Amidst the noise and hoopla which will emanate this week in and around the Nation’s cap­i­tal this week­end , let us peo­ple of col­or, con­sci­en­tious peo­ple of African ances­try ‚take a few moments to rec­og­nize the incred­i­ble sac­ri­fice Martin Luther King made, and the high price he paid along with thou­sands of oth­er unsung heroes.

Many peo­ple of col­or ignore momen­tous events like the instal­la­tion of a new American President as insignif­i­cant to their lives.
This how­ev­er is a mistake .
Thinking of these events in parochial terms lulls us into a false sense of ambivalence.

An American President’s poli­cies have tremen­dous­ly far reach­ing impact and con­se­quences on every­thing across our planet ,
These poli­cies not only deter­mine war and peace, pros­per­i­ty and pover­ty, but even more press­ing exis­ten­tial issues as crit­i­cal as the air we breathe and the water we drink.

We make a trag­ic mis­take if we ignore the events hap­pen­ing in our world today.

A shop­per has been banned from a Louisville mall for life after berat­ing two oth­er women, telling one of them to “go back to wher­ev­er the f – k you come from.” Mayor Greg Fischer apol­o­gized to the women on Wednesday after video of the dis­turb­ing rant at the Jefferson Mall was viewed more than 5 mil­lion times. Renee Buckner, who post­ed the video, told the Courier-Journal that the woman became unhinged when one of the pair sneaked in line at J.C. Penney to add items to the oth­er wom­an’s cart. See more here : http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/louisville-shopper-hurls-racist-insults-women-article‑1.2919050

Sean King

On October 22, 2015 a young men­tal­ly dis­abled high school stu­dent was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by his class­mates on school prop­er­ty. The 18-year-old vic­tim, who was adopt­ed as a tod­dler, was one of the lone African-American stu­dents in the near­ly all white Dietrich High School in Idaho. John Howard, 18, Tanner Ward, 17, and one oth­er uniden­ti­fied mem­ber of the foot­ball team lured the vic­tim into a school lock­er room, promis­ing him hugs, stripped him, force­ful­ly insert­ed a clothes hang­er into his rec­tum, then kicked it deep­er into his rec­tum — caus­ing inter­nal injuries.

When this case was ini­tial­ly report­ed, and it was announced that John Howard was being charged with felony rape, the pos­si­ble penal­ties were as severe as life in prison. It seemed like some sem­blance of jus­tice was immi­nent. The school super­in­ten­dent inter­viewed 30 wit­ness­es and con­firmed that the teen was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. Prosecutors agreed with their inves­ti­ga­tion — which also deter­mined that the vic­tim was also called “Kool-Aid,” “chick­en eater,” “water­mel­on,” and even “n — -r” by stu­dents at the school.

In spite of all of this evi­dence, this week John Howard was giv­en the break of his life. Instead of get­ting life in prison for what he did, he won’t be going to jail for 10 years or five years or a year or six months or even a day. Instead, he’s get­ting two years of pro­ba­tion and 300 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. With good behav­ior, the judge said his record could be expunged. He’ll also be allowed to do his com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice in his new home in Texas where his fam­i­ly peace­ful­ly relocated.

Tanner Ward, who was said to ini­tial­ly insert the hang­er into the victim’s rec­tum, was ini­tial­ly charged as an adult, but con­ve­nient­ly had his case sent to juve­nile court instead.

KING: Black teen James Means killed by remorse­less white man

How in the hell did this happen?

How could a man who did some­thing so heinous, so cru­el and dement­ed, so hor­rif­ic and bar­bar­ic, get pro­ba­tion and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice for it? American jails and pris­ons are full of men and women who did far less and had the prover­bial book thrown at them. For sev­er­al years, I worked full time in pris­ons and youth deten­tion cen­ters all around Georgia and met thou­sands and thou­sands of mid­dle and high school stu­dents who were sen­tenced to hard time in adult pris­ons for far less.

This sen­tence is the liv­ing embod­i­ment of white privilege.

Such is also the case of John Franklin McGraw. At a Donald Trump ral­ly this past March, while Rakeem Jones was being escort­ed out of the ral­ly, sur­round­ed by police, McGraw, who is white, walked right up to Jones, who is black, and through a vicious elbow right to his face, knock­ing him onto the ground.

KING: Pain caused by Dylann Roof makes it impos­si­ble to celebrate

After throw­ing the blow, McGraw, in full view of police, walked right on back to his seat. Even though police wit­nessed the attack, they seemed to have no inter­est what­so­ev­er in arrest­ing McGraw for it. Later, in an inter­view on nation­al tele­vi­sion, McGraw open­ly said of Jones, “the next time we see him, we might have to kill him.” Speaking of the assault, McGraw said “You bet I liked it. Knocking the hell out of that big mouth. We don’t know who he is. He might be with a ter­ror­ist organization.”

After a bystander’s cell phone video of the attack was released, and a nation­al out­cry for jus­tice fol­lowed, police, days lat­er, locat­ed and charged McGraw with felony assault.

Then, last week, white priv­i­lege struck again. McGraw basi­cal­ly beat it all — in spite of the assault being on cam­era, in front of thou­sands, includ­ing the police, and in spite of his death threat being filmed and aired around the world, the judge had mer­cy on McGraw. He was giv­en “a sus­pend­ed 30-day jail sen­tence and a year on unsu­per­vised probation.”

Normally, as a part of such pro­ba­tion, some­one would have to sur­ren­der their firearms, but the judge also “removed a pro­vi­sion from the pro­ba­tion that would have kept McGraw from own­ing a gun.”

KING: Masked white men harass indige­nous peo­ple in North Dakota

In oth­er words, McGraw pret­ty much got every­thing he want­ed, includ­ing extra pro­vi­sions to keep his guns, in spite of the fact that he threat­ened to kill Jones on nation­al television.

It’s all so damn ludi­crous. That McGraw even felt the con­fi­dence and peace of mind to go up and assault Jones in front of police, then take his seat, tells us that he knew full well that law enforce­ment and the jus­tice sys­tem would have lit­tle inter­est in hold­ing him account­able for his actions. It turned out, McGraw was absolute­ly correct.

Again, I per­son­al­ly know men and women who are spend­ing hard time in prison right now for doing far less, but McGraw was giv­en break after break after break.

I’ve said it before, and I must say it again — this jus­tice sys­tem is not bro­ken. It’s func­tion­ing just the way it was designed and built to func­tion. It’s fir­ing on all cylin­ders. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-white-privilege-white-men-assault-black-men-article‑1.2917496

A jury took two hours to find him guilty of one of the most notorious crimes in modern American history. Now he faces life in prison or execution.

Polly Sheppard was hiding when the racist gunman who killed nine of her fellow black parishioners said he was sparing her life so she could “tell the story.”

Victor Cruz said the racial slurs scrawled on the walls of Giants full­back Nikita Whitlock’s home in Moonachie, N.J, on Tuesday are a direct reflec­tion of the America that elect­ed Donald Trump its next president.

Trump America offi­cial­ly has arrived at 1925 Giants Drive.

“I think it’s def­i­nite­ly a direct reflec­tion of how this coun­try’s being run and how this coun­try’s react­ing maybe to some of the deci­sions, some of the ways that this coun­try’s being run and things that are being said by peo­ple at the helm of this coun­try and at the helm of our day-to-day lives — our day-to-day from social media all the way up to the White House,” Cruz, 30, a prod­uct of near­by Paterson, N.J., said Thursday in the Giants’ lock­er room. “These are things that are being spo­ken of and talked about on a dai­ly basis, the good and the bad, more so the bad at this point right now because that’s all we have to work with. It’s just an unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion we’re going through right now.”

Cruz said he sees graf­fi­ti swasti­ka, the ini­tials “KKK” and the mes­sage “Go back to Africa” left for Whitlock and his fam­i­ly dur­ing a break-in, accord­ing to the Giants full­back, as direct reflec­tions of the mind­set that is send­ing Trump to Pennsylvania Avenue. Read more here : http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/victor-cruz-whitlock-vandalism-reflection-american-racism-article‑1.2903492

Carges were abrupt­ly dropped against a Savannah, Georgia, fire­fight­er accused of threat­en­ing a black cou­ple at gun­point and telling them his badge enti­tled him to kill them with impunity.

The Daily Beast report­ed Wednesday that charges against Barry Arnold were inex­plic­a­bly dropped in September after the gov­ern­ment failed to pros­e­cute. The cou­ple who bore the brunt of Arnold’s drunk­en, racist melt­down want to know why. In October of 2015, Marquist Curtis and his fiancée, Amber Phillips were eat­ing din­ner at a Savannah Applebee’s restau­rant when they heard a drunk­en and agi­tat­ed Arnold — who was vot­ed 2014 Savannah Firefighter of the Year — use racist slurs against his serv­er, a black woman. Then, when he not­ed Curtis and Phillips, he began to direct his ire at them.

“He’s say­ing, ‘I got those black ass ribs just like those ni**ers,’” Curtis told the Beast. “He looked over at my fiancée and said ‘I can’t stand those ni**ers.’” Curtis report­ed­ly asked Arnold to “calm down,” accord­ing to police doc­u­ments, but Arnold became bel­liger­ent and com­bat­ive, called Curtis a “ni**er” and tack­led him. The dis­pute spilled out into the restaurant’s park­ing lot where Arnold retrieved a hand­gun from his car and point­ed it at Curtis and Phillips, say­ing that he would kill them. “He’s walk­ing over with his gun and badge, say­ing, ‘I’ve got the right to kill you ni**ers,’” Curtis recount­ed. Restaurant employ­ees, he said, locked the door behind them so they could not return inside to safe­ty. Arnold was charged with mis­de­meanor counts of dis­or­der­ly con­duct, pub­lic drunk­en­ness and point­ing a gun at another.

The Chatham County dis­trict attorney’s office told Kate Briquelet at the Beast that the inci­dent is still under inves­ti­ga­tion, but online records show that no new charges have been filed and that no fur­ther action has been tak­en by pros­e­cu­tors. Curtis told Briquelet that he is skep­ti­cal that city pros­e­cu­tor Meg Heap will pur­sue the charges against Arnold. “We just want jus­tice. No more, no less,” Curtis said. “They’re try­ing to put what he did on hold.” Curtis also said that he had to find out through his attor­ney that charges have been dropped against Arnold.

“Nobody con­tact­ed us,” he said. Heap’s office said that yes, the mis­de­meanor charges were dropped, but they are con­sid­er­ing pur­su­ing felony charges in a high­er court. Curtis’ attor­ney Will Claiborne told the Beast that pros­e­cu­tors are drag­ging their feet. “You’ve got a cap­tain in the fire depart­ment who pulls a gun on these peo­ple and says, ‘With this badge and this gun, I get to kill peo­ple and get away with it,’” he said. “The police at the scene stop him while he’s try­ing to dri­ve away.” Claiborne believes that Arnold should have been charged with dri­ving under the influ­ence, aggra­vat­ed assault and ter­ror­ist threats. He feels that Arnold’s race and city posi­tion are fac­tors in the lack of offi­cial action. “We want to raise pub­lic aware­ness that this sort of injus­tice hap­pens in 2016,” Claiborne said. “What would hap­pen to any­body else oth­er than a white cap­tain in the fire depart­ment is just shocking.”

He point­ed out that if Curtis had pulled a gun of his own in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, “he’d still be sit­ting in jail.” Arnold was ter­mi­nat­ed from his job with the fire depart­ment in the wake of the incident.

http://​www​.raw​sto​ry​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​1​2​/​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​o​r​s​-​q​u​i​e​t​l​y​-​d​r​o​p​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​s​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​f​i​r​e​f​i​g​h​t​e​r​-​w​h​o​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​e​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​u​p​l​e​-​w​i​t​h​-​g​un/

UPDATE : Ex-fire­fight­er who threat­ened to kill black cou­ple indict­ed on 7 felony counts

The for­mer Savannah fire­fight­er who went on a drunk­en, racist ram­page in an Applebee’s restau­rant and men­aced a black cou­ple with a gun has been indict­ed on sev­en felony counts of aggra­vat­ed assault.

Savannah Now report­ed Thursday morn­ing that for­mer Capt. Barry Arnold — Savannah’s 2014 Firefighter of the Year — was indict­ed by a Chatham County grand jury for attack­ing and threat­en­ing to kill Marquist Curtis and Amber Phillips on October of 2015. “Marquist and Amber are glad this has final­ly been done,” said Will Claiborne, Curtis and Phillips’ attor­ney to WSAV. “Frustrated that it took so long. They’re hap­py to final­ly see the process move for­ward. They are one step clos­er to obtain­ing some jus­tice to what hap­pened to them and are look­ing for­ward to their day in court.” Arnold is cur­rent­ly charged with 7 felonies: Two counts of aggra­vat­ed assault, two counts of pos­ses­sion of a firearm, pub­lic drunk­en­ness, sim­ple bat­tery and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. Raw Story report­ed Wednesday that the four mis­de­meanor charges orig­i­nal­ly filed against Arnold had been qui­et­ly dropped. The vic­tims and their sup­port­ers thought that Arnold’s race and con­nec­tions to city gov­ern­ment had ensured that pros­e­cu­tor Meg Heap and the dis­trict attorney’s office were drag­ging their feet with regards to the case.

On a Friday night in October, 2015, Curtis and Williams found them­selves threat­ened with mur­der dur­ing a racial­ly charged run-in with a drunk­en Arnold. After Arnold vio­lent­ly attacked Curtis inside the restau­rant, the alter­ca­tion spilled out­side, where — bran­dish­ing a gun and his fire depart­ment badge — Arnold told the vic­tims he could mur­der them and get away with it under the law.

Claiborne said that when Curtis and Phillips tried to flee back inside to get away, they found that restau­rant work­ers had locked the door.

“If you have a drunk­en vir­u­lent racist in your estab­lish­ment you have an oblig­a­tion to every­one there to make that estab­lish­ment safe,” the attor­ney said. The restau­rant is liable for its han­dling of the inci­dent, Claiborne said, and arrest­ing offi­cers on the night of the crime only charged Arnold with four mis­de­meanors and did not cite him for attempt­ing to dri­ve away from the scene while intox­i­cat­ed. “Law enforce­ment on the scene should’ve appro­pri­ate­ly charged Mr. Arnold. He should’ve been tak­en imme­di­ate­ly to jail,” Claiborne said. “He should’ve been booked on felony charges. If any­one else, par­tic­u­lar­ly an African American, had com­mit­ted these acts that indi­vid­ual would be put direct­ly in jail and prob­a­bly would still be there.”

No tri­al date is cur­rent­ly set for Arnold. http://​www​.raw​sto​ry​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​1​2​/​e​x​-​f​i​r​e​f​i​g​h​t​e​r​-​w​h​o​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​e​d​-​t​o​-​k​i​l​l​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​u​p​l​e​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​e​d​-​o​n​-​7​-​f​e​l​o​n​y​-​c​o​u​n​ts/

A South Carolina judge Monday declared a mis­tri­al in the racial­ly-charged mur­der case against a white police offi­cer accused in last year’s con­tro­ver­sial shoot­ing death of an unarmed black motorist. Days after jurors told the judge they were dead­locked because a hold­out juror was unwill­ing to con­vict Michael Slager, the for­mer North Charleston offi­cer, accused of fatal­ly shoot­ing Walter Scott as he sprint­ed away, the judge reached the con­clu­sion that no ver­dict could be reached. Weary jurors on their fourth day of delib­er­a­tions, had sent a note to Judge Clifton Newman say­ing “the major­i­ty” were still unde­cid­ed on a verdict.

The pan­el of one black and 11 white jurors then asked Newman sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing Slager was charged with vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter in addi­tion to murder.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/judge-declares-mistrial-case-ex-cop-killed-walter-scott-article‑1.2899461

Anybody who lives in Louisiana knows about Joe McKnight. There, he was a liv­ing leg­end. A king.

Yeah, he played pro foot­ball for the Chiefs and Jets. Yeah, he played col­lege ball for the University of Southern California Trojans, but in Louisiana, he was a god. One of the best high school ath­letes in the his­to­ry of the state, the Times-Picayune named him the Best Male Athlete of the Decade. He was that good and did it all right in the mid­dle of Hurricane Katrina. His home was destroyed when he was a junior in high school, he was sep­a­rat­ed from his moth­er dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion and end­ed up being forced to bounce around the state. In spite of it all, he helped his team win the state cham­pi­onship, was the Parade National Player of the Year, and the con­sen­sus num­ber one run­ning back recruit in the country.

Joe McKnight’s killer walks free, but he’s not in the clear yet

At a time when Louisiana need­ed a good sto­ry, Joe McKnight, just a teenag­er, with gifts galore, pro­vid­ed one — and the state nev­er for­got it.

That he was repeat­ed­ly shot and killed in broad day­light in the mid­dle of a Louisiana road­way Thursday has left many of my friends who per­son­al­ly knew Joe crushed, con­fused, bit­ter and angry.

People saw it hap­pen. A wit­ness said that a white man, 54-year-old Ronald Gasser, was the aggres­sor. Images of Gasser on the scene seem to show that he didn’t have a sin­gle scratch on him. It does not appear to have been self-defense. This wit­ness even said that after Gasser first shot him, that he stood over McKnight and shot him some more. Police have said that McKnight was unarmed.

It’s hard for me to not believe that race was a fac­tor in this killing — par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the fact that we’ve seen near­ly 1,000 hate­ful inci­dents since Donald Trump was elect­ed. All over the coun­try, peo­ple of col­or are being attacked — many for the first time in their lives. Will Sims, a beloved California musi­cian, was mur­dered by white men in a hate crime in California just days after Trump was elect­ed. James Means, a sweet 15-year-old boy, was mur­dered the fol­low­ing week by a 62-year-old white man who claimed Means bumped into him at the dol­lar store. Read more here :  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-louisiana-joe-mcknight-black-life-doesn-matter-article‑1.2896251

“The comfort of being ‘naturally better than’ is hard to give up.”

Toni Morrison has writ­ten a pow­er­ful essay in the after­math of Donald Trump’s elec­tion as pres­i­dent of the United States, and it gets right to the heart of why Trump won. In a piece titled “Mourning For Whiteness” from the November 21 print issue of the New Yorker (pub­lished online Monday), the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning nov­el­ist argues that Trump won due to the ter­ror of priv­i­leged white men in the face of a rapid­ly diver­si­fy­ing country.

“Under slave laws, the neces­si­ty for col­or rank­ings was obvi­ous, but in America today, post-civ­il-rights leg­is­la­tion, white people’s con­vic­tion of their nat­ur­al supe­ri­or­i­ty is being lost,” Morrison writes. “There are ‘peo­ple of col­or’ every­where, threat­en­ing to erase this long-under­stood def­i­n­i­tion of America. And what then? Another black President? A pre­dom­i­nant­ly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.”

As Morrison explains it, the sub­con­scious fear of los­ing the “com­fort of being nat­u­ral­ly bet­ter than,” the com­fort of not being fol­lowed in a depart­ment store for instance, was a huge moti­va­tor for many White Americans. Morrison argues that white Americans and par­tic­u­lar­ly white men are so afraid of the col­lapse of white priv­i­lege that they “flocked to a polit­i­cal plat­form that sup­ports and trans­lates vio­lence against the defense­less as strength.”

She con­cludes:

On Election Day, how eager­ly so many white vot­ers — both the poor­ly edu­cat­ed and the well edu­cat­ed — embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The can­di­date whose com­pa­ny has been sued by the Justice Department for not rent­ing apart­ments to black peo­ple. The can­di­date who ques­tioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to con­done the beat­ing of a Black Lives Matter pro­test­er at a cam­paign ral­ly. The can­di­date who kept black work­ers off the floors of his casi­nos. The can­di­date who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Morrison’s take on the elec­tion is one that has been echoed by many oth­er com­men­ta­tors, includ­ing Van Jones, who described it as a “white­lash against a chang­ing coun­try.” As the uptick in hate crimes across the coun­try and Trump’s appoint­ment of con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures like Steve Bannon to his cab­i­net con­tin­ues, it becomes clear­er and clear­er and clear­er that race most def­i­nite­ly played a role in this elec­tion.  http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​o​n​i​-​m​o​r​r​i​s​o​n​-​f​e​a​r​-​o​f​-​l​o​s​i​n​g​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​r​i​v​i​l​e​g​e​-​l​e​d​-​t​o​-​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​e​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​8​3​3​0​e​e​2​e​4​b​0​5​8​c​e​7​a​a​c​0​964

Read the full essay at The New Yorker.

It’s been ten days since donald j trump shocked Democrats and many across the globe by winning the US Presidential elections.

[donald trump] [sic]

The brash New York busi­ness­man­’s path to vic­to­ry did not only include the tra­di­tion­al south­ern and rocky-moun­tain states he carved out a siz­able chunk of white vot­ers out of tra­di­tion­al Pennsylvanian, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Experts say trumps elec­toral col­lege vic­to­ry was made pos­si­ble by white une­d­u­cat­ed vot­ers, many of whom had not both­ered vot­ing before. Not this time, they need­ed to take America back from $2 per gal­lon gas. They need­ed to take America back from a resur­gent auto-indus­try. They need to realign America from 15,000,000 new jobs cre­at­ed under Obama, after being hand­ed an eco­nom­ic col­lapse equal only to the great depres­sion . They need­ed to halt the idea of 20 mil­lion more peo­ple who nev­er had health insur­ance final­ly get it. They need­ed to put a stop to the longest peri­od of job growth since they start­ed keep­ing stats. Yeah, who cares about the fact that the stock mar­ket is in record ter­ri­to­ry and the Nasdaq at lev­els Romney the last sane Republican nom­i­nee could only dream of.
And while we are at it, Romney ran in 2012 promis­ing 6% unem­ploy­ment. Hum , Unemployment is now under 5% .
Thank you pres­i­dent Barack Obama .…..

In terms of the path trump took to the pres­i­den­cy it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to argue that there was indeed a silent trump vote out there which poll­sters were not tap­ping into.
During ear­ly vot­ing I inti­mat­ed to my wife that I found it dif­fi­cult to believe that the long lines of peo­ple stand­ing patient­ly to vote were Hillary Clinton’s voters.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that despite the United States grand­stand­ing on the issue of free and fair elec­tions the Republican par­ty has had in place strate­gies aimed sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly at pre­vent­ing eth­nic minori­ties from voting.

A fed­er­al judge in North Carolina Judge Loretta Biggs ruled before the elec­tions that state offi­cials ille­gal­ly dropped vot­ers from the reg­is­tra­tion lists and must restore them. She said the right to vote “can­not be sac­ri­ficed when cit­i­zens through no fault of their own have been removed from the vot­er rolls.” She ordered the state to rein­state the reg­is­tra­tions that were can­celed, stop fur­ther purges of the reg­is­tra­tion lists, and make sure that vot­ers denied an absen­tee bal­lot are giv­en the option to get one or vote in person.

The rul­ing came in response to a law­suit filed by the NAACP .
Additionally, a fed­er­al appeals court in the very same state of North Carolina struck down a law the Republican-led leg­is­la­ture enact­ed in 2013 to inten­tion­al­ly blunt the grow­ing clout of African American voters.
In a over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry for the Justice depart­ment , civ­il rights groups and black vot­ers in the state, the three judge pan­el unan­i­mous­ly struck down the vot­er sup­pres­sion law. “The new pro­vi­sions tar­get­ed African Americans with almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion” and “impose cures for prob­lems that did not exist,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the pan­el. “Thus the assert­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions can­not and do not con­ceal the State’s true motivation.”

In Wisconsin, where one fed­er­al judge already had eased restric­tions on vot­er-ID require­ments, a sec­ond judge found that addi­tion­al ele­ments of the law passed by the leg­is­la­ture and signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R‑Wis.) were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson sug­gest­ed he would strike the entire law if he were not bound by the Supreme Court’s deci­sion that states may use prop­er­ly writ­ten vot­er-ID laws to guard against vot­er fraud.

“The evi­dence in this case casts doubt on the notion that vot­er ID laws fos­ter integri­ty and con­fi­dence,” Peterson wrote. “The Wisconsin expe­ri­ence demon­strates that a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with most­ly phan­tom elec­tion fraud leads to real inci­dents of dis­en­fran­chise­ment, which under­mine rather than enhance con­fi­dence in elec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. To put it blunt­ly, Wisconsin’s strict ver­sion of vot­er ID law is a cure worse than the dis­ease.” The state will appeal both rul­ings accord­ing to the( Washington Post).

These states are just a few in which bla­tant acts of vot­er sup­pres­sion aimed at set­ting the clock back has been thwart­ed by the fed­er­al courts.
They are by no means the total­i­ty of what Republicans have done to stop black and brown peo­ple from voting.
Ever won­der why Republicans are so stri­dent­ly opposed to the fed­er­al Government, or oth­er­wise so excit­ed about states rights?

The shock­er for me is not that trump won the elec­tion , in fact I expect­ed him to.
Whats shock­ing is that democ­rats who did not vote are shocked that trump won ‑and sec­ond­ly peo­ple keep say­ing they are watch­ing to see whether trump will gov­ern as he campaigned.
Why would trump change what has worked so well for him? He cam­paigned on mak­ing America great again, a thin­ly veiled dog-whis­tle to whites that he is their guy who will push back the gains made by blacks and give them back the coun­try they claim is theirs and theirs alone.

Driving up the Saw Mill park­way yes­ter­day I found myself lis­ten­ing to the Karen Hunter show on satel­lite radio, thanks to my wife who who com­man­deered my levels.
Hunter had a bunch of white peo­ple on her show dis­cussing race. Some claimed to be lib­er­als the oth­ers took on the con­ser­v­a­tive label.
Their con­ver­sa­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant due in part to Ms Hunter’s brash no holes barred per­sona . One male pan­elist seemed to get it , he said America not only has a race prob­lem it has a deni­a­bil­i­ty problem.
He art­ful­ly point­ed to the fact that many whites fun­da­men­tal­ly believed that slav­ery was good for black peo­ple. He argued that at the peak of the civ­il-rights strug­gle many whites said things weren’t bad for blacks. And today as unarmed black peo­ple are being slaugh­tered by racist cops who do not val­ue their lives whites say there is no problem.

His state­ment was a ring­ing endorse­ment of what I have always believed, that for the most part, too many white peo­ple do not give a rats ass about dead black peo­ple or what­ev­er plight we may find our­selves in .
What they care about are their spe­cial priv­i­leges and their inter­pre­ta­tion of social order.
Which makes it dou­bly insane for black peo­ple to try to appeal to them to do whats right.

Of course don­ald trump is going to gov­ern as he campaigned !
Did he do what every oth­er pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has done in forty years in releas­ing his tax returns ?
What penal­ty has he paid for it?
Hasn’t he appealed to the most racist, misog­y­nis­tic xeno­pho­bic, and Islamophobic ele­ments who reside in the deep­est ves­tiges of the polit­i­cal crevasses?
Has it affect­ed him negatively?
Has he cared about what either repub­li­cans or democ­rats have to say about him .
Hasn’t he sur­round­ed him­self with known racists like Jeff Sessions the US sen­a­tor from Alabama, Rudolph Giuliani the for­mer New York City Mayor , Steven Bannon the Alt-right white Nationalist from Breitbart, to name a few?

As was the con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing the cam­paign the sil­ly media fed the pub­lic a steady diet about trump’s inevitable explo­sion . They told us by the fol­low­ing week he would be a foot­note. One by one trump forced all of the six­teen repub­li­can con­tenders to ditch their own pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions and dis­ap­pear into irrel­e­vance or line up in child-like sub­servient obe­di­ence behind him.
He at least under­stood that America had done it’s good deed in elect­ing Barack Obama . It had cleansed itself as it felt it had when it they fought in the civ­il war.
Many peo­ple around the world would be sur­prised to know that many white Americans believe that the sol­diers who died fight­ing against the south in the civ­il war deserved thanks from black for their emancipation.
As if they had self enslaved .As if the civ­il war was start­ed over slavery.

And so they insti­tut­ed jim crow , a snap-back from end­ing slav­ery. The civ­il rights strug­gles of the six­ties was fol­lowed by Nixon’s south­ern strat­e­gy to dump drugs into the black com­mu­ni­ty and incar­cer­ate as many as pos­si­ble . This was con­tin­ued under Ronald Reagan and Herbert Walker Bush’s pres­i­den­cy and to a large extent so too under that of demo­c­rat Bill Clinton.
The gains of the six­ties civ­il rights fights were seen as a bridge too far for white Americans.,
The sim­ple act of say­ing we are not telling you how to grade papers but we are say­ing you have to allow a cer­tain num­ber of qual­i­fied black peo­ple into your schools and uni­ver­si­ties became a light­ning rod deemed as reverse racism by whites.
The supreme court evis­cer­at­ed the vot­ing rights act as a result of that men­tal­i­ty. The log­ic being it was no longer need­ed because peo­ple are not as racists as they once were.
Essentially, do away with the for­mu­la which has worked to stop the ram­pant dis­crim­i­na­tion against a cer­tain sub-set of the pop­u­la­tion because it has worked too well.
Isn’t that the per­fect for­mu­la for allow­ing the kinds of vot­er sup­pres­sion laws we spoke about in places like South Carolina Wisconsin, and Pennsylvanian?
No, this writer was not delud­ed into believ­ing that trumps cries of “mak­ing America great again , tak­ing back our coun­try” was an eco­nom­ic argu­ment aimed at work­ing class peo­ple des­per­ate for jobs. trump knew darn well those jobs are not com­ing back . His hotels are built with steel sourced from China. His ties and shirts so too are made in China.
Those so-called dis­af­fect­ed white work­ing class peo­ple are doing a lot bet­ter under the Obama econ­o­my than they were doing under Bush’s .
The straw-man argu­ments trump used about trade has no mer­it . The whole­sale trade deals were start­ed under Ronald Reagan con­tin­ued under Bush 41 and Clinton.
Barack Obama has zero respon­si­bil­i­ty for them.
The out­pour­ing of white votes at the polls was a direct white-lash against the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama. It was right in line with the think­ing which has exist­ed from after slav­ery . That what­ev­er gains blacks make on their own voli­tion is tak­ing some­thing away from them.
The immi­gra­tion nar­ra­tive used by trump to his sup­port­ers speaks direct­ly to the fact that by twen­ty forty minor­i­ty groups will make up the majority

That is what got trump elected .….….…..

Message to the Masses

Here we are-one week after the 2016 elec­tion, which made Donald Trump the next President of the U.S. Many emo­tions were felt by those who vot­ed (and by those who did­n’t) and the emo­tions depend on who you vot­ed for. Many who vot­ed for Hilary are deeply dis­ap­point­ed, sad, anx­ious, and afraid. Those who vot­ed for Trump are most­ly jubi­lant, excit­ed, smug, proud, and opti­mistic. My mes­sage is to both groups of people.

To Hilary vot­ers: Feelings are fine, but don’t get stuck in your feel­ings. I too know what a grow­ing dread and shock it was to watch the results into the ear­ly hours of Wednesday morn­ing. Or to wake up to the results, and want to retreat back under the cov­ers, and not want to come out for a while-if ever! But we can­not stop in our tracks like we are engaged in the man­nequin game! We must push for­ward! Build coali­tions, be the best us we can be, and build our fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. We have been blessed to be awake and aware of the truth of the sys­tem-Michael Jackson said it-they don’t real­ly care about us. MJ was not just refer­ring to peo­ple of col­or, and nei­ther am I. He was talk­ing about the unde­served, the poor, those who are not part of the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment, etc. So what’s new? And what are we going to do about it? We are a strong peo­ple. We have nev­er giv­en up, and we can’t give up now! We stand strong, and we push for­ward! We must hold our lead­ers account­able. We hold our­selves account­able first. We make plans for our fam­i­lies. Save: Money, Time, Yourself! We move towards self empow­er­ment, busi­ness own­er­ship, and sup­port of busi­ness­es that show us com­pas­sion and empa­thy. Unity is tan­ta­mount. Rhetoric should be min­i­mal; exchange words for action.

To Trump Supporters:

Mind your busi­ness, and your man­ners. I’m glad that you’re hap­py. I’m glad that you feel some­how vin­di­cat­ed-that ‘We got the White House Back’. Unless you’re talk­ing about the Republican par­ty got the White House ‘back’-watch your mouth. If you mean back from a Black Man-watch your mouth. There is an under­cur­rent of racist rhetoric behind that state­ment. And maybe you can say that under the cov­ers of your hood­ed gar­ment, but please, please, please: don’t start talk­ing reck­less to peo­ple of col­or out in these streets! Keep your dem­a­goguery to your­self and in the pri­va­cy of your home and with those who have the same racist beliefs. Respect folk. If I don’t know you-please do not think that it is appro­pri­ate to strike up a con­ver­sa­tion with me in the gro­cery store about pol­i­tics. I don’t know you like that…take care of your busi­ness, smile (or not), and keep it mov­ing. We all have to live in this world. Don’t delude your­self that you own the world. In the words of President-elect Trump-“Wrong!!!”

If you vot­ed for Trump for oth­er rea­sons; that he impressed you with his will­ing­ness to say what­ev­er racist, misog­y­nist, inap­pro­pri­ate and dis­re­spect­ful thing that he want­ed to say to human beings-that’s your busi­ness. No need to apol­o­gize-you vot­ed in what you felt were your best inter­ests. YOU cast your vote for this indi­vid­ual. Doesn’t mean I don’t like you. Doesn’t mean I hate you. Just means that you have to search your own soul to see if it’s OK for you to line up under some­one who is either a straight up ugly human being, or one who want­ed power/​money so bad­ly that he was will­ing to throw any­one under the bus to get it. That’s between you and your god who you serve. Teach your chil­dren, fam­i­ly and friends that hate is bad. That racism, big­otry, misog­y­ny and bul­ly­ing is not cool. Teach them that respect of their fel­low man is not option­al. This is YOUR job! Speak out against those white suprema­cists who are pulling off Muslim wom­en’s’ hijab’s, paint­ing swastikas on walls, bul­ly­ing non-whites, and telling Black peo­ple to ‘Go back to Africa; no non-whites allowed’, and Latino’s that a wall is com­ing, and that their par­ents are going to be deport­ed. This is YOUR job! To bring this coun­try togeth­er will most­ly take White peo­ple to stand against the sin of hate, and make it unpop­u­lar to be racist . But can this be done? When the admin­is­tra­tion is being filled with white suprema­cists, hate­mon­gers, and those whose past words and actions have shown them to be anti-any­thing not white. You have to live with your deci­sion. I’m guess­ing you’re proud of your­self. You vot­ed for some­one who sent out a dog-whis­tle to so-called white nation­al­ists, and is now try­ing to call it back, as Trump did on 60 Minutes this past week­end. Too late!!! He let then dogs out, and is now try­ing to dis­tance him­self from them. You know it’s bad when Glenn Beck declares the so-called alt-right to be DANGEROUS!!!

As we pre­pare our­selves for what’s ahead for this coun­try, we hope for the best. The seeds have been plant­ed. I am not sur­prised at the rhetoric..I am not sur­prised at the racist actions being tele­vised-this is noth­ing new. What I will be sur­prised at will be when White peo­ple stand up against wrong. When they show and prove that yes-America is bet­ter than this!!! Until then, I’ll wait…

For those who wonder why President Barack Obama and his wife First lady Michelle Obama are going so hard for Hillary Clinton and against Donald trump?

NULLIFICATION

There is no need to wonder .
This cou­ple has been cam­paign­ing heav­i­ly against Donald J Trump ever set­ting foot in the White house as President.
If you are won­der­ing why , then you must have missed the last ⁷¹⁄₂ years of Donald Trump’s birther campaign.
The Nation’s first cou­ple is enjoy­ing cam­paign­ing against Trump for the show me your papers birther cam­paign Trump waged against the President.
The duly elect­ed President of the United States was sub­ject­ed to a vicious smear cam­paign that he was not an American citizen .
The nar­ra­tive being that he was born in Kenya had been brought into the United states-state of Hawaii, because they knew that some­how he was born to be pres­i­dent of the United States.

The birther lie took on legs dom­i­na­tion the news cycle inces­sant­ly . Lawsuits were filed by one of it’s stan­dard bear­er a woman named Orly Taitz. Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were chief among the prin­ci­pals push­ing the birther nar­ra­tive but there were oth­ers , includ­ing high rank­ing mil­i­tary officers.
The United States Constitution stip­u­lates that in order for some­one to qual­i­fy to be pres­i­dent of the United States they have to have reached the age of 35 years of age and be of nat­ur­al birth.
If you are able to cast doubt on the coun­try of birth of the pres­i­dent of the United States, you have dis­qual­i­fied him, You have nul­li­fied his presidency.
That was the mis­sion of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and oth­ers . Nullification. 

In the end Trump was forced to eat crow, egg on his orange tinged face Trump open­ly con­ced­ed that the pres­i­dent was born in the United States but only when it suit­ed his nar­row per­vert­ed inter­est. As was to be expect­ed the nar­cis­sis­tic mani­ac in mak­ing the state­ment ‚blamed Hillary Clinton for hav­ing start­ed the birther issue, while claim­ing he was able to do the President and the nation a favor by get­ting the President to show his birth certificate.
That was patent­ly false but it did not stop Trump from mak­ing the statement.
He only made the state­ment when he was faced with the prospect of the first of three pres­i­den­tial debates know­ing he would be asked to defend his cam­paign of lies against the president.

The debates are now over, accord­ing to the polls Trump lost all three to Clinton.
It was laid bare for peo­ple across the globe to see that Donald J Trump , Sarah Palin and the oth­er birthers had the com­bined intel­lect of a 5‑year-old.

Fugitive slave catch­ers were peo­ple who returned escaped slaves to their own­ers in the United States in the mid 19^th cen­tu­ry. Slaves who man­aged to free them­selves from their own­ers had yet anoth­er wor­ry: fugi­tive slave catchers.
Donald Trump’s birther cam­paign against the nation’s first black pres­i­dent was an exten­sion of the chal­lenges blacks faced dur­ing and after slav­ery. It was the equiv­a­lent of “I do not believe you are what you are” (a freed human being) not a slave, chat­tel to be owned .
It is sim­i­lar to what blacks face in America with police who deem that they can­not be in cer­tain areas legit­i­mate­ly and must pro­duce Identification, even on their own property.
Trump’s dis­re­spect­ful cam­paign against the pres­i­den­t’s right to the pres­i­den­cy was an affront to the pres­i­dent and his fam­i­ly and the vast major­i­ty of the intel­li­gent enlight­ened American peo­ple who vot­ed him into office, not once but twice, and most like­ly would over­whelm­ing­ly vote for him again were he con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly eli­gi­ble, what with his 54% approval rating .

On Thursday October 20^th President Obama ripped both Donald Trump and Florida Senator Marco Rubio at a cam­paign stop in South Florida. Rubio has chas­tised Republicans for refer­ring to wik­ileaks email dump against Democrats argu­ing next time it could be the Republicans on the wrong end of those hacks. I was nev­er a Rubio fan but I would have been hap­pi­er hear­ing from a United States Senator that a Russian hack of American Institutions rep­re­sents a clear and present dan­ger. Instead the fear is next time it could be us.
Rubio’s fear and angst seem only cen­tered on the notion that Republicans could be next .
One would have expect­ed a patri­ot­ic United States Senator to have been out­raged not just con­cerned about the fact that his par­ty could be next.

Obama tore into Rubio for run­ning away from immi­grants as soon as things got a lit­tle tough in his par­ty. He blast­ed Rubio for hav­ing said Trump is a con-man who should nev­er have access to the nuclear codes yet still insists he will be vot­ing for Trump.
It’s nor­mal for a sit­ting President to boost the sen­ate or house can­di­date of his own par­ty against the sit­ting sen­a­tor or con­gress per­son of the oppo­site party.
This how­ev­er sound­ed dif­fer­ent to me . It seemed that the Commander in chief want­ed to hang Donald Trump around the neck of Marco Rubio and chase both of them out of town,.

Bye ‚bye Marco No Tears Here…

So what could be going on with this depar­ture from nor­mal pro­to­col. I won­der if events out­lined in the arti­cle above has some­thing to do with this smack-down of Rubio?
You bet it does !!
This is the very same Marco Rubio who said quote “Barack Obama has no class” Of course the President did not allude to this but this writer and many peo­ple of col­or were extreme­ly offend­ed when this hon­orary white Cuban , made that statement.
This pres­i­dent and his fam­i­ly has been a mod­el of class of dig­ni­ty . They have been per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the good peo­ple of the coun­try who twice vot­ed the pres­i­dent into office.
How dare Marco Rubio who ran away from a lit­tle fight over immi­grants, refus­ing to stand up and defend peo­ple who came just a gen­er­a­tion after his own par­ents came.?
In my world that makes Rubio a self serv­ing cow­ard who care only about hold­ing polit­i­cal office.
A lit­tle after the pres­i­dent deliv­ered a dou­ble smack-down of Trump and Rubio, his wife the first lady of the United States Michelle Obama (the clos­er) deliv­ered anoth­er all too famil­iar Michelle Obama smack­down of Trump in the red state of Arizona. Many Democrats and pun­dits believe Arizona could be trend­ing blue even to the point of deliv­er­ing a win in that state for Hillary Clinton , some­thing which has­n’t hap­pened in 20 years.

The Trump cam­paign and Republican offi­cials argue that car­ry­ing Arizona is pure Clinton fan­ta­sy. But accord­ing to the Washington Post, the state’s junior US Senator Jeff Flake ® when asked what Trump could do to ensure a win in Arizona, Flake said: “Come up with a more real­is­tic immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy than build a wall and make the Mexican gov­ern­ment pay for it, walk back the Muslim ban, stop talk­ing about get­ting rid of libel laws. Should I go on? I think we’re not in a good posi­tion. I think Mr. Trump is not where he needs to be to win a gen­er­al elec­tion.” “We can’t afford to alien­ate and demo­nize the largest-grow­ing demo­graph­ic out there,” Flake said, draw­ing a his­tor­i­cal par­al­lel. “Back in the ’60s, we Republicans lost the African American vote that we still haven’t gained back.”

Hum hum.
It’s every man for him­self now .
The splash­ing sounds you hear are Republicans div­ing off the sink­ing HMS Donald Trump.

Originally pub­lished on October 18, 2016 10:44 am

The head of the largest asso­ci­a­tion of police chiefs in the U.S. has issued a for­mal apol­o­gy on the group’s behalf for “his­tor­i­cal mis­treat­ment of com­mu­ni­ties of color.”

Speaking Monday at the annu­al meet­ing of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego, Terry Cunningham said his remarks on behalf of the group were aimed at break­ing a “his­toric cycle of mistrust.”

He said that polic­ing is, in essence, a “noble pro­fes­sion” that has seen dark peri­ods in its history.

“There have been times when law enforce­ment offi­cers, because of the laws enact­ed by fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments, have been the face of oppres­sion for far too many of our fel­low cit­i­zens,” Cunningham said. “In the past, the laws adopt­ed by our soci­ety have required police offi­cers to per­form many unpalat­able tasks, such as ensur­ing legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion or even deny­ing the basic rights of cit­i­zen­ship to many of our fel­low Americans.”

He empha­sized that these dark­er peri­ods are in the past, adding that “while this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared his­to­ry has cre­at­ed a multi­gen­er­a­tional — almost inher­it­ed — mis­trust between many com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and their law enforce­ment agencies.”

“We must move for­ward togeth­er to build a shared under­stand­ing,” he said, call­ing the apol­o­gy a first step in the process. “At the same time, those who denounce the police must also acknowl­edge that today’s offi­cers are not to blame for the injus­tices of the past.”

Police offi­cers gave the speech a stand­ing ova­tion, IACP spokes­woman Sarah Guy told The Washington Post.

Cunningham, who is the police chief in Wellesley, Mass., did not specif­i­cal­ly men­tion any of the recent, numer­ous, high-pro­file police shoot­ings of black men, nor did he bring up the police offi­cers killed ear­li­er this year in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

The issue of his­toric injus­tices is a “del­i­cate sub­ject inside polic­ing,” as NPR’s Martin Kaste tells our Newscast unit, “espe­cial­ly as many rank-and-file cops have come to resent accu­sa­tions of sys­temic racism by groups such as Black Lives Matter.”

And as Martin reports, “Cunningham says he decid­ed to make this state­ment after a meet­ing last sum­mer with President Obama, who told him police need­ed to acknowl­edge his­tor­i­cal mis­treat­ment of com­mu­ni­ties of color.”

Civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal defense Fund told the Post that they wel­comed the apol­o­gy. Here’s what Jeffrey Robinson, ACLU deputy legal direc­tor, said to the newspaper:

“It seems to me that this is a very sig­nif­i­cant admis­sion … and a very sig­nif­i­cant acknowl­edge­ment of what much of America has known for some time about the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between police and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. The fact some­one high in the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty has said this is sig­nif­i­cant and I applaud it because it is long over­due. And I think it’s a nec­es­sary first step to them try­ing to change these relationships.”
But oth­ers were less impressed. “[Cunningham] fails to acknowl­edge the deplorable behav­ior of some mod­ern-day police offi­cers who are allowed to go from police agency to police agency after hav­ing been cit­ed for mis­con­duct with­in one or more depart­ments,” Delores Jones-Brown, a pro­fes­sor at the John Jay College Center on Race, Crime and Justice, told the Los Angeles Times. “There are big­ot­ed cops today as there were when it was legal to be a big­ot­ed cop.”

The apol­o­gy comes less than a week after U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Department of Justice plans to col­lect data on killings by police and use of force. see sto­ry here: http://​wrkf​.org/​p​o​s​t​/​h​e​a​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​c​h​i​e​f​s​-​g​r​o​u​p​-​a​p​o​l​o​g​i​z​e​s​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​i​c​a​l​-​m​i​s​t​r​e​a​t​m​e​n​t​-​m​i​n​o​r​i​t​i​e​s​#​s​t​r​e​a​m/0

Amidst the wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the terror events in Minnesota , New Jersey and right here at home in New York City , one thing has not slowed down, that is the incessant killing of unarmed black men by police across America.

For those of us who had any train­ing as police offi­cers we recall the rules as it relates to when we could legal­ly dis­charge our weapons, much less at anoth­er human being. We look on in hor­ror at the con­stant pret­zel-type forms police and their apol­o­gists take to jus­ti­fy police killings.

Oh my God, we love our police offi­cers, we love the fact that they run to dan­ger on our behalf. They lit­er­al­ly place their lives on the line when we run in the oth­er direction.
But for the love of God, pre­tend­ing that there is no police prob­lem in America is being tone deaf, or worse, will­ful­ly not car­ing about the pile of dead bodies.
It is a sick dement­ed mind­set which crit­i­cizes a social­ly con­scious Colin Kaepernick for tak­ing a knee while turn­ing a blind uncar­ing eye to the pile of dead black bod­ies each year.
When you do that you lose ratio­nal peo­ple, you lose a place in the dis­cus­sion because you made your­self irra­tional and there­fore irrel­e­vant to the conversation.

The peo­ple who make excus­es for police mis­con­duct have made the deci­sion they do not care about the loss of lives, as such the black com­mu­ni­ty must tune them out as well.
How much is enough, how long will the same nar­ra­tive be used ‚“offi­cer fired because they were in fear for their lives?
The fear in police offi­cers can­not be a death sen­tence for others!

I recalled many years ago when I was a serv­ing police offi­cer, there was much talk that there were instances of extra­ju­di­cial killings by the Jamaican police.
It is impor­tant to under­stand that Jamaica as a nation has been, and still remain a small nation which does not give police offi­cers the sup­port they need to get the job done.
It bears men­tion­ing also that the Island is among the most vio­lent places on earth and is with­in the top five most mur­der­ous places on the planet.
Within that con­text, activists groups began to attach the term extra­ju­di­cial to all police shoot­ings. Even though the Island was expe­ri­enc­ing an aver­age of four mur­ders dai­ly and up to 1600 annu­al­ly , every police shoot­ing was labeled an extra­ju­di­cial shooting.

Each shoot­ing elicit­ed protest action and howls of con­dem­na­tion. Most notably the United States Leahy bill with­drew fund­ing from spe­cial­ized units with­in the JCF as a result of these alle­ga­tions, most of which were unproven.
First spon­sored in the late 1990s by Senator Patrick Leahy (D‑VT), the “Leahy laws” (some­times referred to as the “Leahy amend­ments”) are cur­rent­ly man­i­fest in two places. One is Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), as amend­ed, which pro­hibits the fur­nish­ing of assis­tance autho­rized by the FAA and the Arms Export Control Act to any for­eign secu­ri­ty force unit where there is cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the unit has com­mit­ted a gross vio­la­tion of human rights.

If the Americans gov­ern­ment care enough to with­draw fund­ing from groups with­in cer­tain mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary groups in oth­er coun­tries which are accused of human rights abus­es, why is it pow­er­less to stop what we see hap­pen­ing day in day out right here in America?
Not every shoot­ing is racial shoot­ing, not every shoot­ing is a bad shooting .
But as a police offi­cer who became keen­ly con­scious of the envi­ron­ment and the per­cep­tions sur­round­ing shoot­ings by offi­cers in my time, it can­not be out of the realm of the under­stand­ing of American cops that they must be appro­pri­ate­ly sure before using lethal force.

It can be done and must be done, cit­i­zens can­not be killed because police offi­cers are scared. It can­not be that an offi­cer pulls the trig­ger because she is in fear as is being alleged in the killing of 40-year-old Terence Crutcher in Tulsa Oklahoma. Neither can the per­cep­tion that some­one is a “big bad dude” be a death sen­tence for that person.
This is insan­i­ty, every sane law enforce­ment offi­cer past and present knows these rea­sons giv­en for shoot­ing peo­ple they sus­pect, stretch­es the bound­aries of credulity.

How much longer will it be before police offi­cers are held account­able for killing unarmed cit­i­zens rather that the con­stant twist­ing of the laws to jus­ti­fy their ille­gal actions?
The notion that a per­son can be legal­ly shot and killed by police because that per­son seemed to be putting his hand into a vehi­cle can­not con­tin­ue to stand.
An armed, trained police offi­cer already with gun drawn, can­not sim­ply be allowed to gun down cit­i­zens using those guises.
Did he pull a gun ?
Did you see a gun?.….….….. No one can rea­son­ably argue with an offi­cer who shoots some­one who pulls a gun , but we sim­ply can­not sup­port the unlaw­ful killing of peo­ple based on fears and bias­es with­in peo­ple who are sup­posed to be trained to pro­tect lives.

Then San Francisco 49ers back­up quar­ter­back Colin Kaepernick decid­ed to take a polit­i­cal stand by not ris­ing to his feet when cued by the famil­iar strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His rea­son? “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a coun­try that oppress­es black peo­ple and peo­ple of col­or. …There are bod­ies in the street and peo­ple get­ting paid leave and get­ting away with mur­der.” He is sit­ting down, in oth­er words, in order to stand up for social justice.

National anthems ampli­fy the col­lec­tive polit­i­cal uncon­scious, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” is no excep­tion. As the Intercept’s Jon Schwartz point­ed out, a racist lega­cy of anti-Black vio­lence is baked into that par­tic­u­lar song. Francis Scott Key was not only its lyri­cist but a slave­hold­er, Schwartz not­ed, and in the song he “lit­er­al­ly cel­e­brates the mur­der of African Americans.” The cru­cial lines come in the third stan­za: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/​From the ter­ror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” The dark glee of those words charges the refrain, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” with chill­ing sadism, even as they add the intol­er­a­ble weight of his­to­ry to Kaepernick’s con­tro­ver­sial comments.

When we sing the nation­al anthem dur­ing the cap­i­tal­ist pageant that is pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball, yet insist on stick­ing to just the first stan­za because, we rea­son, it’s so very long and we are anx­ious to get to the game, we col­lec­tive­ly agree to the anomie of his­tor­i­cal amne­sia, refus­ing to see the whole­ness of a vivid and seem­ing­ly death­less pat­tern of racist vio­lence while insist­ing: I paid to be here. Now enter­tain me!

But Thomas’s protest is pri­or to Kaepernick’s in more ways than one. For before the Pilgrims, before the colonies, before the foun­da­tion of the United States took it away, this land belonged to indige­nous peo­ples. To acknowl­edge this sim­ple fact mutates the mean­ing of “land of the free and the home of the brave” once again. Thomas refus­es to pledge alle­giance to the flag because her peo­ple are vic­tims of geno­cide at the hands of the U.S. government.
Read more here:  http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​0​9​/​1​6​/​n​a​t​i​v​e​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​s​-​g​r​a​d​e​-​d​o​c​k​e​d​-​f​o​r​-​r​e​f​u​s​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​s​a​y​-​p​l​e​d​g​e​-​o​f​-​a​l​l​e​g​i​a​n​c​e​-​m​y​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​r​i​s​k​e​d​-​o​u​r​-​l​i​v​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​o​u​r​-​l​a​n​d​-​f​o​r​-​o​u​r​-​f​r​e​e​d​om/

Before Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr became a civil rights icon and a larger than life leader for social justice, he was a boxer who won a gold medal at the age of 18 in the light heavy-weight division in the summer Olympics held in Rome in 1960.

Not long after that Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali and con­vert­ed to Islam. Ali said he changed his name because it was his slave name. This did not sit will with the white pow­er struc­ture who saw the ram­bunc­tious Ali as a loud­mouthed “nig­ger” who need­ed to be put in his place.
By 1964 Ali had won the heavy­weight cham­pi­onship of the world by beat­ing Sonny Liston. Many whites who came from fam­i­lies with con­nec­tions got defer­ments includ­ing the Republican can­di­date for pres­i­dent Donald Trump. They were above dying in the jun­gles of south-east Asia, but in 1966 they decid­ed to draft Ali into the United States Army, despite the fact that blacks were over­whelm­ing­ly over-rep­re­sent­ed in the Army and dying in Vietnam.

Ali stead­fast­ly refused to go fight in Vietnam, argu­ing that the Vietnamese had nev­er called him “nig­ger”. He also said going to war and killing peo­ple who had done him no harm was con­trary to his reli­gious beliefs.
This is what the white pow­er struc­ture want­ed to hear. Ali was arrest­ed on draft eva­sion charges in 1966 and stripped of his box­ing titles, he was convicted.
Ali appealed his con­vic­tion and the con­vic­tion was even­tu­al­ly over­turned by the US Supreme Court in 1971 . By this time Muhammad Ali had been out of the box­ing ring for four years and had lost all abil­i­ty to earn a liv­ing through his craft .
Muhammad Ali became an icon for his exploits in the ring but more so for stand­ing up for him­self , his prin­ci­ples and for whats right.
Before his pass­ing Ali walked and rubbed shoul­ders with pres­i­dents and pau­pers, he was loved and respect­ed by hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world.
Back in his home­land many unashamed evoked his name as they evoke Dr King’s, though they want­ed him to rot in prison for refus­ing to fight in a war that had noth­ing to do with him.

I real­ized from a young age that there were men and then there were oth­ers who looked like men. I real­ized that when the man things need to be done they would have to be done by the man and those who look like men might not agree in what had to be done. nev­er­the­less they would ben­e­fit from the results as much or even more than those who fought the fight.
Neither Malcolm X nor Dr King nor Stokely Carmichael nor any of the stal­warts of the 60’s lived to see the fruits of their labor.
Some of the most stri­dent crit­ics of King and Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali looked like men and they cer­tain­ly had black skin.
Most of those who refused to take a stand or even lift a fin­ger in their own defense lived to see an America where they could look a white woman in the face with­out being lynched. They got to see an America where they did not have to step off the side­walk so that some white per­son could walk freely with­out shar­ing that sidewalk.

San Francisco 49ers quar­ter­back Colin Kaepernick need not be deterred by the bar­rage of insults, threats and faux indig­na­tion that he would dare refuse to stand at the singing of the nation­al anthem.
He need not give cre­denc to the bull­shit fake equa­va­lence that his stand­ing against police barasim against blak lifes is some­how tan­ta­mount to dis­re­spect for troops who served in for­eign wars.
What the hell does the one has to do with the oth­er, oth­er than that it offers a mas­sive dis­trac­tion for the forces of evil who does not give a shit about the killings by police and the lack of accountability.
Every mem­ber of the mil­i­tary who fights in a war does so of his or her own voli­tion. No one is forced to sign up . When one joins the mil­i­tary it is noble , it is com­mend­able , but it must nev­er be con­fused with oth­ers giv­ing up their right to free speech because of the choic­es they made.
There is no law which makes it manda­to­ry for any­one to stand at the sign­ing of the anthem , if Kaepernick choses to sit it’s his right to do so.

The Television net­works can be count­ed on to find a nev­er-end­ing stream of dressed up melanin infused self hat­ing uncle toms to say why they love to stand up and pay homage to the flag and the anthem. Never mind that when they get in their cars they get their ass­es kicked by any lit­tle cop with an attitude.
The black uncle toms who come out against Kaepernick make me more sick that the likes of Donald Trump the police gangs which oper­ate as unions and the legions of self acclaimed patri­ots whose claim to fame is big­otry and debase­ment of others.
As the days progress there will be even more ver­min crawl­ing out of the sew­ers, drip­ping with self-right­eous indig­na­tion. How dare Kaepernick not believe what they believe? How dare he crit­i­cize their mil­i­ta­rized jack-boot­ed killers who taze 84-year-old great grand moth­ers and kill 90-year old great grand fathers.
Yah how dare he crit­i­cize them because after all it’s their coun­try right ?
After all they are patri­ots who tie pride and nation­al­ism to a flag and an anthem which cel­e­brates slav­ery but lacks the com­mon decen­cy to rec­og­nize their neigh­bors humanity.