i­ly against the city and the four police offi­cers charged with var­i­ous counts of mur­der or aid­ing and abet­ting mur­der in the death of Mr. Floyd, who was under arrest for alleged­ly pass­ing a forged $20 bill

Benjamin Crump and oth­er attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Floyd’s fam­i­ly mem­bers are sched­uled to hold a news con­fer­ence Friday after­noon. Asked whether he would make an announce­ment about a set­tle­ment, Crump said, “all things are possible.”

“The city needs to exhib­it respon­si­ble lead­er­ship in the face of the hor­rif­ic tragedy that real­ly was a water­shed moment for America,” Crump said in an inter­view Friday

Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, who is over­see­ing the tri­al, on Thursday grant­ed pros­e­cu­tors’ request to rein­state a third-degree mur­der charge. He had reject­ed the charge last fall on the grounds it was not war­rant­ed by the cir­cum­stances of Floyd’s death. But an appel­late court rul­ing last month in an unre­lat­ed case estab­lished new grounds.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ordered Cahill to recon­sid­er whether to add the third-degree mur­der charge a week ago. Chauvin’s attor­ney, Eric Nelson, appealed that rul­ing, but the state Supreme Court said this week it would not intervene.

The three oth­er offi­cers involved — Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng — are charged with aid­ing and abet­ting both sec­ond-degree mur­der and manslaugh­ter. They are expect­ed to go to tri­al in August. All four offi­cers were fired the day after Floyd’s death.