No mat­ter how bad­ly police behave there will always be a sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion that sides with them. They will tell you “if only the per­son fol­lowed instruc­tions”. “If only the per­son fol­lowed com­mands”. “if only the per­son did not speak”. “If only the per­son did not reach”. “if only the per­son did not stand” “If only the per­son did not sit.” “if only the per­son did not kneel.” “if only the per­son did not breathe”. “If only the per­son did not say he can­not breathe”.
How about the police stop abus­ing & killing inno­cent unarmed peo­ple they swore to pro­tect?
Of course, fol­low­ing instruc­tions has nev­er stopped a pow­er-crazed mani­ac with a badge, gun & and whole heap of immu­ni­ty from account­abil­i­ty before.
Police vio­lence has been a sta­ple in the black com­mu­ni­ty for as long as blacks have been off the cot­ton plan­ta­tions and have been herd­ed into plan­ta­tions of oth­er designs.
Redlined com­mu­ni­ties, hous­ing projects, and so on.
Nobody cared that blacks were being mali­cious­ly arrest­ed and inno­cent­ly con­vict­ed and incar­cer­at­ed for crimes they did not com­mit.
Why should they? It was the law after recon­struc­tion, it has­n’t changed.
Nobody cared that blacks were being vio­lent­ly assault­ed and mur­dered by police. again, it was the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy of con­tain­ment of black peo­ple and in par­tic­u­lar black men.

When [cop-apoligists] come up with con­vo­lut­ed rea­sons as to why peo­ple are being killed and vicious­ly assault­ed by the police, and when they tell you that it is only a small minor­i­ty, con­sid­er this.
Ten cops at a scene where two or three are ille­gal­ly assault­ing and bru­tal­iz­ing a cit­i­zen, not one inter­venes to stop it.
How many are good?
Four cops direct­ly involved in George Floyd’s mur­der, how many of them did any­thing to stop it?
Not one. So it seems to me, that [aside from a seg­ment] of the detec­tives who do actu­al inves­ti­ga­tions, and many are even worse than the street cops, cops in the streets are almost a hun­dred per­cent bad.
We can talk about num­bers all day, cops plant­i­ng drugs, their col­leagues know that it is hap­pen­ing and nobody says “this is wrong”.
Cops lying in reports. Cops fal­si­fy­ing & plant­i­ng evi­dence. Cops com­mit­ting per­jury on the wit­ness stand. (judges do not hold them account­able when they are found to have lied under oath, nei­ther have pros­e­cu­tors). Cops leav­ing out excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence which would aid in the exclu­sion of defen­dants from crim­i­nal entan­gle­ments. Cops sweep­ing up inno­cent peo­ple into fraud­u­lent drug raids and lying on affi­davits as to their involve­ment.
Cops beat­ing up cer­tain drug deal­ers, steal­ing their drugs and cash, then turn­ing right around and giv­ing the drugs right back to anoth­er group of deal­ers to sell on their behalf.
Please, some­one, point me to the good cops.

The con­tin­ued abhor­rent treat­ment of black peo­ple in America and the bru­tal­i­ty still met­ed out to peo­ple of col­or at the hands of police is as cul­tur­al as apple pie.
Not only has racist ten­den­cies been cod­i­fied into laws, the entrench­ment of white supe­ri­or­i­ty, and by default black infe­ri­or­i­ty, was encap­su­lat­ed and memo­ri­al­ized across all sec­tors of American soci­ety.
In his 1915 film (Birth of a nation) Southern film­mak­er D W Griffiths depict­ed the KKK as heroes while den­i­grat­ing blacks in the most egre­gious and despi­ca­ble ways pos­si­ble.
The far from lib­er­al [LAtimes] wrote: With sweep­ing shots and inti­mate close-ups, the 1915 silent film her­ald­ed the future of cin­e­ma, but its abhor­rent depic­tion of African Americans and cel­e­bra­tion of the Ku Klux Klan reawak­ened vir­u­lent strains in the nation’s vio­lent racial his­to­ry.“
The film was shown in President [Woodrow Wilson’s] White House. 
Government pol­i­cy!

Power tends to cor­rupt; absolute pow­er cor­rupts absolute­ly. Cliché maybe, nev­er­the­less true. When the police are giv­en the absolute pow­er they now pos­sess to keep the most vul­ner­a­ble and down­trod­den in place, giv­en time, race becomes less of an issue, the abuse now tran­scends race.
Given enough time and pow­er, the immu­ni­ty bestowed on police was bound to lead to impuni­ty.
As the gap between the haves and have nots widen, more and more peo­ple are forced into pover­ty, more and more peo­ple are forced into home­less­ness.
In gen­er­al, blacks are always the most affect­ed, but more and more whites are find­ing them­selves strug­gling to make ends meet, as lit­er­al­ly every dol­lar is sucked up to the one per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.
The nev­er before seen dis­tinct mix of salt with the tra­di­tion­al pep­per, after the police lynch­ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, may very well be attrib­ut­able to white recog­ni­tion that their way of life is also threatened.

There are sev­er­al lay­ers of excuse by those who would deny the crimes being com­mit­ted by police. Not the least of which are (a) deny­ing it is occur­ring, (b) make excus­es for police, © demo­niz­ing the vic­tims, (d) mak­ing the argu­ments that whites are being killed as well.
Of the four I find the lat­ter inter­est­ing, because it seeks to ratio­nal­ize mur­der as nor­mal behav­ior.
As long as police believe that they have the pow­er to do as they please with­out con­se­quence, they will do as they please.
As long as the nation wor­ships and idol­izes police, attribut­ing to them hero sta­tus, for mere­ly doing a job they will­ing­ly signed up for, mem­bers of the KKK and oth­er Neo-nazis will always find sanc­tu­ary in police depart­ments, many of which are ver­i­ta­ble cesspools of anti-black sen­ti­ments & activities.

Oh, in case you are won­der­ing, it was bound to hap­pen, as stat­ed in the open­ing para­graph, giv­en the unchecked pow­er and immu­ni­ty giv­en to police, the vio­lence would inevitably find its way to poor­er, less pow­er­ful, and voice­less whites.
It has.….….Nothing tan­gi­ble will come of this moment in our his­to­ry, there are far too many pow­er­ful peo­ple who are ded­i­cat­ed to keep­ing a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion on the plan­ta­tion.
There is an entire polit­i­cal par­ty ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing it.

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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 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.

“WHEN YOU REFUSE TO STAND UP TO THE AGGRESSOR HE WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED.” ” HE WILL FORCE YOU TO YOUR KNEES, THEN TO YOUR STOMACH AND THEN HE WILL PILE ON TOP OF YOU, AND HE WILL SQUEEZE THE LIFE OUT OF YOU BY PLACING HIS KNEE ON YOUR NECK UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD”.

The biggest stum­bling block to black lib­er­a­tion in America, is the [white wing’s] refusal to acknowl­edge black human­i­ty.
Days ago I wrote an arti­cle which was a kick-off to what I hope will be a series on this sub­ject of race in America and the issues that I believe are the accel­er­ants fuelling that infer­no.
The aggres­sion we see com­ing from police toward black peo­ple is a small micro­cosm of the larg­er issue of hatred that a seg­ment of the white com­mu­ni­ty har­bors towards blacks.
They rev­el in every­thing neg­a­tive that hap­pens to black peo­ple. They have weaponized police to be their mil­i­tary wing. Not that the police were ever right­eous, but with mil­i­ta­riza­tion, KKK & skin­head infil­tra­tion, the pow­ers vest­ed in police must now be cur­tailed.
In a shame­ful twist of irony, the laws that are sup­posed to guar­an­tee equal pro­tec­tion to all cit­i­zens, the very foun­da­tion of what democ­ra­cy ought to be, is the very thing that has been used as a stick over the backs of black peo­ple.
They must no longer be allowed to weaponize police as a tool of white supremacy.

If you ever tuned in to AM talk radio as I do from time to time, you will hear the likes of Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Rudolph Guiliani, Glen Beck, and a whole bunch of oth­ers spew racist bile all day.
If you ever won­der at the sense of antipa­thy towards black peo­ple in a cer­tain sub­sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, and if you won­der where the poi­son is com­ing from, look no fur­ther than [white-wing talk radio].
It is a con­stant drum­beat of mind-numb­ing racist invec­tives that lit­er­al­ly leaves you with your mouth wide open.
You may won­der whether you have tak­en a time machine back to 1950 or whether you are in fact liv­ing in the year 2020?
They cel­e­brate the police, regard­less of the egre­gious nature of the crimes they are accused of.
Police offi­cers shak­ing hands with heav­i­ly armed white mili­tia mem­bers, while beat­ing to a pulp, those who dare stand up against the injus­tice of police vio­lence.
We have seen police fail to arrest vio­lent white suprema­cist riot­ers but vicious­ly assault and arrest those protest­ing racism. We have seen police offi­cers wear­ing the patch­es of white suprema­cists on their uniforms.

The seg­ment of the white pop­u­la­tion refus­ing to let go of white suprema­cy did not get to where they are today sole­ly by being dumb on their own. they were dumb­ed down fur­ther by a media ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of dumb­ing it down. The end result of homog­e­niz­ing and con­cen­trat­ing that block is geared toward the con­tin­u­ance and fur­ther­ance of white suprema­cy.
My great aunt was a lit­er­al library of old Jamaican proverbs. I found that every one of them was applic­a­ble to the sit­u­a­tion to which they were applied con­tex­tu­al­ly.
One such proverb was, (If you tek time search yu wi find ants gut).[Translation] If you search dili­gent­ly you will find the intestines of an ant.
If you let peo­ple speak long enough they will reveal who they are.
What I find to be evi­dent in most of the con­ver­sa­tions com­ing from the [white-wing] is a refusal to acknowl­edge the issues that affect African-Americans.
Refusing to acknowl­edge the pain of the com­mu­ni­ty is a con­tin­u­ance of the 3/​5’s of a human con­cept, once enshrined and cod­i­fied into their laws.
It is a per­pet­u­a­tion of a sick and con­vo­lut­ed belief, albeit igno­rant and inane that deval­ues the lives of black peo­ple.
It is for that rea­son that I wrote, “when you try to change the sub­ject when I tell you what offends me you are deny­ing my human­i­ty.“
When you fail to acknowl­edge my human­i­ty you, there­fore, believe that I am disposable.

Sure, I under­stand that like every­one else black peo­ple are far from per­fect. I know that many of us do dumb things. Sometimes I find it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to stand with the cause, because I know just how dumb some of us can be. Just yes­ter­day I wit­nessed an inci­dent includ­ing a bunch of black folks that caused me to say, “Lord I some­times under­stand why we are not respect­ed”. Nevertheless, I just don’t believe that these are things that peo­ple should lose their lives over. Stupidity has no col­or.
When the Vice President of the United States Mike Pence was giv­en sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to acknowl­edge that black lives mat­ter in an inter­view and he default­ed to the white non­sense of, “all lives mat­ter”, then you know that they do not believe that black lives mat­ter.
They know damn well that when we say “black lives mat­ter” [we are say­ing black lives mat­ter too].
When they default to “all lives mat­ter,” every damn one of you black peo­ple must rec­og­nize that they are say­ing [‘your life damn sure does­n’t mat­ter to me”.]
Because they do not believe that your life mat­ter, and because they do not believe that my life mat­ter, they do not have a prob­lem when we are dis­posed of, by what­ev­er means.

Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart in a recent inter­view said, “Police are “enforc­ing seg­re­ga­tion.” “The police are, in some respects, a bor­der patrol, and they patrol the bor­der between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that sit­u­a­tion erupts, and we express our shock and indig­na­tion.“
I don’t believe I have ever seen it artic­u­lat­ed any bet­ter than that.
The African-American com­mu­ni­ty has always been forced to sub­ju­gate itself to white com­fort­a­bil­i­ty, enforced by white police.
That has been an open secret. The most pris­tine, most edu­cat­ed, and high­ly placed blacks, have hor­ror sto­ries to tell of hav­ing to sub­ju­gate them­selves to the most unin­tel­li­gent, unlearned, uncouth, une­d­u­cat­ed moron with a badge and gun, mak­ing him­self fit into what­ev­er small space that white peo­ple allow him to exist in.

Black Americans, all of us, must know that when you give your lunch mon­ey to the school-yard bul­ly he won’t just take it and for­get about you. He now knows that you are scared of him, you are now on his suck­ers list. He will nev­er leave you alone until you make him.
He will not just take your mon­ey, he wants to humil­i­ate you as well…
As long as you allow some­one to invade your space and claim it as his own, and as long as you step back to accom­mo­date his aggres­sion, he will nev­er stop until he forces you off a cliff or up against a wall.
As long as your ene­my knows that you are more con­cerned with liv­ing regard­less of the con­di­tions he forces upon you, he will force the worst con­di­tions upon you.
If your ene­my knows that you would rather live on your knees than die on your feet, he will con­tin­ue to force you to your knees and then onto your face.
When he forces you onto your stom­ach, face in the dirt, with no place else to go, he still will not be sat­is­fied, he will pile onto your body and he will kneel on your neck and he will force the life from you.

Neville Chamberlain the pre-world war two British Prime Minister, will for­ev­er be remem­bered as the man who tried to appease the ani­mal­is­tic Adolph Hitler.
Hitler, we are told, saw Chamberlain’s appease­ment as a weak­ness. Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, relin­quish­ing a region of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. In 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Chamberlain, who had lost polit­i­cal sup­port, resigned in 1940 and died a few months lat­er.
Giving in to a bul­ly has nev­er stopped a bul­ly, step­ping back with the hope that your tor­men­tor will leave you to live in peace has nev­er worked.
It did not work for the Native-Americans, it di not work for Neville Chamberlain, nei­ther has it worked for Blacks who have spent hun­dreds of years being abused and work­ing with­out com­pen­sa­tion.
Why would any­one believe it will work now?

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.

I just feel like some of the sys­tem could, you know, look at us as indi­vid­u­als,” Brooks said, “We do have lives, you know, was just a mis­take we made, you know, and, you know, not, not just do us, as if we are ani­mals. You know lock us away.”

We talk about the KKK, white suprema­cists, and all kinds of white iden­ti­ty extrem­ists that are in law enforce­ment across America in our writ­ings on this site and on our youtube chan­nel @ chart-a-box.
The cen­tral issue of white iden­ti­ty extrem­ists in American law enforce­ment is one that has not received the focusEd spot­light it needs, and is one of the casu­al­ties of the move­ment against police vio­lence ignit­ed anew by the police lynch­ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Politicians on both sides have failed and refused to acknowl­edge that there are seri­ous issues in American law enforce­ment as a result of white suprema­cists that have infil­trat­ed depart­ments, some­thing the Federal Bureau of Investigations warned about well over a decade ago.


Even after the death of George Floyd and oth­ers lynched by men wear­ing police depart­ments uni­forms and oper­at­ing under the col­or of law. Two black half broth­ers lost their lives, one was found hang­ing from a tree whose death was ruled a sui­cide by police, and the oth­er shot to death in Orange County California by police under the murki­est of cir­cum­stances.
We know that the police was always against the black com­mu­ni­ty, we also know that the FBI warned that this was hap­pen­ing because we have seen their com­ments in chat rooms…we have seen the way they allow armed white mili­tia mem­bers to walk over the rights of peace­able demon­stra­tors opposed to police vio­lence.…. And we have seen how they vio­lent­ly assault those who dare stand up for jus­tice.
It comes as no sur­prise that they would wear their gang patch­es at a time when the streets are in chaos and the coun­try is look­ing more and more like a pow­der keg.
.
.
.

A video sur­faced on social media tak­en dur­ing a George Floyd protest in Costa Mesa on Monday.Friday, June 5, 2020

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has received calls and com­plaints about a deputy seen wear­ing sym­bols asso­ci­at­ed with far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist groups. ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. (KABC) — The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has received calls and com­plaints about a deputy seen wear­ing sym­bols asso­ci­at­ed with far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist groups.
Video sur­faced on social media tak­en dur­ing a George Floyd protest in Costa Mesa on Monday. The deputy was wear­ing sewn on patch­es for “OathKeepers” and “Three Percenters.”

Internal Affairs is inves­ti­gat­ing and the deputy is on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes says such patch­es are pro­hib­it­ed and the tim­ing could­n’t be worse. “The pub­lic sees that as a sym­bol or sym­bol­ic of oppres­sion or racism or extrem­ist views. That is not okay with me. I do not tol­er­ate that behav­ior. My hope is that the pub­lic real­izes that act of this one indi­vid­ual is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of not only the rest of the sher­if­f’s depart­ment, but it’s not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of law enforce­ment,” Barnes said.
The name of the sher­if­f’s deputy seen in the video has not been made public.

Michael Henkel, a 61-year old man who worked as a Family Court super­vi­sor in Philadelphia, has been fired from his job after being caught on cam­era caus­ing a dis­tur­bance dur­ing a peace­ful Black Lives Matter protest. He was seen destroy­ing posters and even curs­ing and shout­ing that he doesn’t care about Black lives.
Last Friday, posters with Black Lives Matter mes­sages were put up on a fence in the park as part of a child-friend­ly protest march orga­nized by com­mu­ni­ty leaders.

Henkel, who had worked for Philadelphia’s First Judicial District, report­ed­ly went and took down the signs. A 34-sec­ond video clip showed Henkel doing so while a woman was heard telling him that the signs are not his prop­er­ty. “I know. It’s the city. I pay for this… Yeah, my tax­es pay for this place, yep,” Henkel respond­ed. “So I can do what­ev­er I want… I’m always around here, too.” The woman respond­ed say­ing, “Great. I live right here. Black Lives Matter!” to which Henkel replied, “Not to me, they don’t.” The woman post­ed the video on Facebook on Sunday, imme­di­ate­ly spark­ing out­rage against Henkel. It was blocked from pub­lic view the next day but was post­ed by anoth­er per­son on Instagram.

Moreover, local activist Leslie Chapman expressed dis­ap­point­ment on Henkel, say­ing, “For that adult to take that away from chil­dren, it’s just real­ly awful. The kids prob­a­bly had a lot of fun mak­ing those signs,” accord­ing to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Meanwhile, it has been con­firmed that Henkel “is no longer an employ­ee,” said Family Court spokesper­son Marty O’Rourke since he made mul­ti­ple vio­la­tions of the state court system’s Code of Conduct. “The Court takes the inci­dent very seri­ous­ly and believes Mr. Henkel’s behav­ior as shown in the video is egre­gious and total­ly unac­cept­able for an employ­ee of the Courts,” he said.

Six pub­lic safe­ty employ­ees were placed on leave after a Michigan woman was found unre­spon­sive in a hold­ing cell less than 12 hours after her arrest.
Priscilla Slater was found unre­spon­sive at 12:45 p.m. by a Harper Woods pub­lic safe­ty staffer on June 10, accord­ing to The Detroit Metro Times. She was rushed to a hos­pi­tal and pro­nounced dead at a local hos­pi­tal. She had been arrest­ed at 1 a.m. in con­nec­tion with a shoot­ing at a hotel in Harper Woods, a sub­urb of Detroit. Six Harper Woods pub­lic safe­ty employ­ees were placed on leave while the death is being inves­ti­gat­ed by the Michigan State Police. Harper Woods Public Safety Director Vincent Smith sent well-wish­es to Slater’s fam­i­ly and promised to get answers.

“I offer my con­do­lences to Ms. Slater’s fam­i­ly. MSP inves­ti­ga­tors, mem­bers of com­mand and myself noti­fied Ms. Slater’s fam­i­ly of the inci­dent in an effort to pro­vide what­ev­er infor­ma­tion that may have been avail­able at the time,” Smith said in a state­ment. “MSP inves­ti­ga­tors are dili­gent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing this inci­dent with the com­plete coöper­a­tion of the Department. The cause of death will not be known until the results of the autop­sy and tox­i­col­o­gy report are com­plet­ed.” In an inter­view with Local 4 Defender, Smith said the sus­pen­sions were pro­to­col and not an admis­sion of guilt. The employ­ees in ques­tion includ­ed four civil­ian aides and two supervisors.

“It is pro­ce­dur­al right now,” Smith said. “The inves­ti­ga­tion is going on with state police. These six were on duty when Ms. Slater was found unre­spon­sive. It is pro­ce­dur­al to coöper­ate with the MSP inves­ti­ga­tion.”
Slater’s death sparked a tense protest in front of the Harper Woods City Hall. Demonstrators con­front­ed Mayor Kenneth Poynter and his wife as they walked into the build­ing on Friday, June 12, two days after Slater’s death. Poynter’s wife man­aged to snatch a sign and rip it. Slater’s fam­i­ly is also hold­ing the city account­able and has retained attor­ney Geoffrey Fieger.
“There is no way the police wouldn’t see that some­body was in a seri­ous med­ical need,” Fieger said, accord­ing to Fox 2 Detroit.

Fieger is launch­ing an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into Slater’s death. “The indif­fer­ence to Black lives by the pow­ers that be is astound­ing,” Fieger said. “It doesn’t hap­pen to rich white peo­ple.
”https://​atlantablack​star​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​1​6​/​s​i​x​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​s​a​f​e​t​y​-​e​m​p​l​o​y​e​e​s​-​o​n​-​l​e​a​v​e​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​m​i​c​h​i​g​a​n​-​w​o​m​a​n​-​w​a​s​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​d​e​a​d​-​i​n​-​c​e​l​l​-​l​e​s​s​-​t​h​a​n​-​1​2​-​h​o​u​r​s​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​a​r​r​e​st/

It took me many years to begin pay­ing atten­tion to American foot­ball.
I thought it was arro­gant, that as it is with base­ball a coun­try could play a game against itself and then declare itself world cham­pi­ons.
As a Jamaican through and through, I took umbrage with a coun­try that did not real­ly give respect to the uni­fy­ing game of soc­cer, a game that is played uni­ver­sal­ly.
In addi­tion to that, the United States nev­er both­ered with crick­et. My beloved cricket!.….….…yea, I have a prob­lem with that.
Cricket is played all across the globe, the West Indies, which dom­i­nat­ed dur­ing the time I was com­ing of age. Many Nations field­ed a nation­al crick­et team and today even more nations are field­ing nation­al crick­et teams. 

The West Indies, England, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe, now even Ireland and Afghanistan have International crick­et teams.
The United States does not. I thought there was a cer­tain degree of snooti­ness and arro­gance in the United States’ deci­sion, not to both­er play­ing a pop­u­lar game played by the rest of the world, but to cre­ate a com­pet­ing game, play among itself, and then declare itself world cham­pi­on. choos­ing to play base­ball over crick­et and to invent its own foot­ball game that no one else played rather than join­ing the rest of the world in soc­cer.
Since then it is impor­tant to note that the United States has field­ed a nation­al soc­cer team, still, no nation­al crick­et team.

But that is hard­ly my point, after much urg­ing from friends I reluc­tant­ly willed myself to begin under­stand­ing American foot­ball.
The more I watched and learned the more fas­ci­nat­ed I became with it, even though I will admit, I still do not believe that it requires any social skills perse.
Sure, it helps to be big, fast, and to pos­sess the abil­i­ty to jump high, throw a foot­ball far, or be built lion a tank to block a run­ner from the oth­er team or to stop a mad rush against your own quar­ter­back, etc.
But I still believe that a tal­ent­ed crick­eter, ten­nis play­er, or golfer, or a soc­cer play­er is a far dif­fer­ent tal­ent than that which is required to play in the (NFL). The National Football League.

Despite my ini­tial dis­dain for foot­ball, I grew to love the game, and became a big fan. I watched every down that I could, even though I real­ly did not cheer for any par­tic­u­lar team, out­side of my cur­so­ry inter­est in the New York Giants and Jets, both of which are based in New Jersey. And of course, I hat­ed the New England Patriots.
After a few years, I could not wait for the new sea­son to begin, and then Colin Kaepernick kneeled against police vio­lence and racism in the soci­ety, and all hell broke loose.
The igno­rant racist & divider- in-chief saw an open­ing and he stirred up the oth­er igno­ra­mus­es.
The divider-in-chief found in the event, a means to [diss the sons-of bitch­es](sic) [oth­er­wise called black men], and so he ran with it.
As dumb as he is, he is not too dumb to rec­og­nize that white America hates black men, and that by diss­ing them, he was solid­i­fy­ing his hold on them.

The reac­tion by the NFL not to stand up with Trump’s racist assault, not to men­tion his mass of deplorable racial­ists was too much for me. How could the NFL not stand with its play­ers?
What is the NFL with­out its 70% of black play­ers? How could a com­pa­ny not stand by its prod­uct?
Yes.…..dammit, I said [prod­uct] that is what the black play­ers are on that plan­ta­tion.
The Home Depot founder has decid­ed to keep sup­port­ing Donald Trump from what I read, but the com­pa­ny itself is try­ing to dis­tance itself from its own founder. They know black peo­ple buy from Home Depot too.
So they are mov­ing away from their big­ot­ed founder, they want to con­tin­ue sell­ing lum­ber, paints, and every­thing they sell, but the NFL refused to stand up with its prod­ucts, its black play­ers.
For me, that was a bridge too far.

The black­list­ing of Kap, and the resul­tant dis­trac­tion about not respect­ing the flag or the anthem, was a diver­sion from what police are doing.
For my part, it was enough for me to take a stand. My deci­sion nev­er to watch anoth­er pass thrown unless Kap was rehired or com­pen­sat­ed, may not have reg­is­tered on the (NFL-o-meter), but it gave me a sense of pow­er, and an adren­a­line rush to know that in my own lit­tle way I was stand­ing with Kap and the oth­er play­ers who were putting their careers in jeop­ardy on the NFL plantation.

Now Drew Breeze, Roger Goodell, and oth­ers are pre­tend­ing that they are final­ly under­stand­ing what Colin Kaepernick and his col­leagues were say­ing after the protests the George Floyd lynch­ing ignit­ed across the globe.
What I found remark­able was that so many of my broth­ers, who are vic­tims them­selves of American racism, had indi­cat­ed to me that giv­ing up watch­ing NFL games was too much.…“I have to watch my games”… they tell me!
I thought it sad, that so many of my broth­ers and sis­ters are unwill­ing to sac­ri­fice any­thing toward their own eman­ci­pa­tion. Even after so many who have gone on before us have sac­ri­ficed so much and have enjoyed none of the ben­e­fits we are enjoy­ing today all things con­sid­ered.
Every damn one of those racists bas­tards who con­tin­ued to insist that kneel­ing when the nation­al anthem was being played was some kind of dis­re­spect to the flag, and coun­try, knew ful­ly well that it had noth­ing to do with either.
And even if it was dis­re­spect toward one or the oth­er, why would black peo­ple bow down to a coun­try that has nev­er respect­ed their right to exist as full human beings, much less an anthem that cel­e­brates their degradation?

When Black peo­ple stand up for their rights their oppres­sors have no choice but to back up and take notice. Will this upris­ing open the eyes of black peo­ple in America enough for them to real­ize they have their future in their own hands? I have no way of know­ing. Nevertheless, I see statutes of an ugly past tum­bling. I see new leg­is­la­tion being pro­posed, I see old safe­guards against account­abil­i­ty being torn away and I see those who enjoyed blan­ket immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion lash­ing out.
More than all, I see NASCAR ban­ning the Confederate flag from its events.
That is huge.……Will I ever watch anoth­er NFL game?
Maybe.….….It all depends on what the league does going for­ward.
The moral of the sto­ry is that as the most abused peo­ple across the globe, we must change some things about our­selves.
That means, we must be will­ing to sac­ri­fice a lit­tle, no mat­ter how small.
Yes, black folks, if you are not watch­ing foot­ball on your tele­vi­sion it [does]make a dif­fer­ence. Neilsen report­ing on who is watch­ing what, is one way deter­mine that when we chose not to watch we are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.
When we turn the tele­vi­sion off all togeth­er we make an even big­ger dif­fer­ence because the cable com­pa­nies also do not stand with us.

The oth­er thing is the impor­tance of buy­ing from black busi­ness­es, and ensur­ing that if you expe­ri­ence poor ser­vice not to argue that you were cor­rect in not sup­port­ing black busi­ness­es because of an iso­lat­ed inci­dent. Tell the man­age­ment of your expe­ri­ence and ask that it be cor­rect­ed.
After all, you are spend­ing your mon­ey with peo­ple who hate you. They treat us with dis­dain and con­tempt, yet you spend your mon­ey with them any­way.
A sim­ple google search will tell you the mega-cor­po­ra­tions that are sup­port­ing white suprema­cy. In many cas­es, they give huge sums of mon­ey to right-wing caus­es and sup­port Republican can­di­dates.
It is time that we real­ize that free­dom is nev­er free, that every gen­er­a­tion has to fight for it, or lose it.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.

I met him at my bar­ber­shop one of the two small busi­ness­es I own and oper­ate in the city of Poughkeepsie. Jamaican to the bone, he came in to get a hair­cut and we became cool after he found out that we were both Jamaicans.
He was a young man who wears the same hair­style as my boys, but he was kin­da dif­fer­ent he talked to me about how I felt he should wear his hair.
I told him that ulti­mate­ly how he wore the hair on his head and face should not be a barom­e­ter of his char­ac­ter, but that ulti­mate­ly, in the world in which we live peo­ple are judged by appear­ance.
I told him that as a young black man he would be judged even more harsh­ly, so I sug­gest­ed that he get a nice tai­lored look.

After a while, he got him­self a job at the Dominoes piaz­za store mak­ing deliv­er­ies. I had no choice but to be hap­py for him, I had nev­er seen any­one so hap­py get­ting a job deliv­er­ing piaz­za, so his con­ta­gious joy was trans­ferred to me.
He became a reg­u­lar and every time that he came in he would recount where he was in his life, includ­ing the fact that he had start­ed class­es at our local com­mu­ni­ty college.

Maurice Gordon was only 28-years old but he was a hope­ful and ambi­tious young man who did not let cir­cum­stance dic­tate his joy.
He was unmatched in his opti­mism for life. Nothing more so than when he enrolled in col­lege.
Yesterday I was scrolling through some news arti­cle and one caught my eye. In a weird way I may have seen it in a pass­ing glance pre­vi­ous­ly but with all that’s hap­pen­ing I may have just scrolled on by.


Grieving mom demands answers after unarmed black motorist is shot 4 times and killed by New Jersey troop­er on Garden State Parkway

I scrolled back and the image that greet­ed me hit me like a ton of bricks.
No, no, no way, I yelled out to my wife, this must be a mis­take, it can­not be.
My heart pound­ing, I speed-read the arti­cle, unable to come to grips with the fact that a real­ly nice guy could meet his death at the hands of police.
According to (insid​ernj​.com) The case of the troop­er shoot­ing of Maurice S. Gordon of Poughkeepsie, back on May 23, only real­ly resur­faced this week­end thanks to Mr. Gordon’s family’s attor­ney press­ing for more infor­ma­tion from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. On May 23 the Burlington Times ran a 234-word report that mere­ly stat­ed there was an inves­ti­ga­tion of “a fatal offi­cer-involved shoot­ing that occurred along the Garden State Parkway” that hap­pened on a stretch “of the Garden State Parkway in the town­ship [Bass River]. One male civil­ian is dead.” There was no ref­er­ence to the col­or of Mr. Gordon’s race, nor the iden­ti­ty of the police agency involved, nor the name of the offi­cer who shot Mr. Gordon.

According to the same report­ing the fam­i­ly’s attor­ney William O. Wagstaff III, has been unable to get even the most basic infor­ma­tion from the inves­ti­gat­ing author­i­ties in the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
Mr. Wagstaff con­firmed to jour­nal­ists that he was trou­bled that it took him nine days “of bad­ger­ing” New Jersey’s Attorney General to see even the lim­it­ed por­tion of the video the state pro­vid­ed to the fam­i­ly. He said that he was at a loss to under­stand why the fam­i­ly had been denied access to the full video and the basic details like where Mr. Gordon actu­al­ly died.
The Gordon fam­i­ly lawyer said he was also con­cerned that despite the 2019 direc­tive by Attorney General com­mit­ting to con­duct inde­pen­dent and trans­par­ent probes of police-involved shoot­ings, [the fact this case involved a state troop­er meant that “what we have here is a state lawyer inves­ti­gat­ing the state police].”

It is no secret that the New Jersey state police have been accused of being one of the most racist police agen­cies in the United States.
And so, ques­tions about whether this is yet anoth­er coverup of the unlaw­ful killing in the state of New Jersey which will result in the state inves­ti­gat­ing itself and arriv­ing at the con­clu­sion that it did noth­ing wrong abounds?
These prac­tices of pulling motorists over at all times of the night, leave peo­ple, and in par­tic­u­lar black peo­ple, at the com­plete mer­cy of racist crim­i­nal cops.
States have giv­en the pow­er to police to con­duct traf­fic stops on motorists, argu­ing that traf­fic stops have yield­ed large finds in illic­it drugs and oth­er con­tra­band. What they do not tell you is that these stops are cash cows that are used to fund police depart­ments and in many cas­es used to fund budgets.

When the racism in American police depart­ments is fac­tored into the mix, a black man trav­el­ing on America’s road­ways, is in extreme per­il of being mur­dered by police who most assured­ly will nev­er be held account­able for their crimes.
There are no words to express the anger I feel at the tak­ing of this young man’s life, par­tic­u­lar­ly because he was so hope­ful and excit­ed about his future.
Regardless of the sto­ry that NJ author­i­ties con­coct and present to the fam­i­ly of Maurice Gordon, for me, it will have zero cred­i­bil­i­ty. The fact that they refused to release infor­ma­tion to the fam­i­ly’s attor­ney who has a right to know how mis­ter Gordon was killed and by what cop is lit­er­al­ly some­thing one would expect from a back­wa­ter total­i­tar­i­an state.
This was not a young man who was engag­ing in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. His killing is an abom­i­na­tion to every­thing that is right­eous and decent. Those that took his life are abhor­rent crea­tures who deserve no def­er­ence or recog­ni­tion afford­ed human beings.

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From: FROM DUTCHESS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

We are sad­dened to share this mes­sage from DCC President Pamela Edington on the death of stu­dent Maurice Gordon:

As the trag­ic events of the past few weeks con­tin­ue to weigh heav­i­ly on our hearts and minds, we have just learned that one of our own, 28-year-old Dutchess Community College stu­dent Maurice Gordon, was killed on May 23 by a state troop­er after a rou­tine traf­fic stop on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. Full details of the inci­dent have not yet been released to the fam­i­ly or their attor­ney, but accord­ing to ini­tial news cov­er­age of the inci­dent, Maurice was unarmed.

A native of Jamaica who moved to the U.S. when he was 19, Maurice was study­ing sci­ence and part of our CSTEP pro­gram. He had been iden­ti­fied as a stand­out who could take advan­tage of research oppor­tu­ni­ties, and was look­ing for­ward to begin­ning this work next semes­ter. By all accounts, Maurice was a smart, involved, affa­ble young man – a lov­ing son and broth­er – who was des­tined for great things. We under­stand his moth­er has trav­eled here from Great Britain to make arrange­ments and to fol­low the inves­ti­ga­tion into her son’s death. Should we become aware of a way in which the DCC cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty can help Maurice’s fam­i­ly, we will let you know.

As we mourn the death of Maurice Gordon, I am ask­ing each mem­ber of our cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty to recom­mit to the goals and val­ues sur­round­ing diver­si­ty that we iden­ti­fied in our five-year strate­gic plan in 2015. Dutchess Community College must be a place where all stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff are wel­come and free to thrive, a safe space in which diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion are fos­tered and embraced, and a mod­el com­mu­ni­ty that val­ues every life.

I am sor­ry to have to share this very sad news with you today. Please do some­thing kind in Maurice’s memory.

PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE IN THE INTEREST OF TRANSPARENCY, CALL THE NJ ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE AND DEMAND ANSWERS.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.

If you ever lost focus on what is real­ly hap­pen­ing in America with race, or if you were nev­er edu­cat­ed on it, this is where you need to begin open­ing your eyes to the ghast­ly vio­lence that was unleashed on black peo­ple, not just by white cit­i­zens, but by the state & Federal Governments.
Today, as peo­ple march for jus­tice in the name of the mul­ti­ple black men, women & chil­dren who have been mur­dered by both police and vig­i­lantes, it is impor­tant to under­stand the gen­e­sis of this hatred.
The last thing we black peo­ple need is to have white peo­ple tell us what we need to do, what we want from white peo­ple is for them to lis­ten to what we are say­ing and for them to ask us to help them to under­stand what we are feeling.

If we under­stand that this [hatred] is (endem­ic to white Anglo Saxons) then we begin the process of under­stand­ing that wait­ing and march­ing will not change hearts and minds of a peo­ple who are by def­i­n­i­tion the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of hatred.
It did not change hearts and minds 57 years ago before they assas­si­nat­ed Dr. King, it will not do so now.
It is for those rea­sons that Dr. King was against it and Malcolm X demand­ed change by what­ev­er means necessary.

Fifty-sev­en (57) years ago Dr. Martin Luther King warned African-Americans about accept­ing grad­u­al­ism, in his August 1963 speech he spoke of what he char­ac­ter­ized as [the fierce urgency of now].
“We have also come to this hal­lowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the lux­u­ry of cool­ing off or to take the tran­quil­iz­ing drug of grad­u­al­ism. Now is the time to make real the promis­es of democ­ra­cy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream speech, August 28,1963.

Someone said if white police were kneel­ing on the necks of dogs or shoot­ing them as they are doing to black peo­ple every sin­gle police depart­ment would have been dis­band­ed.
If they val­ue the lives of dogs (no offense to my dog Bud), more than they do the lives of black human beings, what makes you think that any­thing you do oth­er than force them to respect you will impact their hearts.

In the first place, I am offend­ed sole­ly on the basis of any con­cept by which my exis­tence should be based on any­one else’s sense of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty or acqui­es­cence.
So the very premise of grad­u­al­ism as a con­cept ought to be tossed out the win­dow. If you are not com­fort­able with me in the space that I occu­py you are free to find some­where that you are more com­fort­able. What is not going to hap­pen is that I am not going to adjust my life just so that you can be com­fort­able liv­ing your life the way that you want to live it.

If the police which is sup­posed to keep com­mu­ni­ties safe, has got­ten to the point that those com­mu­ni­ties are worse off because of them , then it is time to get rid of the police.
Sure we need crimes inves­ti­gat­ed and we have some won­der­ful & proffes­sion­al offi­cers who do that every day. The prob­lem is not with those unbi­ased pro­fes­sion­als who go and do their jobs as pros.
The prob­lem comes from the poor­ly-edu­cat­ed, poor­ly-trained racial­ists that are sent out into the com­mu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate income for the states and munic­i­pal­i­ties.
They are lit­tle more than tax-col­lec­tors with a racial agen­da. That is where the prob­lem lies.

(1)So we are call­ing for qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
(2) Stop send­ing police to the Apartheid state of Israel to train to kill black peo­ple.
(3) Make police get mal­prac­tice insur­ance.
(4) Stop police unions from stand­ing in the way of police account­abil­i­ty.
(5) Stop hid­ing police offi­cers’ per­son­nel records from the pub­lic when police com­mit crimes against the com­mu­ni­ty.
(6) Once an offi­cer is fired from a police depart­ment for mis­con­duct he/​she should not be able to work in law enforce­ment again.
(7) End the prac­tice of keep­ing police in their depart­ments, even after mul­ti­ple mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions of use of force excess­es.
(8) Remove the police from schools.
(9) Begin dis­man­tling the indis­crim­i­nate stop­ping of motorists for minor traf­fic infrac­tions.
(10) Begin dis­man­tling laws like the stop and frisk laws in New York, and the mar­i­jua­na laws that police have used to abuse peo­ple of col­or.
We can begin with these changes with­out abol­ish­ing the police altogether. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.

A California may­or has resigned his office after com­ing under fire for send­ing out a racial­ly insen­si­tive email regard­ing police vio­lence.
James Stewart, who was elect­ed may­or of Temecula, California in November 2016, resigned the seat Thursday after he was called out for a reply email to a Temecula res­i­dent, who asked what was being done about police vio­lence, accord­ing to Too Fab.
“I don’t believe there’s ever been a good per­son of col­or killed by a police offi­cer,” Stewart said in the mes­sage that went viral.

People flood­ed the inter­net with crit­i­cisms and accu­sa­tions of racism on the south­ern California city’s offi­cial Facebook page. Stewart, who led the con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing city of about 115,000, post­ed an ini­tial apol­o­gy the day before issu­ing his res­ig­na­tion, stat­ing that he uses “voice text” due to his dyslex­ia, and didn’t proof-read­ing before send­ing.
“I absolute­ly did not say that,” he wrote in the post. “What I said is and I don’t believe there has ever been a per­son of col­or mur­dered by police, on con­text to Temecula or Riverside coun­ty. I absolute­ly did not say ‘good’ I have no idea how that popped up. Please for­give me for this egre­gious error.”

However, the back­lash con­tin­ued, prompt­ing him to make a fol­low-up state­ment to insist those aren’t his beliefs. “My typos and off-the-cuff response to an email on a seri­ous top­ic added pain at a time where our com­mu­ni­ty, and our coun­try, is suf­fer­ing,” he said. “I may not be the best writer and I some­times mis­s­peak, but I am not racist. I deeply regret this mis­take and I own it, entire­ly. I am tru­ly sorry.”Stewart addressed the bad tim­ing and tur­moil the email took on the com­mu­ni­ty and elect­ed to resign, anyway. 

“I under­stand that even my sin­cer­est apolo­gies can­not rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion. Because actions speak loud­er than words, I will step down as your Mayor and City Council Member effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly,” he wrote. The news comes as nation­wide protests against racism and police bru­tal­i­ty con­tin­ue in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black Minneapolis man whose last words were “I can’t breath” as four offi­cers held him in cus­tody in pub­lic. One offi­cer, who was seen pin­ning Floyd down by press­ing his knee into his kneck for almost 9 min­utes, has been charged with sec­ond-degree mur­der. The oth­er three offi­cers assist­ing in the arrest have been charged with aid­ing and abet­ting in the alleged murder.

EDITOR’S NOTE: They are such repug­nant liars, even when caught they still make them­selves seem even more pathet­ic and igno­rant by the sil­ly lies they tell in order to try and save face. I can under­stand the mag­gots who share racists ideals and admit it. What I absolute­ly abhor are those who are deep-seat­ed racists but try to pre­tend to be some­thing else when called out.
On a more point­ed note, the actions of this pathet­ic crea­ture ref­er­ence in the above sto­ry and the one ref­er­ence in the sto­ry below is exact­ly what I addressed in the video mono­logue above.

AND THEN THERE IS THIS.……



TENNESSEE SHERIFF PLANS APOLOGY AFTER ADMITTING HE USED THE N‑WORD IN A RECORDING

Lauderdale County, Tenn., Sheriff Steve Sanders has admit­ted to using the n‑word after a tape record­ing of him using the racist slur sur­faced when a local record­ing artist played the tape dur­ing an Instagram live ses­sion.
“I did. I won’t tell you no lie about it,” Sanders told News Channel 3 Memphis on Wednesday. Despite his use of the n‑word, Sanders said he isn’t a racist, and the word, “just slipped out.”
The sher­iff also said he doesn’t remem­ber when the con­ver­sa­tion took place and that he was unaware he was being recorded.

“I got a lot of Black friends, I got a lot of ene­mies, as any sher­iff would, but I apol­o­gize to all of them,” Sanders said in the inter­view. “I’m going to apol­o­gize Friday to all the cit­i­zens in the coun­ty because they’re good peo­ple.”
Sanders has been sher­iff of Lauderdale County for 16 years, and is the area’s longest-tenured sher­iff.
The audio was also post­ed on Facebook and has prompt­ed some cit­i­zens to demand his res­ig­na­tion. One Lauderdale Country res­i­dent, Tiffany Driver, told New Channel 3 Memphis that it was “heart­break­ing” and “a slap in the face” after the coun­try is still deal­ing with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.
White peo­ple using the n‑word is a phe­nom­e­non that con­tin­ues to make head­lines. On Thursday, Oregon State fresh­man tight end Rocco Carley was dis­missed from his foot­ball team after an audio record­ing where he used racist lan­guage recent­ly surfaced. 

The record­ing was made when Carley was in high school. In the video, which was post­ed to Twitter, the fresh­man foot­ball play­er can be heard say­ing hor­rif­ic, racist state­ments against Blacks, homo­sex­u­als, and Muslims.
“I’d like to get all the Blacks in a cham­ber, and burn the sh*t out of them,” Carley says. In the video, Carley sounds as if he is using a south­ern accent. In an apol­o­gy post on Instagram, he said that the video was “satire.”


In the video below, I speak to the fact that the igno­rance of racism in many of these peo­ple stems from a lack of expo­sure, in addi­tion to being taught to hate. It is real­ly a marked diver­gence between the way many blacks are raised against their white coun­ter­parts.
Some peo­ple are taught to love oth­ers are taught how to hate. It is not impos­si­ble to root hate from the heart of some­one who was raised to do so, but it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult.
Exposure to oth­er cul­tures is edu­ca­tion­al, it opens the eyes to the beau­ty of God’s plan. Living in mono­lith­ic com­mu­ni­ties does noth­ing to help that process.

IGNORE THE RACIAL CONCUBINES WHO SELL YOU OUT FOR WHITE ACCEPTANCE AND SOCIAL-MEDIA LIKES.
THEY BECOME RELEVANT IF YOU GIVE THEM OXYGEN.

“I could have accom­plished more against my ene­mies but I have had to use one hand fend­ing off my friends.”[Paraphrased].
As we expe­ri­ence the events that suc­ceed­ed the ghast­ly killing of George Floyd, we have seen peo­ple of all stripes stand up and pay their respects to the mem­o­ry & fam­i­ly of Mister Floyd.
Speaking for myself, I am still unable to look at the video or watch some of the emo­tion­al images with­out cry­ing uncontrollably.

I have no idea why I can­not stop cry­ing for a man I have nev­er met? I have no idea what made me close my busi­ness, pick up a video cam­era, and stand with pro­tes­tors in my city?
Neither do I know what prompt­ed me to brave a line of heav­i­ly armed police offi­cers, to tell them in no uncer­tain terms, tears in my eyes, that what they are doing across the coun­try is wrong?

In all of the events that occurred, with all of the shock­ing images we bear wit­ness to, of police act­ing out aggres­sive­ly & bar­bar­i­cal­ly against cit­i­zens, I saw hope. I saw hope for a bet­ter tomor­row.
I saw a pos­si­bil­i­ty for the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the dream as Dr. King saw it over [60]years ago. “I have a dream that my four lit­tle chil­dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the col­or of their skin but by the con­tent of their char­ac­ter.”
I saw it in the mil­lions of young and old white peo­ple who turned out to march, lit­er­al­ly plac­ing them­selves in har­m’s way, at extreme risk even at the per­il of death. In many cas­es, they out­num­bered black peo­ple by wide mar­gins.
Many have been bru­tal­ized and even killed by police. Let us nev­er fail to rec­og­nize the sac­ri­fices of our white broth­ers and sis­ters who stand, and have stood with us, and have suf­fered, even though they did­n’t have to.

Even as my heart swells with hope at the prospect of a white awak­en­ing, I am cau­tious and con­strained in my expec­ta­tions of what will come from this momen­tous event.
For far too long many in the black com­mu­ni­ty have used these events as oppor­tu­ni­ties to gain per­son­al recog­ni­tion for them­selves.
Let this not be anoth­er event for the self-absorbed to jock­ey for atten­tion. Let it be the defin­ing event that will char­ac­ter­ize the begin­ning of the end of white supremacy.

This is a moment that must be har­nessed for the greater good. It is an inflec­tion moment that has peeled away the thin veneer of nor­mal­cy that had for four hun­dred years plus, cov­ered the igno­ble and hor­rif­ic night­mare that is white American racism.
It is time to step away from those who would [“what about”] us to death. It is time to walk away from those who would side­track what we are about as a peo­ple, demand­ing equal­i­ty and jus­tice, fair-play on a lev­el play­ing field.
Yes, that includes those with black skin.
Those who have found a kind of sick and dement­ed com­fort in [“Massa’s house”], whether as his maid, but­ler, or as his [con­cu­bine].

There are some who have black skin but white hearts, they sold their souls to the dev­il, and have made the tac­ti­cal deci­sion to speak ill of black peo­ple as a vehi­cle to gain likes on social media.
Understand, that some would rather be sub­servient on their knees in def­er­en­tial servi­tude to their oppres­sors, than face the dan­gers of stand­ing on their own feet towards a path to true freedom.

It is for those rea­sons that Harriet Tubman report­ed­ly car­ried a gun, not for the white slave-catch­ers but for those negroes with white hearts who would run back to [Massa]. Those Israelites who berat­ed Moses because they did not have meat.
The events that we wit­nessed after the lynch­ing of George Floyd’s death have illu­mi­nat­ed the brutish & mur­der­ous pro­cliv­i­ty inher­ent in American police.
For all intents and pur­pos­es, they have demon­strat­ed that they are the oppo­si­tion, they are [the tip of the spear of black oppres­sion], (as if we did­n’t already know)?

The vast major­i­ty of white men in America’s police depart­ments have revealed them­selves as ene­mies of the black com­mu­ni­ty.
But for a few excep­tions, they have become a counter-move­ment to the strug­gles of black peo­ple’s fight for black auton­o­my, they are the counter-move­ment.
They have revealed them­selves as race-sol­diers against the black com­mu­ni­ty, some­thing African-Americans have been say­ing they are for gen­er­a­tions and generations.

The hard­est part of this bat­tle is deal­ing with those in black skin who would jock­ey for [pow­er & place] on the back of a tragedy. Worse yet, there are those who are quite will­ing to be sub­servient race con­cu­bines. Those we sim­ply must ignore and hope they will dry up and blow away.
They are rel­e­vant only when we give them oxy­gen. Like a tiny flick­er­ing flame, place a jar over it and it dies a nat­ur­al death.
They are rel­e­vant only to those they serve, they are not rel­e­vant to us.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.

IMAGES THAT TUG AT THE HEART OF PEOPLE

Regardless of what white apol­o­gists say as they try to jus­ti­fy police geno­cide against Black peo­ple, the images tell an unde­ni­able truth.
At this point, we should engage with our white sis­ters and broth­ers who march and strug­gle with us, they are beat­en and bru­tal­ized and some of them are even killed by the rabid dogs oper­at­ing us police officers.

As far as those who would deny the over 500 years of oppres­sion of Black peo­ple, we should dis­en­gage them and not try to have a con­ver­sa­tion with them.

They care more about injured dogs than they do black babies. They care more about peo­ple break­ing glass than they care about cops mur­der­ing cit­i­zens in their name.
In fact, the killing of black peo­ple evokes a secret glee in them.

It is impor­tant to note that Mister Floyd was accused of pass­ing a ques­tion­able $20-dol­lar bill to a store clerk.…… Eight min­utes and forty six sec­onds it took for Chauvin and his thug col­leagues to squeeze the life out of a plead­ing George Floyd.

Eric Garner being mur­dered by NYPD thugDaniel Pantaleo and a bunch of oth­er thugs. Mister gar­ner’s sin? Selling untaxed cig­a­rettes, a minor violation.

The injus­tice and the dis­par­i­ty are not juts about the optics they are endem­ic and strate­gic.
According to the (MarshallProject​.com), Only 31 of the near­ly 800 white defen­dants exe­cut­ed since 1976 — when the Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty — had a black vic­tim, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center. During the same time­frame, 234 of near­ly 500 exe­cut­ed black defen­dants had white vic­tims. The last time a white per­son was put to death for killing a black per­son in South Carolina, where Roof will be tried, was in 1991.

In Pennsylvania, it was in 1999. In Louisiana, 1752¹. In Texas, there were no such exe­cu­tions between 1854 and 2003, and in Alabama, there were none from 1913 to 1997 (there haven’t been any, since, either). In Florida, a white defen­dant has nev­er been put to death for mur­der­ing a black person.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.

PICTURE MONTAGE, JUNE 2ND IN POUGHKEEPSIE, THOUSANDS TURNED OUT TO SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE THAT ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Amidst the peace­ful protest­ing over the killing of George Floyd, CBS News and Fox 9 have con­firmed that most of the riot­ers and vio­lent pro­test­ers in Minneapolis are linked to white suprema­cist groups.
According to the Department of Safety Commissioner John Harrington, most of the arrests are in fact linked to white nation­al­ist groups that encour­age mem­bers online to take advan­tage of the protests to make chaos. Attorney General William Barr made sim­i­lar remarks.
Melvin Carter, the may­or of St. Paul, said that many riot­ers who were arrest­ed were from out of the state. He agreed that “there’s a group of folks that are sad and mourn­ing.” However, he added, “There seems to be anoth­er group that is using Mr. Floyd’s death as a cov­er to cre­ate havoc.”

According to CourtHouseNews​.com, even Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sus­pects that white suprema­cist groups and drug car­tels are car­ry­ing out some of the vio­lence in Minneapolis. “Our great cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are under assault by peo­ple who do not share our val­ues, who do not val­ue life and the work that went into this and are cer­tain­ly not here to hon­or George Floyd,” he said in a press con­fer­ence. “They need to see today that that line will stop and order needs to be restored.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey shared the same sen­ti­ments. He com­ment­ed, “The peo­ple that are doing this are not Minneapolis res­i­dents. They are com­ing large­ly from out­side the city out­side the region to prey on every­thing we have built.”

According to [Business Insider] A white suprema­cist chan­nel on the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing app Telegram encour­aged its fol­low­ers to spark vio­lence to start a race war dur­ing nation­wide protests against police bru­tal­i­ty fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd, Politico report­ed, cit­ing an inter­nal Department of Homeland Security intel­li­gence note.
Citing the FBI, the note said that two days after Floyd’s death, the chan­nel “incit­ed fol­low­ers to engage in vio­lence and start the ‘booga­loo’ — a term used by some vio­lent extrem­ists to refer to the start of a sec­ond Civil War — by shoot­ing in a crowd.”

• One of the mes­sages in the chan­nel called for poten­tial shoot­ers to “frame the crowd around you” for the vio­lence, the note said, accord­ing to Politico.
• Other media out­lets have also report­ed on white suprema­cist groups weaponiz­ing protests against police bru­tal­i­ty to incite violence.
• Meanwhile, sev­er­al Republican offi­cials, includ­ing President Donald Trump, have blamed “Antifa” for the vio­lence and some have sug­gest­ed pro­test­ers should be hunt­ed down like terrorists.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas also advo­cat­ed for using mil­i­tary force against pro­test­ers and indi­cat­ed that they should be shown no mer­cy.
“We need to have zero tol­er­ance for this destruc­tion,” Cotton wrote, call­ing pro­test­ers “Antifa ter­ror­ists.” “And, if nec­es­sary, the 10^th Mountain, 82^nd Airborne, 1^st Cav, 3^rd Infantry — what­ev­er it takes to restore order,” he added. “No quar­ter for insur­rec­tion­ists, anar­chists, riot­ers, and loot­ers.” “No quar­ter” is a mil­i­tary term that means a com­man­der will not accept the law­ful sur­ren­der of an ene­my com­bat­ant and sug­gests the cap­tive will instead be killed. The prac­tice is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

White suprema­cists pose as Antifa online, call for vio­lencehttps://​www​.click​2​hous​ton​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​0​2​/​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​p​o​s​e​-​a​s​-​a​n​t​i​f​a​-​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​c​a​l​l​-​f​o​r​-​v​i​o​l​e​n​ce/

Let’s just face it, the endem­ic racism with­in America’s Government and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the jus­tice sys­tem is so severe that it is prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to fix the tox­ic rot.
If America’s jus­tice sys­tem was a pair of shoes the wear­er would be walk­ing with­out soles, just uppers giv­ing the impres­sion of pro­tect­ed feet.
If it was a house there would be no roof no walls
If you wear black skin that is…
The silence of white peo­ple, and in par­tic­u­lar white politi­cians, in the face of decades and decades of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism, enforced by tat­toed, doped up on steroids klans­men dressed in police uni­forms, is no is tes­ta­ment to their com­plic­i­ty.
Every damn one of them is guilty. This is not just about the lynch­ings of George Floyd, or Ahmaud Arbery, it’s not about Freddy Grey, or Tamir Rice, it’s not about Philando Castile or Eric Graner, no it is not about Sandra Bland or Bryonna Taylor. God knows it isn’t just about Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell, not just about John Crawford or Trayvon Martin.

The rea­son it is not about any of these high pro­file lynch­ings is that they are too many.
It is about four hun­dred-plus years of white on black homi­cide.
Where does it stop?
Clearly, this is not about enforc­ing laws, police who arrive to deal with a case of some­one ten­der­ing a bad cur­ren­cy-note speak to the per­son respect­ful­ly and calm­ly.
There is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the per­son ten­der­ing a fake note has no idea it is fake. For all intents and pur­pos­es, that per­son may also be a vic­tim of fraud them­self.
Under no cir­cum­stances could the police have ascer­tained that mis­ter Floyd was a crim­i­nal sus­pect just by him ten­der­ing a fake note.
In fact, it requires spe­cial test­ing to deter­mine whether or not a note is fake or real, it is almost guar­an­teed that none of the offi­cers who arrived at the scene that day had the prop­er train­ing to defin­i­tive­ly tell whether a note was fake or real.
It is the busi­ness of the US Secret ser­vice to inves­ti­gate such mat­ters, so it seems to me that all the police could [legal­ly] do [in rela­tion to that par­tic­u­lar call] was to estab­lish the name and address of George Floyd for fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions. As I said ear­li­er for all they knew, and based on how fake notes are cir­cu­lat­ed, mis­ter Floyd may have him­self been a vic­tim of fraud.

Whatever degree of racism you expect exists in the sys­tem, take that num­ber and mul­ti­ply it a thou­sand times and you may get clos­er to the truth of the degree of white racism that cor­rupts & dis­torts the American jus­tice sys­tem against black peo­ple.
It a tragedy to [invoke] the word jus­tice in the same sen­tence as it relates to the Amrican shit-stem against peo­ple of col­or, Blacks, Native Americans, and oth­ers.
A bet­ter def­i­n­i­tion of the American jus­tice sys­tem for black peo­ple would be the [injus­tice shit-stem].
It is tire­some, it is back-break­ing, it is beyond repair. They cre­at­ed a sys­tem of oppres­sion so com­plete that it caus­es some to throw up their hands and declare “only God can fix this”.

And so it leads to the per­ti­nent ques­tion of why?
Why did a race of peo­ple decide that they had to cre­ate such a con­vo­lut­ed sys­tem of deceit and lies, such a remark­ably duplic­i­tous sys­tem designed to dom­i­nate and destroy anoth­er race of peo­ple they had for hun­dreds of years pri­or, dom­i­nat­ed and destroyed.
What does this degree of hatred exist, what caused them to come up with such a hate­ful sys­tem, even though they already had the eco­nom­ic & numer­i­cal strength of majori­tar­i­an rule?
The very thing that America cre­at­ed for its use to sup­press its minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties, (police) is now caus­ing what I saw as the inevitable unrav­el­ing of American hege­mon­ic racism.

America’s Racism can­not be cured by America. America’s Racism must be cured by the rest of the world. It will have to be that the rest of the world stands up to Apartheid Amerikkka as it did against Apartheid South Africa.
This moment must be the defin­ing moment of truth, the defin­ing moment of account­abil­i­ty for America to atone for its sins of slav­ery and geno­cide.
pre­tend­ing that the sins it com­mit­ted and still com­mit each and every day are jus­ti­fied is no longer accept­able.
This has to stop. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
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.