AARON MORRISON
Fri, February 5, 2021, 10:14 AMA war rages on in America, and it didn’t begin with Donald Trump or the assault on the Capitol.

It start­ed with slav­ery and nev­er end­ed, through lynch­ings and vot­er sup­pres­sion, the snarling attack dogs of Bull Connor and the insid­i­ous account­ing of redlining.

Today’s bat­tles in the race war are waged by legions of white peo­ple in the thrall of stereo­types, lies and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that don’t just exist for reclus­es on some dark cor­ner of the internet.

People like the mur­der­er who fatal­ly shot nine Black parish­ioners at a church in South Carolina, telling detec­tives that Black peo­ple were tak­ing over the coun­try and rap­ing white women. And the shoot­er who killed 23 and wound­ed 23 oth­ers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas — tar­get­ing Mexicans, author­i­ties say, because he believed they were invad­ing the coun­try to vote for Democrats.

And the riotous mob, rife with white suprema­cists, that bought in when Trump and oth­ers insist­ed false­ly that the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was stolen, most­ly in areas where peo­ple of col­or live and vote.

For a very long time, civ­il rights lead­ers, his­to­ri­ans and experts on extrem­ism say, many white Americans and elect­ed lead­ers have failed to acknowl­edge that this war of white aggres­sion was real, even as the bod­ies of inno­cent peo­ple piled up.

Racist notions about peo­ple of col­or, immi­grants and politi­cians have been giv­en main­stream media plat­forms, are rep­re­sent­ed in stat­ues and sym­bols to slave­hold­ers and seg­re­ga­tion­ists, and helped dem­a­gogues win elec­tions to high office.

The result? A crit­i­cal mass of white peo­ple fears that mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics and the equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er spell their obso­les­cence, era­sure and sub­ju­ga­tion. And that fear, often exploit­ed by those in pow­er, has proven again and again to be among the most lethal threats to non­white Americans, accord­ing to racial jus­tice advocates.

So how does the nation begin address­ing the war of white aggres­sion after count­less missed opportunities?

The Rev. William Barber II, a civ­il rights leader and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a mul­tira­cial coali­tion that aims to lift mil­lions out of pover­ty and oppres­sion, said it starts with col­lec­tive­ly refus­ing to have polit­i­cal debates root­ed in lies and racist tropes.

“White suprema­cy, though it may be tar­get­ed at Black peo­ple, is ulti­mate­ly against democ­ra­cy itself,” Barber told The Associated Press. “The col­lat­er­al dam­age, when you keep unleash­ing the lies, sow the wind and pour this poi­son into the veins of peo­ple, is the sys­tem becomes so sep­tic that vio­lence spews out of it.”

After tak­ing the oath of office on the very plat­form that some in the mob scaled to breach the Capitol, President Joe Biden acknowl­edged the dan­ger of doing noth­ing about sys­temic racism and vio­lence born of hate.

“A cry for racial jus­tice some 400 years in the mak­ing moves us,” he said. “A cry that can’t be any more des­per­ate or any more clear. And now a rise of polit­i­cal extrem­ism, white suprema­cy, domes­tic ter­ror­ism that we must con­front and we will defeat.”

Historically, white suprema­cy has advanced in lock­step with fears of Black polit­i­cal pow­er. After the Civil War, when for­mer­ly enslaved peo­ple got the right to vote and hold office, the white response includ­ed Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion, vot­er sup­pres­sion and oppres­sion through law enforcement.

The Jan. 6 Capitol riot occurred the same day that Georgia declared the win­ners of its runoff elec­tions — Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the first Black and Jewish can­di­dates the Southern state had ever sent to the U.S. Senate. And it hap­pened as Inauguration Day approached for Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian per­son sworn to serve as vice president.

It should not go unnot­ed that at least one large Confederate flag was waved by the Capitol trespassers.

To many in that most­ly white mob, non­white Americans wield­ed an incon­ceiv­able amount of polit­i­cal influ­ence in the last elec­tion, threat­en­ing the pri­ma­cy of white rule. When white suprema­cism is chal­lenged, its defend­ers delib­er­ate­ly sow divi­sion in ser­vice to the old order, Barber said.

“This kind of mob vio­lence, in reac­tion to Black, brown and white peo­ple com­ing togeth­er and vot­ing to move the nation for­ward in pro­gres­sive ways, has always been the back­lash,” he said.

Oren Segal, vice pres­i­dent of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said address­ing the war of white aggres­sion also requires that we stop using benign terms like “cul­ture war” to describe vio­lence that lit­er­al­ly kills Americans.

“All some­body had to do was actu­al­ly look at the dead bod­ies and the killers to real­ize that the threat of domes­tic white suprema­cist vio­lence has been with us for quite a while,” Segal said.

According to the ADL, which tracks hate vio­lence, rough­ly 74% of extrem­ists who com­mit­ted homi­cides in the U.S. between 2010 and 2019 were right-wing extrem­ists, and a major­i­ty of those were white supremacists.

On Monday, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked racism, xeno­pho­bia and zealotry since 1990, said the num­ber of active hate groups decreased last year by 11%. The decrease is due, in part, to a splin­ter­ing of white suprema­cist and neo-Nazi groups and a migra­tion to social media plat­forms and their use of encrypt­ed apps. Still, the law cen­ter said, the lev­el of hatred and big­otry in America, as well as the threat of domes­tic ter­ror­ism by hate groups, has not diminished.

Christian Picciolini, a for­mer far-right extrem­ist who found­ed the derad­i­cal­iza­tion group Free Radicals Project, said it has become easy to oth­er­ize and ignore white peo­ple who sup­port far-right move­ments or join hate groups. But for too long, he said, that has been part of a col­lec­tive denial among white peo­ple that a real-world, vio­lent threat exists.

“We have to under­stand that, if we want to pre­vent this in the future, we have to exam­ine our his­to­ry — 400 years of what I would clas­si­fy as our nation’s pot­holes,” said Picciolini, who last year released the anti-extrem­ist book “Breaking Hate.”

Malcolm Graham, a for­mer state sen­a­tor in North Carolina, firm­ly believes that America’s fail­ure to con­front white suprema­cism cost the life of his old­er sis­ter, Cynthia Graham-Hurd. She was among the nine killed in 2015 dur­ing a Bible study meet­ing at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.

The mas­sacre “was a defin­ing moment,” Graham said. But that moment was wast­ed when offi­cials and media overem­pha­sized that the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies for­gave the killer, instead of inves­ti­gat­ing his path to extrem­ism, he said.

“We nev­er real­ly dealt with what occurred in Charleston, because every­body was so quick to want to clean it up,” said Graham, who now serves on the Charlotte City Council.

Cynthia Graham-Hurd, a beloved pub­lic librar­i­an who was just shy of her 55^th birth­day, died hud­dled under a desk in the church’s fel­low­ship hall. She had been shot at least a half-dozen times.

The gun­man, Dylann Roof, com­mit­ted the nation’s dead­liest act of anti-Black domes­tic ter­ror­ism since the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bomb­ing that killed four girls at a Black church in Alabama. During clos­ing argu­ments at Roof’s tri­al, a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor said the 22-year-old avowed white suprema­cist intend­ed to start a war between the races.

His actions instead sparked a nation­al reck­on­ing over white suprema­cist iconog­ra­phy, includ­ing the Confederate bat­tle flag, mon­u­ments and stat­ues that appeared in pho­tographs and draw­ings inves­ti­ga­tors found among Roof’s belongings.

In July 2015, for­mer Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, who is Indian American, signed leg­is­la­tion per­ma­nent­ly low­er­ing the Confederate bat­tle flag that flew over South Carolina’s Capitol. Many saw it as a sign that white Americans were awak­en­ing to their com­plic­i­ty and accept­ed their oblig­a­tion to address dis­pro­por­tion­ate white con­trol of gov­ern­ment, econ­o­my and media.

Two years after the Charleston mas­sacre, in 2017, white suprema­cists, the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis held a so-called “Unite the Right″ ral­ly in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event was staged in oppo­si­tion to the pro­posed removal of a Confederate mon­u­ment from a pub­lic park. Heather Heyer, a white coun­ter­pro­test­er, died in an attack car­ried out by a rallygoer.

Trump — who, just one day before Roof car­ried out his mur­ders, launched his White House bid by decry­ing Mexican migrants as rapists and drug deal­ers — infa­mous­ly said there were “fine peo­ple” among the racist Charlottesville ral­ly participants.

There have been moments when it seemed like a reck­on­ing with racism was at hand. After the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, white peo­ple joined protests across the nation.

The SPLC said 111 Confederate mon­u­ments and oth­er white suprema­cist sym­bols have been removed, relo­cat­ed or renamed since Floyd’s death. But near­ly 1,800 Confederate sym­bols, includ­ing 725 mon­u­ments, remained on pub­lic land as of December.

“Confederate sym­bols are not relics of the past – they are liv­ing sym­bols of white suprema­cy,” SPLC chief of staff Lecia Brooks said.

“As evi­denced by the events of Jan. 6, the Confederate flag is just one of many tools still used to reassert white suprema­cist ideals,” she told the AP. “These sym­bols did not go up overnight and the pow­er they hold — specif­i­cal­ly in the South — will not be over­come if we con­tin­ue to stay silent.”

The SPLC has called for fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies to devote more resources to track­ing and pros­e­cut­ing hate vio­lence and bias inci­dents, as well as enact­ing leg­is­la­tion that shifts fund­ing away from pun­ish­ment mod­els and toward pre­vent­ing vio­lent extrem­ism. Picciolini, the for­mer extrem­ist, said pre­ven­tion is essen­tial to derad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple who pose domes­tic ter­ror threats.

“The way that I work with peo­ple to dis­en­gage them from extrem­ism is to not real­ly debate them ide­o­log­i­cal­ly,” he said. “I think that’s the same way America has to deal with this prob­lem. We have to look back at our his­tor­i­cal pot­holes and final­ly accept them and address them, (and) embrace the peo­ple who’ve been harmed along the way, to help shape our future together.”

For Graham, who lost his sis­ter in the Mother Emanuel shoot­ing, the onus isn’t on Black peo­ple to begin nego­ti­at­ing a truce in the race war. Accountability must come first, he said.

“I think white folks need to have a town hall meet­ing, and I think they need to start call­ing their peo­ple out,” Graham said. “They have to be able to point a fin­ger at folks that look like them, and point them out at their din­ner table, at their church­es, at their places of employment.”

Those town halls can be spaces for heal­ing between the races, said La June Montgomery Tabron, pres­i­dent and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a phil­an­thropic organization.

“At the root of heal­ing is truth-telling,” said Tabron, whose orga­ni­za­tion has host­ed a nation­al day of racial heal­ing for sev­er­al years. “What we know in our work is that, for chil­dren to thrive in the future, they need a coun­try, a nation and a world where there is equity.”

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Talking about being dealt a blow? Canada declared this ter­ror­ist group, well “A TERRORIST GROUP’ , some­thing the United States refus­es to do.

The far-right Proud Boys have been thrown into a tumult in the after­math of the Jan. 6 riot, with the group’s lead­ers fac­ing crim­i­nal charges, their chair­man exposed as an infor­mant, and law enforce­ment inves­ti­gat­ing what role Proud Boys had in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Now, amid a brew­ing trade­mark dis­pute with their for­mer lawyer, they might even lose the right to use their name.On Monday, for­mer Proud Boys lawyer Jason Lee Van Dyke, who holds the “Proud Boys” trade­mark, released a let­ter revok­ing Proud Boys chair­man Enrique Tarrio’s right to use the name. Van Dyke’s rea­sons for revok­ing the trade­mark rights includ­ed what he sees as the Proud Boys’ asso­ci­a­tion with Nazi groups, as well as Proud Boys burn­ing a church’s Black Lives Matter ban­ner in a December march in Washington, D.C.

Van Dyke doesn’t fit the pro­file of a typ­i­cal Proud Boys oppo­nent. Van Dyke has an elab­o­rate­ly check­ered legal his­to­ry him­self, includ­ing a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion from prac­tic­ing law after threat­en­ing to kill one of his legal foes. Police claim Van Dyke once used Proud Boys to sur­veil his legal oppo­nent, and was alleged­ly record­ed by an infor­mant lay­ing out plans for a vio­lent ter­ror cam­paign against the man.

Van Dyke’s com­plaints that the Proud Boys are too close to white-suprema­cist groups is espe­cial­ly bizarre, giv­en his own his­to­ry. As recent­ly as 2019, Van Dyke was report­ed­ly caught on tape attempt­ing to join The Base, a neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist group, before being reject­ed by its mem­bers as a “huge lia­bil­i­ty.” In the mem­ber­ship inter­view, a per­son iden­ti­fied by Vice News as Van Dyke can be heard prais­ing neo-Nazi writ­ers and dis­cussing a crack­down on Jewish immigration.

“There’re plen­ty of peo­ple in the Proud Boys who don’t believe that Jews have a place in this coun­try and they want to put a stop to it,” Van Dyke report­ed­ly said in the recording.

Despite that, Van Dyke is now posi­tion­ing him­self as the defend­er of the Proud Boys name, accus­ing Tarrio of using the trade­mark to sell sub­stan­dard Proud Boys mer­chan­dise and let­ting Proud Boys cre­ate fas­cist-style graph­ics using the trademark.

“Your license to uti­lize the ‘Proud Boys’ trade­mark for any pur­pos­es is ter­mi­nat­ed, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly,” Van Dyke wrote in the let­ter to Tarrio.
Read more here; https://​www​.thedai​ly​beast​.com/​p​r​o​u​d​-​b​o​y​s​-​d​e​a​l​t​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​b​l​o​w​-​a​s​-​f​e​d​s​-​c​r​a​c​k​-​d​o​w​n​?​r​e​f​=​h​ome

On what plan­et would this be allowed to hap­pen with­out the sever­est con­se­quences pos­si­ble to these mon­sters, one and all?
Here is a sit­u­a­tion in which a 9‑year-old child is dis­traught and asks for her dad, and a cop tells his col­league to quote, “at this point, just spray her.”
America, what you wit­nessed here are cops who want to esca­late to force lev­el, and would use any pre­tense to get to that escalation.
In the first instance, there is absolute­ly no need to place a 9‑year-old child in hand­cuffs. None whatsoever.
Secondly, the female cop speak­ing to the lit­tle girl is not deesca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion by demand­ing that she sit back; the child is already in the cruis­er; where was she going to go?
American Police con­tin­ue to use these pre­tens­es to trig­ger force, then revert to them to jus­ti­fy using force.
A car­ing trained police offi­cer would gen­tly ask the lit­tle girl her name, rather than con­tin­u­al­ly demand­ing that she sits back.
The next step is to ask her her father’s name and find out from the child how they may con­tact her daddy.
Contrary to these sim­ple steps, the mon­sters used pep­per spray on the child instead. If you do that to my child, it becomes per­son­al; it is no longer between me and the sys­tem; it becomes between you and me.

In Rochester, police released two body-cam­era videos Sunday of offi­cers restrain­ing a dis­traught 9‑year-old girl who was hand­cuffed and sprayed with what police called a chem­i­cal “irri­tant.”
The Democrat and Chronicle report­ed that before the video release, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren expressed her con­cern for the “child that was harmed dur­ing this inci­dent that hap­pened on Friday.”
“I have a 10-year-old child, so she’s a child, she’s a baby. This video, as a moth­er, is not any­thing you want to see,” Warren went on to say. A total of nine offi­cers and super­vi­sors respond­ed to the report of “fam­i­ly trou­ble” on Friday. The girl can be heard in the body-cam­era videos from offi­cers at the scene scream­ing fran­ti­cal­ly for her father as the offi­cers try to restrain her.
At a news con­fer­ence Sunday, Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal“She indi­cat­ed she want­ed to kill her­self and she want­ed to kill her mom,” he said.
Officers tried to force the girl into a patrol car, but she pulled away and kicked at them. In a state­ment Saturday, the police depart­ment said this action “required” an offi­cer to take the girl down to the ground. Then, the depart­ment said, “for the minor’s safe­ty and at the request of the cus­to­di­al par­ent on the scene,” the child was hand­cuffed and put in the back of a police car as they wait­ed for an ambu­lance to arrive.

Police said the girl dis­obeyed com­mands to put her feet in the car. An offi­cer was then “required” to spray an “irri­tant” in the hand­cuffed girl’s face, the depart­ment said Saturday.
At Sunday’s news con­fer­ence, Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan described the irri­tant as pep­per spray. She declined to defend the offi­cers’ actions.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9‑year-old to have to be pep­per-sprayed is OK. It’s not,” Herriott-Sullivan said. “I don’t see that as who we are as a depart­ment, and we’re going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things don’t happen.”
Police said the girl was even­tu­al­ly tak­en to Rochester General Hospital, “where she received the ser­vices and care that she need­ed,” and was lat­er released to her family.
The Rochester Police Department has faced scruti­ny since Daniel Prude’s death last year after offi­cers from the depart­ment put a hood over his head and pressed his face into the pavement.

Again I ask,” Why do African-Americans con­tin­ue to call the police to their homes, know­ing that the mon­sters are trained to hate and kill them”?

I total­ly under­stand the sense of bewil­der­ment you feel when con­sid­er­ing the two Cuban-Americans in the United States Senate. How could any ratio­nal per­son feel any­thing but dis­dain and rev­o­lu­tion at them for being such slav­ish sup­pli­cants to the cause of white supremacy?
I have ten­ta­tive­ly broached the sub­ject a few times on these pages; how­ev­er, it bears a deep­er dive to bear out what actu­al­ly dri­ves the two Cubans.
Some pun­dits argue that most of Latin America’s peo­ple are prac­tic­ing Catholics, which explains why Hispanics grav­i­tate to the heretics in the Fascist Republican par­ty, which they claim is a polit­i­cal par­ty of Christian Conservatives.
There is some truth to that argu­ment, but how does one explain the oth­er half or so who come from the region that prac­tices their reli­gion but will have noth­ing to do with the Republican par­ty because of its racist and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry policies?
In try­ing to under­stand Raphael Cruz & Marco Rubio’s actions, it is impor­tant to under­stand how racism shaped behav­iors in the Americas, includ­ing on the Island of Cuba, before the Castro Revolution.
It is also impor­tant to under­stand the broad­er con­text of how enslaved African peo­ple were treat­ed in the region and the lengths some have gone to be dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from the specter of the reviled black skin.

The unimag­in­able bru­tal­i­ty and bar­barism that African-Americans suf­fered for hun­dreds of years did not come from the hands of [Christians] as they want you to believe. (a)They came from the hands of peo­ple who called them­selves Christian Crusaders.
So the idea of America’s birth from pil­grims who came to the new world try­ing to prac­tice their Religion is a fly­ing unicorn.
The truth is that the peo­ple who came here were pris­on­ers who faced exe­cu­tion in Europe. They had the choice of leav­ing for the Colonies or dying; the oth­er choice was life impris­on­ment in the dun­geons they called pris­ons. They chose the colonies. Australia, America, New Zealand was born.
The prac­tice of ship­ping mur­der­ers, rapists, and oth­er dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to America only came to an end after the civ­il war end­ed. Have you ever asked your­selves how Religious peo­ple could be that bar­bar­ic and evil?

Cubans of Spanish ances­try dis­crim­i­nat­ed against their African coun­ter­parts, even though they them­selves were large­ly out­casts who were brought there to work the sug­ar plan­ta­tions., The tox­ic can­cer of racism exist­ed in Cuba from the start and through­out the Spanish American war.
Fidel Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion became the great equal­iz­er, even though the Castro’s came from Spanish ancestry.
The hatred Cubans in America feel for Castro, and his rev­o­lu­tion, runs far deep­er than just the pover­ty brought on by the American blockade.
It is a deep hatred and a long­ing for the satel­lite apartheid state they oper­at­ed under cor­rupt White and Spanish men lead­ing to Batista’s fall. The Spanish trash in Cuba always treat­ed Blacks like sec­ond class citizens.
I won­der why Raphael Cruz went to lengths to change his name from Raphael to Ted, Hum? It is also not out of the ordi­nary that dark-skinned Cubans that have emerged from out of Cuba speak Spanish and des­per­ate­ly iden­ti­fy with the Latin side of their iden­ti­ty instead of their true African identity.
If you are not con­vinced about these facts, trav­el through Miami’s inter­na­tion­al air­port, or have some deal­ings with the Miami Police Department or any oth­er gov­ern­ment agency in that city that is over­run with them.
Cubans see them­selves as whites, trac­ing their blood­line to Spain, of course, the inter­min­gling and inter­mar­riage may have some­thing to say about that Eurocentricity they crave to iden­ti­fy with.
The lan­guage was forced on the African slaves, the skin they can­not shed, but the caste sys­tem that still exists on the Island, to a less­er extent today, they all pre­tend to be European, rather than African.

About one-fourth of Cubans are mulat­toes (of mixed European and African lin­eage), and some two-thirds are descen­dants of white Europeans, main­ly from Spain. Whites have been the dom­i­nant eth­nic group for cen­turies, monop­o­liz­ing the direc­tion of the econ­o­my and access to edu­ca­tion and oth­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices. Although mulat­toes have become increas­ing­ly promi­nent since the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry, some mulat­toes and blacks (of African her­itage) still face racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. (Brittanica).
During the admin­is­tra­tion of our first African-American President, the lit­tle mon­grel Cuban Senator from Cuba, Marco Rubio, told Fox that the pres­i­dent has no class. “We have a pres­i­dent now that does self­ie-stick videos, that invites YouTube stars there, peo­ple that eat cere­al out of a bath­tub.” President Obama once made a video for [Buzzfeed] where he tried to use a self­ie-stick that attach­es to a cell­phone to take pic­tures and invit­ed YouTube stars to inter­view him. One of those, GloZell Green, once made a video that went viral of her eat­ing cere­al in a bathtub.
Since that com­ment, the lit­tle Cuban grem­lin has become a slav­ish water­boy for the worst crim­i­nal ever to occu­py the white house.
Not only has he not crit­i­cized the low life, Donald Trump, for his count­less crimes and indis­cre­tions, but he has also become apol­o­gists for him, ren­der­ing the label mon­grel too good to describe Rubio.

Raphael Cruz and Marco Rubio are prod­ucts of their his­to­ry, their past & their present. They are con­tin­u­al­ly run­ning from who, they real­ly are, try­ing to be seen as some­thing else.
Anything but who they real­ly are!
So it is no sur­prise to me to learn that anoth­er Cuban, Enrique Tarrio, a Cuban black try­ing to be some­one else, was an FBI infor­mant, now await­ing tri­al for his crimes.
In December 2020, (black enterprise)reported that Black Lives Matter signs out­side of sev­er­al his­toric Black church­es in Washington D.C. were burned and destroyed dur­ing a pro-Trump ral­ly. When Tarrio appeared on a “Warboys” pod­cast inter­view that month, he took respon­si­bil­i­ty and stat­ed he was “the per­son that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames. “I’m damn proud I did,” he said.
The lit­tle mutt went on to pon­tif­i­cate on the Parler web­site that “against the wish­es of his attor­ney, I am here today to admit that I am the per­son respon­si­ble for the burn­ing of this sign.”
He also dared police offi­cers to arrest him, writ­ing: “Come get me if you feel like what I did was wrong. We’ll let the pub­lic decide.”
Running from who they are, try­ing to be accept­ed, I get it but chang­ing your name and com­mit­ting crimes is hard­ly the way to go about gain­ing acceptance.
Just ask Raphael Cruz; his col­leagues in the Senate hates his guts; worse yet, even his chil­dren can­not stand him.
Guys, please get a grip of your­selves, gain some self-respect.

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.Mike writes for thinkers.

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

I have not been shy in point­ing out that there is no Federal Domestic Terrorism statute in the United States because it would unearth proof that the great­est threat to the United States’ secu­ri­ty is white supremacy.
I have also com­pli­ment­ed the FBI for warn­ing years ago that white suprema­cists have and con­tin­ue to infil­trate police depart­ments across the coun­ty. Conversely, I have also crit­i­cized the FBI for not pay­ing enough atten­tion to the threat white suprema­cy pos­es, choos­ing instead to play up the so-called threats posed by Black Lives Matter (BLM pro­test­ers, and ANTIFA„ some of whom go too far by break­ing the laws.
We should nev­er lose sight of the fact that BLM pro­test­ers are actu­al­ly protest­ing against police vio­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty, and the dis­or­ga­nized group that goes by the acronym (ANTIFA). The acronym lit­er­al­ly stands for Anti-fascist.
It seems to me that if the United States were to attend to sys­temic racism and the rise of Fascism, which has tak­en on a new life over the last dozen or so years, these two Organizations would cease to exist.

Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy was ded­i­cat­ed to two things. (1) Enriching him­self, his chil­dren, and his wealthy back­ers, and (2) enhanc­ing the cause of white supremacy.
Though Trump is undoubt­ed­ly the most racist per­son to occu­py the Executive Mansion in my life­time, the racism he rep­re­sents was not cre­at­ed by him; he mere­ly used it toward his own ends and took steps to encour­age it for his future exploitation.
There is evi­dence that at least 20% of Capitol insur­rec­tion­ists were past and serv­ing mil­i­tary and law enforce­ment mem­bers; this rev­e­la­tion should be no surprise.
Despite the irrefutable data, the term ter­ror­ism con­tin­ues to be viewed as some­thing asso­ci­at­ed with for­eign­ers and Muslims in particular.
There is now a new Democratic Administration in Washington DC. We hope that President Biden and the Democrats in the Congress will move with speed and pur­pose in rein­stat­ing the Federal Voting Rights Act to its for­mer state.
The 1965 Act was dec­i­mat­ed in 2013 By the Roberts Court in a stun­ning deci­sion known as Shelby County Vs. Holder.
The oth­er press­ing issue is the need to rein in the white suprema­cist groups run­ning around pre­tend­ing to be law-abid­ing cit­i­zens but are, for all intents, ter­ror­ist groups.

On its sec­ond full day in office, the new admin­is­tra­tion took steps to look at local ter­ror groups. Biden has already direct­ed fed­er­al law enforce­ment and nation­al intel­li­gence offi­cials to com­plete an assess­ment of the threat posed by domes­tic vio­lent extrem­ism in America.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced the threat assess­ment at a press brief­ing on Friday.
The assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion at hand will be man­aged in part by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was cre­at­ed in the wake of the ⁹⁄₁₁ ter­ror­ist attacks and respon­si­ble for advis­ing the pres­i­dent on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues.
When that assess­ment is com­plet­ed, we hope that it will lead to action­able leg­is­la­tion that will focus on this exis­ten­tial threat that has con­tin­ued to result in the loss of count­less lives with­out the out­cry and action war­rant­ed in light of its severity.
White suprema­cy ter­ror­ism is not new. On the morn­ing of April 19^th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed numer­ous Americans right here at home in a das­tard­ly act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism. Since then, white ter­ror­ists have killed at will, and have avoid­ed the coa­les­cence need­ed around the com­mon cause of root­ing it out.

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Mike writes for thinkers

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

The Arts, Culture, Music, Science, Inclusion, Equality, Those are the things the ene­mies of progress hate, the things we saw in the nation’s cap­i­tal on January 20^th. The com­ing togeth­er of American mul­ti­cul­tur­al­is­m’s beau­ti­ful quilt is real­ly what dri­ves the racist polit­i­cal right mad.
It makes them so mad they rage-tweet, and they riot, they kill cops in a blood-lust rage-filled quest to get to law­mak­ers and even their very own vice pres­i­dent and his family.
As the media nib­ble around the edges seek­ing to pla­cate, see­ing to nuance, seek­ing to give def­er­ence to white nation­al­ists, inde­pen­dent voic­es like this writer strive to shine a light on the true rea­son they hate.

They hate because of what we wit­nessed on January 20^th, Native Americans, African-Americans, White Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Pacif-Islanders, Americans all, com­ing togeth­er in a beau­ti­ful cor­nu­copia to cel­e­brate the unique idea of Americanism.
Perhaps the great­est evi­dence of my claim, is out­go­ing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s tweet, on the American Taxpayers account, quote; “Woke-ism, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, all the ‑isms — they’re not who America is. They dis­tort our glo­ri­ous found­ing and what this coun­try is all about. Our ene­mies stoke these divi­sions because they know they make us weak­er.”
That shock­ing racist tweet from an arro­gant twit who abused his pow­er as sec­re­tary of state, used his office for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es in ser­vice to Donald Trump’s crimes, may best be garbaged by a line in the elo­quent Amanda Gorman’s poem. “We’ve seen a force that would shat­ter our nation, rather than share it.”
Boom!!!

It goes with­out say­ing, even though we have banged those drums for years, the sin­gle great­est fear that dri­ves those who now call them­selves Republicans, is the fear that America is grad­u­al­ly mov­ing away from Race-based phi­los­o­phy, to one that embraces the quilt of mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism over the tyran­ny of white supremacy.
The dan­ger they pose to the repub­lic will be an ongo­ing threat. It is fanned and fed by talk radio, right-wing tele­vi­sion, and social media plat­forms that oper­ate as round the clock gaslighters against the con­cept of truth.
The wound­ed snake we wit­nessed on January 6^th is only the begin­ning of what is like­ly to come. Pompeo’s igno­rant yet trans­par­ent tweet is a win­dow into the soul of what this Trumpian move­ment is about.
Whether it is über arro­gant Mike Pompeo, or the two US sen­a­tors Raphael Cruz and Josh Hawley, who paint­ed them­selves into a cor­ner, they are all jock­ey­ing for the white suprema­cist base that Trump man­aged to gal­va­nize over the last sev­er­al years.

Pompeo’s tweet runs against every grain of how the world real­ly works; a riv­er run­ning down­stream gets big­ger and more pow­er­ful as more streams, and trib­u­taries dump out into its south­ward jour­ney. It’s pow­er; it’s might, rivals only by the mighty ocean into whose arms it final­ly surrenders.
The hatred and his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tions that the likes of Mike Pompeo and his ilk rep­re­sent must be shout­ed down as we shout down Donald Trump’s 1619 racist depic­tion of America. We must for­ev­er con­demn, ridicule, and rel­e­gate to the dust­bin of his­to­ry, their putrid lies, and fal­si­fi­ca­tion of America’s true history.
Lies can­not over­come the truth. Hatred can­not over­shad­ow love, and dark­ness will nev­er drown out the light.

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

Much of Wednesday’s inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris felt like a balm to a wound­ed nation’s soul, espe­cial­ly 22-year-old Amanda Gorman’s beau­ti­ful recita­tion of the inau­gu­ra­tion poem, “The Hill We Climb.”

Gorman, who was named the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017 and is the youngest per­son to ever deliv­er an inau­gur­al poem (as well as being an hon­oree for The Root’s Young Futurists in 2019), told the New York Times she fin­ished writ­ing the poem on the night of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

And it makes sense, giv­en that her words so per­fect­ly cap­tured the chal­lenges and pos­si­bil­i­ties that are now before us after the swear­ing-in of President Biden and Vice President Harris. In a verse that pow­er­ful­ly acknowl­edged the role she was play­ing in American his­to­ry, Gorman said this is “a time where a skin­ny black girl descend­ed from slaves and raised by a sin­gle moth­er can dream of becom­ing pres­i­dent only to find her­self recit­ing for one.”

The rest of the poem was sim­i­lar­ly lyri­cal and inspir­ing. An excerpt:

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it’s the past we step into

and how we repair it

We’ve seen a force that would shat­ter our nation

rather than share it

Would destroy our coun­try if it meant delay­ing democracy

And this effort very near­ly succeeded

But while democ­ra­cy can be peri­od­i­cal­ly delayed

it can nev­er be per­ma­nent­ly defeated

In this truth

in this faith we trust

For while we have our eyes on the future

his­to­ry has its eyes on us

This is the era of just redemption

We feared at its inception

We did not feel pre­pared to be the heirs

of such a ter­ri­fy­ing hour

but with­in it we found the power

to author a new chapter

To offer hope and laugh­ter to ourselves

So while we once we asked,

how could we pos­si­bly pre­vail over catastrophe?

Now we assert

How could cat­a­stro­phe pos­si­bly pre­vail over us?

Gorman fol­lows in the foot­steps of Maya Angelou, who read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inau­gu­ra­tion of for­mer President Bill Clinton in 1993. Another fun fact: the love­ly ear­rings and bird­cage ring that Gorman wore at the inau­gu­ra­tion were gift­ed to her by Oprah, who also sent Angelou a gift before her own his­toric moment.

DEMOCRATIC VISIONARY
STACEY ABRAMS
When Abrams announced on December 14 that Georgia’s 16 elec­toral votes had been cast for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, applause erupt­ed for the first Democratic pres­i­den­tial win in the state since 1992 — and for Abrams, the 2018 guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date who had argued all along that vot­er mobi­liza­tion could flip swing states against Donald Trump. With her group Fair Fight, Abrams cham­pi­oned vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and mobi­liza­tion dri­ves in Georgia, Wisconsin, and oth­er bat­tle­ground states. They fig­ured out how to draw new Black, Latinx, and Asian American vot­ers to the polls, cir­cum­vent vot­er sup­pres­sion, and nav­i­gate the chal­lenges of a pan­dem­ic elec­tion, with a savvy empha­sis on mail-in vot­ing, ear­ly vot­ing, and safe in-per­son vot­ing on Election Day that will be a nation­al mod­el going for­ward. That mer­its applause. And the cheer­ing will be even loud­er in 2022 if, as many sus­pect, Abrams runs for (and wins) Georgia’s governorship.

As the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Minneapolis dis­trict where George Floyd’s death dur­ing a bru­tal arrest in May sparked nation­wide protests, Omar imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized that this police killing of a Black man was part of a broad­er cri­sis. “We are not mere­ly fight­ing to tear down the sys­tems of oppres­sion in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” she announced. “We are fight­ing to tear down sys­tems of oppres­sion that exist in hous­ing, in edu­ca­tion, in health care, in employ­ment, in the air we breathe.” Trump staked his bid to win Minnesota on a cam­paign that vicious­ly attacked Omar’s chal­lenge to sys­temic racism. The con­gress­woman respond­ed with a turnout dri­ve that boost­ed Democratic num­bers in her dis­trict and helped Biden sweep the state.

Read more on this sto­ry here; https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​-​p​r​o​g​r​e​s​s​i​v​e​-​l​e​a​d​e​rs/

Sheriffs play a key role in right-wing white suprema­cist movements.
By JESSICA PISHKO JAN 15, 20212:40 P

On Jan. 6, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb made a promise. Delivering a speech in Phoenix dur­ing the ongo­ing mob attack on the nation’s Capitol, Lamb accused for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Hillary Clinton of unnamed crimes and repeat­ed President Donald Trump’s false claims about elec­tion fraud. “Now I’m lim­it­ed to what I can do as the sher­iff, but if you live in Pinal County, I assure you I can fight for your free­dom,” he said before exhort­ing his fol­low­ers to “be vig­i­lant” and to “fight for the Constitution, free­dom, and the American way of life.” (The video has since been delet­ed from social media.)

In the past week, it’s become clear that many mem­bers of law enforce­ment from across the coun­try par­tic­i­pat­ed in the siege on the Capitol. That includes for­mer and cur­rent sher­iffs and their deputies. Ex – Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway was at the Trump ral­ly but said he didn’t march to the Capitol. He described the crowd as “a cross between tail­gat­ing at a foot­ball game and a NASCAR race — fam­i­lies, dogs, chil­dren. Everyone being nice. I mean, it was like a fam­i­ly reunion with­out some of the hate­ful­ness you can find at fam­i­ly reunions. It was a very good crowd.”At least one cur­rent sher­iff admits he was at the riot: Sheriff Chris West of Canadian County, Oklahoma, says he marched toward the Capitol build­ing but did not enter. But long before Jan. 6, sher­iffs have been help­ing to lay the ground­work for vio­lence by the far-right move­ment. As polit­i­cal lead­ers in their com­mu­ni­ties, they have been sow­ing dis­sent at home, encour­ag­ing their own armed mili­tias to pre­pare them­selves to take back the gov­ern­ment, just as Lamb suggested.

Read sto­ry here ;https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​1​/​0​1​/​c​o​n​s​t​i​t​u​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​s​h​e​r​i​f​f​s​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​c​a​p​i​t​o​l​-​r​i​o​t​-​i​n​s​u​r​r​e​c​t​i​o​n​.​h​tml

How cyn­i­cal and gra­tu­itous are House and Senate Republicans in their call for unity?
Even as the Hallowed Halls of Congress was invad­ed, des­e­crat­ed, and blood spilled there­in, Republican right-wing Congressmen, includ­ing their leader Kevin McCarthy, call for uni­ty but take no respon­si­bil­i­ty for their part in foment­ing the insurrection.
Every Republican Senator and mem­ber of the US House knew with­out a sin­gle iota of doubt, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 2020.
Instead of tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions, they engage in the default hypocrisy of (what-about-ism).
What about the so-called Antifa riots dur­ing last sum­mer, they ask? They make no men­tion of the cir­cum­stances that brought peo­ple of all col­or to the streets in cities, towns, ham­lets, the nation’s length and breadth, and across the globe.

More con­se­quen­tial, is the fact that it has been shown that many of the inci­dents of vio­lence, includ­ing arson and mass destruc­tion of prop­er­ty, were actu­al­ly car­ried out by white right-wing ter­ror­ists, in the hope of ignit­ing a civ­il war.
The idio­cy of their (what-about-ism), miss­es a lit­tle nugget, nei­ther (BLM)Black Lives Matter, which mil­i­tates for equal­i­ty, fair­ness, and an end to police vio­lence, nor the boogey­man (ANTIF) Anti-Fascists, hap­pens to be the President of the United States, who is sworn to uphold the Constitution.
The insur­rec­tion­ist Republican cau­cus in the United States House of Representatives has some gall to talk about the George Floyd protests that engulfed the coun­try after a cop mur­dered him in broad day­light, with­out denounc­ing police vio­lence, or show­ing respect to the black community.
The House Insurrectionist cau­cus’s dis­re­spect­ful stance can­not be ignored; it is now a full-fledged white suprema­cist cau­cus that threat­ens and intim­i­dates oth­er US House members.

How can there be heal­ing when the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lems we are fac­ing are still in pow­er, and have not been held accountable?
What gives the arson­ists the right to demand the fire­fight­ers hur­ry to put out the blaze, even as they stand there with the gaso­line and lighter?
How remark­ably rich that these insur­rec­tion sup­port­ers now demand that Democrats abdi­cate their respon­si­bil­i­ty to the Constitution, and get togeth­er to sing kumbaya?
Look at what Trey Goudy and Jim Jordon did to Hillary Clinton in the Bengazi scan­dal they dredged up. Did they show mag­na­nim­i­ty? No, they did not?
There was no rea­son for them to be mag­nan­i­mous in the first place; Secretary Clinton had done noth­ing wrong.
Nevertheless, the Republican arson­ists con­tin­ued with years of hear­ings and dem­a­goguery, which in the end turned up noth­ing either crim­i­nal or negligent.
The White suprema­cists cau­cus, now caught with its tail in the crack, wants Democrats who will soon con­trol the two branch­es of the Legislature and the White House, to all of a sud­den join hands with them and sign we shall overcome.

In the first instance, the absur­di­ty of that is breath­tak­ing; they haven’t tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for aid­ing and enabling Donald Trump in his efforts to over­throw the leg­isla­tive branch of the US Government and make him­self a dear-leader for life.
They have not con­ced­ed that their actions were crim­i­nal. They have not agreed that Trump did any­thing wor­thy of removal. Only ten mem­bers of their cau­cus vot­ed with Democrats to impeach Trump a sec­ond time.
If Senate Republicans did their duty to their oaths, to the Constitution, when they had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to return san­i­ty to the nation, the nation would not be in this mess today.
They abdi­cat­ed their respon­si­bil­i­ty to the Constitution; the result is that the United States House of Representatives was attacked and blood spilled.
More con­se­quen­tial, is the sus­pi­cion that the invaders intend­ed to spill the blood of the Republican’s own vice pres­i­dent Mike Pence, and oth­er lead­ers of the nation.

One Republican insur­rec­tion­ist argued on the House floor in defense of Donald Trump,” Lincoln did not seek ret­ri­bu­tion after the civ­il war.”
The real­i­ty is that Abraham Lincoln erred in not pun­ish­ing the trai­tors who waged war on their own coun­try. Let us stop with the non­sense hero-wor­ship­ing fal­li­ble men who made mistakes.
“Treason,” the crime of betray­ing one’s coun­try, espe­cial­ly by attempt­ing to kill the sov­er­eign or over­throw the gov­ern­ment.
The trai­tors who seced­ed from the Union and waged war on her should not have walked away after their defeat. A strong and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage should have been sent once the war was over, one that would have made it clear that if you betray your coun­try, this will be the outcome.
Instead, Lincoln allowed them to walk away as if they had done noth­ing wrong. Because of those actions, they con­tin­ued to believe in their cause to this day. They have erect­ed mon­u­ments to their heroes, not just in south­ern states but all across the coun­try and even at the nation’s capital.
The result of Lincoln’s fail­ure to pun­ish the trai­tors of April 12^th, 1861 to May 13^th, 1865, result­ed in the White Supremacist bat­tle-flag being parad­ed in the Capitol build­ing on January 6^th, 2021.
That despi­ca­ble flag is what it was all about.

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

Have you ever won­dered what hap­pens when mur­der­ers are grant­ed bail?
Wonder no more, in this medi­um, we have stri­dent­ly been opposed to courts allow­ing accused mur­der­ers back onto the streets after they are arrest­ed and charged.
Instead of bail, I have advo­cat­ed for a speedy tri­al, so that mur­der accused can have their day in court.
In the United States, when a black offend­er is accused of mur­der, he does not expect that he will be grant­ed bail before trial.
Even if he is ulti­mate­ly exon­er­at­ed, he would have already served a lengthy jail time for com­mit­ting no crime.
You may argue that I am con­tra­dict­ing myself. Actually, no. If a defen­dant is giv­en a speedy tri­al, the prob­lem would be reme­di­at­ed, to the great­est extent that it can be.
Poor whites, too, are gen­er­al­ly kept locked up after being accused of mur­der; in actu­al­i­ty, the aver­age per­son, regard­less of col­or, can expect to spend what­ev­er time the sys­tem deems nec­es­sary locked in jail to await tri­al in cas­es far less seri­ous than homicide.
Of course, if you are a wealthy white or a sym­bol of white suprema­cy, you can expect to be grant­ed bail as Kenosha Wisconsin Kyle Rittenhouse was after killing two peo­ple and injur­ing anoth­er after cross­ing state lines with a weapon.
A judge set bail, and white suprema­cists ponied up the mon­ey to spring him from jail.

(Yahoo News report­ed, Prosecutors in Wisconsin have asked a judge to order Kyle Rittenhouse to stay out of bars, and away from vio­lent white pow­er groups like the Proud Boys.
The request comes a week after Rittenhouse was seen drink­ing at a tav­ern out­side of Kenosha after plead­ing not guilty — via Zoom from his lawyer’s office in Racine — at his arraign­ment Jan. 5 on homi­cide and oth­er charges relat­ed to the Aug. 25 vio­lence in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse, who is free on $2 mil­lion bails, had just turned 18 two days ear­li­er. After the hear­ing, he, his moth­er, and sev­er­al oth­er adults went to Pudgy’s Pub in Mount Pleasant. He was seen drink­ing beer while wear­ing a t‑shirt read­ing Free as Fuck).

https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​o​r​s​-​a​s​k​-​j​u​d​g​e​-​b​a​n​-​k​y​l​e​-​1​3​5​0​2​9​0​9​0​.​h​tml

Black mur­der defen­dants can­not get bail; in many cas­es„ black defen­dants who are accused of far less­er crimes are [not] grant­ed bail. Just imag­ine a black mur­der accused, much less one as high pro­file as Kyle Rittenhouse, being allowed back onto the streets and was caught in a bar flash­ing black pow­er signs.
Do you think that pros­e­cu­tors would be ask­ing the judge to order the defen­dant to stay away from bars? Or do you believe they would be ask­ing to yank his bail?
These are the two Americas we talk about, when we talk about the so-called Justice sys­tem. We saw how some police offi­cers helped the nean­derthal white insur­rec­tion­ists to breach the Capitol, where blood was shed in the halls of Congress.

Rittenhouse’s attor­ney respond­ed that his client does­n’t belong to or asso­ciate — even online — with such groups and called the state’s motion “a not-so-thin­ly veiled attempt to inter­ject the issue of race into a case that is about a person’s right to self-defense.”

♦Two Black offi­cers with the US Capitol Police report­ed that they were repeat­ed­ly called the N‑word by Trump sup­port­ers who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

♦One point­ed to a “big dif­fer­ence” in how his col­leagues dealt with the riot­ers, com­pared with last sum­mer’s Black Lives Matter protesters.

♦“Some of the offi­cers were cater­ing to the riot­ers,” the offi­cer said.

♦The Capitol Police has come under fire for its han­dling of Wednesday’s attack. Some offi­cers were seen allow­ing the mob to advance on the build­ing and pos­ing for selfies.

Two Black US Capitol Police offi­cers report­ed that they were repeat­ed­ly called the N‑word by sup­port­ers of President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol last week and sug­gest­ed that their fel­low offi­cers went easy on the rioters.

One of the offi­cers who spoke with BuzzFeed News, a new­er recruit, point­ed to a “big dif­fer­ence” in how his fel­low offi­cers treat­ed Wednesday’s mob com­pared with the way they treat­ed Black Lives Matter pro­test­ers last summer.

Much atten­tion has been paid to a video show­ing offi­cers open a bar­ri­cade to the mob, and to the fact that ini­tial arrests paled in com­par­i­son with the num­ber of peo­ple arrest­ed at protests against Trump and racial injustice.

“Some offi­cers were cater­ing to the riot­ers” on Wednesday, the offi­cer said.

The younger offi­cer said it was hurt­ful to see video of one of his white col­leagues pos­ing for self­ies with some of the rioters.

“That one hurt me the most because I was on the oth­er side of the Capitol get­ting my ass kicked,” he said.

The offi­cer said that if it had been Black peo­ple breach­ing the Capitol last week, he’s not sure his white cowork­ers would have been as chum­my with them.

As the post mortem exam­i­na­tion take shape after the coup attempt insti­gat­ed by Donald Trump and Republicans on January 6^th, one thing is cer­tain; there should be no illu­sions about full accountability.
The Republican Party long gave up on the Democratic process. For decades now, they looked at demo­graph­ic data, and the par­ty has been mov­ing decid­ed­ly toward author­i­tar­i­an rule.
They have ramped up vot­er sup­pres­sion meth­ods, aimed exclu­sive­ly at pre­vent­ing Black Americans from vot­ing. The US Supreme Court gave the par­ty the green light in Shelby County, Alabama Vs. Holder. In a non­sen­si­cal rul­ing, the court all but evis­cer­at­ed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which pro­tect­ed African-Americans’ rights to vote.
Additionally, the Republican par­ty has enact­ed leg­is­la­tion at the state lev­els that has dra­mat­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed huge sec­tions of the black com­mu­ni­ty’s abil­i­ty to vote.
Gerrymandering, vot­er ID laws, and oth­er anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic activ­i­ties have formed part of the Republican par­ty’s tool-kit for decades.
As the real­i­ties of racial demo­graph­ic shifts become clear­er, the Republican par­ty has become more des­per­ate and, as a result, more dan­ger­ous to the Democratic process, as it dou­bles down on its deci­sion to be the polit­i­cal par­ty of white supremacy.
Simply put, the Republican par­ty in its present form, is a clear and present dan­ger to America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty. It can­not be allowed to hold power.

“A scor­pi­on asks a frog to car­ry him over a riv­er. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scor­pi­on argues that both would sink if it did so, and the scor­pi­on would drown. The frog then agrees, but mid­way across the riv­er, the scor­pi­on does indeed sting the frog, doom­ing them both. When asked why, the scor­pi­on points out that this is its nature.”

In my last arti­cle, I wrote about the FBI warn­ings about police depart­ments’ infil­tra­tion by white suprema­cists. I also talked about the fact that there has been sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence across the coun­try that, at least in some depart­ments, white suprema­cy is per­va­sive. Evidence of their influ­ence is also evi­dent on social media, in the para­pher­na­lia some wear on their police uni­forms, in the tat­toos all across their bod­ies, includ­ing in places that are vis­i­ble to the public.
On January 6^th, the coup attempt by Donald Trump to over­throw the gov­ern­ment through blood­shed failed, but just bare­ly. There is talk that some of the insur­rec­tion­ists were actu­al­ly police offi­cers and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary; at least some are past members.
The woman who was shot by Capitol police as she tried to breach parts of the build­ing, is report­ed to be a vet­er­an of the military.
There is talk that even in the secret ser­vice, Trumpism has tak­en root. It now means that Democrats, to include the incom­ing President and Vice President and their admin­is­tra­tion, should have much to wor­ry about.
Frank Figliuzzi, for­mer FBI Assistant Director; Author, explained that the FBI could not inves­ti­gate domes­tic terrorists(white suprema­cists) as it does ter­ror groups out­side the coun­try, because there is no domes­tic ter­ror statute at the fed­er­al level.
This is atro­cious. If the nation want­ed to deal with domes­tic ter­ror­ism effec­tive­ly, statutes would empow­er law enforce­ment to go after them stridently.
The sad real­i­ty is that, those who would fit snug­ly into the cat­e­go­ry of domes­tic ter­ror­ists are large­ly white men.

The FBI, oth­er Federal Security Agencies, and local law enforce­ment agen­cies across the coun­try, have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly been focused on straw man threats. The sup­posed threats they dream up, are [Black iden­ti­ty extrem­ists] and [Antifa].
Realistically, there is no such thing; it is a fig­ment of the FBI’s imag­i­na­tion, a des­ig­na­tion it cre­at­ed. When con­front­ed by California US rep­re­sen­ta­tive Karen Bass, FBI Director Christopher Wray could not explain what Black Identity Extremists were. Still, he was forced to con­cede that Antifa is not an orga­nized group but a bunch of reg­u­lar peo­ple opposed to Fascists and fascism.
In fact, the acronym ANTIFA lit­er­al­ly stands for Anti-Fascists.
So unless one is a fas­cist, it is dif­fi­cult to under­stand why any­one would be opposed to ANTIFA? On the oth­er hand, it is impor­tant to under­stand that the sup­posed Black Identity Extremists that the FBI and local police forces are focused on are black peo­ple fight­ing to be heard, fight­ing to stop police from mur­der­ing them, even when they are unarmed and have com­mit­ted no crime.
These are the peo­ple who con­tin­ue to fight to have state­hous­es and the Federal leg­is­la­ture hear their cries about police vio­lence, even against black women and children.
On these dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple of col­or, is where the Federal Bureau of Investigations has focused its atten­tion. On these pow­er­less peo­ple, is the nation­al intel­li­gence atten­tion focused. That, of course, is when they have a moment to stop sur­veilling peace­ful Muslim citizens.

White Supremacists have not only breached many depart­ments; there are report­ed­ly many mem­bers of white suprema­cist groups on many police and Sheriff’s Departments. They also man­aged to fool law enforce­ment at every lev­el, includ­ing at the fed­er­al lev­el, into believ­ing that they pose no threat to nation­al security.
During the gen­uine peace­ful protest against police vio­lence last sum­mer, which came to a head after the mur­der of Minneapolis native George Floyd, they could be seen heav­i­ly armed, pre­tend­ing to be back­ing the police.
They wore para­pher­na­lia that pur­ports to sup­port police, even as the hue and cry of the mass­es in the streets con­tin­ue to be against police brutality.
Black res­i­dents who live with the tyran­ny of police vio­lence, their white and brown sym­pa­thiz­ers, all knew that those mili­tias that sided with police against their right­eous protests, were already ene­mies against Democracy and all it entails.
The term [back the blue became a ral­ly­ing cry], they wore the police flag, some cops wore their racist insignia on their uni­form. Police thanked them for show­ing up at protests, gave them refresh­ments, and fail to appre­hend them even when they com­mit murder.
Police bru­tal­ize and fur­ther assault inno­cent black-brown, and white pro­test­ers who ask for an end to police vio­lence, but do noth­ing even when those enti­tled men and women com­mit acts of vio­lence and aggres­sion against their fel­low cit­i­zens in their presence.
It was a match made in hell; now the police see that match­mak­ing was intend­ed to deceive and lull them into a false sense of security.
What did law enforce­ment expect to hap­pen with it entered into this unholy alliance with the most despi­ca­ble ele­ments of American society?
The anar­chists, ene­mies of the Republic, Seditionists, are still there right in the Republican cau­cus in the house and sen­ate. Even as Trump’s term is over, and the full real­i­ty of trump’s failed bloody coup becomes clear­er, they will con­tin­ue to vote down every mea­sure that comes up to secure the nation.
America is in deep trou­ble; the threat to her sur­vival lies deeply entrenched inside her. It will not go away because a racist dem­a­gogue is gone from the biggest stage.
Did Law- enforce­ment expect that a scor­pi­on would sud­den­ly for­get to sting?

As Donald Trump’s coup attempt killed a Capitol Police offi­cer doing his duty and wound­ed sev­er­al oth­ers, the silence com­ing out of the White House is deafening.
Before the 2020 Presidential elec­tions, most police Unions and Departments across the coun­try endorsed Donald Trump.
That includes the NYPD, which has close to 30’000 mem­bers, and is the world’s largest police department.
Trump, who claims to love the police, has had noth­ing to say about the killing of that offi­cer on January 6^th. It was his thugs that took the life of that officer.
Imagine if black pro­test­ers mur­dered that officer?
The racists’ right-wing media would have worked itself into a froth, as it calls for the sedi­tion act to be used against them. Trump’s Attorney General William Barr want­ed the Sedition Act used against first Amendment demon­stra­tors last sum­mer. He rolled out large groups of fed­er­al offi­cers to beat and tram­ple inno­cent demon­stra­tors so that Trump could hold a Bible upside down in front of a church.
Even though social media plat­forms have moved belat­ed­ly to silence Trump’s poi­so­nous rhetoric, he still has the Presidential Press room’s from which to speak to the American people.
He could use that avenue to bemoan the death of that officer.
He chose not to, so much for sup­port­ing the police.
So much for throw­ing their sup­port to a law­less fascist.

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.Mike Beckles writes for seri­ous thinkers.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​o​-​i​s​-​p​a​y​i​n​g​-​a​t​t​e​n​t​i​o​n​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​m​e​g​r​o​w​n​-​t​e​r​r​o​r​i​s​ts/

Every police offi­cer, past or present, regard­less of where they are from, or where they oper­at­ed, must feel shame, must be in shock at what we saw evolv­ing in Washington DC yesterday.
Regardless of senior­i­ty, every­one wor­thy of the title of “police offi­cer “would have been able to fore­see that the Capitol police pres­ence and the sub­se­quent response was not only inad­e­quate, but bor­der­line was a dere­lic­tion of duty.
In that regard, the Capitol police chief Steven Sund’s res­ig­na­tion calls are not only sound but urgent­ly critical.
Regardless of any mit­i­gat­ing or excul­pa­to­ry cir­cum­stances that would mil­i­tate in his favor, his depart­men­t’s egre­gious fail­ure makes it impos­si­ble for him to remain in his post.
He must resign…
An excerpt I post­ed to social media ear­li­er this afternoon.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​r​i​s​e​-​o​f​-​n​e​o​-​n​a​z​i​s​m​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D‑Calif., declared Thursday that she did­n’t need a review and called for Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund’s resignation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., called for a con­gres­sion­al inquiry.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also said Thursday the Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger should resign or be fired. “If Senate Sergeant Arms Stenger has­n’t vacat­ed the posi­tion by then, I will fire him as soon as Democrats have a major­i­ty in the Senate,” Schumer said in a statement.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​u​n​l​a​w​f​u​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​s​-​h​i​g​h​l​i​g​h​t​-​a​-​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​o​f​-​c​o​m​p​l​i​c​i​t​y​-​b​e​h​i​n​d​-​t​h​em/
William Bratton, who has led the coun­try’s largest police forces in New York and Los Angeles, said it was “hard to com­pre­hend every­thing that went wrong.” “This was a fail­ure at every level.”
Sen. Christopher Coons, D‑Del., said law­mak­ers began dis­cus­sions about a secu­ri­ty review even as they took cov­er from attack­ers who had breached the Capitol.
Coons, in an inter­view with MSNBC, said that despite the “hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars” spent in the after­math of ⁹⁄₁₁ to guard against a ter­ror­ist hijack­ing and lethal anthrax attacks, offi­cials had nev­er con­tem­plat­ed the sce­nario that played out Wednesday.

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

There is no need for a review of secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols to see what went wrong. Whatever they come up with to try to con­vince the nation went wrong will be blow­ing smoke up the peo­ple’s ass.
The sad real­i­ty is that this hum­ble writer has writ­ten dozens of arti­cles com­plain­ing, not only about the bla­tant dis­par­i­ties in the ways that law enforce­ment across the coun­try enforce the laws, but the way that police and fed­er­al author­i­ties have basi­cal­ly ignored the grow­ing and immi­nent threat of white suprema­cist militias.

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

Almost two decades ago, the FBI warned that white suprema­cists were infil­trat­ing police depart­ments across the nation. This, I might add, is in addi­tion to the fact that America’s police depart­ments were always racist over­lords who look down on the black com­mu­ni­ty with con­tempt and disdain.
Despite these warn­ings from the FBI, there has been no vis­i­ble evi­dence that the mat­ter is being addressed by either the gov­ern­ment at any lev­el, or by law enforce­ment itself.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​y​-​i​s​-​d​e​a​d​l​y​-​w​h​e​n​-​w​i​l​l​-​w​e​-​s​t​a​r​t​-​t​a​k​i​n​g​-​t​h​i​s​-​r​h​e​t​o​r​i​c​-​s​e​r​i​o​u​s​ly/
In fact, even though the FBI gave the warn­ing, for­mer FBI direc­tor James Comey told police dur­ing the Obama Administration, that police were unsure how to do their jobs as they were suf­fer­ing from what [he] called the” Ferguson effect.” The so-called effect emanat­ed from the killing of Mike Brown unarmed 18-year old black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white cop Darren Wilson.
Wilson faced no crim­i­nal charges, but the Black Lives Matter move­ment (BLM) is rumored to have come out of that inci­dent or been brought to promi­nence due to it.
By infer­ence, Comey’s address to police chiefs con­veyed that if police are not allowed to kill young black men, they come across indis­crim­i­nate­ly, they can­not do their jobs.

The real­i­ty is that across the United States, the white suprema­cist move­ments have cur­ried favor with police; thus, they have lured entire police depart­ments into believ­ing that they are allies.
The thug who sat in Speaker Pelosi’s office with his legs on the desk held events to raise mon­ey for the police. His actions and the actions of oth­ers who invad­ed the Capitol to dis­rupt the gov­ern­men­t’s busi­ness on Donald Trump’s behalf result­ed in a police offi­cer’s death.
If Black Life Matters right­eous pro­test­ers had done any­thing close to this, there would be hell to pay.
Police see Black and Brown peo­ple who march for dig­ni­ty, jus­tice, and against police abuse as ene­mies, while the true ene­mies are giv­en the red carpet.
In 2017 a group of black cler­gy mem­bers kneeled in prayer in the Capitol Rotunda to protest against Donald Trump’s bud­get cuts. Capitol police moved in and arrest­ed them.
Among those arrest­ed was the Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor in Georgia, his name, Raphael Warnock.
On January 5^th, 2021, Pastor Raphael Warnock was elect­ed as the first black man to be elect­ed to the United States Senate from Georgia.

The sad irony is that the police have no bet­ter friend than the black com­mu­ni­ty, who only demand to be treat­ed with respect and dignity.
Time and again, we have seen police wel­come heav­i­ly armed white mili­tia-mem­bers wear­ing pro-police insignia with glee. They are giv­en water and thanked for show­ing up, (as cops did to Kyle Rittenhouse) before he mur­dered two peo­ple in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Police offi­cers are mem­bers of white mili­tias groups; they find com­mon cause with them. All over the coun­try, police groups sup­port Donald Trump and have been endorsed by him.
They do not see the threat posed by the mili­tias and white suprema­cist groups as a threat. Contrary to their belief, the real threat to American Democracy comes from white nation­al­ist who believes that they have the God-giv­en right to over­throw the Government if they dis­agree with its policies.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

The cop who shot Jacob Blake in the back a total of sev­en times, crip­pling him from the waist down, will face zero charges. Rusten Sheskey, the white Kenosha Wisconsin cop, shot 27-year-old Jacob a total of sev­en times as the accost­ed Blake, who walked away from them, opened the door to his car, and leaned into the vehicle.
No gun was found in the vehi­cle, even though the pub­lic was told that Blake had a knife in the vehicle.
In America, the police can mur­der any­one, more so black cit­i­zens, using any num­ber of irra­tional rea­sons, and are guar­an­teed to face no penalty.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​p​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​j​a​c​o​b​-​b​l​a​k​e​-​7​-​t​i​m​e​s​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​b​a​c​k​-​i​d​e​n​t​i​f​i​ed/

By Zack Linly

Recent motions filed by attor­neys for Gregory and Travis McMichael — the father and son accused of chas­ing down and fatal­ly shoot­ing Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Ga., on February 23, 2020 — appear to have one agen­da in mind: Remove all indi­ca­tions of Arbery’s very human­i­ty. In the motions filed on Dec. 30 and 31, not only are the McMichaels’ attor­neys try­ing to ban pho­tos that show Arbery pic­tured with, well, any­one, includ­ing fam­i­ly and oth­er loved ones, but they don’t want Arbery referred to as a vic­tim — despite the fact that he so clear­ly was one.
CBS 46 reports that the defense attor­neys don’t want jurors to hear the word “vic­tim” attached to Arbery’s name because “due process requires min­i­mal injec­tion of error or prej­u­dice into these pro­ceed­ings,” accord­ing to the motion.

“Use of terms such as ‘vic­tim’ allows the focus to shift to the accused rather than remain on the proof of every ele­ment of the crimes charged,” the attor­neys wrote. The lawyers who may or may not pos­sess souls also wrote that the “bur­den of the pros­e­cu­tion should not be alle­vi­at­ed, min­i­mized or dimin­ished with the use of loaded words which imply that the pros­e­cu­tion has met its bur­den of proof that the crimes alleged have actu­al­ly been committed.”

OK fine: So the lawyers don’t want the VICTIM to be called a VICTIM because the jury shouldn’t be remind­ed that a VICTIM was VICTIMized with­out proof of the VICTIMization of the obvi­ous VICTIM hav­ing been estab­lished. But the ridicu­lous motions go even fur­ther than that.

Read the full sto­ry here. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​a​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​s​-​f​o​r​-​g​r​e​g​o​r​y​-​a​n​d​-​t​r​a​v​i​s​-​m​c​m​i​c​h​a​e​l​-​r​e​q​u​e​s​t​-​t​h​a​t​-​1​8​4​5​9​8​4​491