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They Are Easily Identified…

There is a cer­tain unmis­tak­able look to them, even though there are oth­ers who wear suits, or look dif­fer­ent­ly, but are just as tox­ic. They range from old­er to mid­dle-aged and even younger, they are some­times tat­tooed and wear sleeve­less shirts.
They gen­er­al­ly have some para­pher­na­lia on their cloth­ing that mim­ics the col­ors of the American flag.
They are usu­al­ly loud, obnox­ious, pro­fuse­ly igno­rant, and there­fore very dan­ger­ous­ly vio­lent.
Many of them are avid motor­cy­clists, they gen­er­al­ly have long rap sheets, oth­ers, not so much, because, despite their lives of crime, the sys­tem ignores them and tar­gets inno­cent Blacks instead.
They pre­tend to be the most patri­ot­ic Americans by the para­pher­na­lia with which they adorn them­selves, and from their mil­i­tary ser­vice, even though not all of them served in the mil­i­tary.
They vote straight Republican, (as you may know they hate the Democratic par­ty for sign­ing the civ­il and vot­ing rights acts into law). They are the least of Americans based on their sup­port for the con­fed­er­a­cy and Naziism, two ide­olo­gies that real Americans rose up against and defeated.

Confederate General Gen. Braxton Bragg, for whom one of the Army’s largest bases, (Fort Bragg) out­side Fayetteville, North Carolina was named.
“These men were, by def­i­n­i­tion, trai­tors who had con­duct­ed war against the United States,” said Newcity, deputy direc­tor for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Duke University.
Nevertheless, there is a whole slew of mil­i­tary bases scat­tered around the coun­try named after these trai­tors, at the same time, there are count­less stat­ues and edi­fices that have been con­struct­ed, not just in the South but all across the coun­try, com­mem­o­rat­ing these trai­tors who took up arms against America and were ulti­mate­ly defeated.



Today they copy the look of the past, and their intent is the same. Un-American, vio­lent, deter­mined to use all means avail­able to them to cre­ate a white eth­no­log­i­cal state.
The prob­lem for Americans not with this tox­ic ide­ol­o­gy, is that when the gov­ern­ment finds com­mon cause with these crim­i­nals there is rea­son to be scared for the future of the coun­try.
When they are parts of the police depart­ments and occu­py all lev­els of gov­ern­ment all the way to the very top, it is time to break the glass and grab the hose.
Many are active mem­bers of the sundry vio­lent mili­tia groups oper­at­ing across the coun­try. They have mur­dered inno­cent Americans, using guns, bombs, auto­mo­biles, and oth­er weapon­ry, yet there seems to be a gen­er­al sense of tol­er­ance for their crimes.
It is any­one’s guess whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has a full appre­ci­a­tion of the threat they pose or even cares to know.
They pre­tend to sup­port the Police, but their sup­port for law enforce­ment only goes to the extent that law enforce­ment acts as a tool of oppres­sion against black peo­ple. And yes, many police offi­cers are mem­bers of those vio­lent hate groups. 

Don't assume the militias at the Charlottesville rally were white ...


The shock­ing real­i­ty is that despite the crimes these white suprema­cists groups com­mit, and despite the exis­ten­tial threat they rep­re­sent as far as the gov­ern­ment is con­cerned, it is busi­ness as usu­al.
America’s code­pen­dent, weird rela­tion­ship with the far-right ide­olo­gies that embrace Nazism and the for­mer con­fed­er­a­cy, must be viewed with­in the frame­work of those forces endgame, which as I said before is the cre­ation of a white eth­nos­tate, and the con­tin­u­a­tion of white suprema­cy.
So, though there may be those who do not nec­es­sar­i­ly embrace Nazism or even the for­mer Confederacy, the fact that these neo-Nazi, fas­cist groups embrace the idea of con­tin­ued white priv­i­lege, they give them tac­it sup­port, or at the very least, they remain silent about them. 

Understanding that brings the sup­port white peo­ple gives to police into sharp­er focus.
There are more whites mur­dered by vio­lent out of con­trol police, how­ev­er, based on Black’s numer­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the pop­u­la­tion, they are killed at a more alarm­ing rate than any oth­er group.
Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, white peo­ple would be up in arms over the unlaw­ful killing of their own peo­ple. Police depart­ments would have been abol­ished, defund­ed, and new and more cit­i­zen-cen­tric mea­sures put in place to deal with com­mu­ni­ty demands.
Because police are killing Blacks at the rate they are, and because it serves cer­tain racists ends, then those white peo­ple, (usu­al­ly men) who end up dead at the hands of police, are accept­ed as col­lat­er­al damage.



Regardless of what you are told, American polic­ing came out of slave patrols. Slaveholders did not care how bru­tal­ly run­away slaves were treat­ed when they were caught by the rag­tag mur­der­ers who made up those slave-patrols.
They want­ed them beat­en and muti­lat­ed so bad­ly that no oth­er slave would ever dare con­sid­er run­ning away in the future. Nevertheless, they were still prop­er­ty, and so giv­en the choice of keep­ing them alive or hav­ing them killed, they would rather have the egre­gious­ly muti­lat­ed run­aways alive to con­tin­ue work­ing their plan­ta­tions than dead.
In the process of recap­tur­ing a run­away, the mur­der­ing scum some­times killed them, but the plan­ta­tion own­ers were not about to hold them account­able even though he had lost his prop­er­ty.
The fact that run­aways were caught, and killed was les­son enough to scare the oth­ers, bring­ing them in alive was the icing on the cake.
The plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty still per­vades American soci­ety today.
“Sure, the police may kill some black peo­ple in ways that raise eye­brows, but the larg­er strat­e­gy of using police to keep blacks in their place is what’s impor­tant, so we sup­port our police”.

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

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Black Man Who Was An Avid Trump Supporter Killed Execution-Style In Milwaukee

Bernell Trammell, a 60-year old Black man who was known in his com­mu­ni­ty for his sup­port of Donald Trump, was report­ed­ly shot and killed in front of his store. The police are still search­ing for the shoot­er.
According to author­i­ties, the inci­dent hap­pened while Trammell was sit­ting on the side­walk of his pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny.
An unknown shoot­er then gunned him down execution-style.

Trammell, who owned a pub­li­ca­tion called eXpressions Journal, was a known polit­i­cal activist and Trump sup­port­er. He also advo­cat­ed for the Black Lives Matter move­ment.
“Because of Trammell’s well-known polit­i­cal activism and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that his mur­der could be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, I respect­ful­ly request that United States Attorney Matthew Krueger open an inves­ti­ga­tion,” Andrew Hitt, chair­man of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Meanwhile, no sus­pect has been in police cus­tody since the shoot­ing incident.

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Republican Assaults On The 15th Amendment To The Constitution Unconstitutional, Un-American.

In the sense that Democracy is defined by the American con­struct, the United States of America is the world’s old­est Democracy.
Credible his­to­ri­ans will have some­thing to say about the verac­i­ty of that asser­tion con­sid­er­ing that Africans were the first known peo­ple to engage in par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems of debate and prob­lem solv­ing, through dia­logue and dis­cus­sions through estab­lished tiered lev­els which con­sist­ed of chief­tains and elders.
Fast for­ward to recent times, and much of the world has embraced American Democracy, lit­er­al­ly split­ting our plan­et into two camps, one that prac­tices and strug­gles to adhere to the west­ern con­cept of Democracy and the oth­er that prac­tices and forces oth­ers to adhere to strict author­i­tar­i­an systems.


The west­ern world fought two world wars, with America at the tip of the spear of both wars. America stood up to the Soviet com­mu­nist pos­ture, ensur­ing that the world was spared being engulfed in the dark throes of com­mu­nist dom­i­na­tion.
America waged overt wars in Korea, in Vietnam, in Grenada, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Latin America, and count­less covert wars across the globe all in the name of ensur­ing and advanc­ing democ­ra­cy.
The most fun­da­men­tal build­ing block in the con­cept of democ­ra­cy is the fun­da­men­tal right that each cit­i­zen has to vote for lead­ers they want to rep­re­sent them.
(Democracy is not a stamped idea on a sheet of paper. It is a con­cept that has to be replen­ished, and authen­ti­cat­ed dai­ly. It requires that every cit­i­zen share equal­ly in a sys­tem of just & equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice.
Failing which, the very con­cept becomes emp­ty words that evoke anger rather than inspire hope).
As America con­tin­ues on its search for the elu­sive truth of full democ­ra­cy, inher­ent in her very foun­da­tions are built in anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ele­ments that con­tin­ue to eat away and weak­en the very foun­da­tion of this great bea­con.
Unless America finds a way to final­ly and con­clu­sive­ly eschew hatred and divi­sive­ness, those vices will destroy the very foun­da­tion of this poten­tial demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.

The ideals enshrined in the accept­ed con­cept of what democ­ra­cy is, is that all who qual­i­fy should vote. That has been an elu­sive con­cept to America.
Despite the protes­ta­tions of excep­tion­al­ism and great­ness, America strug­gles might­i­ly to live up to her own creed that all men are cre­at­ed equal.
Seeking to pre­vent law­ful cit­i­zens from vot­ing, and con­spir­ing to pre­vent those who have paid their debt to soci­ety from doing so, are some of the most despi­ca­ble and cow­ard­ly acts politi­cians could sup­port. they are also uncon­sti­tu­tion­al acts.
When your pol­i­tics are so offen­sive that your only hope is to keep peo­ple from the polls, you are a com­mon thug and worse than a tin-pan dictator.

In some states, Republican offi­cials closed hun­dreds of polling sites. Recently, in Milwaukee, well over a hun­dred polling sites were closed by Republicans, only five sites were left open, sub­ject­ing tens of thou­sands of vot­ers to stand in line for up to eight hours in order to cast their votes.
Those bla­tant acts of vot­er sup­pres­sion were car­ried out only in areas that are heav­i­ly African-American.
In Native-American com­mu­ni­ties, there are reports that peo­ple are forced to dri­ve miles out­side their com­mu­ni­ties to cast a vote.
Voters attest­ed that none of those con­di­tions exist­ed in white sub­urbs that gen­er­al­ly sup­port Republican can­di­dates.
Republican elect­ed offi­cials may not be killing blacks as the try to vote, but they have found a litany of ways to ensure that few­er African-Americans have access to the polls.
Those are clear and unequiv­o­cal vio­la­tions of the 15th amend­ment to the US constitution.


They are not requir­ing black Americans to guess cor­rect­ly how many jelly­beans are in a jar nowa­days. No, they are not ask­ing them ques­tions even they do not know the answers to, what they are doing is just as bad, and in many cas­es far worse.
Donald Trump has been wag­ing sur­gi­cal war­fare against the right to vote, he has essen­tial­ly embarked on a process of lying about vot­er fraud that even a kan­ga­roo com­mis­sion he set up after he entered the white house could not val­i­date.
He has used his twit­ter account to demo­nize mail-in vot­ing in an effort to cast doubt on the upcom­ing elec­tion results. Never mind that there is zero evi­dence of fraud in mail-in vot­ing, out­side of Trump’s Putin-esque lies.
Donald Trump is quite pre­pared to have anoth­er civ­il war of his cre­ation by sow­ing lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion about the valid­i­ty of the elec­tion results than lose the elec­tion.
Donald Trump votes by mail, by that account Donald Trump’s vote is fraud­u­lent. Donald Trump igno­rant­ly states that he is a sup­port­er of absen­tee vot­ing, the poor idiot still has not grasped that there is no dif­fer­ence between the two.
On the one hand, he is using social media and right-wing media to con­tin­ue a lie that vot­ing by mail will be fraught with mas­sive cor­rup­tion.
Arguably, there is zero evi­dence that there is a scin­til­la of truth to this lie, but this seems to be what Vladamir Putin urged him to do to stay in pow­er.
Trump-appoint­ed one of his hench­men to the post of Postmaster General, that hack is Louis DeJoy. 
Louis Dejoy has been tasked with slow­ing down all aspects of the postal ser­vice to ensure that the agency will not be able to cope with the mas­sive amount of mail-in bal­lots come nation­al elections.

As part of that sab­o­tage, Trump and his min­ions have done away with over­time work, effec­tive­ly ensur­ing that there will be a back­log, and most of all, mas­sive chaos that will throw the results of the upcom­ing elec­tions in doubt.
If and when that hap­pens, Trump will then say he warned that the elec­tions would be the most cor­rupt in his­to­ry as he has con­sis­tent­ly tried to do to cre­ate doubt in the elec­tion process.
The tragedy is that his unin­tel­li­gent sup­port­ers are too stu­pid to see the lies.
In order for the elec­tions to be [rigged] as he lied in his state­ments, fifty (50) states, Republican & Democrats would have to con­spire to do so as American pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are all state events that are held inde­pen­dent­ly of each other.


“These changes are hap­pen­ing because there’s a White House agen­da to pri­va­tize and sell off the pub­lic Postal Service,” said Mark Dimondstein, pres­i­dent of the American Postal Workers Union. “But there’s too much approval for the orga­ni­za­tion right now. They want to sep­a­rate the ser­vice from the peo­ple and then degrade it to the point where peo­ple aren’t going to like it any­more.”
Many peo­ple warned that Donald Trump would try to change the date of the elec­tion. This writer under­stood that Donald Trump had no pow­er to change the date of the elec­tion, nev­er­the­less, he has the pow­er to use the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy to cre­ate such sit­u­a­tions that fright­en the pub­lic, there­after declar­ing that free and fair elec­tions can­not be held.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Fascism.
He has already sug­gest­ed that the elec­tions be post­poned, despite the fact that elec­tions have been held dur­ing the civ­il war, dur­ing all kinds of upheavals.
He has poured fed­er­al thugs into the Democratic-run city of Portland Oregon. He has threat­ened to send oth­ers to Chicago, New York, and oth­er cities run by Democrats to insti­gate and stir up vio­lence, he then points to the pitch bat­tles between his cam­ou­flaged Gestapo and pro­tes­tors and argues that he will be a pres­i­dent to restore law and order.
The sad irony is that all of these things are hap­pen­ing under Donald Trump’s lead­er­ship. Why would Donald Trump be giv­en a sec­ond term to enact Vladimir Putin’s agen­da any further?


South Carolina’s state leg­is­la­ture in 2013, imposed a range of vot­ing restric­tions, includ­ing the new vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments. It was part of a wave of vot­ing restric­tions enact­ed after a 5‑to‑4 Supreme Court deci­sion that effec­tive­ly struck down a cen­tral part of the fed­er­al Voting Rights Act, weak­en­ing fed­er­al over­sight of vot­ing rights.
Civil Rights groups and the Obama Administration filed suit and a.
A tri­al judge reject­ed argu­ments that the law vio­lat­ed the Constitution and what remained of the Voting Rights Act. But a three-judge pan­el of the appeals court dis­agreed.
The appeals court rul­ing struck down five parts of the law: its vot­er ID require­ments, a roll­back of ear­ly vot­ing to 10 days from 17, an elim­i­na­tion of same-day reg­is­tra­tion and of pre­reg­is­tra­tion of some teenagers, and its ban on count­ing votes cast in the wrong precinct.
The court found that all five restric­tions “dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed African-Americans.” The law’s vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vi­sion, for instance, “retained only those types of pho­to ID dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by whites and exclud­ed those dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by African-Americans.”(NYT)
The court not­ed that the law went after African-Americans with sur­gi­cal precision.



The Republican Party con­tin­ues to try to pull the wool over the eyes of its white sup­port­ers, and sad­ly there are some Blacks who are fooled as well into believ­ing that the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, the par­ty that reluc­tant­ly signed the Emancipation Declaration, is the same par­ty of today.
Conversely, they want the nation to believe that the racist Democratic par­ty of the Confederacy, is the Democratic Party of today.
Like two ships pass­ing in the night, so has the two polit­i­cal par­ties essen­tial­ly swapped ide­olo­gies begin­ning in the 1960s after the sign­ing of the Civil & Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s.

The Republican par­ty and it’s fake pres­i­dent all across the coun­try have ramped up attacks on vot­ing rights, begin­ning with the Supreme Court’s uncon­scionable and inex­plic­a­ble attack on the act.
The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder struck down Section 4(b), of the act, which set out the for­mu­la for deter­min­ing which states are sub­ject to the Section 5 pre­clear­ance require­ment, thus ren­der­ing Section 5 — which many con­sid­er the heart of the act — mean­ing­less.
After sign­ing the Act, Southern Democratic President Lyndon Johnson declared the sign­ing “a tri­umph for free­dom as huge as any vic­to­ry that has ever been won on any bat­tle­field.” [adapt­ed]
The leg­is­la­tion was meant to enforce the 15th Amendment, which almost a cen­tu­ry before, pro­vid­ed that “The right of U.S. cit­i­zens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.”
How about that 15th Amendment to the US Constitution?
Republican lead­ers across America, par­tic­u­lar­ly in states run by them
claim to be patri­ots, they wrap them­selves in the American flag and feign patri­o­tism when it suits them. However, they con­ve­nient­ly vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions of all Americans when they feel threat­ened elec­toral­ly.
Worse, when white suprema­cy is at risk at the bal­lot box.

There was no need for the high court to do any­thing to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder.
This was set­tled law that ought to have been left stand­ing. The con­cept of (stare deci­sis) Let the deci­sion stand was com­plete­ly thrown out, and inex­plic­a­bly, the rul­ing was that the law worked so well that it was no longer need­ed.
Ari Berman of the nation called the rul­ing a (the return of jim crow). Gilda Daniels | University of Baltimore School of Law, (pre­pare for the trash­ing of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process). Gerry Hebert | Campaign Legal Center,(a rad­i­cal act of judi­cial activism). Spencer Overton | Demos,(a set­back for democ­ra­cy). Paul M. Smith | Jenner & Block LLP,(open sea­son for vot­er id laws).
How about that Supreme Court inter­pret­ing the con­sti­tu­tion and rul­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of laws?
How about that John Roberts and his con­ser­v­a­tive activist col­leagues on the court [call­ing balls and strikes]?

Demonizing mail-in bal­lots, reduc­ing the Post Office’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er bal­lots in a time­ly fash­ion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embark­ing on a mas­sive clo­sure of vot­ing sites in minor­i­ty areas, is a strat­e­gy Trump has for steal­ing the next elec­tions.
It is hap­pen­ing right out in the open. Democrats must find ways to get their vot­ers to vote ear­ly there­by reduc­ing the need for those long lines on elec­tion day.

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

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Rest Well John Lewis, Your Job Here Is Done…

Barack Obama blasts Trump at the funer­al of John Lewis , lash­ing out at those work hard to stop Africa-Americans from voting.

John Lewis

President Barack Obama eulo­giz­ing his friend John Lewis

President Bush speak­ing at John Lewis’ funer­al service.
President Bill Clinton speak­ing at John Lewis’ funer­al service

Laying in state at the capi­tol rotunda
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Ignorant Racist & Mask Skeptic Louie Gohmert Tests Positive For COVID-19…

One of the most anti-mask mem­bers of Congress, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Gohmert was sched­uled to trav­el to Texas with President Donald Trump and got a pos­i­tive result after tak­ing a test at the White House.

Gohmert told CNN last month that he would only start wear­ing a mask reg­u­lar­ly if and when he con­tract­ed COVID-19. According to that CNN report, Gohmert “spends ample time on the House floor not wear­ing a mask, often talk­ing with aides and law­mak­ers at length while not main­tain­ing a social dis­tance.” In recent weeks, the icon­o­clas­tic Texan has been in the news for bang­ing on his desk (while not wear­ing a mask) in an effort to inter­rupt a con­gres­sion­al wit­ness and defend­ing sup­port­ers of his who took part in fights (while them­selves not wear­ing masks) at an event being held by the Democrat run­ning against him in November. On Tuesday, Gohmert’s chief of staff used Facebook to post an alter­nate link to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry video in which a doc­tor who has espoused bizarre beliefs regard­ing demon sperm and alien DNA argued that mask usage is unnec­es­sary. (Both Facebook and Twitter have attempt­ed to remove the video from cir­cu­la­tion on their plat­forms.)
Read more below.

https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​7​/​c​o​n​g​r​e​s​s​-​m​a​s​k​-​s​k​e​p​t​i​c​-​l​o​u​i​e​-​g​o​h​m​e​r​t​-​t​e​s​t​s​-​p​o​s​i​t​i​v​e​-​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​.​h​tml
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Herman Caine’s Passing Should Be A Lesson To Black Skeptics…

It is remark­able when com­mon sense is shunt­ed to the side in order to make way for the absur­di­ty of ridicu­lous polit­i­cal the­ater.
But such is the time in which we now live, truth and hon­esty are vices to be shunned. Lies and dis­tor­tions trea­sured arti­facts.
Such was the case when Herman Caine, mis­ter 999 flat tax, sin­gle-issue for­mer Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date decid­ed to fol­low the Trump cam­paign of deceit and lies, by attend­ing Trump’s dis­as­trous June 20th ral­ly in Tulsa.
Eight mem­bers of Trump’s advance team test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus and his cam­paign staff had to self-iso­late after­ward in case of infec­tion.


Death is the great equal­iz­er, no one can claim vic­to­ry at the death of anoth­er, we are all sched­uled to die.
However, Herman Caine made a con­scious deci­sion to engage in that the­ater of the absurd, and it cost him the most pre­cious gift he was giv­en, his life.
I will not ven­ture to sug­gest that had he stayed home he would have been alive today, I believe our per­son­al­i­ty traits, the things we believe and engage in are all parts of what will ulti­mate­ly lead to how we leave this world.
Nevertheless, his pass­ing ought to be a warn­ing to the skep­tics who would dis­card the con­clu­sive find­ings of sci­ence on the altar of the inane and retarded.

This virus has killed hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple around the world and sick­ened mil­lions. This is no ordi­nary flu as some would have you believe.
Even though the peo­ple we put our trust in, in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty may not deserve most of it, still, we must respect the sci­ence and heed the warn­ings.
Black peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar, with our com­pro­mised immune sys­tems have a duty to exer­cise care.
When we fail to exer­cise care, the results are usu­al­ly swift and clear.

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

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New INDECOM Head Should Be Under No Illusions About Replicating Williams’ Harm…

We are cred­i­bly informed that Hugh Faulkner has been sworn in to replace Terrence Williams as the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM.
As most of you know, Terrence Williams was the first com­mis­sion­er to be appoint­ed to head the new agency after the Act was autho­rized in the Island’s par­lia­ment in 2010.
Williams served the first term and was appoint­ed to a sec­ond, but opt­ed to leave ear­ly, sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ing space for a new com­mis­sion­er to replace him.
[Faulkner was the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Legal Aid Council and has served on sev­er­al boards and tri­bunals includ­ing the Board of the Mico University College, the Toll Authority, Jamaica Mortgage Bank, Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica]. (source, Jamaica Gleaner)

Bruce Golding

Terrence Williams’ tenure has been fraught with ten­sions between INDECOM and the JCF, and the JDF, two of three arms of gov­ern­ment, his agency is man­dat­ed to give over­sight to. The oth­er is the Corrections depart­ment.
Willimas’ tenure may only be summed up as a mis­placed belief that over­sight is syn­ony­mous with adver­sar­i­al.
There has been no mixed bag about Terrence Williams’ tenure as the head of INDECOM, there is no fac­tu­al basis on which to arrive at any oth­er con­clu­sion than to con­clude that his tenure has been a colos­sal fail­ure.
Williams and his sup­port­ers point to few­er police shoot­ings as a mea­sure of what they per­ceive to be a [suc­cess].
The harsh real­i­ty, is that many police offi­cers walked away from doing their jobs because of the con­fronta­tion­al and antag­o­nis­tic nature of Williams’ and INDECOM, the per­se­cu­tion he embarked on, accus­ing offi­cers of wrong­do­ing in cas­es where they were only doing their jobs.
As a result, Terrence Williams’ record as head of INDECOM has pro­duced far less pos­i­tive results than the CCRB was before the INDECOM act was autho­rized. Crime has increased expo­nen­tial­ly, includ­ing vio­lent crimes and thou­sands of Jamaicans have lost their lives need­less­ly as a con­se­quence of his tenure.
Though crime can­not rea­son­ably be laid sole­ly at the feet of INDECOM or Williams for that mat­ter, Williams’ acrony­mous rela­tion­ship, and his will­ing­ness to per­se­cute police offi­cers has lent itself to a mas­sive embold­en­ing of crim­i­nals in the coun­try, some­thing the Island will pay dear­ly for, long after Terrence Williams’ name is for­got­ten.
If the idea was to have thou­sands more inno­cent Jamaicans slaugh­tered need­less­ly, the coun­try over­run with more crim­i­nal­i­ty, and few­er mur­der­ers held account­able, then Terrence Williams and INDECOM have been a success.

Carolyn Gomes

Terrence Williams start­ed by enter­ing into an unholy alliance with Carolyn Gomes of JFJ, a rabid­ly anti-police group large­ly fund­ed by for­eign-inter­est, that start­ed oper­at­ing in Jamaica around the mid to late ’90s.
Gomez, a pedi­atric doc­tor seemed to have a vendet­ta against the police and she waged a relent­less cam­paign against the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency, with the silent acqui­es­cence of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
In the end, kar­ma had its way and Gomes was revealed to the Jamaican peo­ple and like a puff of smoke, Gomes dis­ap­peared with the wind.
At the time that the INDECOM act was cob­bled togeth­er under the infa­mous and abbre­vi­at­ed admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding, they knew full well that Terrence Williams was an ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sis­tic Don Quixote with an agen­da against the police, but that was the per­son Golding, his par­ty and their PNP co-sign­ers wanted.

Terrence Williams

Terrence Williams’s tenure as the head of INDECOM must be remem­bered truth­ful­ly as a dis­mal fail­ure, that should nev­er be repli­cat­ed. It was one fraught with fights with oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies at a time when he ought to have been build­ing bridges in order to achieve suc­cess for the Jamaican peo­ple.
Continued media pos­tur­ing, court fights, cat­fight­ing, and shame­ful demand for more pow­er instead of doing the job he was paid to do was all that Terrence Williams gave Jamaica.
In the end, thou­sands of Jamaicans died who should nev­er have died.
Finally, the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple began to wake up to the harm INDECOM has been doing and their inter­est in the agency began to wane.
The JCF, JDF, & Corrections should have inde­pen­dent over­sight of their oper­a­tion. No agency that is giv­en such awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death should be allowed to inves­ti­gate itself any­more.
Nevertheless, the inves­ti­gat­ing agency should be fair, impar­tial, and sin­gu­lar­ly sole­ly focused on get­ting to the truth.
Terrence Williams shred­ded INDECOM’s mis­sion from the start, it is any­one’s guess whether this [new fel­low] will be able to resus­ci­tate that bad­ly dam­aged image.

Portia Simpson Miller

Is he anoth­er polit­i­cal flunky with an agen­da, is he focused on the task at hand, or is he there to pon­tif­i­cate on the tax­pay­er’s dime?
We will with­hold judg­ment, but as we warned about Williams, and kept his feet to the fire while the nation slept, so too will [this fel­low] be under the micro­scope, good or bad.

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

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Isat Buchanan’s Story Not About Rehabilitation, It Is About The Serious Downgrading Of Standards…

One of the things that I have writ­ten about over the years is the dan­ger inher­ent in allow­ing the inmates to run the asy­lum.
Whenever I invoke the inher­ent dan­ger in that idea, I always do so in a metaphor­i­cal sense.
Unfortunately, today we are at the place where the inmates are lit­er­al­ly run­ning the asy­lum. We are in trou­ble.
Societies are made up of indi­vid­ual homes; the val­ues we teach our chil­dren and those that we adhere to in our indi­vid­ual homes will inex­orably deter­mine the qual­i­ty of the broad­er soci­ety in which we live.
As I wrote recent­ly, I grew up in a Christian Conservative home in rur­al North East Saint Catherine.
In that home, it was God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try, in that order. As a child grow­ing up, I did not know any­one who had been to prison except a cousin who was arrest­ed for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na.
Not many Jamaicans can claim those val­ues today. As a con­se­quence, the soci­etal ills we are wit­ness­ing today may be traced right back to the break­down of the rules, and the relax­ing of stan­dards, under new and con­trived meth­ods of oper­a­tion, many of which have been derived from [for­eign] coun­tries.
It is a slip­pery slope when we not only relax estab­lished rules but throw out tried and proven norms and replace them with new and fash­ion­able ones. Once the Genie is out of the bot­tle, there is no putting it back in.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​d​e​l​r​o​y​-​c​h​u​c​k​s​-​s​y​s​t​e​m​a​t​i​c​-​c​a​m​p​a​i​g​n​-​t​o​-​e​m​p​o​w​e​r​-​a​n​d​-​h​e​l​p​-​c​r​i​m​i​n​a​l​s​-​i​s​-​s​h​o​c​k​i​ng/

In a recent inter­view giv­en to a Radio Jamaica evening pro­gram, [Attorney] Isat Buchanan, in mak­ing a case for indi­vid­u­als detained under the emer­gency pow­ers giv­en the secu­ri­ty forces as a con­se­quence of the inor­di­nate­ly high crime rate, derid­ed and broad-brushed the entire Jamaica Constabulary Force as, quote; (une­d­u­cat­ed with five CXC sub­jects”).
The learned Attorney made no dis­tinc­tion as to whether he was speak­ing of a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual offi­cer when he made those incen­di­ary and dis­re­spect­ful com­ments.
What the [learned Attorney] also did to demon­strate to the coun­try that the colo­nial­ists’ men­tal­i­ty that has char­ac­ter­ized Jamaica since its inde­pen­dence and has con­tin­ued the caste sys­tem to the present-day is alive and well.
That edu­ca­tion would be viewed as con­fined to degrees ver­i­fied by a piece of paper, by this [learned attor­ney] and pro­fes­sor, is proof that we should con­sid­er the very mean­ing of the word [learned]. That we still have a long way to go in under­stand­ing how soci­eties work.
The very tropes that are at the cen­ter of Buchanan’s unlearned tirade have been at the very heart of the ills from which he has been extri­cat­ed and allowed to sit. Buchanan’s sto­ry is one that should nev­er have been pos­si­ble, but the rules were relaxed, the stan­dards low­ered, and the gates opened to allow a dish­tow­el to become a tablecloth…

Over the years, I have point­ed to the dam­age being done across the entire Caribbean region by the University Of The West Indies, the far left-lean­ing out-of-con­trol lib­er­al cesspool of pro­pa­gan­da and elit­ism.
[Isat Buchanan] leaned into the police depart­ment.
“The uncon­sti­tu­tion­al aspect, to put it in lay­man’s terms, is that the min­is­ter is not allowed to twid­dle his thumbs or drink his cof­fee and decide who will I detain today and who will I say can nev­er go home until I say so. The con­sti­tu­tion, as you know, is the don of all dons…what was cer­tain­ly put before the court today and the deci­sion of the court is that you can­not arbi­trar­i­ly take away the lib­er­ty of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try because you are act­ing on the whim of une­d­u­cat­ed police offi­cers with their five CXC sub­jects — unac­cept­able, and I am very unapolo­getic about say­ing that, because all the infor­ma­tion that the min­is­ter flicks with his pen comes from the foot sol­diers who some­times have per­son­al vendet­tas against these young men, and we can­not turn ordi­nary men and women into crim­i­nals. That is not what the drafters of our con­sti­tu­tion, the Charter of Rights, which is recent, would have envi­sioned.” 

One of the things that have changed over the last sev­er­al years is that the old tropes and dog-whis­tles that once were lever­aged against the JCF can no longer be used with any degree of truth. Sure there are dumb cops, dumb doc­tors, dumb politi­cians, and dumb teach­ers’ and we all know that there are dumb lawyers. Isat Buchanan had no oblig­a­tion to con­vince us.
In response to Buchanan’s igno­rance, the head of the Police Officers Association, Senior Superintendent Wayne Cameron, shot back.
“No con­vict­ed felon has the moral author­i­ty to refer to the police as une­d­u­cat­ed.”
“We have mem­bers of the JCF who are lawyers. We have mem­bers with PhDs. We have lawyers at var­i­ous ranks, from con­sta­ble to deputy com­mis­sion­er of police. Any police­man in the coun­try today can make the deci­sion to go to law school once he or she sat­is­fies the pre­req­ui­sites… I dare Mr. Buchanan to join the JCF because no one with a crim­i­nal record can be enlist­ed in the Jamaica Constabulary Force. No indi­vid­ual, irre­spec­tive of your sta­tus in life in this coun­try. It does­n’t mat­ter. You can­not become a mem­ber of the Jamaica Constabulary Force with a crim­i­nal record, so he can­not become a police offi­cer. We can join the legal fra­ter­ni­ty any day,” SSP Cameron said. “Yes, he has angered some per­sons here. He said he was unapolo­getic about it, and we are unapolo­getic about any­thing we are say­ing now.”

Shots fired, haha­ha, I love this JCF; this is the part of the JCF that I fought and lob­bied for dur­ing my short tenure; this is the JCF I fight for today.
Isat Buchanan’s out­burst tells us exact­ly who he is, his true char­ac­ter came out in that inter­view, and it demon­strat­ed to the coun­try that the actions tak­en by the author­i­ties to allow him access to the Jamaican bar were a grave mis­car­riage of jus­tice and a prece­dent which ought to be struck down forth­with.
Isat Buchanan is a con­vict­ed Drug mule con­vict­ed in Jamaica and had his crim­i­nal record expunged. He was con­vict­ed in the United States sim­i­lar­ly and spent ten (10) years in an American prison for being a drug mule.
Isat Buchanan is a lawyer in Jamaica and a teacher at the University of the West Indies’ (intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to).
This exam­ple of soci­etal dis­in­te­gra­tion man­i­fest­ed through this igno­rant drug deal­er is that when there are no soci­etal stan­dards soci­ety suf­fers immense­ly.
But Buchanan, though [unapolo­getic] in throw­ing stones, was the pre­dictable cow­ard any real police offi­cer would imagine.


“…I said I was unapolo­getic about mak­ing that state­ment — the state­ment is that the con­sti­tu­tion is the don of all dons. Meaning, that if you are not in line with the con­sti­tu­tion, what­ev­er you are doing is wrong. In rela­tion to the con­sti­tu­tion, the offi­cers are not edu­cat­ed in the con­sti­tu­tion. They have not received the right train­ing. I could extend fur­ther by say­ing I am still learn­ing the con­sti­tu­tion, and I do law. The ‘une­d­u­cat­ed’ was not to say that the police offi­cers are dunces. I nev­er said that. If any­body knows Isat Buchanan, I’m an edu­ca­tor; I teach at the Faculty of Law [at The UWI]; my class­mates were police offi­cers, and some of my stu­dents are police offi­cers.”
“I have the high­est respect for the police force. I have the max­i­mum amount of love and would nev­er, in my exis­tence, dis­re­spect a police offi­cer. Similarly, all I am say­ing is, when it comes to my use of the word une­d­u­cat­ed, it was not about whether you have a degree. It is about the con­sti­tu­tion in terms of being learned in the con­sti­tu­tion. My use of the word was the very English def­i­n­i­tion in the Oxford Dictionary of une­d­u­cat­ed and not about whether you went to school or not. Most clear­ly, I would nev­er call a police offi­cer dunce. A lot of my court pro­to­cols I have learned from the respectable mem­bers of the JCF. Those mem­bers of the JCF that are with­in the precincts of the court have taught me a lot in terms of how to han­dle myself in court. So I am a stu­dent of mem­bers of the JCF. I would nev­er set out to dis­re­spect them.“
If any police offi­cer is offend­ed, I am com­plete­ly, unequiv­o­cal­ly say­ing I am sor­ry for offend­ing because that was not the con­text in which I used the word une­d­u­cat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly with five CXC sub­jects. It was to say that you have not been trained in mat­ters of the con­sti­tu­tion, and that excludes lawyers who are police offi­cers and oth­er per­sons. This is the assump­tion that I am begin­ning there­with. I was not paint­ing a broad brush on the JCF, and I would nev­er do that. Anybody who knows me knows I am a human rights attor­ney. I nev­er dis­crim­i­nate.” 

The def­i­n­i­tion of being a man is to own up, fess up, and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s actions.
What a punk ass bitch, he could­n’t. He went on dig­ging, and with every syl­la­ble, he dug him­self a deep­er hole.
As a detec­tive, I believed in let­ting peo­ple talk, they will tell you who they are, and in the silt and sand, you may find lit­tle nuggets of gold.
We have found the lit­tle nuggets of gold in the state­ments of this twice-con­vict­ed drug deal­er. He is vir­u­lent­ly anti-police, which is his right; after all, it was police offi­cers that arrest­ed him twice and had him pros­e­cut­ed for his crimes; why would­n’t he hate them?
His ven­om as an attor­ney and sup­posed lec­tur­er is where the prob­lem lies.
(This one rot­ten apple) is in a posi­tion to expo­nen­tial­ly cor­rupt and spoil the whole bar­rel.


NARRATIVE
Mr. Isat A. Buchanan (“the Applicant”) grad­u­at­ed from the Norman Manley Law School in September 2017 and short­ly there­after applied to the Council for a Qualifying Certificate and a Certificate pur­suant to sec­tion 6 of the Legal Profession Act. His appli­ca­tion was sup­port­ed by vol­un­tary dec­la­ra­tions or char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters from eleven per­sons (“the Referees”).

  1. The Applicant’s Voluntary Declaration dis­closed that he had been twice con­vict­ed for a crim­i­nal offence:

a) In 1997 when he was 17 years old, the Applicant was con­vict­ed in the Half-Way-Tree Resident Magistrates Court of pos­ses­sion of cocaine, deal­ing in cocaine, and tak­ing steps to export cocaine. He was ordered to pay a fine and serve 21 days impris­on­ment. He paid the fine and served the 21 days (“the Jamaican conviction”).

b) In 2000, the Applicant was con­vict­ed in the United States for con­spir­a­cy to import cocaine. He was sen­tenced to 10 years impris­on­ment and was released after serv­ing 81⁄2 years (“the US conviction”).

  1. In 2014, the Jamaican Conviction was expunged from his police record pur­suant to a deci­sion by the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Board.
  2. In view of these pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions, Council did not treat his appli­ca­tion as a hear­ing on paper as it did with the oth­er appli­ca­tions. It deferred his appli­ca­tion and required the Applicant to attend a meet­ing of the Council. It also invit­ed him to bring coun­sel to rep­re­sent him and any wit­ness­es as he thought fit.
  3. On November 22, 2017, the Applicant and his coun­sel, Mr. Bert Samuels, attend­ed a meet­ing of Council. The Applicant and sev­en of the Referees made oral state­ments and respond­ed to ques­tions by mem­bers of Council. Mr. Samuels made legal submissions.

THE LAW

6. The General Legal Counsel is the Education Authority pur­suant to sec­tion 2 of the Legal Profession Act (“the Act”). Section 6 (1) of the Act pro­vides that:

A per­son shall be qual­i­fied for enrol­ment if he holds a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate and sat­is­fies the Council that he has attained the age of twen­ty-one years, is not an alien, and is of good character.

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  1. Section 9 (3) of the Act pro­vides that:The [Legal Education] Authority shall issue to any per­son who has sat­is­fied the [Legal Education] Authority that:(a) he has obtained ade­quate prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in law, and (b) he is oth­er­wise qual­i­fied to prac­tise law
    a cer­tifi­cate to that effect (in this act, referred to as a qual­i­fy­ing certificate).
  2. The Applicant had met the aca­d­e­m­ic require­ments to be enti­tled to a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate, had attained the age of twen­ty-one years, and is a cit­i­zen of Jamaica. The only issue, there­fore, was whether he had sat­is­fied the Council that he was of good character.
  3. In Council’s view, the applic­a­ble law was that set out by the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal in Re Joseph Ewart Layne1. In 1986, Mr. Layne was con­vict­ed of ten counts of mur­der. He had been the Operational Commander of the People’s Revolutionary Army (“PRA”) and was the one who had issued the direc­tive to recap­ture the PRA’s mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the exe­cu­tion-style mur­der of a num­ber of Grenadian cit­i­zens, includ­ing the then Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, and sev­er­al of his cab­i­net colleagues.
  4. Mr. Layne was sen­tenced to death. However, fol­low­ing a deci­sion by the Privy Council that the manda­to­ry death sen­tence which had been imposed on him was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, Mr. Layne’s death sen­tence was com­mut­ed to 40 years in prison. Based on remis­sion of sen­tence earned

1 GD 2015 CA 4

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for exem­plary con­duct in prison, he was released after hav­ing spent approx­i­mate­ly 23 years in prison.

  1. While incar­cer­at­ed, Mr. Layne earned three aca­d­e­m­ic degrees, includ­ing a bachelor’s and mas­ter’s in law. After his release, he was admit­ted to the Hugh Wooding Law School, where he grad­u­at­ed with a cer­tifi­cate of mer­it. He applied to the Supreme Court of Grenada to be admit­ted to the bar in that country.
  2. Section 17(1)(a) of the Legal Profession Act of Grenada was in sim­i­lar terms to sec­tion 6 of the Jamaican Act. It is pro­vid­ed in rel­e­vant part:

Subject to the pro­vi­sions of this Act, a per­son who makes an appli­ca­tion to
the Supreme Court, and sat­is­fies the Supreme Court that he– (a) is of good char­ac­ter; and either
(i) holds the qual­i­fi­ca­tions pre­scribed by law, or…shall be eli­gi­ble to be admit­ted by the Court to prac­tise as an attor­ney-at-law in Grenada.

13. As is the case with the present appli­ca­tion, Mr. Layne held the qual­i­fi­ca­tions pre­scribed by law. The only issue was whether Mr. Layne had sat­is­fied the court that he was of good char­ac­ter. The court reviewed a num­ber of Commonwealth deci­sions and con­clud­ed that an appli­cant in these cir­cum­stances had to sat­is­fy two tests:

  1. a) A sub­jec­tive test that con­sid­ers “whether the appli­cant is a per­son of integri­ty, hon­esty, and reli­a­bil­i­ty”2 (this would involve a con­sid­er­a­tion as to whether the appli­cant has been reha­bil­i­tat­ed) and
  2. b) An objec­tive test that con­sid­ers the effect admit­ting the appli­cant would have on the rep­u­ta­tion of the profession.

2 Paragraph 11

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14. The learned judge at first instance con­clud­ed that Mr. Layne had sat­is­fied the first test but not the sec­ond, and she, there­fore, dis­missed his appli­ca­tion. The Court of Appeal refused to inter­fere with the first instance judge’s exer­cise of her discretion3.

THE EVIDENCE

  1. The Council con­sid­ered vol­un­tary dec­la­ra­tions or char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters and oral state­ments by the Applicant, Hon Mr. Justice C Dennis Morrison, Dr. Janeille Matthews, Miss Dorcas White, Miss Tracy Robinson, Dr. Leighton Jackson, Mr. Vuraldo Barnett, and Mr Andre Smith. Council also con­sid­ered char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters from Dr. Brian Heap, Dr. Imani Tafari-Ama, Miss Myrna McKenzie, and Dr. Nuklan Hugh.
  2. In sum­ma­ry, the Applicant stat­ed that:
    1. a) In rela­tion to the Jamaican Conviction, a neigh­bour had asked him to take a pack­age to the United States, telling him that the pack­age con­tained mon­ey in excess of US$10,000.00. When he was searched at the air­port in Jamaica, it was dis­cov­ered that the pack­age, in fact, con­tained cocaine. He was not aware of its contents.
    2. b) In rela­tion to the US Conviction, he was trav­el­ling with a friend, and the friend was car­ry­ing cocaine. This was dis­cov­ered when they arrived in the United States. He was not aware that the friend was car­ry­ing cocaine. The friend, how­ev­er, said that the cocaine must have been the Applicants.

3 See, e.g., para­graph 71

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  1. The Applicant said that he has tak­en full respon­si­bil­i­ty for the out­come of both mat­ters and that he has learned valu­able life lessons. He said that in the years since the con­vic­tions, he had made vol­un­teerism an inte­gral part of his life, espe­cial­ly activ­i­ties geared towards men­tor­ing and guid­ing youth at risk.
  2. Most of the Referees had taught the Applicant at the University of the West Indies or the Norman Manley Law School. Others had inter­act­ed with him in var­i­ous capac­i­ties. For exam­ple, Mr. Barnett is the man­ag­er of the Trench Town Restorative Justice Centre, where the Applicant served as a vol­un­tary trainer.
  3. Mr. Smith and his twin broth­er (who was also present) were high school dropouts who had no inter­est in pur­su­ing fur­ther stud­ies, but as a result of being men­tored by the Applicant, they resumed stud­ies and are now study­ing engi­neer­ing at the University of the West Indies.
  4. Dr. Jackson (who is the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Mona and prac­tis­es law in Jamaica and in the state of New York) also stat­ed that the tran­script of the evi­dence and judg­ments in rela­tion to the US Conviction indi­cat­ed that:
    1. a) The Jamaican Conviction was the main evi­dence that the pros­e­cu­tion had relied on, in par­tic­u­lar, because the pro­hib­it­ed sub­stances were not found on the Applicant;
    2. b) The pro­hib­it­ed sub­stances were found in the lug­gage of the Applicant’s co-defen­dant, but his defence was that they belonged to the Applicant. He gave evi­dence for the pros­e­cu­tion of the Applicant’s pre­vi­ous conviction.

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c) The co-defen­dant was acquit­ted even though he was the one who had phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion of the pro­hib­it­ed substances.

  1. The ref­er­ees spoke to the Applicant’s bril­liance, social con­science, love of and com­mit­ment to the law, and his will­ing­ness to assist oth­ers. Some referred to his humil­i­ty, his polite man­ner, and his gen­tle­man­ly deport­ment. The Applicant had vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­closed his past con­vic­tions to all of them.
  2. Some Referees observed that the Applicant was a very young man at the time of the con­vic­tions and that in the almost two decades since then, he had led an unblem­ished and, in many ways, exem­plary life.
  3. Many expressed the view that in all the cir­cum­stances, he was ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed and that his admis­sion to the bar would not adverse­ly affect the rep­u­ta­tion of the legal pro­fes­sion. Some felt that, in fact, many per­sons would con­sid­er the Applicant’s his­to­ry an inspi­ra­tional exam­ple of reha­bil­i­ta­tion and redemption.

CONCLUSION

  1. After con­sid­er­ing all the evi­dence, Council con­clud­ed (by a major­i­ty) that both the sub­jec­tive test and the objec­tive test had been sat­is­fied. As regards the sub­jec­tive test, mem­bers were in no doubt that the Applicant had been ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed and did not pose any undue risk to the public.
  2. The objec­tive test was more chal­leng­ing. Council rec­og­nized that some mem­bers of the legal pro­fes­sion and of the pub­lic gen­er­al­ly might con­sid­er that admit­ting the Applicant would adverse­ly affect the rep­u­ta­tion of the

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pro­fes­sion, but con­clud­ed that most would share its view that in all the cir­cum­stances, the Applicant would be an asset to the profession.

26. For these rea­sons, the Council decid­ed by a major­i­ty to approve the appli­ca­tion and to issue the Applicant a qual­i­fy­ing cer­tifi­cate and a cer­tifi­cate pur­suant to sec­tion 6 of the Legal Profession Act.

B. St. Michael Hylton, Q.C.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The ref­er­ees spoke to the Applicant’s bril­liance, social con­science, love of, and com­mit­ment to the law.….…… This is prob­a­bly the most glar­ing state­ment from this nar­ra­tive of events.
Remember that based on these rec­om­men­da­tions and the deci­sion to stretch creduli­ty, a man who was twice-con­vict­ed for huge quan­ti­ties of sched­ule A drugs, impris­oned for ten years, still has­n’t tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions, was allowed at the Bar, and is now not only a pro­fes­sor of law but an offi­cer of the courts.
Let that sink in!
The first com­mit­ment to the law that I can think of is the deci­sion to obey them, not to prof­it from them, not to pur­port­ed­ly teach them.
I thank God that despite all of its chal­lenges to date, no known [con­vict­ed felon] has ever been admit­ted into the JCF; for that those who serve today and those who served and left are incred­i­bly proud and can hold their heads high.
Earning degrees is noble; it is good to get a job but are they real­ly being edu­cat­ed, that’s the real ques­tion?
This guy’s sto­ry should nev­er be twist­ed to con­form to the notion of redemp­tion and a sec­ond chance. It should nev­er be allowed to be mis­rep­re­sent­ed as an exam­ple of vir­tu­os­i­ty and the nobil­i­ty of reha­bil­i­ta­tion.
It is the very man­i­fes­ta­tion of cor­rup­tion and pol­i­tics; it is a clear exam­ple of how our most sacred insti­tu­tions can be cor­rupt­ed when those entrust­ed with pow­er, those giv­en stew­ard­ship over our insti­tu­tions that are pil­lars of our bud­ding democ­ra­cy and the rule of law, trade them away on the altar of cheap expe­di­en­cy.
His sto­ry is made pos­si­ble only on the basis of a peo­ple in love with the igno­ble celebri­ty derived from bla­tant crim­i­nal­i­ty.
Because of these incen­di­ary and cor­ro­sive prac­tices, even as I am for a new Constitution that gets rid of the British mon­archs our over­lords, I am equal­ly opposed to the Caribbean Court of Justice as the final court of appeals for Jamaica.

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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. 

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Defund The Police Is Sound Principle!

As Americans of all col­ors final­ly begin to wake up to the real and present dan­ger posed by killer cops, we are see­ing man­i­fest­ed in real-time what we have stat­ed for years, that the police are only one part of the prob­lem.
The pros­e­cu­tors, med­ical exam­in­ers, pathol­o­gists, judges, prison author­i­ties, and elect­ed offi­cials are built into the sys­tem, many of whom are ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of white suprema­cy in America.
Defunding the police will not solve racism in the jus­tice sys­tem but it would be a mean­ing full start.
Why do you think that so many of your tax dol­lars are used to give them what they want while your kids can­not get an edu­ca­tion, they are cut­ting food stamps and WIC, your kid’s schools are ver­i­ta­ble pris­ons, and you can­not afford ‑afford­able hous­ing and your net worth are.….
Well, I’ll let the (joint eco­nom­ic committee0 tell it.….
A 2019 study found that over 97% of respon­dents vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the huge gap between the medi­an wealth held by Black fam­i­lies ($17,000) and White fam­i­lies ($171,000) — a ratio of 10 to one. Respondents esti­mat­ed the gap to be 80 per­cent­age points small­er than the actu­al divide.
Oh well.….

Approximately 70 % of America’s cops are white males, despite the small inroads that African-Americans have made in var­i­ous areas of American life since the civ­il rights fights of the ear­ly 1960“s.
A great deal of those (white men) police large urban cen­ters like Los Angels, New York, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, etc., in which huge chunks of the pop­u­la­tion are black.
By that met­ric, the (AA) com­mu­ni­ty is forced to heav­i­ly sub­si­dize with their tax dol­lars American polic­ing, from which they have large­ly only derived neg­a­tive returns.
On that basis alone, the calls to defund the police and return the monies stolen to pay white cops to black com­mu­ni­ties are total­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly legit­i­mate.
Whenever these argu­ments come up, police groups and their white sup­port­ers point to the killings in the black com­mu­ni­ty as a rea­son that the police should not be defund­ed based on those num­bers.
The real­i­ty is that if poor black peo­ple’s tax dol­lars are being used to fund these huge armies of white cops to kill our peo­ple and those black-on-black crimes are still hap­pen­ing, tell me exact­ly why again should the black com­mu­ni­ty keep pay­ing for those cops?

The fact of the mat­ter is that as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer … albeit from a dif­fer­ent coun­try, I know all too well that many of the crimes com­mit­ted in the black com­mu­ni­ty are part and par­cel of hun­dreds of years of mea­sures tak­en by the American gov­ern­ment against the AA com­mu­ni­ty, both overt­ly and covert­ly.
The ter­ror vis­it­ed upon African-Americans far exceeds the bat­ter­ing and mur­der they suf­fer at the hands of police but are built into covert plant­i­ng of dan­ger­ous drugs and lethal ill­ness­es in the AA com­mu­ni­ty designed both to elim­i­nate that minor­i­ty group and, at times to use the com­mu­ni­ty as guinea pigs for dan­ger­ous exper­i­ments.
This may sound hyper­bol­ic, but they are not; these are all prov­able, well-known facts.
The idea that speak­ing out about police sys­temic and con­tin­ued vio­lence against Black peo­ple should be viewed through the same lens as black-on-black vio­lence is [an unwit­ting acknowl­edg­ment] that the police are crim­i­nals as well.
Black crim­i­nals who com­mit crimes against Black peo­ple or any­one else are gen­er­al­ly held account­able for their crimes. In fact, the pris­ons are filled with them, so much so that count­less inno­cents are pop­u­lat­ing America’s pris­ons for crimes they nev­er com­mit­ted.
Literally every day, we read the hor­ror sto­ries of inno­cent black men and women who have been in prison, some­times for decades, on charges trumped up by racist, cor­rupt cops.
The next time that the (cop-apologists)[sic] counter your legit­i­mate dis­cus­sion on police crim­i­nal­i­ty (idi­ot­ic blacks as well) with the black-on-black non­sense tell them where to go.

The entire sys­tem was designed to bru­tal­ize and mur­der African-Americans, their police enact­ed from slave patrols. I have seen up close the bla­tant crim­i­nal­iz­ing of inno­cent peo­ple by police with agen­das, agen­das that do not care whether an inno­cent per­son­’s life will be ruined by a false arrest; they do it any­way.
Even so, there are judges and politi­cians that do every­thing in their pow­er to keep the pub­lic infor­ma­tion about police aggres­sion in their per­son­nel records.



(Root​.com) report­ed the fol­low­ing.
In the weeks fol­low­ing the first Black Lives Matter upris­ings, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates scored sev­er­al major leg­isla­tive wins. In New York state, one of these was the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50‑A, which shield­ed the mis­con­duct records of law enforce­ment from the pub­lic. Last week, how­ev­er, a fed­er­al judge paused the release of those dis­ci­pli­nary records due to a police union law­suit filed against New York City. Under the rul­ing, the police depart­ment and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a watch­dog group that over­sees the NYPD, are barred from shar­ing the records until at least Aug. 18, reports ABC News.

Not list­ed as a defen­dant — and there­fore exempt from the rul­ing — is ProPublica, a non­prof­it news orga­ni­za­tion with a focus on jus­tice and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. The pub­li­ca­tion announced Sunday it would be pub­lish­ing thou­sands of dis­ci­pli­nary records obtained by the CCRB before last week’s rul­ing. “We are mak­ing this infor­ma­tion pub­lic and, with it, pro­vid­ing an unprece­dent­ed pic­ture of civil­ians’ com­plaints of abuse by NYPD offi­cers as well as the lim­its of the cur­rent sys­tem that is sup­posed to hold offi­cers account­able,” Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky wrote in a post unveil­ing the com­plaints, which were com­piled in a search­able data­base. As Umansky not­ed, the data­base lists only active-duty NYPD offi­cers who have had at least one alle­ga­tion against them sub­stan­ti­at­ed by the CCRB. In total, there are 4,000 offi­cers rep­re­sent­ed out of the department’s 36,000-strong work­force. This means 11 per­cent of all NYPD offi­cers have had a cred­i­ble com­plaint of mis­con­duct lodged against them. According to ProPublica, 34 offi­cers have as many as 40 or more alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against them.

The release of the records is meant to enlight­en the pub­lic about the scope and sever­i­ty of mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force. But the pub­li­ca­tion also aims to shed light on the review process. The CCRB has lim­it­ed inves­tiga­tive pow­ers, which means it can­not con­firm a sub­stan­tial amount of the thou­sands of com­plaints it receives every year. Part of this hinges on coöper­a­tion from the NYPD itself, notes ProPublica. While the NYPD has a legal duty to coöper­ate with the over­sight board’s inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing hand­ing over evi­dence such as body­cam footage, the depart­ment often doesn’t do this. The data­base also includes civil­ian com­plaints of mis­con­duct that the Board found did hap­pen but didn’t vio­late the NYPD’s rules.
“We under­stand the argu­ments against releas­ing this data. But we believe the pub­lic good it could do out­weighs the poten­tial harm,” said ProPublica Editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg. “The data­base gives the peo­ple of New York City a glimpse at how alle­ga­tions involv­ing police mis­con­duct have been han­dled and allows jour­nal­ists and ordi­nary cit­i­zens alike to look more deeply at the records of par­tic­u­lar officers.”

Time and time, we see evi­dence of police mis­con­duct go with­out the pub­lic get­ting redress. Time and again, we see acts of egre­gious police mis­con­duct and crimes, and they inves­ti­gate them­selves, and the pub­lic is none the wis­er at the out­come of their [sup­posed] inves­ti­ga­tions.
Even when they com­mit crimes that are so egre­gious, depart­ments allow them to resign so that they can go to anoth­er depart­ment that wel­comes them with open arms.
Charles Ramsey, an African-American for­mer Philadelphia police com­mis­sion­er, spoke to the issue of vio­lent police encoun­ters with the pub­lic and agreed that the sheer num­ber of depart­ments in the coun­try might be a con­trib­u­tor to the problem.

Ramsey, who was a co-chair of a pres­i­den­tial polic­ing task force, teased out the con­nec­tions between law enforce­ment and race with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on July 10, 2016. Todd said major urban police depart­ments have been tak­ing steps to ease racial ten­sions and asked Ramsey if the small­er depart­ments had the same kind of resources. Ramsey paint­ed a pic­ture that went well beyond core fund­ing.
“There are approx­i­mate­ly 18,000 depart­ments in the United States,” Ramsey said. “I would try to cut the num­ber in half in the next ten years or so because you’re always going to have these kinds of issues as long as you have this many depart­ments with dif­fer­ent poli­cies, pro­ce­dures, train­ing, and the like.” The num­bers back Ramsey up on the num­ber of depart­ments. The final report from the task force he led said there are 17,985 U.S. police agen­cies. (According to Politifact)

Defunding the police would mean, in actu­al terms, cut­ting many of the police forces out and ensur­ing that the oth­ers do their jobs as pro­fes­sion­al offi­cers of the law, not steroid-pumped, doped-up tat­toed wannabe Rambos.
It would mean using the resources saved from the mas­sive mil­i­ta­rized police buildup to offer skills train­ing to young men and women in under­served com­mu­ni­ties, black and white.
It would mean pro­vid­ing jobs for them at the end of their train­ing peri­od, a pol­i­cy ensur­ing that the gang-relat­ed vio­lence would begin to dis­ap­pear.
Of course, as long as there are for-prof­it pris­ons that need black bod­ies to fill them, this kind of robo­cop buildup will con­tin­ue.
Despite what some politi­cians mum­ble under their breath about work­ing to change this destruc­tive tra­jec­to­ry, not much will change. It will con­tin­ue until it reach­es a cat­a­clysmic end.
They are not there just yet.

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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.

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Robert E. Lee High School Renamed After Late Civil Rights Icon John Lewis

Robert E. Lee High School in Fairfax, VA, the eleventh largest school dis­trict in the nation, is final­ly get­ting a long over­due name change. 

The new name: John R. Lewis High School, after the late civ­il rights icon. 

Fairfax County’s school board vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on Thursday to rename the school after the beloved con­gress­man. The new name goes into effect for the 2020 – 21 school year, USA Today reports. 

The move comes amid con­tin­ued calls from activists and politi­cians to take down mon­u­ments across the coun­try that are ded­i­cat­ed to racists, white suprema­cists and Confederate generals. 

Read More: Rep. Jim Clyburn recalls his last con­ver­sa­tion with friend John Lewis

“Rep. Lewis was a cham­pi­on of the Civil Rights move­ment, and our Board strong­ly believes this is an appro­pri­ate trib­ute to an indi­vid­ual who is a true American hero,” Board chair Ricardy Anderson said in a state­ment. “We will also hon­or his life’s work by con­tin­u­ing to pro­mote equi­ty, jus­tice, tol­er­ance and ser­vice in the work that we do.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=indieartswag&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget‑0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1284815610338312203&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com%2F2020%2F07%2F23%2Frobert-e-lee-high-school-name-change%2F&siteScreenName=theGrio&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=550px

This November, Americans will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to embody Lewis’ spir­it, take up his man­tle and car­ry on his endur­ing lega­cy by exer­cis­ing their right to vote. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​e​J​N​w​z​9​G​Fxi— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 19, 2020

Representative Tamara Derenak Kaufax, the board mem­ber who first pro­posed the name change in February, said in the release Thursday that Confederate val­ues “do not align with our community.”

“Our schools must be places where all stu­dents, staff, and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty feel safe and sup­port­ed,” Kaufax said. “I believe that John Lewis’ extra­or­di­nary life and advo­ca­cy for racial jus­tice will serve as an inspi­ra­tion to our stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

Lewis died Friday at the age of 80 fol­low­ing a month­s­long bat­tle with cancer.

Read More: Sen. Nikema Williams to replace John Lewis on November ballot

theGrio pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, he passed as the nation is grap­pling with racial ten­sions and civ­il unrest over police brutality. 

Lewis was the last liv­ing speak­er at the march on Washington which he helped orga­nize in 1963. The doc­u­men­tary John Lewis: Good Trouble delved into his life of activism.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=indieartswag&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget‑1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1280570353845231620&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com%2F2020%2F07%2F23%2Frobert-e-lee-high-school-name-change%2F&siteScreenName=theGrio&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=550px

59 years ago today I was released from Parchman Farm Penitentiary after being arrest­ed in Jackson, MS for using a so-called “white” restroom dur­ing the Freedom Rides of 1961. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​O​U​f​g​e​a​N​DOm— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) July 7, 2020

Last month, Lewis attend­ed a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington despite his sickness.

“We must say, ‘Wake up, America! Wake up!’ For we can­not stop, and we will not and can­not be patient,” said Lewis.

In relat­ed news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that Lewis will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. 

An invi­ta­tion-only cer­e­mo­ny will be held on Monday (July 27) at 1:30 p.m. The pub­lic can pay their respects on the front steps of the Capitol from 6 pm to 10 p.m. and Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. , per CBS News. Social dis­tanc­ing will be enforced and masks are required.(grio.com)

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Most America Support Black Live Matter, Divided On Policy Changes…

Americans agree that racism in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is a prob­lem. Where they’re still divid­ed is how to address it — and how far to go.

According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll pub­lished ear­li­er this week, a record-high num­ber of Americans acknowl­edge that Black peo­ple and oth­er minori­ties are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than white peo­ple in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. But a major­i­ty of those polled still oppose poli­cies intend­ed to trans­form law enforce­ment. The poll also finds sim­i­lar divi­sions with regard to repa­ra­tions and the removal of Confederate monuments.

In all these areas, there were sub­stan­tial racial divides in how respon­dents answered.

In total, 69 per­cent of Americans agree that Black peo­ple expe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem than white peo­ple do. This year marks the first year that a major­i­ty of white peo­ple (62 per­cent) agree with this asser­tion. The per­cent­age of Black folks who express this opin­ion has also increased in the last six years. In 2014, the Post writes, 89 per­cent of Black respon­dents said Black peo­ple were not treat­ed equal­ly by the police; this year, that rate is 97 percent.

A major­i­ty of Americans also agree that killings of unarmed Black peo­ple “are a sign of broad­er prob­lems in the treat­ment of Black peo­ple by police,” at 55 per­cent, but this num­ber has decreased since last month, when 69 per­cent of Americans agreed with this state­ment. A major­i­ty of Americans — 63 per­cent — also say they sup­port Black Lives Matter.

But the great­est dis­agree­ment comes in how Americans actu­al­ly want to tack­le the prob­lems of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing and sys­temic racism. Two of the most trans­for­ma­tive pro­pos­als, slash­ing police bud­gets and offer­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties repa­ra­tions, are still unpop­u­lar with a major­i­ty of Americans, though there are steep racial and gen­er­a­tional divides in people’s responses.

Among all U.S. adults, 55 per­cent say they oppose cut­ting police funds and redis­trib­ut­ing that mon­ey to social ser­vices. Black respon­dents were the only demo­graph­ic group in the sur­vey who sup­port­ed the pol­i­cy, at 50 per­cent. Only a third of white Americans said they want­ed to cut police bud­gets, while Hispanic respon­dents were even­ly split: 47 per­cent say­ing they sup­port­ed divest­ing from the police, while anoth­er 48 per­cent say­ing they were against it.

Still, this idea was large­ly a fringe one before the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., at the end of May. The same is true of repa­ra­tions, which have been dis­cussed for gen­er­a­tions but are start­ing to see more approval among a greater share of Americans.

A major­i­ty of Americans (63 per­cent) still oppose the gov­ern­ment giv­ing mon­ey to Black Americans whose ances­tors were enslaved. But the rate of peo­ple who do sup­port repa­ra­tions — 31 per­cent — is a siz­able increase from the 19 per­cent who favored it in a 1999 ABC News poll, the Washington Post writes.

Currently, more than 80 per­cent of Black peo­ple favor repa­ra­tions, com­pared to rough­ly 75 per­cent of white peo­ple who say the gov­ern­ment should not pay them. A slight major­i­ty of Hispanic respon­dents, 56 per­cent, say they oppose gov­ern­ment-fund­ed reparations.

There were sim­i­lar divi­sions with regard to remov­ing Confederate stat­ues, which hon­or fig­ures who were either pro­lif­ic slave own­ers, will­ing to die to pre­serve slav­ery, or both. More than three out of four Black peo­ple sup­port their removal, while majori­ties of white and Hispanic respon­dents said they pre­ferred to keep them. (root​.com)

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Forget About Who Loves Who, Both PNP & JLP Infested With Thieves…

The hyper­bol­ic non­sense sur­round­ing the Prime Minister’s cri­tique of the late Michael Manley’s tenure is as sil­ly as his deci­sion on the need to respond or clar­i­fy that he, in fact, loved Michael Manley.
As a cit­i­zen of Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness did not sur­ren­der his God-giv­en right to speak his mind.
As a mem­ber and leader of the par­ty that com­petes against the late Michael Manley’s PNP, had Andrew Holness not cri­tiqued Michael’s tenure, it would have been pro­fes­sion­al abdication.

With that non­sense set to the side, it is time that as Jamaicans we learn that the art of pol­i­tics is not a zero sum game. We can love the late Michael Manley while at the same time dis­agree with his pol­i­tics.
Conversely, we can love Andrew Holness and not be hap­py with his pol­i­tics either.
Additionally, we can like some poli­cies and hate oth­ers, on either side of the polit­i­cal divide.
I strug­gle to under­stand why the mad rush to balka­nize, to be polar­ized fur­ther, to place our­selves into restric­tive lit­tle box­es?
Are we most com­fort­able when we are sequestered into con­ve­nient lit­tle box­es, if so, we are sti­fling our­selves, restrict­ing our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive growth. 

The sad irony is that all pol­i­tics is local in Jamaica, the size of the coun­try makes it so, 4411 square miles all told, and under three mil­lion peo­ple, it is a hop skip and a jump.
As such, we need to close the gaps not seek to cre­ate chasms. Growing up in a JLP home, I hat­ed the poli­cies of the PNP, but noth­ing made me proud­er, as a high school­er, than to have seen my Prime Minister, Michael Manley stand on the world stage, and speak as only he could, against the igno­ble evils of apartheid in South Africa.
I still feel chills through my body at the pride I felt when Michael Manley went around the world as the leader of our tiny nation, and a leader of the non-aligned nations, larg­er than life, and demon­strat­ed to the world what human­i­ty ought to look like.
Yet I hat­ed Manley’s Democratic social­ism, I hat­ed what he did to our local econ­o­my, I hat­ed his pol­i­tics of divi­sion that result­ed in hatred, fear, and anx­i­ety.
I hate it still.

Growing up in a con­ser­v­a­tive Christian home, we were taught the val­ue of God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try. We learned the val­ue of edu­ca­tion, hard work. The idea was not to expect any­one to give any­thing to me because I was owed noth­ing.
I took that to heart, as a con­se­quence, I worked to school myself from as young as six­teen years old.
That is what par­tic­u­lar­ly drew me to the poli­cies of the JLP which was a mar­ket-dri­ven ide­ol­o­gy which was heav­i­ly geared at infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment as was evi­denced by the mas­sive school build­ing pro­gram under­tak­en by the Hugh Lawson Shearer’s admin­is­tra­tion that pre­ced­ed Michael Manley’s tenure in the ear­ly 1970s.



In ret­ro­spect, Hugh Lawson Shearer’s tenure at the helm of the Jamaican exec­u­tive, still stands as the most pros­per­ous peri­od in Jamaica’s post-inde­pen­dence his­to­ry.
That peri­od of peace and pros­per­i­ty did not hap­pen in a vac­u­um, it was a direct result of the mas­sive con­struc­tion Shearer embarked on that pro­vid­ed jobs to Jamaican work­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
In addi­tion to that, Aluminum export was at an all-time high and the low crime lev­els attract­ed increased tourist arrivals.
Yup.….built by labor.

Both Manley and Shearer are now long gone, the PNP still strug­gles to be the par­ty of the ’70s that Michael Manley led. No one has both­ered to tell them that the idea of social­ism as a suc­cess­ful ide­o­log­i­cal con­struct has long died.
Even the Chinese and the Russians have moved on, adopt­ing vary­ing forms of mar­ket eco­nom­ics that have raised their stan­dards of liv­ing, and in many cas­es, cre­at­ed untold wealth for those with­in their soci­eties savvy enough to take advan­tage of the chang­ing times.
The JLP for its part, is not the par­ty that the Rt hon­or­able Hugh Lawson Shearer led.
Laborites can talk all they want about pros­per­i­ty, but the unde­ni­able truth as it relates to the JLP, as it has been for the PNP, is that both polit­i­cal par­ties are infest­ed with thieves and crooks who should be in prison.
Andrew Holness pledged that there would be no tol­er­ance for cor­rup­tion and theft when he took office, sad­ly, the JLP is no dif­fer­ent than the PNP as it has reneged on its promise, to be hon­est, and trans­par­ent.
On that score, both polit­i­cal par­ties have been abject failures.

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

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Black Dollar Flee, But To Where?

We say there are no black busi­ness­es for us to sup­port; that state­ment is not true. As a nation of peo­ple with­in this larg­er nation, we have made a con­cert­ed effort to spend our mon­ey with every­one out­side of our own com­mu­ni­ty.
Imagine the pow­er we would have, if we spent over one tril­lion dol­lars we spend each year with our own, or even a part of it?
Spending our mon­ey out­side our own com­mu­ni­ty makes it dif­fi­cult to near impos­si­ble for Black busi­ness­es to sur­vive much less thrive.
Those of us who sup­port black busi­ness­es out­side the tra­di­tion­al Barbershops and Hair salons, hold those small busi­ness own­ers to expo­nen­tial­ly high­er stan­dards than we do every­one else.
No mat­ter how long those black busi­ness­es have been serv­ing our needs pro­fes­sion­al­ly and faith­ful­ly, one mishap elic­its out­rage and a com­ment of, “that is why I don’t sup­port Black peo­ple’s busi­ness.“
As if we are look­ing for a rea­son to spend our mon­ey else­where.


The fact of the mat­ter is that the white dol­lar cir­cu­lates in the white com­mu­ni­ty innu­mer­able amounts of times, and I am not speak­ing hyper­bol­i­cal­ly.
Hispanics, the group clos­est to African-Americas at the bot­tom, see their dol­lar cir­cu­late about 5 times before it leaves. It is get­ting bet­ter as they coa­lesce and build new busi­ness­es.
Asians keep a dol­lar in their com­mu­ni­ty 120 times longer than African Americans, accord­ing to (mon​ey​man​.io.) In fact, lots of busi­ness­es and con­sumers keep their dol­lars cir­cu­lat­ing in their cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties.
The aver­age lifes­pan of a dol­lar in the Asian com­mu­ni­ty is 28 days; in the Jewish com­mu­ni­ty, it’s 19 days, and in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty, it’s six hours. (source vic​to​ri​aad​vo​cate​.com)

Had it not been for bar­ber­shops and hair salons, the dol­lar would have been out of the black com­mu­ni­ty in sec­onds.
In the AA com­mu­ni­ty, it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for black busi­ness­es to grow, and sur­vive for some of the rea­sons I artic­u­lat­ed and oth­ers.
When we do not sup­port our own, it becomes impos­si­ble for our busi­ness­es to com­pete, pro­vide qual­i­ty goods and ser­vices, or hire and retain employ­ees.
Ironically, we are quick to argue that prices are too high, qual­i­ty is sub­stan­dard, and we are not giv­en dis­counts, with­out real­iz­ing that our own actions have cre­at­ed the issues we com­plain about. Yet, the very same issues exist in oth­er busi­ness­es not owned or oper­at­ed by us, yet we have no prob­lem spend­ing our hard-earned mon­ey with those com­pa­nies. In many cas­es, those com­mu­ni­ties are open­ly hos­tile and dis­re­spect­ful to us, but we spend anyway.




The AA com­mu­ni­ty spends some­where between 1.2 7 1.5 tril­lion dol­lars each year.
In fact, last year, the AA com­mu­ni­ty spent a whop­ping 1.4 tril­lion dollars.

  Share of US Population (2019) Buying Power (US$) (2019)
Black 13.4% $1.4 tril­lion
Asian 6.3% $1.2 tril­lion
Latinx13 18.6% $1.7 tril­lion
American Indian 1.3% $126.8 bil­lion

IT is dif­fi­cult to tell where that mon­ey goes. Certainly, it is not cir­cu­lat­ing in the AA com­mu­ni­ty, and it is damn sure not cir­cu­lat­ing in AA businesses.

At the risk of sound­ing dis­re­spect­ful, it seems that far too many with­in the AA com­mu­ni­ty do not under­stand that Black peo­ple are capa­ble of hav­ing busi­ness­es out­side Barbershops and Hair salons.
The sight of a Barbershop or a Hair salon elic­its a weird excite­ment, yet a black-owned tech or oth­er busi­ness strug­gles to gain a sec­ond look from mem­bers of the AA com­mu­ni­ty.
It seems almost as if there are psy­cho­log­i­cal forces at work, caus­ing our peo­ple not to believe, not to dream, not to dare imag­ine any busi­ness out­side the tra­di­tion­al.….… well, you know, bar­ber­shops & hair shops.
Could the events of Black Wall Street still be at play?
You decide!
Black spend­ing pow­er is greater than that of many large nation’s gross domes­tic prod­ucts.
If Black peo­ple are afraid to sup­port and grow Black busi­ness­es out of fear that the KKK and the American Government will band togeth­er to destroy them once again, then we are liv­ing exact­ly how they would like to see us live, in fear.
If we accept that the gov­ern­ment will aid racist whites to destroy busi­ness­es and take hun­dreds of lives, then we are already defeated.

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.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

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Black Woman Accuses Long Island Neighbor Of Harassment

Valley Stream rally held for woman alleging racial harassment ...

A black woman on Long Island claimed on Instagram that her white neigh­bor has sub­ject­ed her to years of threats and race-based harass­ment that includ­ed throw­ing feces onto her prop­er­ty — but cops say there is no evi­dence of “bias” or “crim­i­nal­i­ty.”
Jennifer McLeggan, a 39-year-old sin­gle moth­er in Valley Stream, detailed the alleged abuse she has endured since 2017, when she moved into her home, where she now lives “in fear,” accord­ing to a hand­writ­ten sign on her front door that she post­ed on Instagram.

“My neigh­bors have been racial­ly harass­ing me since I pur­chased my home,” the sign reads. “They have said that I can be ‘erased.’”
McLeggan claims the uniden­ti­fied white man next door has also told her to “go back to where I came from” and had friends spit into her yard, accord­ing to the sign. McLeggan once caught her neigh­bor throw­ing dog feces into her front yard and caught him on video, lead­ing her to win an unspec­i­fied judg­ment in court, she said. The reg­is­tered nurse and moth­er of a 2‑year-old daugh­ter told WABC she post­ed the sign in case she’s even­tu­al­ly harmed. “In case some­thing hap­pens to me here, then some­body would know I’m in the house with a baby,” McLeggan told the sta­tion. “If I die in here, at least cops would see the sign.”

Cops met with McLeggan at her home Monday and held a press con­fer­ence Tuesday in response to the alle­ga­tions that gained trac­tion on social media, WABC reports. “At this time, we do not have any evi­dence of any bias,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told reporters. Ryder cit­ed near­ly 50 calls to cops between McLeggan and her neigh­bor since she moved into the home in 2017, say­ing the com­plaints came “almost equal­ly” from both par­ties, Newsday reports.



McLeggan’s neigh­bor admit­ted hav­ing a pel­let rifle and a pel­let hand­gun, but claimed he only used them for tar­get prac­tice in his back yard, Ryder said. McLeggan’s neigh­bor admit­ted hav­ing a pel­let rifle and a pel­let hand­gun, but claimed he only used them for tar­get prac­tice in his back yard, Ryder said. “There is no crim­i­nal­i­ty at this time from either side,” the police com­mis­sion­er told reporters. Ryder said he called the press con­fer­ence to dial back ten­sion between the pair. “This thing is get­ting way out of con­trol from what it is,” Ryder said. “Not that our vic­tim is not impor­tant, not that our vic­tim is not get­ting her atten­tion, but at the same time we have to make sure we have the evi­dence and every­thing that is going to help us move for­ward and move for­ward in the cor­rect way.” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who joined Ryder dur­ing Tuesday’s press­er, said she urged res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the allegations.



Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, who joined Ryder dur­ing Tuesday’s press­er, said she urged res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions. “I want to make it very clear that hate crimes and big­otry have absolute­ly no place here in Nassau County,” Curran said.
A mes­sage seek­ing com­ment from Nassau County police was not imme­di­ate­ly returned Thursday.
A ral­ly in sup­port of McLeggan is planned for Thursday in Valley Stream. She’s expect­ed to speak after the event, accord­ing to her Instagram feed.

This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @nypost.com
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Editors note, on the police response.
The state­ments by the Valley stream police and the coun­ty exec­u­tive are bogus.
The County Executive Laura Curran, com­ments urg­ing res­i­dents to “take a deep breath” and let cops inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions. “I want to make it very clear that hate crimes and big­otry have absolute­ly no place here in Nassau County,” Is a bunch of unadul­ter­at­ed garbage.
If a white person/​family report­ed that a black neigh­bor threw dead ani­mals, feces of any kind, made threats and oth­er acts of intim­i­da­tion, includ­ing with the use of a gun( as far as the vic­tim is con­cerned, the gun is real that is the law) the black per­son would have been in jail a long time ago.


The police stat­ed that no crimes have been com­mit­ted, that is a load of shit which stinks only in com­par­i­son to them and their racist incom­pe­tence and tac­it com­plic­i­ty in this mat­ter.
It is always inter­est­ing to hear these incom­pe­tent leech­es who live off tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens claim that they can­not take action, despite video evi­dence, and evi­dence which has won the claimant redress in a court of law.
Long Island New York has always been one of those racist enclaves, regard­less of what the res­i­dents there say.
In the low­er regions of New York State, Little pock­ets of racism exist in pock­ets, like in Staten Island where a cer­tain group seems to believe that they have a right to decide who lives where they live. (They are usu­al­ly Italians and Irish) and are from fam­i­lies of cops fire­fight­ers and gang­sters. There are many oth­er such pock­ets of this kind of regres­sive igno­rance, includ­ing parts of Yonkers and oth­er areas.
So it is lit­tle won­der that the [cops] haven’t arrest­ed the filth next door to Ms. McLeggan.

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Stop Trying To Speak To Those Ignorant Racists…

At some stage of the game black folks are going to have to face the real­i­ty that there are some irre­deemable Edomites they will either m****r F*****g go around or roll the f*** over.
You think they don’t know that when you say ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER”, they don’t know that you are say­ing that“black lives mat­ter too”?
Of course, they do, so clear­ly when they counter with the bull­shit, “all lives mat­ter”, what they are try­ing to do is to drown out your voice.
Worse yet, when they par­rot the non­sen­si­cal cocka­mamie “blue lives mat­ter”, they are telling you that they want their ter­ror­is­tic cops to keep killing you. 

One of the most bull­shit things I hear com­ing from these despi­ca­ble hate­ful things is that peo­ple need to respect law enforce­ment.
Law enforce­ment work for peo­ple, not the oth­er way around. It is incum­bent on law enforce­ment to respect the cit­i­zens they serve, all cit­i­zens, and from that respect, they will, in turn, earn the respect of all the cit­i­zen­ry.
But when law enforce­ment has always been pro­tec­tor to one group and a bul­ly­ing oppres­sor to anoth­er, the respons­es are some­what under­stand­able.
I say [some­what], because despite those two dif­fer­ing real­i­ties, those igno­rant racist white m***** f*****s know that it is wrong to shoot an inno­cent unarmed man, they know it is crim­i­nal and wrong to sit on the neck of a man until he dies, they know that it is wrong to apply a carotid neck-hold on a tiny wisp of a black man walk­ing home in the night, killing him.
It is the racist com­po­nent that desen­si­tizes them to the hor­rors of those evils.

Of course, those morons were always going to come out in sup­port of their killer cops. They had no prob­lem with the slave patrols, they had no prob­lem with the lynch­ings, they had no prob­lem with seg­re­ga­tion, they have no prob­lem with the prison indus­tri­al com­plex, they have no prob­lem with the school to prison pipeline, they have no prob­lem with the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of young black kids, they have no prob­lem with infe­ri­or schools, hos­pi­tals, hous­ing, health­care, neigh­bor­hoods or drink­ing water that poor black peo­ple are forced to endure, why would they all of a sud­den care about police slaugh­ter of our peo­ple today?

America has nev­er been good for African-Americans and those Edomites are quite con­tent with keep­ing it that way.
It is for those rea­sons that the next gen­er­a­tion must make it abun­dant­ly clear that hey will not tol­er­ate the s**t any longer.
They do not care about bro­ken black bod­ies, what they care about is bro­ken glass. They do not care about jus­tice, what they clam­or for is social order, a social order which keeps them on top based on their self-acclaimed non­sen­si­cal notion that their washed-out skin col­or is supe­ri­or to our melanat­ed rich­ness.
But if there is no jus­tice there can be no real peace.
Georgia Long-serv­ing con­gress­man and a true civ­il rights icon John Lewis just passed.
As con­do­lences pour in from all quar­ters, so too has the lying despi­ca­ble Republican racists try to pay lip ser­vice to this black icon, seek­ing to cash in on the dead body of our moral kings and queens. We do not need their con­do­lences for our heroes.
We do not need plat­i­tudes as they have done for decades using the good names and sac­ri­fices of our depart­ed cham­pi­ons Martin Luther King and others.

YouTube player

Spare us your shit, black peo­ple have always been the con­science and moral­i­ty to the extent either of those two attrib­ut­es exists or, has ever exist­ed in America. So do not blow any more smoke up our ass­es when our con­science lead­ers pass on.
As Bob Marley asked in his song, “how long shall they kill our prophets, While we stand aside and look”?
Oh Yea, that march­ing and singing ish about “we shall over­come” is not cut­ting it any­more, it nev­er did.
The mis­takes of past strug­gles, have been and still remain, try­ing to appeal to the bet­ter angels with­in dev­ils.
Those hea­thens are not out there stand­ing up in defense of the police, they are in the streets offer­ing them­selves up as counter-demon­stra­tors against your God-giv­en right to exist.
Their police which is par­tial­ly paid by black peo­ple’s tax dol­lars are pro­tec­tors of their com­mu­ni­ties, but are oppres­sive race sol­diers oper­at­ing as judges, jury, and exe­cu­tion­ers in the black com­mu­ni­ties.
police have nev­er been of ser­vice to the black com­mu­ni­ty, they nev­er will.

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


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Rep. John Lewis Civil Rights Icon And Last Living Speaker At The March On Washington, Has Died…

Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the civ­il rights leader who served in Congress since 1987, has died after a months-long bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, Friday. He was 80.

Lewis was diag­nosed with stage 4 can­cer on December 2019 and under­went treat­ment while remain­ing in office. Lewis would become one of President Trump’s fiercest oppo­nents — right up until his death — in a polit­i­cal and civ­il rights career that began some 50 years ago.

Lewis’s life reads like a fic­tion­al movie char­ac­ter cre­at­ed to span the entire civ­il rights move­ment through one per­son. He was born on February 21, 1940, to Willie Mae (née Carter) and Eddie Lewis, both of whom were share­crop­pers. Lewis was one of nine chil­dren, raised in Troy, Ala. He would attend Pike County Training High School, in Alabama, and lat­er, American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tenn. Lewis would become a fix­ture on the Nashville civ­il rights scene where he fre­quent­ly led sit-ins — one of which led to the deseg­re­ga­tion of Nashville lunch coun­ters — and began attend­ing non­vi­o­lence work­shops that would lead him to a non­vi­o­lent civ­il rights phi­los­o­phy that he still believed in right up until his death.

Lewis knew ear­ly on that he want­ed to be a free­dom fight­er after feel­ing the impact that Jim Crow laws had on him as a child.

“I saw racial dis­crim­i­na­tion as a young child,” Lewis said in a 2005 inter­view with NPR. “I saw those signs that said ‘White Men, Colored Men, White Women, Colored Women’. … I remem­ber as a young child with some of my broth­ers and sis­ters and first cousins going down to the pub­lic library try­ing to get library cards, try­ing to check some books out, and we were told by the librar­i­an that the library was for whites only and not for ‘col­oreds’.”

Lewis cred­its a child­hood trip to the North, to Buffalo, N.Y., as the first time he saw white men and black men work­ing togeth­er. He would also be fas­ci­nat­ed by water foun­tains with­out signs des­ig­nat­ing them for whites only. Lewis would lis­ten to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks on the radio and would meet them both while only a teenager.r

In 1960, Lewis would become one of the orig­i­nal 13 Freedom Riders, who would ride bus­es to chal­lenge seg­re­gat­ed seat­ing in the South. In 1963 — at only 23 — he would become one of the youngest mem­bers of the “Big Six” lead­ers as chair­man of the Student Nonviolent Coördinating Committee (SNCC) and the youngest speak­er at the March on Washington. During his three years with SNCC, Lewis would help SNCC launch the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a push to orga­nize and reg­is­ter black vot­ers in Mississippi. Lewis was also inte­gral in open­ing the Freedom Schools, alter­na­tives to pub­lic schools most­ly in the South, that were com­plete­ly free and aimed to help teach African American chil­dren learn to think and act politically.

On March 7, 1965 — a day that would become known as “Bloody Sunday” — Lewis, sev­er­al reli­gious lead­ers, activists, and some 600 marchers attempt­ed to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to protest the police shoot­ing death of unarmed pro­test­er Jimmie Lee Jackson a few weeks ear­li­er. The plan was for marchers to walk to then-Gov. George Wallace’s office to ask ques­tions about Jackson’s death. Gov. Wallace said that there would be no march and ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol chief to “use what­ev­er mea­sures are nec­es­sary to pre­vent a march.”

Lewis, stood beside Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as he led march across the bridge. At the end of the bridge, marchers were con­front­ed by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to leave. Instead they began to pray. Police then launched tear gas, while mount­ed troops began beat­ing non­vi­o­lent pro­test­ers with night­sticks. Lewis’ skull was frac­tured in the mêlée and the scars from that day were still vis­i­ble as he got old­er. The visions of police beat­ing pro­test­ers, which were broad­cast­ed across America, would prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson into sign­ing the Voting Rights Act into law on Aug. 6, 1965.

Lewis would turn his atten­tion to change on a gov­ern­men­tal lev­el in 1977 when he would run an unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign to win Atlanta’s 5th con­gres­sion­al dis­trict seat. In 1981, Lewis was elect­ed to the Atlanta City Council and in 1986, Lewis ran again for the 5th Congressional District seat in a tough cam­paign to beat favorite Julian Bond for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion. He would go on to beat Republican Portia Scott in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Lewis has been a con­gres­sion­al jug­ger­naut since, win­ning the seat every elec­tion since.

.Lewis was the only liv­ing speak­er from the March on Washington on stage dur­ing Barack Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2009 and lat­er Obama would sign a pho­to of him­self to Lewis with the words. “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.”

Lewis would go on to win sev­er­al hon­orary doc­tor­ates and awards for his civ­il rights work, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 from President Obama and the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for the third install­ment of March, a graph­ic nov­el depict­ing his life dur­ing the civ­il rights move­ment along­side co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell. The first two vol­umes of March were pub­lished in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The New York Times would call the series “A gal­va­niz­ing account of his com­ing-of-age in the move­ment, it’s a cap­sule les­son in courage of con­science, a sto­ry that inspires with­out mor­al­iz­ing or sim­pli­fy­ing in hindsight.”

From the Times:

March begins and draws to a close with scenes from the march Lewis led in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, for­ev­er known as “Bloody Sunday” after state troop­ers and the local police attacked the non­vi­o­lent pro­test­ers. The open­ing pan­els depict the marchers gath­ered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, then move from their tense, prayer­ful faces to the pha­lanx of bil­ly clubs and white hel­mets on the oppo­site bank. Lewis, then only 25, was beat­en that day; five months lat­er, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

In what has now become a band­wag­on, Lewis was one of the few Congress mem­bers to announce, even before President Donald Trump took office, that he had no inten­tions or work­ing with an open­ly racist elect­ed official.

“I don’t see this pres­i­dent-elect as a legit­i­mate pres­i­dent,” Lewis said in an inter­view with NBC’s Meet the Press a week before Trump was sworn into office. “I think the Russians par­tic­i­pat­ed in help­ing this man get elect­ed and they have destroyed the can­di­da­cy of Hillary Clinton.”

Lewis was fierce­ly loy­al to the fight for equal rights and made no bones about his loy­al­ty. As such, he didn’t attend Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, the first one he’s missed since being elect­ed to Congress.

“You can­not be at home with some­thing that you feel is wrong,” Lewis said.

During impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Trump in 2019, Lewis gave an impas­sioned speech on the House floor.

“When you see some­thing that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral oblig­a­tion to say some­thing, do some­thing,” Lewis said Wednesday. “Our chil­dren and their chil­dren will ask us: ‘What did you do? What did you say?’”

Lewis, a fight­er since birth, not­ed that he was in a fight for his life after learn­ing of his can­cer diag­no­sis in December 2019 dur­ing a rou­tine med­ical visit.

“I’ve been in some kind of fight — for free­dom, equal­i­ty, basic human rights – for near­ly my entire life,” he told AJC in December. “I have nev­er faced a fight quite like this one.”

In a December state­ment, Lewis was hope­ful about advances in can­cer research and his chances to win his health battle. 

“I have decid­ed to do what I know to do and do what I have always done: I am going to fight it and keep fight­ing for the Beloved Community,” he said. “We still have many bridges to cross.”

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And Now John Lewis Dies…

AS IF 2020 WASN’T ALREADY BAD ENOUGH, NOW JOHN LEWIS DIES. REST IN PEACE JOHNLEWIS.

Asked by a CBS inter­view­er why black peo­ple are dying at the hands of police, Donald Trump replied in a pre­dictable racist fash­ion, “so are white peo­ple, so are white peo­ple”, what a ter­ri­ble ques­tion to ask?
The sad tragedy in that answer from this most inglo­ri­ous of morons, is that there was (a) no sense of the math involved in the dynam­ic, in that the ques­tion came out of the real­i­ty of the 13% black pop­u­la­tion as against the 60% white stake, and that blacks are killed by white race sol­diers, (police) at 3.5 times the rate of white peo­ple. (b) the igno­ra­mus in chief nev­er both­ered to address the over­ar­ch­ing issue of police abuse and vio­lent mur­der of American cit­i­zens, Black white & brown.

Missing from his answer, was any recog­ni­tion that regard­less of race, police were killing peo­ple they ought not to be killing, and that in and of itself is a pub­lic health cri­sis.
In fact, even as the igno­ra­mus in chief failed to grasp the seri­ous­ness of the cri­sis police pose, not just to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the American peo­ple, but to the sta­bil­i­ty of the American democ­ra­cy, the Minneapolis city coun­cil was vot­ing to declare racism a pub­lic health crisis. 

The Minneapolis City Council declared racism a pub­lic health emer­gency in the city Friday, vow­ing to allo­cate fund­ing and oth­er resources to “name, reverse, and repair the harm done” to peo­ple of col­or in the city. The res­o­lu­tion was unan­i­mous­ly approved near­ly two months after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police while in cus­tody in south Minneapolis. Days after his death, Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins called on the coun­cil to define racism as a pub­lic health crisis.

The police vio­lence being wit­nessed across America is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hatred that cer­tain seg­ments of the white pop­u­la­tion har­bor for African-Americans. That hatred is man­i­fest­ed every day on talk radio, on [Faux tele­vi­sion] and it plays out in the fan­tas­tic fal­la­cy of Karens and Kens whose busi­ness it is to tell black peo­ple what they can and can­not do as cit­i­zens of this repub­lic.
Nothing that Karen or Ken does is is dan­ger­ous as the pow­er police wield, they have the pow­er of life and death, and they are not flinch­ing, nei­ther are they shy about using that pow­er.
The res­i­dent evil in the White House has unleashed that mur­der­ous hatred on every street and boule­vard in America.
Its tox­i­c­i­ty is pal­pa­ble, its con­se­quences severe, and it’s ten­ta­cles stifling. 

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

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Tennesse Man Claim Police Beat Him With Chairs, Ping Pong Equipment After His Arrest…

For every sto­ry of police bru­tal­i­ty that gains nation­al atten­tion, there are sev­er­al more that fly under the radar. Take, for instance, the sto­ry of Daniel Jefferson, who alleges that, after being arrest­ed by Memphis Police in 2015 dur­ing a drug inves­ti­ga­tion, he was beat­en up at the Raines police precinct.

“They beat me with chairs, ping pong tables; man, I had per­ma­nent boot marks on my back for months,” Jefferson told WREG in Memphis. Internal MPD doc­u­ments detail Jefferson’s account and show that exces­sive force com­plaints were upheld for three of the five offi­cers accused. Jefferson was arrest­ed after alleged­ly fir­ing shots at a plain­clothes offi­cer. “He jumped out on me with his gun, so I let off my shots, and I kept on going,” Jefferson said. Jefferson even­tu­al­ly went to prison on charges of aggra­vat­ed assault and being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm but the charge of attempt­ed first-degree mur­der was dropped.

Jefferson was unapolo­getic about shoot­ing the offi­cer sim­ply because he wasn’t aware of who he was. “I thought it was just a reg­u­lar [exple­tive] — reg­u­lar per­son try­ing to rob me,” he said. He did admit that if he was aware the man was an offi­cer, his response would’ve been dif­fer­ent. “I ain’t gonna lie, if I knew he was an offi­cer, I would have sur­ren­dered. You know what I’m say­ing? I ain’t try­ing to shoot no police officer.”

He still has con­cerns about how much worse his sit­u­a­tion could’ve been which, giv­en every­thing we know, is com­plete­ly valid. In the same year that Jefferson was beat­en, Sandra Bland was killed found dead in police cus­tody. While he has yet to file a law­suit, Jefferson does want some com­pen­sa­tion for what he endured. “They know they … have to pay [a] big boy bag of mon­ey, you hear me?”

While some of the offi­cers were sus­pend­ed due to the inci­dent, it’s unclear if any of them are cur­rent­ly employed by the Memphis Police Department. MPD did not respond to Jefferson’s alle­ga­tions when asked by WREG on Monday. It’s tru­ly sad that Jefferson was beat­en in cus­tody and the fact he’s still alive is both a source of amaze­ment and relief.