It is the final stretch in an elec­tion cycle that tru­ly lives up to the old cliché’,” this is the most impor­tant elec­tion of our life­time.” As America teeters on the brink of dic­ta­tor­ship under the thumb of a wannabe strong­man, vot­ing takes on new and more urgent significance.
Speaking to African-Americans vot­ers who may be con­sid­er­ing not vot­ing, some per­son told you he or she was­n’t going to vote because they are get­ting noth­ing for their vote.
Stop and take stock of your life.
Your vote influ­ences every­thing you touch, the air you breathe, or whether you are allowed to con­tin­ue breathing.

The qual­i­ty of the food you eat, health­care, the goods and ser­vices you receive in your com­mu­ni­ties, the schools your chil­dren are allowed to attend.
Everything in our lives is touched and influ­enced by pol­i­tics. If your vote was not impor­tant, ask your­selves, why have they fought so hard to stop you from win­ning suf­frage? And now that so many have died to give it to you, why do you think Republicans are fight­ing so hard to take it away from you?
As I thought about writ­ing this arti­cle, I also thought that a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, so I decid­ed to show you some of the things Black peo­ple endured to get the right to vote.
If you do not care about what I have to say, I hope you care about what these images convey.

Voting is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of self-auton­o­my, of cit­i­zen­ship, it as a vehi­cle to self-deter­mi­na­tion. When you decide not to vote, by default, you cede your right to self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-autonomy.
That means you give oth­ers the right to deter­mine every­thing for you, how your chil­dren’s schools are fund­ed, whether police are allowed to mur­der your chil­dren with­out con­se­quence, you give up the right to demand clean air, clean drink­ing water, and safe neighborhoods.
When you cede that author­i­ty to peo­ple who have fought tooth and nail for hun­dreds of years to keep you sub­ju­gat­ed, do you think that they will have a change of heart and sud­den­ly decide to stop oppress­ing you?
The next time some fool tells you not to vote, tell him or her where to go.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, 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.

Philadelphia police shot and killed a 27-year-old Black man car­ry­ing a knife Monday after­noon, prompt­ing angry protests over the killing that turned vio­lent overnight. Police respond­ed to a call that a man, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Walter Wallace Jr., was act­ing errat­i­cal­ly and car­ry­ing a knife. When the offi­cers arrived, Wallace, whose father told the Philadelphia Inquirer was on med­ica­tion for men­tal health issues, was stand­ing on his front porch with the knife as his fam­i­ly tried to defuse the situation.

When police arrived, one eye­wit­ness said they imme­di­ate­ly drew their weapons, and the inci­dent esca­lat­ed from there“Wallace’s moth­er chased after him as he walked down the steps of his porch, still hold­ing the knife,” eye­wit­ness Maurice Holloway told the Inquirer. “His moth­er tried to shield Wallace and tell police he was her son.” “[E]veryone is say­ing, ‘Don’t shoot him, he’s gonna put it down, we know him,’” Holloway said. The video of the inci­dent shows Wallace’s moth­er trail­ing him as he cir­cled around parked cars and back towards the mid­dle of the res­i­den­tial street where the two offi­cers had drawn their weapons. Wallace walked in the direc­tion of the offi­cers as they retreat­ed, when police fired at him. The Philadelphia police depart­ment said in a state­ment that the offi­cers had told Wallace to drop the knife and that he was advanc­ing on the offi­cers. The record­ing tak­en by a neigh­bor dips down at the ground just at the moment of the shoot­ing, but appears to show Wallace still a dis­tance from the offi­cers as about a dozen shots were fired.

“Why didn’t they use a Taser?” Wallace’s father said after the shoot­ing. “His moth­er was try­ing to defuse the sit­u­a­tion.” The city’s may­or said a video tak­en at the scene of the shoot­ing of Wallace Jr. raised “dif­fi­cult ques­tions that must be answered.” The city’s police com­mis­sion­er said there would be an inves­ti­ga­tion into the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shooting.
On Monday evening, as many as three hun­dred pro­test­ers gath­ered near the site of the shoot­ing amidst a heavy police pres­ence. Police said 30 cops were injured dur­ing clash­es with pro­test­ers, most of which were from pro­jec­tiles thrown by pro­test­ers. Authorities say a police vehi­cle was destroyed, loot­ing took place, and more than 30 arrests were made overnight.

He is from Ghana, he has been in the United States for years, he told me he lived in Missouri before decid­ing to come to New York where he has kinfolk.
He tells me that he has chil­dren in Ghana and so he has to work hard. He first came to see me with one of his kin­folk, a friend of mine from Ghana.
He want­ed Cellphone ser­vice, he also need­ed a plan that would allow him to speak to his fam­i­ly back home. He is a pret­ty talk­a­tive guy, and so we talked a lot until he learned that I was born in December.
He told me that because I was born in December my Ghanian name would be (Kabra). He explained the rea­son for the name, but I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of those rea­sons, I’m hor­ri­ble when it comes to long con­ver­sa­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when I make the deci­sion that the infor­ma­tion is not cru­cial. Except to say that I now feel like a [Kabra] when­ev­er I see him, even though I have no idea what a Kabra is, or if [it] is even a thing.
I only know him as Mister Liat.

He did odd jobs for one of his rel­a­tives who oper­ates a small used car lot out­side the vil­lage of Pleasant Valley New York. And then he got a steady job in an assist­ed liv­ing facil­i­ty in the town of Millbrook. He lives close to where I live with a rel­a­tive I’m told, and so most evenings, rain snow, or shine, while I am dri­ving home in the com­fort of a nice warm car, I pass by him stand­ing at the light post that dou­bles as an unof­fi­cial bust-stop.
Unfortunately, I can­not offer him a ride because my home is less than half a mile away. He works sev­er­al miles away. Nevertheless, I always honk my horn to say hi, he waves back, even before I honk, no mat­ter how dark it is.

Driving by mis­ter Liat there almost every evening, always gnawed at my gut, being born and raised poor, I have no illu­sions about the things that God has blessed me with, I nev­er take them for granted.
In fact, I har­bor deep-seat­ed feel­ings of guilt at the things that I do have, despite work­ing as a slave to accom­plish what I have.
I dri­ve my wife nuts about veg­eta­bles going bad in the refrig­er­a­tor, or some tchotchke that she buys when I con­sid­er that in some parts of this, the great­est coun­try in the world, there are peo­ple who can­not source healthy foods, or worse, can­not afford to eat period.

One thing that con­soles me is the thought that for most immi­grants to America’s shores hard work and sac­ri­fices are a staple.
Hard work, edu­ca­tion, and good plan­ning are the only true path­ways out of pover­ty. America is still the last best hope for poor peo­ple to find their way.
This morn­ing I saw mis­ter Liat, he stopped by to pay his phone bill and we got to talk­ing, he told me that on sev­er­al occa­sions the police pass him stand­ing there, they size him up and some­times dou­ble back to demand to know what he is doing stand­ing there?
At a bus-stop.
He told me that one group of cops stopped to ques­tion him in the snow, they ordered him to his knees in the snow.
At the bus stop.
No, this is not Minneapolis, not Texas, not in the deep south, not in the rocky moun­tains, this is the Hudson Valley New York.

One cop asked him if he was from Ghana, after hear­ing his still raw Ghanaian accent, he said he nod­ded in the affirmative.
The cop then pro­ceed­ed to tell him that he had been to Ghana sev­er­al times and how nice­ly the peo­ple treat­ed him there.
The irony is palpable.
He told me that on anoth­er occa­sion a cop stopped to ques­tion him, he said he was scared that he would be murdered.
Imagine being scared of being mur­dered by the sup­posed protectors”?
“Kabra, I have my kids in Ghana, these peo­ple will kill you”, he reasoned.
He explained his actions lit­er­al­ly sup­pli­cat­ing him­self to the cop, “you could do a great good today if you gave me a ride to my job”, he sug­gest­ed to the cop.
The cop told him no…he could get into trou­ble for giv­ing him a ride.

Imagine the real­i­ty that allows the police to stop and vio­late the rights of peo­ple with­out zero con­se­quence, but if he dares give that per­son a ride in that lux­u­ry tax-pay­er SUV, he could be in a whole hell of trouble.
I thought about the thou­sands of dol­lars in tax­es my wife and I pay so that cop and oth­ers may ride around in those lux­u­ry SUVs, then I thought long and hard about the kind of world we have cre­at­ed as a species.
Changing the lives of the very poor is a moral oblig­a­tion that we all have, nev­er­the­less, we can nev­er have moral laws com­ing from deeply immoral law-makers.
And a tear came to my eye.….….….….….….…

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.

Brittany Chrishawn, the pro­duc­er of the award-win­ning police bru­tal­i­ty film “Illville,” gets attacked and left with bro­ken teeth after police tres­pass on her property.
Brittany Chrishawn, an award-win­ning African-American film­mak­er and social jus­tice advo­cate who pro­duced a film that explores police bru­tal­i­ty, has been bru­tal­ized her­self by police offi­cers in Jacksonville, Florida. Her film Illville most recent­ly won an award at The Cannes International Pan African Film Festival 2020.

The police allege that Brittany assault­ed an offi­cer with a plas­tic spoon while he was seat­ed in his car in her dri­ve­way, but there’s video footage show­ing the offi­cer get­ting out of the car to col­lect the plas­tic spoon from the ground to use as evi­dence against her.
We live in a time where police mis­con­duct has been exposed for the epi­dem­ic that it is, but far too many sto­ries of vic­tims who’ve sur­vived police bru­tal­i­ty go untold, and these are the vic­tims who have to endure fight­ing wrong­ful con­vic­tions with­out the strong sup­port of the pub­lic eye and nation­al media out­lets. This sto­ry deserves the public’s atten­tion because vic­to­ry with this case will pro­vide a bench­mark for peo­ple of col­or who may be sub­ject­ed to this type of police mis­con­duct in the future. It will be a great step for­ward in this age-old fight for basic human/​civil rights.

On May 13^th, 2020, JSO offi­cer Carmona parked in Brittany’s dri­ve­way for no legal rea­son; the police report claims he thought the prop­er­ty was vacant so he parked there to check his email. Brittany Chrishawn Williams-Moore approached the officer’s vehi­cle to ask the offi­cer if she could help him, but she end­ed up hav­ing to call 911 to report the offi­cer for refus­ing to give a rea­son for him being there and refus­ing to leave.

But when more offi­cers arrived on the scene, Brittany was arrest­ed with the use of exces­sive force by mul­ti­ple male offi­cers, one of them being JSO Officer Tyler Landreville who’s known for hav­ing already killed 2 African American men in Jacksonville – Vernell Bing in 2016 and Frankie Feliciano in 2019.

“We both felt the same fear that we imag­ine all black peo­ple feel right before they die at the hands of law enforce­ment,” said Ausar Moore, Brittany’s hus­band who wit­nessed the encounter.

He con­tin­ues, “I was a lit­tle relieved when the super­vis­ing offi­cer and oth­er offi­cers arrived at the scene. But instead of the super­vi­sor mak­ing offi­cer Carmona leave, two offi­cers includ­ing one who pre­vi­ous­ly killed two African-Americans in Jacksonville ran into our house with­out a war­rant, tack­led my 97-pound wife, and banged her head against our wood­en floor break­ing her two front teeth in half. Until this day, she is still suf­fer­ing from injuries relat­ed to the inci­dent such as a dis­or­der called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) which is dubbed ‘the sui­cide dis­ease’. I am dis­gust­ed with how this sys­tem rou­tine­ly oppress­es peo­ple of col­or and shar­ing our sto­ry is the best way I know to cor­rect the flaw with­in the legal system.”

In recent times I have writ­ten about the lies in the cul­ture wars Republicans are wag­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to the issue of abor­tions. In so doing I have sought to point out the glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cies between what they say they are fight­ing for, and their actu­al deeds, which shows that they are lying hypocrites.
As I have point­ed out, Republicans led by the heretics in the so-called white evan­gel­i­cal faith, are sole­ly con­cerned about abor­tion, because white women are not hav­ing enough babies to main­tain the numer­ic white strength in America that they need to main­tain white supremacy.

On the issue of Immigration, they want that lim­it­ed if not total­ly dried up for the same rea­son. Black and brown immi­grants tend to be more exposed and there­fore less closed-mind­ed, so they are gen­er­al­ly less like­ly to vote for a white right-wing par­ty that hates peo­ple of color.
Even in cas­es where the immi­grants do come in and sell their very souls to the Republicans, a‑la the major­i­ty of the Cubans in south Florida, — [a‑la Raphael Cruz & Liddle Marco Rubio, et al[sic], they are tol­er­at­ed for their votes, not accept­ed as real Americans.

Here is Steve King, a Republican con­gress­man from Iowa in a tweet in March of 2017: Wilders under­stands that cul­ture and demo­graph­ics are our des­tiny. We can’t restore our civ­i­liza­tion with some­body else’s babies.
Donald Trump, in a con­ver­sa­tion in which he referred to peo­ple arriv­ing in the United States from coun­tries that are large­ly Black and Brown, referred to those coun­tries as *shit­hole coun­tries*. He asked: ” Why can’t we have peo­ple from Norway?
Norway is a homoge­nous­ly white European nation, so there you have it.

The decep­tion in the fight against abor­tions that have been wrapped in reli­gious pack­ag­ing for moral valid­i­ty, is easy to unmask, not by what they are say­ing, but by what they are doing.
It not only reveals the lies and hypocrisy but unrav­els the whole cha­rade that is behind the white evan­gel­i­cal movement.
Unfortunately, there is a bunch of Black Church folk who have also fall­en vic­tim to this fraud, and have thrown their sup­port behind the Republican Party, a par­ty that is anti­thet­i­cal to their inter­ests, yet it has been able to fool some into believ­ing that on the dual issues of abor­tions and reli­gion they should sup­port that party.
On the sem­i­nal issues that affect Blacks in their dai­ly lives, the Republican par­ty has stead­fast­ly posi­tioned itself against Black Americans. On race and police vio­lence, on repa­ra­tions, on edu­ca­tion, hous­ing, on health­care, on afford­able hous­ing, clean drink­ing water, on vot­ing rights.
On issue after issue, the Republican Party has posi­tioned itself square­ly between the for­ward progress of Blacks and where they need to be.

On the most basic of sus­te­nance that is food stamps and oth­er dietary sup­ple­men­tary pro­grams that have been cre­at­ed to aid the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble, Republicans have opposed giv­ing those dietary sup­ple­ments to chil­dren in order for them to survive.
Blacks are among the poor­est peo­ple in the coun­try, so when Republicans oppose dietary sup­ple­ments for the poor­est among us they are say­ing they do not care whether Black babies live or die.
When Police mur­der young Black men and boys Republicans change the sub­ject to law and order. What they are say­ing is that they do not care if Black men and boys live or die.

A few days ago I wrote about some folks in the Black com­mu­ni­ty pre­tend­ing to [be woke].….. then there are the celebri­ties as well, some of whom take it upon them­selves to speak for Black peo­ple, when they them­selves are inca­pable of artic­u­lat­ing a full sen­tence on their own behalf.
Trump and Republicans dis­re­spect Lebron and Steph and oth­ers who do not buy into his racist bull­shit, but his cam­paign invit­ed [Ice cube] or what­ev­er his name is, to sit down on behalf of Black people.
Who does Ice Cube speak for?

The tragedy with watch­ing these events, is the clar­i­ty with which the truth unfolds, but because many of these negroes do not both­er to read they fall for every shiny object.
Why would any­one sit down with Trump and his cam­paign giv­en his record of racism and lies? Nothing that comes out of him is cred­i­ble, every­thing that comes out of him is decep­tive and self-serving.
And so while these Christians and oth­er negroes are run­ning around talk­ing about sup­port­ing Trump and the Republican par­ty, the true agen­da of the Republican par­ty is on full dis­play in places like Arkansas for all to see. Not to men­tion what his per­son­al Attorney William Barr is doing in the Department of Justice to send Blacks back to the plantations.

Arkansas has car­ried out its fourth exe­cu­tion with­in a week, bring­ing to a trou­bling end the state’s con­tro­ver­sial attempt to run a “con­vey­or belt of death” in an aggres­sive burst of killings unseen in the US for more than half a century.
 Kenneth Williams was pro­nounced dead at 11.05 pm local time at the end of a 13-minute lethal injec­tion that result­ed in dis­turb­ing signs of dis­tress on the part of the prisoner.
Eyewitnesses in the death cham­ber report­ed that his whole body shook with 15 or 20 con­vul­sions just min­utes into the pro­ce­dure, and that he con­tin­ued to breathe heav­i­ly even after a par­a­lyt­ic was inject­ed into him to ren­der all move­ment impos­si­ble.
Despite pleas from fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tim not to exe­cute Williams Asa Hutchinson hur­ried­ly had him killed, and the Republican-dom­i­nat­ed Supreme Court refused to hear their case for a stay, much less for clemency.

It is not a ques­tion of whether one believes in the death penal­ty or not, it is a ques­tion of how Republican Governors in Republican-run states are eager and will­ing to kill Black inmates with cal­lous dis­patch, and a Republican-dom­i­nat­ed Supreme Court with the likes of Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh who refus­es to even hear their appeals.
Experts point­ed to sev­er­al issues in these killings, includ­ing the drugs of choice which they argue cause unnec­es­sary suffering.
According to report­ing from the Guardian, Kenneth Williams made a lengthy state­ment before he was killed. He apol­o­gized to all his vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, and said: “I was more than wrong. The crimes I per­pe­trat­ed against you all were sense­less, extreme­ly hurt­ful, and inex­cus­able. I humbly beg your for­give­ness and pray that you find the peace, heal­ing, and clo­sure you all deserve.”

People are free to vote for the par­ty of their choice, peo­ple are free to sup­port whomev­er they chose but for some of you who pur­port to speak for the Black com­mu­ni­ty, please do the hon­or­able thing and tell the peo­ple you are seek­ing to influ­ence that you are just dogs chas­ing bones.
Tell the truth that you have been promised some­thing and that’s the rea­son you are run­ning around behind Republicans. But what­ev­er you do, please do not try to dis­tort real­i­ty with your lies.

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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.

The harm slav­ery has done to Black peo­ple is both immea­sur­able, and incal­cu­la­ble. There are many things that con­tin­ue to plague peo­ple of African ances­try that may direct­ly be linked to slav­ery, not just those of us who are descen­dants of enslaved Africans, but those who live on the African con­ti­nent who are the descen­dants of Africans who lived under European occupation.
Nothing has been used to dis­tort real­i­ty for African peo­ple than the con­cept of reli­gion. Still today it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to get most of our reli­gious broth­ers and sis­ters to under­stand that believ­ing in a sov­er­eign God does not mean sit­ting around wait­ing for him/​her to burst through the clouds to save us from what­ev­er ails us.
My Pastor the Reverend Dr. Jesse Voyd Bottoms speaks to this truth that I have always believed in,” If pray­ing is all you do, it is not enough”.

It is a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that is borne out through­out the Bible. (Philippians 4:13)¹³ I can do all things through ^[a]Christ who strength­ens me.
James 2:14 – 17, What does it prof­it, my brethren, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? ¹⁵ If a broth­er or sis­ter is naked and des­ti­tute of dai­ly food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are need­ed for the body, what does it prof­it? ¹⁷ Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
You get the pic­ture I suppose?

How then as Christians are so many of us Blacks still con­found­ed when it comes to this issue when it comes to what we need to do to effect change here on earth and in our own communities?
Why are we still look­ing up into the skies in the hope that the great cre­ator of the uni­verse is going to burst through and sweep us up and all of our trou­bles will be over?
Exodus 14 v 13 – 16,¹³ Moses answered the peo­ple, “Don’t be afraid! Stand still, and see what the Lord will do to save you today. You will nev­er see these Egyptians again. ¹⁴ The Lord is fight­ing for you! So be still!” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you cry­ing out to me? Tell the Israelites to start mov­ing. ¹⁶ Raise your staff, stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide the water. Then the Israelites will go through the sea on dry ground.

This issue of racism is noth­ing new, over two thou­sand years ago Yeshua was cru­ci­fied by the Italians, with the help of Jews who saw him as a threat to the estab­lished order.
Struggling under the weight of the cross he was forced to car­ry after being bru­tal­ly beat­en and bru­tal­ized, not a sin­gle per­son helped to car­ry the cross as Yeshua strug­gled with it, until of course, they saw Simon of Cyrene a black man who was pass­ing through, he, they forced to car­ry the cross.
Luke 23:26 And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was com­ing in from the coun­try, and laid on him the cross, to car­ry it behind Jesus.
Matthew 27:32 As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They com­pelled this man to car­ry his cross.
Mark 15:21 And they com­pelled a passer­by, Simon of Cyrene, who was com­ing in from the coun­try, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to car­ry his cross.

The moral of the sto­ry is that not a sin­gle one of those Italian sol­diers saw fit to help Yeshua or to force any­one else, but anoth­er black man to help the black Yeshua with the heavy piece of tim­ber, that they had forced him to car­ry after beat­ing him mercilessly.
If we as a peo­ple have learned noth­ing after thou­sands of years of these things hap­pen­ing to us, when are we going to learn?
If we refuse to acquaint our­selves with the real­i­ties sur­round­ing us, and if we refuse to read any­thing, and if we con­tin­ue to engage in the prac­tice of prayer with­out works, a hun­dred years from now our chil­dren, grand chil­dren, and great-grand­chil­dren, (if they sur­vive) will be fight­ing these same fights that we should have ended.
If we who call our­selves Christians con­tin­ue to believe that the Lord God Almighty sanc­tioned peo­ple own­ing peo­ple ‚then we deserve to con­tin­ue being slaves. If we con­tin­ue to be sanc­ti­mo­nious, sac­ri­fi­cial lambs to the slaugh­ter, because we believe in the hog­wash that we must hum­ble our­selves in front of our ene­mies and turn the oth­er cheek, then guar­an­teed we will be a sac­ri­fice on the burn­ing altar of stupidity.

As long as we believe that we have an oblig­a­tion to con­tin­ue to love our ene­mies, even as he uses his sword to slaugh­ter us, then we deserve what­ev­er else he dish­es out to us.
Much has been done to use reli­gion to pre­vent Black insur­rec­tion dur­ing their enslave­ment and to con­tin­ue to keep blacks from ever get­ting to real­iz­ing the lies about white superiority.
I am not here to tell you what to believe, nev­er­the­less, if you believe that the very same peo­ple whose ances­tors enslaved and mur­dered yours, and are to this day opposed to you hav­ing the most basic of right and dig­ni­ty that they sum­mar­i­ly enjoy, are deserv­ing of your love and devo­tion, then do you.
Watch and pray, that’s scrip­tur­al. All through­out the Bible the GOD of the right­eous, waged war on the ene­mies of his peo­ple, and destroyed them.

Has that God sud­den­ly reversed him­self and requires us to sur­ren­der our lives in hum­ble sup­pli­ca­tion and feal­ty to those who oppress us? If you believe that you are still a slave.
Some of you Christians are so right­eous that you can­not even talk about any­thing but Church, you do not pay atten­tion to your kid’s school hap­pen­ings. You do not vote in school board elec­tions, you have no idea who rep­re­sents you in state­hous­es and in the Congress, then you com­plain about not vot­ing because “nobody ain’t giv­ing you any­thing.” That is the rea­son they dump their mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar jails in your com­mu­ni­ties with­out even con­sult­ing you.

That is why they build bus depots in your com­mu­ni­ties, so that your chil­dren may ingest the putrid diesel fumes, mak­ing them expo­nen­tial­ly more sus­cep­ti­ble to asth­ma and oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases. Don’t even men­tion noise pollution.
When you do not vote and stay vig­i­lant, they poi­son your water, they demol­ish your com­mu­ni­ties and build inter­state high­ways and pay you noth­ing for your land. When you refuse to vote, they put police in place to bru­tal­ize and kill you, because they fear no consequence.
Why is it that you pay tax­es just like every­one else, yet your chil­dren’s schools are ver­i­ta­ble fortress­es, manned by armed police ready to gun them down, no books, co com­put­ers, while a cou­ple of miles into the sub­ur­b’s their schools are peace­ful oases of tran­quil learn­ing, staffed with car­ing teach­ers and equipped with every tool need­ed to aid the learn­ing process?

Do you still want to talk about not voting?
Why do you think they are going to such lengths to take that right away from you? I am speak­ing to you so-called woke peo­ple who sit on your rear ends and point to flaws in can­di­dates, knit-pick­ing any lit­tle neg­a­tive you can find in them as if you are per­fect, then use social media to encour­age oth­ers not to vote or get involved in the process.
Who are you help­ing in that process, except to make your­self seem smart, when you are real­ly demon­strat­ing just how unlearned you are?

Yeshua him­self told those who would trap him into speak­ing out about the Roman Government,“ Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21.
It was by far more than an attempt by Yeshua to avoid the entrap­ment, but a guide to Christians that they have an earth­ly duty to pay atten­tion and be attuned to earth­ly hap­pen­ings, and to be con­ver­sant of the issues that will affect our lives.
All of those peo­ple who fol­lowed Yeshua, includ­ing his dis­ci­ples fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that he would return in their lifetime.
He was cru­ci­fied more than two thou­sand years ago.….….….. He is com­ing back, make no mis­take about that, but there is a lot of time between God’s time and our idea of time.
And in between those two con­cepts of time, there is a whole lot of liv­ing and suf­fer­ing left to happen.

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[“I do get a sense some­times now among cer­tain young peo­ple, and this is accel­er­at­ed by social media, there is this sense some­times of: ‘The way of me mak­ing change is to be as judg­men­tal as pos­si­ble about oth­er peo­ple.” “And that’s enough.” “Like, if I tweet or hash­tag about how you didn’t do some­thing right or used the wrong verb.” “Then I can sit back and feel pret­ty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’”
“That’s not activism. That’s not bring­ing about change”. “If all you’re doing is cast­ing stones, you’re prob­a­bly not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”] (Barack Hussien Obama)

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.

THE QUESTION HERE IS RATHER SIMPLE; WOULD THIS COP DO THIS TO A 9‑MONTHS-PREGNANT WHITE WOMAN, I’LL ANSWER THAT FOR YOU HELL NO!!!

Kansas City, Missouri — A nine-months-preg­nant Black woman whose arrest by a Kansas City police offi­cer sparked out­rage and occu­pa­tion of City Hall grounds was so over­come with emo­tion Thursday that she was unable to address a ral­ly demand­ing police reform.
Deja Stallings end­ed up on the ground with an offi­cer’s knee in her back dur­ing the Sept. 30 arrest that was cap­tured on video. Civil rights orga­ni­za­tions and oth­ers have camped out at City Hall since and have vowed not to leave until the offi­cers involved and Police Chief Rick Smith are fired.
The pro­test­ers also want the city to redi­rect 50% of the police depart­men­t’s bud­get to social ser­vices sup­port­ing the Black com­mu­ni­ty. On Thursday, Stallings strug­gled to walk from the car to the steps of City Hall, where she was expect­ed to address the crowd. When her time to speak arrived, she man­aged to get out only a few words before she start­ed to cry and had to sit down.
Stallings’ lawyer, Stacy Shaw, read her state­ment, in which she described the phys­i­cal pain and a bruise she still has from the arrest.
“I cry every day because I am scared for my baby,” she said. “My baby girl has not even been born yet and she is a vic­tim of police bru­tal­i­ty. I am try­ing to stay strong but I know my baby is a fight­er. She needs to be the last child who is a vic­tim of the KCPD. She needs the demands of this occu­pa­tion to be met.”

Shaw said doc­tors have checked the unborn baby, named Dsyre, and she appears to be healthy.
Stallings was issued a munic­i­pal cita­tion for hin­der­ing arrest after police said she inter­fered when they tried to arrest a man, and that she was put on the ground to be hand­cuffed because she resist­ed arrest.
Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jean Peters-Baker is review­ing the arrest. Police said in a state­ment Thursday that the offi­cers involved remain on duty.
“We are review­ing the inci­dent as well,” spokesman Sgt. Jacob Becchina said, adding that police are coop­er­at­ing with the pros­e­cu­tors’ investigation.
Civil rights groups have said for months that Smith should resign or be fired because his depart­ment is plagued by racism and does­n’t inves­ti­gate or respond to unnec­es­sary force or fatal shoot­ings of Black peo­ple by officers.
Smith has said repeat­ed­ly that he does­n’t intend to resign but oth­er­wise has made no state­ment since the arrest.
Mayor Quinton Lucas has said he does­n’t believe it’s fea­si­ble to reduce the police bud­get by 50%.
Shaw said the pro­test­ers are not swayed.
“We have stat­ed that we will occu­py the seat of gov­ern­ment, right here on this lawn, until our demands are met or we are forcibly and vio­lent­ly removed from the prop­er­ty,” Shaw said.
“And if we are vio­lent­ly removed, we’ll be back the next day,” she said. (Adapted)

City Councilmen Brandon Ellington and Eric Bunch spoke in sup­port of police reform and vowed to help the pro­test­ers achieve their goals. Bunch said he would push the coun­cil to take the nec­es­sary action to “com­plete­ly re-imag­ine what pub­lic safe­ty means.”
He said the police depart­men­t’s $272 mil­lion bud­get this year is more than the com­bined bud­gets of sev­er­al oth­er depart­ments, includ­ing parks, health, neigh­bor­hood ser­vices, indi­gent med­ical care, and hous­ing and home­less ser­vices. He not­ed that as the city con­tin­ues to steer more mon­ey to police, vio­lent crime and homi­cides keep increas­ing. “We lit­er­al­ly do not have the mon­ey to sup­port the vital health care and qual­i­ty of life issues pre­cise­ly because we have resigned our­selves to a real­i­ty in which law enforce­ment is the only tool to address these com­plex issues,” he said.

The sto­ry of Jonathan Price killing was just anoth­er case of a Black man mur­dered by police, noth­ing to see here right?
In fact, hard­ly an eye­brow has been raised in his killing which occurred in a small Texas town sev­er­al days ago.
We report­ed on the killing, sur­pris­ing­ly his killer has been arrest­ed on mur­der charges by the Texas Rangers.
It is not every day that a cop who sum­mar­i­ly mur­ders a Black man is even dis­ci­plined, let alone arrest­ed and charged with his murder.

There is a twist to this killing though, Black vic­tims of police vio­lence are gen­er­al­ly demo­nized by whites, made to be respon­si­ble for their own deaths.
If only he com­plied with police com­mands, if only he did not resist, if only he did not move, if only he showed his hands, if only he did not run, if only he did not stand, if only he did not sit, if only he did not talk back, if only he answered the cop’s ques­tions, if only he was not so big, if only .….……
But from all accounts this man Jonathan Price exem­pli­fied all of those [if only’s] .…..In a Facebook post below Jonathan Price had much to say about race, the police, and even slight­ed Black Lives Matter(BLM).
Many peo­ple point­ed to the irony of Price’s post and the fact that he was shot by the police, even though he cozied up to them and lit­er­al­ly dissed those who spoke out against sys­temic police violence.

With all the ten­sion and ani­mos­i­ty going on with race and the 1time ᴿᴺ. . I’m on the same fence as lil Wayne, with him say­ing a white cop saved his life, and hasn’t been too vocal based off EXPERIENCES 
I was raised by the Malone’s and Woodruff’s in my home­town for a LARGE amount of my youth, was my 2^nd fam­i­ly then, and still are in 2020 if I have to say any­thing. The amount of food fed to me they spent on me, out­weighs any BS about race or col­or right now. I have fam­i­ly that’s nev­er done a DAMN THING for me, or sup­port­ed my busi­ness ven­tures and they’re my BLOOD They will FOREVER be 1,000,000 in my book & they know who they are! They’re to blame for my coun­try side and addic­tion to white women not com­plain­ing one bit 

There were times i should have been detained for speed­ing, out­stand­ing cita­tions, out dat­ed reg­is­tra­tion, doz­ing off at a red light before mak­ing it to my garage down­town Dallas after a lonnng night out i’ve passed a sobri­ety test after leav­ing a bar in Wylie, Texas by 2 white cops and still let me dri­ve to where I was head­ed, and by the way they con­sid­er Wylie, Texas to be VERY racist I’ve nev­er got that kind of ENERGY from the po-po

Not say­ing black lives don’t mat­ter, but don’t for­get about your own, or your expe­ri­ences through growth /​“wak­ing up”.[sic]

Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop whom the world watch for nine min­utes kneel on the neck of George Floyd until he was dead, in May of this year has been released on bail.
Chauvin was freed after post­ing $100,000 through a bail bond agency. Hours lat­er, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota announced that he was mobi­liz­ing 100 mem­bers of the Minnesota National Guard “out of an abun­dance of cau­tion” at the request of lead­ers in Minneapolis, which was upend­ed by nights of protest imme­di­ate­ly after the killing of Mr. Floyd in May.
Which makes us won­der at the wis­dom of grant­i­ng him bail when author­i­ties know that protest will erupt, not to men­tion the cost of mobi­liz­ing all of the extra cops and nation­al guards-personnel?

Murder sus­pects are gen­er­al­ly not allowed out on bail across the United States, and so again Derek Chauvin is out on bail sole­ly on the basis that he is a white police offi­cer who is charged with mur­der­ing a black man.

Jonathan Price was walk­ing away from Wolfe City Police Officer Shaun Lucas when Lucas opened fire, killing Price, offi­cials said

Footage released by the Aurora Police Department dur­ing a civ­il ser­vice com­mis­sion appeal hear­ing on Sept. 29 shows for­mer Officer Levi Huffine “pun­ish­ing” a Black woman in police cus­tody by leav­ing her hogtied in a face-down posi­tion in the back of a patrol car in the Denver, Colorado, sub­urb for 21 minutes.
Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson said the car video shows that Huffine “tor­tured” the woman, adding that she was dis­gust­ed by the footage.
Shataean Kelly, 28, was arrest­ed on munic­i­pal charges fol­low­ing a fight on Aug. 27, 2019. Bodycam footage shows that Huffine hogtied Kelly’s hands to her feet after he claimed she attempt­ed to escape by try­ing to open the locks in the back of the cruiser.

Wilson said that the locks in the back of the cruis­er do not open and restrain­ing Kelly in that way was unnecessary.“The hob­bling, in my opin­ion, was anoth­er form of pun­ish­ment,” said Wilson.
During the dri­ve to the jail, Kelly slipped off the seat with her hands and feet still cuffed togeth­er behind her back, and wound up pinned to the floor of the vehi­cle in a face-down position.
An inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that Kelly remained in that posi­tion for 21 min­utes. She plead­ed with Huffine for help dur­ing the trip.
“Please help me up, offi­cer! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe, officer!”Wilson said Kelly could have died from posi­tion­al asphyx­ia. “I’m about to break my neck,” she cried out as she was pinned on her face with her hips above her head. “I don’t want to die like this!” Huffine nev­er respond­ed to Kelly’s pleas.

IF YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAW WITH GEORGE FLOYD WAS BAD, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

Watch video below

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​t​h​e​s​a​v​o​y​s​h​o​w​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​1​0​5​2​8​8​3​4​9​1​8​0​0​721

“In my opin­ion, she was just tor­tured back there. It makes me sick,” said Wilson after watch­ing the video on Tuesday. “We are not judge, jury, and [the exe­cu­tion­er],” said Wilson. “We are not to treat peo­ple inhu­mane­ly like they don’t mat­ter.” At one point, Kelly referred to Huffine as “mas­ter,” say­ing: “I beg you, mas­ter,” while plead­ing with him for help. “As an African-American female she den­i­grates her­self to the point she actu­al­ly calls him ‘mas­ter.’ To me that is dis­gust­ing,” said Wilson. Charges against Kelly relat­ed to her arrest have been dropped Officials con­sid­ered bring­ing charges against Huffine but decid­ed against it because Kelly was not seri­ous­ly injured. He was fired by Wilson in February, six months after the inci­dent, after the chief over­ruled the review board’s rec­om­men­da­tion that Huffine receives a 180-hour sus­pen­sion. At the time, the details sur­round­ing Huffine’s ter­mi­na­tion were not revealed, and the depart­ment did not spec­i­fy beyond say­ing he was fired over “severe misconduct.”

PROUD BOY, YOU DECIDE?

The ongo­ing hear­ing that com­menced after Huffine appealed his ter­mi­na­tion will result in a deci­sion made by the city’s four-per­son civ­il ser­vice com­mis­sion, who will decide whether Huffine should keep his job. Huffine claimed he was too short to be able to see what was hap­pen­ing in the back seat dur­ing the dri­ve to the jail.
University of Colorado Denver pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice Dr. Paul Taylor tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing and said it is not a good prac­tice to keep a per­son hob­bled with­out a seat­belt on. “There is a ten­den­cy for peo­ple to peo­ple either roll-off or fall of the seat and onto the floor­board,” he said.
Wilson said Huffine is lucky Kelly did not die, because oth­er­wise, he would be “in an orange jump­suit right now.”
Huffine is sched­uled to tes­ti­fy again on Oct. 1.

In March 2019, this bum cop, [Nate Meier] was found drunk and unre­spon­sive in the driver’s side seat of an unmarked Ford Taurus patrol car stopped out­side Buckley Air Force Base.
His col­leagues were dis­patched to the car to per­form a well­ness check and he was found in the car with the engine still run­ning. Imagine what would hap­pen to a mem­ber of the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly an African-American man found in a car under the influ­ence of drink or drug?
We do not need to imag­ine, Rayshard Brooks, was mur­dered out­side an Atlanta fast-food restau­rant last June, he was sus­pect­ed to have been dri­ving under the influ­ence of alco­hol. Prosecutors said that the cop who shot Brooks Garrett Rolfe declared, “I got him,” after fir­ing the fatal shots at Mr. Brooks. Rolfe kicked the vic­tim, pros­e­cu­tors said, while his part­ner stood on the fatal­ly wound­ed man’s shoul­der. [So there is that]
Rolfe and his part­ner, Devin Brosnan, both of whom are white, then failed to ren­der aid for more than two min­utes, said prosecutors.

so what did respond­ing offi­cers, fire­men, and EMT do? Prosecutors revealed that they could not file charges against Meier as respond­ing offi­cers failed to pass along infor­ma­tion that he was like­ly intox­i­cat­ed. “I don’t think it’s a cov­er-up, but it’s a cou­ple of blocks from it,’ said District Attorney George Brauchler.
From time to time we high­light the cor­rupt alliance between police, pros­e­cu­tors, and judges in the jus­tice sys­tem. Here is a typ­i­cal instance in which a cop in uni­form was behind the wheel of an auto­mo­bile, engine still run­ning, passed out drunk and the pros­e­cu­tor tells us that it was not a cover-up.
This was a clas­sic cov­er-up and worse, they were sent to inves­ti­gate an inci­dent, they observed a drunk behind the wheel of a car with its engine run­ning, with a gun and badge, and the pow­er to take life, and what did they do, they cov­ered it up by not doing what they are paid to do.
To pro­tect the pub­lic from drunk dri­vers. In this case, this was far worse than a civil­ian dri­ving drunk, this bum had the pow­er to take some­one’s life under the col­or of law.
If that was not crim­i­nal com­plic­i­ty of the respond­ing cops I don’t know what is?

on the oth­er hand, no one should be sur­prised about this crim­i­nal enter­prise that is oper­at­ing as a police depart­ment, this is the very same depart­ment in August 2019 mur­dered 23-year-old Elijah McClain. Aurora police received a call about a sus­pi­cious per­son wear­ing a ski mask and wav­ing his arms as he walked down a street on August 24. McClain refused to stop walk­ing and fought back when offi­cers tried to take him into cus­tody, accord­ing to police.
Paramedics gave McClain a med­ica­tion on the instruc­tions of Aurora police, he suf­fered a car­diac arrest on the way to the hos­pi­tal. His fam­i­ly said he sus­tained a brain injury and was tak­en off life sup­port in September 2019.
Can you imag­ine cops who are trained for six months or less instruct­ing Paramedics to give poten­tial­ly lethal drugs to peo­ple they are arresting?
Welcome to America.……

THIS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO BE COVERED, UP SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Any secu­ri­ty or intel­li­gence offi­cial will tell you that they would rather deal with threats that are on the out­side. It is expo­nen­tial­ly more prac­ti­cal to dis­lodge and dis­pel threats that emerge from the out­side, rather than deal with entrenched threats that have embed­ded them­selves to the inside.
Keeping out rad­i­cals is a much eas­i­er task than to find and root out rad­i­cals that are oper­at­ing from the inside.
Simply put, it is much eas­i­er for the hens to peck away at the Fox try­ing to get in than to defend them­selves from a Fox already in the Henhouse.
In America’s racist soci­ety, Black Americans strug­gle dai­ly, as they have strug­gled for hun­dreds of years, for civ­il rights, dig­ni­ty, auton­o­my, self-deter­mi­na­tion, and equality.
That chal­lenge is vast­ly com­pro­mised when the heads of Agencies in which racism is being chal­lenged hap­pens to have Black skin.
Even though the racist poli­cies are no less inher­ent, a black leader enforc­ing racist poli­cies, makes the case more dif­fi­cult to prove.

It was that way dur­ing slav­ery, slaves work­ing in the big house would tell [mas­sa] what they knew about run­away plans. It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to deal with the mole that oper­ates from within.
Today, even though African-Americans have won some of the rights they craved, those rights are under seri­ous threat from three ele­ments that con­tin­ue to enforce white supremacy,(1) the sen­ate that empow­ers white rur­al states with sparse pop­u­la­tions, through the two Senators per state rule, while can­cel­ing out the voic­es of heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed states with large pop­u­la­tions. (b) The Electoral College, which has caused Democrats two elec­tions, 2000 and 2016, in which they won the pop­u­lar vote by wide mar­gins, to the tune of mil­lions of votes, but lose the white house through the archa­ic elec­toral col­lege law. © And The unelect­ed Supreme Court that con­tin­ues to strip away the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of ordi­nary Americans, while sys­tem­i­cal­ly empow­er­ing the rich and powerful.

When the bul­lets from a way­ward Black cop hit and kills an inno­cent unarmed Black man, he is no less dead because the bul­let did not come from a white cop. The racist white poli­cies that gave the black cop the free­dom to shoot is equal­ly as guilty.
A 5 – 4 deci­sion from the supreme court, (a) in Shelby coun­ty Alabama Vs Holder, in which Clarence Thomas vot­ed to strip away vot­ing rights pro­tec­tions for African-Americans, or (b) in cit­i­zens United, or any oth­er vote he made that evis­cer­ates pro­tec­tions for the aver­age per­son, and African ‑Americans in par­tic­u­lar, are no less oner­ous and dev­as­tat­ing because Clarence Thomas is black.
It is said that a pros­e­cu­tor can pros­e­cute a ham sand­wich. The evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the grand jury is what the pros­e­cu­tor wants the grand jury to rule on. The grand jury process, a closed process, is part of the ring around the mil­i­tary arm of white pow­er, the police.
What is remark­able, is that Breonna Taylor’s neigh­bors were endan­gered and offi­cer Brett Hankison was indict­ed for endan­ger­ing them. Breonna Taylor is dead and no one is being held account­able for mur­der­ing her in her own home.

It should come as no sur­prise then, that Daniel Cameron, the Republican Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Former coun­sel to Mitch McConnell, after many months of a sup­posed inves­ti­ga­tion into the killing of Breanna Taylor, would refuse to tell the pub­lic the racial make­up of the grand jury that decid­ed only on endan­ger­ment charges against one cop.
One of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples in the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, is that it must not only be done, but it must also appear to be done.
The Attorney General works for the peo­ple, is paid by the peo­ple, and there­fore answer­able to the people.
It is bad enough that Breonna Taylor was mur­dered in her own home, as a con­se­quence of bad intel, signed and legit­imized by a judge.
That Ms, Taylor and her boyfriend, Mr.Kenneth Walker were the vic­tims of an arm of the state that is unac­count­able, is no sur­prise. That the Attorney General would seek to cov­er up the racial make­up of the grand jury that looked at the evi­dence is absolute­ly cor­rupt and indefensible.
We all know of the Uncle Tom fig­ures that have been part of the land­scape through­out this jour­ney which brought Black peo­ple from the shores of Africa, to America in chains.
It is no sur­prise then that the black-skinned coon that occu­pies the Attorney General’s office in Kentucky, and is seen in this pic­ture, coon­ing with Donald Trump, would sell out his own peo­ple for a mere pat on the back from [mas­sa].
Standing in the Oval Office, and being allowed to address the Republican Convention, was way more than enough to get that Black man to sell the entire Black race back into slavery.

Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove are three of the (LMPD) offi­cers, who on March 13^th, 2020, fired dozens of bul­lets into the home of Ms. Taylor, as they tried to exe­cute a no-knock war­rant, signed by a judge.
The loss of life in this nev­er-end­ing fight, which is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the war on Black peo­ple com­menced under the Nixon Administration has tak­en an incal­cu­la­ble toll on the black community.
Ms. Taylor is dead, she com­mit­ted no crime, yet no offi­cer has been charged with her death. If Ms. Taylor is dead,(which she is), and her death is not demon­stra­bly an acci­dent, how can there be no true bill returned on her killing?
Who made the deci­sion only to charge Brett Hankison with endan­ger­ment and what do they look like.
Breonna Taylor was not endan­gered, she is dead.

THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED

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.

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Latasha lived in South Central LA, and she lived very close to the Empire Liquor Market, which is why she went there to pur­chase some orange juice that Saturday morn­ing. She walks into the store, goes into the refrig­er­at­ed part of the store, and gets a bot­tle of orange juice that costs $1.79. She had $2 in her hand to pay for the juice. She sticks the juice into her back­pack and part of it’s stick­ing out of the top, and she pro­ceeds to go to the counter to pay for it.

Mrs. Du, the shop­keep­er’s wife, is tend­ing the shop that morn­ing and imme­di­ate­ly starts to aggres­sive­ly ask Latasha if she’s try­ing to steal her juice — this is from eye­wit­ness’ accounts. Latasha says, ‘I’m try­ing to pay for it.’ Du grabs and tries to pull the back­pack off her to see what’s in it, and Latasha starts to fight back as a result of that. Du falls down twice while they’re fight­ing. When she stands back up the sec­ond time, she has a gun in her hand and she’s point­ing it at Latasha. The juice has fall­en out of the back­pack by now; Latasha bends down, picks up the juice, puts it on the counter, and turns to walk out of the store to avoid any fur­ther con­fronta­tion. Du shoots her in the back of the head.

Du is ini­tial­ly charged with first-degree mur­der with spe­cial cir­cum­stances. She’s found guilty of invol­un­tary manslaugh­ter. The rec­om­men­da­tion from the court, that’s the pro­ba­tion offi­cer, is that she receive the max­i­mum sen­tence — 16 years in prison, because she did­n’t seem to show any remorse in her inter­views. But the judge in the case, Judge Joyce Karlin, decides that Du should not spend any time in jail, and instead gives her pro­ba­tion, makes her pay for Latasha’s med­ical and funer­al expens­es, gives her com­mu­ni­ty [ser­vice], and lets her go — to the hor­ror and anger of the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty, the black com­mu­ni­ty, but also from all parts of the city.

What’s even more painful to the com­mu­ni­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to Latasha’s fam­i­ly, was that the judge said that Latasha was the crim­i­nal and that Du was her vic­tim. She said in her sen­tenc­ing state­ment that if Latasha was still alive, she’d prob­a­bly be in her court accused of assault on a shop­keep­er. So we have one per­son who is alive and well — now she’s the vic­tim. And the per­son who’s dead and bleed­ing on the ground is the crim­i­nal. And we see that hap­pen­ing over and over again. We saw it with Michael Brown, and we saw it with Trayvon Martin — you know, on and on and on. It’s such a long list of names.
Read more here; https://​www​.good​.is/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​l​a​t​a​s​h​a​-​h​a​r​l​i​n​s​-​r​o​d​n​e​y​-​k​i​n​g​-​a​n​n​i​v​e​r​s​ary

To add insult to injury after the ghast­ly and immoral act of slav­ery was forced upon Black peo­ple kid­napped from their homes in Africa, the American Government paid resti­tu­tion to slave­hold­ers for the loss of [their prop­er­ty] but not a sin­gle pen­ny has been made avail­able as com­pen­sa­tion for what they did to Blacks for hun­dreds of years.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to com­pen­sate more than 100,000 peo­ple of Japanese descent who were incar­cer­at­ed in intern­ment camps dur­ing World War II. The leg­is­la­tion offered a for­mal apol­o­gy and paid out $20,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to each sur­viv­ing victim.
John Tateishi who was incar­cer­at­ed at Manzanar intern­ment camp in California from age 3 until he was 6, wrote; The expe­ri­ence was both humil­i­at­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing. “We came out of these camps with a sense of shame and guilt, of hav­ing been con­sid­ered betray­ers of our coun­try.” He says that after the war most fam­i­lies nev­er spoke about it.
Even though the efforts of Black peo­ple were (a) what inspired the Japanese ‑American move­ment, & (b) that sur­vivors of that tragedy were com­pen­sat­ed, to this day the United States refus­es to com­pen­sate African-Americans for the geno­cide it wrought on mil­lions through the mid­dle pas­sage, hun­dreds of years of slav­ery, jim crow and the con­tin­u­ance of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism.

“There were no com­plaints, no big ral­lies or demands for jus­tice because it was not the Japanese way. More than 100,000 peo­ple of Japanese her­itage from the West Coast were sent to war relo­ca­tion camps dur­ing World War II.
But decades lat­er and inspired by the civ­il rights move­ment, the Japanese American Citizens League launched a con­tentious cam­paign for redress. It divid­ed the com­mu­ni­ty along gen­er­a­tional lines. Tateishi became a leader of the movement.
After World War 11 the United States unveiled a plan designed to put west­ern Europe back on its feet after the war, despite the fact that the war was ini­ti­at­ed by Germany. The brain­child of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, for whom it was named, it was craft­ed as a four-year plan to recon­struct cities, indus­tries, and infra­struc­ture heav­i­ly dam­aged dur­ing the war and to remove trade bar­ri­ers between European neigh­bors — as well as fos­ter com­merce between those coun­tries and the United States.
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. pro­gram pro­vid­ing aid to Western Europe fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of World War II. It was enact­ed in 1948 and pro­vid­ed more than $15 bil­lion to help finance rebuild­ing efforts on the con­ti­nent. [History​.com]

On January 31, 1865, the 13^th amend­ment abol­ished slav­ery in the United on December 6, In the same year, the Amendment was rat­i­fied and slav­ery was a thing of the past.
Or was it?
The 13^th amend­ment abol­ished slav­ery in the United States and pro­vides that; “Neither slav­ery nor invol­un­tary servi­tude, (except as a pun­ish­ment for a crime), where­of the par­ty shall have been duly con­vict­ed, shall exist with­in the United States, or any place sub­ject to their jurisdiction.”
Rather clever indeed ‘there.” Let us end this civ­il war and get on with our lives, but this clause will be our on-ramp to rein­sti­tute a crawl­ing ‑pen form of slav­ery through mass incarceration.
That was exact­ly what they did.

Since that time African-American peo­ple have suf­fered through black codes, (laws designed across all states and ter­ri­to­ries that crim­i­nal­ized lit­er­al­ly every­thing that black peo­ple did, includ­ing just stand­ing around. Those vicious laws result­ed in what is known as the prison chain gangs. The chain gangs orig­i­nat­ed as a part of a mas­sive road devel­op­ment project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony con­victs out­side of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of pris­on­ers, shack­ling four or five togeth­er while they worked, ate, and slept.
Slavery rein­sti­tut­ed into the United States under the guise of con­vict­ed felons, which was per­fect­ly legal and is per­fect­ly legal today, it is right there in the 13^th Amendment.
Slavery nev­er end­ed in the United States, mass incar­cer­a­tion of African-Americans begun before the ink was dried on the eman­ci­pa­tion declaration.

As it has done to Native American tribes from whom it stole the land, the United States Government has done noth­ing to repair the breach. In fact, it has sys­tem­i­cal­ly embarked on cod­i­fy­ing laws, and enact­ing poli­cies that are dia­met­ri­cal­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the inter­est of African-Americans in every regard.
What is the rea­son for that degree of dis­dain you ask?
After all, Blacks slaved and died for hun­dreds of years to build wealth for white America. The wealth that they them­selves have not ben­e­fit­ted from. It is not enough to claim that your white par­ents came long after­ward and so you have noth­ing to do with slavery.
If that is your expe­ri­ence as a white per­son, you and your fam­i­ly already ben­e­fit­ted hav­ing arrived in an America that slave labor built. if that is your expe­ri­ence, shut your mouth, take a seat, or join the fight for social justice.
You are ben­e­fit­ting from the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors.

Apart from the lack of respect met­ed out to African-Americans, there is a notable hatred, not just from insignif­i­cant mind­less trolls but from sig­nif­i­cant mind­less trolls at all lev­els of the Government.
We see it in the white mili­tias that show up as rein­force­ment to racist police in cities where Blacks and con­sci­en­tious whites are demon­strat­ing for the tear­ing down of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism.
We see it in their Faux media. The num­ber one issue in my opin­ion, that dri­ves this lev­el of raw racism and hatred, is fear that the very foun­da­tions of white suprema­cy are crumbling.

They are scared that what they did to Blacks will be done to them. As much as they hate Blacks, they also hate lib­er­al whites who would join the fight for equality.
They fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand that as more and more whites join the cause of jus­tice, the clos­er we all get to a more just soci­ety through the crum­bling of white apartheid.
As they hat­ed Abolitionists and used all kinds of vio­lence against them, we must view the right-wing vio­lence with the very same lens.

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.

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Fourteen-year-old Jamar lives in a high rise ten­e­ment in the heart of the city. For blocks and blocks all around him, the only thing he sees is more build­ings like the fif­teen-floor low-income build­ing in which he, his moth­er, three broth­ers, and hun­dreds of peo­ple like him call home. Jamar’s father has been in and out of jail for as long as he has been alive, he hard­ly knows when he is out of jail any­more, he just assumes he is always locked up because he hard­ly sees him anymore.
Jamar is Black as you may have already guessed.
The play­ground is a sin­gle fenced-in area where groups of his con­tem­po­raries jos­tle for time on the bas­ket­ball court in the sum­mer­time. All around the com­mon areas, women with strollers lounge with lit­tle kids trail­ing behind them. On the many bench­es scat­tered around the court­yard sits oth­er peo­ple, men & women, junkies, and low-lev­el dope peddlers.
It is like a jun­gle made out of con­crete, life exists for him with­in the con­fines of a few hun­dred feet out­side of the build­ing in which he lives.

Drug deal­ing, gang activ­i­ties, pros­ti­tu­tion, are what he sees daily.
His move­ments are restrict­ed, stray­ing too far away from his build­ing can mean sud­den death, even though he is not a mem­ber of any of the gangs that oper­ate in the vast com­plex of buildings.
Just head­ing down­stairs from the small two-bed­room fifth-floor apart­ment he shares with his mom and broth­ers could mean get­ting roughed up by local bul­lies, or beat­en to a pulp by police offi­cers who see him only as a young black male, tall and gan­g­ly, 6 – 2 and there­fore a threat to be neutralized.
It is an exis­tence that shapes how he views the world, it shapes the way he speaks or even whether he speaks at all.
His only safe space is inside the small apart­ment amidst the noise of his younger sib­lings and the curs­ing and yelling his moth­er does seem­ing­ly all of the time.

Across town, just three wiles across the city line, and just where the sub­urbs begin, the dif­fer­ences in lifestyles are night and day, they are so dif­fer­ent than what hap­pens in the seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing ten­e­ments where Jamar lives, events may eas­i­ly be con­strued to be hap­pen­ing in two dif­fer­ent countries.
Joey is 16 years old he lives with his old­er sis­ter who is a high school senior, she is get­ting ready for col­lege. Joey and Beth live with their par­ents Karen and Ken, in a four-bed­room bun­ga­low on a tree-lined boule­vard where he and his friends ride their bikes, roller­boards, smoke weed, and drink alco­hol. Joey is white.
When the police cruise by they wave to them and some­times stop to chat.
Neither Joey nor any of his friends have ever been stopped much less roughed up or arrest­ed by the police, even though they have done crazy things that could eas­i­ly have land­ed them in jail.
Unless there is a strange twist of fate that seri­ous­ly alters Joey’s life, he too will be attend­ing col­lege when the time comes, and he will grad­u­ate and live a life of pur­pose, all because of his envi­ron­ment and privilege.
Unless there are strange twists of fate that seri­ous­ly alters the tra­jec­to­ry of Jamar’s life,(a) inter­ac­tions with police who make it their busi­ness to ensure that he is arrest­ed for even look­ing at them, after they have assault­ed and abused him repeatedly,(b) the gen­er­al envi­ron­ment in which he lives, are all but cer­tain to ensure that he ends up in prison, like his dad before him, or worse, a sta­tis­tic of gun vio­lence, either by gang­sters or the police.
It is an inex­tri­ca­ble trap from which Jamar may nev­er be able to extri­cate him­self, all because of his envi­ron­ment and lack of privilege.

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.

By Ishena Robinson

Toots Hibbert, the Grammy-win­ning Jamaican singer behind sem­i­nal reg­gae tracks like “Pressure Drop” and “54−46″, died on Friday.

Hibbert, born Frederick Nathaniel, was sur­round­ed by fam­i­ly when he died peace­ful­ly at a hos­pi­tal in Kingston, Jamaica, said a state­ment put out on his social media channels.

He had been hos­pi­tal­ized with com­pli­ca­tions from COVID-19 and put in a med­ical­ly-induced coma ear­li­er this month, reports the Jamaica Gleaner, though his fam­i­ly has not revealed the cause of death.

Hibbert was the front-man of Toots and The Maytals, a group that ush­ered in the roots rock­steady reg­gae sound that was borne in Jamaica in the late ’60s and quick­ly went on to cap­ti­vate music lovers the world over. Hibbert is also cred­it­ed with coin­ing the term reg­gae with the track “Do The Reggae,” which he wrote in 1968 with his back­ing band.

His music was also informed by the R&B and soul music being pro­duced by Black Americans, and his reg­gae-infused cov­ers of stan­dards like “I’ve Got Dreams (To Remember)” and “I Can’t Stand The Rain” are cel­e­brat­ed parts of his oeuvreAcross the globe and in his native Jamaica, Toots was rec­og­nized as a musi­cal icon, and trib­utes have come from all cor­ners in response to the news of his passing

“There is nobody like him. I will remem­ber him as a pas­sion­ate per­former with the biggest per­son­al­i­ty ever,” Jack Jackson, bass play­er for The Maytals, told the Gleaner.

“Toots was always his own self, full of ener­gy, laugh­ter and hard work,” Island Records founder Chris Blackwell said to Rolling Stone, “Toots wrote and per­formed so many great songs all across the world and had just com­plet­ed a total­ly new album which was planned for release this year. It is so sad that he has been tak­en from all of us.”

A pro­lif­ic artist and per­former for close to six decades, Hibbert released the final album of his career, Got To Be Tough, just this August. It has been nom­i­nat­ed for a Grammy.

He is sur­vived by his wife of 39 years and sev­en of his children.

by Joe Jurado

In Louisiana, an inves­ti­ga­tion has been launched into three offi­cers involved in the arrest of two Black teenagers out­side of a Lafayette bowl­ing alley.

CNN reports that last Saturday, 16-year-old twins Jabari and Gerard Celestine were wait­ing out­side to enter the Arcadia Lanes bowl­ing alley when three Lafayette police offi­cers, respond­ing to a call about some­one who had a gun near­by, arrived. Ron Haley Jr., an attor­ney for the fam­i­ly, told CNN that nei­ther boy had a gun on them. According to Haley, the offi­cers approached Jabari, read him his rights, and then placed him in hand­cuffs when they arrived.

Multiple videos of the inci­dent went viral on social media, with one show­ing Gerard approach­ing the offi­cers as they arrest his broth­er. Another video shows the offi­cers push­ing Gerard against a wall and an offi­cer repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him once he’s on the ground

While Jabari was released with­out being charged, Gerard was arrest­ed on charges of inter­fer­ence, resist­ing arrest, and bat­tery of a police offi­cer. Interim Police Chief Scott Morgan has launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the arrest and placed one of the offi­cers on admin­is­tra­tive leave. The oth­er offi­cers have been removed from reg­u­lar duty, pend­ing the results of the inves­ti­ga­tion. The Lafayette Police Department has not released the names of the offi­cers involved or said why they were at the bowl­ing alley.

Man. They, alleged­ly, real­ly tried to arrest Jabari just because he was Black. Like it’s bla­tant­ly obvi­ous, y’all. The fact they just showed up, read his rights, and cuffed him with­out even ask­ing ques­tions or see­ing if he had a gun says it all.

This is only the lat­est inci­dent involv­ing the Lafayette Police Department as last month, the depart­ment faced out­rage fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death of Trayford Pellerin, a 31-year-old Black man. Haley, who also rep­re­sents Pellerin’s fam­i­ly, said that the arrest only spot­lights how nec­es­sary it is for police to address sys­temic racism.

“First you have to be trans­par­ent,” Haley told CNN. “If you are a law enforce­ment offi­cer, you have one of the only jobs in the coun­try where it is legal in your job descrip­tion to take away someone’s life, lib­er­ty, and prop­er­ty. With that pow­er, there must be transparency.”

Social media plat­forms like Facebook are now basi­cal­ly troll farms for right-wing lies and pro­pa­gan­da; their aim is obvi­ous­ly to (a) dis­cred­it the Black Lives Matter Movement, & (b) show that Black pro­test­ers are not exact­ly pro­test­ers, but vio­lent extrem­ists who want to destroy America.
Of course, nei­ther is true, but as we learn as we go along, there is noth­ing that white suprema­cists will not do, includ­ing com­mit­ting mur­der and arson, to main­tain and retain white supremacy.
In many cas­es, the so-called Black anar­chists cov­ered up in black gear from head to toe, are not Black peo­ple at all, but far-right ter­ror­ist white supremacists.
In par­tic­u­lar, on Facebook, they are obvi­ous; they use false accounts to cre­ate pro-police groups. Through their “back the blue cam­paign,” this cre­ates a false, illu­so­ry effect that has fooled some cops into believ­ing that they are real allies. That they are pro-police, when in fact they are dan­ger­ous domes­tic terrorists.
The truth of the mat­ter is that as police Departments con­tin­ue to react with incred­i­ble vio­lence toward gen­uine pro­test­ers, instead of fix­ing their depart­ments, white, right-wing ter­ror­ists are allowed to com­mit crimes, some­times in the pres­ence of police, and walk away.

According to Ryan Devereux of the [Intercept], [a cache of law enforce­ment mate­ri­als was recent­ly hacked and post­ed online under the title “BlueLeaks,” pro­vid­ing an unprece­dent­ed look at the com­mu­ni­ca­tions between state, local, and fed­er­al law enforce­ment in the face of the nation­wide protests. In an analy­sis of near­ly 300 doc­u­ments that ref­er­ence “Antifa,” The Intercept found repeat­ed instances of Antifa and left-wing protest­ing activ­i­ties cast in car­toon­ish­ly grim terms along­side more sub­stan­tive reports of lethal right-wing vio­lence and threats that have received scant men­tion from top Trump admin­is­tra­tion officials.]
Even though American Law enforce­ment agen­cies knew that the por­tray­al of Black pro­test­ers in a light that depicts them as ter­ror­ists were false, those agen­cies remained silent, even as Donald Trump & William Barr paint­ed a fake & fraud­u­lent narrative.
Law enforce­ment offi­cers across the coun­try were shar­ing detailed reports of far-right extrem­ists seek­ing to attack the pro­test­ers and police dur­ing the country’s his­toric demon­stra­tions, a trove of new­ly leaked doc­u­ments reveals, accord­ing to the same reporting.

They flood Facebook posts that show police beat­ing up gen­uine BLM pro­test­ers with pro-police pro­pa­gan­da; they use the most vit­ri­olic and insid­i­ous com­ments to describe Black pro­test­ers and demand that police not only fur­ther abuse the pro­test­ers but kill them.
On the ground, far-right gun-tot­ing white mili­tias sup­pos­ed­ly sup­port­ing police, are allowed to roam the streets of cities all across the coun­try. In con­trast, the very same police bru­tal­ize gen­uine pro­test­ers against police violence.
In case after case, police stand by and watch as heav­i­ly armed mili­tia mem­bers assault and intim­i­date unarmed protesters.
It has now become clear that demar­ca­tion lines, [to the extent that one exist­ed], between Police and white suprema­cist groups, have all but dis­ap­peared. There is no pre­tense anymore.
For those rea­sons, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old, could cross state lines from Illinois into Wisconsin, where he killed two peo­ple and seri­ous­ly injured one oth­er under the pre­text that he was there to pro­tect Wisconsin’s businesses.
Kyle Rittenhouse was not old enough to have the weapon he had, but that did not mat­ter to the police who greet­ed Rittenhouse and oth­er Militia ‑mem­bers, as they hand­ed out bot­tles of water to them and thanked him for being there.
(Yup, back­ing the Blue).

The infa­mous Umbrella man, Branden Michael Wolfe, has been linked to white Supremacy, even though he pre­tend­ed to be a mem­ber of Antifa, a group that is more myth than real­i­ty. According to Law enforce­ment, there is real­ly no Organization know as Antifa; in fact, the group’s name is an acronym for the words Anti-Fascists.
Therefore, it fol­lows that Donald Trump and his lap­dog min­ions like the Florida Drunk Matt Gaetz would demo­nize this group and label them domes­tic terrorists.
One Pro-Police web­site describes Antifa this way. Antifa, short for anti-fas­cist or Anti-Fascism Action, is a rad­i­cal far-left-lean­ing polit­i­cal move­ment, made up of most­ly autonomous groups spread through­out the United States. The move­ment has ties to anar­chism, oth­er rad­i­cal left groups like By Any Means Necessary, and is known for its mil­i­tant pres­ence at protests. Some of the bet­ter known, loose­ly orga­nized Antifa groups include Torch Antifa, Antifa Sacramento, and NYC Antifa.
Fas​.org summed up Antifa this way.

Headline after head­line blared out the facts police knew that the man break­ing store win­dows and set­ting fire to stores was actu­al­ly a white suprema­cist try­ing to stoke a race war, but that was not the nar­ra­tive that Donald Trump and William Barr want­ed into the pub­lic domain.
According to the Star Tribune, a masked man who was seen in a viral video smash­ing the win­dows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store dur­ing the George Floyd protests, earn­ing him the moniker “Umbrella Man,” is sus­pect­ed of ties with a white suprema­cist group and sought to incite racial ten­sion, police said. A Minneapolis police arson inves­ti­ga­tor said the act of van­dal­ism at the AutoZone on E. Lake Street helped spark a chain reac­tion that led to days of loot­ing and riot­ing. The store was among dozens of build­ings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed.
“This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and loot­ing through­out the precinct and the rest of the city,” Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search war­rant affi­davit filed in court this week. “Until the actions of the per­son, your affi­ant has been call­ing ‘Umbrella Man,’ the protests had been rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful. The actions of this per­son cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of hos­til­i­ty and ten­sion. Your affi­ant believes that this indi­vid­u­al’s sole aim was to incite violence.”

The fore­gone is only a cou­ple of instances of that gaslight­ing that Trump, his per­son­al Attorney/​Attorney General William Barr, and oth­er right-wing dem­a­gogues feed the pub­lic about these events.
Given a com­plete­ly free hand, Donald Trump and William Barr would have police across America hunt down and destroy inno­cent Black Americans who demon­strate jus­tice and respectabil­i­ty while ignor­ing the real and present dan­ger white Militias pose to the Republic.
Remarkably the lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion seeps right into the minds of the throngs of une­d­u­cat­ed, low infor­ma­tion peo­ple who sup­port Donald Trump and hate Black people.
They argue con­tin­u­al­ly that Black black crimes are a far greater threat to Black peo­ple than Police killing Black people.
Unfortunately, some igno­rant Blacks also fall vic­tim to that nar­ra­tive because they have been vic­tims of Black on Black crime somehow.

So let us look at the facts, when Black peo­ple kill oth­er Blacks, they go to prison. The Jails and pris­ons are filled with them; they do not get paid vacation.
Blacks kill blacks 90% of the time, accord­ing to research data. Whites kill whites 82% of the time as well. What that shows is that peo­ple kill who they are around.
When the con­se­quences of slav­ery and the social con­struct of Jim crow and gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism is con­sid­ered, it is small won­der that Black peo­ple are not walk­ing around stark rav­ing mad.
Yet, what the imbe­cil­ic Donald Trump and some of his min­ions like Rudolph Giuliani would have you believe, is that Black People Killing Black peo­ple is our real prob­lem. Still, police mur­der­ing our chil­dren, our broth­ers and sis­ters are quite okay.
People can abuse us and take advan­tage of us when we are igno­rant of what is hap­pen­ing around us.
For those rea­sons, dur­ing slav­ery, our enslaved fore­bear­ers were not allowed to read or be privy to any information.
The Slavers under­stood that an informed per­son could not be a slave.
Asked what the great­est threat to the American sys­tem was, the racist FBI direc­tor J Edgar Hoover who abused every pow­er he was giv­en, replied, ” a uni­fied black race.”

Today, I believe that the Black American pop­u­la­tion is divid­ed into four groups, (a) an edu­cat­ed group that is work­ing like hell to dig the race out of the morass it’s in, (b) a group that is men­tal­ly still enslaved, those we must leave alone, © those who refuse to take up a book or any device to learn about what is hap­pen­ing around them, and final­ly, (d), the group that only picks up the Bible.
Either way, we are a long way from eman­ci­pa­tion as it ought to be, because our peo­ple have made a con­scious deci­sion to serve their for­mer mas­ters, wor­ship god and ignore their lives on earth, or trust that the very same peo­ple who enslaved our fore-par­ents are now bet­ter more enlight­ened and con­sci­en­tious peo­ple who would not do the same today.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, 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.