When Patricia start­ed hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties breath­ing, her fam­i­ly didn’t think it was that seri­ous. Until she test­ed pos­i­tive with COVID-19 and even­tu­al­ly died on March 16.

Unfortunately, on that same day, her fam­i­ly also found out that Wanda, her old­er sis­ter, was tak­en to the ER due to cough. She died of pneu­mo­nia due to COVID-19 as well on March 25.

Their fam­i­ly is yet been to under­stand why out of all the 9 sib­lings, Wanda was the one who got infect­ed even though she has always stayed at home. But at one time, Patricia and Wanda appar­ent­ly attend­ed church together.

Moreover, their fam­i­ly is par­tic­u­lar­ly griev­ing with the fact that they weren’t able to give the two sis­ters a final good­bye because of the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures in an infec­tious dis­ease death.

“The tough­est part about my sis­ters’ death is that they had to die alone in the hos­pi­tal,” Frieson told CNN. “It’s just dev­as­tat­ing to us that we couldn’t go to see them in their last moments.”

Currently, there are a total of more than 5,000 known cas­es of coro­n­avirus in Illinois and 73 deaths.

London, England — Kayla Williams, a 36-year old moth­er of 3 from London who was report­ed­ly infect­ed with the coro­n­avirus, has died a day after she called emer­gency ser­vices and was told that she could not be admit­ted to a hos­pi­tal because she was not a “pri­or­i­ty”.
Her hus­band Fabian Williams, a 49-year old garbage col­lec­tor, called emer­gency ser­vices when she suf­fered from cough, high fever, and severe chest and stom­ach pains. He fol­lowed what the call oper­a­tor instruct­ed him while he wait­ed for the med­ical help to arrive.
When the para­medics arrived, she car­ried out some tests. Documents con­firmed that she was treat­ed as a sus­pect­ed Covid-19 case. However, she was left at the apart­ment and was not tak­en to the hos­pi­tal because she was told that she is not a pri­or­i­ty.
The morn­ing after, Fabian helped her eat and get dressed but her con­di­tion still con­tin­ued to wors­en. He rest­ed for a while and when he came back to her, she was slump­ing head down.
“She was already dead. I put her on the ground — because that is what they had told me to do before — and I rang 999 again and they told me to put my hand on her chest and pump her chest,” he recount­ed to The Guardian.

Police offi­cers even­tu­al­ly came to their apart­ment but refused to get in. Funeral ser­vice offi­cials, who were wear­ing full foren­sic suits, arrived next and did all the pro­ce­dures required in an infec­tious dis­ease death.
Fabian said that what left him appalled is that what was hap­pen­ing wasn’t explained to him. He was only ordered to stay home or iso­late and noth­ing else.
Meanwhile, the ambu­lance ser­vice con­firmed in a state­ment that Kayla was suf­fer­ing from symp­toms of the coro­n­avirus but was advised “self-care, use antipyret­ics, increase food/​fluid” and quar­an­tine from her fam­i­ly.
A lot of peo­ple expressed their dis­ap­point­ment with the para­medics say­ing that she wasn’t a pri­or­i­ty.
“This tragedy would almost cer­tain­ly not have had Kayla Williams not been a black woman,” one said. “It is less well doc­u­ment­ed than in the US, but black women in the UK also face sim­i­lar struc­tur­al obsta­cles to receiv­ing ade­quate health­care.”
“The news of the death of Kayla Williams is so heavy this evening,” anoth­er wrote. “Black women being told we are “not pri­or­i­ties” dur­ing a glob­al health pan­dem­ic whilst mem­bers of the celebri­ty class and Royal fam­i­ly have imme­di­ate, round the clock access to test­ing and health­care. No words.”

Marlowe Stoudamire, a well-known entre­pre­neur from Detroit, has report­ed­ly died from com­pli­ca­tions relat­ed to coro­n­avirus at the age of 43. His col­leagues and peo­ple across the city are mourn­ing the death of the trans­for­ma­tion­al leader who was con­sid­ered “a light to the city

The promi­nent con­sul­tant and entre­pre­neur was the first one to be pub­licly iden­ti­fied of the 24 per­sons in Michigan that died from the virus. He had no known under­ly­ing health con­di­tion or recent trav­el his­to­ry, accord­ing to The Detroit News.
He died on March 24 at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, said Henry Ford Health System COO Bob Riney, speak­ing on behalf of Stoudamire’s fam­i­ly. Stoudamire is sur­vived by his wife, Valencia, and two young children.

He is best known for serv­ing as the project direc­tor of the award-win­ning Detroit 67 exhib­it at the Detroit Historical Museum, a project that com­mem­o­rat­ed the 50^th anniver­sary of the Detroit Uprising in 1967.
Stoudamire has also left behind a sig­nif­i­cant lega­cy in help­ing devel­op sev­er­al strate­gic ini­tia­tives in Detroit City. He has worked with big com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions such as JP Morgan Chase, Pepsi, National Hockey League, Wayne State University, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Skillman Foundation.

Moreover, he served as project direc­tor of inter­na­tion­al busi­ness strat­e­gy at Henry Ford Health System. He also found­ed the inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing and busi­ness strate­gies firm Roster Detroit and Butterfly Effect Detroit.

Nationwide — Dez-Ann Romain, the 36-year old prin­ci­pal of the Brooklyn Democracy Academy in New York City has died from coro­n­avirus com­pli­ca­tions. Reportedly, she is the first city pub­lic school employ­ee to con­tract and die from COVID-19.

The acad­e­my is a trans­fer school for over-age/un­der-cred­it­ed stu­dents, locat­ed in the Brooklyn bor­ough. According to her col­leagues, Romain was a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty ser­vant that “gave her entire self” to the school and the entire com­mu­ni­ty “and it did not mat­ter how incred­i­bly com­plex a prob­lem was.”

She was known to reg­u­lar­ly stop and talk to every stu­dent that she passed in the hall­ways in between class­es. Also, back in March 2019, she was hon­ored by Brooklyn’s Borough President Eric Adams for her enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty, cul­ture, and education.

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) issued a pub­lic state­ment say­ing: “It is with pro­found sad­ness and over­whelm­ing grief that we announce the pass­ing of our sis­ter, CSA mem­ber Dezann Romain, Principal of Brooklyn Democracy Academy, due to com­pli­ca­tions from Coronavirus. Our prayers are with her fam­i­ly and school com­mu­ni­ty as we mourn along­side them. Please keep Principal Romain in your thoughts and con­tin­ue to do every­thing pos­si­ble to keep your­selves and your loved ones safe dur­ing this health crisis.”(bn.com)

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has the world on pause and celebri­ties are includ­ed in the swift lifestyle changes. On Monday, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she and long­time part­ner Stedman Graham are tak­ing the coro­n­avirus man­dates seri­ous­ly. While shar­ing her quar­an­tine habits dur­ing an Instagram live ses­sion with OprahMag​.com Digital Director Arianna Davis, Winfrey said Stedman has been quar­an­tined in their guest house since return­ing from out-of-town.
Due to his recent trav­els and her health con­di­tions, the pair sees it best to remain in sep­a­rate quar­ters for the time being. 
“’ I don’t see what everybody’s get­ting so upset about!’ That’s what Stedman was saying…and that’s why Stedman’s at the guest house!” she said.

Winfrey admits that ini­tial­ly, Graham did not take the threat of coro­n­avirus seri­ous­ly. During his trav­els, he flew on mul­ti­ple flights and hit mul­ti­ple air­ports. Due to the social dis­tanc­ing man­dates, Winfrey decid­ed to fol­low pro­ce­dures imme­di­ate­ly upon his return. Despite his pri­or thoughts and opin­ions on the pan­dem­ic, Stedman glad­ly agreed to quar­an­tine for Winfrey’s safe­ty. “Stedman did not arrive from Chicago until Thursday, he had been speak­ing in St. Louis…he’d been on planes, so Stedman is like ‘What’s the pro­ce­dure for com­ing home?’ The pro­ce­dure is…you ain’t com­ing and sleep­ing in my bed!” Winfrey said.

“And lit­er­al­ly, he goes, ‘I’m not?’ And I go, ‘Have you not been pay­ing atten­tion to the news? Social dis­tanc­ing does not mean you go and sleep in the same bed with the per­son! When you just got off American Airlines!’” Winfrey want­ed to make it clear that Stedman does not have the coro­n­avirus or dis­play any symp­toms. The quar­an­tine is a pre­cau­tion­ary effort in case Stedman became unknow­ing­ly exposed to the virus. She cites her com­pro­mised res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem as a cause for con­cern. Last year, Winfrey came down with pneu­mo­nia for which she just end­ed her course of antibi­otics last week. While in quar­an­tine, Winfrey and her girls drop off meals to Stedman dai­ly and vis­it the guest house to chat from a safe dis­tance. Although Stedman is locked down in the guest house, Winfrey said she’s remained busy. She has been enjoy­ing tele­vi­sion shows with her girls, read­ing books from Oprah’s Book Club and stay­ing enter­tained with social media. She even made tequi­la shots for DJ D‑Nice’s vir­tu­al par­ty host­ed on Instagram live. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @the grio​.com.

Nationwide — Many from urban com­mu­ni­ties ini­tial­ly believed that Black peo­ple were immune to the coro­n­avirus. This was obvi­ous­ly false infor­ma­tion, part­ly due to the media’s bias in their report­ing. Not only can Black peo­ple con­tract the COVID-19 virus, but many are also dying from it. Many have died already, but here are just five con­firmed cases:

#1 – Larry Edgeworth: a 61-year old long-time employ­ee of NBC News. According to CNN, he worked in an equip­ment room at the company’s head­quar­ters in New York City, also suf­fered from oth­er health issues.

#2 – Oliver Stokes Jr.: a 50-year old man from New Orleans who was best known as Go DJ Black N Mild. He worked as a DJ in Houston for KHOU, and also spun bounce records for New Orleans AM sta­tion WBOK. According to People, he was ini­tial­ly diag­nosed with pneumonia.

#3 – Patricia Frieson: a 61-year old retired nurse from Chicago who had a his­to­ry of res­pi­ra­to­ry issues which includ­ing severe asth­ma. NBC Chicago reports that she con­tract­ed the virus at a nurs­ing home.

#4 – Tre Wiser: a 32-year old fam­i­ly man report­ed­ly from San Diego. He was a father, hus­band, son, and uncle. He report­ed­ly con­tract­ed the virus from some­one he knew who also was infected.

#5 – Alvin Simmons: a 54-year old from Rochester, New York. He report­ed­ly had hyper­ten­sion and liv­er dis­ease, and was ini­tial­ly diag­nosed with pneu­mo­nia. After being giv­en antibi­otics, he vom­it­ed blood, had a stroke, and lat­er test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus accord­ing to ABC 13 News.

For the best infor­ma­tion about the virus pan­dem­ic, please fol­low the Center of Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) or call the National Coronavirus Helpline at (888) 581‑5029.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office is under fire over a viral video that appears to show a police offi­cer plant­i­ng drugs on a suspect.

The arrest of a Black male in Bridge City that was caught on cam­era has sparked fury and debate across social media after a cop is seen mov­ing what appears to be small bag­gies of nar­cotics near the sus­pect, who was report­ed­ly sell­ing drugs in the neighborhood.

JPSO spokesman Capt. Jason Rivarde said deputies were called to the area Monday after­noon over the ille­gal activ­i­ties and found a male fit­ting a 911 caller’s descrip­tion of a drug deal­er near the inter­sec­tion of Fourth St. and Westewego Ave., Fox8live​.com reports.

The Sheriff’s Office issued a state­ment after fac­ing back­lash on social media, not­ing that the sus­pect —iden­ti­fied as Dominique Griffin — bit one of the offi­cers while resist­ing arrest.

“The video in ques­tion is part of the evi­dence that has been col­lect­ed in this case. It has been alleged by third par­ties that evi­dence on the scene was plant­ed by one of our deputies. Our on-scene deputies have been inter­viewed in this mat­ter and gave rea­son­able expla­na­tions to the actions depict­ed in the video,” a state­ment from the JPSO said.

JPSO spokesman Capt. Jason Rivarde said deputies were called to the area Monday after­noon over the ille­gal activ­i­ties and found a male fit­ting a 911 caller’s descrip­tion of a drug deal­er near the inter­sec­tion of Fourth St. and Westewego Ave., Fox8live​.com reports.

Read more:https://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​1​9​/​0​7​/​1​2​/​e​x​-​f​l​o​r​i​d​a​-​d​e​p​u​t​y​-​a​r​r​e​s​t​e​d​-​a​f​t​e​r​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​l​y​-​p​l​a​n​t​i​n​g​-​d​r​u​g​s​-​i​n​-​c​a​r​s​-​o​f​-​u​n​s​u​s​p​e​c​t​i​n​g​-​m​o​t​o​r​i​s​t​s​-​d​u​r​i​n​g​-​t​r​a​f​f​i​c​-​s​t​o​ps/

The Sheriff’s Office issued a state­ment after fac­ing back­lash on social media, not­ing that the sus­pect —iden­ti­fied as Dominique Griffin — bit one of the offi­cers while resist­ing arrest.

“The video in ques­tion is part of the evi­dence that has been col­lect­ed in this case. It has been alleged by third par­ties that evi­dence on the scene was plant­ed by one of our deputies. Our on-scene deputies have been inter­viewed in this mat­ter and gave rea­son­able expla­na­tions to the actions depict­ed in the video,” a state­ment from the JPSO said.

Sheriff Joseph Lopinto stat­ed dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that the deputies involved in the arrest main­tain that the bag­gies in ques­tion con­tained pills, which were removed from Griffin’s pock­et dur­ing the arrest and placed on the ground. But Black Twitter ain’t buy­ing it.
Meanwhile, a search war­rant obtained for Griffin’s cell phone alleged­ly revealed mes­sages about planned drug transactions.

Every day peo­ple of the col­or redact­ed per­sua­sion argue that racism in America is a thing of the past or, at the very least, a thing large­ly exag­ger­at­ed by the media and by us dis­grun­tled blacks. Yet every oth­er day it seems we see record­ed reports of unsus­pect­ing black peo­ple walk­ing into instances of bla­tant racism while in the process of mind­ing our own damn business.

WSB-TV report­ed that in Cobb County, Ga., last Monday, a white man pulled a gun on two black women and their 1‑year-old god­son after caus­ing a minor acci­dent and being asked by the women to pull over and deal with what he had done.

It all start­ed when 59-year-old Stephen Abbot report­ed­ly clipped the side mir­ror of Asia Lewis and Kimberly Carter’s car as they were rid­ing with their god­son. After Abbot didn’t imme­di­ate­ly pull over, the women caught up with him and called out for him to do so, at which point he reached for his gun, the women told officers.

“He grabbed his gun and just put it on his dash like he was try­ing to scare us or some­thing,” said Lewis. 

According to Carter, the two of them made an attempt at de-esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion telling offi­cers, “I yelled out, ‘You don’t have to do all that, we’re not point­ing a gun at you, or doing any­thing to you, we’re just try­ing to let you know that you hit my car.’”

And just in case any of our melanin defi­cient read­ers were think­ing, “Oh come on, the guy was prob­a­bly just real­ly in a hur­ry. I’m sure it was an emer­gency. You’ve seen the movie Changing Lanes, peo­ple get car­ried away some­times. How do we know this had any­thing to do with race at all?” WSB-TV got ahold of a 911 record­ing from a call made by Abbot prov­ing that the only emer­gency he faced was fear of black peo­ple in traffic.

“I don’t know who these peo­ple are. I have no idea what they’re doing, but I am not going to stop in traf­fic for two black peo­ple in a beat-up old car,” Abbot told 911 dispatch.

Later on in the record­ing, Abbot can report­ed­ly be heard say­ing the two women insult­ed his “fam­i­ly her­itage.” (Likely trans­la­tion: “Those dark­ies want­ed me to pull over my car like their ances­tors want­ed mine to pull over white power!”)

Abbot was arrest­ed about nine miles from the scene and charged with mis­de­meanor hit-and-run and point­ing a gun, accord­ing to WSB-TV.

Abbot will like­ly not be charged with any hate crimes, but Lewis and Carter know that hate is what informed Abbot’s every action that day.

“We shouldn’t be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly because we’re black,” Lewis said.

Both women say they nev­er men­tioned race (because, hon­est­ly, we nev­er have to), all they spoke of was the dam­age to their car which they’re still hop­ing to have repaired. Abbot is now out on bond. Originated @the rt​.com

Pikesville, MD — Rena Mellerson, a 76-year old grand­moth­er from Maryland who was vio­lent­ly arrest­ed by police, is no longer fac­ing any charges. All charges against her includ­ing sec­ond-degree assault, resist­ing and inter­fer­ing with an arrest, and obstruc­tion have been dropped.

The inci­dent that hap­pened in January stemmed from offi­cers try­ing to arrest her grand­daugh­ter at her home. Officers respond­ed to a 911 call about two women alleged­ly hav­ing an argu­ment in pub­lic. Body cam­era footage of the inci­dent was recent­ly released.
After clear­ing the scene, Baltimore County Police Corporal Brennan fol­lowed one of the women iden­ti­fied as Mellerson’s grand­daugh­ter who went to Mellerson’s home. Brennan told Mellerson that Floyd was under arrest for dis­or­der­ly con­duct, but she refused to let him in.
A strug­gle between the two then ensued. Brennan then pulled out a Taser and told Mellerson that she is also under arrest for inter­fer­ing with the inves­ti­ga­tion. Ms Mellerson tried to con­vince Floyd to go with the police but she refused.

Brennan con­tin­ued to force the door open and even used his pep­per spray. He suc­cess­ful­ly entered the house with his gun drawn as Mellerson tried to run. He then grabbed her arm and anoth­er offi­cer forced her to the ground.
A video of the alter­ca­tion tak­en by a wit­ness went pub­lic and has caused a back­lash against the depart­ment. An inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing the appar­ent exces­sive use of force is report­ed­ly underway.

Madison, WI — Jarrett Adams, who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of sex­u­al assault for which he served 10 years in prison, has now become an attor­ney and has opened his own law firm in New York City. His pri­ma­ry goal is to help oth­er incar­cer­at­ed men and women who have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed like he was before.

Adams was only 17-years old when was sen­tenced to 28 years in prison. That sen­tence was lat­er reduced to 10 years, and he was exon­er­at­ed and released in 2007.

After his exon­er­a­tion, Adams attend­ed Loyola University Chicago School of Law where he earned a law degree. He then served on the Innocence Project after admit­ting to the New York State Bar four years ago.

Most recent­ly, Adams admit­ted to the Wisconsin State Bar and was sworn in by Keith Findley, the co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project who helped in over­turn­ing his conviction.

Having expe­ri­enced the injus­tices in the jus­tice sys­tem, he knew first­hand how hav­ing low income would great­ly affect a person’s chances of get­ting incar­cer­at­ed. Like him, most peo­ple who were false­ly accused don’t have access to bet­ter attor­neys as well.

Now, he is com­ing back to Wisconsin to help over­turn wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the state’s inflat­ed prison population.

“I real­ly want to live a life as an exam­ple of what can hap­pen when peo­ple are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ties and the tools to rein­te­grate suc­cess­ful­ly back into our soci­ety,” he told WPR. “We can’t repair what is going on in our impov­er­ished areas in the state of Wisconsin by lock­ing every­one up.”
Story orig­i­nat­ed @BN.com

As a fol­low­er of Jesus Christ, I find it remark­able that one of the great­est weak­ness­es of the mod­ern Christian Church, and the Black church, in par­tic­u­lar, is its fail­ure to con­nect faith to every­day life.
In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I am not a the­olo­gian, nei­ther am I for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed in Christian teach­ings.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that if we pur­port to be fol­low­ers of Jesus Christ, (Yeshua the Messiah) the per­son from whom our faith is named, then we ought to rec­og­nize that stand­ing around in pious sup­pli­ca­tion, heads to the heav­en, beg­ging for God to do for us what he already empow­ered us to do for our­selves is being sil­ly, to say the least.

Paul speak­ing, in Philippians 4: 13, I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me.
Speaking to his dis­ci­ples Yeshua said in Matthews 17: 20, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mus­tard seed, you can say to this moun­tain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impos­si­ble for you.“
Now I nev­er intend­ed for this brief arti­cle to be a reli­gious ser­mon, I’m no Pastor or min­is­ter of the faith. However, as I said ear­li­er I see Christian Pastors preach­ing pie in the sky ser­mons that may be okay if you are dying today, but if you have to live here on earth you bet­ter take your life and that of your chil­dren into your own hands for your own sur­vival.
In every mir­a­cle, Yeshua demon­strat­ed that the recip­i­ent of that mir­a­cle had it in them to do for them­selves using a com­bi­na­tion of faith and works. (Simply put, it is not mag­ic, but faith made pos­si­ble through works).
Fill the jars with water, as he wrought his very first mir­a­cle. Stretch forth your hand to the man born with a crooked arm. To the lep­er, “Go show your­self to the Priest”. Pick up thy bed and walk. Go wash thy­self in the riv­er.
On and on we see the mir­a­cles hap­pen as the recip­i­ents par­tic­i­pat­ed in their own heal­ing by doing what they were told to do.
In Matthew 8:13, with an abun­dance of faith that Yeshua could heal his ser­vant, a Roman cen­tu­ri­on went to the mas­ter for help.
Knowing his faith Yeshua said to him, “Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee”.
The cen­tu­ri­on turned and went home, and so it was done, his ser­vant was healed.
Even the dead got up to his com­mand“Lazarus, come forth”, he com­mand­ed and the dead Lazarus got up walked out of the tomb.

A Black Christian Pastor in the deep American Southern state of Mississippi trav­el­ing with his infant son got pulled over by the police.
The cops asked per­mis­sion to search his vehi­cle which he cor­rect­ly denied. That did not pre­vent them from order­ing him from his vehi­cle leav­ing his 2‑year-old infant son in the back­seat as one cop pro­ceed­ed to search his vehi­cle with­out his con­sent.
All this time while his infant son was sleep­ing in the car. The cop search­ing the vehi­cle did not notice the baby until the poor infant sneezed. They were too busy look­ing for some­thing, any­thing, with which to nail this black man who was dri­ving a so-called lux­u­ry vehi­cle, because as you know, the only way black peo­ple in American can own prop­er­ty or nice cars is if they are drug deal­ers.
So they allowed the pas­tor to retrieve his son from the vehi­cle, but not even the sleep­ing child and his protes­ta­tions that he was a man of the cloth did any­thing to dis­suade the cop search­ing to say “okay we are done here”.
All the while he was there lit­er­al­ly bow­ing down to them, refer­ring to them as ‘sir”, even as they vio­lat­ed the law, vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and poten­tial­ly trau­ma­tized his infant child.
Despite any­thing that you may hear about this case, whether from this not to bright pas­tor or the police chief, the cop talk­ing to the pas­tor said it all.
That the search was pre­cip­i­tat­ed not by some hit by the dog, but by his refusal to give them per­mis­sion in the first place.
In the end, they found noth­ing, but that is hard­ly the point. In the video, the pas­tor addressed his con­gre­gants and explained what had hap­pened to him.
And then the pas­tor said this after a lengthy expla­na­tion to his con­gre­ga­tion. “You all know that I’m not a preach­er who preach­es about social jus­tice and all of that.”[sic]

Wait, what?
You got me there dog.…… Wasn’t Doctor King slaugh­tered by these very peo­ple at the ten­der age of 39 because he did the social jus­tice thing, or am I miss­ing some­thing?
How do you live in America and is not sen­si­tized to the thick cloud of racial injus­tice that blan­kets the coun­try and man­i­fest­ed through the thou­sands of police depart­ments nation­wide?
Wasn’t Jesus Christ,(Yeshua) mur­dered because he did the social jus­tice thing?
You know, stand­ing up for the dis­pos­sessed, stand­ing up for wom­en’s rights, look­ing after the poor, vis­it­ing and heal­ing the sick, feed­ing the hun­gry, com­fort­ing the wid­owed, car­ing for the father­less, stand­ing up to the oppres­sors rais­ing the dead?
And oh, while we are on that sub­ject, did­n’t Peter car­ry a sword, and did­n’t he use it to slice the ear of one of the guards who came to arrest Yeshua?
Yeah …sure Yeshua, accord­ing to [scrip­ture], replaced the guard’s ear, but hav­ing searched the scrip­tures, I could not find any evi­dence that Yeshua ever admon­ished Peter for car­ry­ing a sword. In fact, even after Peter had sev­ered the ear from the guard, Yeshua told him to put up his sword, he nev­er chas­tised him for hav­ing it.
So when you hear a so-called pas­tor say,”“You all know that I’m not a preach­er who preach­es about social jus­tice and all of that.“
Ask your­self the ques­tion, “what was he preach­ing about? Because if you are not preach­ing about social injus­tice you are not preach­ing the word of Jesus Christ (Yeshua the Messiah).
Yeshua was a social jus­tice war­rior who laid it all on the line for those with­out pow­er.
How con­ve­nient for this pas­tor, (Mike Pembleton) that all of a sud­den he sees the light, right after he came under the bootheel of the oppres­sor and was humil­i­at­ed?
What was he preach­ing about before this.….. his inevitable humiliation?

PEMBLETON JR’s. STATEMENT SPEAKING OF HIMSELF IN THE THIRD PERSON

Pastor Mike Pembleton Jr, who in addi­tion to his role as a pas­tor sells insur­ance, was on his way to meet with a cus­tomer when he was pulled over by Richland, MS police offi­cer W.R. James for hav­ing win­dows that were tint­ed too dark­ly. #WRJames would not tell #MikePembletonJr if he was being detained or not but threat­ened him with arrest if he didn’t exit the video. James asked if he could search the car, and Pembleton told him no. Pembleton pro­ceed­ed to let James know three times that he didn’t con­sent to the search, but James searched his vehi­cle any­way. Pembleton’s son was asleep in the back seat for 5 min­utes while James searched. This could have end­ed in tragedy if James had been star­tled, know­ing how trig­ger-hap­py the police are when Black peo­ple are around.

This is unac­cept­able. Police are all about arrest­ing and killing as many Black peo­ple as they can, and they do not care about break­ing the law. The only thing they care about is pos­si­bly fac­ing some con­se­quences, which, because police are left to inves­ti­gate them­selves most of the time, rarely ever hap­pens. #DrivingWhileBlack is a seri­ous offense in the Oppressive States of America and needs to be close­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. Pembleton is fil­ing a civ­il rights com­plaint in response to the unlaw­ful search. @OfficialMikePembletonJr men­tioned that up to this point he didn’t focus much on social jus­tice. With this hit­ting home, he is plan­ning on focus­ing on that more. Hopefully he takes a page from #VernonJohns book.

Now here is a man who claims to be a pas­tor chat­ting away with the police, call­ing them “sir”, even as they vio­late the laws, vio­late his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, poten­tial­ly placed his child at seri­ous phys­i­cal risk, and poten­tial­ly trau­ma­tized him, in addi­tion to dam­ag­ing his vehi­cle.
Now if you look at the cop car behind the pas­tor’s vehi­cle the tint on the police car is equal­ly as dark or poten­tial­ly dark­er than that of the pas­tor’s vehi­cle. A strong case of “do as I say but not as I do, because I am the law and there is noth­ing you can do about it”.
And oh yes, after they did not find what they thought they would sure­ly find in a car dri­ven by a black man, they set­tled on the fac­to­ry tint of the car he was driving.

The pas­tor then tells the cops talk­ing to him what he does for a liv­ing, which by the way is none of the cop’s busi­ness. He then tells the cop (where he stays,) I sup­pose that is where he lives-.……reminiscent of the enslaved who had won their free­dom and walked around with their so-called free­dom papers.
This pas­tor who nev­er [both­ered to get involved in social jus­tice stuff], ran up into a slave patrol that did not care a [damn] about his free­dom papers.
By virtue of the col­or of his skin, he had no expec­ta­tion of free­dom, regard­less of what a piece of paper said.
The cop talk­ing to him all but said it, he’s search­ing the vehi­cle because you did not give per­mis­sion to him to search it.
So even though the law dic­tates that if the motorist objects to a search a police offi­cer may not search the vehi­cle, these cops use the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed right of black cit­i­zens to say “no” as a rea­son to ini­ti­ate a search of this pas­tor’s vehi­cle any­way.
Of course, they lie every time that the canine detect­ed some­thing on the out­side of the vehi­cle and that gives them the right to vio­late your rights.
The last time I checked dogs react to the smell of every­thing, from oth­er ani­mal’s scent, food, shit, and every­thing in between.
In oth­er words, though you have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to object to a search of your vehi­cle or home, police can vio­late your rights because a dog react­ed to food, anoth­er dog, or even feces on the out­side of your car.
And that is enough to give them the right to vio­late your rights.
If you are black.

In an (npr) report it was revealed that the Chicago Tribune sift­ed through three years worth of cas­es in which law enforce­ment used dogs to sniff out drugs in cars in sub­ur­ban Chicago. According to the analy­sis, offi­cers found drugs or para­pher­na­lia in only 44 per­cent of cas­es in which the dogs had alert­ed them.
When the dri­ver was Latino, the dogs were right just 27 per­cent of the time.
Dog-han­dling offi­cers and train­ers argue the canine teams’ accu­ra­cy should­n’t be mea­sured in the num­ber of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or para­pher­na­lia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs’ noses are so sen­si­tive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.
The Tribune spoke to a few dog experts and they almost uni­ver­sal­ly blamed the han­dlers:

Dog han­dlers can acci­den­tal­ly cue alerts from their dogs by lead­ing them too slow­ly or too many times around a vehi­cle, said Lawrence Myers, an Auburn University pro­fes­sor who stud­ies detec­tor dogs. Myers point­ed to the “Clever Hans” phe­nom­e­non in the ear­ly 1900s, named after a horse whose own­er claimed the ani­mal could read and do math, before a psy­chol­o­gist deter­mined the horse was actu­al­ly respond­ing to his mas­ter’s unwit­ting cues.
Training is the key to elim­i­nat­ing acci­den­tal cues and false alerts, said Paul Waggoner of Auburn’s detec­tor-dog research pro­gram.
“Is there a poten­tial for han­dlers to cue these dogs to alert?” he asked. “The answer is a big, resound­ing yes.”

POLICE PRESS CONFERENCE OF THE INCIDENT

The truth of the mat­ter is that, pow­er-crazed cops who want to show who is boss after being denied per­mis­sion to search a vehi­cle, def­i­nite­ly cues the ani­mals to give them a false rea­son to invade peo­ple’s per­son­al spaces.
Get into the social jus­tice fight pas­tor or sur­ren­der your robe, you thought you were exempt now you know.

A Harvard University police offi­cer is fac­ing major crit­i­cism for his use of force in three recent inci­dents involv­ing young home­less Black men on its main cam­pus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

According to The Harvard Crimson, the school’s stu­dent-run news­pa­per, Officer Anthony T. Carvello, 61, first received crit­i­cism in September of last year when he put his hand on a man’s neck at the Smith Center and the man said he couldn’t breathe. According to an inci­dent report, Carvello, who is white, approached Terry T. Jackson, 20, to whom he had pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en a tres­pass warn­ing. In his report, Carvello said that he told Jackson that he was vio­lat­ing his tres­pass warn­ing and that Jackson used exple­tives to describe him while Carvello wait­ed for back­up to arrive.

Carvello claimed he pushed Jackson’s head down after he alleged­ly refused Carvello’s order to put his hands behind his back for an arrest. According to video that cap­tured the inci­dent, Carvello put his hand on Jackson’s neck before plac­ing him in hand­cuffs. Three back­up offi­cers also even­tu­al­ly arrived on the scene.

Jackson told The Crimson that he was unable to breathe when Carvello grabbed his neck and explained that he had an anx­i­ety attack dur­ing the inci­dent. Jackson’s girl­friend Aryana S. Watkins, 22, told The Crimson that she wit­nessed Jackson cry­ing as he was placed in the back of a Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) car. Two oth­er peo­ple who wit­nessed the arrest also said they believe Carvello used exces­sive force while appre­hend­ing Jackson, and one of the wit­ness­es said she called the department’s sta­tion lat­er that day to express her con­cerns. Her efforts didn’t seem to work, how­ev­er, because four months after the arrest, Carvello was select­ed by the depart­ment to be one of its two patrol offi­cers of the Smith Center.

“The cen­tral and open nature of the SCC’s pub­lic spaces lends itself to increased activ­i­ty, includ­ing behav­iors that do not abide by the rules of the space,” wrote HUPD spokesper­son Steven G. Catalano. “Our offi­cers assigned to the SCC are required to respond to more issues than they might oth­er­wise in anoth­er part of campus.”

Three HUPD offi­cers famil­iar with the inci­dent felt it was inap­pro­pri­ate for Carvello to put his hands on Jackson’s neck and they argue that the depart­ment should have removed him from the Smith Center pend­ing investigation.

The sec­ond inci­dent involv­ing Carvello occurred in January. He was dis­patched to the Smith Center to respond to a report of an “unwant­ed guest” on the sec­ond floor, accord­ing to a pub­licly avail­able inci­dent report Carvello penned. As Carvello ascend­ed the steps to the sec­ond floor, he came upon Isaiah L. Scott, 22, to whom he had giv­en a tres­pass warn­ing the pre­vi­ous day.

Scott walked away and Carvello pur­sued him with his pep­per spray drawn, accord­ing to his inci­dent report, because Scott had alleged­ly been “non-com­pli­ant” the day before. According to the report, Carvello approached Scott near the ele­va­tors and told him he was under arrest for tres­pass­ing and he told him to place his hands behind his back.

Carvello wrote that Scott was non-com­pli­ant and he repeat­ed­ly asked to speak to Carvello’s super­vi­sor. This is when Carvello said that he threat­ened to pep­per spray Scott. Carvello said Scott still wouldn’t com­ply and even­tu­al­ly he sprayed in Scott’s direc­tion. Scott dodged the spray and attempt­ed to flee Carvello.

I fol­lowed him and repeat­ed com­mands to stop and put his hands behind his back,” Carvello wrote. “I sprayed two more times hit­ting him once on the side of his face and once direct­ly in his eyes. I secure[d] him against the wall and wait­ed for back­up to arrive.”

Eventually, six HUPD offi­cers came to assist with hand­cuff­ing Carvello, who was even­tu­al­ly moved to the ground to fin­ish the arrest.

HUPD Sergeant James P. Pignone, 53, arrived at the scene and wrote in a report, “Scott said that he was being harassed by Officer Carvello, that he (Scott) had done noth­ing wrong, that he wasn’t tres­pass­ing and that Officer Carvello had just walked up to him, called him a ni**er and sprayed him with pep­per spray.”

“By Department pol­i­cy, offi­cers are allowed to use Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) spray,” Catalano wrote of the inci­dent. “HUPD offi­cers are instruct­ed to use only the amount of force that is rea­son­ably nec­es­sary to deesca­late the inci­dent and bring it under con­trol. If de-esca­la­tion does not work, offi­cers may apply an esca­lat­ing lev­el of force to meet the lev­el of resistance.”

Despite Catalano’s state­ment and a report by Pignone say­ing Carvello’s arrest was appro­pri­ate, three offi­cers in the depart­ment famil­iar with the case said they believe Carvello used exces­sive force while arrest­ing Scott. An inves­ti­ga­tion into this arrest is ongoing.

Finally, the third inci­dent involv­ing Carvello occurred on Feb. 20, on the first floor of the Smith Center. At 11 a.m., he approached Tyrique D. Simmons, 21, who had an active tres­pass warn­ing for all Harvard University prop­er­ty, accord­ing to two inter­nal HUPD inci­dent reports writ­ten by Carvello.

arvel­lo wrote that he approached Simmons and as Simmons attempt­ed to leave, Carvello “put [his] hands on [Simmons’s] chest and shoul­der area and guid­ed him toward the wall,” accord­ing to the first report.

The two of them had a bit of a scuf­fle near a col­umn across the ele­va­tors, accord­ing to the police report. Simmons then tried to run away and Carvello grabbed Simmons and backed him into the col­umn where Carvello stat­ed that he was under arrest. Carvello wrote that once he said this, Simmons’ resis­tance inten­si­fied and he punched Simmons to pre­vent an assault. Simmons cor­rob­o­rat­ed the punch in an inter­view with the Crimson.

According to Carvello’s reports and video footage, Simmons told Carvello “I didn’t do any­thing” dur­ing the inci­dent. On the day of the arrest, three wit­ness­es said Carvello used exces­sive force when appre­hend­ing Simmons and one of the wit­ness­es said she filed a com­plaint with HUPD that day.

Simmons told the Crimson that he feared for his life dur­ing the inci­dent and since then, he’s suf­fered height­ened stress. His moth­er, Tanya L. Simmons, 42, even said her son has avoid­ed phys­i­cal con­tact since the arrest occurred.

According to The Crimson, Carvello sub­mit­ted two dif­fer­ent reports detail­ing the inci­dent to an inter­nal HUPD data­base. In the sec­ond report, Carvello is more detailed in describ­ing Simmons’ behav­ior and the inci­dent, adding details such as how he drew his pep­per spray after he forced Simmons to the floor. A par­tial video of the arrest cor­rob­o­rat­ed these claims where Carvello repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to use the spray. Two HUPD offi­cers even­tu­al­ly arrived on the scene to assist with hand­cuff­ing Simmons, accord­ing to both ver­sions of the report.

nce again, with this third inci­dent, three offi­cers famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion believe Carvello used exces­sive force with Simmons. Former Boston Police Department lieu­tenant and cur­rent Emmanuel College soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Thomas Nolan even called the alle­ga­tions against Carvello unusual.

“You’ve got three instances of exces­sive force alle­ga­tions in six months,” he said. “That’s a lot. That’s more than most police offi­cers will accrue over the course of a 25 or 30-year career.”

In a recent meet­ing, Harvard’s stu­dent gov­ern­ment con­demned Carvello’s actions, demand­ing that the HUPD drop the tres­pass­ing charges against the man in the February inci­dent. They also demand­ed HUPD “release its code of ethics and bud­get, and that police issue an apol­o­gy and dis­ci­pline the offi­cer involved.”
this sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed in [Newsone]

Multnomah County, OR — After threat­en­ing to “blow the head off” of an unarmed African American teen, Michael James Black from Oregon, who is white, has only been ordered to write an apol­o­gy to the teen. He will not spend time in jail, but instead will just under­go three years of pro­ba­tion and 150 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, anger man­age­ment and diver­si­ty training.

The case stemmed from an inci­dent in May 2018 when Black was sit­ting alone in a lawn chair in his garage and he saw a 14-year old Black teen, who was unnamed, rid­ing a bicy­cle about 50 feet away from his home.

The teen then report­ed­ly pulled into the cul-de-sac and drove around with his bike. Black told him that he was on pri­vate prop­er­ty and began shout­ing racial slurs.

When the teen con­tin­ued bik­ing, Black yelled out, “I’ll blow your head off” before going inside his home. The teen then rushed home as he thought the man was going to get a gun.

Meanwhile, the teen told the police that he thought that the cul-de-sac where he pulled into was pub­lic and he was just there to wait for his friends after bas­ket­ball prac­tice. There were two “no-tres­pass­ing” signs in the cul-de-sac but were “not vis­i­ble from the street,” accord­ing to the police who responded.

Deputy District Attorney BJ Park claimed that Black threat­ened to shoot the teen and his friends “sim­ply because they walked by his house and he didn’t like that and because of the victim’s race.”

Black was recent­ly found guilty of men­ac­ing and sec­ond-degree intim­i­da­tion, which is con­sid­ered to be a hate crime. However, he was only ordered to write an apol­o­gy to the teen and com­plete 150 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. He is also pro­hib­it­ed from pos­sess­ing weapons.

In what many main­stream pub­li­ca­tions are label­ing a (RARE REBUKE), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts blast­ed as inap­pro­pri­ate & dan­ger­ous, com­ments made by Senate Minority Leader NY US Senator Charles Schumer. Really now, where has John Roberts been over the last three years of the Trump régime?
Is Roberts seri­ous, or is it that he mere­ly wants to demon­strate his feal­ty to Trump?
Senator Schumer was speak­ing at a demon­stra­tion out­side the capi­tol build­ing on Wednesday.
In ref­er­ence to Republicans con­sis­tent assault on a wom­an’s right to chose, Senator Schumer said “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirl­wind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said at a ral­ly out­side the court. “You won’t know what hit you if you go for­ward with these awful deci­sions.”

Roberts fired off a response to the senior Senator imme­di­ate­ly. “Justices know that crit­i­cism comes with the ter­ri­to­ry, but threat­en­ing state­ments of this sort from the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment are not only inap­pro­pri­ate, but they are also dan­ger­ous,” Roberts said in a state­ment. “All Members of the Court will con­tin­ue to do their job, with­out fear or favor, from what­ev­er quar­ter.“

Anyone pay­ing atten­tion knows that this is a bunch of malarkey, that by this out­bursts the chief jus­tice has exposed him­self fur­ther, as just anoth­er shill for Trump.
In a point­ed response to Roberts, Senator Schumer’s offi­cer dou­bled down,
“For Justice Roberts to fol­low the right wing’s delib­er­ate mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Sen. Schumer said, while remain­ing silent when Donald Trump attacked Justices [Sonia] Sotomayor and [Ruth Bader] Ginsberg [sic] last week, shows Justice Roberts does not just call balls and strikes.” 

True !!!
He must real­ly believe that peo­ple are not pay­ing atten­tion, or maybe he believes that they are just plain stu­pid.
The Roberts court to those pay­ing atten­tion has become noth­ing but a rub­ber stamp for right-wing poli­cies pushed by the ultra-right-wing Republican Party.
John Roberts loves to push the idea that the court calls balls and strikes, but the game is rigged, lit­er­al­ly every deci­sion that comes out of the Roberts court has been 5 – 4 deci­sions, in favor of the Republicans who have a major­i­ty 5 – 4 appoint­ment on the court.
One could make the argu­ment that the lib­er­al mem­bers vote togeth­er as well, but the major­i­ty in this coun­try owes them a debt of grat­i­tude that they are at least stand­ing firm on the con­sti­tu­tion, even if in dis­sent.
The Roberts courts have become so par­ti­san that it evoked a blis­ter­ing bar­rage of crit­i­cisms from asso­ciate jus­tice Sonia Sotomayor weeks ago.
It is not often that a sit­ting mem­ber of the court steps out­side the veil of pro­pri­ety which has char­ac­ter­ized past courts.
Just last week the court ruled that American Border Patrol agents who fired into the Sovereign nation of Mexico and kill inno­cent unarmed Mexicans can­not be held account­able in American courts.

The string of 5 – 4 deci­sions is extreme­ly con­se­quen­tial to tens of mil­lions of Americans, usu­al­ly the poor­est most mar­gin­al­ized are the ones most severe­ly affect­ed by those rul­ings.
None more con­se­quen­tial, than the 2013 deci­sion of the court to strike down (for absolute­ly no prac­ti­cal rea­sons), key ele­ments of the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby V. Holder decision,(named after for­mer Attorney General Eric Holder) was a major blow to bal­lot access experts argued.
It paved the way for sys­tem­at­ic statewide efforts to reduce the num­ber of polling places in places like Texas, which has cut some 750 of its vot­ing sites.

Shelby County V Holder was June 25, 2013, Supreme Court deci­sion that struck down the for­mu­la used in Section (4) of the Voting Rights Act as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.
”The con­di­tions that orig­i­nal­ly jus­ti­fied these mea­sures no longer char­ac­ter­ize vot­ing in the cov­ered juris­dic­tions,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the major­i­ty opin­ion in Shelby.
Interestingly, the opin­ion gave the Voting Rights Act (VRA) itself, cred­it for the sta­tus of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in vot­ing, not­ing, “these improve­ments are in large part because of the Voting Rights Act.”

Let me break down for you what the esteemed and learned Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said was the court’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for strik­ing down Section 4 of the Act.
(a) Sure there was racism against African-Americans which jus­ti­fied sec­tion (4) I. e. cer­tain juris­dic­tions with a his­to­ry of dis­crim­i­na­tion to sub­mit any pro­posed changes in vot­ing pro­ce­dures to the U.S. Department of Justice or a fed­er­al dis­trict court in D.C. – before it goes into effect – to ensure the change would not harm minor­i­ty vot­ers. 
Roberts con­cedes that the dis­crim­i­na­tion exist­ed, not that it required Robert’s acqui­es­cence, African-Americans have a 400-year his­to­ry in America to show that it exists.
(b) JohnRoberts then went on to say quote: ”The con­di­tions that orig­i­nal­ly jus­ti­fied these mea­sures no longer char­ac­ter­ize vot­ing in the cov­ered juris­dic­tions.”
In oth­er words, the per­va­sive racism which neces­si­tat­ed the fol­low­ing, no longer exists. Violence. Ballot stuff­ing. Poll tax Forcing blacks to guess how many jelly­beans were in a jar filled with jelly­beans. Literacy-Testing, Forcing poten­tial black vot­ers to answer ques­tions the ques­tion­ers did not know the answer to. Gerrymandering. Ridiculous Registration Practices. Demands for vot­er ID(does this one ring a bell)? Redistricting.

These are the con­di­tions John Roberts wrote no longer exist, even though we know that the strat­e­gy once employed to stop blacks from vot­ing has been char­ac­ter­ized by the mot­to; “if at first, you don’t suc­ceed, try and try and try again”.
Even though Black Voters are no longer required to guess how many jelly­beans are in a jar, oth­er vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics have been placed on steroids in Republican-run states.
The inces­sant demand for spe­cif­ic types of Identifications. Long lines as a result of the clo­sure of vot­ing sites, ger­ry­man­der­ing, threats of vio­lence from white mili­tias, all con­tin­ue to be explic­it tac­tics of vot­er sup­pres­sion employed by Republicans.
What sit­u­a­tion was John Roberts look­ing at that would [reasonably]cause him, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas to arrive at that conclusion?

On February 28 writ­ing for Vox Elie Mystal wrote: The case, Wolf v. Cook County, might have made news on its own: the Trump admin­is­tra­tion knows that beat­ing up on pow­er­less and des­per­ate peo­ple excites the sick xeno­phobes who still call them­selves “Republican.” It also pre­sent­ed yet anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for cen­trist talk­ing heads to chas­tise lib­er­als who defend brown immi­grants who need food.
In a sting­ing rebuke of the Roberts court, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused Republicans on the court of “putting their thumbs on the scale” for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, and crit­i­cized them for rush­ing to hear emer­gency appeal case from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, when they so reg­u­lar­ly admon­ish inmates who are about to be put to lit­er­al death, for fail­ing to file their appeals in a time­ly man­ner.
Mystal went on” When a jus­tice of the Supreme Court warns that the court has ceased act­ing as an inde­pen­dent check on the admin­is­tra­tion, that should sound a loud, eardrum-bust­ing alarm.”

John Roberts the sup­posed Constitutional schol­ar, has no prob­lem with Trump tear­ing down the foun­da­tion of the rule of law. His con­cern is that any­one should call out him and his cohorts on the court for val­i­dat­ing the destruc­tion.
John Roberts’ response to a senior leg­isla­tive leader is the thing that should cause blar­ing alarm, that an unelect­ed jus­tice would come out guns blaz­ing against a senior leader elect­ed by the peo­ple is a break-glass moment.
John Roberts’s response is as faux as Bill Bar’s com­ments that Trump’s tweets make it dif­fi­cult for him to do his job.
John Roberts has no real con­cerns about Senator Schumer’s com­ments per se, like Barr does not care that Donald Trump tweets, just the atten­tion it brings to his activ­i­ties. John Roberts is only mad at the fact that Schumer is bring­ing atten­tion to what the court bear­ings name is doing to the constitution.

John Roberts does not care about the almost forty-five mil­lion African- Americans who are in places find­ing it incred­i­bly hard to vote. Neither does he care about the fifty nine mil­lion Hispanics who are also like­wise affect­ed. The fact that the National Congress of American Indians research found that Native peo­ple liv­ing in the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada, are forced to dri­ve 163 miles to the near­est polling sta­tion, is of no con­cern to the Chief Justice.
What he cares about is that his extreme­ly shel­tered and pow­er­ful white male col­leagues on the court and the [coon] are allowed to rule with­out question. 

As long as he is sure that the seeds he is plant­i­ng are corn, there is no way that farmer Jones will reap any­thing but corn.
I am a firm believ­er in the abil­i­ty of the uni­verse to bal­ance things out. Despite human grand­stand­ing, the uni­verse bal­anced itself out on Tuesday night.
The uni­verse ensured that Michael Bloomberg reaped a har­vest of bit­ter fruits, com­pen­sa­tion for the bit­ter seeds of police abuse he not only sowed but nur­tured, as Mayor of New York City for twelve years, and even there­after.
Voters in state after state, except in American Samoa sent Michael Bloomberg a strong mes­sage, “you are not our choice”. 

Mister Bloomberg, as Mayor was well with­in his rights as chief exec­u­tive of the city of New York, to imple­ment poli­cies he believes would keep the cit­i­zens safe.
No one should fault the for­mer Mayor for the imple­men­ta­tion of stop and frisk. In fact, the then-Mayor Bloomberg did not start the pro­gram, it was start­ed under his pre­de­ces­sor Rudolph Giuliani.
But it was­n’t just that Michael Bloomberg sup­port­ed and enhanced the pol­i­cy, he vocif­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed it. Additionally, Bloomberg strate­gi­cal­ly used NYPD cops to tar­get black and brown res­i­dents of the city, based upon his fun­da­men­tal belief that they were the only ones com­mit­ting crimes.

A friend recent­ly remind­ed me that as police offi­cers in Jamaica we ran­dom­ly had access to stop and frisk as a mat­ter of course.
I agreed with my friend, but the thing miss­ing from our use of the strat­e­gy was racial ani­mus.
Despite the out­rage, and many calls from minor­i­ty groups in New York City, Michael Bloomberg was unper­turbed, even after the Supreme Court ruled that the pol­i­cy was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and the NYPD had scaled back the prac­tice, and even after Bloomberg had demit­ted office, he still defi­ant­ly defend­ed the pol­i­cy.
There were unde­ni­able strate­gic ben­e­fits from the stop and frisk pol­i­cy from a polic­ing stand­point. The prob­lem with the pol­i­cy is that giv­en such broad lat­i­tude to stop and search who­ev­er they deemed sus­pi­cious, police incul­cat­ed into the pol­i­cy their own igno­rant racial biases. 

Two days ago, Emily Badger wrote for the New York Times: Crime in the city con­tin­ued to decline, sug­gest­ing that the aggres­sive use of police stops wasn’t so essen­tial to New York’s safe­ty after all.
Evidence has emerged of the harms cre­at­ed by the strat­e­gy. We now know that stu­dents heav­i­ly exposed to stop-and-frisk were more like­ly to strug­gle in school, that young men were more like­ly to expe­ri­ence symp­toms of anx­i­ety and depres­sion, that this expo­sure fos­tered cyn­i­cism in polic­ing and gov­ern­ment writ large, and that it made res­i­dents more like­ly to retreat from civic life.

The dam­age that was done to young African- American and Latino men runs far deep­er than the killings that occurred at the hands of NYPD cops. The many and var­ied instances of abuse of the rights of cit­i­zens and the tens of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars that have been spent to com­pen­sate some vic­tims are only the tip of the ice­berg.
Research in New York found that black male stu­dents who were more exposed to stop-and-frisk had low­er test scores. And oth­er research using sur­veys about expe­ri­ences with the police has found that stu­dents around the coun­try who were arrest­ed or stopped, or who wit­nessed these encoun­ters or knew of oth­ers involved, had worse grades.

Last November, when he first apol­o­gized for the prac­tice before announc­ing his cam­paign for pres­i­dent, Michael Bloomberg sug­gest­ed that he had come to under­stand some of these deep­er con­se­quences, includ­ing the ways that the pol­i­cy had dam­aged faith in law enforce­ment and gov­ern­ment.
“The ero­sion of trust both­ered me — deeply,” he said at the time. “And it still both­ers me. And I want to earn it back.”
But it was­n’t just that Bloomberg had been a part of bad pub­lic pol­i­cy, it was the way in which he defend­ed it in per­son­al ways which made it seem at the time, that he did not care about the peo­ple of col­or in the city because they were basi­cal­ly all criminals.

For that rea­son it did not mat­ter to me that Bloomberg said he was sor­ry He may very well had seen the light and come to his sens­es, the dam­age was done and the con­se­quences were too severe for a sim­ple “I’m sor­ry”.
Michael Bloomberg by his record had no right to come to the African-America com­mu­ni­ty ask­ing for sup­port.
There are many things he can do to make up for some of the harm he has done.
That includes set­ting up a char­i­ty to help repair some of the dam­age his poli­cies caused.
As I said when he went to A R Bernard’s Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn and Bernard asked the con­gre­ga­tion to show him some love and respect, many church lead­ers are the worst ele­ments with­in the Africa-American com­mu­ni­ty.
They should be exposed as the ene­mies that that they are.
Kudos to the mem­bers of the Brown chap­le AME church in Selma Alabama who turned their backs on Mike Bloomberg, kudos to the African-American vot­ers on Super Tuesday who sent him packing. 

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie on Wednesday once again bur­nished his rep­u­ta­tion as “Mr. No” in Congress by join­ing a hand­ful of law­mak­ers who opposed a mea­sure that would make lynch­ing a fed­er­al hate crime.

Congress has tried for more than a cen­tu­ry to pass a bill out­law­ing the prac­tice, which ter­ror­ized most­ly African Americans across the coun­try in the 19^th and 20^th cen­turies. But such pro­pos­als have been repeat­ed­ly blocked or ignored.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, how­ev­er, passed the House by a bipar­ti­san vote of 410 – 4. The Senate has already passed its ver­sion of the bill.

Massie, a Kentucky Republican, joined fel­low GOP law­mak­ers Ted Yoho, of Florida, and Louie Gohmert, of Texas, and inde­pen­dent Justin Amash, of Michigan, in vot­ing against the measure.

“I vot­ed against (the bill) because the Constitution spec­i­fies only a hand­ful of fed­er­al crimes, and leaves the rest to indi­vid­ual states to pros­e­cute,” Massie told The Courier Journal on Wednesday. “In addi­tion, this bill expands cur­rent fed­er­al ‘hate crime’ laws. A crime is a crime, and all vic­tims deserve equal jus­tice. Adding enhanced penal­ties for ‘hate’ tends to endan­ger oth­er lib­er­ties such as free­dom of speech.”

Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, spon­sored the pro­pos­al and said dur­ing Wednesday’s floor debate how it will show “race-based vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar, has no place in American society.”

“I can­not imag­ine our nation did not have any fed­er­al law against lynch­ing when so many African Americans have been lynched,” he said. “Lynching was the pre­ferred method of the Ku Klux Klan, the pre­ferred choice of (tor­tur­ing and mur­der­ing African-Americans).”

Rush named the leg­is­la­tion after Till, a 14-year-old black teenag­er from Chicago who was mur­dered in Mississippi in 1955 by a group of white men. Till’s bru­tal slay­ing gained inter­na­tion­al atten­tion at the time and has been cit­ed as one of the cat­a­lysts for the civ­il rights movement.

During the floor debate, Rush described grow­ing up in Chicago and remem­ber­ing how pic­tures of Till were on the cov­er of Jet Magazine after the teen’s moth­er insist­ed on an open cas­ket funer­al to show her son had been bru­tal­ly beat­en and shot in the head. 

Witnesses said two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, kid­napped Till, whose body was lat­er found float­ing in the Tallahatchie River.
Read the full arti­cle here; https://​www​.couri​er​-jour​nal​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​2​/​2​6​/​k​e​n​t​u​c​k​y​-​r​e​p​-​t​h​o​m​a​s​-​m​a​s​s​i​e​-​o​p​p​o​s​e​s​-​e​m​m​e​t​t​-​t​i​l​l​-​a​n​t​i​-​l​y​n​c​h​i​n​g​-​a​c​t​/​4​8​8​3​7​4​0​0​0​2​/​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​0​E​D​q​w​x​h​K​e​D​7​J​i​S​U​f​o​4​Q​B​0​T​q​b​i​p​p​N​g​j​F​s​0​L​x​z​b​Q​3​i​G​n​N​i​K​f​_​X​L​j​O​G​7​5​O5o

Hernandez v. Mesa ends with a decid­ed­ly Trumpy result.

Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, a 15-year-old Mexican boy, was with his friends near the US-Mexican bor­der when one of those friends was detained by US Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa. Hernández ran onto Mexican soil, and Mesa fired two shots at the boy — one of which struck him in the face and killed him.

Hernández and his fam­i­ly dis­agree about the events that led up to this shoot­ing. The fam­i­ly says that Hernández and his friends were sim­ply play­ing a game where they would run to the fence that sep­a­rates the United States from Mexico, touch it, then run back to their own country’s soil. Mesa claims that Hernández and his friends threw rocks at him. (Significantly, the Justice Department has refused to take any action against Mesa.)

Regardless of who is telling the truth, the ques­tion in the Hernández case is whether Mesa is immune from a fed­er­al law­suit even if he shot and killed Hernández in cold blood. The Supreme Court held, in a 5 – 4 deci­sion along famil­iar par­ti­san lines, that Mesa can­not be sued.

The case turns upon whether the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which per­mit­ted fed­er­al law­suits against law enforce­ment offi­cers who vio­late the Constitution, has any real force in 2020. After Justice Samuel Alito’s opin­ion in Hernández, the answer to this ques­tion is a resound­ing “no.” 

Alito’s opin­ion does not explic­it­ly over­rule Bivens, but it appears to be lay­ing the ground­work for a future opin­ion that will elim­i­nate Bivens’ pro­tec­tions against fed­er­al offi­cers who vio­late the Constitution. Notably, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a sep­a­rate opin­ion in which he argues that “the time has come to con­sid­er dis­card­ing the Bivens doc­trine altogether.”

Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, briefly explained

The Constitution’s Bill of Rights places a num­ber of restric­tions on law enforce­ment, includ­ing the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unrea­son­able search­es and seizures.” But the Constitution is silent about whether an indi­vid­ual offi­cer may be sued if they vio­late one of these restric­tions. Although a fed­er­al law does per­mit suits against state law enforce­ment offi­cers who vio­late “any rights, priv­i­leges, or immu­ni­ties secured by the Constitution and laws,” there is no such statute that explic­it­ly autho­rizes suits against fed­er­al agents.

Read the full sto­ry here; https://​www​.vox​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​2​/​2​5​/​2​1​1​5​2​6​4​3​/​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​-​c​o​u​r​t​-​h​e​r​n​a​n​d​e​z​-​m​e​s​a​-​b​i​v​e​n​s​-​b​o​r​d​e​r​-​g​u​a​r​d​-​c​r​o​s​s​-​m​e​x​ico

Chicago, IL — Jaylan Butler, a 20-year old man from Chicago, says that he was false­ly accused and vio­lent­ly arrest­ed by police who threw him to the ground and put a gun to his head even after learn­ing that he was the wrong guy. He filed a law­suit against the police offi­cers, alleg­ing false arrest and exces­sive use of force.

n the inci­dent that occurred last year, Butler, who is a mem­ber of the school’s swim team, was trav­el­ing with his team­mates on a bus when he was asked by his coach to take a pic­ture of a road sign while they were on a rest stop.

As he was walk­ing back to the bus, sev­er­al patrol cars sud­den­ly sur­round­ed him and at least six police offi­cers came up to him and con­front­ed him with guns drawn.

“Plaintiff Jaylan Butler has always known that he could be tar­get­ed by police offi­cers because he is Black. Mr. Butler’s father taught him at a young age how to max­i­mize his chances of sur­viv­ing an encounter with law enforce­ment — stop instant­ly, put your hands up, drop any­thing you are hold­ing, and drop to your knees,” the law­suit states.

Butler quick­ly did that, but he was forced to the ground by the offi­cers. An offi­cer even held a gun to his head and threat­ened to “blow his fu – ing head off” if he moved. Butler com­plied with all the orders as he was being hand­cuffed while face down in the ground.

His coach­es then noticed the com­mo­tion and inter­vened and explained to the police offi­cers that he was a col­lege ath­lete. He was able to show his ID to the offi­cers only after the vio­lent arrest. He was released when they real­ized he was not the per­son they were look­ing for.

“They nev­er told Jaylan why he was being arrest­ed, even after they real­ized their mis­take,” Rachel Murphy, a staff attor­ney at the ACLU of Illinois, told New York Post. “Instead, it’s clear they based their deci­sion to arrest and harm Jaylan on the fact that he was a young Black man.”

Butler recent­ly filed a law­suit against the offi­cers from the Hampton Police Department, the East Moline Police Department, and the Rock Island County Sheriff’s Office for false arrest, exces­sive deten­tion, and exces­sive use of force.