Robert E. Lee High School in Fairfax, VA, the eleventh largest school dis­trict in the nation, is final­ly get­ting a long over­due name change. 

The new name: John R. Lewis High School, after the late civ­il rights icon. 

Fairfax County’s school board vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on Thursday to rename the school after the beloved con­gress­man. The new name goes into effect for the 2020 – 21 school year, USA Today reports. 

The move comes amid con­tin­ued calls from activists and politi­cians to take down mon­u­ments across the coun­try that are ded­i­cat­ed to racists, white suprema­cists and Confederate generals. 

Read More: Rep. Jim Clyburn recalls his last con­ver­sa­tion with friend John Lewis

“Rep. Lewis was a cham­pi­on of the Civil Rights move­ment, and our Board strong­ly believes this is an appro­pri­ate trib­ute to an indi­vid­ual who is a true American hero,” Board chair Ricardy Anderson said in a state­ment. “We will also hon­or his life’s work by con­tin­u­ing to pro­mote equi­ty, jus­tice, tol­er­ance and ser­vice in the work that we do.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=indieartswag&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget‑0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1284815610338312203&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com%2F2020%2F07%2F23%2Frobert-e-lee-high-school-name-change%2F&siteScreenName=theGrio&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=550px

This November, Americans will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to embody Lewis’ spir­it, take up his man­tle and car­ry on his endur­ing lega­cy by exer­cis­ing their right to vote. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​e​J​N​w​z​9​G​Fxi— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 19, 2020

Representative Tamara Derenak Kaufax, the board mem­ber who first pro­posed the name change in February, said in the release Thursday that Confederate val­ues “do not align with our community.”

“Our schools must be places where all stu­dents, staff, and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty feel safe and sup­port­ed,” Kaufax said. “I believe that John Lewis’ extra­or­di­nary life and advo­ca­cy for racial jus­tice will serve as an inspi­ra­tion to our stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

Lewis died Friday at the age of 80 fol­low­ing a month­s­long bat­tle with cancer.

Read More: Sen. Nikema Williams to replace John Lewis on November ballot

theGrio pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, he passed as the nation is grap­pling with racial ten­sions and civ­il unrest over police brutality. 

Lewis was the last liv­ing speak­er at the march on Washington which he helped orga­nize in 1963. The doc­u­men­tary John Lewis: Good Trouble delved into his life of activism.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=indieartswag&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget‑1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1280570353845231620&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com%2F2020%2F07%2F23%2Frobert-e-lee-high-school-name-change%2F&siteScreenName=theGrio&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=550px

59 years ago today I was released from Parchman Farm Penitentiary after being arrest­ed in Jackson, MS for using a so-called “white” restroom dur­ing the Freedom Rides of 1961. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​O​U​f​g​e​a​N​DOm— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) July 7, 2020

Last month, Lewis attend­ed a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington despite his sickness.

“We must say, ‘Wake up, America! Wake up!’ For we can­not stop, and we will not and can­not be patient,” said Lewis.

In relat­ed news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that Lewis will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. 

An invi­ta­tion-only cer­e­mo­ny will be held on Monday (July 27) at 1:30 p.m. The pub­lic can pay their respects on the front steps of the Capitol from 6 pm to 10 p.m. and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. , per CBS News. Social dis­tanc­ing will be enforced and masks are required.(grio.com)

Americans agree that racism in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is a prob­lem. Where they’re still divid­ed is how to address it — and how far to go.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll pub­lished ear­li­er this week, a record-high num­ber of Americans acknowl­edge that Black peo­ple and oth­er minori­ties are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than white peo­ple in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. But a major­i­ty of those polled still oppose poli­cies intend­ed to trans­form law enforce­ment. The poll also finds sim­i­lar divi­sions with regard to repa­ra­tions and the removal of Confederate monuments.

In all these areas, there were sub­stan­tial racial divides in how respon­dents answered.

In total, 69 per­cent of Americans agree that Black peo­ple expe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem than white peo­ple do. This year marks the first year that a major­i­ty of white peo­ple (62 per­cent) agree with this asser­tion. The per­cent­age of Black folks who express this opin­ion has also increased in the last six years. In 2014, the Post writes, 89 per­cent of Black respon­dents said Black peo­ple were not treat­ed equal­ly by the police; this year, that rate is 97 percent.

A major­i­ty of Americans also agree that killings of unarmed Black peo­ple “are a sign of broad­er prob­lems in the treat­ment of Black peo­ple by police,” at 55 per­cent, but this num­ber has decreased since last month, when 69 per­cent of Americans agreed with this state­ment. A major­i­ty of Americans — 63 per­cent — also say they sup­port Black Lives Matter.

But the great­est dis­agree­ment comes in how Americans actu­al­ly want to tack­le the prob­lems of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing and sys­temic racism. Two of the most trans­for­ma­tive pro­pos­als, slash­ing police bud­gets and offer­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties repa­ra­tions, are still unpop­u­lar with a major­i­ty of Americans, though there are steep racial and gen­er­a­tional divides in people’s responses.

Among all U.S. adults, 55 per­cent say they oppose cut­ting police funds and redis­trib­ut­ing that mon­ey to social ser­vices. Black respon­dents were the only demo­graph­ic group in the sur­vey who sup­port­ed the pol­i­cy, at 50 per­cent. Only a third of white Americans said they want­ed to cut police bud­gets, while Hispanic respon­dents were even­ly split: 47 per­cent say­ing they sup­port­ed divest­ing from the police, while anoth­er 48 per­cent say­ing they were against it.

Still, this idea was large­ly a fringe one before the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., at the end of May. The same is true of repa­ra­tions, which have been dis­cussed for gen­er­a­tions but are start­ing to see more approval among a greater share of Americans.

A major­i­ty of Americans (63 per­cent) still oppose the gov­ern­ment giv­ing mon­ey to Black Americans whose ances­tors were enslaved. But the rate of peo­ple who do sup­port repa­ra­tions — 31 per­cent — is a siz­able increase from the 19 per­cent who favored it in a 1999 ABC News poll, the Washington Post writes.

Currently, more than 80 per­cent of Black peo­ple favor repa­ra­tions, com­pared to rough­ly 75 per­cent of white peo­ple who say the gov­ern­ment should not pay them. A slight major­i­ty of Hispanic respon­dents, 56 per­cent, say they oppose gov­ern­ment-fund­ed reparations.

There were sim­i­lar divi­sions with regard to remov­ing Confederate stat­ues, which hon­or fig­ures who were either pro­lif­ic slave own­ers, will­ing to die to pre­serve slav­ery, or both. More than three out of four Black peo­ple sup­port their removal, while majori­ties of white and Hispanic respon­dents said they pre­ferred to keep them. (root​.com)

We say there are no black busi­ness­es for us to sup­port; that state­ment is not true. As a nation of peo­ple with­in this larg­er nation, we have made a con­cert­ed effort to spend our mon­ey with every­one out­side of our own com­mu­ni­ty.
Imagine the pow­er we would have, if we spent over one tril­lion dol­lars we spend each year with our own, or even a part of it?
Spending our mon­ey out­side our own com­mu­ni­ty makes it dif­fi­cult to near impos­si­ble for Black busi­ness­es to sur­vive much less thrive.
Those of us who sup­port black busi­ness­es out­side the tra­di­tion­al Barbershops and Hair salons, hold those small busi­ness own­ers to expo­nen­tial­ly high­er stan­dards than we do every­one else.
No mat­ter how long those black busi­ness­es have been serv­ing our needs pro­fes­sion­al­ly and faith­ful­ly, one mishap elic­its out­rage and a com­ment of, “that is why I don’t sup­port Black peo­ple’s busi­ness.“
As if we are look­ing for a rea­son to spend our mon­ey else­where.


The fact of the mat­ter is that the white dol­lar cir­cu­lates in the white com­mu­ni­ty innu­mer­able amounts of times, and I am not speak­ing hyper­bol­i­cal­ly.
Hispanics, the group clos­est to African-Americas at the bot­tom, see their dol­lar cir­cu­late about 5 times before it leaves. It is get­ting bet­ter as they coa­lesce and build new busi­ness­es.
Asians keep a dol­lar in their com­mu­ni­ty 120 times longer than African Americans, accord­ing to (mon​ey​man​.io.) In fact, lots of busi­ness­es and con­sumers keep their dol­lars cir­cu­lat­ing in their cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties.
The aver­age lifes­pan of a dol­lar in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty is 28 days; in the Jewish com­mu­ni­ty, it’s 19 days, and in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, it’s six hours. (source vic​to​ri​aad​vo​cate​.com)

Had it not been for bar­ber­shops and hair salons, the dol­lar would have been out of the black com­mu­ni­ty in sec­onds.
In the AA com­mu­ni­ty, it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for black busi­ness­es to grow, and sur­vive for some of the rea­sons I artic­u­lat­ed and oth­ers.
When we do not sup­port our own, it becomes impos­si­ble for our busi­ness­es to com­pete, pro­vide qual­i­ty goods and ser­vices, or hire and retain employ­ees.
Ironically, we are quick to argue that prices are too high, qual­i­ty is sub­stan­dard, and we are not giv­en dis­counts, with­out real­iz­ing that our own actions have cre­at­ed the issues we com­plain about. Yet, the very same issues exist in oth­er busi­ness­es not owned or oper­at­ed by us, yet we have no prob­lem spend­ing our hard-earned mon­ey with those com­pa­nies. In many cas­es, those com­mu­ni­ties are open­ly hos­tile and dis­re­spect­ful to us, but we spend anyway.

The AA com­mu­ni­ty spends some­where between 1.2 7 1.5 tril­lion dol­lars each year.
In fact, last year, the AA com­mu­ni­ty spent a whop­ping 1.4 tril­lion dollars.

IT is dif­fi­cult to tell where that mon­ey goes. Certainly, it is not cir­cu­lat­ing in the AA com­mu­ni­ty, and it is damn sure not cir­cu­lat­ing in AA businesses.

At the risk of sound­ing dis­re­spect­ful, it seems that far too many with­in the AA com­mu­ni­ty do not under­stand that Black peo­ple are capa­ble of hav­ing busi­ness­es out­side Barbershops and Hair salons.
The sight of a Barbershop or a Hair salon elic­its a weird excite­ment, yet a black-owned tech or oth­er busi­ness strug­gles to gain a sec­ond look from mem­bers of the AA com­mu­ni­ty.
It seems almost as if there are psy­cho­log­i­cal forces at work, caus­ing our peo­ple not to believe, not to dream, not to dare imag­ine any busi­ness out­side the tra­di­tion­al.….… well, you know, bar­ber­shops & hair shops.
Could the events of Black Wall Street still be at play?
You decide!
Black spend­ing pow­er is greater than that of many large nation’s gross domes­tic prod­ucts.
If Black peo­ple are afraid to sup­port and grow Black busi­ness­es out of fear that the KKK and the American Government will band togeth­er to destroy them once again, then we are liv­ing exact­ly how they would like to see us live, in fear.
If we accept that the gov­ern­ment will aid racist whites to destroy busi­ness­es and take hun­dreds of lives, then we are already defeated.

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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.

A black woman on Long Island claimed on Instagram that her white neigh­bor has sub­ject­ed her to years of threats and race-based harass­ment that includ­ed throw­ing feces onto her prop­er­ty — but cops say there is no evi­dence of “bias” or “crim­i­nal­i­ty.”
Jennifer McLeggan, a 39-year-old sin­gle moth­er in Valley Stream, detailed the alleged abuse she has endured since 2017, when she moved into her home, where she now lives “in fear,” accord­ing to a hand­writ­ten sign on her front door that she post­ed on Instagram.

“My neigh­bors have been racial­ly harass­ing me since I pur­chased my home,” the sign reads. “They have said that I can be ‘erased.’”
McLeggan claims the uniden­ti­fied white man next door has also told her to “go back to where I came from” and had friends spit into her yard, accord­ing to the sign. McLeggan once caught her neigh­bor throw­ing dog feces into her front yard and caught him on video, lead­ing her to win an unspec­i­fied judg­ment in court, she said. The reg­is­tered nurse and moth­er of a 2‑year-old daugh­ter told WABC she post­ed the sign in case she’s even­tu­al­ly harmed. “In case some­thing hap­pens to me here, then some­body would know I’m in the house with a baby,” McLeggan told the sta­tion. “If I die in here, at least cops would see the sign.”

Cops met with McLeggan at her home Monday and held a press con­fer­ence Tuesday in response to the alle­ga­tions that gained trac­tion on social media, WABC reports. “At this time, we do not have any evi­dence of any bias,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told reporters. Ryder cit­ed near­ly 50 calls to cops between McLeggan and her neigh­bor since she moved into the home in 2017, say­ing the com­plaints came “almost equal­ly” from both par­ties, Newsday reports.

McLeggan’s neigh­bor admit­ted hav­ing a pel­let rifle and a pel­let hand­gun, but claimed he only used them for tar­get prac­tice in his back yard, Ryder said. McLeggan’s neigh­bor admit­ted hav­ing a pel­let rifle and a pel­let hand­gun, but claimed he only used them for tar­get prac­tice in his back yard, Ryder said. “There is no crim­i­nal­i­ty at this time from either side,” the police com­mis­sion­er told reporters. Ryder said he called the press con­fer­ence to dial back ten­sion between the pair. “This thing is get­ting way out of con­trol from what it is,” Ryder said. “Not that our vic­tim is not impor­tant, not that our vic­tim is not get­ting her atten­tion, but at the same time we have to make sure we have the evi­dence and every­thing that is going to help us move for­ward and move for­ward in the cor­rect way.” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who joined Ryder dur­ing Tuesday’s press­er, said she urged res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the allegations.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who joined Ryder dur­ing Tuesday’s press­er, said she urged res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions. “I want to make it very clear that hate crimes and big­otry have absolute­ly no place here in Nassau County,” Curran said.
A mes­sage seek­ing com­ment from Nassau County police was not imme­di­ate­ly returned Thursday.
A ral­ly in sup­port of McLeggan is planned for Thursday in Valley Stream. She’s expect­ed to speak after the event, accord­ing to her Instagram feed.

This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @nypost.com
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Editors note, on the police response.
The state­ments by the Valley stream police and the coun­ty exec­u­tive are bogus.
The County Executive Laura Curran, com­ments urg­ing res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions. “I want to make it very clear that hate crimes and big­otry have absolute­ly no place here in Nassau County,” Is a bunch of unadul­ter­at­ed garbage.
If a white person/​family report­ed that a black neigh­bor threw dead ani­mals, feces of any kind, made threats and oth­er acts of intim­i­da­tion, includ­ing with the use of a gun( as far as the vic­tim is con­cerned, the gun is real that is the law) the black per­son would have been in jail a long time ago.


The police stat­ed that no crimes have been com­mit­ted, that is a load of shit which stinks only in com­par­i­son to them and their racist incom­pe­tence and tac­it com­plic­i­ty in this mat­ter.
It is always inter­est­ing to hear these incom­pe­tent leech­es who live off tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens claim that they can­not take action, despite video evi­dence, and evi­dence which has won the claimant redress in a court of law.
Long Island New York has always been one of those racist enclaves, regard­less of what the res­i­dents there say.
In the low­er regions of New York State, Little pock­ets of racism exist in pock­ets, like in Staten Island where a cer­tain group seems to believe that they have a right to decide who lives where they live. (They are usu­al­ly Italians and Irish) and are from fam­i­lies of cops fire­fight­ers and gang­sters. There are many oth­er such pock­ets of this kind of regres­sive igno­rance, includ­ing parts of Yonkers and oth­er areas.
So it is lit­tle won­der that the [cops] haven’t arrest­ed the filth next door to Ms. McLeggan.

At some stage of the game black folks are going to have to face the real­i­ty that there are some irre­deemable Edomites they will either m****r F*****g go around or roll the f*** over.
You think they don’t know that when you say ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER”, they don’t know that you are say­ing that“black lives mat­ter too”?
Of course, they do, so clear­ly when they counter with the bull­shit, “all lives mat­ter”, what they are try­ing to do is to drown out your voice.
Worse yet, when they par­rot the non­sen­si­cal cocka­mamie “blue lives mat­ter”, they are telling you that they want their ter­ror­is­tic cops to keep killing you. 

One of the most bull­shit things I hear com­ing from these despi­ca­ble hate­ful things is that peo­ple need to respect law enforce­ment.
Law enforce­ment work for peo­ple, not the oth­er way around. It is incum­bent on law enforce­ment to respect the cit­i­zens they serve, all cit­i­zens, and from that respect, they will, in turn, earn the respect of all the cit­i­zen­ry.
But when law enforce­ment has always been pro­tec­tor to one group and a bul­ly­ing oppres­sor to anoth­er, the respons­es are some­what under­stand­able.
I say [some­what], because despite those two dif­fer­ing real­i­ties, those igno­rant racist white m***** f*****s know that it is wrong to shoot an inno­cent unarmed man, they know it is crim­i­nal and wrong to sit on the neck of a man until he dies, they know that it is wrong to apply a carotid neck-hold on a tiny wisp of a black man walk­ing home in the night, killing him.
It is the racist com­po­nent that desen­si­tizes them to the hor­rors of those evils.

Of course, those morons were always going to come out in sup­port of their killer cops. They had no prob­lem with the slave patrols, they had no prob­lem with the lynch­ings, they had no prob­lem with seg­re­ga­tion, they have no prob­lem with the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, they have no prob­lem with the school to prison pipeline, they have no prob­lem with the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of young black kids, they have no prob­lem with infe­ri­or schools, hos­pi­tals, hous­ing, health­care, neigh­bor­hoods or drink­ing water that poor black peo­ple are forced to endure, why would they all of a sud­den care about police slaugh­ter of our peo­ple today?

America has nev­er been good for African-Americans and those Edomites are quite con­tent with keep­ing it that way.
It is for those rea­sons that the next gen­er­a­tion must make it abun­dant­ly clear that hey will not tol­er­ate the s**t any longer.
They do not care about bro­ken black bod­ies, what they care about is bro­ken glass. They do not care about jus­tice, what they clam­or for is social order, a social order which keeps them on top based on their self-acclaimed non­sen­si­cal notion that their washed-out skin col­or is supe­ri­or to our melanat­ed rich­ness.
But if there is no jus­tice there can be no real peace.
Georgia Long-serv­ing con­gress­man and a true civ­il rights icon John Lewis just passed.
As con­do­lences pour in from all quar­ters, so too has the lying despi­ca­ble Republican racists try to pay lip ser­vice to this black icon, seek­ing to cash in on the dead body of our moral kings and queens. We do not need their con­do­lences for our heroes.
We do not need plat­i­tudes as they have done for decades using the good names and sac­ri­fices of our depart­ed cham­pi­ons Martin Luther King and others.

Spare us your shit, black peo­ple have always been the con­science and moral­i­ty to the extent either of those two attrib­ut­es exists or, has ever exist­ed in America. So do not blow any more smoke up our ass­es when our con­science lead­ers pass on.
As Bob Marley asked in his song, “how long shall they kill our prophets, While we stand aside and look”?
Oh Yea, that march­ing and singing ish about “we shall over­come” is not cut­ting it any­more, it nev­er did.
The mis­takes of past strug­gles, have been and still remain, try­ing to appeal to the bet­ter angels with­in dev­ils.
Those hea­thens are not out there stand­ing up in defense of the police, they are in the streets offer­ing them­selves up as counter-demon­stra­tors against your God-giv­en right to exist.
Their police which is par­tial­ly paid by black peo­ple’s tax dol­lars are pro­tec­tors of their com­mu­ni­ties, but are oppres­sive race sol­diers oper­at­ing as judges, jury, and exe­cu­tion­ers in the black com­mu­ni­ties.
police have nev­er been of ser­vice to the black com­mu­ni­ty, they nev­er will.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.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.

Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civ­il rights leader who served in Congress since 1987, has died after a months-long bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, Friday. He was 80.

Lewis was diag­nosed with stage 4 can­cer on December 2019 and under­went treat­ment while remain­ing in office. Lewis would become one of President Trump’s fiercest oppo­nents — right up until his death — in a polit­i­cal and civ­il rights career that began some 50 years ago.

Lewis’s life reads like a fic­tion­al movie char­ac­ter cre­at­ed to span the entire civ­il rights move­ment through one per­son. He was born on February 21, 1940, to Willie Mae (née Carter) and Eddie Lewis, both of whom were share­crop­pers. Lewis was one of nine chil­dren, raised in Troy, Ala. He would attend Pike County Training High School, in Alabama, and lat­er, American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tenn. Lewis would become a fix­ture on the Nashville civ­il rights scene where he fre­quent­ly led sit-ins — one of which led to the deseg­re­ga­tion of Nashville lunch coun­ters — and began attend­ing non­vi­o­lence work­shops that would lead him to a non­vi­o­lent civ­il rights phi­los­o­phy that he still believed in right up until his death.

Lewis knew ear­ly on that he want­ed to be a free­dom fight­er after feel­ing the impact that Jim Crow laws had on him as a child.

“I saw racial dis­crim­i­na­tion as a young child,” Lewis said in a 2005 inter­view with NPR. “I saw those signs that said ‘White Men, Colored Men, White Women, Colored Women’. … I remem­ber as a young child with some of my broth­ers and sis­ters and first cousins going down to the pub­lic library try­ing to get library cards, try­ing to check some books out, and we were told by the librar­i­an that the library was for whites only and not for ‘col­oreds’.”

Lewis cred­its a child­hood trip to the North, to Buffalo, N.Y., as the first time he saw white men and black men work­ing togeth­er. He would also be fas­ci­nat­ed by water foun­tains with­out signs des­ig­nat­ing them for whites only. Lewis would lis­ten to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks on the radio and would meet them both while only a teenager.r

In 1960, Lewis would become one of the orig­i­nal 13 Freedom Riders, who would ride bus­es to chal­lenge seg­re­gat­ed seat­ing in the South. In 1963 — at only 23 — he would become one of the youngest mem­bers of the “Big Six” lead­ers as chair­man of the Student Nonviolent Coördinating Committee (SNCC) and the youngest speak­er at the March on Washington. During his three years with SNCC, Lewis would help SNCC launch the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a push to orga­nize and reg­is­ter black vot­ers in Mississippi. Lewis was also inte­gral in open­ing the Freedom Schools, alter­na­tives to pub­lic schools most­ly in the South, that were com­plete­ly free and aimed to help teach African American chil­dren learn to think and act politically.

On March 7, 1965 — a day that would become known as “Bloody Sunday” — Lewis, sev­er­al reli­gious lead­ers, activists, and some 600 marchers attempt­ed to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to protest the police shoot­ing death of unarmed pro­test­er Jimmie Lee Jackson a few weeks ear­li­er. The plan was for marchers to walk to then-Gov. George Wallace’s office to ask ques­tions about Jackson’s death. Gov. Wallace said that there would be no march and ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol chief to “use what­ev­er mea­sures are nec­es­sary to pre­vent a march.”

Lewis, stood beside Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as he led march across the bridge. At the end of the bridge, marchers were con­front­ed by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to leave. Instead they began to pray. Police then launched tear gas, while mount­ed troops began beat­ing non­vi­o­lent pro­test­ers with night­sticks. Lewis’ skull was frac­tured in the mêlée and the scars from that day were still vis­i­ble as he got old­er. The visions of police beat­ing pro­test­ers, which were broad­cast­ed across America, would prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson into sign­ing the Voting Rights Act into law on Aug. 6, 1965.

Lewis would turn his atten­tion to change on a gov­ern­men­tal lev­el in 1977 when he would run an unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign to win Atlanta’s 5^th con­gres­sion­al dis­trict seat. In 1981, Lewis was elect­ed to the Atlanta City Council and in 1986, Lewis ran again for the 5^th Congressional District seat in a tough cam­paign to beat favorite Julian Bond for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion. He would go on to beat Republican Portia Scott in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Lewis has been a con­gres­sion­al jug­ger­naut since, win­ning the seat every elec­tion since.

.Lewis was the only liv­ing speak­er from the March on Washington on stage dur­ing Barack Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2009 and lat­er Obama would sign a pho­to of him­self to Lewis with the words. “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.”

Lewis would go on to win sev­er­al hon­orary doc­tor­ates and awards for his civ­il rights work, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 from President Obama and the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for the third install­ment of March, a graph­ic nov­el depict­ing his life dur­ing the civ­il rights move­ment along­side co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. The first two vol­umes of March were pub­lished in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The New York Times would call the series “A gal­va­niz­ing account of his com­ing-of-age in the move­ment, it’s a cap­sule les­son in courage of con­science, a sto­ry that inspires with­out mor­al­iz­ing or sim­pli­fy­ing in hindsight.”

From the Times:

March begins and draws to a close with scenes from the march Lewis led in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, for­ev­er known as “Bloody Sunday” after state troop­ers and the local police attacked the non­vi­o­lent pro­test­ers. The open­ing pan­els depict the marchers gath­ered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, then move from their tense, prayer­ful faces to the pha­lanx of bil­ly clubs and white hel­mets on the oppo­site bank. Lewis, then only 25, was beat­en that day; five months lat­er, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

In what has now become a band­wag­on, Lewis was one of the few Congress mem­bers to announce, even before President Donald Trump took office, that he had no inten­tions or work­ing with an open­ly racist elect­ed official.

“I don’t see this pres­i­dent-elect as a legit­i­mate pres­i­dent,” Lewis said in an inter­view with NBC’s Meet the Press a week before Trump was sworn into office. “I think the Russians par­tic­i­pat­ed in help­ing this man get elect­ed and they have destroyed the can­di­da­cy of Hillary Clinton.”

Lewis was fierce­ly loy­al to the fight for equal rights and made no bones about his loy­al­ty. As such, he didn’t attend Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, the first one he’s missed since being elect­ed to Congress.

“You can­not be at home with some­thing that you feel is wrong,” Lewis said.

During impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Trump in 2019, Lewis gave an impas­sioned speech on the House floor.

“When you see some­thing that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral oblig­a­tion to say some­thing, do some­thing,” Lewis said Wednesday. “Our chil­dren and their chil­dren will ask us: ‘What did you do? What did you say?’”

Lewis, a fight­er since birth, not­ed that he was in a fight for his life after learn­ing of his can­cer diag­no­sis in December 2019 dur­ing a rou­tine med­ical visit.

“I’ve been in some kind of fight — for free­dom, equal­i­ty, basic human rights – for near­ly my entire life,” he told AJC in December. “I have nev­er faced a fight quite like this one.”

In a December state­ment, Lewis was hope­ful about advances in can­cer research and his chances to win his health battle. 

“I have decid­ed to do what I know to do and do what I have always done: I am going to fight it and keep fight­ing for the Beloved Community,” he said. “We still have many bridges to cross.”

AS IF 2020 WASN’T ALREADY BAD ENOUGH, NOW JOHN LEWIS DIES. REST IN PEACE JOHNLEWIS.

Asked by a CBS inter­view­er why black peo­ple are dying at the hands of police, Donald Trump replied in a pre­dictable racist fash­ion, “so are white peo­ple, so are white peo­ple”, what a ter­ri­ble ques­tion to ask?
The sad tragedy in that answer from this most inglo­ri­ous of morons, is that there was (a) no sense of the math involved in the dynam­ic, in that the ques­tion came out of the real­i­ty of the 13% black pop­u­la­tion as against the 60% white stake, and that blacks are killed by white race sol­diers, (police) at 3.5 times the rate of white peo­ple. (b) the igno­ra­mus in chief nev­er both­ered to address the over­ar­ch­ing issue of police abuse and vio­lent mur­der of American cit­i­zens, Black white & brown.

Missing from his answer, was any recog­ni­tion that regard­less of race, police were killing peo­ple they ought not to be killing, and that in and of itself is a pub­lic health cri­sis.
In fact, even as the igno­ra­mus in chief failed to grasp the seri­ous­ness of the cri­sis police pose, not just to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the American peo­ple, but to the sta­bil­i­ty of the American democ­ra­cy, the Minneapolis city coun­cil was vot­ing to declare racism a pub­lic health crisis. 

The Minneapolis City Council declared racism a pub­lic health emer­gency in the city Friday, vow­ing to allo­cate fund­ing and oth­er resources to “name, reverse, and repair the harm done” to peo­ple of col­or in the city. The res­o­lu­tion was unan­i­mous­ly approved near­ly two months after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police while in cus­tody in south Minneapolis. Days after his death, Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins called on the coun­cil to define racism as a pub­lic health crisis.

The police vio­lence being wit­nessed across America is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hatred that cer­tain seg­ments of the white pop­u­la­tion har­bor for African-Americans. That hatred is man­i­fest­ed every day on talk radio, on [Faux tele­vi­sion] and it plays out in the fan­tas­tic fal­la­cy of Karens and Kens whose busi­ness it is to tell black peo­ple what they can and can­not do as cit­i­zens of this repub­lic.
Nothing that Karen or Ken does is is dan­ger­ous as the pow­er police wield, they have the pow­er of life and death, and they are not flinch­ing, nei­ther are they shy about using that pow­er.
The res­i­dent evil in the White House has unleashed that mur­der­ous hatred on every street and boule­vard in America.
Its tox­i­c­i­ty is pal­pa­ble, its con­se­quences severe, and it’s ten­ta­cles stifling. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.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.

For every sto­ry of police bru­tal­i­ty that gains nation­al atten­tion, there are sev­er­al more that fly under the radar. Take, for instance, the sto­ry of Daniel Jefferson, who alleges that, after being arrest­ed by Memphis Police in 2015 dur­ing a drug inves­ti­ga­tion, he was beat­en up at the Raines police precinct.

“They beat me with chairs, ping pong tables; man, I had per­ma­nent boot marks on my back for months,” Jefferson told WREG in Memphis. Internal MPD doc­u­ments detail Jefferson’s account and show that exces­sive force com­plaints were upheld for three of the five offi­cers accused. Jefferson was arrest­ed after alleged­ly fir­ing shots at a plain­clothes offi­cer. “He jumped out on me with his gun, so I let off my shots, and I kept on going,” Jefferson said. Jefferson even­tu­al­ly went to prison on charges of aggra­vat­ed assault and being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm but the charge of attempt­ed first-degree mur­der was dropped.

Jefferson was unapolo­getic about shoot­ing the offi­cer sim­ply because he wasn’t aware of who he was. “I thought it was just a reg­u­lar [exple­tive] — reg­u­lar per­son try­ing to rob me,” he said. He did admit that if he was aware the man was an offi­cer, his response would’ve been dif­fer­ent. “I ain’t gonna lie, if I knew he was an offi­cer, I would have sur­ren­dered. You know what I’m say­ing? I ain’t try­ing to shoot no police officer.”

He still has con­cerns about how much worse his sit­u­a­tion could’ve been which, giv­en every­thing we know, is com­plete­ly valid. In the same year that Jefferson was beat­en, Sandra Bland was killed found dead in police cus­tody. While he has yet to file a law­suit, Jefferson does want some com­pen­sa­tion for what he endured. “They know they … have to pay [a] big boy bag of mon­ey, you hear me?”

While some of the offi­cers were sus­pend­ed due to the inci­dent, it’s unclear if any of them are cur­rent­ly employed by the Memphis Police Department. MPD did not respond to Jefferson’s alle­ga­tions when asked by WREG on Monday. It’s tru­ly sad that Jefferson was beat­en in cus­tody and the fact he’s still alive is both a source of amaze­ment and relief. 

A cou­ple from California has been charged with a hate crime after they were caught on video on July 4^th defac­ing a Black Lives Matter mur­al in the city of Martinez. 42-year old Nicole Anderson and 53-year old David Nelson were seen paint­ing over the word “Black,” which had been paint­ed in yel­low, with black paint.

Both of them were wear­ing red shirts, but David’s shirt had Trump’s name on it with the expres­sion “Four More Years”.
“We’re sick of this nar­ra­tive, that’s what’s wrong,” David said in the video, accord­ing to ABC News. “The nar­ra­tive of police bru­tal­i­ty, the nar­ra­tive of oppres­sion, the nar­ra­tive of racism, it’s a lie.”
Some bystanders can be heard in the back­ground of the video telling them to stop, say­ing that what they’re doing is racist. At one point, Nicole even paused what she was doing and said murals like that should only be done in New York, adding, “This is not hap­pen­ing in my town.”

For about five min­utes, David yelled “All lives mat­ter,” to which one of the bystanders respond­ed, “Until Black lives mat­ter, no lives mat­ter.” The two were gone when the police arrived at the scene. They only found a wit­ness who took a pic­ture of the sus­pects’ car, which was described as a Nissan pick­up truck with the word “NICOLE” paint­ed in sil­ver. An inves­ti­ga­tion led to their arrest and the charges.
“The com­mu­ni­ty spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time putting the mur­al togeth­er only to have it paint­ed over in a hate­ful and sense­less man­ner,” Chief Manjit Sappal of the Martinez Police Department said in a state­ment. “The City of Martinez val­ues tol­er­ance and the dam­age to the mur­al was divi­sive and hurtful.”

Three white cops from Aurora Colorado have been fired for report­ed­ly tak­ing pho­tos of them­selves as they mocked the death of 23-year old Elijah McClain, a Black man, who died after police used a choke­hold on him in August 2019.

According to reports, the three mon­sters attend­ed his memo­r­i­al, took pho­tos reen­act­ing the choke­hold that caused his death, and then cir­cu­lat­ed them to oth­ers with­in their police depart­ment.
The department’s inter­im police chief, Vanessa Wilson, said all the involved offi­cers were “imme­di­ate­ly placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave with pay in non-enforce­ment capac­i­ties” after she was informed of the incident.

Wilson added that an inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing the inci­dent is ongo­ing and the results, includ­ing the pho­to evi­dence and offi­cers’ names, will be pub­licly released once com­plet­ed.
McClain’s fam­i­ly expressed their dis­ap­point­ment with the recent inci­dent, say­ing it was a “new low” fol­low­ing what the police did that caused his death, they said in a statement.

The family’s state­ment con­tin­ues: “This is a depart­ment where offi­cers tack­led an inno­cent young black man for no rea­son, inflict­ed out­ra­geous force – includ­ing two carotid choke­holds – for fif­teen min­utes as he pled for his life, joked when he vom­it­ed, and threat­ened to sic a dog on him for not lying still enough as he was dying. They tampered with their body cam­eras to hide the evi­dence. They exon­er­at­ed the killers. They deployed riot police and spewed pep­per gas on peace­ful pro­tes­tors [sic] at a vig­il of mourn­ers play­ing the vio­lin. And now this.”

It is easy for white peo­ple to say, “We got it made over here”, while detail­ing some per­ceived hor­rif­ic con­di­tion in some oth­er coun­try. When you are sit­ting atop the pile, that is in and of itself, and the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of what peo­ple are in the streets about, the very man­i­fes­ta­tion of ‘white priv­i­lege”.

“WE”?
Define “we”.
Sure, some peo­ple of all races are doing okay, but for a lot of peo­ple, things are not so rosy. The prob­lem is that so many white peo­ple do not know or under­stand their own his­to­ry.
They have no clue that the planters divid­ed the black enslaved and the white enslaved bonds-peo­ple along racial lines, in order to main­tain con­trol over them all.

It was crit­i­cal that they find a way to do so because of what was a bur­geon­ing under­class that they were afraid they would not be able to con­trol.
So they con­vinced the white crim­i­nals thrown out of Europe that they were supe­ri­or based on the sim­i­lar­i­ty of their skin col­or with that of the planters and wealthy estate hold­ers.
They went fur­ther, by mak­ing them over­seers on the plan­ta­tions and slave catch­ers after they had worked off their peri­od of bond­ed servi­tude.
Out of the slave ‑catch­ing in the Southern States came [the thing we now call polic­ing].
White [refuse]being dumped on America from Europe did not end until after the civ­il war ended. 

Still today, the one per­cent have con­vinced poor whites that they are some­how supe­ri­or to oth­er races in America. While all of us fight over the crumbs from their tables.
The mid­dle class is being evis­cer­at­ed, and more than forty per­cent of American fam­i­lies can­not find an extra $500 cash in case of an emer­gency.
All fo this, while we are at each oth­er’s throats and they pile up tril­lions in their sav­ings accounts.
Ninety-sev­en per­cent of the poor­est coun­ties in the nation are in Republican-run states. 

These are coun­ties that are heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed by poor whites, who, despite white priv­i­leges, are unable to pull them­selves up by their boot­straps.
What they do well, is claim vic­tim­hood, and are heav­i­ly invest­ed in hatred.
Stupid is as stu­pid does. As long as they have you fooled that your pale skin is some­how some­thing which places you above oth­er races in America they will con­tin­ue to rape all of us, and all you have is your white fan­ta­sy of superiority.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.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 STEFANO BLOCH and DANIEL E. MARTÍNEZ

As the con­ver­sa­tion around exces­sive police force has pushed the coun­try to con­sid­er nov­el and dras­tic reforms in the wake of the mur­der of George Floyd and the wide­spread protests that fol­lowed, there is one area that has yet to gain wide­spread atten­tion. Given the hor­rif­ic bru­tal­i­ty wit­nessed in Floyd’s mur­der and oth­er cas­es of black, brown, and poor peo­ple being killed by police offi­cers, it’s under­stand­able that law enforce­ment killings of pets has yet to become a major issue. Still, it is worth con­sid­er­ing what these killings can teach us and what we might do about them. Ultimately police killings of pet dogs only fur­ther demon­strate the racial dis­par­i­ties in police vio­lence and the need for reform.

The real­i­ty of dog deaths at the hand of police says far more about how humans are over-policed than about dogs per se. The real­i­ties of shoot­ings asso­ci­at­ed with and at dogs reveal one of the insid­i­ous and rarely acknowl­edged man­i­fes­ta­tions of state vio­lence enact­ed in and on vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties of color.

Moving beyond the sen­sa­tion­al media sto­ries and activist accounts of “pup­py­cide” that put the num­ber of dog killings by cops at more than 10,000 annu­al­ly, we recent­ly looked at the data on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings obtained from the third and fourth largest police agen­cies in the coun­try. While we found the per­cent­age of dog-relat­ed offi­cer-involved shoot­ings to be extra­or­di­nary, the over­all num­ber of dog shoot­ings were low­er than what has been cit­ed in pub­li­ca­tions rang­ing from the Atlantic to Police Magazine, num­bers based on a gross esti­mate pro­vid­ed by Laura Mathews, a spe­cial assis­tant with the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. To be sure, dog deaths at the hands of police do reg­u­lar­ly occur, with the online post­ing of count­less graph­ic videos — many of which include scenes of vio­lence also being direct­ed at humans—offer­ing fur­ther evi­dence of the problem.

But as our analy­sis of the data on offi­cer-involved shoot­ings reveals, between 2010 and 2016, Los Angeles Police Department offi­cers were involved in 417 shoot­ings, with dogs being shot in more than a quar­ter of cas­es. For the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, whose offi­cers were involved in 406 inci­dents between 2010 and 2017, dogs were shot 45.6 per­cent of the time. More alarm­ing than the num­ber of dogs being shot by police is where dogs are killed by police, as we dis­cuss in a recent study. 
Read more here; https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​7​/​c​o​p​s​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​d​o​g​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​.​h​tml‘

Many peo­ple were shocked when Itasha Brunson, a moth­er of five from Mississippi, doc­u­ment­ed her attempt to take the lives of her­self and her five chil­dren on Facebook Live. She says that she want­ed to com­mit sui­cide after find­ing out that her boyfriend was already mar­ried. Moments lat­er, she was involved in a very seri­ous car accident.

In the almost-20-minute video, Brunson said that she want­ed to com­mit sui­cide and decid­ed to also include her daugh­ters as she want­ed some­one to “come with her.”

After post­ing her live video, Itasha report­ed­ly was involved in a mul­ti-car acci­dent on I‑240 in Memphis, Tennessee, accord­ing to The Courier Daily. Brunson was report­ed­ly tak­en to the hos­pi­tal with two of her chil­dren for treat­ment on their non-crit­i­cal injury.

After receiv­ing back­lash online, Brunson claimed that she didn’t real­ly want to com­mit sui­cide and was just bad­ly hurt upon know­ing that her boyfriend was actu­al­ly a mar­ried man.

Many peo­ple were con­cerned about her men­tal health fol­low­ing the inci­dent. Others said she just want­ed atten­tion, for which she said she felt they were judg­ing her too harsh­ly. A GoFundMepage has been set up under her name.(adapted)

As the sum­mer of 2020 begins to take shape, more. and more peo­ple are walk­ing around wear­ing masks. And as the COVID-19 virus con­tin­ues to demon­strate why it should be tak­en seri­ous­ly in many so-called red states, *states that are run by Republicans,* as in Texas, Florida, Arizona et al, author­i­ties are report­ing a rapid spike in CODID-19 cas­es. Some pun­dits have argued that dog­mat­ic polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing has result­ed in some peo­ple refus­ing to wear a sim­ple mask, and that ‑that may be respon­si­ble for the spikes being record­ed in those Republican-run states.
At the risk of los­ing steam in all of the COVID upticks, is the urgent­ly need­ed issue of polic­ing revamp­ing and overall.

As more pri­vate com­pa­nies, NGO’s and oth­er enti­ties begin to add their names to the Black Lives Matter cause, or rather begin to dis­en­tan­gle from the moor­ings of the sink­ing white suprema­cy titan­ic, and even as some of the veneers of sys­temic racism are peeled away, it is becom­ing clear­er by the day, just how entrenched and insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism is, to the American con­struct.
Across the globe as well, peo­ple who have nev­er set foot in America, but who now ben­e­fit from the bridg­ing of the dig­i­tal divide, are able to get a glimpse of what African-Americans have com­plained about for over four hun­dred years.
As such, they too are shin­ing a light on America and demand­ing change.
The loud­er the calls and the more com­pa­nies take action to cor­rect this sys­temic prob­lem, the loud­er the howls of push­back becomes from the *white-wing* media, as it tries to counter the truth of what peo­ple are see­ing with their own eyes.
Not exact­ly the peo­ple the right-wing cares about.

The next time you hear them talk about polic­ing as if it can­not be done with­out bru­tal­i­ty and mur­der, under­stand that they don’t care about those being abused.
Years ago I knew lit­er­al­ly all of the offi­cers on the force in my city. As a small busi­ness own­er and a for­mer cop, I made it my duty to fos­ter good rela­tions with the offi­cers in my city.
For their part, the major­i­ty of the offi­cers at the time were good peo­ple just doing a job.
There were foot ‑patrol offi­cers, bicy­cle patrols, and of course offi­cers in their cruis­ers as well as the detec­tives.
Officers could be count­ed on to stop and say hel­lo while they walked up and down or rode by on their bicy­cles or drove by in their cruis­ers.
And then it all start­ed to dry up.….…. so I asked one cop, a real­ly good friend of mine. “Hey what hap­pened to all of the bicy­cle and foot patrols”?
He told me blunt­ly, “Mike, the chief stopped all of that, he wants us to come out and write tick­ets and lock up peo­ple”.

Let that sink in for a minute, for the next time you hear that there are no quo­tas, or that the police are there to serve the com­mu­ni­ty.
They are not. They are there to crack skulls, bring in rev­enue, and to make arrests.
The for-prof­it pris­ons demand that cops make arrests.
Regardless of what police exec­u­tives say in pub­lic, even if they do not out­right tell cops to crack skulls and drag peo­ple to jail, the response by their supe­ri­ors when it comes to their eval­u­a­tions makes it clear what is expect­ed of them.
District Attorneys and judges at all lev­els are an inte­gral part of the cul­ture of oppres­sion of peo­ple of col­or.
The cas­es pros­e­cut­ed by pros­e­cu­tors and the dis­par­i­ty in the sen­tences hand­ed down for the very same offens­es between black and white offend­ers, tell the entire story.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.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.

Women who are strug­gling to nav­i­gate the busy thor­ough­fares of life, while in the midst of a pan­dem­ic, and deal­ing with the enor­mous stress of fight­ing for racial jus­tice, now have a new resource to fos­ter self-care and cre­ate an abun­dant life. Jamaican-born author and pub­lish­er, Janet Autherine, has launched her third book, Island Mindfulness: How to Use the Transformational Power of Mindfulness to Create an Abundant Life.

Inspired by her island roots, Janet’s “Everything is Irie” approach to Mindfulness, takes read­ers on a dynam­ic jour­ney to self-empow­er­ment. The book is filled with heart­felt sto­ries of nav­i­gat­ing love, mar­riage and divorce, racial prej­u­dices, and learn­ing to adjust one’s sail in the face of finan­cial and career chal­lenges. Readers are encour­aged to slow their pace, and in the spir­it of the islands, mind­ful­ly and inten­tion­al­ly embark on a jour­ney to nour­ish their minds, bod­ies, and souls, in order to claim an abun­dant life.

Mindfulness is an inte­gra­tive, mind-body approach that is instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing bal­ance amidst the incred­i­ble stress that life can bring. With Island Mindfulness, Autherine offers a refresh­ing per­spec­tive on the mind­ful­ness jour­ney that brings calm to any strug­gle. Born in St. Thomas, Jamaica, the Orlando-based author migrat­ed to the United States at the age of twelve and nav­i­gat­ed many chal­lenges on her jour­ney to become a respect­ed writer, speak­er, and admin­is­tra­tive law judge. In Island Mindfulness, she shares how her hum­ble upbring­ing, steeped in the prin­ci­ples of hard work, resilience, and grat­i­tude, influ­enced her journey.

When asked about the moti­va­tion for writ­ing the book, Autherine explained: “I want­ed to empow­er women of col­or to speak their truth, prac­tice self-care, and claim an abun­dant life. We weren’t meant to just strug­gle, to be strong for every­one else while sac­ri­fic­ing self-care. I want us to believe that we deserve to have mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships, finan­cial abun­dance, spir­i­tu­al abun­dance, and a pur­pose­ful life.”

In the wake of the hor­rors of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and the stress of the inter­na­tion­al protests for racial jus­tice, Island Mindfulness is a time­ly resource for those look­ing for the peace and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty need­ed to cre­ate an abun­dant life, even in tur­bu­lent times. Through the lens of Janet’s jour­ney, read­ers will find a trea­sure box of life lessons and a gift of peace.

sland Mindfulness is cur­rent­ly avail­able on Amazon​.com. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the author vis­it: JanetAutherine​.com

About the Author
Janet Autherine has a heart for youth and women’s empow­er­ment. She is the author of three books: Growing into Greatness with God, Wild Heart, Peaceful Soul and Island Mindfulness: How to Use the Transformational Power of Mindfulness to Create an Abundant Life. She is a grad­u­ate of Pennsylvania State University, Boston College Law School, and Georgetown University School of Law. Her mis­sion is to empow­er oth­ers through the art of sto­ry­telling and the trans­for­ma­tion­al pow­er of mindfulness.

When they tell you just how great American cops are and that there are only a few bad apples.…..
Well, as I said in an arti­cle days ago if 50 cops are on scene and 10 are engaged in abus­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic and the oth­ers do noth­ing, please explain to me how the oth­er 40 can lay claim to being good cops? Unless of course, beat­ing up and killing mem­bers of the pub­lic is depart­ment pol­i­cy?
Well, you be the judge .……

»»»»»»»»

Three police offi­cers in Wilmington, North Carolina were fired on Wednesday after a rou­tine audit of dash­cam footage caught them hav­ing vio­lent­ly racist con­ver­sa­tions, includ­ing one where an offi­cer said he “can’t wait” to “go out and start slaugh­ter­ing them fuck­ing [n — words]” in a poten­tial civ­il war. 
During an audit on June 4, a Wilmington PD Sgt. Heflin dis­cov­ered that the dash­cam on Officer Michael “Kevin” Piner’s car had been acci­den­tal­ly acti­vat­ed, and had cap­tured con­ver­sa­tions Piner had with Cpl. Jesse Moore and Officer James “Brian” Gilmore. In those two con­ver­sa­tions, the offi­cers antic­i­pat­ed and even glo­ri­fied the prospect of racial civ­il war and looked for­ward to indis­crim­i­nate­ly mur­der­ing Black peo­ple, among oth­er racist comments.

“Piner tells Moore lat­er in the con­ver­sa­tion that he feels a civ­il war is com­ing and he is ‘ready,’” Piner said, accord­ing to doc­u­ments released by police Wednesday. “Piner advised he is going to buy a new assault rifle in the next cou­ple of weeks. A short time lat­er Officer Piner began to dis­cuss soci­ety being close to ‘mar­tial law’ and soon ‘we are just gonna go out and start slaugh­ter­ing them fuck­ing [n‑words]. I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.’ Moore respond­ed that he would not do that. Piner stat­ed, ‘I am ready.’” 
Piner then told Moore that a civ­il war was need­ed to “wipe ’emoff the fuck­ing map. That’ll put them back four or five gen­er­a­tions.” Moore respond­ed, “You’re crazy.” Wilmington police chief Donny Williams, a Black vet­er­an of the depart­ment who had been named its per­ma­nent chief on the pre­vi­ous day, said at a press con­fer­ence that he would have no tol­er­ance for the behav­ior record­ed by the dash­cams, accord­ing to Wilmington’s Port City Daily. “This is the most excep­tion­al and dif­fi­cult case I have encoun­tered in my career,” Williams said. “We must estab­lish new reforms for polic­ing here at home and through­out this country.”

In addi­tion to fir­ing the three offi­cers, Williams said he would noti­fy the North Carolina Education and Training Standards Commission because “these indi­vid­u­als should not be allowed to prac­tice law enforce­ment again,” accord­ing to the report. Williams also said that the Wilmington police depart­ment would con­sult with the dis­trict attor­ney to review cas­es where the offi­cers had been called to tes­ti­fy as wit­ness­es, to deter­mine if they had been biased towards the defen­dants, as well as “if any crimes had been com­mit­ted by the offi­cers” them­selves.
The con­ver­sa­tions all show Piner, Gilmore, and Moore turn­ing their ire towards protests against the ongo­ing nation­al protests against police bru­tal­i­ty and racism, as well as Black peo­ple they’ve arrest­ed, Black judges, and Black fel­low officers.

During a con­ver­sa­tion about the protests, Gilmore and Piner voiced their dis­gust about videos of police offi­cers kneel­ing with pro­test­ers, what Gilmore refers to as “wor­ship­ping blacks.” Gilmore also told Piner that it’s “almost like [Black peo­ple] think they’re their own god.” The audio also caught Piner and Gilmore talk­ing about Black offi­cers in their depart­ment. “Let’s see how his boys take care of him when shit gets rough, see if they don’t put a bul­let in his head,” Piner said, refer­ring to one Black offi­cer, who Piner also called a “piece of shit.” 
Later, dash­cam video caught Piner and Moore’s phone call, which includ­ed Moore refer­ring to a Black woman he arrest­ed as an “[n‑word],” and a Black local judge as a “fuck­ing Negro mag­is­trate” and referred to her by a homo­pho­bic slur. 
“God has a spe­cial place in hell for peo­ple like that, man. Hate ‘em,” Moore told Piner. “It’s bad because not all Black peo­ple are like that.” After Piner respond­ed, “Most of ‘em,” Moore said: “90 per­cent of them, Kevin, 90 fuck­ing per­cent of them.” 

All three cops had been with the police depart­ment for more than twen­ty years, accord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the Wilmington Police Department, and all three had spent sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time on the department’s Special Operations team through­out their careers.
When inter­viewed, “each offi­cer point­ed to the stress of today’s law enforce­ment envi­ron­ment” as the rea­son for the con­tent of the con­ver­sa­tions, accord­ing to the report. All three also denied being racist.
This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly appeared on VICE US.