The dai­ly reck­less, & wan­ton use of dead­ly force by American cops all across the coun­try con­tin­ues. Police depart­ments are allowed to inves­ti­gate them­selves, result­ing in a total lack of trust between the pub­lic and the depart­ments.
Their inves­ti­ga­tions gen­er­al­ly end up with what­ev­er atroc­i­ty they com­mit­ted being ruled with­in depart­men­tal guide­lines.
Even when they com­mit mur­der, local and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors gen­er­al­ly refuse to pros­e­cute them, the log­ic being that they are the very same peo­ple pros­e­cu­tors rely on to gath­er evi­dence and help to pros­e­cute mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic when they run afoul of the law.
Judges give their tes­ti­mo­ny much more cre­dence than an aver­age per­son giv­ing evi­dence, even as there is a nev­er-end­ing list of videos show­ing cops plant­i­ng evi­dence on inno­cent cit­i­zens and in their con­struc­tive pos­ses­sion.
On the rare occa­sion that American cops are pros­e­cut­ed, they gen­er­al­ly ask for a bench tri­al. A bench tri­al is one in which evi­dence is heard by a judge with­out a jury and a ver­dict is arrived at by the same judge.
Hardly are police offi­cers ever con­vict­ed when they receive a bench tri­al.
Across the coun­try judges, pros­e­cu­tors and police are gen­er­al­ly indis­tin­guish­able in tone. Police unions are major donors to the cam­paigns of elect­ed judges and where applic­a­ble, that of pros­e­cu­tors of their choice as well. This cre­ates a con­flict, but no one bells the cat, so it per­sists.
The aver­age cit­i­zen faces a stiff uphill climb to get a fair shake when the police are the crim­i­nals.
When the vic­tim of police crimes is black or brown, jus­tice is often just a pipe dream.

In addi­tion to the awe­some pow­ers they are giv­en, includ­ing to take life, they are also giv­en a spe­cial lay­er of pro­tec­tion that most oth­er cat­e­gories of work­ers do not have. That extra shield is called [Qualified immu­ni­ty]. Qualified immu­ni­ty pro­tects a gov­ern­ment offi­cial from law­suits alleg­ing that the offi­cial vio­lat­ed a plain­tiff’s rights, only allow­ing suits where offi­cials vio­lat­ed a “clear­ly estab­lished” statu­to­ry or con­sti­tu­tion­al right.
Qualified immu­ni­ty is not immu­ni­ty from hav­ing to pay mon­ey dam­ages, but rather an immu­ni­ty from hav­ing to go through the costs of a tri­al at all. Accordingly, courts must resolve qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty issues as ear­ly in a case as pos­si­ble, prefer­ably before dis­cov­ery.(Law​.cor​nel​.edu)
Doctors have to pay for insur­ance so too are lawyers forced to have insur­ance against mal­prac­tice.
Literally, every pro­fes­sion­al must have insur­ance except the police. Yet when police offi­cers betray their oaths, and on the rare occa­sions that they are held account­able for their crimes, the finan­cial cost is borne by the very same aggriev­ed tax­pay­ing public.

Because there is a need to keep the for-prof­it pris­ons and jails full. And because of America’s insti­tu­tion­al­ized built-in racism which tar­gets poor black and brown peo­ple for over-polic­ing and sub­se­quent mass incar­cer­a­tion, nei­ther the states nor the Federal gov­ern­ment will lift a fin­ger to rein in the reck­less killings of inno­cent unarmed peo­ple by out of con­trol rene­gade police.
Additionally, all across the coun­try, police depart­ments have become a hotbed of white nation­al­ism and bare­ly below the sur­face tox­ic racism against peo­ple fo col­or. Well over a decade ago the FBI warned about this trend. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department took some active steps to cur­tail some of the killings and ille­gal activ­i­ties. Many depart­ments were forced to enter into con­sent decrees with the Justice Department led by Eric Holder, to insti­tute a change in poli­cies and pro­to­cols.
The Trump jus­tice depart­ment, begin­ning with for­mer Alabama’s Republican US Senator Jeff Sessions, and now William Barr, has since dis­con­tin­ued most of those con­sent decrees. In addi­tion to that, Trump him­self has encour­aged police to be more aggres­sive and vio­lent toward the peo­ple they come in con­tact with.
“When you arrest them and place your hand on top of their heads before they enter the car, don’t be so nice, you can remove your hand,” Trump told a bunch of cheer­ing cops.
To their cred­it, a few Police chiefs pushed back against Trump’s dan­ger­ous state­ments, they reit­er­at­ed that they would con­tin­ue to ensure that their depart­ments pro­tect the rights of all citizens.

In June of 2016 writ­ing for com​plex​.com Sara David in an arti­cle titled;
[The Supreme Court Sets a Dangerous Precedent By Ruling That Cops Can Break the Law] said, a divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in some cas­es, evi­dence of a crime can be used against a defen­dant even if police obtained it ille­gal­ly. According to the Associated Press, the 5 – 3 deci­sion drew “heat­ed dis­sents from lib­er­al jus­tices who warned that the out­come would encour­age police to vio­late people’s rights.” The rul­ing comes in a case in which South Salt Lake City Police Department nar­cotics detec­tive Douglas Fackrell stopped defen­dant Joseph Edward Strieff in 2006. Fackrell sus­pect­ed Strieff of being involved in drug activ­i­ty, but didn’t actu­al­ly have “rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,” which is required by the U.S. Constitution for inves­ti­ga­to­ry stops.

In her dis­sent Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote stri­dent­ly;
The Court today holds that the dis­cov­ery of a war­rant for an unpaid park­ing tick­et will for­give a police officer’s vio­la­tion of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and check it for out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rants — even if you are doing noth­ing wrong. If the offi­cer dis­cov­ers a war­rant for a fine you for­got to pay, courts will now excuse his ille­gal stop and will admit into evi­dence any­thing he hap­pens to find by search­ing you after arrest­ing you on the war­rant. Because the Fourth Amendment should pro­hib­it, not per­mit, such mis­con­duct, I dissent.

The Atlantic reports that dur­ing ques­tion­ing, Fackrell “relayed Strieff’s per­son­al infor­ma­tion to a police dis­patch­er — a rou­tine prac­tice dur­ing police stops — and learned Strieff had an out­stand­ing traf­fic war­rant.” The detec­tive then arrest­ed Strieff based on that war­rant, and found a small amount of metham­phet­a­mine on his per­son; Strieff was charged and con­vict­ed for unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion. On Fackrell, U.S. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her pop­u­lar dis­sent, “In his search for law­break­ing, the offi­cer in this case him­self broke the law.”

In her wis­dom, the learned Associate Justice Sotomayor was right on the mon­ey. quote, Do not be soothed by the opinion’s tech­ni­cal lan­guage:
Since then police across the coun­try has been on a ram­page, stop­ping motorist and even pedes­tri­ans, demand­ing their Identification. There are count­less videos of some of those encoun­ters on social media plat­forms in which peo­ple walk­ing down the streets are stopped and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions demand­ed from them by the police.
Failure to slav­ish­ly and prompt­ly hand over your iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to these over­lords gets the pre­dictable response, “you are ham­per­ing my inves­ti­ga­tion”. There was no inves­ti­ga­tion, to begin with, but the ille­gal fourth amend­ment infringe­ment based on no crime, is now deemed to be a law­ful inves­ti­ga­tion with which cit­i­zens must com­ply, or risk arrest, being bad­ly beat­en or killed.
Well, there is your Supreme court for you, a court many peo­ple see as their last resort for jus­tice.
The same court that ruled slav­ery was legal. Jim crow was legal. Separate but equal was legal. Black peo­ple were only ³⁄₅ of a human being. Interracial mar­riage was ille­gal. Affirmed cit­i­zens unit­ed, (cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple). Will not inter­vene to save an inno­cent con­demned man’s life because his brief was not filed in time.

THE DAILY RECKLESS & WANTON USE OF DEADLY  FORCE BY AMERICAN RAMBO COPS CONTINUES UNCHECKED.
THEIR UNLAWFUL AND UNCONSCIONABLE USE OF LETHAL FORCE  PLACES NOT JUST THE LIVES OF PEOPLE UNDER THEIR SCRUTINY IN DANGER, BUT ALSO THE LIVES OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

The may­or of Austin, Texas, says he’s “dis­turbed” by a video he has seen of the fatal shoot­ing of a man by an Austin police offi­cer as the man drove away from police. 
Mayor Steve Adler says in a state­ment Monday that 42-year-old Mike Ramos does not appear to be threat­en­ing, but was fatal­ly shot and that “there are many questions.” 

Austin police chief Brian Manley said Monday that he under­stands com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns about the shoot­ing and that police, the dis­trict attor­ney, and oth­er agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing while offer­ing con­do­lences to Ramos’ family. 

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.

Detroit, MI — Deborah Gatewood, a 63-year old health care work­er from Michigan, has died due to com­pli­ca­tions of the coro­n­avirus after she was report­ed­ly denied a test mul­ti­ple times from the very hos­pi­tal where she worked.

Gatewood, who worked at Beaumont Hospital for 31 years, report­ed­ly showed COVID-19 symp­toms, includ­ing cough and fever, in the third week of March. “They [Beaumont] sent her home say­ing you are show­ing signs of COVID-19,” Kaila Corrothers, Gatewood’s daugh­ter, told FOX 2 Detroit. “So they were con­firm­ing that she most like­ly had COVID, but they did not test her.” Gatewood report­ed­ly vis­it­ed the ER four times and request­ed to be test­ed, but was told to just rest at home and take cough med­i­cine. Her con­di­tion con­tin­ued to wors­en until she was found unre­spon­sive in bed.

She was tak­en by ambu­lance to Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit where she was test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus. After bat­tling extreme­ly high fever and devel­op­ing bilat­er­al pneu­mo­nia, she sad­ly died. Corrothers expressed her dis­ap­point­ment with Beaumont Hospital, say­ing they have neglect­ed her mother’s severe con­di­tion. “The fact that she got infect­ed by doing the job she did for 31 years and she couldn’t get tak­en care of by her own fam­i­ly, mean­ing Beaumont, it’s sad. It is dis­heart­en­ing, to say the least,” she said. Meanwhile, Beaumont Hospital has yet to com­ment on the par­tic­u­lar case but said, “As patients come to Beaumont for care dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, we are doing every­thing we can to eval­u­ate, triage and care for patients based on the infor­ma­tion we know at the time. We grieve the loss of any patient to COVID-19 or any oth­er illness.”

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….

Atlanta Mother of Twin Boys Dies From Coronavirus at 36-Years Old

Atlanta, GA — Brent Green, a 36-year old African American moth­er of twins who had no known under­ly­ing con­di­tions, has died due from coro­n­avirus. Her fam­i­ly believes she start­ed get­ting sick after going to the gro­cery store to buy food for her children.

“She was hap­py, going around doing every­thing that she need­ed to do,” Linda Green, Brent’s moth­er told WSTV about her. She was a respon­si­ble employ­ee work­ing for a rep­utable com­pa­ny in Atlanta and a lov­ing moth­er to 12-year old twin boys. However, a few days after a trip to the gro­cery store, she began hav­ing a headache and short­ness of breath. She was hos­pi­tal­ized, where she test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Her con­di­tion ini­tial­ly seemed to be get­ting bet­ter, but it even­tu­al­ly turned to the worse.

Her moth­er had a chance to speak to her for the last time and told her, “Fight baby and do every­thing you can to come back to me.” She remem­bered Brent respond­ed, “‘I love you too mama.’ Those were the last words I heard come out of my daughter’s mouth.” Linda Green want­ed to share her daughter’s expe­ri­ence to serve as a les­son to oth­ers to take the coro­n­avirus seri­ous­ly. “Please do all the things you can to fight this dis­ease and not be among each oth­er and take it light­ly,” Green said. “If you con­tin­ue to mis­lead and think that this is not for real, you will not see the peo­ple that you love (again).”

Midland, VA — Levi Norwood, a 17-year old white teen, alleged­ly killed his moth­er and broth­er because he believed they were racist for dis­ap­prov­ing of his Black girl­friend. His father recent­ly died after alleged­ly com­mit­ting sui­cide. Levi alleged­ly shot and killed his 34-year old moth­er, Jennifer Norwood, and 6‑year old broth­er, Wyatt, last February inside their home in Fauquier County, Virginia. He then alleged­ly wait­ed for his 37-year old father, Joshua Norwood, to come home and shot him in the head, injur­ing him. Levi fled the scene with a stolen car and went to North Carolina where he was found shoplift­ing at a Target store. He was arrest­ed and is being held at a region­al juve­nile deten­tion cen­ter await­ing tri­al. Most recent­ly, his father was found dead inside their home. Authorities said no foul play is sus­pect­ed and believed he com­mit­ted sui­cide. His cause and man­ner of death have yet been con­firmed by the med­ical exam­in­er. Their rel­a­tives believed Joshua killed him­self because “his pain was so deep, and he saw no oth­er way out,” Joshua’s aunt, Rebecca Norwood, wrote on Facebook, accord­ing to the Washington Post. “He told me he died the night his wife and lil boy were killed and he was just an emp­ty shell of a per­son.” After his death, Joshua was crit­i­cized when his appar­ent racist behav­ior sur­faced on his Facebook. He and his wife were alleged­ly against their son hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with a Black girl.

DETAILED STORY AS CARRIED BY THE WASHINGTON POST.

Father of Va. teen accused of killing his mom and broth­er is found dead in same house;

By Ian Shapira and Michael E. Miller April 21, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. EDT
His moth­er begged him not to give up. But two months after his wife and 6‑year-old son were killed and his old­er son was charged with mur­der, Joshua Norwood saw only one way for­ward, he told his moth­er, Ginny, on Monday. “He said for me not to be sor­ry, be hap­py because he would be with Jen and Wyatt,” Ginny Norwood wrote on her Facebook page.
Joshua hung up and wrote one last mes­sage. “He sent me a text and said, ‘I love you’ and that he need­ed to be with them,” Ginny wrote. Then Joshua returned to the liv­ing room of his Northern Virginia ranch home. It was there, on Valentine’s Day, that he had dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of Jennifer Norwood, 34, and Wyatt, 6. And it was there, at 3:30 p.m. Monday, that Fauquier County sheriff’s deputies dis­cov­ered Joshua’s body. They were called to the house by his moth­er, who lives in Maine.

“My boy, my only boy, My son Joshua killed him­self a cou­ple hours ago,” Ginny wrote on Facebook. Her son suf­fered trau­ma to his upper body, but no foul play is sus­pect­ed, the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office said. An offi­cial cause of death will not be declared until an autop­sy is com­plet­ed, said James Hartman, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. He declined to pro­vide fur­ther details. The death marks the lat­est tragedy in the Norwood fam­i­ly. Levi, a 17-year-old junior at Liberty High School, has been charged with first-degree mur­der in the killings of his moth­er and broth­er.
Joshua’s aunt, Rebecca Norwood, wrote on Facebook that he had tak­en his life because “his pain was so deep, and he saw no oth­er way out.” “He told me he died the night his wife and lil boy were killed and he was just an emp­ty shell of a person.”

A month after the deaths of his wife and son, Joshua Norwood filed a peti­tion to restore his gun rights. According to his peti­tion, he had been invol­un­tar­i­ly admit­ted to a facil­i­ty or ordered to manda­to­ry out­pa­tient treat­ment in the Richmond area from March 11 to March 13. He was sched­uled for a hear­ing on Tuesday in Fauquier County General District Court, but the pro­ceed­ing was pushed back to May 11 because of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to court records and the court clerk. “He was real­ly upset that police had tak­en his guns,” said one acquain­tance who had spo­ken to him in recent weeks. “He want­ed to be able to pro­tect him­self, now that he was alone.” In a pre­vi­ous inter­view with The Washington Post, Joshua Norwood described com­ing home with a bou­quet of flow­ers for his wife about 6 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. When he opened the door to their brick house on Elk Run Road, a gun­shot rang out from the base­ment, and the bul­let grazed his head, he said. Norwood, who often car­ried a gun, fired back, and his assailant fled the house.

The father found his wife and youngest son fatal­ly shot and lying under blan­kets in the liv­ing room. It wasn’t until the next day that he learned the alleged cul­prit was his old­er son. “Every day for the rest of my life,” he said, “I’m going to wake up, look in the mir­ror, and I’m going to have a scar down my face, my head, as a mem­o­ry of the worst day of my life, when my fam­i­ly got tak­en away.” Eventually, Levi was tracked down in North Carolina, arrest­ed and returned to Northern Virginia. He is being held at a region­al juve­nile deten­tion cen­ter, await­ing tri­al. It’s unclear how his father’s death will affect his case. Scott Hook, Fauquier County’s commonwealth’s attor­ney, declined to com­ment. In the after­math of the killings, Joshua Norwood had come under scruti­ny for his own behav­ior, fac­ing accu­sa­tions that he was a racist who object­ed to his son’s hav­ing a black girl­friend. His Face­book page fea­tured a well-known say­ing by white suprema­cist David Lane: “We must secure the exis­tence of our race, and a future for white chil­dren.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Lane as “one of the most impor­tant ide­o­logues of con­tem­po­rary white supremacy.”

Norwood appears to have made dozens of posts on the white suprema­cist web­site Stormfront. And the acquain­tance, who met Norwood on Stormfront and last spoke to him ear­li­er this month, said Norwood was wor­ried the police inves­ti­ga­tion would reveal his white suprema­cist ties. “He didn’t want any infor­ma­tion com­ing out taint­ing his rep­u­ta­tion or embold­en­ing his son’s defense case,” accord­ing to the acquain­tance, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to avoid asso­ci­a­tion with Stormfront. But Norwood insist­ed in February that he was not a white suprema­cist. He said he could not remem­ber why he pro­mot­ed Lane’s max­im on Facebook. Levi Norwood’s girl­friend has not returned mes­sages from The Post, and her par­ents have declined inter­view requests.

Their fin­ger­prints are all over every act of bar­barism that has ever been vis­it­ed on inno­cent black Americans. From induc­ing enslaved men to engage in sex­u­al encoun­ters with them and when caught cry­ing rape.
From cry­ing rape when enslaved men denied them sex­u­al favors.
From the Tulsa Riots to Rosewood, From the Emit Till mur­der to Susan Smith and every case in between, white wom­en’s fin­ger­prints have been all over the mur­der of inno­cent black peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly black men.
Today, they would rather pay their last pen­ny to help save the life of a stray dog than show a sin­gle iota of empa­thy to a mur­dered black child.
The lack of empa­thy is noth­ing new; white women have always embarked on the sys­tem­at­ic killing of black chil­dren whom they chose to beat to death for the most minor child infrac­tion dur­ing slavery.

One of the issues that have been pushed to the back­burn­er as COVID ‑19 dom­i­nates the news is the issue of racism and the part white women play in it.
It can­not be lost on any­one that since Donald Trump ascend­ed to the Presidency, he has made no bones about being the most open­ly white nation­al­ist racists to occu­py the White House in our life­time.
We all knew that even among the best of them, if we can appro­pri­ate­ly use the term [best]to describe degen­er­a­cy, Republican or Democrat, at best, they were all rabid racists.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN SIGNED THE EMANCIPATION DECLARATION INTO LAW.

Yet still, here was Republican Abraham Lincoln, in a let­ter to pub­lish­er Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune;
I would save the Union. I would save it the short­est way under the Constitution. The soon­er the nation­al author­i­ty can be restored; the near­er the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I do not agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone I would also do that. What I do about slav­ery, and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when­ev­er I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor­rect errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

LYNDON JOHNSON SIGNED BOTH THE CIVIL AND VOTING RIGHTS ACTS INTO LAW.

Yet still, here was Democrat Lyndon Johnson: A crass & boor­ish spec­i­men. Some his­to­ri­ans believe Johnson to date has been the worst of the lot of them and may, to date, be the most revolt­ing ever to attain the pres­i­den­cy.
The National Post​.com argues Lyndon Johnson has been the most vul­gar pres­i­dent to date, As the world awaits the next nasty utter­ance from Donald Trump, one can only mar­vel at how his­to­ry itself has end­ed up in (lan­guage alert!) — a “shit­hole.” Amid the chron­ic shock and hor­ri­fied reac­tions, peo­ple have become blind to the fact that he is not (yet) the most dis­gust­ing U.S. pres­i­dent in liv­ing mem­o­ry. That title actu­al­ly belongs to a Texan Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, a howl­ing, flat­u­lent tor­men­tor of women whose cussing and racism remain breath­tak­ing today. And if you’re offend­ed by Trump’s lev­el of vul­gar­i­ty, you real­ly — real­ly — don’t want to read any fur­ther.
A record­ed 1964 tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Jack Valenti touched on Johnson’s elec­toral chances in Texas for an upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial race: Said Johnson, “I think I can take every Mexican in the state and every n — -r in the state.” “All they (the vot­ers) ever hear at elec­tion time is n — -r, n — -r, n — -r!”. Speaking of appoint a black jurist to the court Johnson went on, “When I appoint a n — -r to the bench, I want every­one to know he’s a n — -r.”

So we have estab­lished that racism is as much a social con­struct in America, as accept­ed & prac­ticed, as American as apple pie.
One of the false beliefs relat­ed to race is the idea that the face of racism in America is that of white males, and this could not be fur­ther from the truth. As I have writ­ten sev­er­al times over the last cou­ple of years, in par­tic­u­lar when the issue of Donald Trump’s racism comes up for dis­cus­sion, white women have used the safe­ty of hid­ing behind their white men, even as they per­pet­u­ate and indulge in the most vicious forms of racism.
In the three years that Donald Trump has been President of the United States, a real phe­nom­e­non has tak­en shape. One that many peo­ple have found cute names for. Some peo­ple have even found this phe­nom­e­non amus­ing; unfor­tu­nate­ly, because the result can result in death, it is absolute­ly no laugh­ing mat­ter.
It is a mat­ter of white women call­ing the police on black peo­ple for engag­ing in the most mun­dane activ­i­ties that we all engage in, in our dai­ly lives.

There seems to be an invig­o­rat­ed awak­en­ing in white women and an ener­gized spir­it to engage in bla­tant racism since Donald Trump took office. However, it can­not all be laid at Trump’s feet, no mat­ter how repug­nant he is.
We have all seen the videos of white women call­ing the police to arrest black peo­ple bar­be­cu­ing in the park. Studying in a com­mon area in a col­lege dorm. Sitting in a Starbucks cof­fee shop. In Cleveland, Huntington Bank apol­o­gized after an employ­ee called the police on a black man try­ing to cash his pay­check. Shopping at a CVS and using a coupon. Alison Ettel was filmed as she called the police on an 8‑year-old black girl sell­ing water with­out a per­mit. A white neigh­bor called the police on 12-year-old Reggie Fields as he was cut­ting grass in his neigh­bor­hood as part of his sum­mer busi­ness. Last sum­mer, Jaequan Faulkner, 13, opened a hot dog stand hop­ing to raise mon­ey to buy clothes. It was report­ed for not hav­ing a per­mit. In October, a Brooklyn woman was cap­tured in a viral video appear­ing to call 911 and claim­ing a young boy had groped her inside a deli. The footage shows young chil­dren cry­ing as she’s mak­ing the alleged call to the police, who nev­er show up. The woman was lat­er con­front­ed with sur­veil­lance footage con­firm­ing the boy nev­er groped her. On social media, users dubbed her “Cornerstore Caroline.“
It goes on and on, play­ing golf, stay­ing at an AirB&B, nap­ping on a couch, vis­it­ing the pool, run­ning a busi­ness, mak­ing a white woman sus­pi­cious, mak­ing a white woman uneasy, I could go on all day.

For some peo­ple who have nev­er lived in black skin in America, these things may seem pret­ty run-of-the-mill. There is noth­ing run of the mill about these racist calls to the police, and they are designed to use the police to kill the object of their hatred.
The bru­tal­i­ty and vio­lent ten­den­cies of police who kill black peo­ple are old­er than apple pie, com­ing from as far back as slav­ery.
No, there was noth­ing called police offi­cers dur­ing slav­ery; back then, they were over­seers on the plan­ta­tions and, even­tu­al­ly, slave patrols who ran down enslaved peo­ple flee­ing bondage in search of free­dom.
The sheer bar­barism of that era, in which slave patrols would have dogs lit­er­al­ly eat the flesh from run-away peo­ple, beat and muti­late them, is still evi­dent today.
Police still use dogs to muti­late black peo­ple who are already sub­dued, beat, and ulti­mate­ly mur­der them, even though they are unarmed and offer no resis­tance.
On the con­trary, white ser­i­al killers are treat­ed with the soft­est touch­es. They are gen­er­al­ly well pro­tect­ed, includ­ing being tak­en to get fast food after they mas­sa­cred mul­ti­ple inno­cent people.

The web­site (face2​faceafrica​.com) suc­cinct­ly writes, “What escapes many peo­ple is that the whim­si­cal killing of enslaved Blacks in the U.S. dur­ing slav­ery, and even after by white folks with­out puni­tive con­se­quence is based on laws passed by white politi­cians, who hap­pened to be plan­ta­tion own­ers as well. One such devi­ous law is the Casual Killing Act of 1669 which declared it legal to kill a slave while cor­rect­ing because mal­ice could not be pre­sumed. The “casu­al killing of slaves” says that if a slave dies while resist­ing his mas­ter, the act will not be pre­sumed to have occurred with “prepensed mal­ice.”
Does the penul­ti­mate & last lines ring a bell? Let us look at those two lines again, [if a slave dies while resist­ing his mas­ter, the act will not be pre­sumed to have occurred with “prepensed mal­ice.”]
Now, do you see it?
When you see a bunch of mur­der­ous cops beat­ing the hell out of a black per­son while six of them are sit­ting on him/​her, yelling “stop resist­ing” over and over again, the idea is to jus­ti­fy killing that per­son.
As long as they yell out, stop “resist­ing,” no mat­ter what crimes they com­mit there­after will be deemed jus­ti­fied when they inves­ti­gate them­selves.
These con­di­tions are not new; they were cod­i­fied into laws and form part of the fab­ric of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism built into the American body politic.
The new real­i­ty is this, “If a black per­son dies while resist­ing his new mas­ter [the police], the act will not be pre­sumed to have occurred with “prepensed mal­ice.”]
Now google the name Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Laquan McDonald. Michael Brown. Philando Castille. John Crawford. Sandra Bland. Miles Hall. Alton Sterling. Amadou Diallo. Sean Bell. .….….….

(Killedbypolice​.net) reports that though there are proven meth­ods that have result­ed in few­er deaths at the hands of police, only a few police depart­ments have adopt­ed them.
One of the strate­gies that I believe would be of much help is the duty to inter­vene if anoth­er offi­cer uses exces­sive force.
The fact that they have not adopt­ed these mea­sures and, in par­tic­u­lar, hold­ing oth­er cops account­able sends a strong mes­sage that there is no inten­tion to stop the killer dogs from mur­der­ing inno­cent peo­ple of col­or.
You pay their salaries through your tax­es; they kill you and serve their own racist interests.

But the laws passed to make it no big deal to kill black peo­ple were actu­al­ly passed to pro­tect white women who would mali­cious­ly beat and kill black chil­dren.
The cry­ing that we now see when white women are caught in bla­tant acts of racism or when they ille­gal­ly offend a black per­son is noth­ing new. White women have always been at the cen­ter of the bar­barism unleashed against inno­cent black cit­i­zens.
Whether it be the hor­rif­ic mur­der of Emmitt Till, the Tulsa Riots, to Susan Smith, who killed her chil­dren and blamed a black man, engag­ing in hor­rif­ic acts of racism and revert­ing to the lit­tle damsel in dis­tress has been their modus Operandi as long as this igno­ble sys­tem has exist­ed.
Sure the men pro­vide the mus­cle but behind the mus­cle are the devi­ous, dev­il­ish brains that have fer­til­ized racism and allowed it to con­tin­ue to grow.

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

Nationwide: Bishop Gerald O. Glenn, the 66-year old pas­tor and founder of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Virginia, has report­ed­ly died from COVID-19. He alleged­ly defied warn­ings to avoid reli­gious gath­er­ings and still con­tin­ued to preach that “God is larg­er than this dread­ed virus” before con­tract­ing the coronavirus.

When author­i­ties start­ed to advise social dis­tanc­ing, Glenn still appar­ent­ly held in-per­son church ser­vices and said he would keep preach­ing “unless in jail or the hos­pi­tal.” A day after his ser­mon on March 22, the state offi­cial­ly banned all gath­er­ings of 10 peo­ple or more.
A few days after, Glenn test­ed pos­i­tive of COVID-19. He was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where his con­di­tion con­tin­ued to wors­en even with a ven­ti­la­tor. He sad­ly died of COVID-19 on April 11, church offi­cials announced on Facebook.

Moreover, his 65-year old wife, Mother Marcietia Glenn, their daugh­ter, Mar-Gerie Crawley, and 2 oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers have test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus. Meanwhile, Church mem­bers held a vig­il to mourn the death of Bishop Glenn. Senator Tim Kane of Virginia also expressed his grief on his death.
“My heart sinks as I learn this morn­ing that Bishop Gerald Glenn, pas­tor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church, died yes­ter­day from COVID-19,” Kaine wrote on Twitter the day after his death. “He was a friend and pil­lar of Richmond faith com­mu­ni­ty. May all do as much for so many.”

Philadelphia, PA — Dr. Ala Stanford and oth­er African American doc­tors (most­ly women) from Pennsylvania have launched the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium to pro­vide free mobile coro­n­avirus test­ing to under­served com­mu­ni­ties in hopes to pre­vent fur­ther spread of the virus, espe­cial­ly among Black people.

Dr. Stanford, who is a pedi­atric sur­geon, owns a pri­vate prac­tice and a Black-owned med­ical con­sult­ing firm called REAL Concierge Medicine. She is also on staff at Abington-Jefferson Hospital in Hatfield Township. She says she launched the ini­tia­tive because she want­ed to do some­thing about the increas­ing num­bers of cas­es and deaths relat­ed to COVID-19 in com­mu­ni­ties where Afriacn Americans live.

Initially, she cre­at­ed and uploaded a video try­ing to dis­prove the myth that African Americans were resis­tant to COVID-19. But even though some were wor­ried that if they had the virus, they couldn’t get tested.

That’s when she decid­ed to form Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium with her col­leagues in the med­ical field as well as church­es in the Black com­mu­ni­ties in Philadelphia. Having some test­ing kits on hand, Stanford and the oth­er doc­tors “put our sup­plies togeth­er and we went out to the com­mu­ni­ty,” she told WHYY.

Those who want to be test­ed can sign up for an appoint­ment online. The group is test­ing any­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly in under­served com­mu­ni­ties, who has coro­n­avirus symp­toms or known con­tact with some­one who test­ed positive.

They have set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds to pro­vide COVID-19 test­ing, advo­ca­cy, and edu­cate Black peo­ple about the coro­n­avirus dis­ease. It has so far raised more than $25,000 of its $50,000 goal.

THE VIRUS

At the off­set of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, some peo­ple in the African-American & Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties were buoyed by mis­in­for­ma­tion that black peo­ple are some­how immune from the virus.
I nev­er under­stood how that would work, so I took the pre­cau­tion to heed the warn­ings of the med­ical experts and advised my fam­i­ly to do so as well, vis-a-vis the wear­ing of masks, wash­ing of hands, stay­ing six feet apart from oth­ers where pos­si­ble, show­er­ing imme­di­ate­ly after enter­ing my home, putting clothes worn out­side in the laun­dry room, (wife enforced) among oth­er com­mon-sense safe­ty mea­sures.
In Jamaica, peo­ple are seen par­ty­ing and ignor­ing the direc­tives from author­i­ties to observe safe­ty pro­to­cols, not out of con­fu­sion or mis­in­for­ma­tion, but open defi­ance and rebel­lion.
That lev­el of law­less­ness not only places the par­tic­i­pants at risk, but it also endan­gers the entire coun­try and the lim­it­ed resources avail­able to the gov­ern­ment to treat those who will get sick through no fault of their own.

MISINFORMATION

Other infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic space that may have caused some degree of con­fu­sion & over-con­fi­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly among our peo­ple, is the idea that the virus does not like heat, or at best will die giv­en the cor­rect degree of heat exposure.[sic]
The truth of the mat­ter is that lit­er­al­ly every liv­ing thing on this plan­et will die giv­en the right amount of heat expo­sure.
On the oth­er hand, even if one lives in a hot cli­mate, the dis­ease will still kill peo­ple if they get infect­ed and have some of the under­ly­ing pre-exist­ing con­di­tions the experts warned us, would make some peo­ple more vul­ner­a­ble to dying than oth­ers. High blood pres­sure, kid­ney dis­ease, dia­betes, obe­si­ty, lung dis­ease, etc.
(Newscientist​.com) asks the ques­tion: Will the COVID-19 out­break caused by the new coro­n­avirus fade as the north­ern hemi­sphere warms up? This has been sug­gest­ed by some researchers and repeat­ed by some polit­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing US President Donald Trump, but we sim­ply don’t know if it is the case. “We absolute­ly don’t know that,” says Trudie Lang at the University of Oxford. “I keep ask­ing virol­o­gist col­leagues this and nobody knows.”“So when you hear peo­ple say the weath­er will warm up and it will just dis­ap­pear, it’s a very unhelp­ful gen­er­al­iza­tion,” she says.
Read more: https://​www​.new​sci​en​tist​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​2​3​3​2​4​9​-​w​i​l​l​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​-​c​o​r​o​n​a​v​i​r​u​s​-​o​u​t​b​r​e​a​k​-​d​i​e​-​o​u​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​s​u​m​m​e​r​s​-​h​e​a​t​/​#​i​x​z​z​6​J​Q​S​R​y​a8v
Some of those con­di­tions include sim­ply being old­er, obese, hav­ing high blood pres­sure, suf­fer­ing from dia­betes, hav­ing kid­ney prob­lems and a host of oth­er con­di­tions.
A lit­tle com­mon sense will tell us that if we are suf­fer­ing from one or more of those mal­adies, we gen­er­al­ly have immune sys­tems that are com­pro­mised & there­fore it becomes hard­er to fight off ill­ness­es like the COVID-19.

FOOD DESERTS

It real­ly is rather sim­ple to under­stand. In the United States, for exam­ple, a lot of peo­ple in the African-America com­mu­ni­ty are poor, in fact, poor­er than oth­er races based on our numer­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the soci­ety.
Some peo­ple live in com­mu­ni­ties that are called food deserts; “While there’s no one stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion to go by, food deserts are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be places where res­i­dents don’t have access to afford­able nutri­tious foods like fruits, veg­eta­bles, and whole grains. Instead of gro­cery stores or farm­ers’ mar­kets, these areas often have con­ve­nience stores and gas sta­tions with lim­it­ed shelf space avail­able for healthy options — mak­ing nutri­tious foods vir­tu­al­ly inac­ces­si­ble for many fam­i­lies.” (adapt­ed)
In many com­mu­ni­ties, in states like California, Michigan,Missouri, and oth­ers, res­i­dents are forced to shop for food at the local cor­ner stores and bode­gas.
This lim­its them to eat­ing a lot of processed foods that are packed with salts, sug­ars, and preservatives.

LACK OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES & ENDEMIC STRUCTURAL RACISM

Being at the bot­tom of the eco­nom­ic lad­der place those in that socio-eco­nom­ic group at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage. Not only are they unable to source healthy foods because of where they live, sim­ply find­ing the mon­ey to pur­chase healthy foods becomes an issue.
Additionally, get­ting health­care is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, even for African-Americans with health Insurance as insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism built into the sys­tem dis­crim­i­nates on the lev­el of care peo­ple get based on the col­or of their skin.
According to the (cdc​.gov) Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native (AI/​AN) women are two to three times more like­ly to die from preg­nan­cy-relat­ed caus­es than white women. Pregnancy-relat­ed deaths per 100,000 live births (the preg­nan­cy-relat­ed mor­tal­i­ty ratio or PRMR) for black and AI/​AN women old­er than 30 was four to five times as high as it was for white women. Even in states with the low­est PRMRs and among women with high­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion, sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences per­sist. These find­ings sug­gest that the dis­par­i­ty observed in preg­nan­cy-relat­ed death for black and AI/​AN women is a com­plex nation­al prob­lem.

MAKING THE RIGHT DECISIONS 

Thus far, from what we have seen in New York City, Chicago Illinois, Washington State, in Italy and even in Wuhan China, it is safe to con­clude that like oth­er virus­es, peo­ple tend to be at greater risk when tight­ly packed into small geo­graph­i­cal areas.
Getting dis­tance between one’s self and oth­ers and observ­ing oth­er expert direc­tives seems to be the thing to do.
Even as nations strug­gle to bring this pan­dem­ic under con­trol each and every one of us has cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ties to be recep­tive to gov­ern­men­tal direc­tives.
Regardless of pre-exist­ing con­di­tions, if we are able to avoid get­ting infect­ed, we have a bet­ter chance of sur­viv­ing than find­ing ways to sur­vive after get­ting infect­ed.
Additionally, this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to take stock of our­selves col­lec­tive­ly as a peo­ple. Where pos­si­ble, we must begin the process of eat­ing less fat­ty, sug­ary and processed foods, and con­sum­ing less alco­holic bev­er­ages. As the say­ing goes“we are what we eat”, so if we can avoid the foods that give us those pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tions, and exer­cise, if we sur­vive this pan­dem­ic we may also sur­vive the next killer virus as well.

The ris­ing death toll, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly among black res­i­dents, has led Michigan to cre­ate a racial dis­par­i­ties task force​.By Khushbu Shah Apr 10, 2020, 11:15am EDTPhotographs cour­tesy of the Detroit Free Press

An aunt, an uncle, and a cousin have test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus, says Cassandra Spratling. A friend’s hus­band died. Her brother’s friend, like her aunt and uncle, is hos­pi­tal­ized. “I’m almost afraid, I almost hate turn­ing on my Facebook page, or even some­times answer­ing my phone,” says the 64-year-old Detroit native, once a jour­nal­ist at the Detroit Free Press. As the num­ber of deaths from COVID-19 ris­es in the city, she says, “it makes me a lit­tle ner­vous when I get a phone call because I’m always afraid that it’s going to be some­body I know.” Spratling, in her north­west Detroit neigh­bor­hood, is like many African Americans nation­wide, watch­ing in fear as the coro­n­avirus rapid­ly spreads in her home­town and in oth­er black com­mu­ni­ties across the US. Read the full sto­ry here: https://​www​.vox​.com/​i​d​e​n​t​i​t​i​e​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​4​/​1​0​/​2​1​2​1​1​9​2​0​/​d​e​t​r​o​i​t​-​c​o​r​o​n​a​v​i​r​u​s​-​r​a​c​i​s​m​-​p​o​v​e​r​t​y​-​h​o​t​-​s​pot

Sandy Brown lost both her hus­band of 35 years and only child to bat­tles with coro­n­avirus just days apart
By Matthew Allen — April 11, 2020

While coro­n­avirus has brought tragedy to many American house­holds, the virus has an insur­mount­able toll on one Michigan woman after the dis­ease claimed her entire fam­i­ly. Sandy Brown, a res­i­dent of a Flint sub­urb, lost her hus­band, Freddie Lee Brown, Jr., and their only son, Freddie Brown III, to COVID-19 just days apart from one anoth­er, accord­ing to The Detroit News.

The elder Freddie was 59 years old when he suc­cumbed to coro­n­avirus com­pli­ca­tions on March 26. The younger Freddie was only 20 when he passed away on March 29.
“There’s not even a word cre­at­ed to describe my pain. It’s unimag­in­able,” Sandy Brown told the news­pa­per. The father and son both had under­ly­ing con­di­tions that made them vul­ner­a­ble to the virus. The senior Freddie, whose lungs col­lapsed pri­or to his death, had a kid­ney trans­plant in 2012. The younger Freddie had asth­ma. The cou­ple had been mar­ried for 35 years. Freddie Brown, Jr., was a church elder of the Church of God and Christ and retired pro­duce clerk at a gro­cery store. Freddie Brown III was attend­ing Mott Community College and had plans to walk on the Michigan State University foot­ball team.

Dr. Fredrick Echols, Director of the St. Louis Department of Health, has con­firmed that as of April 8^th, all 12 COVID-19 deaths in the city of St. Louis, Missouri were African Americans. This is the first major city in the United States to report such a statistic.

The infor­ma­tion was revealed in an exclu­sive op-ed he wrote pub­lished by the St. Louis American. Dr. Echols, who is a med­ical doc­tor and just 37-years old, wrote: “Many of the pre-exist­ing con­di­tions that make the coro­n­avirus more dan­ger­ous for some peo­ple — like heart con­di­tions and dia­betes — dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect the Black com­mu­ni­ty. This is why every­one in the City of St. Louis — espe­cial­ly African Americans — must take pre­cau­tions against spread­ing this disease.”

In his op-ed, he also con­firmed that the city has two appoint­ment-only COVID-19 test­ing sites – one in North St. Louis, at 2425 N. Whittier Strett and the oth­er at the 5471 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. loca­tion. The city also has a mobile test­ing site at 1717 Biddle Street, but patients must call first to reg­is­ter before arriving.

Both Dr. Echols and the city’s top offi­cial, Mayor Lyda Krewson, addressed the city via a Facebook Live ses­sion, and it was revealed that the city will more than like­ly have to extend its stay-at-home order into the month of May.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Public Schools are offer­ing to-go meals for chil­dren who are out of school, and both the city and coun­ty have issued strict orders to halt evic­tions for the time being.

Up-to-date infor­ma­tion is being pub­lished dai­ly at the offi­cial web site. for the city’s Department of Health.(bn.com)

Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds announced on Friday evening that he and his fam­i­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for the nov­el coro­n­avirus, but are now neg­a­tive and recov­er­ing at home. On what was also his birth­day, the leg­endary song­writer and pro­duc­er shared on Instagram a let­ter of grat­i­tude to his fans.
“I would like to warm­ly thank every­one for all the many birth­day wish­es today. I feel so blessed to be able to cel­e­brate anoth­er birth­day,” Edmonds wrote. “I test­ed pos­i­tive for the Covid19 virus, as did my fam­i­ly. It’s an incred­i­bly scary thing to go through my friends.” He added, “I’m hap­py to report we have now test­ed neg­a­tive and are on our way back to full health.”

Edmonds’ news comes after an Instagram Live bat­tle between him and Teddy Riley was abrupt­ly post­poned on Sunday, April 5. Riley lat­er told Charlamagne Tha God that it was due to Edmonds being sick. “There is no back­out,” Riley said at the time, accord­ing to Revolt. “Nobody is back­ing out. Babyface is mov­ing for­ward, he’s not actu­al­ly 100%. He’s been sick.”

Chicago, IL — As coro­n­avirus cas­es con­tin­ue to rise in the coun­try, Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois has record­ed the high­est num­ber of cas­es in a sin­gle area in the entire coun­try. They have had a total of over 355 cas­es since the pan­dem­ic start­ed – 238 inmates and 115 staff members.

The out­break of the virus appar­ent­ly start­ed from 2 inmates who were the first ones to test pos­i­tive for COVID-19 about two weeks ago.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which oper­ates the jail which is one of the country’s largest with more than 4,500 inmates, not­ed that the num­bers could increase even more as a vast major­i­ty of the inmates have yet been tested.

The inmates who have test­ed pos­i­tive have already been placed in a quar­an­tine area, while at least 17 who had com­pli­cat­ed symp­toms have been hos­pi­tal­ized. One inmate who is COVID-19 pos­i­tive appar­ent­ly died of com­pli­ca­tions from the coro­n­avirus, offi­cials said.
“This has been a dif­fi­cult time for every­one,” Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart told the New York Times.

The rapid trans­mis­sion of the coro­n­avirus behind bars have been linked to the over­crowd­ed and unsan­i­tary con­di­tions in jails that alleged­ly helped spread the virus. According to reports, at least 1,324 coro­n­avirus cas­es are from U.S. jails, includ­ing at least 32 deaths.
In line with that, some author­i­ties were prompt­ed to release thou­sands of inmates who were most­ly await­ing tri­al or sen­tenced for non­vi­o­lent crimes to decrease the prison pop­u­la­tion. Visitations have been pro­hib­it­ed also to pre­vent fur­ther spread to peo­ple out­side the prison.

What hap­pened in the mid-west­ern state of Wisconsin on Tuesday should alarm every­one, Democrats and Republicans alike, or at least those who claim to love America.
The Republican Legislature’s deci­sion to oppose the State’s Democratic exec­u­tive order, to push the Democratic pri­ma­ry elec­tions back because of COVID-19 was stark.
It demon­strat­ed that Republicans do not care what it takes to attain and hold pow­er, even it means expos­ing mil­lions of demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tion vot­ers to a dan­ger­ous life-threat­en­ing disease.

The Republican-dom­i­nat­ed state leg­is­la­ture, with the major­i­ty since 2011, due in part to ger­ry­man­dered maps, refused to allow the Democratic governor’s request to mail absen­tee bal­lots to all vot­ers or move the pri­ma­ry. Then the State Supreme Court, which is con­trolled by Republican judges, over­turned the governor’s rul­ing to post­pone the elec­tion until June. According to the New York times, for­mer Vice President Joe Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders were on the bal­lot in Wisconsin, but the main event is the State Supreme Court race between the con­ser­v­a­tive incum­bent jus­tice, Daniel Kelly, and a lib­er­al chal­lenger, Jill Karofsky. 

The win­ner will be in a posi­tion to cast a decid­ing vote on a case before the court that seeks to purge more than 200,000 peo­ple from Wisconsin’s vot­er rolls — in a state where 2.6 mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed in the last governor’s race. When the mat­ter was first before the court in January, Mr. Kelly recused him­self, cit­ing his upcom­ing elec­tion. He indi­cat­ed he would “rethink” his posi­tion fol­low­ing the April elec­tion, which comes with a 10-year term.
But the elec­tion pro­ceed­ing on Tuesday is not just about the vot­er purge case. It is the lat­est exam­ple of what many in the state see as a decade-long effort by Wisconsin Republicans to dilute the vot­ing pow­er of the state’s Democratic and African-American vot­ers.(new york times)

The out­come of the Wisconsin elec­tions aside, comes the larg­er issue of the con­se­quences of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s actions in block­ing President Barack Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland’s ascen­sion to the US supreme court.
The seat that Obama had every right to fill, but failed to fight for, was even­tu­al­ly filled by Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee.
In a typ­i­cal 5 – 4 deci­sion, the five Republicans on the US supreme court upheld the deci­sion of the Wisconsin state supreme court to dis­en­fran­chise the state’s Democratic vot­ers.
In vin­tage fash­ion, the US supreme court under John Roberts with its 5 – 4 Republican major­i­ty has essen­tial­ly become anoth­er arm of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the Republican party.

The real dam­age to the process is real­ly not Donald Trump’s lies, we know he is a patho­log­i­cal liar. Although the accep­tance of lies inex­orable dimin­ish­es the fab­ric of our col­lec­tive moral exis­tence, the real dam­age is being done through the Justice Department and Trump pack­ing the courts with right-wing ide­o­logues.
It is for that rea­son that African-Americans must stay on top of their lives and pay atten­tion and where pos­si­ble, get up go out and vote like their lives depend on vot­ing.
Because it does.……There seem to be a sense among African-Americans that even­tu­al­ly their inter­est will even­tu­al­ly be leg­is­lat­ed and ensured by the white pow­er struc­ture which has for over four hun­dred years done the exact oppo­site.
I under­stand that there may also be a sense of res­ig­na­tion that blacks can­not change their cir­cum­stances in America so they have essen­tial­ly checked out of the process.
In fair­ness to African-American women, they have gen­er­al­ly not thrown up their hands in despair. Nevertheless, there seems to be a per­va­sive sense of escapism that has become self-evi­dent among our men.
They are able to talk about any movie or video game, but knows noth­ing about the crit­i­cal polit­i­cal issues that affect their lives.

Communicating the seri­ous­ness of the exis­ten­tial cri­sis fac­ing black peo­ple in America, is seri­ous­ly ham­pered by the refusal of our peo­ple to read any­thing.
Whether its news­pa­per arti­cles, blogs, or to process tex­tu­al data that is com­piled and made eas­i­ly avail­able on web­sites, or in oth­er forums, Black peo­ple have demon­stra­bly refused to con­sume that infor­ma­tion.
Should we pro­duce that infor­ma­tion in cray­on, we don’t know.
In Wisconsin, on Tuesday Democratic vot­ers braved the COVID-19 virus and hail­storms just to exer­cise their right to vote.
A plu­ral­i­ty of the American peo­ple still believe that the US Supreme court will do the right thing for the Republic but they are woe­ful­ly mis­guid­ed in that mind­set.
The nation’s high­est court has always got­ten it wrong when comes to fair­ness for the plu­ral­i­ty of the dif­fer­ent peo­ple in America.
.* On slav­ery.
* On Jim crow
*On inter-racial mar­riage
* On the Japanese intern­ment
* On sep­a­rate but equal
* On cit­i­zens unit­ed, et al.
On issue after issue, the Supreme Court of the United States has come down against peo­ple of col­or. There is no rea­son or prece­dent for peo­ple of col­or to ever believe that the SCOTUS will ever do the right thing when the rub­ber meets the road. 

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.

PAY ATTENTION THIS IS NO JOKE, THIS VIRUS DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE

New Orleans, LA — Antoinette Franklin, an elder­ly woman from New Orleans who was 86-years old, and her 3 sons, who were aged 58 to 71, have all died from com­pli­ca­tions of the coro­n­avirus after test­ing pos­i­tive of COVID-19.
My uncle passed, my grand­moth­er passed, my dad passed, then my oth­er uncle passed its lit­er­al­ly like 7 – 8 days apart it’s hor­rif­ic,” Anthony Franklin told WDSU. 58-year old Anthony Franklin Sr. was remem­bered for his love for music and his fam­i­ly.
61-year old Timothy Franklin was con­sid­ered the base­ball enthu­si­ast in the fam­i­ly.
71-year old Herman Franklin want­ed to be clos­er to his fam­i­ly so he just recent­ly moved back to New Orleans.
Their fam­i­ly said they are not sure how they were infect­ed with the virus, but con­firmed that they all got sick almost at the same time.
“I want the world to know if it hap­pened to the Franklin fam­i­ly it could hap­pen to any fam­i­ly,” Jacqueline Franklin said. “Let’s take this seri­ous­ly my chil­dren have to bury their father, their pre­cious grand­moth­er and their uncles. Let’s not let this hap­pen to anoth­er fam­i­ly.”
A ser­vice for her 3 sons was held last Friday and attend­ed by only a few rel­a­tives and friends to adhere to the social dis­tanc­ing restric­tions. A sep­a­rate ser­vice was set for Antoinette on Saturday.

Jason Hargrove, a city bus dri­ver from Detroit who post­ed a video on social media angri­ly com­plain­ing about one of his pas­sen­gers who was cough­ing with­out cov­er­ing her mouth, has sad­ly died from COVID-19. He was only 50-years old.
Hargrove’s video was post­ed on his Facebook page just about two weeks ago. In the video, he talks about a woman who rode his bus and appar­ent­ly did not care and was not tak­ing the pan­dem­ic seri­ous­ly enough because she repeat­ed­ly coughed with­out cov­er­ing her mouth.
During his 8‑minute video, he is heard say­ing: “We out here as pub­lic work­ers, doing our jobs, try­ing to make an hon­est liv­ing to take care of our fam­i­lies, but for you to get on the bus and stand on the bus and cough sev­er­al times with­out cov­er­ing up your mouth … that lets me know that some folks don’t care. Utterly don’t give a f — , excuse my language.”

Just 4 days after record­ing and post­ing that video, Hargrove him­self began to feel sick and sad­ly passed away late Wednesday night.
Mike Duggan, the Mayor of Detroit, made a pub­lic announce­ment say­ing “every­body in America” should watch Hargrove’s video.
Duggan com­ment­ed, “He was infect­ed before we closed the front doors [on bus­es]. Some of his lan­guage is graph­ic, but I don’t know how you can watch it and not tear up. He knew his life was being put in jeop­ardy… by some­one who didn’t take this seri­ous­ly and now he’s gone.”
It remains unclear if Hargrove con­tract­ed the ill­ness from the spe­cif­ic pas­sen­ger that he ref­er­enced in the video.

A local Black-owned funer­al home in Albany, Georgia, is shocked to learn they unknow­ing­ly host­ed two funer­als that report­ed­ly infect­ed at least 20 peo­ple with coro­n­avirus includ­ing the pas­tor who deliv­ered one of the eulo­gies. Sadly, that pas­tor has since died from COVID-19.

Local health offi­cials say that the out­break began short­ly after the funer­als for 64-year old retired jan­i­tor Andrew J. Mitchell and anoth­er unnamed man. Both funer­als were attend­ed by their rel­a­tives and friends, and at least one per­son who attend­ed was infect­ed caus­ing oth­ers to also become infect­ed. As of Wednesday after­noon, there are at least 490 con­firmed coro­n­avirus cas­es and at least 29 coro­n­avirus-relat­ed deaths report­ed in Dougherty County, which is home to Albany, accord­ing to the Georgia Department of Public Health.

“It took one per­son, who­ev­er that was, and there was no intent,” Scott Steiner, CEO of Albany’s largest hos­pi­tal told CNN. “It shows this virus can quick­ly spread.”
The Georgia Department of Health con­firmed that the virus spread among “indi­vid­u­als who attend­ed a num­ber of events in Albany.” The depart­ment added, how­ev­er, that it is not yet 100% clear “where or with whom it all start­ed.”
Mitchell’s 75-year old long-time part­ner Emell Murray was one of those infect­ed with the coro­n­avirus. She was hos­pi­tal­ized for fever and high blood pres­sure a few days after Mitchell’s funeral.

So how did all this start?

Authorities have report­ed­ly traced the town­wide out­break to a 67-year old man who trav­eled from Atlanta to attend one of the funer­als. He report­ed being sick, and was hos­pi­tal­ized in Albany. “The next day it’s when we began see­ing peo­ple com­ing to our emer­gency room who were sick,” Steiner said. “Two (peo­ple) the first day, six the next day, eight the next day, and it just began to cas­cade from that point.”

A state­ment from the funer­al home and the governor

The Martin Luther King Memorial Chapel, which host­ed the two funer­als on February 29 and March 7 respec­tive­ly, released a state­ment after they were noti­fied by the health depart­ment offi­cials of the pos­si­ble spread of the virus on March 13.
“Although we have been iden­ti­fied as a com­mon fac­tor in the track­ing of the COVID-19 in Albany, know that we are oper­at­ing with­in all reg­u­la­to­ry safe­ty or health guide­lines,” the funer­al home direc­tors wrote in a Facebook post. “We know that there is a grow­ing con­cern across the city. We are tak­ing extra pre­cau­tions to pro­tect you, our staff and the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp expressed his con­cern about the rapid increase of coro­n­avirus cas­es in Albany in a press con­fer­ence, cit­ing the impor­tance of com­ply­ing with the stay-at-home order in the state.
“I believe there was a funer­al ser­vice weeks ago where an infect­ed per­son went, and it cre­at­ed this whole epi­cen­ter which just explod­ed down there,” Kemp said. “That’s one of the rea­sons we have been beg­ging peo­ple to not have — and I know it’s a hard thing — reli­gious services.”

Detroit, MI — Laneeka Barksdale, a 42-year old moth­er from Michigan with four chil­dren, has report­ed­ly died from the coro­n­avirus after being sick for two weeks and fight­ing for her life in the hospital.

Barksdale, who is lov­ing­ly known as Nikki to her fam­i­ly, was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal when she had symp­toms of COVID-19. With her under­ly­ing asth­ma, Barksdale expe­ri­enced more severe conditions.

“They induced a coma maybe her sec­ond day in the hos­pi­tal to see if they could give her lungs a bit of a break from over­work­ing,” her broth­er Omari Barksdale told Fox News Detroit. “They brought her out of the coma, when she came out, she still wasn’t able to process enough oxygen.”

The doc­tors still tried to keep her oxy­gen lev­el by heav­i­ly sedat­ing her, but her tem­per­a­ture remained at 102 degrees. She sad­ly died on March 23 due to the com­pli­ca­tions of the coronavirus.

Michigan is one of the states with the high­est num­ber of cas­es in the US. Currently, the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es are more than 9,300, at least 337 peo­ple have died, and the num­bers are still increasing.

Omari remem­bered his sis­ter as his “pro­tec­tor” and he was bro­ken­heart­ed that he couldn’t do enough to pro­tect his sis­ter now. He is appeal­ing to all peo­ple to adhere to the author­i­ties’ guide­lines to help pre­vent the fur­ther spread of the coronavirus.

“This is the most seri­ous thing we’ve faced as a world in anybody’s life­time that’s alive right now,” he said. “The impli­ca­tions of it are too vast to take lightly.”