Early Saturday morn­ing, Deborah Pearl, a 53-year-old African-American moth­er and employ­ee of a Cleveland area Harley Davidson Diner in Northeast Ohio, was on her to way work.

At 7:20 a.m., as she was dri­ving her Ford Taurus, she had no idea that she was liv­ing her very last moments on this earth. Matthew Ryan Desha, a 29-year-old white man, ran a red light at an inter­sec­tion and hit Pearl’s car with his Jeep.

After his car flipped many times and hers was pushed into the inter­sec­tion, what hap­pened next was like some­thing out of a hor­ror movie. Many of them injured in a truck acci­dent gen­er­al­ly do not sur­vive in such scenarios,

As Deborah Pearl got out of her car to assess the sit­u­a­tion, Matthew Desha did as well. Except he also grabbed his 5.56-millimeter high pow­ered assault rifle. According to wit­ness­es, Pearl then pro­ceed­ed to put her hands in the air in attempt to save her life from the armed stranger who had nar­row­ly avoid­ed killing them both in the crash just sec­onds earlier.

KING: Ask Leslie Jones — racism and big­otry are get­ting worse

It mat­tered not to Matthew Desha. A wit­ness who called 911 report­ed hear­ing him fire off at least 12 shots. At first, the appeared to be ran­dom. The 911 caller heard Deborah Pearl, who was a sit­ting duck at that point, begin scream­ing. Desha then began aim­ing and fir­ing at her. While it has not yet been released how many times she was hit, when police arrived the scene, Deborah Pearl was found there on pave­ment mor­tal­ly wound­ed and bleed­ing out.

Devastated and shocked, her hus­band and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers came to the scene, and, under­stand­ably so, could not even muster up the words to explain how they were feeling.

Matthew Desha was arrest­ed near the scene. Early Monday morn­ing he was charged with the mur­der of Deborah Pearl. Police have not men­tioned a motive for the bru­tal mur­der, but the entire scene is rid­dled with awful implications.

Just this past June, “police charged 29-year-old Matthew R. Desha with one felony count of car­ry­ing a con­cealed weapon and one mis­de­meanor count of pos­ses­sion of drug para­pher­na­lia. A search of the North Ridgeville, Ohio, man’s car turned up a loaded 9 mm hand­gun and three addi­tion­al loaded mag­a­zines, along with straws with sus­pect­ed drug residue and oth­er contraband.”

Church shoot­er wait­ed for vic­tims to close eyes: survivor

Clearly, that arrest was­n’t enough to have this man ful­ly disarmed.

My mind imme­di­ate­ly goes to Kalief Browder, who was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of steal­ing a back­pack.Kalief spent three years in jail await­ing tri­al for that charge before sim­ply being released when the case was dismissed.
Read more here: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-white-man-car-crash-shoots-kills-black-woman-article‑1.2769936

Earlier this week, a 22-year-old inter­view with John Ehrlichman, a for­mer aide to President Richard Nixon, was pub­lished in Harper’s Magazine that con­firmed what many black peo­ple have always sus­pect­ed, which is that the “War on Drugs” was specif­i­cal­ly designed to tar­get African-Americans. Said Ehrlichman, “The Nixon cam­paign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two ene­mies: the anti­war left and black peo­ple.” Ehrlichman added, “we knew we couldn’t make it ille­gal to be either against the war or black, but by get­ting the pub­lic to asso­ciate the hip­pies with mar­i­jua­na and blacks with hero­in, and then crim­i­nal­iz­ing both heav­i­ly, we could dis­rupt those communities.”

I read Ehrlichman’s con­fes­sion on the same morn­ing that I was prepar­ing to go and defend a young black man in fed­er­al court who had been indict­ed on weapons and drug charges. At that moment, I could not help but reflect on both the racism and inani­ty that is the War on Drugs as well as the fact that for the major­i­ty of my adult life, I was a card-car­ry­ing black Republican who at one point dur­ing my youth admired President Nixon.

Yes, you read cor­rect­ly: I was a black Republican. Not a Herman Cain or Ben Carson Republican, mind you, but I fer­vent­ly believed that blacks, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Republican-dom­i­nat­ed South, need­ed to have broth­ers and sis­ters of good con­science advo­cat­ing on behalf of black peo­ple in both parties.

When I reg­is­tered to vote dur­ing my fresh­man year at Morehouse College in 1990 – 91, my dorm room walls not only fea­tured the lat­est Jet Magazine “Beauties of the Week,” but they were also adorned with Newsweek Magazine’s pic­tures of President George H.W. Bush, General Norman Schwarzkopf and my idol, General and lat­er Secretary of State Colin Powell. At a time when most of our cam­pus was inun­dat­ed with anti-war rhetoric, I was argu­ing at polit­i­cal forums for the need to defeat Saddam Hussein and estab­lish order in the Middle East.

When I was a child, the Iran Hostage Crisis, where the Ayatollah Khomeni’s min­ions held 52 American hostages for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, served as my first polit­i­cal awak­en­ing. The fact that the hostages were released on Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Day was crit­i­cal to my young polit­i­cal psyche.

-Sorry Bill Clinton: The Impact Of Your Drug & Prison Policies Deserves More Than ‘My Bad’

What I was too young to under­stand at the time was that Reagan, like Donald Trump and oth­er mod­ern Republicans, was a race baiter. I was too young to com­pre­hend the sin­is­ter nature of Reagan’s deci­sion to announce his pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a small town that was only famous for being the site where the bod­ies of slain civ­il rights work­ers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were found bru­tal­ly lynched in 1964. Or that Reagan’s “wel­fare queen” com­ments ear­ly in his first admin­is­tra­tion were pre­cur­sors to the con­tin­u­ing stereo­types of blacks being the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of gov­ern­ment hand­outs, a posi­tion that to this very hour fails to acknowl­edge that more whites per capi­ta par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment assis­tance programs.

There was a time in my life where Republican race bait­ing was sub­tle. It is crys­tal clear that today, we have come almost full cir­cle, as it is only a mat­ter of time before Trump or some oth­er major Republican fig­ure starts using racial slurs as parts of their stump speech­es. I saw this com­ing back in 2008 when Barack Obama was on the verge of becom­ing the first black President of the United States. Like many black Republicans, I sup­port­ed Obama, in part because George W. Bush’s failed eco­nom­ic poli­cies had us tee­ter­ing on the brink of a new Great Depression. But to be hon­est, I also had no inten­tion what­so­ev­er of hav­ing to look my grand­kids in the eyes some­day and explain why I did not sup­port the first viable black pres­i­den­tial can­di­date or fight hard against those whose bias­es com­pelled them to obstruct his efforts while in office.

-Nancy Reagan’s Biggest Legacy With African-Americans

So now, I watch my for­mer par­ty burn to the ground; immo­lat­ed by racial hatred, misog­y­ny, reli­gious big­otry and a dis­dain for same sex unions. And to be hon­est, this is nec­es­sary. Hopefully, from the ash­es, those of us of good con­science with con­ser­v­a­tive lean­ings will con­tin­ue to work hard to make our nation’s de fac­to mot­to, “E Pluribus Unum” or “From many, one,” a real­i­ty and not just an illu­so­ry con­cept. Confession of a for­mer black Republican: The par­ty I loved despis­es my people

Chuck Hobbs is a tri­al lawyer and free­lance writer based in Tallahassee, Florida.

Like a thief in the night, the Dutchess County Legislature voted 19 to 6 to move ahead with building a new jail and facility to house the county Sheriff’s offices.

Early Tuesday morn­ing, March 22, the Legislature approved mov­ing for­ward with the $192 mil­lion bonds to fund the long-dis­cussed project. According to esti­mates, the 30-year bond will see the coun­ty pay­ing back an esti­mat­ed $9.9 mil­lion annu­al­ly with a total cost with inter­est amount­ing to $274 million.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, at issue is the pro­pos­al for a new, 569-bed jail and sher­if­f’s office. This comes after decades of dis­cus­sion of a per­ma­nent solu­tion to the coun­ty jail over­crowd­ing. Dutchess is under state pres­sure to per­ma­nent­ly address the issue since the North Hamilton Street jail can only house 250 inmates. Nearly 200 addi­tion­al inmates have been housed in out-of-coun­ty facil­i­ties, at the cost of about $8 mil­lion annu­al­ly to Dutchess tax­pay­ers. The coun­ty installed pods at the jail to house some inmates in mid-2015 to reduce costs, but that is only a tem­po­rary fix. Officials have argued that if the pro­pos­al did­n’t pass the leg­is­la­ture, the state could pull the vari­ance that allows the coun­ty to use the pods.

Monday evening, res­i­dents opposed to the project demon­strat­ed in front of the leg­isla­tive build­ing on Market street. They argued that Poughkeepsie’s city needs treat­ment cen­ters for drug users and men­tal­ly ill peo­ple, not jails. The Republican-dom­i­nat­ed leg­is­la­ture pushed back, argu­ing that drug offend­ers and men­tal­ly ill peo­ple will be giv­en the nec­es­sary care once the facil­i­ty is built.
In oth­er words, the drug-addict­ed and men­tal­ly ill will have to con­tin­ue to wrack up arrest records to get the treat­ment they need, which makes no ratio­nal sense.
In a chill­ing arti­cle titled “Portrait of an epi­dem­ic,” the Poughkeepsie Journal peeled back the fright­en­ing real­i­ty of what obtains in Dutchess County with peo­ple addict­ed to drugs.

This is the sto­ry of a list, thick with flawed heroes and tragedy, of 63 peo­ple, the lives they nev­er got to fin­ish, and the rea­sons they died. They were moth­ers and fathers, the gain­ful­ly employed and not, sports and dog lovers, addicts. They all died in 2013 when they acci­den­tal­ly over­dosed on drugs. This is a sto­ry of Dutchess County because each one died there. But it is also a sto­ry of America, where it is being writ­ten from coast to coast, the out­growth of painkillers dis­pensed for years in what gov­ern­ments now know was an uncon­trolled and all-too lais­sez-faire man­ner. Portrait of an epi­dem­ic.

It’s dif­fi­cult for any­one asso­ci­at­ed with Poughkeepsie not to know or know of some­one who died from a drug over­dose. Though not a res­i­dent of the city, this writer oper­ates a busi­ness there. Consequently, my wife and I have seen far too many instances where peo­ple with whom we have inter­act­ed lose their lives as a result of drug addic­tion… We have also seen far too many instances where inad­e­quate recre­ation­al out­lets for city youth force them into the streets, where they often end up get­ting killed. Through her vol­un­teer work with shel­ters and oth­er projects, my wife Cheryl has also gained valu­able insight into this prob­lem which now dri­ves her pas­sion for see­ing a non-incar­cer­a­tion solution.
The solu­tion to this prob­lem is not to build more jail cells to ware­house non-vio­lent offenders.

Monday night Cheryl and I were among the throngs of peo­ple who attend­ed the pub­lic hear­ing on the pro­posed jail con­struc­tion project. Ironically though, Black res­i­dents of the City of Poughkeepsie will like­ly be most neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by this mas­sive expan­sion of the project; blacks in atten­dance could be count­ed on both hands with maybe a fin­ger or two to spare.
Cheryl and I got our turn to address the Legislature, mak­ing the case that what the coun­ty ought to be doing was not adding to the prison indus­tri­al com­plex but, in prac­ti­cal terms, should be invest­ed in find­ing ways to decrim­i­nal­ize drug-addict­ed res­i­dents and those with men­tal disability.
Cheryl and I knew that essen­tial­ly what we were doing was tan­ta­mount to shout­ing in the wind. Cheryl had spo­ken at that very podi­um on a pre­vi­ous occa­sion as part of a pro­gram called “jobs, not jail” she was emo­tion­al as she remind­ed the leg­is­la­ture that on that occa­sion, she received noth­ing but blank stares.
Last night was no dif­fer­ent. The Legislature, which Republican white men dom­i­nate, already had their minds made up. Nothing that the long lists of peo­ple who spoke in oppo­si­tion say would change the out­come of that vote.

The Republican response to the mas­sive jail project is unan­i­mous. Still, it may be summed up in the state­ment of coun­ty Legislator Angela Flesland, R‑Town of Poughkeepsie, who vot­ed in favor of the pro­pos­al. “We are final­ly mov­ing for­ward with a pro­pos­al to tru­ly solve the prob­lem of jail over­crowd­ing in a way that respects tax­pay­ers, staff, and inmates.” “Being able to build and staff the new facil­i­ty and still save an esti­mat­ed $5.3 mil­lion per year speaks to how inef­fi­cient our cur­rent facil­i­ty is.”
In oth­er words, the only qual­i­fy­ing com­po­nent wor­thy of Republicans’ con­sid­er­a­tion is “mon­ey”!!!
None of the Republicans in the leg­is­la­ture spoke to the cit­i­zens’ con­cerns who spoke about not incar­cer­at­ing drug users and the men­tal­ly ill. Their sole con­cern was the almighty dollar.

What Republicans did not speak to is the issue of Federal moves to reor­ga­nize the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by President Obama. In my few min­utes at the micro­phone, I point­ed out that fed­er­al pro­grams are actu­al­ly releas­ing non-vio­lent offend­ers from incarceration.
Even with­out these fed­er­al releas­es, Jails have insuf­fi­cient inmates in some quar­ters. In 2013 A pri­vate prison in Arizona recent­ly sued the state for hav­ing a lack of pris­on­ers. For the sake of sav­ing over $16 mil­lion in back pay, the state set­tled by pay­ing the pri­vate prison $3 mil­lion. Arizona essen­tial­ly paid a com­pa­ny $3 mil­lion because few peo­ple are com­mit­ting crimes. According to (Wonderprogressive​.com).

In the State of Texas in 2011 ( able2​know​.org ) report­ed that Texas has too many prison beds not enough pris­on­ers.
A com­plex occu­py­ing almost an entire block at 4700 Blue Mound Road is now vacant large­ly due to reforms aimed at reduc­ing the state’s penal sys­tem costs.
 Starting in the ear­ly 1990s, Texas ignit­ed an almost $3 bil­lion prison build­ing spree, turn­ing to pri­vate prison oper­a­tors to house inmates as the prison pop­u­la­tion swelled beyond the capac­i­ty of state facil­i­ties. Now, state, coun­ty, and city bud­get cuts, a decline in crime rates, an old­er pop­u­la­tion, and penal and court reforms have all con­tributed to what some call a glut of inmate beds. Those fac­tors have result­ed in closed and half-emp­ty pris­ons and jails, able2​know​.org reports.

Even though there are instances where prison over­crowd­ing is ram­pant, there is a gen­er­al trend toward a less­en­ing of prison pop­u­la­tions across America. As has been the case in Texas and oth­er parts of the coun­try, com­mon-sense mea­sures to reduce prison pop­u­la­tions are bear­ing fruits.
Why, then is this rush to build a mul­ti-mil­lion prison facil­i­ty smack-dab in the cen­ter of the city of Poughkeepsie with­out any care or con­sid­er­a­tion for the objec­tions of city residents?

Cost aside; this project is a County project which can be con­struct­ed any­where in the coun­ty. Why are there no sug­ges­tions to place the pro­posed mam­moth facil­i­ty any­where else but in the city’s cen­ter? Could it be that the envi­ron­men­tal impact would not be tol­er­at­ed else­where? Could it be that white Dutchess County res­i­dents would not tol­er­ate a mam­moth jail facil­i­ty near their homes? What about traf­fic, the impact on ground­wa­ter, air qual­i­ty, and a host of oth­er envi­ron­men­tal issues?
Democratic Legislator Joel Tyner Rhinebeck/​Clinton raised the issue of the poten­tial for seri­ous neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences with­out a top-to-bot­tom review done before construction.
Tyner point­ed out that some assur­ances were giv­en that the project would have neg­li­gi­ble envi­ron­men­tal fall­out. Still, he was wary of the source of those assur­ances because of the chum­my rela­tion­ship between the firm and County Executive Marc Molinaro and County Sheriff Butch Anderson.

Republicans con­trol the Dutchess County Legislature, so the mea­sure would pass. I believe every­one attuned to this issue knew quite well that regard­less of what was said, regard­less of the protest­ing, Republicans are gen­er­al­ly inter­est­ed in mass incar­cer­a­tion and mon­ey, peo­ple be damned.
What sur­prised this writer was the vote Democratic Legislator Barbara Jeter-Jackson cast in favor of the measure.
Jeter-Jackson, a Democrat from the City of Poughkeepsie, vot­ed to build the behe­moth of a jail com­plex smack-dab in the mid­dle of the city. She also vot­ed to declare the project will have no neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts.
Jeter-Jackson cast these two votes even though a com­pre­hen­sive study has not been done on the full envi­ron­men­tal impact such a con­struc­tion project will have on staff, inmates, and even the larg­er community.

Republicans did not need Jeter-Jackson’s vote for the mea­sure to pass. The 19 – 6 vote would have been an 18 – 7 vote, an almost 3 – 1 mar­gin. What Jeter-Jackson’s vote did was to accord the dra­con­ian mea­sure some sem­blance of bipar­ti­san­ship that is not worth the paper the bill is writ­ten on.
In try­ing to jus­ti­fy her vote, Jeter-Jackson said, “Ever since I’ve been here as a leg­is­la­tor, I’ve been deal­ing with the (Commission of Correction),” she said. “Do I believe they will pull the third (vari­ance)? Yes, I do.”

In oth­er words, she believes that the State of New York will cut off its prover­bial foot to spite its body with­out any fur­ther delay, accord­ing to her rea­son­ing. I heard noth­ing from her regard­ing the salient points Joel Tyner and oth­er Democrats raised or the pub­lic’s concerns.
She did not speak to the seri­ous mass incar­cer­a­tion of our young peo­ple who are crim­i­nal­ized before they have a chance to mate­ri­al­ize. She did not speak to the chem­i­cal risks Tyner said would form part of the every­day life of the facil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly to preg­nant women and staff work­ing in the facil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the first floor.

In an unprece­dent­ed stroke of illog­i­cal rea­son­ing, Jeter-Jackson said she does­n’t believe the 569 beds out­lined in the pro­pos­al will be need­ed once the coun­ty begins con­struc­tion on the new jail itself. If it’s prob­a­bly not going to be need­ed, why vote to build it?
Furthermore, what is the ratio­nale behind giv­ing Republicans the veneer of cov­er they need­ed to cre­ate the impres­sion of bi-par­ti­san sup­port and to the detri­ment and cha­grin of the peo­ple who vot­ed her into office?

For County Executive Marcus Molinaro and Republicans in the Legislature, the lives of Drug addicts, poor and indi­gent minor­i­ty youth, and the men­tal­ly ill are dis­pos­able. However, Barbara Jeter-Jackson ought to know bet­ter. She must know that no per­son suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and drug addic­tion should have to com­mit offens­es giv­ing them­selves mas­sive rap sheets in order to get treatment.
She knows it’s a bunch of baloney, yet she vot­ed for it even though her vote was not needed.

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

“I start­ed a joke that start­ed the whole world cry­ing, but I did­n’t see that the joke was on me”
I start­ed to cry which start­ed the whole world laugh­ing, but I did­n’t see that the joke was on me.… (Brothers Gibb 0/​c Bee/​gees)
In that haunt­ing voice, Robin Gibb belt­ed out that cryp­tic lyric which ulti­mate­ly said “the joke was on me”.

For years the American media roman­ti­cized pack­aged and sold Donald Trump’s big­ot­ed igno­rance as Reality Television. Donald Trump is a wealthy heir to his fathers for­tune. No-he may not be as rich as he would like oth­ers to believe, but Trump has had his own suc­cess­es which can­not be denied.
In America and across the globe mon­ey equals pow­er and Donald Trump has pur­chased the abil­i­ty to say and do what­ev­er the hell he wants.

REPUBLICANS ARE ANGRY BUT NOT FOR THE REASONS THEY TELL YOU

When Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and oth­ers blast­ed onto the scene with vile rhetoric after it became evi­dent Barack Obama would like­ly win the Democratic Nomination in 2008, no one said it was wrong or it should stop.
Everyone was laugh­ing then; no harm, no foul, America had always abused it’s black pop­u­la­tion. Why should it care about this uppi­ty n****r now?
No one in the Republican Party nor the cor­po­rate media saw any­thing wrong with the putrid bile which Trump, the semi-lit­er­ate Sarah Palin and oth­ers were spewing.
In fact most of the white lib­er­als in the Democrat par­ty were silent as well.
After all why should they speak out?
Just who did Obama think he was?
Remember Bill Clinton the sup­posed first Black President com­ments ?[sic] “This is the biggest fairy tale I have ever seen”.
Ha ha ha lets all have a good laugh about that fairy tale ? Only thing was , the joke was on Bill and Hillary Clinton in ’08 ‚.

REPUBLICAN HATE FOR OBAMA FUELED THE RISE OF TRUMP’S FASCISM….

Despite repeat­ed attempts to fix the fall­out from those com­ments, many felt Clinton’s com­ments were aimed at belit­tling Obama’s can­di­da­cy. Black vot­ers in South Carolina was hav­ing none of it.
“We’ll show you whose can­di­da­cy is a fairy tale”, they seemed to say with their votes. In droves Black vot­ers rolled up to the polls in unprece­dent­ed num­bers, for all intents and pur­pos­es Hillary Clinton’s can­di­da­cy was toast from there on in.
The Racists whites weren’t laugh­ing anymore.

But back to Trump…It’s now the 2016 cam­paign the media glee­ful­ly gave Trump’s racist nar­ra­tive top billing. Even though Trump open­ly ridiculed and berat­ed reporters at his mass ral­lies, news net­works car­ried Trump’s ral­lies from start to fin­ish then spent days after­wards mag­ni­fy­ing his sub­stance-free talk­ing points ad nau­se­am.
The ral­lies which start­ed out with the dog whis­tle “make America great again” became more and more like Hitler’s youth ral­lies as Trumps cam­paign began to attract bot­tom feed­ers like David Duke (the for­mer grand drag­on of the Klux Klux Klan) and major white suprema­cists groups.
No one who noticed was fooled by Trump’s “make America great again” bull­shit logo.
We knew it was a thin­ly veiled “make America white again” veneer. As more and more peo­ple got assault­ed and abused by Trump big­ot­ed rhetoric the under­class of the American not- so-under­bel­ly start­ed swarm­ing out like legions of locusts to attend Trump’s rallies.
Then they real­ized peo­ple weren’t fooled by the non­sense of make America great again, so off with the veneer of lies,” make America white again” is now offi­cial­ly out in the open.

The Rallies are now full-blown white suprema­cist events. While this is hap­pen­ing the cor­po­rate media con­tin­ue to engage in implau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty claim­ing that ral­ly atten­dees are white work­ing class peo­ple, instead of label­ing them what they tru­ly are, une­d­u­cat­ed , igno­rant bigots.
As Trumps rhetoric became more and more bel­li­cose, more and more ordi­nary peo­ple start­ed to push back at the hate com­ing from Trump. So more and more pro­test­ers start­ed show­ing up to push back against the hate­ful and divi­sive rhetoric.
Muslims were tossed, Black lives mat­ter pro­test­ers were tossed, women and any­one who dared to speak out against Trump’s Racist , Xenophobic , Islamaphobic rants are now pub­lic ene­my num­ber one.
THE PEOPLE AREN’T ANGRY ‚REPUBLICANS MAD AT OBAMA’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS…

Trump demand that pro­test­ers be tossed out in the cold with­out their coats. He encour­aged his sup­port­ers to attack pro­test­ers while assur­ing them he would pay the legal costs should it be nec­es­sary. This embold­ened more and more bot­tom feed­ers to crawl out of the sew­ers. All of a sud­den the crowds seemed to have more and more plaid shirts and wide brimmed hats than oth­er campaigns.
The Hitler salute has also been evi­dent at Trumps Rallies. The hate filled whites who attend his ral­lies need to vent their frus­tra­tions and vent they do.

Despite being so-called native born huge num­bers of them are unable to lift them­selves from the throes of pover­ty despite being American cit­i­zens with the ben­e­fit of white privilege.
This for them is rea­son enough to hate every­one else not like them. Basically any­one not igno­rant, pover­ty-strick­en, bel­liger­ent, resent­ful, sci­ence-deniers, non-white or filled with hatred.

This makes Mexicans Muslims, and every­one else includ­ing the tra­di­tion­al tar­get of their unmit­i­gat­ed ven­om , blacks all liable to feel their wrath.
For these bot­tom feed­ers Trump is mere­ly a means to an end. They don’t care that Trump is a ser­i­al divorcee who takes advan­tage of Americas tax laws and abus­es immi­grant labor while talk­ing about work­ers rights.
They are not con­cerned that the dis­re­spect­ful phi­lan­der­er Donald Trump abhors them just as much as he hates those he berates. To them Trump is a mega phone through which they get to vent their hatred and Trump rec­og­nizes that all too well. Recognizing this Trump said he could fire a gun down 5^th avenue and he would not lose a sin­gle vote.
Yes Trump is right about that , they do not care that he is a New York City Liberal who donat­ed heav­i­ly to lib­er­al can­di­dates and sup­port­ed lib­er­al caus­es and positions.
To these igno­ra­mus­es any Trump will do , he speaks their lan­guage of hate and that “trumps” all else.

The Planter class did a mas­ter­ful job of con­vinc­ing white crim­i­nals who came over from Europe as bonds­men that if they played by the rules and sep­a­rat­ed them­selves from enslaved Africans soon they would become part of the planter class.
They real­ized the expe­di­en­cy of con­vinc­ing impov­er­ished whites to mil­i­tate against their own self inter­est was crit­i­cal if they were to main­tain con­trol of the situation.
White sep­a­ratism was born.
The sav­agery and ven­omous bar­bar­i­ty unleashed on Black African peo­ple who were sub­ject­ed to slav­ery and Jim crow was not car­ried out by Christians who fled reli­gious persecution.
They were the filth of Europe’s sew­ers. Murderers and Rapists, the most vile despi­ca­ble life-forms oper­at­ing on the premise that through bru­tal­i­ty and bar­bar­i­ty they could cur­ry favor to improve their indi­vid­ual lots.

Today their descen­dants are no dif­fer­ent, many are impov­er­ished une­d­u­cat­ed who blame every­one else for their fail­ures. Their unfound­ed hatred is based on noth­ing sub­stan­tive that can be addressed. They are who they are, they were bred to hate and be hate­ful. They were bred to believe that their sor­ry lives were the way they are because oth­ers have succeed.
On that basis they also hate white edu­cat­ed ‚lib­er­at­ed, lib­er­al intel­lec­tu­als who do not sub­scribe to the hatred and big­otry which defines them.
The media can call them blue col­lar work­ing class whites all it wants the world knows them for what they are, under-per­form­ing big­ots who blame oth­ers for their inadequacies.
And the whole world laughs “cause the joke is on them”.

Republicans consistently argue they want to shrink Government, they want to roll-back many of the powers of the Federal Government.
Republican Ted Cruz the Canadian born T‑Party US Senator from Texas mentions the Federal Constitution every sentence regardless of the subject under discussion. Yet when it suits Ted Cruz he casually discards the constitution, as was the case when Antonin Scalia died. All of a sudden the President had no authority to name a replacement and the Senate should not advice and consent.This kind of “it’s only okay when I say it is“shows the callousness and blatant hypocrisy of Republicans .

During the American Civil Rights strug­gle Southern Governors declared that the Federal Government had no busi­ness telling them what to do with the peo­ple liv­ing in their states. The prob­lem was that they only con­sid­ered whites wor­thy of pro­tec­tion under the laws. They were opposed to fed­er­al Intervention because the Federal Government demand­ed that lit­tle black chil­dren be allowed into schools so they could learn to read and write.
It took Federal Troops to get black chil­dren into schools in Little rock Arkansas in 1957.

Fast for­ward to 2016 and the very same argu­ments dom­i­nate the Republican nar­ra­tive .One Candidate’s slo­gan is that he will make America great again .
The ques­tion is great for whom ? Those of us who pay atten­tion , par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Black com­mu­ni­ty know the slo­gan ‘make America great again’ is a thin­ly veiled dog whis­tle aimed at Nativist une­d­u­cat­ed white Americans who blame every­one for their fears and lack of accom­plish­ments. Simply put it means make ‘America white again’. Naturally this is total­ly nec­es­sary after the Black guy took America from them for two four year terms.[sic]

In case after case we have seen what State’s rights mean to poor Black and brown peo­ple in America and we get an under­stand­ing of why the so-called Conservatives are always push­ing for less Federal Government and more pow­er to indi­vid­ual states.
Taking cen­ter stage over the inces­sant exe­cu­tion of unarmed Black and Brown Americans by police is the nation­al dis­grace which is the Flint water cri­sis in Michigan.The city of Flint Michigan redi­rect­ed the city’s water sup­ply from it’s orig­i­nal source to a cheap­er more risky source to save mon­ey with dev­as­tat­ing consequences.
The cri­sis began in 2014 when Flint changed the source of its water from Detroit’s water sup­ply to the Flint River, osten­si­bly to save mon­ey. The new water sup­ply was cor­ro­sive, which caused lead from the system’s pipes to con­t­a­m­i­nate the drink­ing water sup­ply. Between 6,000 and 12,000 chil­dren have been exposed to lead dur­ing this cri­sis, some­thing that will take years — if not decades — to address.

The end result is that res­i­dents of Flint has been drink­ing and using con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed lead-poi­soned water and no one cared. The Governor of Michigan Republican Rick Snyder has tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty yet he has not made the nec­es­sary funds avail­able to fix the prob­lem. Reports indi­cate that there is a one bil­lion dol­lar rainy day fund some of which could be made avail­able to fix the problem.
Additionally the Federal Government can step in and help as it would when nat­ur­al dis­as­ters strike .
Unfortunately Republicans in the US Senate have stalled leg­is­la­tion which would help res­i­dents suf­fer­ing from the fall­out of the lead con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Flint.

The Daily beast reports that orig­i­nal­ly, approx­i­mate­ly 10 sen­a­tors took advan­tage of the “hold” maneu­ver, block­ing progress on the Flint pro­pos­al. Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sen. Ted Cruz made a hasty retreat after news of his hold was leaked to the press. Since then it is report­ed that all of the oth­er Republicans Senators have slith­ered away from the hold maneu­ver leav­ing Utah’s Mike Lee anoth­er T‑Party Senator stand­ing in the way of help for Americans includ­ing lit­tle chil­dren suf­fer­ing from lead poisoning .
These are the kinds of peo­ple who now make up the Republican par­ty . These are the peo­ple who came to pow­er because of cit­i­zens united.These are the robot­ic heart­less androids who now pop­u­late the American Government and are holed up in the Republican Party.
Think Donald Trump is bad think again? Ted Cruz , and Marco Rubio the two Cuban Hispanics vying for the pres­i­den­cy are far worse than Trump they will do any­thing to show their whiteness.
So one Republican Senator gets to hold up aid to an entire city of large­ly poor black peo­ple suf­fer­ing from lead poi­son­ing but in an instant they appro­pri­ate mon­ey to give to rich cor­po­ra­tions and to wage war on small­er weak­er nations who can­not ade­quate­ly defend themselves.
States rights means hav­ing the pow­er to con­tin­ue abuse of minori­ties with­out Federal interference.

“It’s stuff that we hear around here all the time,” the House minority leader said.

WASHINGTON — When Republican pres­i­den­tial front-run­ner Donald Trump did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly dis­avow for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, it did­n’t sur­prise House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) that much.

Pelosi and oth­er Democrats have argued this week that Republican law­mak­ers are respon­si­ble for the rise of Trump and the cam­paign he is running.

“The sanc­ti­mo­ny that was dis­played in terms of ‘Oh, my gosh, can you believe he said that?’ — it’s stuff that we hear around here all the time,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.

While Pelosi said she did­n’t think Trump is a reflec­tion of Republicans “writ large across the coun­try,” she called him an “accu­rate reflec­tion of the actions tak­en or not tak­en by the House Republicans.”

Pelosi sug­gest­ed that it was hyp­o­crit­i­cal of Republicans to dis­tance them­selves from Trump while obstruct­ing con­gres­sion­al efforts to com­bat racism and inequal­i­ty — for exam­ple, by block­ing a mea­sure to remove Confederate flags from the Capitol and by refus­ing to move leg­is­la­tion to renew the Voting Rights Act, which is cur­rent­ly stuck in committee.

“While they dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves from Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with right-wing white suprema­cist groups, they at the same time vot­ed a num­ber of times against our amend­ment to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol,” she said.

Although the Confederate flag is a sym­bol of hate and racism to many, Republicans put for­ward a mea­sure last year to allow the flag to be dis­played on Confederate Memorial Day at graves on fed­er­al land, defy­ing Democrats’ attempts to ban them.

REPUBLICAN HATE FOR OBAMA FUELED THE RISE OF TRUMP’S FASCISM….

Pelosi also denounced the GOP for tout­ing fam­i­ly val­ues and the “spark of divin­i­ty that exists with­in every per­son” while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly “shut­ting the door to women and chil­dren from Latin America and Syria,” a ref­er­ence to Republican efforts toblock migrants and refugees from enter­ing the country.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R‑Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) con­demned Trump ear­li­er this week.

“If a per­son wants to be the nom­i­nee of the Republican Party, there can be no eva­sion and no games,” Ryan said. “They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.”

Yet both lead­ers stood by their pre­vi­ous state­ments that they would ulti­mate­ly sup­port who­ev­er ends up being their par­ty’s nominee.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump is a ser­i­al liar, ram­pant xeno­phobe, racist, misog­y­nist, birther and bul­ly who has repeat­ed­ly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 bil­lion mem­bers of an entire reli­gion — from enter­ing the U.S.
Read more here Nancy Pelosi Isn’t Buying GOP Outrage Over Donald Trump’s KKK Comments

After Donald J Trump swept a major­i­ty of the Super Tuesday states many in the Republican Party’s estab­lish­ment who thought Trump would sim­ply implode are now

in full frontal pan­ic mode on Wednesday.
Mitt Romney the last los­er Republicans nom­i­nat­ed to run against Obama is sched­uled to speak on the state of pan­ic on Thursday at 11:00am east­ern at the University of Utah.
Romney is slat­ed to address the seri­ous prob­lem fac­ing the par­ty and the impli­ca­tions a Trump nom­i­na­tion would have for the future of the Republican Party.
At the same time Ben Carson issued a release say­ing he does not see a path for­ward for his cam­paign and as such he will not be attend­ing the next Republican debate. Frankly I did not even remem­ber that Ben Carson was still in the race !
Well I guess he fell asleep or was run­ning the race the way the Tortoises ran that decep­tive race against the Hare.

The Republican hate machine unleashed a scorched-earth attack against Obama in 2007 to this Obama’s last year in office, not a sin­gle Republican abstained from the

assault except for­mer President George W Bush.
That hate fueled the rise of Donald J Trump, a brash unfil­tered self-pro­fessed Billionaire from New York who is not afraid to offend the sen­si­bil­i­ties of any group that is not white Anglo-Saxon.

Under Obama America saw a dra­mat­ic rise in the num­ber of hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center esti­mates that he num­ber of anti-gov­ern­ment “patri­ot” groups, includ­ing para­mil­i­tary hate orga­ni­za­tions, reached an all-time high in 2012, fanned by President Barack Obama’s reelec­tion. Patriot groups have been clas­si­fied by the law cen­ter as hate orga­ni­za­tions because their anti-gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ment is almost always paired with racism, rang­ing from fear of every­day crime to a loom­ing race war, said Mark Potok, the law cen­ter’s chief hate group and hate crime inves­ti­ga­tor. The law cen­ter found 1,360 patri­ot groups in 2012 -– an 813 per­cent rise since 2008, the year before Obama took office. Of those groups, 321 con­sti­tute mili­tias. The law cen­ter also found a near-record 1,007 hate groups with ani­mus direct­ed at minori­ties, gay men, les­bians, and trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als in 2012. That’s a slight decline from the 1,018 groups count­ed in 2011.

Trump Rallies are vir­tu­al­ly KKK Rallies. This is why Donald Trump lied that he did not know who David Duke the for­mer Grand Wizard of the Klux Klux Klan was.
The Republican par­ty is in a quandary at this moment try­ing to fig­ure out how to take the nom­i­na­tion from Donald Trump.
They know that if Donald Trump is the Party’s nom­i­nee the Opposition research data on Donald Trump would be so dev­as­tat­ing that the par­ty would poten­tial­ly lose the pres­i­den­cy , the sen­ate , many gov­er­nor­ship’s and could even put the House of Representatives in play.

Many with­in the Republican Party are now in full pan­ic. I per­son­al­ly don’t believe all Republicans who remained silent against the hate­ful rhetoric lev­eled against the President were racists . Many remained silent because they were afraid of fac­ing pri­ma­ry chal­lenges from insur­gent right wing T‑party upstarts to their right.
Many long time Republican par­ty estab­lish­ment stal­warts went down to chal­lenge to the right of where they stood .
Former Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor and Indiana US Senator Richard Luger are just two who went down to right wing challengers.

What the Republican Party can do to remain rel­e­vant is to seri­ous­ly chase the Racists from the par­ty and let them go form a third par­ty or stay home .Unless Republicans are pre­pared to take a stand against the most vile reac­tionary forces with­in it’s ranks it must be pre­pared to deal with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mon­u­men­tal loss and prob­a­bly most impor­tant­ly the like-hood of the par­ty splin­ter­ing and becom­ing inconsequential.

A few short days ago, nine peo­ple gath­ered togeth­er in the Sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston South Carolina were uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly slaugh­tered by a sin­gle vile despi­ca­ble by-prod­uct of hate.
If we con­cen­trate on Dylann Storm Roof while we miss the smol­der­ing caul­dron of racial ani­mus lurk­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close just beneath the sur­face, those patri­ots would have died in vain. Let me be clear, there are large amounts of white Americans who have fought and died, oth­ers took extreme risks to fur­ther the cause of racial justice.
Even today we see our white broth­ers and sis­ters joined with us in grief at the wan­ton and cow­ard­ly loss of life in Charleston South Carolina.
Nevertheless, there is a stub­born and vio­lent under­bel­ly of hate which still per­sists in sec­tions of the white community.

This view is large­ly sus­tained by a con­stant diet of racist invec­tives fed them through local talk radio, which in some cas­es all but call for vio­lence against President Obama and black Americans.
FOX Television spews out a dai­ly a diet of anti-Obama, anti-black rhetoric with­out con­se­quence. Score one for free speech when it is not direct­ed at the Government structure.

As the grief sur­round­ing the mas­sacre of the Charleston nine start­ed to sink in, peo­ple of good-will began to coa­lesce around remov­ing the Confederate bat­tle flag from the grounds of the state house.
Immediately that start­ed hap­pen­ing, black church­es start­ed going up in flames across the south. In sev­en days six Churches have been burned to the ground. In the mean­time, Authorities twid­dle their thumbs won­der­ing aloud whether Arson is involved.
What do they believe is behind all of those Churches with large­ly black con­gre­ga­tions going up in flames?
See the sto­ry here.SIX black church­es stretch­ing from Georgia to Ohio are burned down in sev­en days: Fears of tide of ‘racist’ vio­lence as three are con­firmed as arson Read more: http://​www​.dai​ly​mail​.co​.uk/​n​e​w​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​-​3​1​4​2​8​1​7​/​S​t​r​i​n​g​-​s​u​s​p​e​c​t​e​d​-​a​r​s​o​n​-​a​t​t​a​c​k​s​-​S​I​X​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​h​u​r​c​h​e​s​-​s​t​r​e​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​G​e​o​r​g​i​a​-​O​h​i​o​-​b​u​r​n​e​d​-​s​i​n​g​l​e​-​w​eek.

A few weeks ago two con­vict­ed mur­der­ers escaped from a sup­posed max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison upstate New York. The search for the two fugi­tives end­ed two days ago with the cap­ture of one after his col­league was shot and killed two days earlier.
The Task-Force ded­i­cat­ed to the cap­ture of the two fugi­tives report­ed­ly com­prised of over a thou­sand law-enforce­ment offi­cials from sev­er­al Agencies com­ing togeth­er to bring an end to the flight of the two escaped convicts.
To date, we have not seen the same effort ded­i­cat­ed to find­ing the Arsonists engaged in the burn­ing of the six places of worship .…..
Barack Obama as head of the Executive Branch of Government has the pow­er and Authority to use the full force of the American Federal Government to squash the per­pe­tra­tors of these Acts of Domestic Terrorism.
As the 4^th of July approach­es the FBI warned local law enforce­ment agen­cies to look out for acts of ter­ror­ism against Americans. As they look for Terror com­ing from peo­ple with Arabic sound­ing names, acts of domes­tic ter­ror­ism con­tin­ue to be per­pe­trat­ed against African American peo­ple by peo­ple with Euro-cen­tric sound­ing names yet there are no alarm bells.

The burn­ing of African-American Churches has been a tra­di­tion­al ter­ror weapon for the Ku Klux Klan and oth­er ter­ror groups, this time is no dif­fer­ent. The fact is they do it because they know they will not be held account­able. For decades cow­ard­ly white ter­ror­ists have used Bombings, Arson, lynch­ings on the Black Population, even as Blacks cow­er in fear hid­ing behind Bibles and platitudes.
As long as Black peo­ple cow­er in fear clutch­ing their Bibles in Prayer, they will con­tin­ue to be vic­tims of this back­wa­ter tribe of Ignorant terrorists.
Nowhere in the Bible is there any teach­ing of allow­ing ones-self to be slaughtered.
Christians are liv­ing in a fool’s par­adise if they believe sim­ply com­plain­ing and cow­er­ing in vic­tim-hood will solve their prob­lems. God com­mand­ed Moses to get up from his knees and use what he had as the Children of Israel faced the red sea and Pharaoh’s fast approach­ing Army to their backs.
Christians, if pray­ing is all you do it’s not enough.
The Bible teach­es us to watch and pray…
It is high time for Night Riders of the Klan and any oth­er ter­ror­ists cloaked in secre­cy and the cov­er of dark­ness to face seri­ous con­se­quences when they ride up to burn our Churches.

As I have warned before ter­ror­ists are right here among us, they do not always speak Arabic as some would have you believe. Never be caught say­ing ” I nev­er thought it could hap­pen here” > If it can hap­pen there, it can hap­pen here, it can hap­pen anywhere.
Every Christian Congregation must be on watch for the ter­ror­ists with Guns who would come in and kill us as we pray.
Yet every one of us must be a sol­dier in defense of our Christian prin­ci­ples, our faith, and yes our places of worship.
Being per­pet­u­al vic­tims is not a solution…
Every Generation of Black Americans must pick up the American flag and defend their home­land, not just pulling out cell-phones to record hate, but be active cit­i­zens stand­ing firm as patri­ots in this the land their ances­tors occu­pied before Christopher Columbus hap­pened upon these shores.

While the over­all pop­u­la­tion says it will spend about 10% more on hol­i­day gifts this year, than last year, African Americans say they plan to spend 17% more.
• All shop­pers: Will spend 12% more on gift cards; 10% more on elec­tron­ic mer­chan­dise and 10% more on toys.
• African Americans: Will spend 17% more on elec­tron­ics, 17% more on food, and 15% more on apparel.
The Nielsen research high­light­ing the pro­ject­ed growth of minor­i­ty spend­ing can help retail­ers and mar­keters focus on who to tar­get. (Neilsen.
In sim­ple lan­guage, there will be a lot more black faces in Television commercials.
Black spend­ing pow­er is fore­cast to reach as much as 1.1 Trillion by 2017 and some even more aggres­sive sam­pling sug­gest­ing it will top 1.5 Trillion as ear­ly as 2015.
That’s 44 mil­lion peo­ple spend­ing a pro­ject­ed 1.5 Trillion dol­lars on con­sumer goods and ser­vices. Outpacing every oth­er demo­graph­ic group. Latinos being the clos­est in spending.

1. 

   Money cir­cu­lates zero to one time with­in the black com­mu­ni­ty, com­pared to the more than six times it cir­cu­lates in the Latino com­mu­ni­ty, nine times in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty, and an unlim­it­ed amount of times with­in the white com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

   Birdie Ross-Haith grew up patron­iz­ing black-owned busi­ness­es. A native Victorian, Ross-Haith said her par­ents empha­sized to her and her sib­lings the impor­tance of sup­port­ing the black com­mu­ni­ty by pur­chas­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices from peo­ple who looked like them. As an adult with a busi­ness of her own, how­ev­er, Ross-Haith said that mind-set has seem­ing­ly fall­en by the way­side. “That’s what’s wrong with the black cul­ture now. They don’t try to help each oth­er,” said Ross-Haith, co-own­er of B&B Handbags. “(Black shop­pers) would come and look but nev­er buy. Ross-Haith’s state­ments come on the heels of recent­ly released data that reports black buying

   

   pow­er has increased from $957.3 bil­lion in 2010 to an expect­ed $1.1 tril­lion by 2015. Although this data from the State of the African-American Consumer Report reflects a pos­i­tive growth in blacks’ dis­pos­able income, the grow­ing fail­ure of blacks to do sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness with oth­er blacks casts a dark shad­ow over the news.”(Victoriaadvocate​.com.

   The sad real­i­ty is there is no end in sight blacks earn more and spend more. As is evi­denced by sur­vey after sur­vey, met­ric after met­ric, The black com­mu­ni­ty has made itself a well-lubri­cat­ed con­duit for mon­ey. No Nation can be pow­er­ful with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er. No peo­ple can be pow­er­ful with­out eco­nom­ic pow­er, Money.
   This Christmas as blacks march once again for jus­tice, they will put down their plac­ards and walk into Department stores plunk­ing down hun­dreds of mil­lions, if not bil­lions, on con­sumer goods and ser­vices many can ill afford.
   The unfor­tu­nate result is that very lit­tle, if any mea­sur­able per­cent­age of that expen­di­ture will find it’s way into black-owned businesses.

   The web­site (Blackmeinamerica reports

Black buy­ing pow­er con­tin­ues to increase, ris­ing from its cur­rent $1 tril­lion lev­els to a fore­cast­ed $1.3 tril­lion by 2017.

• Each year, African Americans spend more than $47 bil­lion on Lincoln auto­mo­biles, $3.7 bil­lion on alco­hol, $2.5 bil­lion on Toyotas, $2 bil­lion on ath­let­ic shoes, and $600 mil­lion each year on McDonald’s and oth­er fast foods, accord­ing to Target Market News Inc., a Chicago-based mar­ket­ing research group.

• Blacks also spend wild­ly to keep up their appear­ances. The black hair care and cos­met­ics indus­try counts as a $9 bil­lion a year busi­ness, but while African Americans are spend­ing the most, they are prof­it­ing the least, said offi­cials from the Black-Owned Beauty Supply Association (BOBSA) in Palo Alto, Calif. Beauty prod­uct lines designed for African Americans were once 100 per­cent owned and oper­at­ed by blacks, today oth­er eth­nic groups con­trol more than 70 per­cent of the market.
• The cur­rent home­own­er­ship rate reveals that 73.5 per­cent of whites own homes while approx­i­mate­ly 43.9 per­cent of African Americans are home­own­ers, accord­ing to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies State of the Nation report for 2013.

• Sixty per­cent of African Americans have less than $50,000 saved in com­pa­ny retire­ment plans and only 23 per­cent have more than $100,000. https://​bmia​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​1​1​/​0​5​/​h​o​w​-​d​o​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​s​p​e​n​d​-​5​0​7​-​b​i​l​l​i​o​n​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​s​-​a​n​n​u​a​l​ly/.
• The loy­al­ty blacks have to their church also has proven cost­ly, said offi­cials at Faith Communities Today, a non­prof­it based in Hartford, Conn. A 2013 study revealed that black church­es have col­lect­ed more than $420 bil­lion in tithes and dona­tions nation­wide since 1980, an aver­age of $252 mil­lion a week.

• 

  black​amer​i​ca​.com The lat­ter part of the  report is par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive. An esti­mat­ed $252 mil­lion dol­lars week­ly paid in tithes and offerings.
  Yet how many Pastors teach/​preach self-empow­er­ment? How many even care where Parishioners get the mon­ey they demand in tithes and offerings?
  Even with­in a sin­gle con­gre­ga­tion how many black con­gre­gants own busi­ness­es? Do their sis­ters and broth­ers in Christ know of these busi­ness­es? Do they shop at stores owned by fel­low con­gre­gants? The answer is a resound­ing no.
  As some­one who has owned a small busi­ness for the past 13 years, I can attest to those real­i­ties. I have heard the full gamut, “I ain’t mak­ing them rich”.
  The longer you are in busi­ness the small­er the share of the black com­mu­ni­ty you get. There is a psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­con­nect which I will leave to the pro­fes­sion­als. Having been in busi­ness all these years I laugh at them, the only time some come in is when they do not have enough mon­ey. In which case they expect you to sell to them at a loss. Even when their pock­ets are filled with mon­ey they want to make sure you actu­al­ly lose mon­ey sell­ing to them. Not so when they buy from oth­er merchants.
  In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, they come sell­ing stolen items, or solic­it­ing mon­ey when their kids sell stuff from school. Purchasing items is a give­away as they nev­er return to deliv­er the item/​s pur­chased. Finally, they come ask­ing store own­ers to fund bas­ket­ball, foot­ball, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, even though they nev­er spent a sin­gle pen­ny with you.
  Is it any won­der that those from the black com­mu­ni­ty who strike it rich some­times give noth­ing to the community?
  There is noth­ing to give back, the black com­mu­ni­ty gave noth­ing to them.
  Those are the facts whether we want to face them or not. In far too many instances the only time blacks walk into a black busi­ness is with out­stretched arms look­ing for a handout.
  There is a dis­tinct and gen­er­al desire to see each oth­er fail. If black America is to move for­ward that men­tal­i­ty will have to change.

  for­ward that men­tal­i­ty will have to change.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.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.

Many want to believe President Barack Obama’s elec­tion and re-elec­tion meant the nation had reached some racial nir­vana where struc­tur­al inequities and racist atti­tudes were on the decline, Bond said. Not so, the 74-year-old for­mer NAACP chair­man told about 450 peo­ple at the Sarasota Democratic Party’s annu­al Kennedy-King fundrais­ing din­ner dur­ing a 45-minute speech.

“Indeed, there is some evi­dence that it foment­ed them,” Bond said of racist atti­tudes. “Obama is to the Tea Party as the moon is to werewolves.”

Bond assert­ed that the Tea Party does­n’t like Obama because of what he represents.

“They see the nation’s demo­graph­ics turn­ing them into a minor­i­ty and they don’t like it,” Bond said. “They say they want their coun­try back. And we ask, what was that coun­try like? In their coun­try I could­n’t eat at a lunch counter and also vote. These were not the good ol’ days for me. If the pres­i­dent rep­re­sents the end of the America they knew, I say good for him.”

Bond’s mes­sage to Democrats con­trast­ed sharply with U.S. Rep. Allen West’s in Sarasota just 11 days earlier.

At the Sarasota Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, West said that Democrats have repeat­ed­ly failed the black com­mu­ni­ty. He not­ed that the Democrats in the 1850s want­ed to con­tin­ue slav­ery and Democrats in the 1950s and ear­ly 1960s opposed the civ­il rights movement.

James Charles Evers (born September 11, 1922) is an impor­tant civ­il rights advo­cate in the United States. The old­er broth­er of civ­il rights mar­tyr Medgar Evers, Charles Evers is a lead­ing civ­il rights spokesman with­in the Republican Party in his native Mississippi. He was the first African American elect­ed since the Reconstruction era as may­or in a Mississippi city, in Fayette in 1969. He ran for gov­er­nor in 1971 and theUnited States Senate in 1978, both times as an inde­pen­dent. Born in Decatur, Mississippi, Evers had a strong, devout­ly Christian moth­er and father. During World War II, Charles and Medgar Evers both served in the U.S. Army. Charles fell in love with aFilipina woman over­seas. They could not mar­ry her and go to his native Mississippi because of her “white” skin col­or. Mississippi had enshrined Jim Crow rules in its con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­hib­it­ed inter­ra­cial mar­riages. In Mississippi about 1951, Charles and Medgar Evers grew inter­est­ed in African free­dom move­ments. They were inter­est­ed in Jomo Kenyatta and the rise of the Kikuyu trib­al resis­tance to colo­nial­ism in Kenya, known as the “Mau-Mau” Rebellion as it moved to open vio­lence. Along with his broth­er, Charles became active in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion that also pro­mot­ed self-help and busi­ness own­er­ship. He drew inspi­ra­tion from Dr. T.R.M. Howard, the pres­i­dent of the RCNL, who was one the wealth­i­est blacks in the state. Between 1952 and 1955, Evers often spoke at the RCNL’s annu­al con­fer­ences in Mound Bayou on such issues as vot­ing rights. Around 1956, Evers’s entre­pre­neur­ial gifts and his civ­il rights activism land­ed him in trou­ble inPhiladelphia, Mississippi. He left town and moved to Chicago. There, he vowed to sup­port the move­ment back home, and fell into a life of hus­tling, run­ning num­bers for the Mob, and man­ag­ing pros­ti­tutes. The mon­ey he made was said to have been sub­stan­tial, and much of it was sent back to help the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Byron De La Beckwith shot Medgar Evers as he arrived home from work. Evers died in an ambu­lance on the way to the hos­pi­tal. Charles Evers was shocked and deeply upset by news of his broth­er’s death. Over the oppo­si­tion of more estab­lish­ment fig­ures in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) like Roy Wilkins, Charles took over Medgar’s post as head of theNAACP in Mississippi.  https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Charles_Evers.html

Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote exten­sive­ly and was the best known spokesper­son for African-American rights dur­ing the first half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. He co-found­ed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, bet­ter known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. While grow­ing up in a most­ly European American town, W.E.B. Du Bois iden­ti­fied him­self as “mulat­to,” but freely attend­ed school with whites and was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ed in his aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies by his white teach­ers. In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encoun­tered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began ana­lyz­ing the deep trou­bles of American racism.

After earn­ing his bach­e­lor’s degree at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. He paid his way with mon­ey from sum­mer jobs, schol­ar­ships and loans from friends. After com­plet­ing his mas­ter’s degree, he was select­ed for a study-abroad pro­gram at the University of Berlin. While a pupil in Germany, he stud­ied with some of the most promi­nent social sci­en­tists of his day and was exposed to polit­i­cal per­spec­tives that he tout­ed for the remain­der of his life.Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, and went on to enroll as a doc­tor­al stu­dent at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität). (He would be award­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­al degree from Humboldt decades lat­er, in 1958.)http://​www​.biog​ra​phy​.com/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​w​e​b​-​d​u​-​b​o​i​s​-​9​2​7​9​924

Born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, Ralph D. Abernathy was a Baptist min­is­ter who, with Martin Luther King Jr., orga­nized the his­tor­i­cal Montgomery bus boy­cotts. He co-found­ed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a major civ­il rights fig­ure, serv­ing as close advis­er to King and lat­er assum­ing SCLC pres­i­den­cy. Later return­ing to the min­istry, Abernathy died on April 17, 1990, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Early Years

Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, the 10^th of 12 off­spring born to Louivery Abernathy and William Abernathy, a farmer and dea­con. Upon grad­u­at­ing from high school, Abernathy was draft­ed into the U.S. Army dur­ing World War II, sub­se­quent­ly leav­ing his fam­i­ly’s 500-acre farm.Following his mil­i­tary ser­vice, in 1948, Abernathy became an ordained min­is­ter while pur­su­ing his edu­ca­tion. He earned a math­e­mat­ics degree from Alabama State College in 1950, and received a mas­ter’s degree in soci­ol­o­gy from Atlanta University the fol­low­ing year. He then became pas­tor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery and dean of stu­dents at Alabama State. He also mar­ried Juanita Odessa Jones; the two would have four chil­dren togeth­er. http://​www​.biog​ra​phy​.com/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​r​a​l​p​h​-​d​-​a​b​e​r​n​a​t​h​y​-​9​1​7​4​397

Joseph Lowery was born on October 6, 1921, in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1952, he became pas­tor for the Warren Street United Methodist Church in Mobile. There, he helped launch a dri­ve to end dis­crim­i­na­tion in Mobile. In 1957, Lowery helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1968, he became the SCLC’s chair­man. After retir­ing, he con­tin­ued to fight against social injustice.“Work for that day … when jus­tice will roll down like waters and right­eous­ness as a mighty stream.”

Early Life

Born Joseph Echols Lowery on October 6, 1921, (some sources say 1924) in Huntsville, Alabama. For more than 50 years, Reverend Joseph Lowery has fought against prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion on behalf of the African-American com­mu­ni­ty. He earned him­self the nick­name the “dean of the civ­il rights move­ment.” Lowery, the son of a teacher and a busi­ness­man, grew up in the seg­re­gat­ed South. He knew first­hand the hard­ships and cru­el­ty that many African-Americans expe­ri­enced. At the age of 12, Lowery was beat­en by a white police offi­cer after he acci­den­tal­ly bumped into the law enforce­ment offi­cial. He grad­u­at­ed from high school in 1939 and then stud­ied at sev­er­al col­leges, includ­ing Wayne State University and Knoxville College. After com­plet­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, Lowery fol­lowed a spir­i­tu­al call­ing. He grad­u­at­ed from the Chicago Ecumenical Institute in 1950 with a doc­tor­ate in divinity.

Civil Rights Career

An ordained Methodist min­is­ter, Lowery returned to Alabama in 1952 to serve as pas­tor for the Warren Street United Methodist Church in Mobile. There, he became active in the emerg­ing civ­il rights move­ment. Inspired by the resis­tance shown regard­ing the seg­re­gat­ed bus­ing sys­tem in Montgomery, Lowery helped launch a dri­ve to end the same dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices in Mobile.

In 1957, Lowery worked with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and oth­ers to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became the orga­ni­za­tion’s vice pres­i­dent and helped the group with its efforts to fight for equal­i­ty through non­vi­o­lent actions. Lowery stayed true to his con­vic­tions at a great per­son­al cost at times.

He and sev­er­al mem­bers of the SCLC were sued for libel by a Montgomery com­mis­sion­er because of a 1960 news­pa­per ad that made cri­tiques of the city’s police depart­ment. Lowery’s assets were seized when the court ruled against the SCLC mem­bers. They appealed the case, which was final­ly over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964. http://​www​.biog​ra​phy​.com/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​j​o​s​e​p​h​-​l​o​w​e​r​y​-​1​1​388