From time to time, we talk about American exe­cu­tion squads that go around com­mu­ni­ties wear­ing police uni­forms. Sadly, these killer squads are pro­tect­ed by the high­est pow­ers in the coun­try, speak­ing of the Supreme Court.
Almost dai­ly this medi­um delves into the many cas­es of the vic­tims of America’s state-spon­sored mur­der squads, which are truth­ful­ly paid for by peo­ple like you and me.
Try as we may, how­ev­er, the voic­es that sup­port these death squads, over 18,000 of them, are expo­nen­tial­ly loud­er than the voic­es of those of us who want to live in a soci­ety gov­erned by the rule of law, not one gov­erned by a police state enforced by squads of uni­formed killers.
At the risk of sound­ing repet­i­tive and redun­dant, I con­tin­ue to direct atten­tion to the Supreme Court, which cre­at­ed on its own a pol­i­cy called qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty for police and oth­er state actors that has mor­phed into qual­i­fied impuni­ty by police.
We can legit­i­mate­ly argue that no cat­e­go­ry of work­ers should have qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. We could also legit­i­mate­ly argue that the Supreme Court, which is not a leg­isla­tive body, had no busi­ness carv­ing out a leg­isla­tive frame­work that pro­tects gov­ern­ment work­ers from account­abil­i­ty when it was not leg­is­lat­ed or has any basis constitutionally.
But we would be bang­ing our heads against a wall in mak­ing the legit­i­mate point that the court itself is ille­git­i­mate based on the way it has been pop­u­lat­ed using polit­i­cal chi­canery and that some of the play­ers on the court actu­al­ly lied dur­ing their inter­views for the job.
Any ordi­nary per­son seek­ing a job who lied would be fired, but that is a con­ver­sa­tion for the future.

HERE IS THE STORY

A num­ber of Ohio police offi­cers are on paid leave fol­low­ing a chase that led to the fatal shoot­ing of 25-year-old Black man Jayland Walker on Monday. Officers tried to pull Walker over in a traf­fic stop, and he led offi­cers on a chase by car — and lat­er by foot — pri­or to a con­fronta­tion, accord­ing to Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett. The chase last­ed four-and-a-half min­utes and reached speeds of up to about 80 mph, police said.
Officers used “tasers” and lat­er “fired bul­lets” mul­ti­ple times at Walker before his death, the Akron Beacon Journal report­ed.
The offi­cers involved in the fatal shoot­ing have been put on paid leave, an action described as a “stan­dard prac­tice” by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Mylett declined to answer ques­tions regard­ing the num­ber of offi­cers that fired at Walker, the news­pa­per said.
Seven of the eight offi­cers report­ed­ly involved in the shoot­ing are white, Ohio news out­let WKYC-TV report­ed.

Police claimed that Walker “shot a gun” dur­ing the chase and a Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office report described a weapon “recov­ered” from his car, accord­ing to the Akron Beacon Journal. Walker wasn’t armed when he was shot by offi­cers, sources told WKYC-TV, and autop­sy records revealed he was hit “dozens of times by a bar­rage of more than 90 shots.” Autopsy records revealed shots caused over 60 wounds to Walker’s body, the news out­let report­ed, with a “large major­i­ty” appear­ing in the front of his body. “Use of force cas­es are always ugly. This case is ugly times 10,” a police source with knowl­edge of the shoot­ing told WKYC-TV. Walker’s aunt Lajuana Walker-Dawkins, in a press con­fer­ence on Thursday, expressed her hopes that her late nephew wouldn’t be “por­trayed as some thug.” “We want hon­or and dig­ni­ty at any cost,” Walker-Dawkins said. “We don’t know what hap­pened. And we’d like to know.” The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office, in a press release ear­li­er this week, announced Walker’s death was a homi­cide, and he died from gun­shot wounds. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation also plans to inves­ti­gate the death per the Akron Police Department’s request, the Akron Beacon Journal said. Walker’s death has led to protests in the Ohio com­mu­ni­ty, WKYC-TV report­ed. The city of Akron can­celed a Fourth of July week­end event amid the demon­stra­tions. “Independence Day is meant to be a cel­e­bra­tion and a time of gath­er­ing with friends and fam­i­ly. Unfortunately, I feel strong­ly that this is not the time for a city-led cel­e­bra­tion,” Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said in a state­ment. (Huffpost​.com)

It has become rou­tine for these armed gangs of states spon­sored killers to mur­der Americans of col­or and receive paid vaca­tions, after which we are told that they fol­lowed policy.
We must clear­ly under­stand from those state­ments that their pol­i­cy is to mur­der us; noth­ing else is to be said about those comments.
The oth­er BS they feed the pub­lic is that when their killers assas­si­nate unarmed Americans, the inves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed fair­ly by inde­pen­dent agencies.
This is the most laugh­able bull­shit that they feed the pop­u­lace, and they get away with it. In real­i­ty, those cas­es are usu­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed by police agen­cies the next coun­ty over by police offi­cers who are afford­ed the same pow­ers to kill with­out accountability.
Yet they can con­vince a will­ful­ly igno­rant pop­u­la­tion that those inves­tiga­tive agen­cies will do a fair inves­ti­ga­tion when the next inves­ti­ga­tion may be direct­ed at their agency and include their murderers.
American police offi­cers across the coun­try are trained to oper­ate the way the very con­cept of polic­ing was con­strued and for­mu­lat­ed. That is as a slave-catch­ing enti­ty that is allowed to use what­ev­er means nec­es­sary to cap­ture Black bod­ies and return those chat­tels to the slave-own­ers. There are no more indi­vid­ual enslavers any­more; the states now under­take that role.
Any per­son oper­at­ing a motor vehi­cle on any road­way any­where in America is sub­ject to the same treat­ment as any black per­son dur­ing slav­ery was exposed. This is the 21^st cen­tu­ry, and the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects all Americans from unlaw­ful search­es and seizures by state agents; the Supreme Court has whit­tled away those pro­tec­tions paving the way for the police state to oper­ate out­side the walls of the constitution.

.

.

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

There have always been dis­par­i­ties in the allo­ca­tion of funds depend­ing on the make­up of indi­vid­ual com­mu­ni­ties; there is no deny­ing that. This prob­lem will not go away as long as imper­fect peo­ple make deci­sions. With that said, we all must rec­og­nize that our com­mu­ni­ties are up to us to maintain.
Sure we pay tax­es, and we assume and pre­sume that those tax­es are to be used to take care of cer­tain func­tions in our com­mu­ni­ties, like pay­ing teach­ers, fire­fight­ers, police offi­cers, san­i­ta­tion, and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor workers.
But I just won­dered whether we would all be bet­ter off if we all cared for our own communities?
It is a ques­tion for which I know the answer, but I will not impose my views on you, my read­ers; cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties are treat­ed bet­ter than oth­ers, but can we do bet­ter, those of us who are of a cer­tain melanat­ed hue?
Can we keep our own com­mu­ni­ties clean by adopt­ing a small mod­icum of civic pride? How we treat our homes is reflect­ed in our streets and the rest of our com­mu­ni­ty. We do not have to have a lot of mon­ey to have pride in our community.
Growing up in Northern Saint Catherine, we did not have three pen­nies to make (tup­pence), but our house was always immac­u­late, the wood­en floor shiny like a new mir­ror. Our clothes were torn and worn, but we were always clean.
We did not have nice brooms, but we gath­ered the fall­en fronds that held the coconuts to the tree and kept the yard clean.
For those rea­sons, I con­tin­ue to be amazed at the behav­ior of some peo­ple in their own communities.

For instance, this morn­ing, while hav­ing a cup of cof­fee and stand­ing out­side my work loca­tion, across the street was a man drink­ing from a glass bot­tle. Having fin­ished his drink, he dropped the bot­tle on the grass by the side­walk, even though he was walk­ing toward a vis­i­ble garbage recep­ta­cle only a few feet from where he dropped the bot­tle. He could not be both­ered with car­ing enough about where he dis­card­ed the bottle.
Even if he does­n’t live in the com­mu­ni­ty, where is your civic con­scious­ness, man? But this is not some­thing con­fined to this indi­vid­ual, it is par for the course, and it is not just about lit­ter­ing the streets; it is also about drug deal­ing and oth­er qual­i­ty of life issues.
Maybe if we took charge of our own com­mu­ni­ties, oth­ers would respect us a lit­tle more.
On that note, I must con­grat­u­late Mayor Rob Rollison and his staff for expe­di­tious­ly attend­ing to one of those issues I speak of. That is the issue of drug-addict­ed peo­ple and the open drug Bazar that exist­ed in a cer­tain sec­tion of the city.
Thank you, Mayor Rollison, and your staff; we can all make a dif­fer­ence in this city we love.
.

.

.

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

Samuel Jackson Rips ‘Uncle Clarence’ Thomas For Risking Interracial Marriage In Roe Reversal…

Actor Samuel Jackson slammed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Clarence” for jeop­ar­diz­ing the legal right to inter­ra­cial mar­riage with the court’s deci­sion Friday to over­turn of Roe v. Wade.

The same ratio­nale the con­ser­v­a­tive court employed to reverse the 1973 deci­sion on abor­tion rights could now be used to elim­i­nate the right to same-sex mar­riage, con­tra­cep­tion and inter­ra­cial mar­riage, which was pro­tect­ed in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia rul­ing, law­mak­ers and schol­ars fear.

Jackson bashed Thomas as “Uncle Clarence” in a Friday night tweet, refer­ring to the exces­sive­ly servile Black char­ac­ter in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s pre-Civil War nov­el “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Approximately Forty mil­lion Black peo­ple are liv­ing in the United States. This large pop­u­la­tion falls some­where between the pop­u­la­tion of Ukraine, which once boast­ed a pop­u­la­tion of M44,246,156, and Poland, with a pop­u­la­tion of M37,921,592.
But for Russia, Turkey, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, no oth­er coun­try on the European con­ti­nent comes close to the numer­ic strength of the Black Population in the United States.
The next clos­est pop­u­la­tion is Romania, which boast­ed a pop­u­la­tion of M19,506,114; in 2019, all oth­er coun­tries have pop­u­la­tions expo­nen­tial­ly below Romani.
In February of 2022, CNBC’s Frank Holland joined ‘Squawk Box’ to report that Black spend­ing pow­er reached a record $1.6 tril­lion in 2021, although the group’s net worth declined 14%.
On January 25, 2021, BankGreenwood​.com report­ed that a recent Selig Center for Economic Growth study found that mon­ey cir­cu­lates once in the African American com­mu­ni­ty, six times in the Latino com­mu­ni­ty, and nine times in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty. In white neigh­bor­hoods, mon­ey cir­cu­lates near­ly an unlim­it­ed num­ber of times. In part, this explains the wealth gap for Black communities.

Despite the African-American com­mu­ni­ty’s pop­u­la­tion strength and huge spend­ing pow­er, the com­mu­ni­ty has not found a way to har­ness its numer­ic strength and finan­cial spend­ing pow­er as lever­age in America. A nation of forty mil­lion peo­ple with a gross domes­tic prod­uct of 1.6 tril­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly should be a pow­er­ful nation regard­less of where it is geo­graph­i­cal­ly, even if it is inside anoth­er nation. In fact, it should strive to be pow­er­ful because it is a nation that needs to be so for its own sur­vival. Instead, the spend­ing pow­er of African-Americans is dilut­ed and divid­ed among oth­er eth­nic groups with­in the United States, mak­ing the forty mil­lion peo­ple hap­less strag­glers eco­nom­i­cal­ly. The com­mu­ni­ty acts as a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for 1.6 tril­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly that flows from it into every­one else’s pockets.
A friend of mine post­ed an image to social media with the cap­tion, “black peo­ple are the only peo­ple who pur­chase an old ware­house and turn it into a church so that they can pray to God for jobs.”
It summed up one of the atti­tudes with­in our com­mu­ni­ty. As if we com­plete­ly missed the part that said we must do for our­selves and not just wait on God to do for us what we can do for ourselves…
That is not to say that, as a com­mu­ni­ty, we are a nation of lazy do-noth­ings; far from it, the reverse is actu­al­ly true.…. that 1.6 tril­lion annu­al­ly does come from some­where, and no one gives it to us.
The sad real­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that as soon as we get it, we run out to spend it.
We have failed to mas­ter the art of trust­ing each oth­er, which may be so because we have not both­ered to mas­ter the art of being trustworthy.

We have failed to come togeth­er and form coop­er­a­tives to build each oth­er up. Instead, we talk about how well oth­er groups are doing. We the­o­rize that gov­ern­ment doles out mon­ey to immi­grants and does noth­ing for what is con­sid­ered native Blacks.
Because we lack inno­v­a­tive skills to cre­ate and main­tain the busi­ness­es we need for our eco­nom­ic sur­vival, we spend all our mon­ey with oth­ers, jeop­ar­diz­ing our lit­er­al sur­vival as a people.
The dol­lar can­not cir­cu­late in our com­mu­ni­ty more than it does because we do not sell the goods and ser­vices we con­sume to keep the dol­lar cir­cu­lat­ing. Even if we did pro­duce the goods and ser­vices to make that hap­pen, we do not like or trust each oth­er enough to spend our mon­ey with our own peo­ple, so we must first con­quer the hatred and ani­mos­i­ty we har­bor toward each other.
The psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma imposed upon us because of hun­dreds of years of enslave­ment cou­pled with entrenched and sys­temic racist laws and prac­tices have made us angry, intol­er­ant, and mis­trust­ful of each oth­er, so much so that rather than lash out at those who offend us, we inter­nal­ize our trau­ma and lash out at each other.
Our inabil­i­ty to under­stand that there will be no ‘they’ to save us, that we are the ‘they’ if ever we are to be saved, has far-reach­ing con­se­quences for our sur­vival in this hos­tile environment.
Our inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize our poten­tial strength has shaped how leg­is­la­tion is draft­ed all the way down to how our com­mu­ni­ties are policed.
Our inabil­i­ty to coa­lesce effec­tive­ly almost as a mono­lith for max­i­mum effec­tive­ness even affects the qual­i­ty of the water we drink.
Police mur­der our chil­dren because they know the courts will pro­tect them. The courts pro­tect them because they have no rea­son to fear the pow­er of the peo­ple; we, the peo­ple, there­in lies the prob­lem. We are forty mil­lion weak and a 1.6 tril­lion dol­lar well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit that fun­nels cash into the pock­ets of every­one but our own.
Before we chant Black pow­er or, worse, chant the ridicu­lous notion of black girl pow­er, we bet­ter learn how to stick togeth­er and keep our mon­ey in our own community.

.

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

This sto­ry appeared else­where; I decid­ed to bring it to my read­ers for no rea­son oth­er than to show that sep­a­rat­ing from these peo­ple is the only solu­tion. I am not racist; I am a prag­ma­tist. It makes per­fect sense to me to remove one­self from any­one who con­sis­tent­ly plots to kill and cause harm to you. In the case of the nation of South Africa, tens of thou­sands of peo­ple gave their lives in the strug­gle to end white minor­i­ty rule. Nelson Mandela spent over 27 years on Robin Island in a small jail cell before the strug­gle forced his cap­tors to release him into greatness.
In the mean­time, Winnie Mandela and count­less oth­er unsung heroes car­ried on the fight. But that was only a small part of the sto­ry. Across the African con­ti­nent, the strug­gle was waged. All the way into the Caribbean, in our own small Jamaica, our lead­ers stood up to the great satan­ic pow­ers that pow­ered, main­tained, and nur­tured the demon­ic insti­tu­tion of apartheid in South Africa, Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe), and all across the great African continent.
Today, South Africa is ruled by a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment cho­sen by the people.
What did South African lead­ers do after Mandela? They embarked on cor­rup­tion, graft, and theft of pub­lic resources rather than build a great nation of Black rule.

Black lead­ers in that coun­try had not done to the white minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tion what they did to the major­i­ty Black com­mu­ni­ty when they had pow­er; that grace shows that we are bet­ter than them.
They had not con­fis­cat­ed the lands that were stolen (as they should have) when the Edomites land­ed on the con­ti­nent and decid­ed to claim what was [not] theirs.
They did not hold war crimes tri­bunals, [as they should have], when they took pow­er and mete out ‘jus­tice’ to the lead­ers of the white Afrikaans: Nasionale Party, NP for their crimes.
The Black lead­er­ship in South Africa sim­ply took office and allowed the white usurpers to con­tin­ue on as if they had done noth­ing wrong.
They were allowed to keep the mon­ey, the land, and even the prime liv­ing spaces. They are allowed to main­tain still, a de fac­to apartheid sys­tem by virtue of their wealth.
Despite these acts of grace and stu­pid­i­ty, they still plot the mass extinc­tion of Black peo­ple in their own god­dam land. If and when they final­ly pull off an act of insur­rec­tion against the coun­try, the Black lead­er­ship in South Africa will have no one to blame but their own damn stupidity.
(mb)

‘Reclaim South Africa’: Pastor Found Guilty of Planning to Launch an Insurrection to Restore Country to All-White Leadership By Poisoning Water Supply

A South African pas­tor has been con­vict­ed of plot­ting to over­throw the gov­ern­ment. In addi­tion to his plans to invoke and nation­al insur­rec­tion, the cler­gy­man devised a scheme of geno­cide, hop­ing to kill thou­sands of Black people.On Monday, June 6, Rev. Harry Johannes Knoesen, who serves as the head of the National Christian Resistance Movement, was found guilty by the Middelburg High Court sit­ting in the Middleburg Magistrate’s court of five charges relat­ed to con­spir­ing to com­mit trea­son and take over the gov­ern­ment The courts not­ed he used his plat­form as a reli­gious leader to recruit and incite oth­ers to com­mit vio­lent attacks, The Associated Press reports. The offi­cial charge for the 64-year-old pas­tor was a con­tra­ven­tion of the Protection of Constitutional Democracy Against Terrorism and Related Matters Act (POCDATARA).
Prosecutors say one of the acts his right-wing orga­ni­za­tion, also called the “Crusaders,” explored imple­ment­ing to take over the coun­try was a bio­log­i­cal weapon to infect and kill Black peo­ple. Officials suc­cess­ful­ly argued, Knoesen’s group planned to poi­son the water reser­voirs that were accessed by and sup­plied to Black com­mu­ni­ties. The court also found the preach­er, who rep­re­sent­ed him­self, guilty of unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of firearms after weapons and ammu­ni­tion were found in the place in Middelburg, a small town in the east­ern Mpumalanga province, where he was stay­ing when offi­cers arrest­ed him.
News 24 stat­ed Knoesen was one of five oth­er indi­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of plan­ning a nation­al insur­rec­tion. Their alleged moti­va­tion was to replace the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment with mem­bers of the Christian orga­ni­za­tion. To make their impact they planned imple­men­ta­tions tar­get­ing nation­al key points, malls, and infor­mal set­tle­ments on Nov. 28, 2019.

Prosecutors alleged that Knoesen’s mis­sion was moti­vat­ed by his “high­ly racial views” and a desire to “reclaim South Africa for white peo­ple.” It is alleged he would use social media to insti­gate racial ten­sion between white and Black cit­i­zens in South Africa. He even admit­ted to shar­ing “recipes” on Facebook to man­u­fac­ture explo­sives with his fol­low­ers, the Middelburg Observer report­ed. “To fur­ther this end, he planned to attack gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and more specif­i­cal­ly police and mil­i­tary insti­tu­tions,” Monica Nyuswa, a spokes­woman for the National Prosecuting Authority. Police spokesper­son Colonel Katlego Mogale said about the Crusaders’ ter­ror­ist threat, “This objec­tive would be achieved by car­ry­ing out attacks on mil­i­tary and police instal­la­tions as well as on infor­mal set­tle­ments occu­pied by African per­sons.” “We are sat­is­fied with the judg­ment,” The National Head for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya said. “It once again shows that excel­lent intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and ded­i­cat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion pre­vent­ed a blood­bath in the coun­try. If the planned attack was not pre­vent­ed and dis­rupt­ed, it would have led to a racial war in South Africa.”

Knoesen’s sen­tenc­ing has been post­poned to Friday, June 10. However, his co-defen­dants Donald Abrahams, 57, and Erroll Abrahams, 52, both pled guilty in December 2020, have already been sen­tenced to 15 years for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crimes. Since their sen­tenc­ing, sev­en years of their pun­ish­ment have been suspended.The broth­ers also were hit with five-year sen­tences for financ­ing ter­ror­ism, unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a pro­hib­it­ed firearm, unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a firearm and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of ammu­ni­tion, and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of more than 200 car­tridges. The colonel said, “Effectively each accused will serve eight years in prison. All oth­er sen­tences will run con­cur­rent with the sen­tence on prepar­ing and plan­ning to car­ry out ter­ror­ist attacks.” Authorities will keep the preach­er in cus­tody until his sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings on Friday, accord­ing to the inter­na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion IOL News. Mogale states, “He will present the sen­tenc­ing reports as he is rep­re­sent­ing himself.”
(This sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared @Atlntablackstar) 

Those of you who are pay­ing atten­tion may recall this case from 2020 where a Black Virginia man was bru­tal­ly tased by a mon­ster in a police uni­form while he was expe­ri­enc­ing a men­tal event.
It is kin­da redun­dant that I wrote, ‘black Virginia man’, who else would those mon­sters abuse in such a way?
Just to recap, the vic­tim La Monta Gladney, a 38-year-old Black man of the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax coun­ty was pac­ing in a cir­cle and try­ing with­out suc­cess, to com­mu­ni­cate with emer­gency per­son­nel on the scene that he need­ed help.
Other reports note he was ram­bling inco­her­ent­ly and lat­er was found to have had phen­cy­cli­dine, a street drug known as PCP or angel dust, in his system.
Another cop arrived on the scene, this time an eight-year vet­er­an Rambo Tyler Ryan Timberlake, he imme­di­ate­ly pulled his taser and shot Gladney then kneeled on his back and neck. As Gladney falls to the ground, the offi­cer places his knee on the man’s back and neck. Timberlake, with­out lift­ing his knee, smacks him in the face and shoots him with the stun gun anoth­er time. Gladney cries out, “No!” He also yells, “I can’t breathe.”
Mister Gladney was arrest­ed on [trumped] up charges of pub­lic drunk­en­ness and resist­ing arrest, the charges were lat­er dropped. 

Well, now the coun­ty has decid­ed to set­tle the fed­er­al law­suit filed by mis­ter Gladney for an undis­closed sum accord­ing to Atlanta Blackstar. La Monta Gladney assert­ed that Timberlake vio­lat­ed his civ­il rights by tas­ing him with­out provo­ca­tion, kneel­ing on his back and neck, and then arrest­ing him with­out cause.
In a state­ment, Jeff McKay, Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said the set­tle­ment does not include an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty or guilt.
So I guess Fairfax coun­ty in Virginia is just in the busi­ness of cut­ting checks willy-nil­ly to peo­ple to whom its employ­ees have done noth­ing wrong!!!
The sad irony here is that this mon­ster thug Tyler Ryan Timberlake who was charged with assault­ing mis­ter Gladney was found [not] guilty by a white jury ear­li­er this year. He lied in his tes­ti­mo­ny to the jury that he mis­took mis­ter Gladney for anoth­er man who was want­ed on a war­rant. He con­tra­dict­ed that state­ment in the same tes­ti­mo­ny that he felt he had grounds to arrest Gladney for being intox­i­cat­ed in pub­lic. Ultimately, he said he wasn’t try­ing to hurt Gladney, but get him help. I guess the way to help a per­son suf­fer­ing is to tase them repeat­ed­ly and hit them in the head while they are in distress.
This was the same lying cop who teste­fied that he thought the vic­tim was a dif­fer­ent person
“It was first and fore­most we need­ed to get him med­ical treat­ment, it’s com­mon to have to take into cus­tody indi­vid­u­als on PCP in order to get them med­ical care.” [Yea just attempt to kill them to save them].

Timberlake told jurors his Taser was the best way to do that because peo­ple on PCP can be unusu­al­ly strong and often don’t respond to pain the same way a sober per­son does, so oth­er tools like a baton or pep­per spray are ineffective.
During the tri­al droves of Timberlake’s thug col­leagues attend­ed court because they were upset that he was charged criminally.
But they nee­dent have wor­ried the white jury had no inten­tion of find­ing him gul­ty for his crimes, but the coun­ty is using tax­pay­ers mon­ey to com­pen­sate mis­ter Gladney.
The irony, in the mean­time the mon­ster is all­lowed to con­tin­ue wear­ing a police uni­form, and will con­tin­ue to cause harm to the public.
It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the first offi­cer on the scene did see the need for force and did not use any force on mis­ter Gladney. The police chief after view­ing the video of the encounter said what he saw was outrageous.

.

.

.

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

This F*****g Judge said releas­ing the footage of POLICE using a canine to kill an inno­cent man could cause chaos and jeop­ar­dize police safety.
This goes to the heart of what this writer has been say­ing all along, that pros­e­cu­tors and judges are crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it in the bur­geon­ing and exis­ten­tial cri­sis of police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or in America.

The lash and shack­les remain two pri­ma­ry sym­bols of mate­r­i­al degra­da­tion fixed in the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of slav­ery in the Americas. Yet as recount­ed by states, abo­li­tion­ists, trav­ellers, and most impor­tant­ly slaves them­selves, per­haps the most ter­ri­fy­ing and effec­tive tool for dis­ci­plin­ing black bod­ies and dom­i­nat­ing their space was the dog. This data is drawn from archival research and the pub­lished mate­ri­als of for­mer slaves, nov­el­ists, slave own­ers, abo­li­tion­ists, Atlantic trav­el­ers, and police reports to link the sys­tems of slave hunt­ing in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the US South through­out the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth centuries.
Slave hounds were skill­ful­ly honed biopow­er pred­i­cat­ed upon scent­ing, hear­ing, sight­ing, out­run­ning, out­last­ing, sig­nal­ing, attack­ing, and some­times ter­mi­nat­ing, black run­aways.
These ani­mals per­me­at­ed slave soci­eties through­out the Americas and bol­stered European ambi­tions for colo­nial expan­sion, indige­nous extir­pa­tion, eco­nom­ic extrac­tion, and social dom­i­na­tion in slave soci­eties. as dogs were bred to track and hunt enslaved run­aways, slave com­mu­ni­ties uti­lized resources from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment to obfus­cate the ani­mal’s height­ened sens­es, which pro­duced suc­cess­ful escapes on mul­ti­ple occasions.
This insis­tence of slaves’ human­i­ty, and the inten­si­ty of dog attacks against black resis­tance in the Caribbean and US South, both served as proof of slav­ery’s inhu­man­i­ty to abo­li­tion­ists. Examining racial­ized canine attacks also con­tex­tu­al­izes rep­re­sen­ta­tions of anti-black­ness and inter­species ideas of race. An Atlantic net­work of breed­ing, train­ing and sales facil­i­tat­ed the use of slave hounds in each major American slave soci­ety to sub­due human prop­er­ty, actu­al­ize legal cat­e­gories of sub­ju­ga­tion, and build effi­cient eco­nom­ic and state regimes.
This inte­gral process is often over­looked in his­to­ries of slav­ery, the African Diaspora, and colonialism.
By vio­lent­ly enforc­ing slavery’s regimes of racism and prof­it, expos­ing the human­i­ty of the enslaved and deprav­i­ty of enslavers, and enrag­ing transna­tion­al abo­li­tion­ists, hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas.(aca​d​e​m​ic​.oup​.com)

Though rather beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten this pré­cis miss­es the mark in its final con­clu­sion when it opined,“hounds were cen­tral to the rise and fall of slav­ery in the Americas”.
Police slavers across America con­tin­ue to use Canine hounds on the bod­ies of Black Americans with cal­lous and degen­er­a­tive dis­re­gard backed up by pros­e­cu­tors, and judges all the way up the Federal judiciary.
The fol­low­ing exam­ple is just one iter­a­tion of the macabre and demon­ic prac­tice that is cou­pled with the pre­pos­ter­ous asser­tion that releas­ing video footage of these atroc­i­ties will jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty. When police act in that way they endan­ger their lives, no one does it to them.
(mb)

A fed­er­al judge in Alabama denied a family’s motion to have footage released show­ing a police dog maul­ing their loved one until he died from those injuries. The offi­cer believes mak­ing the footage pub­lic could “jeop­ar­dize police safe­ty” and prompt “civ­il unrest.”
On Wednesday, May 18, Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks denied Joseph Pettaway’s fam­i­ly a motion ask­ing her to remove the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty des­ig­na­tion from police body­cam videos of the deceased being bit­ten to death by a Montgomery Police Department canine. While the fam­i­ly and their attor­ney believe releas­ing the footage will pro­mote trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the four-year-old case, the judge is stand­ing with the city’s lawyers, who claim, that releas­ing the video will cause chaos.
The fam­i­ly of mis­ter Pettaway filed a civ­il law­suit in 2019 against the city and the police depart­ment for vio­lat­ing Pettaway’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The claim alleges on Sunday, July 8, 2018, police engaged in exces­sive force when they allowed Niko, a dog on the force, to sink his teeth so deeply into the thigh of the man (even before ver­i­fy­ing if he was a crim­i­nal) caus­ing his wrong­ful death. 

At the time, police believed Pettaway might have been a bur­glar break­ing into a most­ly emp­ty house at 3809 Cresta Circle. They were alert­ed by “an anony­mous report that there appeared to be an unknown per­son inside the house,” the law­suit alleges.

This is when they released Niko on Pettaway and cap­tured the fatal attack on the body­cams in ques­tion. The suit also claims the police failed to pro­vide med­ical aid to the man dur­ing crit­i­cal moments after the dog bite, allow­ing him to bleed to death.

The fam­i­ly attor­ney, told Atlanta Black Star Pettaway “was in a house that was being remod­eled,” but unlike pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, “he was not in his mother’s house.”

While he was in the house, there was anoth­er per­son in there with him. Both men (at some point) believed they were alone in the house.

The Attorney states, “There was a per­son in the house when Mr. Pettaway entered who did call 911 because he could not [rec­og­nize] JLP’s face. This per­son had been work­ing with Joseph Lee remod­el­ing the house. He has lat­er acknowl­edged that he knows JLP but did not know it was JLP at the time. The time of entry was about 2:40am.

The Montgomery police say the home­own­er also approved them to come into their home with the dogs in an effort to pro­tect their prop­er­ty, the Montgomery Advertiser states.

Still, the law­suit says there was “at no time” a rea­son­able threat to the MPD, and no rea­son for the ani­mal to be released, and once released, they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to save Pettaway’s life.

The law­suit read, “From the screams and/​or pleas of Mr. Pettaway heard by MPD police dur­ing the attack … They knew that the police dog was attack­ing Joseph Lee Pettaway and knew that he was being vio­lent­ly injured by the dog, i.e., he was being mauled and his flesh was being torn and ripped by the police dog .”

“After the police dog began attack­ing Mr. Pettaway inside the house, [MPD police] allowed the police dog to con­tin­ue this vio­lent attack on Mr. Pettaway, dur­ing which time no MPD police­man entered the house and inter­vened or took any actions that effec­tive­ly restrained or ceased the police dog’s attack on Mr. Pettaway.”

Nix told ABS that the city doesn’t believe the offi­cers were in error dur­ing any part of the inci­dent, say­ing, “The City and its offi­cers are claim­ing that exces­sive force was not used and that the release of the dog was prop­er. They also claim that the depart­ment pol­i­cy was to not ren­der aid to a sus­pect injured by them and that , there­fore, they are not liable to Mr. Pettaway’s estate for the fact that he bled to death.”

“The police on the scene, about 6 or 7 of them, did not even try to stop his bleed­ing with direct pres­sure,” the lawyer continued.

The fam­i­ly filed a motion to have the footage show­ing the gris­ly killing released but has been blocked at every turn. 

“Our claim is that med­ical aid is a require­ment of the con­sti­tu­tion in this cir­cum­stance and that it was the pol­i­cy enact­ed and enforced by the city that caused the vio­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion and JLP’s death, there­fore, cre­at­ing a cause of action called a Monell claim. We argue that med­ical aid should have been ren­dered to stop the bleed­ing,” Nix maintains. 

The city’s attor­neys were first to object to their dis­tri­b­u­tion. They argued the release of the video could put offi­cers in dan­ger. They fur­ther argued the footage is so dis­turb­ing it pos­si­bly could wind up “facil­i­tat­ing civ­il unrest” and would impact law enforce­ment pri­va­cy, caus­ing “annoy­ance, embar­rass­ment” for those on duty believ­ing they were doing their jobs in good faith.

A judge has filed the videos under a pro­tec­tive order, stop­ping it from being released to the public.

The lawyer reveals the fam­i­ly has heard the 911 call and seen the police body­cam video. The lawyers also ren­dered to the court a time­line of events based on the video. It was sub­se­quent­ly sup­pressed from the pub­lic record. On Wednesday, May 18, Griffin Sikes, anoth­er attor­ney on the case, said these claims are not valid and the peo­ple have a right to see the footage, which is cru­cial evi­dence in the civ­il suit. “The United States courts are the people’s courts,” he remind­ed the city.

A viral video shows a Black woman vicious­ly assault­ed in a racial­ly moti­vat­ed attack by a white Jacksonville, Florida, man that left the vic­tim trau­ma­tized. Kevin Williamson, 59, has been arrest­ed and charged with bat­tery, but the vic­tim wants Williamson to face stiffer hate crime charges.
Rayme McCoy, 23, is still heal­ing from a vicious attack last week after being beat­en at a gas sta­tion in Jacksonville on May 16. McCoy says as she walked into the gas sta­tion for a rou­tine gas sta­tion expe­ri­ence, she over­heard Williamson yelling
“He came in the store after me, and said the remark, go back to where y’all came from, and I’m tired of y’all kind,” McCoy said.
McCoy says Williamson direct­ed his anger toward her and start­ed berat­ing her with racist com­ments, and then got in her face. “I was like, sir, can you just back up and he said he had his gun in his car and I said, I’ll call my dad,” McCoy said.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​f​l​o​r​i​d​a​-​m​a​n​-​r​e​p​e​a​t​e​d​l​y​-​p​u​n​c​h​e​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​f​a​c​e​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​n​o​t​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​ed/

Surveillance video cap­tured what hap­pened next that left McCoy in com­plete shock as Williamson start­ed hit­ting McCoy repeat­ed­ly in the face. The after­math of the assault left the 23-year-old bruised and swollen on parts of her face and eyes.
“She’s obvi­ous­ly still trau­ma­tized by this event and is still going through it as you can plain­ly see,” said Ben Frazier, civ­il rights activist and founder of North Florida Coalition, who is also advo­cat­ing for McCoy.
Frazier draws a con­nec­tion between what hap­pened to McCoy and what hap­pened just two days ear­li­er in Buffalo, New York, when anoth­er white man unleashed a racist attack killing 10 Black peo­ple inside a gro­cery store.
“We rec­og­nize there is a direct con­nec­tion between what hap­pened in Buffalo and what hap­pened in Jacksonville, Florida,” Frazier said.

Frazier says racial vio­lence has been part of the America’s his­to­ry for gen­er­a­tions. This coin­cides with recent Justice Department data that shows anti-Black hate crimes and inci­dents spik­ing since 2020, far sur­pass­ing any oth­er racial or eth­nic group.
Data released last year shows anti-Black hate crimes reach­ing 2,871 report­ed inci­dents, which is up from 2019 fig­ure of 1,930 report­ed inci­dents. Reported anti-white hate crimes and inci­dents were 869, Anti-Latino hate crimes and inci­dents were 517, Anti-Asian hate crimes and inci­dents were 279. “To be attacked bru­tal­ly and vicious­ly by a white man who had noth­ing on his mind but per­pet­u­at­ing the kind of racism and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vio­lence and ter­ror,” Frazier said.
Both McCoy and Frazier say they want Williamson to face fed­er­al hate crime charges for the attack. “We’re demand­ing that the FBI inves­ti­gate this, and the Justice Department call it exact­ly what it is; it is in fact a hate crime,” Frazier said.
“I just hope he actu­al­ly gets charged,” McCoy said.
Jacksonville Sheriff’s deputies arrest­ed Williamson on Friday, four days after the attack, and charged him with bat­tery for the attack and was booked into a pre-tri­al deten­tion facil­i­ty. WJXT report­ed Williamson appeared before a judge on May 21, and was ordered to be held on a $20,000 bond.(First appeared in Atlantablackstar)

Thoughts and prayers are all you will get from Republicans if you are white or of any oth­er race; if you are Black, you won’t even get that; it’s stone-cold silence.
The inci­dents of mass shoot­ings are so fre­quent these days that fam­i­lies of the last mas­sacre haven’t even buried their dead before there is anoth­er. The nation is so numb that the lat­est shoot­ing gar­ners noth­ing more than a pass­ing glance and a cur­so­ry mention.
The sad real­i­ty is that racism is so deeply entrenched into the coun­try’s fiber that they are blind­ed by the destruc­tion it is wreak­ing on the nation.
Republicans do not care that Black peo­ple are gunned down mer­ci­less­ly as they shop for food in Buffalo, New York, but a ris­ing tide rais­es all boats, so there will always be white col­lat­er­al dam­age, sad­ly whites died as well.

Whether it’s Robb Elementary School, Santa Fe High School, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or Sandy Hook Elementary School, it is not Black or Brown chil­dren being slaugh­tered- American chil­dren are dying.
Yet, there are fifty Republican United States Senators in Washington DC head­ed by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and two Democrats, Kirsten Sinnema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who do not care about the chil­dren dying dai­ly in what should be sacred spaces,.…… their schools.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​t​h​i​s​-​i​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​t​h​e​-​r​i​g​h​t​-​t​o​-​b​e​a​r​-​a​r​ms/
Never for one moment would I expect them to give a shit about a group of Black peo­ple mas­sa­cred as they went about their dai­ly lives in Buffalo, New York, but the cal­lous dis­re­gard they show toward the lives of their won lit­tle white babies is most telling about those monsters.
Mitch McConnell did not only break the United States Senate; he broke America. Texas has two of those US sen­a­tors, John Cornyn and Raphael Cruz, and the gov­er­nor of the state, Gregg Abbot, who are all part of the prob­lem. However, to the extent that either of the three may be up for reelec­tion, the ‘bril­liant’ Texas vot­ers will cast votes to reelect all three.
I will not say those vot­ers are stu­pid; I will leave the name-call­ing to oth­ers, suf­fic­ing to say that in most cas­es, those sin­gle-issue vot­ers are not above sac­ri­fic­ing their chil­dren on the altar of the sec­ond amendment.
As I said in the arti­cle linked above own­ing the guns and mak­ing the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion an absolute right are about stock­pil­ing weapons for a war of sur­vival, they con­coct in their heads.

What’s hap­pen­ing in America is like stand­ing par­a­lyzed on the tracks with a fast-mov­ing freight train bar­rel­ing toward you. The Republican par­ty is hell-bent on destroy­ing the nation if they can­not con­trol pow­er. They are unable to win elec­tions so they cheat. Even when they cheat they do not have the votes to win nation­al elec­tions so they foment a coup d’é­tat. At the state lev­el, they pass all kinds of laws that hin­der the abil­i­ty of seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion to vote.
If the major­i­ty of the coun­try is opposed to your ideas I believe it is time you take stock of what you are sell­ing. The major­i­ty of the American peo­ple are stuck in a night­mare sce­nario in which they vote for Democrats but the racist elec­toral col­lege gives their win to Republicans.
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, says that dis­par­i­ty is grow­ing. “The way this is start­ing to work is that elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives who col­lec­tive­ly have gath­ered 10 mil­lion, maybe 12 mil­lion, maybe by the year 2030 30 mil­lion few­er votes are going to stack the judi­cia­ry and entrench minor­i­ty rule,” Schatz, a Democrat, said dur­ing last year’s debate about con­firm­ing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. “And so some­thing has to give.”
Senator Schatz is off by almost a decade minor­i­ty rule has already over­tak­en the American democracy.
The vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in the most pop­u­lat­ed states like California, New York, and Chicago have had their votes nul­li­fied by the two US Senators per state across the board.
So South Dakota with a pop­u­la­tion of eight hun­dred and sev­en­ty-nine thou­sand, three hun­dred and thir­ty-six cit­i­zens (879,336) gets the same two sen­a­tors as California with its forty mil­lion cit­i­zens (40,000,00).

In the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Al Gore won the pop­u­lar vote, and George Bush was made pres­i­dent of the United States. In 2016 Hillary Rodham-Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote and we all know how that turned out, don­ald trump was made pres­i­dent of the United States. The stench of both those pres­i­den­cies will con­tin­ue to linger for a very long time to come.
Technically, the Senate fil­i­buster that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinnema refused to end has brought America to a stand­still. The coun­try is now a minor­i­ty-ruled nation.
An NPR report cit­ed data that shows that right now, the Senate is split even­ly in half, but the 50 Democratic sen­a­tors rep­re­sent 41.5 mil­lion more peo­ple than the 50 Republican sen­a­tors. By 2040, if pop­u­la­tion trends con­tin­ue, 70% of Americans will be rep­re­sent­ed by just 30 sen­a­tors, and 30% of Americans by 70 sen­a­tors. This inequity affects every sec­tor of American life, includ­ing the Supreme Court which is now set to over­turn Roe V Wade which has been the law of the land for 49 years. that court evis­cer­at­ed 51 years of prece­dent when it destroyed the 1965 Voting Rights act to favor Republicans in elections.
Since then Republicans have passed a raft of anti-vot­ing laws across states they con­trol that sur­gi­cal­ly tar­get Black voter’s abil­i­ty to vote.
In 2021 writ­ing for the Atlantic Adam Jentleson said the next two years may be America’s last chance to pro­tect the basic demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple of major­i­ty rule.
The stag­na­tion includ­ing the mas­sacres of inno­cent chil­dren is a clear man­i­fes­ta­tion of minor­i­ty rule. When the votes of the major­i­ty are cast aside for a white agen­da this is the result. That win­dow may be open only until the last votes are cast in 2022.

.

.

.

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

Once we are set­tled on some­thing we have been taught for years or real­ly want to believe because they val­i­date our own feel­ings, we are some­times reluc­tant to let go of those beliefs. Regardless of the lev­el of verac­i­ty in new infor­ma­tion avail­able, some peo­ple are pre­dis­posed to turn­ing their backs on new infor­ma­tion because it makes them uncomfortable.
As a result, we some­times end up in a cir­cle of lies that fail to advance us indi­vid­u­al­ly or collectively.
The death of Youtube rela­tion­ship sen­sa­tion Kevin Samuels should have been a sad moment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Black com­mu­ni­ty. Across the American expe­ri­ence, Black men are the least pro­tect­ed, most hat­ed, and hunted.
Unfortunately, black-skinned folks have fall­en vic­tim to the same web of deceit and lack of uni­ty that caused us to be shack­led and brought here over four hun­dred years ago, not as proud peo­ple but as dehu­man­ized chat­tel to be exploited.
Whether or not mis­ter Samuels died poor in a small sub­let apart­ment, was his mes­sage any less what it was because he may or may not have had a huge bank account?
Kevin Samuels did not have a tele­vi­sion or radio show; he was rel­e­gat­ed to a Youtube chan­nel. Despite that, women and men logged on to his chan­nel to ask him for rela­tion­ship advice.
I did not know about Kevin Samuels until a few months before his pass­ing. Being curi­ous, I watched a few of his shows; admit­ted­ly, not always in their entire­ty, I do have a short atten­tion span.
I observed that what­ev­er he said must be processed with­in the con­text of the ques­tion or the state­ment made to him.
The sad real­i­ty is that crit­ics gen­er­al­ly don’t care about [con­text]; their objec­tive is not to be ratio­nal and fair; they want to tear down and destroy.

The women who called Kevin Samuels sought him out; he did not call them, so when a woman tells him she want­ed a so-called ‑high-val­ue man, ‑what­ev­er that is? It is only fair that he asked her about her edu­ca­tion, weight, age, and how many chil­dren she has, among oth­er questions.
After all, we live in a shal­low-Al-style soci­ety that val­ues how peo­ple look and how much mon­ey they have. Acquiescing to those real­i­ties, Samuels made deter­mi­na­tions based on what the woman brought to the table and what, in his judg­ment, he believed her pros and cons would attract.
People do not like to hear truths, so they dis­par­age the mes­sen­ger rather than process the mes­sage. That has been one of the Achilles heels of Black America. It is eas­i­er to ridicule the mes­sen­ger than look in the mir­ror and change. They had so much ven­om and dis­gust for Bill Cosby because he chal­lenged young men to pull up their damn pants. They were over­joyed when Cosby was brought down because it made them feel bet­ter about themselves.
Kevin Samuels spoke the truth to women, but that was not what they logged onto his pro­gram for; they were there for him to val­i­date their bullshit.
They want­ed him to tell them that with three chil­dren for three dif­fer­ent baby-dad­dies, no edu­ca­tion, and weigh­ing 280 pounds, they were enti­tled to a man mak­ing six fig­ures, who would cater to her every desire, and he must have no baby-mom­ma drama.
These fan­tasies may exist on plan­et Utopia, and I recent­ly heard they might also be on plan­et Uranus.

If you watch tele­vi­sion and do not like the con­tent, thank God we still have the free­dom to turn the chan­nel. The peo­ple who called and watched Kevin Samuels were there because they want­ed his advice; I find it odd that those who did not like what he had to say or how he said what he said would find joy and com­fort in his pass­ing. That includes not just some of the women who tell them­selves they are queens (small q), but also some sor­ry-ass brothas, who have noth­ing going for them­selves out­side of their pathet­ic abil­i­ties to tear down. Any fool can tear down, it takes real men and women of char­ac­ter to build up. Those who can only tear down include some so-called preach­ers who can­not cut it in the real world, so they pros­ti­tute God’s word to enrich them­selves. There is a spe­cial hell for those demons.
I am all for wok­e­ness, but we delude our­selves when we con­tin­ue to lie to our­selves that we are kings and queens because it makes us feel good in our negativity.
Far too many women seem to think they have a right to be treat­ed with def­er­ence because she is a queen, with four kids, for four dif­fer­ent men and noth­ing else but a bad atti­tude with genitalia.
No one owes you any­thing in rela­tion­ships; add val­ue to your­self, and hope­ful­ly, some­one will see that as some­thing appealing.
Demanding that a man make six fig­ures to allow you to buy fake ass­es, fake hair, fake nails, fake eye­lash­es, fake every­thing is sil­ly. Real men do not want to see you in any of that stuff, for starters.……You attract what you dress for.

Accusing dis­senters of your BS of being misog­y­nis­tic or hav­ing a pho­bia is sim­plis­tic, disin­gen­u­ous & self-serv­ing. Hard truths are not misog­y­ny, regard­less of how often the cor­po­rate media say it is. Far too many women want ready-made wealth rather than com­mit to work­ing with a man who has a good plan. Many of you lie to your­selves that you do not want a man because you can­not get or keep a good man.
You harm your chil­dren through your tox­ic behav­ior toward the fathers who leave you because of that tox­i­c­i­ty. You then weaponize their chil­dren against them, then claim they are dead-bead dads.
You fall prey to the lure of a sys­tem that delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed the envi­ron­ment to insti­tu­tion­al­ize Black men leav­ing their chil­dren father­less so they can become fod­der for the prison indus­tri­al com­plex. But you are either too stu­pid or too pride­ful to real­ize it because you are a queen, right?
You are hurt­ing your chil­dren when you sep­a­rate them from their fathers. You are hurt­ing your chil­dren when you fol­low blind­ly behind an American soci­ety that has laid the trap that incen­tivizes you to dis­re­spect your man in front of his chil­dren and call the police and accuse him of abus­ing you.
Society wants the Black man in prison because it knows a child with­out a father in the home is more like­ly to end up in prison and less like­ly to become a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of society.
But you under­stand none of this because you are a queen.…… that thir­ty-five-year-old, six foot five Black man liv­ing with you is not your man but your son; your baby, right? And he, in his igno­rance, sees wher­ev­er you live as his crib, too.
Because of your tox­i­c­i­ty, you raise him to believe the world owes him a liv­ing, but you not only destroy his rela­tion­ship with his father, you make it impos­si­ble for him to become the father he should be. But guess what he most like­ly will be a father to sev­er­al chil­dren, a dys­func­tion­al one. One that the racist sys­tem rev­els in, one that the sys­tem designed with you in mind.

Whether or not Kevin Samuels had mon­ey is not impor­tant. A man’s worth can­not ratio­nal­ly be mea­sured by the mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions he acquired but by the lega­cy of ser­vice he gave to his fel­low man. Assigning cred­i­bil­i­ty to wealth is asi­nine; it is the rea­son immoral char­ac­ters with mon­ey, and even those who lie about being rich are ele­vat­ed to posi­tions of power.
The most con­se­quen­tial peo­ple to ever grace this earth had no mate­r­i­al wealth of which to speak, yet their lega­cy con­tin­ues to guide the way we live.
Celebrating the death of some­one who held up a mir­ror to your face does not say any­thing neg­a­tive about the depart­ed; it speaks to your char­ac­ter, or should I say the lack thereof?.…
Rest in peace, King!!!

.

.

.

.

.

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

It hap­pens dai­ly, repeat­ed­ly, and usu­al­ly, the back­sto­ry is the same. Oftentimes it ends with a Black per­son dead, a fam­i­ly shat­tered, and no one held accountable.
Police con­tin­ue to barge into the homes of Black peo­ple, usu­al­ly on the flim­si­est of evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. Raids are pred­i­cat­ed on the infor­ma­tion of some­one they have over a barrel.
Despite the dan­gers inher­ent in using the infor­ma­tion of a sin­gle infor­mant to break into some­one’s home, police con­tin­ue to do so in black neigh­bor­hoods with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy while look­ing for drugs.
Set aside the fact that, in gen­er­al, even if African-Americans do have drugs in their homes, they most assured­ly are the low­est on the totem pole. Poor Black peo­ple lack the means to import drugs into America; the dirty lit­tle secret in this sor­did affair is that the importers of these con­tra­band face no scruti­ny in their lily-white sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, let alone fear police raids.
Usually, crim­i­nals fac­ing pres­sure from police to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on oth­er law­break­ers are inclined to give false infor­ma­tion about peo­ple they do not like.
Using infor­ma­tion derived from pres­sur­ing career crim­i­nals is a dan­ger­ous game that police engage in that endan­gers inno­cent Black American lives.

Police dressed up as sol­diers act out war­rior fan­tasies they see in video games, but the result for their vic­tims is no laugh­ing mat­ter. Dead rel­a­tives, trau­ma­tized chil­dren, bul­lied and abused by white police offi­cers in what ought to be the sacred sanc­tum of their homes.
Usually, they barge into the wrong homes, trau­ma­tiz­ing chil­dren with their Rambo per­sona, leav­ing a trail of destruc­tion to per­son­al prop­er­ty. The bot­tom line is that when those white cops oper­ate in Black com­mu­ni­ties, they oper­ate as over­seers. To them, every­one in the com­mu­ni­ty is beneath them; every­one is a criminal.
They do not serve the com­mu­ni­ties; they go out to bru­tal­ize and sub­ju­gate. This is what Black Americans are sub­ject­ed to.
Despite a long-run­ning his­to­ry of these night­mare sce­nar­ios occur­ring with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences, judges con­tin­ue to sign off on no-knock war­rants cost­ing inno­cent lives and count­less mil­lions in prop­er­ty dam­age as the state agents oper­ate with total impuni­ty when they enter the homes of Black families.
They make sure they cause as much prop­er­ty dam­age as pos­si­ble, and there are no con­se­quences for their actions.
They snuffed out the lives of Breonna Taylor using a no-knock war­rant; one would have thought that the prac­tice would have end­ed after they wrong­ly entered her home and mur­dered her, but her Black life is of no con­se­quence to them, so the prac­tice con­tin­ues on steroids.
Police are mere tools of Government; if the politi­cians want­ed those prac­tices end­ed, they would end imme­di­ate­ly. The unmit­i­gat­ed truth is that those who wield polit­i­cal pow­er have no inter­est in defang­ing the war­rior cop phe­nom­e­non that has over­tak­en America. That goes for Republicans and Democrats.

In Chicago, police rou­tine­ly use no-knock war­rants to look for drugs in Black peo­ple’s homes. The results are usu­al­ly the same, it was the wrong house, and the infor­ma­tion came from a sin­gle informant.
Nevertheless, the police go in guns drawn, yelling and scream­ing at small chil­dren and sub­ject­ing them to hours of humil­i­a­tion even when they are told they are in the wrong homes.
This is state-spon­sored tyran­ny made worse by police depart­ments loaded with white suprema­cists oper­at­ing under the col­or of law.

A Flint fam­i­ly is suing the Michigan State Police for what they call acts of dis­crim­i­na­tion and vio­la­tions of their civ­il rights. Just over a year ago, Michigan State Troopers knocked down their door to look for evi­dence in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing. However, nobody in the fam­i­ly was actu­al­ly involved. Lawyers for the fam­i­ly say this inci­dent vio­lat­ed one of Michigan’s non-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, as well as the fam­i­ly’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion. They’re seek­ing dam­ages for the fam­i­ly’s emo­tion­al trau­ma from the event. “I am just so grate­ful that this day did­n’t turn out like so many oth­er days for peo­ple who look like us. So many peo­ple who did­n’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand up in front of you and tell you how wrong­ly they were treat­ed because they were killed by the peo­ple who were sup­posed to pro­tect them,” said Aaron Dunigan, whose moth­er and sis­ter were the sub­jects of an alleged no-knock raid last April. But he said the trau­ma is still with them.
On April 21, 2021, Michelle Colston was get­ting her chil­dren ready for bed with the help of her moth­er, Renee Dunigan, when they said Michigan State Troopers used a bat­ter­ing ram to enter their apart­ment unannounced. 

They say the troop­ers made them keep qui­et as they inves­ti­gat­ed the home, with no access to their phones to let their fam­i­ly know they were okay. Lawyers for the Dunigan/​Colston fam­i­ly allege that troop­ers’ bias­es led them to rush the inves­ti­ga­tion. “What hap­pened was they saw a car in the dri­ve­way and jumped to a con­clu­sion that it belonged to one fam­i­ly… And what this real­ly was was slop­py police work. It would not have occurred in a white com­mu­ni­ty. It’s police work that says they’re all the same, they’re all guilty,” said Attorney Will Goodman. They said this alleged pro­fil­ing vio­lat­ed Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, and that the Troopers’ behav­ior in the home vio­lat­ed the fam­i­ly’s 4^th and 14^th Amendment rights. They’re seek­ing dam­ages to help cov­er men­tal health­care and ther­a­py costs as they work to regain their sense of secu­ri­ty. “There are small chil­dren in this fam­i­ly, who- before this hap­pened- trust­ed the police. They were told to respect the police. Now, when they see the police, they ask their mom and grand­ma, and uncle ”are they going to kill us?’ ” said, Attorney Julie Hurwitz. A spokesper­son for Michigan State Police had no com­ment but in a state­ment last year, they said they used a cruis­er’s P.A. sys­tem to noti­fy the fam­i­ly from out­side. The Duncan/​Colston legal team said that claim is false.

Bunch of liars.
Whenever there is an out­cry about the police attack on the rights and dig­ni­ty of Black cit­i­zens, the default nar­ra­tive is that the police need more train­ing. Reflexively, this for­mer Jamaican cop says those hood­lums do not need more train­ing because they do [not] com­mit the same crimes against priv­i­leged white men and women.
This writer con­tin­ues to make the point that the aggres­sion that those police offi­cers live out in the Black com­mu­ni­ty has been bred in them from inside their dirty homes where igno­rant par­ents, unable to jus­ti­fy their fail­ures, use race to jus­ti­fy not mak­ing it in America despite their white skin and its atten­dant privileges.
They are taught aggres­sion in the police acad­e­mies; the Black com­mu­ni­ty is their ene­my; it is a com­mu­ni­ty of worth­less, no-good crim­i­nals who deserve no respect; these tropes are rein­forced in their depart­ments head­ed by degen­er­ates like State Police Director Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue.
It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to have clean water any­where if the head of the stream is pol­lut­ed with the kind of poi­son spewed from degen­er­ates like the one pic­tured above.

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

Where is this attack­er, why is he not arrest­ed? If a black man had done that to a white woman he would either be in jail or killed by police.

A Florida man was caught on cam­era bru­tal­ly attack­ing a woman in a gas sta­tion. Seemingly unpro­voked, the white male is accused of using racist lan­guage before assault­ing the woman — mak­ing the crime appear to be a hate crime. Civil rights activists have called for the man to be arrested.

She alleges the man was already upset from an ear­li­er alter­ca­tion out­side of the estab­lish­ment and upon com­ing in shift­ed his atten­tion to the Black woman, who was already at the counter. The man was “rant­i­ng and rav­ing” in the gas station’s con­ve­nience store. From a short dis­tance, she could hear him using racial epi­thets with­out regard for oth­ers around. She told First Coast News, “I went in BP to get gas and I was walk­ing in … there was a guy argu­ing with an Indian guy, and when I walked around him to go inside, he came in after me and was basi­cal­ly yelling y’all kind, you need to go back where you came from.” McCoy says the man came up to the counter and stood too close to her. When she asked him to step back, he threat­ened her by say­ing he had a firearm in his car — as he would use it on her. “So, at that point, I felt threat­ened,” the woman said. “He put his beers on the counter in front of my stuff and I slid them over and at that point, that’s when he start­ed punch­ing me in the face.”
The store video shows him punch­ing her 10 times.

There is a cor­nu­copia of rea­sons why American police open­ly and with­out care sum­mar­i­ly vio­late the rights of the peo­ple they are sup­posed to pro­tect, not the least of which is gov­ern­ment sup­port for their crimes. The fol­low­ing sto­ry lays bare the cor­rup­tion, racism, and crim­i­nal­i­ty that exist in one police depart­ment where senior police offi­cers use their posi­tions of pow­er and author­i­ty in racist ways to bru­tal­ize and crim­i­nal­ize inno­cent peo­ple of col­or they hate. Not only are they pathet­ic racist clowns they are patho­log­i­cal liars, who com­mit crimes but are too cow­ard­ly to man up to their own actions. Of course, they are not wor­ried because even in the face of damn­ing evi­dence of bla­tant crimes they are not pros­e­cut­ed. In extreme cir­cum­stances where the evi­dence is so over­whelm­ing that it can­not be cov­ered up or swept under the rug tax­pay­ers’ funds are used to offer a small mon­e­tary stipend to their vic­tims while they remain in the depart­ment col­lect­ing hefty salaries, pen­sions, and oth­er ben­e­fits but far worse for the tax­pay­ers these pathet­ic crea­tures are allowed to keep police pow­ers they should nev­er have in the first place.

This hap­pens because cor­rupt politi­cians, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges allow these crim­i­nals to hide while the very same aggriev­ed par­ties are paid with their own tax dol­lars appro­pri­at­ed from them.
Literally, every poll that will ever be com­mis­sioned in the United States on the sub­ject of whether or not the police should be defund­ed will come back with a major­i­ty think­ing defund­ing the police is a bad idea.
Of course, many are too stu­pid to under­stand log­ic, or it is their own polit­i­cal inter­est to kiss the ass of pro-police inter­est groups. That goes for Democrats like Joe Biden and a raft of others.
What the polls will nev­er reveal is that sup­port for police in America and their Nazi tac­tics began around slav­ery, and grad­u­at­ed from slave-catch­ers to some­thing we now call the police.
In terms of their atti­tudes, noth­ing has changed.
In terms of them serv­ing the white pop­u­la­tion to the detri­ment and cha­grin of Blacks, noth­ing has changed either. It is there­fore imper­a­tive to under­stand that whites will nev­er agree to defang an enti­ty that has served their inter­est to the per­il of Blacks.
Their oppo­si­tion to hold­ing police account­able for their crimes has noth­ing to do with crime.
(mb)

Minneapolis to Pay Army Vet Who Was Beaten to a Pulp After Returning Fire At Officers In Unmarked Vehicles $1.5M; Terms Include No Admission of Guilt…

The city of Minneapolis has set­tled a case for over $1 mil­lion with an Army vet­er­an who filed a law­suit against the munic­i­pal­i­ty and its employ­ees after his civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed. He sued the city after he was acquit­ted of shoot­ing at law enforce­ment on the grounds of self-defense, and says the law­suit was nev­er about “a check,” but “jus­tice and accountability.”On Tuesday, May 17, Jaleel Stallings was offered and accept­ed a $1.5 mil­lion-plus costs and attor­ney fees set­tle­ment from the city of Minneapolis. The law­suit, accused offi­cers in the Minneapolis Police Department of lying about the May 30, 2020 inci­dent, includ­ing their instruc­tions to police to “delib­er­ate­ly con­ceal their appear­ance so that they could hunt civil­ians by sneak­ing up and shoot­ing them with 40mm rounds.”
An inves­ti­ga­tion con­firmed that offi­cers fal­si­fied reports about the evening, includ­ing the fact a cop shot him first with­out iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as law enforce­ment or pre­sent­ing just cause, a swarm of cops beat him for up to 30 sec­onds and oth­er badges failed to inter­vene when they saw their col­league using exces­sive force. 

Initial reports claimed Stallings vio­lat­ed a man­dat­ed cur­few and shot at the offi­cer dur­ing the chaot­ic protests days after George Floyd’s death. Bodycam of the event was released by Stallings’ lawyer, Eric Rice, show­ing his client was shot with plas­tic bul­lets from an unnamed source from an unmarked car, and only then did he fire his pistol.
A fed­er­al court deci­sion agreed that the mil­i­tary man, who was law­ful­ly allowed to car­ry his weapon and pro­tect him­self, oper­at­ed in self-defense on that Saturday night and acquit­ted him of the charges against him by the offi­cers. The Star Tribute reports the attor­ney for the city offered a set­tle­ment to stop the case from going to tri­al. Court records show Stallings accept­ed the terms that say the city and offi­cer will not admit lia­bil­i­ty, and “express­ly deny the valid­i­ty of [Stallings] claims.” Stallings said, “It’s dis­ap­point­ing because the goal of the civ­il suit was not a check.” “It was get­ting jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty,” he con­tin­ued. “And I don’t feel like I’ve received that. I don’t feel like any­thing has been done to hold the offi­cers account­able or change the cul­ture of polic­ing that leads to these inci­dents” Stallings said. When dis­cussing the process, he said he was glad the footage came out, show­ing the behind-the-scenes belief sys­tems some offi­cers hold about their patrolling duties and the peo­ple they are hired to serve.

“I’m grate­ful that we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to release that body­cam footage to the pub­lic so they could see and come to their own opin­ions and con­clu­sions about what hap­pened that night, how police were using force through­out those riots,” said Stallings. One rank­ing offi­cer, Lt. Johnny Mercil is heard on the footage pro­fil­ing pro­test­ers, say­ing they must be white “because there’s no loot­ing.” Another rank­ing offi­cer Cmdr. Bruce Folkens was cap­tured on cam­era brag­ging he was “hunt­ing peo­ple.” Public out­rage from these com­ments fur­ther stressed the rela­tion­ships between civil­ians and Minneapolis law enforcement.

Deputy Minneapolis City Attorney Erik Nilsson said his office con­sult­ed with the City Council and agreed to the settlement.“The City Attorney’s Office, after con­sul­ta­tion with the City Council, served on the Plaintiff, in this case, a Federal Rule 68 Offer of Judgment in the amount of $1.5 mil­lion,” reads a state­ment from Nilsson. “The plain­tiff accept­ed this judgment.
“The city hopes that an ear­ly res­o­lu­tion to this mat­ter will allow all of the par­ties to move for­ward,” Nilsson said. Stallings is but one of three set­tle­ments the city has made over the last two months relat­ed to the protest. In April, the City Council sanc­tioned $1.8 mil­lion to be giv­en to two women who allege they were shot in the face with pro­jec­tiles by offi­cers dur­ing the protest, and in March, Soren Stevenson received $2.4 mil­lion, after los­ing his left eye from the blunt impact of pro­jec­tile from a 40mm firearm used by offi­cers in an attempt to dis­perse a group of protesters. 

By Daniel Nyamekye

Payton Gendron record­ed his plans to car­ry out the racial mas­sacre in East Buffalo for months in a chat on the Discord social media plat­form, reports show. Just 30 min­utes before the white suprema­cist fired his first set of rounds in the Tops Friendly Markets in the Black neigh­bor­hood Saturday, he invit­ed a small group of peo­ple to the pri­vate chat room to see his plans.

Gendron’s goal was to kill three dozen Black peo­ple, he said in the mes­sages. No one in the cha­t­room alert­ed author­i­ties, accord­ing to reports. He killed 10 Black peo­ple on Saturday. 

“What we know at this time is that a pri­vate, invite-only serv­er was cre­at­ed by the sus­pect to serve as a per­son­al diary chat log,” Discord offi­cials said in a statement.

“Approximately 30 min­utes pri­or to the attack, how­ev­er, a small group of peo­ple were invit­ed to and joined the serv­er. Before that, our records indi­cate no oth­er peo­ple saw the diary chat log in this pri­vate server.”

Gendron also live-streamed the shoot­ing ram­page and post­ed a 180-page man­i­festo online.

The Washington Post reviewed 672 pages of Discord mes­sages post­ed by some­one with the same han­dle used by Gendron on oth­er social media plat­forms. The mes­sages includ­ed self­ies of the suspect.

The paper also ver­i­fied a speed­ing tick­et that Gendron men­tioned he received. The user ref­er­enced Gendron’s men­tal health eval­u­a­tion last June, which was record­ed by New York State Police, accord­ing to reports.

The 18-year-old said in the mes­sages he lied when he told med­ical eval­u­a­tors his threat to com­mit a mur­der-sui­cide when he grad­u­at­ed high school was a joke. He believed the deci­sion allowed him to stay off the FBI’s radar.

“It was not a joke,” he said in the Discord mes­sages. “I wrote that down because that’s what I was plan­ning to do.”

On April 29, a copy of the first install­ment of the Gendron’s mes­sage was uploaded on the file-host­ing plat­form MediaFire. The Washington Post report­ed that it was not avail­able to down­load until Monday.

The sec­ond batch of mes­sages was post­ed on Thursday. MediaFire has removed the doc­u­ment and dis­abled the account. The platform’s chief exec­u­tive said the records would be kept for law enforcement.

“This is where I’m gonna end it, thanks for the fun,” the last mes­sage says.

The records on Discord go back as far as November, accord­ing to reports. They show that Gendron vowed in December to kill “replac­ers.”

He select­ed the Tops store in Buffalo by February after con­sid­er­ing attack­ing sites in Rochester. He also planned on tar­get­ing two oth­er spots in Buffalo.

According to reports, the assailant esti­mat­ed how many Black peo­ple he could kill between each loca­tion and worked out the dis­tance and how much time he would need for each shooting.

The mes­sages also revealed that the assailant con­sid­ered car­ry­ing on the ram­page at a Black school or church but changed his mind.

“I would con­sid­er break­ing into a Buffalo ele­men­tary school, but those places are locked up tight, plus I get a strange feel­ing when think­ing about mas­sacring chil­dren,” he wrote.

In addi­tion to those killed, three peo­ple were injured in the attack on Saturday before police offi­cers arrest­ed Gendron. Witnesses said he had tak­en off his tac­ti­cal gear and turned the gun to his neck before police took him down.

A por­tion of a live stream of the attack showed Gendron paus­ing after point­ing his assault rifle at a white man in the store to apol­o­gize, and walk­ing away. A longer ver­sion of the video showed Gendron had already shot about four or five peo­ple, shoot­ing one woman on the floor twice.

The white suprema­cist jour­naled three vis­its to the Tops store on March 8 where a secu­ri­ty guard con­front­ed him. He told the guard he was “col­lect­ing con­sen­sus data,” accord­ing to reports. In addi­tion to two secu­ri­ty guards, he count­ed 53 Black peo­ple in the super­mar­ket that day and six white people.

Gendron also feared that his par­ents would uncov­er his plan. He wrote about hid­ing his guns in his bed­room and clothes in his car. The sus­pect said he bought and sold sil­ver coins to acquire the ammu­ni­tion for the massacre. 

When Gendron’s par­ents saw a speed­ing tick­et from his recon­nais­sance vis­it to the store 200 miles away from his home, he told his father on March 26 that he skipped school to go on a hike at a state park, accord­ing to reports.

Gendron had secret­ly dropped out of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, how­ev­er. Fearing that his par­ents could have caught on to his plan, Gendron wrote that he wished he had launched the attack right away

“My par­ents know lit­tle about me,” he wrote on Feb. 22. “They don’t know about the hun­dreds of sil­ver ounces I’ve had or the hun­dreds of dol­lars I’ve spent on ammo. They don’t know that I spent close to $1000 on ran­dom mil­i­tary s — . They don’t even know I own a shot­gun or an AR-15, or ille­gal magazines.”

By Mark Osbourne & Billy Hutchinson

Thomas Lane, one of the for­mer Minneapolis police offi­cers involved in George Floyd’s killing, has plead­ed guilty to sec­ond-degree manslaugh­ter, accord­ing to the Minnesota attor­ney general.

State Attorney General Keith Ellison said the plea agree­ment reached with Lane rep­re­sents an “impor­tant step toward heal­ing the wounds of the Floyd fam­i­ly, our com­mu­ni­ty, and the nation.

Lane, 38, had been sched­uled to go to tri­al next month in state court along with his for­mer Minneapolis police col­leagues J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao.

All three defen­dants were con­vict­ed in February by a fed­er­al jury on charges of vio­lat­ing George Floyd’s civ­il rights by fail­ing to inter­vene or pro­vide med­ical aid as their senior offi­cer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of the hand­cuffed 46-year-old Black man’s neck for more than nine min­utes in the May 25, 2020, incident.

The seem­ing­ly irra­tional feal­ty to Donald Trump by a large seg­ment of the American pop­u­la­tion and the mur­der of peo­ple of col­or both by police and oth­er dis­grun­tled white nation­al­ists must be viewed against the back­ground of the fight by Republicans to end non-white immi­gra­tion and Roe v Wade as the cen­ter­pieces of their agenda.
That agen­da is under­pinned by a des­per­ate attempt to stop the flow of dark-skinned peo­ple into the United States on the one hand and force white women to stop hav­ing abor­tions on the other.
What is behind those two issues, you ask? A mani­a­cal desire to increase the birthrate of whites and lim­it the fur­ther brown­ing of America.
Behind the mani­a­cal effort to force white women to bring to term babies, their fathers and uncles fathered, and worse, bring­ing to term the offspring/​s of rapists is about increas­ing the num­ber of whites and decreas­ing the num­bers of every­one else.
Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts declared on Sunday morn­ing that he wants his state to pass a law ban­ning all abor­tion with no excep­tions for incest or rape, stat­ing that it’s his “inten­tion” to call a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion to take “fur­ther steps” to “pro­tect pre­born babies.”

For years they pre­tend­ed that this was about reli­gion, and they man­aged to bring evan­gel­i­cals along; even some Black Christians signed on to the idea of anti-choice because they believed as they were told that they would burn in hell for ter­mi­nat­ing a pregnancy.
However, black folks would start to awak­en to the truth as race rela­tions in America con­tin­ued to dete­ri­o­rate. So much for the post-racial America that was sup­posed to suc­ceed Barack Obama’s presidency.
The sense of urgency that dri­ves the polit­i­cal right and the poten­tial over­turn­ing of the almost five decades old Roe V Wade deci­sion and the January 2021 assault on Congress comes from the knowl­edge they have that, giv­en time; white suprema­cy will be unten­able based on the nation’s demo­graph­ic changes.
ACCORDING TO NEW CENSUS DATA, William H. Frey, Senior Fellow — Brookings Metro, wrote, “The nation is diver­si­fy­ing even faster than pre­dict­ed.” The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its last batch of race-eth­nic pop­u­la­tion esti­mates in advance of the 2020 cen­sus, with data indi­cat­ing that the nation­al head­count will reveal a more diverse nation than was pre­vi­ous­ly expect­ed. The new esti­mates show that near­ly four of 10 Americans iden­ti­fy with a race or eth­nic group oth­er than white and sug­gest that the 2010 to 2020 decade will be the first in the nation’s his­to­ry in which the white pop­u­la­tion declined in numbers.
The declin­ing white pop­u­la­tion share is per­va­sive across the nation. Since 2010, the white pop­u­la­tion share declined in all 50 states. Most note­wor­thy is the increased diver­si­ty in the younger por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. In 2019, more than half of the nation’s pop­u­la­tion under age 16 iden­ti­fied as a racial or eth­nic minor­i­ty for the first time. Among this group, Latino or Hispanic and Black res­i­dents togeth­er com­prise near­ly 40% of the population.

Right-lean­ing pub­li­ca­tions like the wall street jour­nal, the Atlantic, and oth­ers have rub­bished the idea that whites are des­tined to become a minor­i­ty to a coa­lesced minority.
The Journal’s John J. Miller, in 2021, in an essay titled; ‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It”, wrote: Remember the “coali­tion of the ascen­dant”? National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein invent­ed the phrase in 2008 to describe the “grow­ing ele­ments of American soci­ety” that had elect­ed Barack Obama and giv­en Democrats com­mand­ing majori­ties in both con­gres­sion­al hous­es: “young peo­ple, Hispanics, and oth­er minori­ties, and white upper-mid­dle-class pro­fes­sion­als.” Republican suc­cess­es in 2010, 2014, and 2016 called the coalition’s dura­bil­i­ty into ques­tion. But the 2020 elec­tion— Joe Biden’s vic­to­ry notwith­stand­ing — may pro­vide the great­est rea­son to doubt it. Compared with 2016, President Trump and con­gres­sion­al Republicans improved their stand­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly among Hispanic vot­ers and made small­er strides among oth­er groups, such as Asian-Americans, blacks, and Muslims. https://​www​.wsj​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​m​a​j​o​r​i​t​y​-​m​i​n​o​r​i​t​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​d​o​n​t​-​b​e​t​-​o​n​-​i​t​-​1​1​6​1​2​5​4​9​609
Miller’s asser­tion is based essen­tial­ly on the mix­ing of races and the chil­dren result­ing from those unions. His asser­tion is premised on the idea that those chil­dren will alter the demo­graph­ics in favor of the present white major­i­ty. An asser­tion that has noth­ing to do with the brown­ing of America yet pur­ports to speak to how vot­ers may vote in the future depend­ing on their assim­i­la­tion into white culture.
White replace­ment the­o­ry is not a fringe idea; it is main­stream Republican ide­ol­o­gy that got Donald Trump elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States. It was behind the so-called free­dom cau­cus in the US Congress and the intractable oppo­si­tion to President Barack Obama.
It is behind the Republican par­ty’s deci­sion to give up on democ­ra­cy and attach them­selves to the [trumpian] idea of despo­tism. If you can no longer win elec­tions fair­ly, ensure that there are no more free and fair elections.

In the sup­posed lib­er­al bas­tion of New York, Elise Stefanik, the House Republican num­ber three who glee­ful­ly took on the role Liz Chaney had, is a firm believ­er in replace­ment theory.
Stefanik’s Facebook ads, which prompt­ed a scathing edi­to­r­i­al in her home­town news­pa­per, accused “rad­i­cal Democrats” of plan­ning what she called a “per­ma­nent elec­tion insur­rec­tion” and said their plan to “grant amnesty to 11 mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple would over­throw our cur­rent elec­torate and cre­ate a per­ma­nent lib­er­al major­i­ty in Washington.
Asked by CNN’S Manu Raju if she repu­di­at­ed replace­ment the­o­ry, Stefanik said: “I’ve nev­er made a racist com­ment.”
That exchange came after Illinois Senator Dick Durbin called out elect­ed offi­cials who “jump at the chance to get fea­tured on [Tucker] Carlson’s show and echo his white suprema­cist blath­er, his dark gospel of fear and hate and racism.”(according to Newsweek)
The American farm­land has always been fer­tile soil in which racism and geno­cide would thrive. From the igno­ble insti­tu­tion of slav­ery to Jim Crowe in the South to the more sub­tle insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism in the North-East and across the length and breadth of America, racism has been America’s shame.
From April 12^th, 1861, to May 13^th, 1865, Americans fought each oth­er in a bloody civ­il war that would end slav­ery on the books, per se. By the time the shoot­ing war sub­sided, an esti­mat­ed 620,000 peo­ple lay dead, vic­tims of an incor­ri­gi­ble and unright­eous sys­tem that demand­ed blood for its sustenance.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​i​k​e​-​r​u​p​e​r​t​-​m​u​r​d​o​c​k​-​e​l​o​n​-​m​u​s​k​-​i​n​t​e​n​d​s​-​t​o​-​c​a​s​h​-​i​n​-​o​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​r​a​c​i​sm/

America learned noth­ing from that blood­shed; instead of cleans­ing itself of the stench of igno­rance and hate, it dou­bled down by build­ing mon­u­ments to the very trai­tors who had tak­en up arms against the nation. All across the coun­try, Legislatures enact­ed laws that were just as oner­ous as slav­ery and, in some cas­es, even more so.
Present-day America oper­ates as a nor­mal soci­ety but under­neath that faux exte­ri­or lies the ugly mon­ster of shared igno­rance and hatred that has char­ac­ter­ized this nation through its existence.
It should have come as no sur­prise that rapa­cious vul­tures would seek to unearth the stink­ing car­cass of racism and seek to prof­it from it. Unfortunately, the main­stream media in America but for a few jour­nal­ists, are all con­sumed with fluff and friv­o­li­ty to con­tin­ue bring­ing these impor­tant facts to the fore for well think­ing Americans.
And so now that we are see­ing the bloody con­se­quence of what the hate machine known as FOX is doing to the lives of inno­cent Black and Brown peo­ple, it is impor­tant to say I warned that Rupert Murdock was destroy­ing America.
I told you so, now every media house is talk­ing about Murdoch and his lit­tle min­ions on his hate chan­nel, but the horse is already through the gate, and the well is already poisoned.
The coun­try must leg­is­late its way out of this quag­mire it is in. Legislation can­not stop racist thoughts, but it changes behav­ior. Eventually, those who would use racism as a means to an end will get the message.

.

.

.

.

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 joy or sat­is­fac­tion for me when I bring these atroc­i­ties to your atten­tion, in fact, it pains my heart to do so but even as I try my best to expose these inci­dents of police vio­lence, my attempts do not begin to scratch the sur­face of what’s going on.
Time and again we hear of these inci­dents in which police exe­cute peo­ple sim­ply because they can and suf­fer no con­se­quence. Usually, their vic­tims are Black or brown.
The sad real­i­ty in America is that the pop­u­lar cul­ture of mil­i­ta­rized police and the added cloak of immu­ni­ty cre­at­ed by the Supreme Court has result­ed in a war­rior men­tal­i­ty by police who act with total impuni­ty when they are deal­ing with peo­ple of color.
It does not mat­ter whether their intend­ed tar­get is in his or her own home, 85-years-old, female, or a deaf per­son, much less one suf­fer­ing from a men­tal ail­ment. The bark­ing of orders is fol­lowed by an oblig­a­tory bar­rage of bul­lets killing the intend­ed target.
The bark­ing of orders regard­less of how need­less or unnec­es­sary is law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for killing whomev­er they want; usu­al­ly some­one Black or Brown.
It is a sick and nau­se­at­ing spec­ta­cle that the world must be awak­ened to. This is what is hap­pen­ing in America. Government agents are com­mit­ting geno­cide on the peo­ple they hate and arrest­ing with dig­ni­ty white mass murderers.(MB)

Two for­mer cops have been charged in the 2021 police slay­ing of a Black man in Lawton, Oklahoma.

An admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion con­tend­ed both offi­cers did not fol­low the department’s “well-estab­lished train­ing pro­to­cols, poli­cies, prac­tices, cus­toms or pro­ce­dures” dur­ing the alter­ca­tion, lead­ing to first-degree manslaugh­ter charges announced last week. USA Today reports an Aug. 1 hear­ing has been sched­uled for for­mer Lawton offi­cers Robert Hinkle, 30, and Nathan Ronan, 29, after District Attorney Kyle Cabelka charged them for the death of Quadry Sanders, 29.
The announce­ment was made on Friday, May 6. Cabelka said in a state­ment, “The Comanche County District Attorney’s Office has made the deter­mi­na­tion that the shoot­ing of Quadry Sanders was not jus­ti­fied. An inves­ti­ga­tion into the slay­ing, head­ed by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations, last­ed months.

The fatal encounter began on Dec. 5, 2021, when Ronan and Hinkle respond­ed to a 911 call where a female caller iden­ti­fied Sanders as a per­son wav­ing a gun in someone’s house and refus­ing to leave. The offi­cers arrived at the home locat­ed at 1806 NW Lincoln Avenue, near N.W. 18^th St. and N.W. Lincoln Ave.
According to author­i­ties, the offi­cers asked Sanders to exit the res­i­dence, but instead of com­ing out the front, he left from the side door. Reports say Sanders lat­er returned to the prop­er­ty and came to the front where the offi­cers were. This is when the offi­cers shot and killed him, say­ing the three were in a “con­fronta­tion” prompt­ing them to fire their weapons.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation deter­mined the men’s actions war­rant­ed that they be fired.
Hinkle was dis­charged from the LPD for vio­lat­ing the force’s pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures per­tain­ing to “con­duct and behav­ior, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use dead­ly force, dead­ly force, and unsat­is­fac­to­ry performance.
Ronan was dis­charged for also vio­lat­ing pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures, how­ev­er, his strikes were the fail­ure to per­form “duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use dead­ly force, dead­ly force, mobile and body cam video/​audio (not acti­vat­ing body­cam footage).”
Both of the offi­cers dis­obeyed LPD Rules and Regulations – Performance of Duty and City of Lawton Municipal Code – Violations of City Code.

In a state­ment, Lawton City Manager Michael Cleghorn said Ronan and Hinkle’s con­duct was “not in con­for­mance with the Lawton Police Department’s well-estab­lished train­ing pro­to­cols, poli­cies, prac­tices, cus­toms or procedures.”
The charges were announced after video footage of the alter­ca­tion was released. The footage showed Sanders in full com­pli­ance with the orders giv­en him by the two for­mer cops. The footage showed Sanders was only ordered to put his hands up after he was shot four times, and offi­cers con­tin­ued to shoot him despite him obey­ing their commands.
The med­ical exam­in­er list­ed Sanders’ cause of death as “mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.” A total of twelve gun­shot wounds were found on his body (abdomen, groin area, legs, arm, and hand).
Audio from the offi­cers’ body­cam hears them shout­ing at the Black man, “stay down” and “roll over on your stomach.”
It also cap­tures Sanders say­ing, “I’m down” and “I can’t breathe.” No gun was found on Sanders.

Cabelka’s office said 15 rounds were fired at Sanders: 11 rounds by Hinkle and four rounds by Ronan
The offi­cers, who were fired from the depart­ment in January, were arrest­ed. The two were released on a $25,000 bond on Friday. Should they be con­vict­ed for Sanders’ death, they both face a min­i­mum of four years in state prison.
Sanders’ fam­i­ly is being rep­re­sent­ed by S. Lee Merritt, who was not sat­is­fied with the charges, believ­ing they should be upgraded.
On social media, he wrote, “We demand mur­der charges.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation deter­mined the men’s actions war­rant­ed that they be fired.
Hinkle was dis­charged from the LPD for vio­lat­ing the force’s pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures per­tain­ing to “con­duct and behav­ior, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use dead­ly force, dead­ly force, and unsat­is­fac­to­ry performance.
Ronan was dis­charged for also vio­lat­ing pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dures, how­ev­er, his strikes were the fail­ure to per­form “duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to use dead­ly force, dead­ly force, mobile and body cam video/​audio (not acti­vat­ing body­cam footage).”

Both of the offi­cers dis­obeyed LPD Rules and Regulations – Performance of Duty and City of Lawton Municipal Code – Violations of City Code. Upon see­ing the evi­dence, Merritt said it remind­ed him of the George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery deaths, two cas­es he worked on behalf of their fam­i­lies. I put this video on that lev­el,” he said.
“It real­ly shocks the con­science when you have a chance to see Mr. Sanders lit­er­al­ly doing what­ev­er he could to try to save his own life, and these offi­cers are oper­at­ing with such callousness.”
Merritt lat­er wrote on Instagram he could not “find a sin­gle redeemable fac­tor that mit­i­gates any aspect of this shooting.”
“It was just mur­der. There was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” the cap­tion con­tin­ued. “These men must be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest extent of the law.”
KSWO reports Merritt will con­tin­ue to push the DA’s office to upgrade the charges to mur­der. Merritt also plans on con­tact­ing the Attorney General and the Department of Justice.
Lawton Mayor Stan Booker said last week, “As the Mayor of Lawton, the loss of life in our com­mu­ni­ty is always a dif­fi­cult mat­ter to grasp. My thoughts and prayers go out to the par­ents and those in our com­mu­ni­ty who lost a loved one in Quadry Sanders.”

“Although this deci­sion and the releas­ing of infor­ma­tion that fol­lowed may pro­vide clar­i­ty to this trag­ic inci­dent, it does not come with­out impact­ing one’s stages of grief and mourn­ing of a lost loved one,” he con­tin­ued. “I believe the Lawton Police Department holds itself to the high­est pos­si­ble stan­dards, and I know it will con­tin­ue to do so mov­ing forward.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Atlanta Black Star, full cred­it belongs to them.

Would this sus­pect have been allowed to sur­ren­der if he was black or would he have been ter­mi­nat­ed in a hail of police bullets?

Ten peo­ple were killed and three oth­ers injured in a “racial­ly moti­vat­ed” shoot­ing at a super­mar­ket in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black neigh­bor­hood in Buffalo, New York, author­i­ties said. 

Officials said the sus­pect­ed gun­man, a white 18-year-old man, trav­eled sev­er­al hours to Buffalo to car­ry out the attack, which he live-streamed on social media. Eleven of the 13 peo­ple who were shot were Black, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said at a news conference.

The sus­pect was tak­en into cus­tody after the attack, Gramaglia added. 

“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “It was a straight-up racial­ly moti­vat­ed hate crime from some­body out­side of our community.”

Gramaglia said the gun­man was wear­ing tac­ti­cal gear and was armed with an assault-styled rifle. He parked out­side the Tops Friendly Market around 2:30 p.m. ET and opened fire in the park­ing lot, killing three peo­ple and injur­ing a fourth. He then went inside and con­tin­ued his ram­page, Gramaglia said.

A retired Buffalo police offi­cer, who was work­ing as a secu­ri­ty guard at the store, con­front­ed the gun­man and shot him. Authorities said the gun­man was hit, but his tac­ti­cal gear pre­vent­ed injury. 

The gun­man returned fire, killing the guard.

The super­mar­ket is about three miles north of down­town Buffalo. The sur­round­ing area is pri­mar­i­ly res­i­den­tial and is sur­round­ed by homes, along with a Family Dollar store, bar­ber shops, a laun­dro­mat and fire sta­tion. Authorities said evi­dence showed the sus­pect showed racial ani­mos­i­ty but declined to elaborate. 

The gun­man made his way through the store, fir­ing at oth­ers before he was met by law enforce­ment near the lob­by. Authorities said the gun­man had his weapon point­ed at his head and author­i­ties were able to nego­ti­ate his surrender.

“I have already called a judge to come down­town imme­di­ate­ly and arraign this indi­vid­ual,” he said. “Within the next hour, this indi­vid­ual will be arraigned on a charge of mur­der in the first degree.”

He declined to say where the sus­pect was from, only say­ing the sus­pect trav­eled hours and lived in the state of New York. 

Authorities say the gun­man livestreamed the attack to social media. The footage shows the gun­man, dressed in mil­i­tary gear, pulling up to the front of the store with a rifle on the front seat and then point­ing the rifle at peo­ple in the park­ing lot as he exit­ed the vehi­cle and open­ing fire, a law enforce­ment offi­cial told the Associated Press.

It also shows the sus­pect walk­ing into the super­mar­ket and shoot­ing sev­er­al oth­er vic­tims, the offi­cial said. 

Authorities were also look­ing into whether he had post­ed a man­i­festo online, the offi­cial said.

Braedyn Kephart and Shane Hill, both 20, said they’d just pulled into the park­ing lot of the store when they saw the alleged gun­man leav­ing and being tak­en into custody.

“He was stand­ing there with the gun to his chin. We were like what the heck is going on? Why does this kid have a gun to his face?” Kephart said. He dropped to his knees. “He ripped off his hel­met, dropped his gun, and was tack­led by the police.”

Police closed off the block, lined by spec­ta­tors, and yel­low police taped sur­round­ed the full park­ing lot. Mayor Byron Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz were at the scene late Saturday after­noon, gath­ered in a park­ing lot across the street from the Tops store and expect­ed to address the media.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is “close­ly mon­i­tor­ing” the shoot­ing and that she has offered assis­tance to those in Buffalo, her home­town, accord­ing to her Twitter account. 

Buffalo is New York’s sec­ond-largest city, with a pop­u­la­tion of more than 278,000 people. 

The shoot­ing came lit­tle more than a year after a March 2021 attack at a King Soopers gro­cery in Boulder, Colorado, that killed 10 people.

Contributing: Diana Dombrowski, Journal News; The Associated Press.