By Zack Linly

The Dec 22 shoot­ing of 47-year-old Andre Hill in Columbus, Ohio, is arguably among the most reck­less acts of police bru­tal­i­ty we’ve seen this year — and that’s say­ing a lot. As the inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent — in which a white police offi­cer opened fire on a Black man who was stand­ing in a garage clear­ly hold­ing a cell­phone, repeat­ed­ly shout­ed at him to “put your fuck­ing hands out to the side” while he was lying on the ground shot and then failed to pro­vide med­ical help — con­tin­ues, new details have emerged. Those details include the sec­ond offi­cer on the scene report­ing that she “did not observe any threats” from Hill that would prompt an offi­cer to shoot in the first place.

ABC News reports that Officer Amy Detwiler, who arrived at the scene after now-for­mer offi­cer Adam Coy, the one who fired the shots and was sub­se­quent­ly fired for incom­pe­tence and “gross neglect of duty,” said she saw Hill walk away from a car when she arrived in response to a non-emer­gency call involv­ing an SUV left idling.

As The Root pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Coy didn’t have his body cam­era on until after the shoot­ing, but because the cam­eras have a func­tion that records 60 sec­onds of “look back” footage, video footage of the shoot­ing was record­ed and recent­ly released by the police depart­ment. No audio could be heard before the shots were fired, but Detwiler’s report to inves­ti­ga­tors sheds some light on what pre­ced­ed the shooting.

From ABC:

Detwiler didn’t see any inter­ac­tion between Hill and Coy, but said Coy told her Hill had walked into a next-door garage.

After the offi­cers crossed over to the garage they saw Hill, with Detwiler telling inves­ti­ga­tors “she felt Mr. Hill may need assis­tance to enter the res­i­dence,” accord­ing to her interview.

Coy asked Hill in a “nor­mal tone of voice” to exit the garage and Hill com­plied but with­out respond­ing, Detwiler said.

As Hill walked out, Detwiler “did not observe any threats from Mr. Hill,” nor did she see a gun, the inter­nal affairs report said.

“Officer Detwiler stat­ed Officer Coy observed a firearm and yelled, ‘There’s a gun in his oth­er hand, there’s a gun in his oth­er hand!’” the report said. “Officer Detwiler heard gun­fire at this moment.”

No gun was found at the scene, police said.

A few gen­tle reminders: First, this all came from a call to police about a truck left run­ning in the street. Second, Hill approached offi­cers after he was ordered to do so and was hold­ing his cell­phone in the air with the screen lit up and fac­ing the offi­cers — mean­ing he was going far out of his way to show he wasn’t armed or pre­sent­ing any kind of threat, but he was still shot all the same. Third, despite the spot­light on police bru­tal­i­ty and sys­temic racism in polic­ing that has been in place since the death of George Floyd, a lot of cops seem to not be get­ting the mes­sage. Lastly, as we pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Coy is no rook­ie cop. He’s a 19-year police vet­er­an with dozens of mis­con­duct com­plaints — includ­ing exces­sive force alle­ga­tions — in his per­son­nel file.Coy is still under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and hope­ful­ly, he will be charged in Hill’s death, but his fir­ing should have come long ago. Hill should still be alive today.

By Aviva Shen

On Monday evening, the Columbus Department of Public Safety announced it has fired the police offi­cer who killed Andre Hill, an unarmed Black man, last week. The white Ohio offi­cer, Adam Coy, was found to have used unrea­son­able force, failed to turn on his body cam­era, and declined to admin­is­ter first aid after he shot Hill.

Coy was respond­ing to a non-emer­gency call about a man sit­ting in his car, yet he showed up with his gun drawn. Hill, 47, was vis­it­ing a friend’s house and had stopped in the garage. Coy ordered him to come out of the garage, so Hill turned around and walked toward Coy with his phone in his hand. Though Coy didn’t turn on his cam­era until after the shoot­ing, a 60-sec­ond play­back fea­ture cap­tured the shoot­ing with­out audio. That footage showed Coy shoot­ing Hill with­in 10 sec­onds of approach­ing him. The oth­er offi­cer on the scene told inves­ti­ga­tors that she did not think Hill posed a threat.

It was the city’s sec­ond police killing of a Black man in the span of a few weeks. A sheriff’s deputy who once said his job was to “hunt peo­ple” killed Casey Goodson Jr. out­side his own home on Dec. 4, trig­ger­ing nation­wide protests. While Goodson’s death wasn’t cap­tured on cam­era, the footage of Hill’s death was so trans­par­ent­ly damn­ing that with­in days, the may­or, city coun­cil mem­bers, and the police chief had all called for Coy’s fir­ing. “Officer Coy’s han­dling of this run is not a ‘rook­ie’ mis­take as a result of neg­li­gence or inad­ver­tence, but the deci­sions … and actions tak­en were reck­less and delib­er­ate,” Police Chief Tom Quinlan wrote in his rec­om­men­da­tion last week.

Coy racked up a num­ber of com­plaints alleg­ing abuse over his years on the force. But he went large­ly unpun­ished until now. In one case in 2012, cruis­er footage showed him slam­ming a man’s head repeat­ed­ly into the hood dur­ing a drunk dri­ving arrest. The city paid out $45,000 in a civ­il rights set­tle­ment for that assault, accord­ing to the Columbus Dispatch, while Coy was sus­pend­ed for 160 hours as a result.

But Coy is hard­ly the only offi­cer in Columbus with a his­to­ry of vio­lence. There are many offi­cers who have net­ted dozens of exces­sive force com­plaints while keep­ing their jobs; some have been pro­mot­ed. Bureau of Justice sta­tis­tics show Columbus police offi­cers killed about three times more peo­ple than any oth­er depart­ment in Ohio between 2013 and 2019. More than two-thirds of those peo­ple were Black in a city that’s only 29 per­cent Black overall.

This sta­tus quo has per­sist­ed despite evi­dence of per­va­sive mis­con­duct and abuse with­in the city police force. Large protests erupt­ed in 2016 after Officer Bryan Mason killed Tyre King, a 13-year-old Black boy who, accord­ing to an autop­sy report request­ed by his fam­i­ly, was “more like­ly than not” run­ning away when he was shot. Mason had already been impli­cat­ed in 47 reports involv­ing exces­sive force, the Appeal report­ed. He was nev­er fired nor indict­ed for the shoot­ing; the department’s ini­tial response was to tweet a pho­to of a repli­ca of a BB gun King was alleged­ly car­ry­ing at the time. More recent­ly, one Columbus offi­cer on the vice squad was indict­ed for forc­ing women to have sex with him under threat of arrest (he is sep­a­rate­ly fac­ing charges for shoot­ing and killing a woman while on the job). Several Black police offi­cers have also blown the whis­tle on the agency’s cul­ture of racism, retal­i­a­tion, and bullying.It’s a cul­ture that has deep roots. Back in 1999, the Department of Justice found the depart­ment had a pat­tern and prac­tice of racial pro­fil­ing, wrong­ful arrests, lying about civ­il rights vio­la­tions, and exces­sive force. “The offi­cers involved in mis­con­duct many times have a his­to­ry of com­plaints against them, and fail to report accu­rate­ly to their supe­ri­ors what tran­spired in the inci­dent (chang­ing the facts to por­tray the vic­tim as respon­si­ble for the arrest, the use of force, and/​or the search),” the DOJ report not­ed. The city respond­ed to the DOJ law­suit in 2002 by giv­ing police offi­cers more train­ing on racial pro­fil­ing and expand­ing the inter­nal affairs bureau’s abil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate mis­con­duct. But the nature of the com­plaints — alle­ga­tions of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and false arrests — have remained remark­ably similar.

Part of the prob­lem is that the police union has his­tor­i­cal­ly stood in the way of even mod­est reforms; under the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment, the city can’t even sus­pend an offi­cer unless they clear a high bar. But the city is now try­ing again. Over the protests of the police union, Columbus vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly approved a mea­sure in November to cre­ate a civil­ian review board and inspec­tor gen­er­al to inves­ti­gate the police. The inde­pen­dent watch­dog agency is mod­eled after sim­i­lar boards in cities like Baltimore and New York, which have had mixed results. Mayor Andrew Ginther shut the police union out of the work­ing group that struc­tured the civil­ian review board, but the city will like­ly still need to nego­ti­ate the scope of the board’s pow­er with the union.

“I think law enforcement’s per­spec­tive is very impor­tant, but the FOP is not run­ning this process,” Ginther said in July. “They’re not in charge; they’re not call­ing the shots any­more about how we police.”

The may­or has also pro­posed cut­ting fund­ing for the police, which makes up one-third of the city’s entire bud­get, and allo­cat­ing funds to hire men­tal health and social work­ers instead.

But even just keep­ing Coy off the force might prove dif­fi­cult in the long run. He has the right to appeal the deci­sion through union arbi­tra­tion, and no crim­i­nal charges have been filed against him yet. According to an inves­ti­ga­tion by WOSU, the Columbus pub­lic radio sta­tion, sev­er­al oth­er Columbus police offi­cers have been re-hired in recent years after appeal­ing their fir­ing. It’s a prob­lem that’s plagued police depart­mentsacross the country.

We’re like­ly to see more high-pro­file fir­ings as politi­cians respond to this year’s sus­tained Black Lives Matter protests. President-elect Joe Biden has called for mod­est polic­ing reforms tar­get­ing the “bad apples” in depart­ments. Purging offi­cers like Coy from the force is a com­mon­sense first step. But it won’t fix American polic­ing. Even when local lead­ers and police chiefs call for reform, they face entrenched road­blocks, if not open revolt. Columbus is among the many American cities that have been tin­ker­ing around the edges of their police forces for decades with lit­tle to show for their efforts. Real change can’t hap­pen until we move from sim­ply pun­ish­ing offi­cers like Coy for shoot­ing an unarmed Black man, to keep­ing them from being there in the first place.

fAccording to experts, African-Americans are three times more like­ly to die from COVID-19 than their white coun­ter­parts. The Brookings Institution report­ed, “In every age cat­e­go­ry, black peo­ple are dying from Covid at rough­ly the same rate as white peo­ple more than a decade older.”
A BBC arti­cle report­ing on the death of an African-American doc­tor in Indianapolis, Indiana, recent­ly, asked the ques­tion, ” Is every­one racist”?
The arti­cle cit­ed a 2015 paper pub­lished in the American Journal of Public Health that found “most health care providers appear to have an implic­it bias in terms of pos­i­tive atti­tudes toward Whites and neg­a­tive atti­tudes toward peo­ple of color.”

The ques­tion “are we all racist”? is a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion to con­sid­er as we pon­der the con­se­quences of death and destruc­tion on the black pop­u­la­tion; we already know the reasons.
Inherent in the ques­tion is the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that col­or bias­es may have bled-over into, and actu­al­ly may help shape how even black care­givers relate to black peo­ple, as opposed to the way they treat whites. A large per­cent­age of care­givers are actu­al­ly black, which makes the ques­tion even more perplexing.
It is not out of the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that the long-held con­cept of white fem­i­nine fragili­ty and white male supe­ri­or­i­ty, [deserv­ing of def­er­ence], may inform how black care­givers relate to whites, instead of how they see their own kind.
There is a lot of anec­do­tal evi­dence that would sug­gest that this is indeed so, even though the sam­pling may not be sci­en­tif­ic, and could arguably be based on the geog­ra­phy of the care insti­tu­tion, etc.
All things con­sid­ered; how­ev­er, the evi­dence is clear across the board; implic­it bias­es affect the way peo­ple of col­or are treat­ed. But that is to be con­sid­ered in every aspect of American life; black lives are far less valu­able than white lives.

On October 17^th, 1993, I took my wife to a Bronx teach­ing Hospital to give birth to our son, who we would lat­er name Kodi.
It was a Sunday morn­ing. I dropped her off at the hos­pi­tal entrance, where she was allowed to sit in a wheel­chair and was wheeled in while I went to park my car.
As soon as I entered her room a few min­utes lat­er, I real­ized that much was wrong; she was in extreme pain, which seemed out of the ordinary.
I prompt­ly went to the nurse’s sta­tion and made known my feel­ings known to them, and they made sure to tell me that I was just a stressed-out spouse who was just scared.
Though not con­vinced, I went back to her room, shoul­ders drooped, not sure who was right, they or me.
It did not take long for me to be back at the nurse’s sta­tion once again, to explain to them that some­thing was wrong.
Again they told me that I was pan­ick­ing, all was well, and so again, I went back to my wife’s room.

Well, need­less to say, my sec­ond for­ay to the nurse’s sta­tion was not going to be my last. My third vis­it was a more col­or­ful one that was more befit­ting the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, and of course, it acti­vat­ed a response.
In quick order, they were in the room, and then they want­ed to ush­er me out of the room, but I was going nowhere.
They then hand­ed me a gown and mask, and in less than a minute, the room was filled with Doctors, Nurses, and machines.
My unborn son’s heart had stopped beat­ing by then, so they restart­ed his heart using machines. In their hur­ry to pull him out there­after, they lit­er­al­ly pulled his hip out of place.
Our son was made to wear a brace of an extra dia­per rolled up between his thighs for months to get rid of a click in his hips, due to their apa­thy and negligence.
Was this implic­it bias? Some of the staff mem­bers were black oth­ers were white. Was it just that the staff in this one hos­pi­tal was lethar­gic and unprofessional?
Over the years, I have seen sev­er­al oth­er exam­ples of this kind of behav­ior that could rea­son­ably be viewed in the same light, includ­ing inci­dents that includ­ed my own per­son­al care that has been less than what would nor­mal­ly be expect­ed and oth­ers that were inspiring.
My wife has also com­plained about the care she received, or the care she has not received, in one par­tic­u­lar hos­pi­tal, but how are those com­plaints rat­ed when it is almost impos­si­ble to know whether white patients are treat­ed similarly?

The answer may be in the nation­al data that does indi­cate that black peo­ple are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than whites in care facil­i­ties, even when the care­givers are black?
The real­i­ty is that implic­it bias affects every stra­tum of American soci­ety; there is no rea­son to doubt the data; in fact, it pro­vides the stark con­se­quences of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism.
The dead bod­ies of black peo­ple con­tin­ue to pile up due to racists poli­cies, whether from an unem­pa­thet­ic health care sys­tem, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry redlin­ing hous­ing poli­cies, or vio­lent police, many of whom itch to pull the trig­ger when­ev­er they see black bodies.
Dr. Susan Moore, 52, passed away at a local hos­pi­tal on Sunday, after com­plain­ing about how she was treat­ed at anoth­er Indianapolis hos­pi­tal, even after telling them that she was a med­ical doctor.
According to the report­ing, Dr. Moore test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid-19 on 29 November and was admit­ted with a high fever while she coughed up blood and strug­gled to breathe. But even as a physi­cian her­self, she said she had strug­gled with get­ting care. Dr. Moore said she had had to plead for antivi­ral Remdesivir dos­es and request a scan of her chest. At one point, the doc­tor report­ed­ly told her she did not qual­i­fy for the drug and that she should go home.
“He made me feel like I was a drug addict,” Dr. Moore said in a Facebook video. “And he knew I was a physi­cian. I don’t take nar­cotics. I was hurting.”
Donald Trump was not cough­ing up blood; nei­ther were any of the white men who got infect­ed at his super-spread­er events; they all qual­i­fied for the best treat­ment; no ques­tions asked.
Would that have hap­pened to a white woman? Would that have hap­pened to a white woman who is a doc­tor? Would the poor­est or lowli­est white woman be treat­ed that way?
No!!!

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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.

By Nina Golgowski
Andre Maurice Hill was the sec­ond Black man killed by law enforce­ment this month in the state cap­i­tal of Columbus.

For some, it was a rare time of respite; for oth­ers, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for resistance.(writes Farrel Evans for History​.com)

How did Americans liv­ing under slav­ery expe­ri­ence the Christmas hol­i­days? While ear­ly accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often paint­ed an ide­al­ized pic­ture of own­ers’ gen­eros­i­ty met by grate­ful work­ers hap­pi­ly feast­ing, singing and danc­ing, the real­i­ty was far more complex.

In the 1830s, the large slave­hold­ing states of Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas became the first in the United States to declare Christmas a state hol­i­day. It was in these Southern states and oth­ers dur­ing the ante­bel­lum peri­od (1812−1861) that many Christmas tra­di­tions—giv­ing gifts, singing car­ols, dec­o­rat­ing homes — firm­ly took hold in American cul­ture. Many enslaved work­ers got their longest break of the year — typ­i­cal­ly a hand­ful of days — and some were grant­ed the priv­i­lege to trav­el to see fam­i­ly or get mar­ried. Many received gifts from their own­ers and enjoyed spe­cial foods untast­ed the rest of the year.

But while many enslaved peo­ple par­took in some of these hol­i­day plea­sures, Christmas time could be treach­er­ous. According to Robert E. May, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Purdue University and author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory, own­ers’ fears of rebel­lion dur­ing the sea­son some­times led to pre-emp­tive shows of harsh dis­ci­pline. Their buy­ing and sell­ing of work­ers didn’t abate dur­ing the hol­i­days. Nor did their annu­al hir­ing out of enslaved work­ers, some of whom would be shipped off, away from their fam­i­lies, on New Year’s Day — wide­ly referred to as “heart­break day.”

Still, Christmas afford­ed enslaved peo­ple an annu­al win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge the sub­ju­ga­tion that shaped their dai­ly lives. Resistance came in many ways — from their asser­tion of pow­er to give gifts to expres­sions of reli­gious and cul­tur­al inde­pen­dence to using the rel­a­tive loose­ness of hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions and time off to plot escapes.

For slave­hold­ers, gift-giv­ing con­not­ed pow­er. Christmas gave them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their pater­nal­ism and dom­i­nance over the peo­ple they owned, who almost uni­ver­sal­ly lacked the eco­nom­ic pow­er or means to pur­chase gifts. Owners often gave their enslaved work­ers things they with­held through­out the year, like shoes, cloth­ing and mon­ey. According to Texas his­to­ri­an Elizabeth Silverthorne, one slave­hold­er from that state gave each of his fam­i­lies $25. The chil­dren were giv­en sacks of can­dy and pen­nies. “Christmas day we gave out our dona­tions to the ser­vants, they were much pleased and we were salut­ed on all sides with grins, smiles and low bows,” wrote one Southern planter. In his book The Battle for Christmas, his­to­ri­an Stephen Nissenbaum recounts how a white over­seer con­sid­ered giv­ing gifts to enslaved work­ers on Christmas a bet­ter source of con­trol than phys­i­cal vio­lence: “I killed twen­ty-eight head of beef for the people’s Christmas din­ner,” he said. “I can do more with them in this way than if all the hides of the cat­tle were made into lashes.”

Enslaved peo­ple rarely made rec­i­p­ro­cal gifts to their own­ers, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans Shauna Bigham and Robert E. May: “Fleeting dis­plays of eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty would have con­tro­vert­ed the [enslaved work­ers] pre­scribed role of child­like depen­den­cy.” Even when they played a com­mon hol­i­day game with their own­ers — where the first per­son who could sur­prise the oth­er by say­ing “Christmas Gift!” received a present — they were not expect­ed to give gifts when they lost.

In some instances, enslaved peo­ple did rec­i­p­ro­cate with gifts to the mas­ters when they lost in the game. On one plan­ta­tion in the Low Country South Carolina, some enslaved house work­ers gave their own­ers eggs wrapped in hand­ker­chiefs. Yet over­all, the one-sided nature of gift-giv­ing between slave­own­ers and those they enslaved rein­forced the dynam­ic of white pow­er and paternalism.

Christmas Vacation and Freedom

For enslaved work­ers, Christmastime rep­re­sent­ed a break between the end of har­vest sea­son and the start of prepa­ra­tion for the next year of pro­duc­tion — a brief sliv­er of free­dom in lives marked by heavy labor and bondage. “This time we regard­ed as our own, by the grace of our mas­ters; and we there­fore used or abused it near­ly as we pleased,” wrote famed writer, ora­tor and abo­li­tion­ist Frederick Douglass, who escaped slav­ery at age 20. “Those of us who had fam­i­lies at a dis­tance were gen­er­al­ly allowed to spend the whole six days [between Christmas and New Year’s Day] in their society.”

Some used these more relaxed hol­i­day times to run for free­dom. In 1848, Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved mar­ried cou­ple from Macon, Georgia, used pass­es from their own­ers dur­ing Christmastime to con­coct an elab­o­rate plan to escape by train and steam­er to Philadelphia. On Christmas Eve in 1854, Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman set out from Philadelphia to Maryland’s Eastern Shore after she had heard her three broth­ers were going to be sold by their own­er the day after Christmas. The own­er had giv­en them per­mis­sion to vis­it fam­i­ly on Christmas Day. But instead of the broth­ers meet­ing with their fam­i­lies for din­ner, their sis­ter Harriet led them to free­dom in Philadelphia.

John Kunering

For enslaved peo­ple, resis­tance dur­ing Christmastime didn’t always take the form of rebel­lion or flight in a geo­graph­i­cal or phys­i­cal sense. Often it came in the way they adapt­ed the dom­i­nant society’s tra­di­tions into some­thing of their own, allow­ing for the purest expres­sion of their human­i­ty and cul­tur­al roots. In Wilmington, North Carolina, enslaved peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed what they called John Kunering (oth­er names include “Jonkonnu,” John Kannaus” and “John Canoe”), where they dressed in wild cos­tumes and went from house to house singing, danc­ing and beat­ing rhythms with rib bones, cow’s horns and tri­an­gles. At every stop they expect­ed to receive a gift. “Every child ris­es on Christmas morn­ing to see the John Kannaus,” remem­bered writer and abo­li­tion­ist Harriet Jacobs in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its great­est attraction.”

These pub­lic dis­plays of joy were not uni­ver­sal­ly loved by all whites in Wilmington, but many encour­aged the activ­i­ties. “It would real­ly be a source of regret, if it were denied to slaves in the inter­vals between their toils to indulge in mirth­ful past times,” said a white ante­bel­lum judge named Thomas Ruffin. For his­to­ri­an Sterling Stuckey, author of Slave Culture, the Kunering reflect­ed deep African roots: “Considering the place of reli­gion in West Africa, where dance and song are means of relat­ing to ances­tral spir­its and to God, the Christmas sea­son was con­ducive to Africans in America con­tin­u­ing to attach sacred val­ue to John Kunering.”

‘None of the Negroes Was Ever Forgot on That Day’

Enslaved peo­ple had a long mem­o­ry of Christmastime. They remem­bered how they used it to mark time around the plant­i­ng sea­son. They knew they could count on it for a mea­sure of free­dom and relax­ation. Their inabil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in gift exchange — one of the most basic aspects of the sea­son — helped rein­force their place as men and women who couldn’t ben­e­fit from their labor. Some, like Harriet Tubman and the Crafts, saw it as a time best suit­ed to chal­lenge the whole society.

The adults remem­bered the gifts long after their child­hoods were stolen by this ter­ri­ble insti­tu­tion. “Didn’t have no Christmas tree,” recount­ed a for­mer­ly enslaved man named Beauregard Tennyson, in a WPA inter­view. “But they set up a long pine table in the house and that plank table was cov­ered with presents and none of the Negroes was ever for­got on that day.”

Another day, anoth­er task to add to the ever-grow­ing list of things Black folks can’t do for fear of hav­ing a com­plete­ly unwar­rant­ed and volatile run-in with the police.
On Saturday, Jamar Mackey was enjoy­ing lunch with his fam­i­ly at a food court inside of a local Virginia Beach Mall. Well, that was the case until two Virginia Beach police offi­cers hand­cuffed Mackey with­out explanation.
Visibly and under­stand­ably upset, Mackey and his wife began ques­tion­ing the offi­cers who con­tin­ued to escort Mackey from the food court and out­side of the build­ing. In a video post­ed to Facebook, you can hear Mackey and the woman with him try­ing to get some answers from the offi­cers but to no avail.
“But what did he do?” the woman ques­tioned. “Can you just tell us, we just came with our babies. We don’t even have a Black truck.”

Insider reports that when offi­cers final­ly got out­side, they attempt­ed to explain the sit­u­a­tion to Mackey and his fam­i­ly, who had fol­lowed them out­side to con­tin­ue record­ing. According to police, Mackey and appar­ent­ly his son “matched the descrip­tion” of a per­son they were look­ing for who was sus­pect­ed of using stolen cred­it cards inside the mall. “We got a descrip­tion of some­one who was using stolen cred­it cards, OK?” police explained after final­ly remov­ing the hand­cuffs from off of a now irate Mackey. “That per­son is a Black male with dreads and was wear­ing all black and was with a boy who was wear­ing red, OK?” The cam­era then pans over to anoth­er pair that a dif­fer­ent set of police were also ques­tion­ing on the oth­er side of the mall entrance.

“It was a big mis­un­der­stand­ing,” the offi­cer explained. The woman with Mackey respond­ed, “this is so embar­rass­ing” and pro­ceed­ed to ask for the name of the offi­cer and num­ber that she could call to han­dle the mat­ter further.The Virginia Beach Police Department has since launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent and Chief of Police Paul Neudigate said in a statement:
“Certainly, any­one would be upset about being detained for some­thing they didn’t do” said Chief Neudigate. “While the video shows the offi­cer stayed calm and respect­ful through­out the brief encounter, we must ensure the sit­u­a­tion mer­its the response. We are gath­er­ing all the facts to eval­u­ate the inci­dent so we can address the con­cerns peo­ple have raised.”

According to WAVY-TV, the Virginia Beach Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is also launch­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion and released a state­ment in regards to the inci­dent saying:

The Virginia Beach NAACP strong­ly con­demns the appar­ent racial bias on dis­play in the video clip that has wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on social media today. In the midst of a glob­al pan­dem­ic, Virginia Beach police offi­cers – with­out masks or per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment – mis­tak­en­ly detained a Black man who was spend­ing qual­i­ty time with his fam­i­ly. As a Virginia Beach offi­cer stat­ed ‘you have the right to be upset,’ and indeed we are just that: quite upset. Even more alarm­ing, calls from the Virginia Beach NAACP to the Virginia Beach Police Chief remain unan­swered as of Sunday evening. We are demand­ing a meet­ing with the Virginia Beach Police Chief with­in 48 hours. As the police depart­ment has not respond­ed to our inquiries, the Virginia Beach NAACP has launched its own inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent. The NAACP will not rest until every Black cit­i­zen in Virginia Beach can shop, dine, and trav­el with­out being racial­ly pro­filed by our city’s police officers.

The Virginia Beach police chief has since apol­o­gized to Mackey and his fam­i­ly. From the root.

by Shanel Genai

On Sunday the lead attor­ney for the city of Chicago, Mark Flessner, resigned from his role as Corporation Counsel for the city of Chicago via an email sent to staff.
According to NPR, Flessner’s res­ig­na­tion was brought on because of the con­tin­u­al back­lash sur­round­ing the now-viral video of a 2019 botched police raid of the home of a local social work­er, Anjanette Young. As pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed by The Root, offi­cers bom­bard­ed Young’s home after being false­ly tipped off by an infor­mant, break­ing down her door, hand­cuff­ing her, and tear­ing up her home. This all hap­pened while Young, who had just got­ten out of the show­er, stood naked, repeat­ed­ly telling police that they had the wrong home.
Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt shared an image of Flessner’s email in a tweet Sunday after­noon. “Dear Team, I have resigned as Corporation Counsel. I will work on a tran­si­tion plan over the next few days,” Flessner wrote.

At this point, it’s unclear whether or not he was asked to resign, but Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot swift­ly accept­ed his res­ig­na­tion saying:
‘I accept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly. I want to thank him for his ser­vice to the City of Chicago. I am com­mit­ted to a full review of every­thing that occurred sur­round­ing this inci­dent, will take cor­rec­tive action where appro­pri­ate, and will hold peo­ple accountable.”
After his res­ig­na­tion, Flessner told the Chicago Tribune that he felt he was being accused by the pub­lic of try­ing to con­ceal police body cam­era footage of the raid. But he main­tains that it isn’t so. The video, which was released pub­licly by Chicago sta­tion WBBM-TV was brought to light ear­li­er this month, but only after a long, legal fight with the city of Chicago. Speaking on behalf of his client’s trau­mat­ic and har­row­ing expe­ri­ence, Young’s attor­ney Keenan Saunter had this to say to Chicago’s CBS2:
“If this had been a young woman in Lincoln Park by her­self in her home naked, a young white woman — let’s just be frank – if the reac­tion would have been the same? I don’t think it would have been. I think [offi­cers] would have saw that woman, right­ful­ly so, as some­one who was vul­ner­a­ble, some­one who deserved pro­tec­tion, some­one who deserved to have their dig­ni­ty main­tained. They viewed Ms. Young as less than human.”

As of now, Mayor Lightfoot has ordered a review of the city’s video release pol­i­cy and apol­o­gized to Young on behalf of both her­self and the City of Chicago.
(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Root​.com).

The leader of the Proud Boys says he is “not ashamed” of burn­ing a Washington DC church’s Black Lives Matter sign.
The right-wing group’s chair­man Enrique Tarrio says he was respon­si­ble for set­ting the ban­ner on fire after a MAGA ral­ly in the city last weekend.
The dis­turb­ing inci­dent is being inves­ti­gat­ed as a poten­tial hate crime and a reli­gious leader has com­pared it to “cross burnings.”
The BLM sign was tak­en from the Asbury United Methodist Church, one of the old­est Black church­es in Washington DC, dur­ing a night of vio­lence after the pro-Trump rally.
Tarrio took to con­ser­v­a­tive social media site Parler to post a pic­ture of him­self and oth­er men using lighters to torch the sign.
Tarrio denied on Parler that the act was a hate crime and wrote that it was done “out of love” for the country.

“I’m here to tell you that there was no hate crime com­mit­ted. The only hate there is in my heart is for com­mu­nism and an author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment,” wrote Mr Tarrio. “BLM is a Marxist move­ment. It isn’t about the col­or of some­one’s skin.
“Against the wish­es of my attor­ney I am here today to admit that I am the per­son respon­si­ble for the burn­ing of this sign.
And I am not ashamed of what I did because I did­n’t do it out of hate… I did it out of love. Love for a coun­try that has giv­en my fam­i­ly SO MUCH.”
Read sto­ry here. https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​a​m​-​n​o​t​-​a​s​h​a​m​e​d​-​d​i​d​-​p​r​o​u​d​-​2​0​0​0​3​1​3​2​7​.​h​tml

A for­mer police detec­tive from Kansas has filed an exces­sive force law­suit alleg­ing that he sus­tained seri­ous injuries when a Kiowa County Sheriff’s Deputy inten­tion­al­ly drove over him.

Lionel Womack said in a state­ment that he had not been speed­ing nor was he under the influ­ence when he was pulled over in a traf­fic stop by Jeremy Rodriguez.

Mr Womack, who is Black, says despite this, and even though his dri­ver’s licence, insur­ance, and vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tion were up to date, he pan­icked and fled.

A graph­ic dash­cam video cap­tured the series of hor­rif­ic events that unfold­ed next as the patrol truck mowed him down, as he ran shirt­less across a field on the night of 15 August.

“When the first offi­cer turned his lights on, I pulled over and com­plied … exact­ly as you’re sup­posed to. But when three addi­tion­al vehi­cles pulled up quick­ly and start­ed to sur­round my car, I freaked out. That’s when I took off, it was a ‘fight or flight’ moment and I was going to live,” he said.

“I felt like I was in dan­ger. This was out in the coun­try, late at night, and it was dark. So I ran for my life. That’s what you see in the dash­cam video. I’m run­ning in an open field, and I’m scared.”

The video is the cru­cial piece of evi­dence in the fed­er­al civ­il rights case filed by attor­ney Michael Kuckelman against the deputy in the US District Court in Kansas.

In the law­suit, Mr Kuckelman argues that Deputy Rodriguez used exces­sive force and was “cal­lous­ly indif­fer­ent” to Mr Womack’s civ­il rights.

Mr Womack had left the police depart­ment ear­li­er in August with hopes of build­ing up his own secu­ri­ty busi­ness. He was on his way home from a busi­ness trip to California when a Highway Patrol offi­cer in west­ern Kansas ini­ti­at­ed a chase over “an alleged traf­fic vio­la­tion”, accord­ing to the lawsuit.

Sheriff’s deputies from Pratt County and Kiowa County joined in the chase, which even­tu­al­ly end­ed on a dirt road. Mr Womack then took off on foot across a near­by field.

The dash­cam footage from a Pratt County sher­if­f’s deputy’s vehi­cle shows Mr Rodriguez using his patrol truck to catch up to Mr Womack, who was unarmed.

The deputy appar­ent­ly swerves the truck to hit Mr Womack, knock­ing him to the ground and run­ning over him.

Mr Womack rolls out from under the truck, his arms and legs flail­ing on the ground as some­one on the video shouts at him to lie down.

A deputy in the sec­ond patrol truck is heard to utter an exple­tive as he watch­es what is happening.

The law­suit alleges that Mr Womack sus­tained seri­ous injuries to his back, pelvis, and thigh, as well as to his right knee, ankle, and foot.

Commenting on the dis­turb­ing footage, Mr Kuckelman said: “It is impos­si­ble to watch a video of a deputy dri­ving his truck over Mr Womack with­out feel­ing sick. There was nowhere for Mr Womack to go. It was an open field, and he was trapped, yet the deputy drove his truck over him anyway.”

Neither Kiowa County Sheriff Chris Tedder nor his attor­ney respond­ed to a request for com­ment by the Associated Press.

Mr Kuckelman has urged Sheriff Tedder in per­son and in let­ters to fire Mr Rodriguez, but he has refused and the deputy remains on patrol. The attor­ney also wants Mr Rodriguez charged crim­i­nal­ly and has accused the sher­iff of engag­ing in a cov­er-up of the deputy’s conduct.

Four months lat­er, Mr Womack remains in jail on felony charges of attempt­ing to elude a law enforce­ment offi­cer by engag­ing in reck­less dri­ving and inter­fer­ence with a law enforce­ment officer.

Court records show he is also charged with sev­er­al mis­de­meanour traf­fic cita­tions, includ­ing fail­ure to dri­ve in the right lane on a four-lane high­way, improp­er sig­nalling, and dri­ving with­out headlights.

Mr Womack comes from a fam­i­ly entrenched in local law enforce­ment. His wife and his moth­er are police offi­cers with the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. His step­fa­ther retired from police work as a sergeant there, and two of his aunts are police dispatchers.

After watch­ing the video, his wife, Officer Zee Womack said she strug­gled to under­stand why the deputy felt jus­ti­fied in using such force and that her hus­band is lucky to be alive.

At a time when it is not easy to be in law enforce­ment, she said “this makes it a lot more dif­fi­cult to be an officer”.

She added that some­one capa­ble of mak­ing a deci­sion such as Mr Rodriguez did should not have a badge, say­ing: “To me it showed a bla­tant dis­re­gard for human life.”

Ms Womack filed a fed­er­al law­suit last year alleg­ing “ram­pant racism and sex­ism” in her own police department.

In his state­ment, Mr Womack said he believes that most police offi­cers are good, but that law enforce­ment must be held account­able “when they cross the line”.

“I nev­er imag­ined that I would some­day be the vic­tim of exces­sive force by a fel­low law enforce­ment offi­cer. He could have eas­i­ly killed me.”

By Zack Linly

Gregory Alan Bush — the white man who walked into a Louisville, Ky., area Kroger super­mar­ket in 2018 and fatal­ly shot two elder­ly Black peo­ple — plead­ed guilty to mur­der on Tuesday and will spend the rest of his life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Bush — who is report­ed­ly schiz­o­phrenic and was unmed­icat­ed at the time of the shoot­ing, accord­ing to his attor­ney — is also fac­ing fed­er­al hate crime charges, because while men­tal ill­ness might some­what explain why he walked into a gro­cery store and opened fire, mur­der­ing two peo­ple, men­tal ill­ness doesn’t make a per­son racist and there is lit­tle doubt that race played a part in the sense­less killings.

The Associated Press reports that Bush “plead[ed] guilty but men­tal­ly ill” in Jefferson Circuit Court to two counts of mur­der, crim­i­nal attempt­ed mur­der and wan­ton endan­ger­ment. He was sen­tenced to two life terms to be served concurrently.
From AP

Pleading guilty but men­tal­ly ill means the Kentucky Department of Corrections must pro­vide Bush with treat­ment and med­ica­tion dur­ing his term, accord­ing to Jeff Cooke, a spokesman for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office. Under a plea agree­ment, Bush also was set to plead guilty to fed­er­al hate crime charges in February. Federal pros­e­cu­tors alleged the shoot­ing of Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Jones, 67, was racial­ly moti­vat­ed, though Attorney General William Barr agreed not to seek the death penalty.

According to WDRB-TV, Angela Elleman, one of Bush’s attor­neys, said in a state­ment that Bush’s “schiz­o­phre­nia was not med­icat­ed, so he was tor­tured by voic­es that threat­ened to kill him and his family.”

“He act­ed out of his psy­chosis and his ill­ness, while at the very same time his elder­ly par­ents were down­town seek­ing a men­tal inquest war­rant to hos­pi­tal­ize him for everyone’s safe­ty,” Elleman said, adding that Bush’s actions that day “are not keep­ing with his char­ac­ter when med­icat­ed. Mr. Bush has agreed to spend the remain­der of his life in prison where he can be safe­ly treat­ed and medicated.”

But, again, lack of med­ica­tion doesn’t explain why Bush seem­ing­ly tar­get­ed Black peo­ple in his ter­ror­is­tic attack. As The Root pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, just before Bush head­ed to Kroger to begin his ram­page, he tried to enter the his­tor­i­cal­ly Black First Baptist Church in Jeffersontown, which thank­ful­ly, was locked at the time.

As Bush was exit­ing Kroger after the shoot­ing, he report­ed­ly told a white man who was crouched behind a car hold­ing a gun, “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.”

According to court records, Bush also has a his­to­ry of mak­ing racist com­ments, includ­ing alle­ga­tions that he repeat­ed­ly called his ex-wife, who is Black, “a nig­ger bitch.”

WDRB reports that the fam­i­ly mem­bers of Bush’s vic­tims spoke at his sen­tenc­ing hearing.

“I just don’t under­stand why you select­ed any­one — It can’t be just for the col­or of their skin,” Charlotte Stallard, Maurice’s wife, said. “To me, it has to be more than that. You can’t hate some­one that much for the col­or of their skin. You have ruined my life. I’d like to just have an idea why?”

Kelly Watson, Stallard’s daugh­ter — whose son was with Stallard at the time of the shoot­ing — said in court, “That day replays in my head constantly.”

“The man whose life you took, he gave and he loved every­body around him,” Watson said. “He was there for every­body, and I hope that while you are sit­ting in jail, you are able to rec­on­cile your own life and think about what you did. And I’m grate­ful you will nev­er be able to hurt any­one else.”

By D Watkins.
Mike Africa, Jr., who was born in prison, appeared on “Salon Talks” to dis­cuss MOVE and free­ing his parents

Eight-year-old me could­n’t imag­ine not see­ing my dad’s smil­ing face on Christmas morn­ing, or draw­ing my mom a car­toon-filled card cov­ered in thank yous for Mother’s Day, or the thou­sands of oth­er mem­o­ries small kids get to share with their par­ents. These types of mem­o­ries make up the foun­da­tion of our tra­di­tions and are the things that we pass down to our kids. Mike Africa Jr., who was born in prison, was robbed of the chance of cre­at­ing those in-per­son mem­o­ries with his par­ents. The Philadelphia police depart­ment forced him to fig­ure out life on his own.

Africa Jr.‘s jour­ney is bril­liant­ly relat­ed in the new HBO doc­u­men­tary film, “40 Years a Prisoner,” direct­ed by Tommy Oliver and avail­able now on HBO Max. Featuring an all-star ensem­ble of pro­duc­ers includ­ing The Roots, Common, and John Legend, “40 Years A Prisoner” is a com­pelling film about the hor­rors of America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The sto­ry begins in 1978 when Philadelphia police raid­ed MOVE, a back to nature orga­ni­za­tion based on love, among oth­er peace­ful prin­ci­ples. Africa’s par­ents, two MOVE mem­bers, were arrest­ed dur­ing that raid on trumped-up charges and con­vict­ed before he was born. In the film, Oliver doc­u­ments Africa Jr.‘s life pur­suit of free­ing his par­ents, along with oth­er MOVE mem­bers, and a decades-long bat­tle with the Philadelphia police depart­ment. I recent­ly got a chance to talk with Africa Jr. and Oliver about the film on an episode of “Salon Talks.”
Read the sto­ry here: https://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​1​2​/​1​0​/​4​0​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​a​-​p​r​i​s​o​n​e​r​-​m​i​k​e​-​a​f​r​i​c​a​-​j​r​-​t​o​m​m​y​-​o​l​i​v​e​r​-​s​a​l​o​n​-​t​a​l​ks/

Joshua Feast, a res­i­dent of La Marque, Texas, was shot and killed by police on Wednesday. ABC 13 reports that La Marque Police had tar­get­ed feast as a per­son who may have been con­nect­ed to a pre­vi­ous shoot­ing in the area.

The shoot­ing took place in front of Feast’s uncle’s home, where he had been stay­ing. According to a neigh­bor, a police car drove up, then made a U‑turn back towards the house after pass­ing it and called out to Feast. At the time, the neigh­bor stat­ed that Feast, 22, was mov­ing a car after speak­ing with his child’s moth­er when the cop called his name out. The neigh­bor told ABC 13 that the offi­cer offered no help to Feast after he was shot. “I came out­side and over­heard the offi­cer say­ing, ‘Talk to me, Josh. Talk to me, talk to me.’ As if he sees him fad­ing away with­out try­ing to ren­der aid or at least help him.”

According to Click 2 Houston News, the offi­cer, iden­ti­fied as Jose Santos, shot Feast after he exit­ed his vehi­cle and start­ed to run. Feast’s uncle says he was hit in the back. The Galveston County Daily News says that offi­cer Santos has been put on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office is now inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing. Chief Deputy Darrell Isaacks report­ed that Feast might have had a weapon on him when he was shot. La Marque Police Chief Kirk Jackson says that offi­cer Santos was inves­ti­gat­ing gun­shots heard in that area pre­vi­ous­ly and that Feast had been seen in the area and was a per­son of inter­est in the on-going inves­ti­ga­tion. La Marque Mayor Pro Tem Keith Bell, also made a state­ment regard­ing the shooting:

“It is def­i­nite­ly a sad day in our com­mu­ni­ty. I also want­ed to say that this is a tragedy to our com­mu­ni­ty as well. I do not believe that there is any mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­ty that would not call this a tragedy sim­ply because a young per­son in our com­mu­ni­ty, in our city, has lost their life unexpectedly.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at Grio​.com.

Stars are shar­ing trib­utes to pro-wrestler-turned-actor Tommy “Tiny” Lister, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 62.

“RIP Tiny ‘Deebo’ Lister,” Ice Cube tweet­ed about his friend and co-star in Friday, the 1995 now-clas­sic com­e­dy. “America’s favorite bul­ly was a born enter­tain­er who would pop into char­ac­ter at the drop of a hat ter­ri­fy­ing peo­ple on and off-cam­era. Followed by a big smile and laugh. Thank you for being a good dude at heart. I miss you already.

I’m ded­i­cat­ing my page today as a Tribute to my close friend, ‘Tiny Lister’ aka Debo, aka Zeus, aka Cleatus… Gone far to (sic) soon. Rest easy Big Homie. Love U,” Ice‑T wrote.

By Zack Linly.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Trump sup­port­ers are racist.

Some peo­ple might call the state­ment debat­able or even an out­right lie, but any­one who can sup­port a man who con­stant­ly proves him­self to be a xeno­phobe and hater of all things Black Lives Matter is no dif­fer­ent from their cult leader in my book. Besides, when push comes to shove, they always show their true col­ors (and their hatred for peo­ple of true color).

A Detroit Democratic law­mak­er found this out the hard way after she took part in a more than four-hour-long hear­ing with the House Oversight Committee last week in which Trump attor­ney and Danny DeVito’s Penguin cos­play­er Rudy Giuliani brought out a bunch of so-called “wit­ness­es” to regur­gi­tate all of the claims of wide­spread vot­er fraud that have been dis­missed by judges, debunked by legal experts and denounced by elec­tion offi­cials — not to men­tion the fact that even Attorney General William Barr said there’s no evi­dence to sup­port the non­sense, accord­ing to the Department of Justice.

Fox 2 Detroit reports that Rep. Cynthia Johnson, the Democratic chair of Michigan’s House Oversight Committee and one of three Democrats who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sham-ass hear­ing, said she received mul­ti­ple voice­mails in which dis­grun­tled and delu­sion­al Trump sup­port­ers threat­ened her and essen­tial­ly said she should be lynched. Johnson shared one of the voice­mails to her Facebook page in which a very angry white woman can be heard call­ing her a “big-lip nigger.”

“Honey, how dare you bul­ly wit­ness­es on the stand,” KKK Karen said. “Your name and phone num­ber are out there now. You should be swing­ing from a fuck­ing rope you Democrat.”

I have long har­bored the belief that the true racial har­mo­ny many Americans long for will be best real­ized when all eth­nic groups’ eco­nom­ic advance­ment is realized.
How do we attain eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence in a coun­try where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widen­ing by the day? We will get to that in due course, but in the mean­time, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er that the respect that those at the bot­tom crave, will not be gained by beg­ging for it, demand­ing it, demon­strat­ing for it; it has to be earned.
Being at the bot­tom of the eco­nom­ic lad­der, African-Americans have the most to gain by chang­ing how we han­dle what­ev­er eco­nom­ic resources we possess.
Yet, for some strange rea­son, more than any oth­er racial group, we seem to have set a course toward the total and com­plete eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment of every­one but ourselves.
Last Year the black com­mu­ni­ty spent some­where between 1.1 & 1.3 tril­lion dol­lars on con­sumer goods and ser­vices; hard­ly any mon­ey was spent sup­port­ing black businesses.
And so I believe that as long as black peo­ple con­tin­ue to spend a few bucks in black hair­dress­ing salons and bar­ber­shops, then dress up in clothes with Italian design­er names, to go out to eat at Italian, Chinese, and oth­er peo­ple’s restau­rants, then spend the night in hotels, none of which is owned by us, we will for­ev­er be at the bot­tom of the eco­nom­ic ladder.

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

Money is pow­er; we can pre­tend all we want that we can pla­cate oth­ers by being servile and ami­able, but the truth is that mon­ey is what mat­ters in this country.
I am not mak­ing a case for a cap­i­tal­is­tic approach to every­thing we do.
What I am allud­ing to is the dis­tinct real­i­ty that when we have none of the ameni­ties to sus­tain life, when we have to go out­side our com­mu­ni­ty to pur­chase the goods and ser­vices we require, we will for­ev­er be at the mer­cy of the peo­ple to whom we con­tin­ue to give our money.
If we are stuck beg­ging peo­ple to let us eat at their restau­rants, instead of own­ing and patron­iz­ing our own, no one will take us seriously.
If we con­tin­ue to spend every cent we earn in depart­ment stores and on web­sites buy­ing Italian design­er clothes and acces­sories, even though( we set fash­ion trends), we will for­ev­er be mar­ket­ed to, for our mon­ey. At the same time, we receive no respect for our con­tri­bu­tion to their growth.
As long as we con­tin­ue to drink expen­sive cham­pagne man­u­fac­tured by peo­ple who say they did not cre­ate it for us, when we make work boots fash­ion­able and expen­sive, and spend our last dol­lar on expen­sive gam­ing machines, games, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia, we will con­tin­ue to be a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for mon­ey, pre­cious­ly lit­tle of which will stick to our community.

Last year accord­ing to the Organization of American History, the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM), Los Angeles chap­ter, tweet­ed: “We’re dream­ing of a #BlackXmas.” For the sec­ond year, the move­ment lever­aged black buy­ing pow­er — now over one tril­lion dol­lars — and the Christmas hol­i­day to chal­lenge white cap­i­tal­ism and suprema­cy, the prin­ci­pal caus­es of racial and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ties and state-sanc­tioned vio­lence against black peo­ple. African Americans were urged to with­hold their dol­lars from “white cor­po­ra­tions” and instead “donate to Black-led orga­ni­za­tions that are build­ing new, lib­er­a­to­ry struc­tures in our communities…in the names of your loved ones as their [hol­i­day] gifts.” If shop­pers want­ed to par­take in the hol­i­day shop­ping rit­u­al, they were encour­aged to pur­chase from black-owned retail­ers.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​b​l​a​c​k​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​-​f​l​e​e​-​b​u​t​-​t​o​-​w​h​e​re/

There are many more star­tups today than when I start­ed writ­ing on this issue; I wish them well. Nevertheless, though the idea of more star­tups is incred­i­bly excit­ing to watch, I won­der whether many are being done extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly and with­out the req­ui­site finan­cial back­ing nec­es­sary to with­stand the grow­ing pains?
I am par­tic­u­lar­ly hope­ful at the prospect that online busi­ness­es have of sur­viv­ing, if they can afford to weath­er the storm of exor­bi­tant web-host­ing fees, tech sup­port, and the host of oth­er chal­lenges that comes with online mar­ket­ing, not the least of which are stiff and volu­mi­nous competition.
The fact that con­sumers do not know the col­or of black site owners/​operators may be a net pos­i­tive for those busi­ness own­ers in the long run.
My fer­vent hope is that more and more African-Americans will begin to embrace the idea that black busi­ness own­er­ship is tied to our finan­cial empowerment.
It is a sim­ple con­cept that goes like this; when we get busy in our own lives, run­ning our restau­rants, banks, bar­ber­shops, hair salons, hotels, real­ty com­pa­nies, con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, tax pro­cess­ing firms, movie-mak­ing com­pa­nies„ tele­vi­sion net­works, peo­ple will see what we are doing, and they will come a‑knocking.
It is not a nov­el con­cept; it is what every oth­er eth­nic group in America is busy doing.

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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.

By Zack Linly

Greg and Travis McMichael, two of three men involved in the Feb. 23 pur­suit and shoot­ing death of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick in Glynn County, Ga., tried to get released on bond. But Friday, after two days of hear­ings, a judge denied their request, accord­ing to the New York Times.

During a Thursday hear­ing, defense attor­neys for the McMichaels argued that these men are cit­i­zens who serve their com­mu­ni­ty and not racist lynch­ers of a Black man who was out jog­ging in their neighborhood.

Fox 40 reports that the McMichaels’ plea for free­dom was heard by Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley. Aside from bond, their lawyers request­ed that Judge Walmsley reject two of the counts against them, includ­ing mal­ice murder.

From Fox 40:

Travis McMichael’s attor­neys, Robert Rubin and Jason Sheffield, wrote in court doc­u­ments request­ing bond that he lives with his par­ents, has a 3‑year-old son and doesn’t have a pass­port. They cit­ed his past ser­vice as a U.S. Coast Guard machine tech­ni­cian as proof of his character.

Gregory McMichael, 64, is a retired inves­ti­ga­tor for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit dis­trict attorney’s office and a for­mer Glynn County police offi­cer. His lawyers said in a legal fil­ing that they plan to present evi­dence in court to show why he should be freed on bond.

The McMichaels’ attor­neys are also ask­ing the judge to reject the indictment’s mal­ice mur­der charge, say­ing it was writ­ten in a way that improp­er­ly “charges two crimes in one count.” They made a sim­i­lar argu­ment for toss­ing out a charge of crim­i­nal attempt to com­mit false imprisonment.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, the third defen­dant in the case,was pre­vi­ous­ly denied bond but will also appear­ing before a judge to try again.

The McMichaels, as well as a third man, William Bryan, are charged with mul­ti­ple felonies includ­ing mur­der after they chased Arbery down, repeat­ed­ly blocked him from run­ning out of the sub­di­vi­sion and pos­si­bly hit him with one of the trucks pur­su­ing him before Travis shot with a shot­gun, accord­ing to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations which took over the case in May.

“I believe Mr. Arbery was being pur­sued, and he ran till he couldn’t run any­more, and it was turn his back to a man with a shot­gun or fight with his bare hands against the man with the shot­gun,” GBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richard Dial said in June, CNN reports. “He chose to fight. I believe Mr. Arbery’s deci­sion was to just try to get away, and when he felt like he could not escape he chose to fight.

According to the Daily News, ear­ly dur­ing the hear­ing, Walmsley denied a motion by defense attor­neys to block pros­e­cu­tors from using racist Facebook posts shared between the defen­dants and oth­ers as evi­dence that the McMichaels should not be grant­ed bond.

In fact, while pros­e­cu­tor Jesse Evans was ques­tion­ing friends and fam­i­ly of Travis—all of whom appear to believe he’s a won­der­ful man and not a mur­der­ous racist — one friend, Zachary Langford, was asked about a text he received from Travis in November 2019 in which they dis­cussed Travis “shoot­ing a crack­head coon with gold teeth.” Langford — I shit you not — claimed Travis was “refer­ring to a rac­coon.” The wit­ness admit­ted that he respond­ed say­ing the “rac­coon” need­ed Newport cigarettes.

From the Associated Press:

Defense attor­neys for both McMichaels have denied any racist motives in the shoot­ing. Right after the Feb. 23 shoot­ing, Gregory McMichael told police that he and his son armed them­selves and got in a pick­up truck to pur­sue Arbery because they sus­pect­ed he was a burglar.

“These men are proud of what they have done,” Arbery’s moth­er, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told the judge as she asked him to deny them bond. “They want to go home because they think in their self­ish minds that they are the good guys.”

Prosecutors say Arbery was mere­ly jog­ging when the McMichaels pur­sued him. Their defense attor­neys insist­ed in court Thursday that’s not true.

“We have sub­stan­tial evi­dence that, on the day in ques­tion, Mr. Arbery was not a jog­ger,” said Robert Rubin, one of Travis McMichael’s attor­neys. “He was there for nefar­i­ous purposes.”

Rubin gave no evi­dence in court that Arbery was doing any­thing wrong the day he was shot.

Walmsley decid­ed to adjourn court Thursday evening with­out mak­ing a rul­ing on bond for the defen­dants because there was still more evi­dence to be pre­sent­ed, AP reports.

On day two of the hear­ing, which began Friday morn­ing, Walmsley denied the McMichaels bond. NPR reports that the racist texts sent by Travis as well as Langford’s lame-ass expla­na­tion of them might have been a fac­tor in the denial of bond. As far as Greg McMichael goes, Walmsley appeared to believe he may have used his past career in law enforce­ment to influ­ence the case.

From NPR:

In deny­ing bond, Walmsley cit­ed con­cern with the con­sis­ten­cy of the tes­ti­mo­ny among the dif­fer­ent wit­ness­es who spoke for Travis McMichael. He also specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed con­cern with one witness’s expla­na­tion for an alle­ga­tion of bias.

Though Walmsley did not elab­o­rate, on Thursday pros­e­cu­tors also read aloud racist mes­sages that McMichael exchanged with one of the wit­ness­es, Zachary Langford. In one mes­sage, McMichael used a slur for Black people.

After review­ing the mes­sages, Langford tes­ti­fied that McMichael “was refer­ring to a rac­coon, I believe.”
This sto­ry first appeared in the (https://​www​.the​root​.com

r

So here is the deal, the Trump night­mare pres­i­den­cy was made pos­si­ble because of racist poli­cies and ten­den­cies that have exist­ed in the GOP, for arguably hun­dreds of years.
Yes, the Democratic par­ty was the par­ty of the KKK, but please nev­er lose sight of the changes which occurred, which saw a Southern Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, sign two land­mark pieces of leg­is­la­tion, (a) the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and (b)the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law giv­ing African Americans auton­o­my and dignity.
Yes, Abraham Lincoln signed the 13^th Amendment the Emancaptation Declaration into law, but Lincoln had no moral con­vic­tion about free­ing the slaves.
Evidence of that may be found in the link below.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​m​p​r​o​m​i​s​e​-​o​f​-​1​8​7​7​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​o​l​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​s​-​i​n​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​p​e​r​i​o​d​-​k​n​o​w​s​-​a​s​-​j​i​m​-​c​r​o​we/

Additionally, the 1877 com­pro­mise which saw Republican Rutherford B Hayes ascend to the Presidency was one of the most treach­er­ous acts ever embarked on in America.
Republicans gave every­thing away to the Democrats in the south, when they agreed that Hayes, who was los­ing the elec­tion, become the pres­i­dent if he removed US troops from the South.
Hayes removal of Federal troops from the South effec­tive­ly end­ed Reconstruction which was empow­er­ing Blacks and had result­ed in 22 black men get­ting elect­ed to the US House of Representatives and two to the US Senate.
Out of that treach­ery came Jim Crow.
Jim crow laws result­ed in an almost worse form of slav­ery for the recent­ly freed enslaved people.
Leapfrog to the present day.

Republican poli­cies are total­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the very exis­tence of African American’s.
What’s good for us they fight; what’s bad for us they support.
On police abuse, the envi­ron­ment, jobs, hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, and every oth­er area of our lives, Republicans fight against our interest.
The fight against abor­tion is a fight that Republicans cham­pi­on because white women do not have enough white babies.
Iowa Republican con­gress­man said; we can­not main­tain our civ­i­liza­tion with oth­er peo­ple’s babies”.
On the one hand, the fight to emp­ty out America of black and brown peo­ple and, on the oth­er hand, stop abor­tions is geared sole­ly on build­ing up whites numer­i­cal­ly to main­tain white suprema­cy and white hegemony.

No polit­i­cal par­ty can claim to rep­re­sent God by fight­ing against abor­tions on the one hand but fights vig­or­ous­ly to keep basic sus­te­nance out of the mouths of babies after they are born.
Most of the so-called white evan­gel­i­cals who claim that Donald Trump was sent by God will give every­thing they have to pro­tect a dog, but would do noth­ing to help a black baby or black per­son in need.
As Christians, many of us refuse to par­tic­i­pate in our lives, so we become vic­tims of our own disengagement.
Neither polit­i­cal par­ty is about God, but being about God is not what we say; it is about what we do.
What would Jesus do?
Feed the hun­gry, heal the sick, com­fort the wid­ow, vis­it the incarcerated.
No, nei­ther par­ty is Godly, but we must live with them, and as they are, we must choose the par­ty that is clos­er to those basic standards.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.