At a time when we some­times won­der whether there is hope for human­i­ty amidst the hate and anger, we found a moment of respite and relax­ation, a few moments of escape into a world of trav­el, sto­ry­telling good food and drink.
Even though most of us can only dream of trav­el­ing to places unknown Anthony Bourdain took us there on the wings of his illus­tri­ous abil­i­ty at sto­ry­telling. As a native of my beloved Jamaica, I could not be more proud than the time Anthony Bourdain vis­it­ed and dived head­first into our rich cul­ture of food music, and our fun lov­ing people.

I shed a tear, though I nev­er met the man I felt like he was fam­i­ly, that is how great he was.
One Twitter user wrote Quote. The thing about #Bourdain was he did­n’t look down on for­eign places he visited&theirquaintness/ back­ward­ness. He dived in, hun­gry to expe­ri­ence. His was­n’t the Orientalist gaze. He saw humanity(& food)everywhere and con­nect­ed with it. RIP.

Anthony Bourdain trav­eled the world and he met many peo­ple the end result was that he emerged a much more enlight­ened indi­vid­ual who saw the world for what it was, diverse, dif­fer­ent, inter­est­ing un-mono­lith­ic and incred­i­bly beautiful.
He was smart enough to appre­ci­ate the beau­ty in the dif­fer­ence. He left us far too soon. All in all, he left us with the dis­tinct abil­i­ty to find com­mon ground and under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ences in all of us because he under­stood ful­ly that those dif­fer­ences weren’t neg­a­tives, they are the char­ac­ter­is­tics which make our world interesting.
(RIP).

People dis­cuss racism in the abstract as if its a new strain of dead­ly virus for which there is no anti­dote. In an effort not to offend sen­si­bil­i­ties we tip­toe around this insid­i­ous and dead­ly scourge with­out dis­cussing the most impor­tant aspect of racism which is the crit­i­cal issue of attribution.

Look, I get the idea of not alien­at­ing allies in any war, but the idea that white lib­er­als who are final­ly on the side of whats right by final­ly stand­ing up for human dig­ni­ty and decen­cy would be offend­ed if we call out white racism is absurd.
Those who would be offend­ed by our direct attri­bu­tion of racism to the right­ful per­pe­tra­tors were nev­er our allies in the first place.

It is far bet­ter to go into bat­tle with a small army of true believ­ers than a large crowd of wishy-washy mam­by-pam­bys who are not com­mit­ted to the cause.
Black peo­ple con­tin­ue to pay a tremen­dous price in blood and trea­sure to this coun­try despite hav­ing slaved and died for over four hun­dred years with­out hav­ing received a sin­gle pen­ny of compensation.

The ago­niz­ing mur­ders and muti­la­tions, rapes and assaults on black bod­ies by white slavers can­not be ignored or for­got­ten. But it did not end there, The chain-gangs, Jim Crow, the prison Industrial com­plex and the unchecked mur­der­ous police assaults on peo­ple of col­or remain and con­tin­ue day by day.
Despite these more well-doc­u­ment­ed instances of incom­pre­hen­si­ble bar­barism whites have vis­it­ed on blacks, there are the much more nuanced exam­ples of men­tal retar­da­tion which are not so well know.

These inci­dences, for exam­ple, include a black Chicago man who was shot and injured in the ear­ly 1960’s on a hunt­ing trip. His friends took him from hos­pi­tal to hos­pi­tal to save his life at every hos­pi­tal they were turned away.
Turned away, because of the col­or of his skin, he bled out and died.

We have to rec­on­cile these instances of egre­gious inhu­man­i­ty with a Florida jury which award­ed four cents to the fam­i­ly of a black man mur­dered by police in his own garage behind a clos­ing garage door. The cal­cu­lat­ed dis­re­spect inher­ent in that ver­dict can­not be ignored and must be viewed ful­ly for what it is.
Gregory Vaughn Hill Jr was killed by police who showed up to his house because he was alleged­ly play­ing his music too loud.
Hill who was in his garage hav­ing a drink in the ear­ly after­noon attempt­ed to close his garage door, not before the respond­ing cops fired mul­ti­ple rounds into his body killing him.

We all knew they were not going to be held account­able, that’s a giv­en. The mind-numb­ing dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing this killing has as its focal point the idea that cops ought not to be called for triv­ial issues as a noise com­plaint in the mid­dle of the after­noon, rather than that police offi­cer who are sup­posed to be guardians of our safe­ty, should not be the ones exe­cut­ing us.
Racism will con­tin­ue until those who ben­e­fit from it are held account­able for it. Those who ben­e­fit from it will not change it, so as Martin Luther King assert­ed, blacks should nev­er be lulled into the accep­tance of grad­ual change, (King called it the tran­quil drug of gradualism).
If this can­cer is going to be fixed it must be iden­ti­fied, con­front­ed, iso­lat­ed and cauterized.

Black America served as a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for 1.1−2 tril­lion dol­lars last year, most of which went to busi­ness­es in oth­er communities.
If African-Americans ever want to be respect­ed in their own coun­try, they bet­ter plug this dike.

The trag­ic turn race rela­tions have tak­en from Donald Trump’s ascen­den­cy to the pres­i­den­cy will have dev­as­tat­ing and last­ing con­se­quences, not just for peo­ple of col­or in America but across the Globe.
Put, the rise of fas­cism is con­se­quen­tial whether to America’s pol­i­cy, in the West Bank, the out­door prison camp main­tained by Israel called Gaza, the Korean penin­su­la, or as it relates to immi­grants flee­ing per­se­cu­tion and death from Latin America.
As such, it requires vig­i­lance and a state of wokeness[sic] on the part of all peo­ple of col­or regard­less of where we are domiciled.

Racist and Xenophobic immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy affects the free move­ment of peo­ple across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders on the one hand, even as they inform mis­guid­ed depor­ta­tion poli­cies not root­ed in jus­tice, fair­ness, or the rule of law but are demon­stra­bly root­ed in race and skin pigmentation.
In a coun­try as pow­er­ful and con­se­quen­tial as the United States, a coun­try which has held itself out as the tip of the spear of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, this new American direc­tion has giv­en the entire world a tremen­dous whiplash.

Back in the United States, the debate rages as more and more peo­ple of col­or, large­ly African-Americans, are being forced to rec­og­nize, if not accept, that the elec­tion of Barack Obama did not mean that America was ready to move past its endem­ic shame of racism. Whether it is police mur­der­ous assault on black peo­ple or those who weaponize the police inex­orably into the mil­i­tary wing of white suprema­cy, the evi­dence is undeniable.

As the assaults on decen­cy pile up, from the White House to the low­est rung of white suprema­cy in the bow­els of Dixie, Black America’s con­tin­u­ance of a failed pol­i­cy of assim­i­la­tion since the pas­sage of the civ­il rights act of 1964 seem to be the path of choice even today.
♦The idea of sit­ting at white lunch coun­ters to force change is inher­ent­ly moral. Yet, I would rather be embark­ing on a plan of start­ing my own Diner. I do not rel­ish the taste of spit in my food.
Why are Black Americans beg­ging to be accept­ed into cof­fee shops and waf­fle hous­es? How dif­fi­cult is it to open their own cof­fee shops and waf­fle houses?

♦ The idea of get­ting peo­ple who hate my guts for no rea­son oth­er than their envy of my beau­ti­ful black skin, to allow me to spend my beau­ti­ful green dol­lars in their restau­rants, hotels, coun­try clubs, and oth­er busi­ness­es, does not have real appeal for me.
I much rather believe in start­ing my own hole in the wall eatery. AirB&B has demon­strat­ed that we don’t have to use their hotels either. In fact, Harriet Tubman proved long ago that peo­ple could be moved over hun­dreds of miles safe­ly and effec­tive­ly if we chose to use our craniums.

♦ Black Americans who are inor­di­nate­ly pre­dis­posed to enter­tain­ing and being enter­tained con­tin­ue to leak their pre­cious green dol­lars to peo­ple who hate them by sup­port­ing the NFL and oth­er enti­ties that clear­ly only use them for their bod­ies and money.
Last year accord­ing to Nielsen. Black Americans spent a total of 1.2 Trillion dollars. 
According to http://www.blackenterprise.com/the-road-to‑1 – 5‑tril­lion-in-black-buy­ing-pow­er/ esti­ma­tion of black spend­ing trends.

Black buy­ing pow­er cur­rent­ly stands at over $1.1 tril­lion and is on the road to hit about $1.5 tril­lion by 2021. This col­lec­tive buy­ing pow­er means that near­ly $2 tril­lion will be flow­ing through black America annu­al­ly very soon, mak­ing us the cen­ter­piece for var­i­ous researchers, mar­keters, adver­tis­ers, and oth­er cam­paigns designed to influ­ence black spend­ing pat­terns. But the ques­tion is, with so much buy­ing pow­er, can we as African Americans influ­ence and direct said spend­ing our­selves? Do we have the pow­er direct­ly, indi­rect­ly, and strate­gi­cal­ly to deter­mine where that mon­ey flows and if so, could direct­ing that flow help rebuild the black com­mu­ni­ty?

Within the next 45 years, by around 2060, black America might be rep­re­sent­ed by 75 mil­lion in the U.S., hold­ing about 20% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. In terms of black-owned busi­ness­es, that num­ber sits any­where from 2.5 mil­lion to 3 mil­lion enter­pris­es and is pro­ject­ed to grow in larg­er num­bers in the future.

All of this data points to the trend that African Americans will be sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and U.S. jobs’ cre­ation and sustainability.
However, African-Americans’ chal­lenge is not that some peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty do not rec­og­nize the need to cre­ate more startups.[BE]

The chal­lenge lies in black sup­port for those star­tups, and the atten­dant sup­port required to sur­vive. Some claims have been that a dol­lar lasts no longer than one to six hours before leav­ing our community.
So to bor­row a term, the African-American com­mu­ni­ty remains mere­ly a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for mon­ey to be dis­persed to oth­er communities.

There is much to be dis­cussed in terms of how we move a com­mu­ni­ty of 13.5% of 320 mil­lion peo­ple to under­stand the pow­er of their money.
There is hard­ly a legit­i­mate argu­ment to be made that there aren’t ade­quate amounts of mon­ey pass­ing through black peo­ple’s hands.
One bil­lion dol­lars dis­persed among forty mil­lion peo­ple trans­lates to rough­ly 27.5 thou­sand per per­son spend­ing per annum. Hardly any of that mon­ey is being spent with black enter­pris­es or small businesses.
If Black Americans do not want to be talk­ing about this very issue of racism and exclu­sion across the eco­nom­ic and geo­graph­i­cal spec­trum a hun­dred years from now, this hole in the dike must be plugged.

The lega­cy of their col­lec­tive cow­ardice and big­otry will for­ev­er be embed­ded in his­to­ry for posterity.

The NFL is a league which is made up of over 70% black men, yet today the NFL cod­i­fied into its rules, big­otry and the sup­pres­sion of its mem­ber’s 1^st amend­ment rights, even though those rights are inher­ent­ly guar­an­teed in the con­sti­tu­tion of the United States.

First amend­ment to the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble and to peti­tion the Government for a redress of grievances.

Every com­pa­ny or busi­ness have a right to estab­lish a code of ethics for its employ­ees yet those eth­i­cal codes can­not super­sede the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees estab­lished under the Constitution of the United States.
Yet that is exact­ly what the all-white NFL bil­lion­aire own­ers decreed, essen­tial­ly reduc­ing over 1200 African-American men to noth­ing more than mute black bod­ies to be exploit­ed for finan­cial gain.

In a dis­grace­ful act of cow­ardice, NFL own­ers with the absten­tion of the own­er of the San-Francisco 49ers and with­out any rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the play­ers union , decid­ed that teams may choose to remain off the field while the nation­al anthem is being played.
However, if teams and or play­ers are on the field when they anthem is being played and they take a knee the team will be fined $15’000.
To his cred­it, the own­er of the New York Jets has said he will assume pay­ment of the fine if his play­ers decide to take a knee or assume any oth­er form of protest.

In a shock­ing capit­u­la­tion to Donald Trump’s big­otry wrapped in a flim­sy yet trans­par­ent veneer of faux patri­o­tism, this bunch of NFL own­ers will be record­ed in his­to­ry as the despi­ca­ble bunch of racist incon­se­quen­tial bums that they tru­ly are.
Whether it is bot­tom-line or these bil­lion­aires are sim­ply rich slime­buck­ets is inconsequential.
The lega­cy of their col­lec­tive cow­ardice and big­otry will for­ev­er be embed­ded in his­to­ry for posterity.

Each and every one of those black NFL play­ers has white team­mates, white agents, white friends, some have white wives, white girl­friends, they move in cir­cles of white associates.
Where are those white friends now?
Colin Kaepernick took a knee to high­light the ram­pant, egre­gious and mur­der­ous assault on black men, black women, black chil­dren by police who are paid by their tax dol­lars to pro­tect them.

Since Kaepernick’s ini­tial protests, hun­dreds of black peo­ple have been mur­dered and seri­ous­ly maimed by race sol­diers, the mil­i­tary wing of white suprema­cy who com­mit these atroc­i­ties under the cov­er of law.
I have long main­tained that it’ is luna­cy to appeal to the bet­ter angels of your oppres­sor to turn around and be decent human beings.
The chal­lenge for Black peo­ple, not just in America but every­where across the globe in which they encounter racist whites is to under­stand whats going on and to divorce them­selves from the mis­guid­ed notion that a Leopard will change its spot.

Well over a year ago I took the deci­sion nev­er to watch anoth­er NFL game ever again, as long as Colin Kaepernick was not reinstated.
It was enough for me that the league would try to sup­press the voice of an employ­ee because he dared to speak out against big­otry which is demon­stra­bly mur­der­ing inno­cent people.

I did not need to see it cod­i­fied into rules to make that deci­sion. I did not watch one minute of even one game last sea­son. For me, the NFL has long been dead. The lie that view­er­ship went down because white peo­ple are mad at the actions of Kaepernick and oth­ers is part of the false­hoods and mis­in­for­ma­tion which has tak­en over our existence.
Nevertheless, as I said last year, the actions of black peo­ple will not change any. Blacks will con­tin­ue on watch­ing and cheer­ing as if noth­ing happened.

Checkpoints con­tin­ue to increase amidst rapa­cious land grab by Israelis. The resul­tant expan­sion of ille­gal set­tle­ments con­tin­ue unabat­ed and the world is death­ly silent as the American Government moved it’s embassy to Jerusalem.
Christians in America see this move by the Americans as Biblical in its pro­por­tion. Israelis see this move as some­thing out of Biblical prophe­cy, even though they are nei­ther Christians nor believe in the Bible.
At the United Nations, US ambas­sador Nikki Haley shame­less­ly blames the vic­tims for their own deaths.

In the mean­time, the apartheid, Zionist state of Israel con­tin­ue to thumb its nose at con­ven­tion­al norms as it’s sol­diers indis­crim­i­nate­ly slaugh­ter dozens and dozens of unarmed Palestinian men women and children.
No one is spared death by the Israeli snipers they shoot and kill jour­nal­ists and even those in wheel­chairs. It is a shock­ing dis­play of geno­cide being vis­it­ed upon an already oppressed peo­ple who have lost every­thing and have been liv­ing under the oppres­sive bootheels of Israel since 1948.

Israel and the United States main­tained that the peo­ple killed are Hamas func­tionar­ies who breached the fences to enter Israel.
However inde­pen­dent report­ing has shown that this is an unadul­ter­at­ed lie.
In many cas­es, those who lose their lives are actu­al­ly the vic­tims of sniper fire while they are in the buffer zones away from the Fences.
The fact that these pro­tes­tors are killed by sniper fire is a stark indi­ca­tor that these peo­ple are not killed scal­ing any fence but are slaugh­tered by the Zionist army sim­ply for protesting.

Amidst the silent col­lu­sion of the rest of the world, the gov­ern­ment of South Africa has with­drawn its ambas­sador to Israel.
South Africa which suf­fered under vicious apartheid rule and which ben­e­fit­ted from the gra­cious­ness of con­sci­en­tious peo­ple across the globe now feels it has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to stand up and call out Israeli for what it is doing to the peo­ple of Palestine.

It is shock­ing that any group of peo­ple regard­less of their reli­gious per­sua­sion could assume that this geno­cide is some­how sanc­tioned by a sov­er­eign deity.
If this mass slaugh­ter is God-sanc­tioned then this writer wants no part of that God.
What kind of world are we liv­ing in when we are afraid, or at best uncon­cerned, about the indis­crim­i­nate killing of our fel­low human beings?

http://​mon​doweiss​.net/​2​0​1​7​/​0​1​/​m​a​i​n​s​t​r​e​a​m​i​n​g​-​p​a​l​e​s​t​i​n​i​a​n​-​g​e​n​o​c​i​de/

Have we become so immo­bi­lized by fear, of what may hap­pen may be done to us if we speak out, and so as a con­se­quence, we remain silent? How then do we expect to leave our world in a state in which our chil­dren may live as free human beings when we lack the courage to say enough?

How can we allow our fears to freeze us into immo­bil­i­ty against fas­cism, racism, big­otry, xeno­pho­bia, sex­ism, and the oth­er vices which would divide us into lit­tle-balka­nized camps, and keep us hid­ing behind walls and fortifications?
It is time for the world to hold the Zionist state of Israel account­able for its crimes against humanity.
There can­not jus­ti­fi­ably be two dif­fer­ent set of rules Governing our social order, one for Israel and anoth­er for every­one else.
This is unac­cept­able and it must stop.

GARVEYISM THE CONCEPT THEN 

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr was born on the 17^th of August 1887. Though Garvey was born in Jamaica he was best known for his Panafricanist move­ment in the United States which was met with stiff resis­tance from African-American lead­ers who con­demned his methods.
He was a leader of a mass move­ment called Pan-Africanism and he found­ed the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).^[2][3] He also found­ed the Black Star Line, a ship­ping and pas­sen­ger line which pro­mot­ed the return of the African dias­po­ra to their ances­tral lands.(Wikipedia)

Most of all Marcus Garvey advo­cat­ed seg­re­ga­tion from the white pow­er struc­ture which had kid­napped, raped, mur­dered, enslaved and oth­er­wise vis­it­ed and still per­pet­u­at­ed geno­cide on African peo­ples, advanc­ing a Pan-African phi­los­o­phy to inspire a glob­al mass move­ment and eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment focus­ing on Africa known as Garveyism.

Garvey found­ed and oper­at­ed the Black Star Liner a pas­sen­ger ship­ping line which pro­mot­ed the return of the African dias­po­ra to their ances­tral lands. Despite attract­ing huge fol­low­ings Garvey who would lat­er be rec­og­nized as Jamaica’s first National hero saw the demise of his ship­ping line which went into bankruptcy.
Garvey was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed on trumped up mail fraud charges and even­tu­al­ly deport­ed to Jamaica where he con­tin­ued his work.

Garvey’s essen­tial ideas about Africa were stat­ed in an edi­to­r­i­al in Negro World enti­tled “African Fundamentalism”,

On 8 July, Garvey deliv­ered an address, enti­tled “The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riots”, at Lafayette Hall in Harlem. During the speech, he declared the riot was “one of the blood­i­est out­rages against mankind”, con­demn­ing America’s claims to rep­re­sent democ­ra­cy when black peo­ple were vic­tim­ized “for no oth­er rea­son than they are black peo­ple seek­ing an indus­tri­al chance in a coun­try that they have laboured for three hun­dred years to make great”. It is “a time to lift one’s voice against the sav­agery of a peo­ple who claim to be the dis­pensers of democracy”.

NOW

Seventy-Eight (78) after the death of Marcus Garvey and fifty(50) years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr the civ­il rights leader who taught and advo­cat­ed for a more peace­ful non-vio­lent paci­fist form of protest, not a great deal has changed.
Dr. King him­self cau­tioned against what he called “the tran­quil drug of grad­u­al­ism” in response to the com­mon refrain from lib­er­al whites to let things evolve gradually.
At the same time, King’s non-vio­lent form of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence was large­ly born out of the idea that Blacks by virtue of their numer­i­cal strength could not have a mil­i­tary solu­tion to their plight in America.

For Blacks who had not tak­en the option as oth­ers had to leave and reset­tle on the African Continent, the strat­e­gy was inex­orably one of appeal­ing to the bet­ter angels of the very peo­ple who had oppressed mur­dered, raped, enslaved and oth­er­wise abused them for over four hun­dred years.

I risk being repet­i­tive by stat­ing that the very issues which plagued the Black com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the 60’s, seg­re­ga­tion, racial bias­es, and abuse from police who sees itself as an insti­tu­tion, as defend­ers of the white pow­er struc­ture rather than pro­tec­tors of all cit­i­zens are the same issues which plague the com­mu­ni­ty today.

It is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that cul­tur­al­ly, police depart­ments treat black cit­i­zens dif­fer­ent­ly than they do whites because they do not see black cit­i­zens as full citizens.
Individual police offi­cers and groups of offi­cers may not even rec­og­nize the struc­tur­al bias­es and dis­re­gard, inher­ent in their respons­es and behav­ior toward black Americans as opposed to how they respond to whites.
In many cas­es, many white offi­cers may oth­er­wise be what one would call “decent peo­ple”, the dif­fer­ences in their approach­es go to the depth of the implic­it bias­es which are inher­ent in law enforce­ment in America.

When there is a jux­ta­po­si­tion of the mas­sive infil­tra­tion of white suprema­cists in law enforce­ment over the years it demon­strates the lev­el of dan­ger peo­ple of col­or face in their inter­ac­tion with law enforce­ment, even when they are the ones who hap­pen to call the police.
In 2017 the Intercept reported.
“Federal law enforce­ment agen­cies in gen­er­al — the FBI, the Marshals, the ATF — are aware that extrem­ists have infil­trat­ed state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies and that there are peo­ple in law enforce­ment agen­cies that may be sym­pa­thet­ic to these groups,” said Daryl Johnson, who was the lead researcher on the DHS report. Johnson, who now runs DT Analytics, a con­sult­ing firm that ana­lyzes domes­tic extrem­ism, says the prob­lem has since got­ten “a lot more trou­ble­some.”

The uncon­scionable and despi­ca­ble shoot­ing deaths by police of men­tal­ly ill fam­i­ly mem­bers of black peo­ple who call them for help goes to the lack of respect police large­ly have for black lives.
The con­tin­ued rep­re­hen­si­ble killing and abuse of black men and women even when they are unarmed and have com­mit­ted no crimes, against the repeat­ed cas­es of white mass killers being arrest­ed with­out receiv­ing a scratch from police demon­strates the dan­ger­ous bi-fold polic­ing paths in America.
Even in adverse sit­u­a­tions where a poten­tial arrestee decides to resist being arrest­ed, the wrong­ness of how police behave in the mind of the sub­ject can­not be ignored.

Today black Americans are pro­filed in Starbucks cof­fee shops, in Waffle hous­es, in restau­rants, cloth­ing stores, and oth­er establishments.
Well over half a cen­tu­ry after lunch counter sit-ins, water hoses, hav­ing to pay at the front, then exit and go to the back of the bus to sit or stand, the con­ver­sa­tions are the same.

And so I won­der whether the path of assim­i­la­tion and inte­gra­tion tak­en in the 60’s has been a cor­rect path for American blacks? What would have hap­pened if Blacks had come togeth­er as they did dur­ing the Montgomery bus boy­cotts to start com­mu­ni­ty banks, start­up and sup­port each oth­er in busi­ness­es out­side the tra­di­tion­al bar­ber­shops and hair salons? In Real Estate, char­ter schools, and busi­ness­es of all kinds would the response to blacks in America be the same had blacks opt­ed for build­ing their own insti­tu­tions as ear­li­er blacks did?

Black Americans built Institutions of high­er learn­ing, they build col­leges and Universities which are mon­u­ments to black excel­lence, integri­ty, and intel­lect to this day.
Black busi­ness­es have been vic­tims of white wrath and hate and have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroyed under trans­par­ent pre­texts of wrongdoing.
On January 1, 1923, a mas­sacre was car­ried out in the small, pre­dom­i­nant­ly black town of Rosewood in Central Florida. The mas­sacre was insti­gat­ed by the rumor that a white woman, Fanny Taylor, had been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by a black man in her home in a near­by com­mu­ni­ty. Read the sto­ry here: http://​www​.black​past​.org/​a​a​h​/​r​o​s​e​w​o​o​d​-​m​a​s​s​a​c​r​e​-​1​923

In 1921, Tulsa had the wealth­i­est black neigh­bor­hood in the coun­try. On Sundays, women wore satin dress­es and dia­monds, while men wore silk shirts and gold chains. In Greenwood, writes his­to­ri­an James S. Hirsch,“Teachers lived in brick homes fur­nished with Louis XIV din­ing room sets, fine chi­na, and Steinway pianos.”
They called it Black Wall Street.

“They had done every­thing that they were sup­posed to do in terms of the American dream,” says Carol Anderson, Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. “You work hard, you save your mon­ey, you go to school, you buy prop­er­ty. And this is what they had done under hor­rif­ic conditions.”

Greenwood was strict­ly seg­re­gat­ed from the rest of the city, but still, it flour­ished. It was home to black lawyers, busi­ness own­ers, and doc­tors — includ­ing Dr. A.C. Jackson, who was con­sid­ered the most skilled black sur­geon in America and had a net worth of $100,000.

Dr. Jackson was killed on the night of May 31^st, 1921, along with hun­dreds of black Tulsans. Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were razed that night. 1,256 homes and 191 busi­ness­es were destroyed. 10,000 black peo­ple were left home­less. By morn­ing, Black Wall Street had been reduced to rubble.

In 1890, a group of migrants flee­ing the hos­tile South set­tled an all-black town called Langston, 80 miles west of Tulsa. Oklahoma wasn’t yet a state, and its racial dynam­ics weren’t set in stone. The archi­tect of the set­tle­ment, Edwin McCabe, had a vision of Oklahoma as the black promised land. He sent recruiters to the South, preach­ing racial pride and self-suf­fi­cien­cy. At least 29 black sep­a­ratist towns were estab­lished in Oklahoma dur­ing the late 19^th century.

White home­stead­ers opposed to the “Africanization of Oklahoma” spear­head­ed a counter-move­ment, and the rur­al black set­tle­ments were all but wiped off the map. McCabe him­self fled to Chicago in 1908. But black peo­ple were in Oklahoma for good, and they moved to the cities — tak­ing that dream of empow­er­ment with them. Tulsa expe­ri­enced a mas­sive oil boom in the 1900s, and black res­i­dents began mak­ing good mon­ey as cooks and domes­tic ser­vants to the free­wheel­ing white nou­veau riche. They invest­ed that mon­ey in their own neigh­bor­hood, and by 1920 Greenwood was the most vibrant and afflu­ent black com­mu­ni­ty in the United States.

White res­i­dents were dis­turbed by the grow­ing black wealth in Greenwood and sought to impose offi­cial seg­re­ga­tion mea­sures. In 1914, the city passed a law that for­bade any­one from liv­ing on a block where more than three-quar­ters of the pre­ex­ist­ing res­i­dents were of anoth­er race. In iso­la­tion, Greenwood only thrived more. Its main strip boast­ed attor­neys’ offices, auto shops, cafes, a movie the­ater, funer­al homes, pool halls, beau­ty salons, gro­cery stores, fur­ri­ers, and con­fec­tioner­ies. One entre­pre­neur built an ele­gant 54-room hotel, like­ly the largest ever owned by a black per­son in pre-Civil Rights America. Crystal chan­de­liers hung from the ceil­ing in the ban­quet hall. Its own­er, J.B. Stradford, had been born a slave.

That resent­ment in Tulsa was so intense,” says Carol Anderson, “it was just wait­ing for a spark in order to ignite it.” That spark was a sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tion against a black teenag­er named Dick Rowland. It’s not entire­ly clear what hap­pened in the ele­va­tor of the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921, but one com­mon nar­ra­tive is that Rowland acci­den­tal­ly tripped against its oper­a­tor, a white 17-year-old named Sarah Page, caus­ing her to scream. A bystander who heard the scream called the police, and “like a game of tele­phone, the sto­ry became more inflam­ma­to­ry with each retelling, and spread rapid­ly,” writes Dexter Mullins.

When Rowland was cap­tured, a few black World War I vet­er­ans from Greenwood armed them­selves in front of the cour­t­house, pre­pared to pre­vent a lynch­ing. They were jus­ti­fied in their fear — a man named Roy Belton had been lynched in Tulsa the year before, after his arrest. “The lynch­ing of Roy Belton,” read Greenwood’s black news­pa­per The Tulsa Star in 1920, “explores the the­o­ry that a pris­on­er is safe on the top of the Court House from mob violence.”

In front of the cour­t­house where Dick Rowland was being kept, a group of white men approached the black men from Greenwood. “Nigger, what are you going to do with that pis­tol?” said one. “I’m going to use it if I need to,” the black man replied. The white man attempt­ed to wrest the pis­tol from his hands, and a gun­shot rang out. It’s unclear whether it was acci­den­tal, a warn­ing shot, or an attempt to injure or kill. In any case, all hell broke loose.

The groups of white and black men had a run­ning gun­fight all the way to Greenwood. When they got there, the group of whites — which had grown in num­ber — began fir­ing indis­crim­i­nate­ly on black bystanders. Black peo­ple were shot in the streets and dragged behind cars with noos­es tied around their necks. Their hous­es and busi­ness­es were loot­ed and burned down. Greenwood res­i­dents fired back, and there were white casu­al­ties as well. Ultimately, the white mob was larg­er and bet­ter armed.
Read the full sto­ry here: https://​time​line​.com/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​t​u​l​s​a​-​r​a​c​e​-​m​a​s​s​a​c​r​e​-​a​9​2​b​b​2​3​5​6​a69

Did Black America lose it’s appetite to start­up and own busi­ness­es? How many Black Americans today knew about these two exam­ples I out­lined here or the count­less oth­er instances of white geno­cide against blacks who decid­ed to cre­ate wealth for themselves?
The fact is, not many. So the refusal by blacks to start­up and own their own busi­ness­es is not root­ed in knowl­edge of what occurred nei­ther should black Americans be afraid or intimidated.
The fate of each and every one of us rests not with the gen­eros­i­ty or benev­o­lence of oth­ers, [least of all those who hate us] but in the accu­mu­la­tion of wealth and the sub­se­quent empow­er­ment of us as a people.

There is a rea­son that they chose to burn those busi­ness­es and kill the peo­ple who dared to defy con­ven­tion­al wis­dom by cre­at­ing their own engines of empow­er­ment. Despite their igno­rance, those imbe­ciles who burned those black busi­ness­es were at least intel­li­gent enough to under­stand the impor­tance of wealth cre­ation as a vehi­cle to real and sus­tain­able power.

There is an endur­ing truth which exists in the uni­verse, it is that out of the worst tragedy there are still good possibilities.
The con­di­tions which are the most vio­lent and dan­ger­ous cre­ates the lush­est, green foliages. (See the areas clos­est to active volcanoes).

If Black America spends its ener­gies and it’s 1.3 ‑1.5 tril­lion dol­lars of spend­ing mon­ey each year enrich­ing oth­ers. A hun­dred years from now they will be talk­ing about how they are treat­ed in cof­fee shops or what obtains in place of cof­fee shops then.
Why are we hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about waf­fle hous­es? What does it take to do star­tups of waf­fle houses?
At the risk of being over­ly sim­plis­tic, serv­ing waf­fles, eggs, bacon, cof­fee and some orange juice is not exact­ly rock­et science.
How about some black peo­ple put them­selves at the busi­ness end of the cash registers?

As long as we con­tin­ue to be cash cows to the very peo­ple who loathe us we will per­pet­u­al­ly be the punch­ing bag for others.
There is no pow­er with­out eco­nom­ic power.
Those opposed to our exis­tence knows it, they are opposed to it because were we to break through their stran­gle­hold they know they have no more con­trol over us.
Think about it for awhile!

Benjamin Netanyahu says African Refugees are destroy­ing the fab­ric of the Zionist state.

The choice for these migrants the choice is a few dol­lars and a tick­et out, or jail. The Israeli Government has also built a wall between itself and Egypt with a view to keep­ing refugees out.

The fol­low­ing is a state­ment for for­mer NFL play­er and African-American male Desmond Marrow: 

“I was false­ly arrest­ed & tak­en into cus­tody in Atlanta by the Henry County Police. I only had my cell phone in my pos­ses­sion and they claimed to be scared for their lives. I had no type of weapon in my pos­ses­sion. I was arrest­ed for hav­ing a gun that turned out to be my cell phone. During the arrest, the police knocked my teeth out, slammed me on my head and choked me out until I was uncon­scious. In addi­tion, I suf­fered a shoul­der strain and a con­cus­sion. They threw me into iso­la­tion and labeled me a gang mem­ber because of my tat­toos. I was ful­ly coop­er­at­ing with the offi­cers with ZERO resistance.

I thought I was going to die. Henry County police dept was try­ing to keep me qui­et, but once they found out I was a for­mer NFL play­er & there was a video of the inci­dent did they then try to drop my charges. They were basi­cal­ly try­ing to get me to sell my soul in exchange for the video not being post­ed and they would drop all the felonies and clear my record. They said I was resist­ing arrest, being out of con­trol, spit­ting and assault­ing the Officers by head­but­ting them.

But GOD record­ed it and I have PROOF!”

These women didn’t stand on ceremony; they accepted the risks of activism and fought for worlds where others might have freedoms that they themselves would never enjoy.

The wave of white Nationalism wash­ing over Western Europe and the United States requires seri­ous atten­tion from all non-white peo­ple. It may be sig­nif­i­cant exis­ten­tial­ly for peo­ple of col­or caught up in its wake unless those who are in the way wake up to its reality.

Many peo­ple thought Britain’s exit from the European Union was a joke which would nev­er hap­pen. Many peo­ple thought a Donald Trump pres­i­den­cy was as improb­a­ble as hit­ting the Powerball.

Despite Emanuel Macron’s sweep­ing elec­tion win over far-right can­di­date Marine Le Pen last year, the New York Times opined,[The issues that Ms. Le Pen raised are not going away. She gained twice the sup­port that her father did when he ran for pres­i­dent in 2002, cement­ing the far right’s hold on the French polit­i­cal landscape.]

Over the last two decades, the prac­tice of mass depor­ta­tion of peo­ple of col­or has become com­mon­place in the United States and in Britain for the small­est infrac­tions and in many cas­es in sit­u­a­tions, for offens­es they did not even commit.
This kind of enforce­ment has its root in racism and are pushed only by far-right white eth­nic groups in the United States and across Europe.

We must see these kinds of actions for what they are. The dem­a­gog­ic rhetoric is not root­ed in facts, nei­ther is it sup­port­ed by data. Study after study has shown that immi­grants com­mit far few­er crimes than native-born citizens.
Immigrants gen­er­al­ly migrate in search of bet­ter eco­nom­ic opportunities.
In more severe cas­es they do so because their very lives depend on it. For those rea­sons, immi­grants tend to be very good and respon­si­ble cit­i­zens who bring much dynamism and ener­gy to the workforce.

The prac­tice of remov­ing peo­ple who have lived for decades because of minor infrac­tions or because they thought they did not have to reg­u­lar­ize their sta­tus must be seen as the [eth­nic cleans­ing] it is.
This is evi­dent in the so-called (Windrush Generation) who are now liv­ing with the specter of depor­ta­tions in England even though they arrived in the United Kingdom as cit­i­zens of Britain, hav­ing arrived from the Caribbean before 1973.

In a recent­ly released book titled (Fascism a Warning) writ­ten by Madeline Albright, the US’s first female Secretary of State, Amazon’s review said the following.
[The momen­tum toward democ­ra­cy that swept the world when the Berlin Wall fell has gone into reverse. The United States, which his­tor­i­cal­ly cham­pi­oned the free world, is led by a pres­i­dent who exac­er­bates divi­sion and heaps scorn on demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. In many coun­tries, eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al fac­tors are weak­en­ing the polit­i­cal cen­ter and empow­er­ing the extremes of right and left].

The tone set by the far-white[sic] is hav­ing dis­as­trous con­se­quences, not only for black and brown mem­bers of immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties in the United States and parts of Europe but are man­i­fest­ing itself in the way black cit­i­zens are treat­ed by law enforce­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the United States.
The unlaw­ful killing of Black peo­ple has exist­ed for as long as the United States existed.
Shockingly, how­ev­er, the police con­tin­ue to kill peo­ple of col­or with­out due jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, or expla­na­tion even in instances where they are unarmed and the sys­tems which ought to hold them account­able has twist­ed itself into pret­zels try­ing to give jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what every ratio­nal per­son know is murder.

In many cas­es, the sheer num­ber of bul­lets fired by police at indi­vid­u­als defies log­i­cal rea­son­ing and may only be con­strued or inter­pret­ed as total depraved indif­fer­ence to human life.
The cops who sav­age­ly slaugh­tered Amadou Diallo fired at the unarmed man a report­ed forty-one times. Some of those who fired their weapons could­n’t even claim they were scared, they coined a total­ly fraud­u­lent jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for dis­charg­ing their weapons.
“Contagious fir­ing” a new jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for [depraved indif­fer­ence] entered the lex­i­con and it was off to the races.
Abner Louima, Sean Bell, Akai Gurley, and count­less oth­er vic­tims were to fol­low, with each killing and depraved assaults in which police were not held account­able the attacks on black men inten­si­fied with no clear end in sight.

The idea that cops can sim­ply say they were in fear for their lives and are deemed jus­ti­fi­able in pump­ing dozens of bul­lets into an unarmed per­son is the high­est degree of men­tal and moral depravity.
Even in sit­u­a­tions in which a per­son may have a weapon it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy fir­ing bul­lets into an offend­er who has been neutralized.
Now imag­ine sit­u­a­tions in which the police don’t even see a gun yet over and over they use the very same tired excuse that they thought the per­son had a gun.

What’s worse, armed white sus­pects are talked down and tak­en into cus­tody with­out inci­dent, unarmed black peo­ple who aren’t even crim­i­nal sus­pects are drilled full of bul­lets imme­di­ate­ly the police arrive on the scene.
Blacks caught with a weapon is almost assured that his sen­tence will be the death penal­ty, decid­ed, and car­ried out on the spot.
White killers who mas­sacre large num­bers of inno­cents are almost always arrest­ed with­out a sin­gle round being fired at them and are treat­ed with the great­est degree of def­er­ence and care.

Over half a cen­tu­ry after Dr. Martin Luther King was assas­si­nat­ed the struc­tur­al edi­fices of white suprema­cy still exist in America as it did when he lived.
I strug­gle to see a sit­u­a­tion in which two white men of any age would have the police called on them because they sat in a Starbucks cof­fee shop and had not yet made a purchase.
Sitting in Starbucks and work­ing on one’s com­put­er, (free wi-fi), read­ing a book, or sim­ply chat­ting away is the Starbucks busi­ness model.
Yet two young black men sit­ting there like every­one else can find no sanc­tu­ary from racism, fas­cism, and police excess, even in these inner sanc­tums of pro­gres­sive coexistence.

In the ear­ly six­ties while Dr. King lived the sin­gle great­est issue fac­ing black peo­ple in America was police abuse, today well over half a cen­tu­ry lat­er police abuse is the largest issue affect­ing black peo­ple and oth­er peo­ple of col­or in America.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that police abuse has noth­ing to do with the qual­i­ty of police ser­vices over­all. Police ser­vice to oth­er peo­ple with much less melanin in their skins is exemplary.

In a riv­et­ing arti­cle writ­ten for the Root​.com, Dr. Jason Johnson, pro­fes­sor, polit­i­cal ana­lyst, and pub­lic speak­er. said the fol­low­ing in rela­tion to a loud argu­ment between a young white woman and her young African American boyfriend with whom she was feuding.
“I’m gonna call the cops! I’ll tell them you hit me!” the woman screamed, sit­ting on the grass and point­ing at her ex. “I’ll tell them you beat me up. They’ll get your ass.”

Johnson described what fol­lowed this way:
The man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and gave her a look of shock, anger, and then unmit­i­gat­ed fear. He was black. She was white. He knew exact­ly what she was say­ing, and so did I, and most hor­ren­dous­ly, so did she.
Johnson summed up the event this way ”
“When white peo­ple threat­en to call the police on black peo­ple — out of anger, out of spite, out of pure vin­dic­tive­ness — they are effec­tive­ly say­ing, “I’ll kill you!” They’re just using a legal exten­sion of white suprema­cy to do it. It’s high time we start con­sid­er­ing these big­ots just as much a threat as the police that they sum­mon to do their bid­ding”.

White Americans have no prob­lem with police, when they call, ‑the police arrive in record time and their cares are attend­ed to with pre­ci­sion type dispatch.
When blacks injured by whites call the police,-the police arrive and go to the white offend­er to hear what occurred despite the white per­son being the offender.
Black motorists who have their vehi­cles destroyed on the streets by white dri­ves, par­tic­u­lar­ly white women, tell hor­rif­ic tales of how they are treat­ed by white cops who use intim­i­dat­ing tac­tics, despite the fact that they are the aggriev­ed party.
The nat­ur­al default pos­ture of police, there­fore, is that blacks are express­ly inca­pable of being right, inher­ent­ly inca­pable of being aggrieved.

This deep sense of implic­it bias weaponizes black skin ren­der­ing black men and boys and even women and chil­dren sus­pects, (see Tamir Rice), pure­ly on the basis of their skin color.
Police offi­cers turn up to answer calls, demon­stra­bly with no inten­tion of de-esca­lat­ing sit­u­a­tions, for the most part, they show up aggres­sive­ly not car­ing how they act.
Why should they care, sel­dom are police offi­cers held account­able, regard­less of what they do to black peo­ple, even when they kill unarmed cit­i­zens who posed no threat to them­selves or any­one else?

In a tear-jerk­ing Article writ­ten for CNN African-American jour­nal­ist Nia-Malika Henderson in speak­ing about — The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: wrote.
“The memo­r­i­al cap­tures the bru­tal­i­ty and the scale of lynch­ings through­out the South, where more than 4,000 black men, women, and chil­dren, died at the hands of white mobs between 1877 and 1950”. “Most were in response to per­ceived infrac­tions — walk­ing behind a white woman, attempt­ing to quit a job, report­ing a crime or orga­niz­ing share­crop­pers”.

The tragedy did not end in the 1950s as we are well aware untold num­bers of black peo­ple have dis­ap­peared and were nev­er heard from again, their only crime, dar­ing to be alive.
The killings con­tin­ued through­out the six­ties and sev­en­ties with the full weight of the states behind jim crow laws, which man­i­fest­ed them­selves in more lynch­ings, vot­er exclu­sion, vot­er sup­pres­sion, eugen­ics, chain gangs, lat­er trans­formed into the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, and oth­er meth­ods of racial suppression.

And so when we fast for­ward to the men arrest­ed in a Philidelphia Starbucks cof­fee shop many peo­ple includ­ing African Americans fall vic­tim to blam­ing Starbucks.
Starbucks the com­pa­ny has a far bet­ter record as a cor­po­rate cit­i­zen than many oth­er com­pa­nies, and so it is incred­i­ble myopic for any­one, least of all African-Americans to sug­gest that Starbucks has a prob­lem, which is, in essence, deny­ing that American has a problem.

The white Starbucks man­ag­er who called the police on the two young African-American men absolute­ly would not even have noticed that two white men sit­ting in the same seats had not made a purchase.
The fact of the mat­ter is that the only rea­son that a time­line was cre­at­ed in her mind is the skin col­or of the two men. As soon as they stepped into that cof­fee shop a time clock trig­gered in her head, that time clock was trig­gered based on a con­cept too many whites have, that black peo­ple do not belong.

Nevertheless, the fight African-Americans are wag­ing is a fight that will land them in the very same predica­ment a hun­dred years from today. There is no pow­er with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er. People who use their ener­gies to fight with oth­ers to give them the free­dom to spend their mon­ey with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion are bound to end up being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.

What will it take for African-Americans to under­stand that the strat­e­gy of fight­ing to get peo­ple to accept them into their orga­ni­za­tions, busi­ness­es, insti­tu­tions, and fra­ter­ni­ties is a los­ing strategy?
There is more than enough evi­dence for us to con­clude that despite not hav­ing to sit and wait in vain to be served at lunch coun­ters, not a great deal has changed in the think­ing of far too many in the white community.
Surely the answer is in build­ing busi­ness­es of our own, estab­lish­ing coop­er­a­tives, small start-ups, com­mu­ni­ty banks, restau­rants, Real estate agen­cies, cof­fee shops, tech star­tups, dress shops, media house, etc, etc.

The only busi­ness black peo­ple seem to get excit­ed about are bar­ber­shops and hair salons. Which are two busi­ness­es ded­i­cat­ed to form, rather than sub­stance, what can be seen rather than what’s inside? So they priss and preen and dress up then go to white-owned restau­rants, white-owned hotels, and spend their monies pur­chas­ing goods and ser­vices in white-owned busi­ness­es, gets treat­ed bad­ly and the cycle con­tin­ues. That hamp­ster wheel has been a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter and it will con­tin­ue to be so until we change it.

As long as blacks con­tin­ue to side­step the sem­i­nal issue of self-empow­er­ment through black finan­cial reten­tion, the dis­re­spect met­ed out to blacks in oth­er peo­ple’s busi­ness­es will remain on a continuüm.
There seems to be lit­tle desire among black peo­ple to pool their resources and become finan­cial con­trollers of their own lives.
Despite the con­tin­ued rep­re­hen­si­ble treat­ment met­ed out, black Americans con­tin­ue to bleed their resources each year, to the tune of well over one tril­lion dol­lars. (Black Buying Power To Reach $1.3 Trillion By 2017 )

In the mean­time blacks con­tin­ue to make the lame argu­ments that they can­not get loans to do star­tups, argu­ing incor­rect­ly that the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing loans avail­able to Latinos who are cre­at­ing star­tups at a record pace.
Black intel­lec­tu­als and jour­nal­ists argue that the implic­it bias­es we wit­ness in the end­less cycle of police killings and oth­er abus­es met­ed out to black peo­ple across America are fear-based.

I dis­agree, I heard in that record­ing, that cop telling Alton Sterling, over and over that he was going to blow out his fuck­ing brains, (then he did). Time after time police are caught on video and audio record­ings telling blacks, “I’m going to fuck­ing kill you” then they kill the person.
That is not fear it is hatred.
Not only is it hatred, but these encoun­ters are also unequiv­o­cal instances of mod­ern-day lynch­ings car­ried out by tax-pay­er fund­ed agents of the states. They are unmit­i­gat­ed instances of state mur­der in which the intent to kill is man­i­fest­ly expressed.

Police offi­cers are the first judge of facts when they are called to a sit­u­a­tion. Real offi­cers turn up with the inten­tion to resolve issues amicably.
The offi­cers who showed up at the Starbucks in Philadelphia had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, they end­ed up serv­ing their own racist agendas.

As a police offi­cer, you enter the cof­fee shop and engage the per­son who called the police. Clearly, after hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the man­ag­er (who was the com­plainant in this instance), real offi­cers would inti­mate to the com­plainant that unless the per­sons were being dis­rup­tive there was no offense.
As the own­er of two pri­vate busi­ness­es, I do have the right to ask some­one to leave if the per­son is being dis­rup­tive, or if the per­son is trespassing.
However, the tres­pass can­not be con­fined to only peo­ple of a cer­tain pigmentation.

Real police offi­cers would have approached the two young men and spo­ken to them respect­ful­ly, upon which they would have been told that they were await­ing a friend. [which is what peo­ple do at cof­fee shops, includ­ing Starbucks].
Real police offi­cers would have walked away when the friend of the two men arrived. They did not walk away because they saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be tough guys, lots of them, two unarmed men.

Instead of defus­ing the non-sit­u­a­tion, they took up aggres­sive posi­tions around the two men in a semi-cir­cle. That aggres­sion includ­ing mov­ing chairs and tables with the full inten­tion of show­ing who was boss.
None of which was nec­es­sary if they believed they had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be def­er­en­tial and respect­ful to the two men.
The sole defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic which pre­de­ter­mined the cop’s response was the col­or of the men’s skin.

In England, Spain, France, Russia, Denmark. Norway, The Netherlands, and all across Europe and the United States we are wit­ness­ing a rise in what can only be acknowl­edged as Fascist attacks on peo­ple of color.
During the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama (America’s first black pres­i­dent), there was a pro­lif­er­a­tion of hate groups unseen in the United States prior.
President Obama as the first African-American to hold the office of pres­i­dent received more death threats than any oth­er President in history.
Those threats and the rise of the white hate groups had noth­ing to do with fear and every­thing to do with hatred.
These groups are heav­i­ly armed, hate-filled, they train as armies do and they are not afraid to chal­lenge the Government under the force of arms as they did in the Bundy standoff.
Despite this clear and present dan­ger, the Federal Beaurea of Investigations (FBI) spent its time and resources inves­ti­gat­ing and prepar­ing warn­ings on the so-called “Black Identity Extremists.”

According to (thing​progress​.com) The trou­bling report cit­ed numer­ous instances of vio­lent extrem­ism, pin­ning them on the cur­rent wave of Black Lives Matter demon­stra­tions and allow­ing law enforce­ment to pur­sue aggres­sive sur­veil­lance and inves­ti­ga­tions into indi­vid­u­als they believe may one day pose a threat.
Instead of deal­ing with the threats posed by the heav­i­ly armed, well-trained Militias with vio­lent intent, the FBI is more con­cerned about unarmed peo­ple demon­strat­ing to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect. https://​thinkprogress​.org/​f​b​i​-​u​s​i​n​g​-​i​t​s​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​i​d​e​n​t​i​t​y​-​e​x​t​r​e​m​i​s​t​s​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​-​c​6​4​7​0​9​1​1​3​5​ab/

Politico mag­a­zine report­ed that vio­lent hate groups are now act­ing as a “third force” — as a buffer, in the­o­ry, between far-right agi­ta­tors and their opponents.
Indeed, dur­ing these first months of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, these loose-knit orga­ni­za­tions mak­ing up America’s mili­tia move­ment are los­ing their anti-gov­ern­ment ide­o­log­i­cal puri­ty as they grow increas­ing­ly close with a seg­ment of the right-wing from which many in the recent past had gen­er­al­ly kept their dis­tance. Their pres­ence as a pri­vate secu­ri­ty force for an increas­ing­ly pub­lic coali­tion of white nation­al­ist fac­tions — Ku Klux Klan fol­low­ers, neo-Nazis, and “alt-right” sup­port­ers — has trans­formed a move­ment that has already demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to threat­en vio­lence. www.politi​co​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​0​1​7​/​0​8​/​1​7​/​w​h​i​t​e​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​a​c​i​s​t​s​-​m​i​l​i​t​i​a​s​-​p​r​i​v​a​t​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​2​1​5​498

All in all, this fright­en­ing sys­tem of aggres­sion we are wit­ness­ing can be turned back but it requires vig­i­lance, mil­i­tan­cy, and a sense of awokeness[sic] from those who are threat­ened by aggres­sion, their only crime being their skin color.
These are not prob­lems that crop up like some non-man made dis­ease, they are arti­fi­cial prob­lems cre­at­ed by peo­ple who make con­scious deci­sions to adopt a pos­ture that they some­how have more right to this plan­et than oth­ers do.

This aggres­sion must be coun­tered using edu­ca­tion, self-aware­ness, social inter­ac­tion, finan­cial empow­er­ment, vot­ing, and a raft of oth­er tools.
Those who would con­tin­ue to take advan­tage of the igno­rance and docil­i­ty of oth­ers will not cease to push the enve­lope until the igno­rant and docile say no more.
This is an exis­ten­tial cri­sis that requires all hands on deck.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

“Don’t you fuck­ing walk away! Don’t fuck­ing walk away from me!” the 20-some­thing-year-old woman screamed as she fol­lowed after the 20-some­thing-year-old guy who just got out of her car. It was 2 a.m.; only the street lights were on, but the guy was clear­ly done with his girl­friend (prob­a­bly ex-girl­friend at this point) and was just try­ing to get inside the building.

“You fuck­ing ass­hole!” she screamed and ran after him, jump­ing onto his back for the angri­est pig­gy­back ride in his­to­ry. He tus­sled with her for a bit, man­ag­ing to slide her off his back with a thud. Then he kept walk­ing to the apart­ment, curs­ing at her to leave him alone. This was sev­er­al years ago — my friend Josh and I were awk­ward­ly watch­ing the whole thing. All we want­ed to do was move a few final box­es into my first apart­ment in Laurel, Md., but this Real Housewives of Potomac cutscene was block­ing our path to my sec­ond-floor unit.

“I’m gonna call the cops! I’ll tell them you hit me!” the woman screamed, sit­ting on the grass and point­ing at her ex. “I’ll tell them you beat me up. They’ll get your ass.”

The man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around and gave her a look of shock, anger and then unmit­i­gat­ed fear. He was black. She was white. He knew exact­ly what she was say­ing, and so did I, and most hor­ren­dous­ly, so did she. When white peo­ple threat­en to call the police on black peo­ple — out of anger, out of spite, out of pure vin­dic­tive­ness — they are effec­tive­ly say­ing, “I’ll kill you!” They’re just using a legal exten­sion of white suprema­cy to do it. It’s high time we start con­sid­er­ing these big­ots just as much a threat as the police that they sum­mon to do their bidding.

This week, black America added “sit­ting at Starbucks wait­ing for a white friend” to the list of things that we can­not safe­ly do with­out fear of police vio­lence. Previous entries includ­ed sit­ting in your car, sit­ting in some­one else’s car, stand­ing on your front porch, stand­ing on your back porch, sur­viv­ing a car acci­dent, ask­ing for direc­tions to school and, of course, breathing.

As a black man in America who has been harassed by police more times than I can count, the viral Starbucks video didn’t sur­prise me at all. However, my anger is direct­ed not just at the cops but also at the cow­ard­ly Starbucks man­ag­er who made the call to the police to begin with. The men and women mak­ing these out­ra­geous and unwar­rant­ed calls to police, which result in the harass­ment, unfair pros­e­cu­tion and even death of peo­ple of col­or, need to be found, pub­licly shamed and pros­e­cut­ed to the full extent that the law allows.

No, I’m not talk­ing about Dave Reiling, the man who report­ed an actu­al crime in Sacramento, Calif., that the police used as an excuse to shoot Stephon Clark in his own back­yard. Calling the police to report an actu­al crime that the police over­act to is not the citizen’s fault, no mat­ter what col­or they are. I’m talk­ing about the hun­dreds of cas­es — that we know about — every year, where white Americans active­ly and know­ing­ly use the police as an exten­sion of their per­son­al big­otry yet face no consequences.

I’m talk­ing about the white woman at the Red Roof Inn out­side of Pittsburg who called the cops on me because I dis­put­ed the charges on my bill and asked to speak to a man­ag­er. I’m talk­ing about the white woman who called the cops on me last year even though she knew I was walk­ing with polit­i­cal can­vassers for Jon Ossoff’s con­gres­sion­al cam­paign in North Atlanta. I’m talk­ing about the police offi­cer who fol­lowed me behind my house in Hiram, Ohio, ask­ing where I lived because he’d “got­ten some calls about robberies.”

In each and every sin­gle one of these instances, a white per­son used the cops as their per­son­al racism valets, and I was the one get­ting served. In each of these instances, I could have been arrest­ed, beat up or worse based on noth­ing more than the word of a white per­son whom I made uncom­fort­able. As sick as this all is, I still con­sid­er myself lucky.

Tamir Rice was killed at the ten­der age of 12 because a man who admit­ted to spend­ing the after­noon drink­ing called 911 to report a “juve­nile” that was prob­a­bly car­ry­ing a “fake” gun. Constance Hollinger, the 911 dis­patch­er, who failed to deliv­er that infor­ma­tion to the cops, got an eight-day sus­pen­sion but kept her job, and there was no inves­ti­ga­tion into the caller. Tamir Rice is still dead.

Then there’s Ronald T. Ritchie, who told 911 that John Crawford III was run­ning around Walmart “men­ac­ing chil­dren” with a shot­gun. Crawford, hold­ing a BB gun — sold at Walmart — in the open car­ry state of Ohio, was shot and killed by police. Despite clear evi­dence that Ritchie lied to the 911 dis­patch­er, which is a crime, no charges were filed against him.

You can get arrest­ed for pulling a fire alarm, mak­ing fake bomb threats and mak­ing false claims of an alien inva­sion—why not a false police report that results in death? We should be push­ing for pros­e­cu­tion against these callers just as much as the cops who pull the trigger.

That’s why I knew Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson’s state­ment on the Philadelphia inci­dent was trash: “Our store man­ag­er nev­er intend­ed for these men to be arrest­ed and this should nev­er have esca­lat­ed the way it did …”

Either Johnson is lying or hasn’t been white in America as long as I’ve been black in America. Calling the police is the epit­o­me of esca­la­tion, and call­ing the police on black peo­ple for non­crimes is a step away from ask­ing for a tax-fund­ed beat­down, if not an exe­cu­tion. That Starbucks man­ag­er didn’t call the police in the hopes that they’d polite­ly ask two black cus­tomers to buy a lat­te or leave, just like the angry woman in front of my apart­ment wasn’t threat­en­ing to call the cops just to get her boyfriend to lis­ten to her. The intent of these actions is to remind black peo­ple that the ulti­mate con­se­quence of dis­com­fort­ing white peo­ple — let alone anger­ing them—could be death.

As hor­ri­ble as the real­i­ties of American polic­ing can be for black America, we can’t ever for­get that there are even worse peo­ple out there. They’re peer­ing out from the cur­tains of their house, infor­ma­tion kiosks and “lib­er­al” cof­fee coun­ters, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly dial­ing their phones, whis­per­ing the exag­ger­a­tions and Trumped-up fears that make America’s vio­lent polic­ing pos­si­ble. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​f​r​o​m​-​s​t​a​r​b​u​c​k​s​-​t​o​-​h​a​s​h​t​a​g​s​-​w​e​-​n​e​e​d​-​t​o​-​t​a​l​k​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​w​h​y​-​w​-​1​8​2​5​2​8​4​087

Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

Senior Editor @ The Root, box­es out­side my weight class, when they go low, you go lower.

During Wednesday night’s game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Memphis Grizzlies, an announc­er took every­one watch­ing back to slave days when he not­ed that the All-Star point guard was “out of his cot­ton-pick­ing mind.”

It was the sea­son finale per­for­mance for Westbrook who prob­a­bly would’ve won anoth­er league MVP had James Harden not played out of his cot­ton-pick­ing mind.

Sporting News reports that broad­cast­er Brian Davis has been the play-by-play announc­er for the Thunder on Fox Sports Oklahoma. Davis got a lit­tle too excit­ed watch­ing Westbrook’s play dur­ing the 137 – 123 win over the Grizzlies and bizarrely shout­ed out that Westbrook had lost his “cot­ton-pick­ing” mind.

I note that the moment was bizarre because Westbrook hadn’t real­ly done any­thing besides find an open team­mate and throw him the ball. In bas­ket­ball par­lance this is called an assist. It wasn’t even a flashy LeBron chan­nel­ing his best Magic Johnson assist. It was just a toss to an open guy who hit the shot.

Also, and this might be the crux of my annoy­ance with the state­ment — I didn’t men­tion that I was annoyed, well, I am, and not for racial rea­sons — but, who says “cot­ton-pick­ing”? Seriously, that’s like yelling out “Jiminy Cricket” or “Jehoshaphat.”

I’m not duck­ing the fact that the state­ment — which has obvi­ous racial over­tones hear­ken­ing back to slav­ery and the time when blacks were actu­al cot­ton-pick­ers — was not only inap­pro­pri­ate, but also real­ly stupid.

The Thunder released a state­ment on Davis’ racial­ly insen­si­tive remarks, call­ing them “offen­sive and inappropriate.”

Thunder Vice President of Broadcasting Dan Mahoney told The Norman Transcript:

We find the term used by Brian Davis on our broad­cast last night to be high­ly inap­pro­pri­ate and offensive.

We’ve dis­cussed it with the announc­er and let him know that. He assures us it was not meant in any sort of offen­sive or deroga­to­ry man­ner and he apologizes.

Nonetheless, he’s been told the use of that term in any man­ner is unacceptable.

Well, good goo­gly-moo­gly, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Wowzers, that was a strong state­ment. I’m sure Davis has learned his les­son, and if he tru­ly is a throw­back racist of some sort then it will only be a mat­ter of time before he drops anoth­er 1960s-style racial­ly inap­pro­pri­ate state­ment. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​a​n​n​o​u​n​c​e​r​-​c​l​a​i​m​s​-​r​u​s​s​e​l​l​-​w​e​s​t​b​r​o​o​k​-​i​s​-​o​u​t​-​o​f​-​h​i​s​-​c​o​t​t​o​n​-​1​8​2​5​2​2​0​861

By Taryn Finley

Two of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sur­viv­ing chil­dren gave pow­er­ful ser­mons Tuesday from the pul­pit their father stood at when he gave his final speech on April 3, 1968.

During the I AM 2018 event on Tuesday, Bernice King informed the audi­ence at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee, that she was going to go a bit off-script as the holy spir­it moved her to invite her broth­er, Martin Luther King III, to stand next to her as she spoke. She said their broth­er Dexter King, though not phys­i­cal­ly present, was stand­ing with them as well.

The youngest King child then went on to reveal that on the day he was assas­si­nat­ed, her father told his moth­er the title of his next address: “America May Go to Hell.”

“If you would per­mit me, I think as I look at the land­scape of our world today, America may still go to hell,” Bernice King warned. “So 50 years lat­er, I’m here to declare and decree not only must America be born again but it’s time for America to repent.”

She said America has fum­bled its respon­si­bil­i­ty to deal with the three evils her father warned about: racism, pover­ty and militarism.

“We have not, in 50 years, dealt with, as dad­dy chal­lenged us to deal with, the last ves­tiges of racism,” she said. “We must repent because dad­dy chal­lenged us to deal with a sec­ond evil: pover­ty, which we have refused to con­front in this nation.”

She added that mil­i­tarism “has robbed us of the nec­es­sary resources to address the social injus­tices and the social ills and the social dis­crep­an­cies in our nation,” not­ing that her father said coun­tries who spend more mon­ey on mil­i­tary than social advance­ment are “rapid­ly approach­ing a spir­i­tu­al death.”

With a cadence in her voice sim­i­lar to her father’s, Bernice King chal­lenged America to break its “vicious cycles” and praised the Parkland, Florida, stu­dents for stand­ing up against gun vio­lence and “social decay.” She also not­ed that it wasn’t by chance that the grand­daugh­ter of the civ­il rights leader stood onstage dur­ing the recent March For Our Lives ral­ly to call for a “gun-free world.”

Read more here: https://​www​.face​book​.com/​I​A​M​2​0​1​8​M​L​K​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​8​4​6​2​8​8​5​1​5​5​6​9​7​11/