Tag: Race Issues

Juneteenth–2020

Closing Thought–19Jun20

Donald the Orange has decided to once again hold his rallies…the only way he can control the message in public…..he will return to the propaganda trail in Tulsa…..

President Trump is planning to hold his first rally of the coronavirus era on June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he says he’s planning more events in Florida, Texas, and Arizona as well. Trump made the announcement as he met with a handful of African American supporters Wednesday afternoon for a roundtable discussion, the AP reports. Trump’s signature rallies often draw tens of thousands of people but have been on hiatus since March 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic. “A beautiful new venue, brand new. We’re looking forward to it,” Trump said during a White House event. “They’ve done a great job with COVID, as you know, the state of Oklahoma.” The rally will take place on Juneteenth, the commemoration of the ending of slavery in the US.

Sorry but a bad choice….unless you want to reinforce the racist accusations against the campaign…..

I have written several post explaining the importance of 19 June or Juneteenth…..https://lobotero.com/2017/06/19/juneteenth-our-other-independence-day/  or  https://lobotero.com/2018/06/19/closing-thought-19jun18/ and more  https://lobotero.com/2019/06/19/the-other-independence-day/

Trump will do something…..Out of respect? 

“Many of my African American friends and supporters have reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this Holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents,” he wrote Friday night in a series of tweets. He noted that the “big deal” rally is now scheduled for next Saturday, June 20, and claimed that ticket requests have been “in excess of 200,000.” The Hill notes that his switch regarding the rally, which will be his first one in over three months due to the coronavirus pandemic, is a “rare instance of [him] giving in to criticism,” though Trump had insisted earlier that the choosing of June 19 as the original date wasn’t intentional.

Out of respect is just another lie for the slobbering supporters.

Trump was not finished embarrassing his ass…..he then asserts that no one every heard of Juneteenth……until he brought it to the news…..

“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump said, a reference to his decision to postpone a campaign rally from June 19 to June 20. He said a black Secret Service agent told him about the day’s significance: a celebration of the end of slavery. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.” Trump was surprised when informed his own White House has previously marked the occasion. Sen. Kamala Harris was among those ridiculing Trump’s assertion, notes USA Today.

But in case you are on of those people that never heard of the day and  would like more info and history on why this is a terrible idea……to hold a racist rally on this day that is……https://theblackwallsttimes.com/category/history

And before Tulsa there was a riot in East St. Louis about 4 years earlier……

In East St. Louis, as in other cities across the nation, white people resented every effort of African Americans to improve their social and economic conditions during the 20th century. In this instance, white residents erupted in violence in response to Black migrants coming into the city in droves — mostly from the South. During World War I, the labor market significantly expanded to meet the needs of military production. With a growing demand for industrial workers in the North, Black Southerners flocked to places like East St. Louis. In response, white business owners worked to block new migrants from gaining economic or political power.

Even though Black workers held the most menial jobs and received lower wages than their peers, white people in East St. Louis still viewed them as a threat. And they were determined to keep Black people “in their place” through acts of violence and intimidation. In May 1917, a group of white workers filed formal complaints against Black migrants in the city, blaming African Americans for taking “their” jobs in local factories.

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/east-st-louis-race-riot-1917-protests/

As the lives of Afro-Americans were starting to improve the rest of society was not handling it well and riots broke out trying to put blacks back in the “place”.

And that brings us to today…and not much has really changed.

Sorry but a change in date will not make things better for this president……

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What About White People?

How many have heard the tale that the media is ignoring the violence committed by police towards white people?

I have heard….and of course the old reliable “All Lives Matter”….I would have been disappointed if that had not shown up…..sorry but to me that is the same as saying “I have black friends”…..a racist response.

But let’s look at the accusation that the media is ignoring voilence against white people……

The ongoing national protests against police brutality have focused for the most part on black victims, for the obvious reason that black Americans are disproportionately abused by police. The horrifying video of George Floyd being slowly strangled to death hit a raw nerve in the black community, which has endured decades of these kinds of atrocities, as well as an exponentially greater amount of less-lethal abuses.

This has led some conservatives to claim that the protesters are deliberately ignoring white victims. Commentator Matt Walsh pointed to videos of two white men, Tony Timpa and Daniel Shaver, being brutally killed by police as evidence that only black killings get attention and that police brutality is not a reflection of systemic racism. At Townhall, Mike Adams wrote an article entitled “White Man Can’t Breathe,” noting that there had not been “George Soros-funded protests” or “Antifa riots” in response to the Timpa killing, and implied a lack of them would show “political opportunism.”

These are disingenuous arguments.

https://theweek.com/articles/918849/what-about-police-violence-against-white-people

There is NO substance to the claims.

But that will not let disinformation go to waste….social media is full of bullshit waiting to be spread.

Let’s now look at those racists we all know……the ones I know think they are not hardly racist at all…they just think they are spouting truth……

New research indicates that the Dunning-Kruger effect — meaning the tendency for less competent individuals to overestimate their competence — can be applied to prejudicial attitudes. The study, which appears in Personality and Individual Differences, found that the least egalitarian individuals tended to be those who overestimated their levels of egalitarianism the most.

“I’m generally interested in how prejudice works and in why it’s sometimes difficult to get people to become less prejudiced. This study opened a window into understanding why some people don’t know that they’re prejudiced, and why those people might be particularly difficult to reach,” said study author Keon West, an associate professor of social psychology and the director of Equalab at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The researchers examined who was the most likely to overestimate their level of egalitarianism in two studies with 307 participants.

https://www.psypost.org/2020/06/study-finds-the-most-racially-prejudiced-people-tend-to-think-that-they-are-less-racist-than-the-average-person-56991

Racism will always exist….the thing to do is make it as unattractive as possible…..no one should have to face discrimination because of the skin color or for their birth place…..

Sorry renaming military bases is not going to help stem the rise of racism at all…..pulling down statues does little to change prejudices….https://www.upworthy.com/to-all-my-fellow-white-folks-trying-to-get-a-quick-anti-racism-education

Lots a work ahead….stay in the streets and make a difference…..just a thought……

Be Well…Be Safe….Be Heard……

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How Will This Help?

Everybody in Washington is scrambling to find a way to counter the protests and the issue of race.

The military has their idea….rename bases that are named for Confederate generals……

The death of George Floyd in police custody and the ensuing protests are sparking changes in law enforcement, media, and business—and now the US armed forces. Earlier this year, the US Army said it had no plans to scrap the names of any of its 10 bases named after Confederate leaders—ie, Fort Bragg, Fort Lee, and Fort Hood, to name a few—even though at the time it was announcing it would no longer allow images of Confederate flags at these sites. Now, however, in the wake of Floyd’s killing, military bigwigs say they’ll entertain a conversation on a possible renaming. “The secretary of defense and secretary of the Army are open to a bipartisan discussion on the topic,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement Monday for Mark Esper and Ryan McCarthy, per Politico.

The statement added, however, that “each Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a significant place in our military history. Accordingly, the historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies.” Still, as Politico points out, even these individual histories aren’t stellar: As an example, it cites Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, “a major slave-owner and … largely considered to be one of the most incompetent generals of the Civil War.” One person who agrees the military sites should be renamed: former CIA chief and retired Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned in 2012 amid an affair scandal. “We do not live in a country to which Braxton Bragg, Henry L. Benning, or Robert E. Lee can serve as an inspiration,” he writes in an op-ed in the Atlantic. “Acknowledging this fact is imperative.” More from him here.

Confederate monuments have reemerged as a national flash point since the death of George Floyd. Protesters decrying racism have targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, and some state officials are considering taking them down. Pelosi lacks the authority to order the removal of the 11 Capitol statues honoring Confederates but is urging the little-noticed Joint Committee on the Library to vote to remove them. Senate Republicans share jurisdiction. The presence of statues of generals and other figures of the Confederacy in Capitol locations such as Statuary Hall—the original House chamber—has been offensive to African American lawmakers for many years. But the chairman of the Library Committee noted, “the law does not permit the Architect of the Capitol or the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library to remove a statue from the Capitol once it has been received.” States determine which of their historical figures to display at the Capitol.

I agree that these changes should occur but why now?

They have needed addressing for many decades and now they are important….why?

Could it be the new bill the Dems are offering for consideration?

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/09/dems-j09.html

They, Dems, realize this piece of theater will go nowhere once it gets to the Senate it will die……so as usual the powers will do the “DC two step”…look like they are doing something when they are doing nothing.

I say do not accept this ‘compromise’ stay in the streets where changes will occur……

Stay in the streets…..it is working…do not accept anything but change……https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/08/stay-streets-its-working-two-weeks-racial-justice-protests-new-york-state-classifies

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“Bad Apples” Can Find Work

The term being used for those that commit abuse against the public is ‘bad apples’…..it is a term used to try and separate the good from the bad…..

Just a quick reference point for my readers…..killings commited by the police since 2015…..

a screenshot of a cell phone

(graph printed in the WaPo)

That is just the killings….does not include the other abuses commited by the police.

And there are those that worry that these ‘criminals’ would not be able to find gainful employment….(personally I say let them dig ditches or clean port-a-lets)……

But not to worry for if they are fired they fly under the radar and get work in another city so they can continue their abuses of the public.

Now it is not so covert….Florida has openly stated they will hire those fired for abuse of the public trust…..

A Florida police organization’s promise to hire any officers around the U.S. who are fired or who leave their jobs during the nationwide uprising over police brutality was decried by critics Tuesday as indicative of a toxic law enforcement community that rewards severe misconduct.

The Brevard County Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) posted two messages on Facebook Saturday urging officers in Buffalo, New York; Atlanta; and Minneapolis to consider finding new jobs in Florida where the union claimed they won’t have to face so-called “spineless leadership.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/09/problem-say-critics-police-union-recruits-fired-officers-new-jobs-florida

Spineless Leadership?

So-called police unions are the spineless gutless traitors of the public trust.

If they were truly concerned they would be leading the dash for reforms and security for the public.

Please stop calling these cowards as a “union”…they are not concerned with the worker as they are protecting bad players from the law.

Plus the narrative that the police use to explain what has happened is steadily disproved…..

Minneapolis police initially told the public that George Floyd died after a “medical incident during a police interaction.” The Buffalo, New York, department said a protester “tripped and fell.” Philadelphia police alleged that a college student who suffered a serious head wound had assaulted an officer.

All three claims were quickly disproved by videos seen widely on the internet and television, fueling mistrust and embarrassing agencies that made misleading or incomplete statements that painted their actions in a far more favorable light.

Police departments deny lying but acknowledge sometimes making mistakes when releasing information in fast-moving, complicated situations. The videos, they say, do not always capture officers’ perspectives.

https://news.yahoo.com/video-evidence-increasingly-disproves-police-184949761.html

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8 Point Plan To End Police Brutality

The protests as usual have brought about lots of talk about what is need to make the use of police brutality a thing of the past.

Operating with the backing and encouragement of President Trump—who has threatened to deploy the military to suppress protests—and the aid of thousands of National Guard soldiers, police forces throughout the US are engaged in an ongoing rampage.

More than 11,000 people have been arrested in the less than two weeks of protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd. Most have been attacked by police and arrested for “failure to disperse” or violating curfews, under both Democratic and Republican mayors.

Thousands of peaceful demonstrators have been teargassed, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets and beanbags, beaten with truncheons and pushed to the ground, leading to serious injuries and in some cases death. While largely ignored by the mainstream media, video after video of police attacks have gone viral on social media, fueling popular outrage.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/06/viol-j06.html

Lots of talk, especially from politicians, it is a good subject to pad the resume for the next election….I am sorry but I doubt see many of them as sincere……

These protests and the brutality are NOTHING new.

Police brutality has been with us for many many years…..

Eugene Williams, a 17-year-old black boy, was stoned to death by white people in 1919 after he swam into what they deemed the wrong part of Lake Michigan.

In response, black people in Chicago rose up in protest, and white people attacked them. More than 500 people were injured and 38 were killed. Afterward, the city convened a commission to study the causes of the violence.

The commission found “systemic participation in mob violence by the police,” Khalil Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of the book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, told Vox. “When police officers had the choice to protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.”

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21280643/police-brutality-violence-protests-racism-khalil-muhammad

We all, except for the racist, want to see an end to the brutality….and there is a proposal that I kinda like…..it has an 8 fold path…..

Amend federal civil rights laws to allow more effective prosecution of police misconduct by changing the standard from willfulness to recklessness;

Abolish “qualified immunity,” so police officers can be held civilly liable for abuses; Prohibit the transfer of offensive military equipment to police departments

Strip federal funds from departments that violate civil rights;

Create a federal model policing program that emphasizes de-escalation, non-lethal force and culturally competent policing in which access to federal funds depends upon the level of reform adopted. As part of this effort to modernize and humanize police departments we need to enhance the recruitment pool by ensuring that the resources are available to pay wages that will attract the top-tier officers we need to do the difficult work of policing;

Provide funding to states and municipalities to create civilian corps of unarmed first responders to supplement law enforcement, such as social workers, EMTs, and trained mental health professionals, who can handle order maintenance violations, mental health emergencies, and low-level conflicts to aid police officers;

Require agencies to make records of police misconduct publicly available;

Require all jurisdictions that receive federal grant funding to establish independent police conduct review boards that are broadly representative of the community and that have the authority to refer deaths that occur at the hands of police or in police custody to federal authorities for investigation.

In addition, the boards would be authorized to report to federal authorities other types of abuses by police including patterns of misconduct. This would be supplemental to current federal authority to commence investigations. Clearly we need to enhance federal funding for such investigations.

So far these are the best I have heard…..

I see where there can be cheating on these requirements…but that is nothing unusual….there is always fudging federal statutes….there has been too much for too long…..

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Another Brick In The Wall

All the protests over deaths has yet another victim to add to the list of black people killed in police custody.

This time it is Tacoma with the bad cops….

The Mayor of Tacoma, Washington, Victoria Woodards, has called for the firing of police officers involved in the death of Manuel Ellis. Ellis, a 33-year-old black man, died on March 3 in handcuffs while being restrained on the ground by police. His death has been ruled a homicide.

“I am demanding tonight that the Pierce County Sheriff review and confirm every action taken by each officer. I demand that the sheriff provide details of the actions of each officer on the scene and I am directing the city manager to fire each officer involved,” Woodards said at a news conference late Thursday night, adding: “The officer who committed this crime should be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Ellis died of respiratory arrest due to hypoxia due to physical restraint, The News Tribune reported. Contributing factors included methamphetamine intoxication and dilated cardiomyopathy, commonly known as an enlarged heart. The Medical Examiner ruled Ellis’ death a homicide.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/manuel-ellis-death-black-man-tacoma-police-homicide-mayor-woodards-says-fire-prosecute-officer/

It was murder…..call it what is is….homicide in the first degree…..

Protesters need to go to Tacoma and make a stink.

More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during the protests against police violence as of Thursday, the tenth day of demonstrations in a row since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day.

In a tally taken of recorded arrests across the country, the Associated Press reported that the number of protesters arrested has grown by the hundreds each day. The news agency reported that one quarter of the arrests have been made in Los Angeles followed by New York City, which has 2,000 arrests, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

The AP analysis also showed that the majority of the arrests are for “low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse.” Exposing as false the claims by President Donald Trump and Democratic politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that the majority of the protesters are outside agitators, AP reported that, during a 24-hour period over the weekend in Minneapolis, “41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/05/demo-j05.html

Time to make a stand!

Be Well…..Be Safe…..Be Heard…..

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Only A Few Bad Apples

That is what some mental midget that works for Donald the Orange had to say on the news over the weekend…..I got to thinking seems that there is possibly more bad than good.

Just a very few of the cops gone bad…..but you will not know of it if you believe that morons that work for this White House.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1266963846649933824
 

Trump keeps talking and keeps inciting the violence to escalate…..

Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of working people and youth who have turned out in nearly 100 cities to protest the murder of George Floyd have themselves become the target of violent assaults by massively armed squads of police, backed by national guardsmen.

The nationwide violence unleashed against protesters is a continuation and escalation of the murderous assault that cost the life of George Floyd. The police are acting with impunity, fully aware that their violent attacks on protesters are supported by the Trump administration.

It is hardly a coincidence that Floyd’s murder occurred in Minneapolis, where President Donald Trump delivered a fascistic tirade last October at a rally attended by hundreds of cops. He denounced “far left” and “socialist” politicians, including the city’s mayor

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/01/pers-j01.html

Speaking of Minneapolis….since 2015 the choke hold has been used 237 times…..

Minneapolis police officers have used neck restraints at least 237 times since 2015 and have left people unconscious 44 times in the same time period, according to analysis of police reports from NBC News. The report states people lost consciousness in 16 percent of the incidents. Although some U.S. police departments have outright bans on chokeholds, the Minneapolis Police Department’s policy manual allows the use of neck restraints that can leave people unconscious. NBC News reports that almost half of those who lost consciousness were injured, but the records don’t state how severe the injuries were. The data also showed three-fifths of those of those subjected to neck restraints and who then lost consciousness were black—about 30 percent were white. The Minneapolis Police Department did not comment on the data. Last month, Officer Derek Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes before the 46-year-old died. He was charged Friday with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Read it at NBC News

Shades of Kent State…or so it would seem…..

A man was shot dead in Louisville after police officers and the Kentucky National Guard “returned fire” while clearing a large crowd early Monday.

Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad said in a statement that at around 12:15 a.m. his officers and the National Guard were sent to a parking lot to break up a crowd.

“Officers and soldiers began to clear the lot and at some point were shot at,” Conrad said in a statement. “Both LMPD and National Guard members returned fire, we have one man dead at scene”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-dead-louisville-after-police-national-guard-return-fire-protesters-n1220831

We are asking ourselves….how did society get to this point?  And there is an answer…..SCOTUS (I have written on this previously)……

Focusing on racial bias also risks obscuring the fundamental problem: the Supreme Court has effectively given police a license to shoot, pummel, or falsely arrest ill-fated citizens across the nation.

In the wake of the Civil War, freed southern blacks were terrorized by lynch mobs and other attackers. Congress responded to Ku Klux Klan violence against freed southern blacks by enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to authorize lawsuits against any person acting “under color of” law who causes a “deprivation of any rights… secured by the Constitution and laws.” But in a series of decisions beginning in 1967, the Supreme Court gutted that law by permitting police and other government agents to claim they acted in “good faith” when violating citizens’ rights. In 1982, the Supreme Court granted government officials immunity unless they violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

The Supreme Court effectively added an asterisk to the Constitution that expunged much of the Bill of Rights. In a 2018 case absolving a reckless shooting that killed a motorist, Justice Sonia Sotomayor angrily dissented that the court’s decision “tells [police] officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.” 

Cops Kill Because We Gave Them The Legal Framework to Do It

This cannot be explained away as “a few bad apples”…..those “apples” have been fermenting since the 1860s….

Time for analysis is over…..solutions need to be found and words are not that solution.

Sadly Tribalism will keep this from happening….a party that depends on tribalism and a people that cannot see past their own white noses.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Is It Riot Or Resistance?

American society has been once again awaken from the Dream by protests……and as normal it is because a black person has been killed by the police.

I am sure there are a wealth of opinions on why and most of them are out of the mouths of white people who have no idea on what it is truly all about.

So is it riot or resistance?

Let’s be honest…..your opinion will be formed by what you see and hear in the news….so basically the MSM decides which it will be….

The general public’s opinions about protests and the social movements behind them are formed in large part by what they read or see in the media. This gives journalists a lot of power when it comes to driving the narrative of a demonstration.

They can emphasize the disruption protests cause or echo the dog whistles of politicians that label protesters as “thugs.” But they can also remind the public that at the heart of the protests is the unjust killing of another black person. This would take the emphasis away from the destruction of the protests and toward the issues of police impunity and the effects of racism in its many forms.

https://theconversation.com/riot-or-resistance-how-media-frames-unrest-in-minneapolis-will-shape-publics-view-of-protest-139713

Now after about 2 weeks of violence the moralizing has begun….

The moralizing has begun.

Those who have rarely been the target of organized police gangsterism are once again lecturing those who have about how best to respond to it.

Be peaceful, they implore, as protesters rise up in Minneapolis and across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd. This, coming from the same people who melted down when Colin Kaepernick took a knee — a decidedly peaceful type of protest. Because apparently, when white folks say, “protest peacefully,” we mean “stop protesting.”

Everything is fine, nothing to see here.

Protest, Uprisings, and Race War

Some are asking…”But why all the violence?”

Vox took a look at that question in an article over the weekend….

Of course the protests are about George Floyd’s death. Political leaders fear violence at the protests — and any destruction of property or bodily harm is, of course, worrisome — but their concerns actually demonstrate the fundamental asymmetry that the protesters are pushing back against. The state has a monopoly on legitimate violence, and it is often directed at young black people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice — the list goes on. When they die, the police officers responsible too frequently face no repercussions because they are protected by the law. If the men who killed George Floyd go to prison for their actions, they will be exceptions that prove that longstanding rule.

Yet if the anger and frustration from centuries of racial oppression causes a peaceful protest to become “violent” — and most of the reported attacks have been directed against property, not people, though one man was tragically killed in Detroit — suddenly that other kind of violence becomes the dominant story so far as political leaders are concerned, a disruption to the natural order that must be corrected. The systemic racism that has led to so many black lives being cut short becomes secondary.

But it shouldn’t, because that’s the real problem America must grapple with. Otherwise, sooner or later, this will all happen again.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/30/21275507/minneapolis-george-floyd-protests-police-violence

The most logical next question was how did the police get authorized the use of these choke holds?

Ever hear of the City of Los Angeles v Lyons?

We can lay some of the blame at the feet of SCOTUS.

Lyons brought a federal lawsuit against the city and officers who assaulted him. But that case, City of Los Angeles v. Lyons (1983), did not end well for him. Decades later, the 5-4 decision still stands as one of the greatest obstacles to civil rights lawyers challenging police brutality in cases like George Floyd’s.

Adolph Lyons was not the only man choked by a Los Angeles police officer. Between 1975 and 1980, LAPD officers used chokeholds on at least 975 occasions.

As Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in his dissenting opinion, “the city instructs its officers that use of a chokehold does not constitute deadly force.” Nevertheless, “no less than 16 persons have died following the use of a chokehold by an LAPD police officer,” 12 of whom were black men.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/30/21274697/supreme-court-police-chokehold-george-floyd-derek-chauvin-lyons-los-angeles

This whole ball of hate has been building since the video of the beating of Rodney King was posted for all to see…..and the results of the results of the police trials of the ones doing the beating.

But to worry our “president” has a plan to end these protest…..

President Trump, declaring himself a “president of law and order,” threatened Monday to deploy “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to American cities, claiming governors and local officials had “failed to take necessary action” to end civil unrest.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-01/trump-tells-governors-to-dominate-as-he-shrinks-from-crisis

Just a last thought from CNBC…..American police forces killed three people per day in 2019, for a total of nearly 1,100 killings

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Both Sides Of Floyd

I am sure that there is a wealth of opinions about these protests that have ignited across the global……my favorite was that George Floyd had been a porn star….now what the f*ck does that have to do with his death? To me it sounded like a white persons excuse.

All that aside…there is like I said a wealth of opinions and these are just a few of the published ones.

Did you see George Floyd’s death on TV and mutter “Oh, my God” in horror? To Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that sounds pretty white. But “if you’re black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted wanted to throw something), while shouting, ‘Not @#$%! again!'” he writes in the LA Times. Bottom line, he doesn’t want to see storefronts destroyed, “but African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer.” Blacks have been pushed to the edge by murder upon murder of innocent people like Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, so let’s try to empathize: “What I want to see is not a rush to judgment, but a rush to justice,” he writes. For more opinions:

  • Deroy Murdock: “What do smoke, scorched aluminum and shards of glass have to do with George Floyd’s needless, wasteful and hideous killing? Nothing,” writes the political commentator at Fox News. “Will this destruction help unify Americans in pursuit of justice for George Floyd? No.”
  • Christopher Mah: “The most important idea I learned from my students—many of whom have been personally affected by police violence—is that rioting is the language of grief,” the Minneapolis teacher writes at MinnPost. “There is anger, yes, but underneath it, people are grieving.”
  • Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris want funding redirected away from police to emergency response programs “that don’t kill” African Americans. “Now more than ever is the time to divest not only from police resources, but also the idea that the police keep us safe,” they write in the New York Times.
  • John Matisonn asks how rioting could happen in “liberal Minnesota.” But in the eight years after 1999, “Minneapolis paid $4.8 million in legal settlements related to 122 police misconduct incidents,” he writes at News24. “Police officers and county sheriffs were involved in 29 civilian deaths.” And former prosecutor Amy Klobuchar, now a senator, “chose not to criminally charge any fatalities involving law enforcement.”
  • Michelle Goldberg sees the protests as part of “a dystopian film about a nation come undone”—features nightmares like the pandemic, a frozen national economy, and armed lockdown protesters. “Some of the tropes are familiar, but we haven’t seen this movie before,” she writes at the Times.
  • Zaid Jilani wants people to “demand accountability for George Floyd’s death” without romanticizing rioters. At the National Review, he quotes Martin Luther King Jr: “I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.”

MLK. Jr was right.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Protests–Week 2

The death of George Floyd has re-ignited the racial tensions that have been smoldering under the radar……and protests have broken out coast to coast……

Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black men grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, with police cars set ablaze and reports of injuries mounting on all sides during another night of unrest after months of coronavirus lockdowns. The protests, which began in Minneapolis following Floyd’s death Monday after a police officer pressed a knee on his neck for more than eight minutes, have left parts of the city a grid of broken windows, burned-out buildings, and ransacked stores, the AP reports. The unrest has since become a national phenomenon as protesters decry years of deaths at police hands. More:

  • In Philadelphia, at least 13 officers were injured when peaceful protests turned violent and at least four police vehicles were set on fire. Other fires were set throughout downtown.
  • In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a 1921 massacre of black people that left as many as 300 dead and the city’s thriving black district in ruins, protesters blocked intersections and chanted the name of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a police officer in 2016.
  • In Tallahassee, Florida, a pickup truck drove through a crowd of protesters, sending some running and screaming as the vehicle stopped and started and at one point had a person on its hood, police said, but no serious injuries were reported. Police handcuffed the driver but did not release his name or say whether he would face charges.
  • In Los Angeles, protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” some within inches of the face shields of officers. Police used batons to move the crowd back and fired rubber bullets. One man used a skateboard to try to break a police SUV’s windshield. A spray-painted police car burned in the street.
  • In Washington, DC, growing crowds outside the White House chanted, taunted Secret Service agents and other law enforcement officers, and at times pushed against security barriers. President Trump, who spent much of Saturday in Florida for the SpaceX rocket launch, landed on the residence’s lawn in the presidential helicopter at dusk and went inside with speaking to journalists.
  • In New York City, video posted to social media showed officers using batons and shoving protesters down as they made arrests and cleared streets. Another video showed two NYPD cruisers driving into protesters who were pushing a barricade against a police car and pelting it with objects, knocking several to the ground.
  • In Minneapolis,state troopers and National Guard members moved in to break up protests after an 8pm curfew took effect, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to clear streets outside a police precinct and elsewhere. The show of force came after three days where police mostly declined to engage with protesters. It also came after the state poured in more than 4,000 National Guard members and said the number would soon rise to nearly 11,000.

Donald the Orange in true authoritarian fashion has issued warnings to the public……

Donald Trump has threatened people protesting the death of George Floyd with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” if they had breached the fence outside the White House, where members of the US Secret Service are “waiting for action”.

In a Twitter thread posted after another night of protests and uprisings against police brutality across the US, the president suggested that US Secret Service members look forward to inflicting violence.

He also appeared to encourage counter protests, promoting “MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-twitter-george-floyd-death-protests-white-house-dogs-guns-a9540216.html

Then Donald is just begging for another Kent State (look it up!)

President Donald Trump’s controversial statement suggesting looters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will be shot by National Guard troops drew fire from critics, particularly from congressional leaders with previous battlefield experience.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-national-guard-troops-may-shoot-looters-2020-5

Then the Orange one goes to his sycophant in the DoD……

the AP reports that the Pentagon has taken the “rare step” of telling the US Army to deploy active-duty US military police units in Minneapolis. Sources say that includes soldiers from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Drum in New York, Fort Carson in Colorado, and Fort Riley in Kansas. The orders were given verbally Friday after President Trump sought military options from Defense Secretary Mark Esper to curb the protests in Minneapolis.

Seriously?

It gets more like the authoritarian regimes he, Donald, so admires…..

How long before another “accidental” death happens within these protests?

Finally as long as we are talking about this authoritarian regime in the White House…..

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy.” Their study finds a correlation between white American’s intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-effect-new-study-connects-white-american-intolerance-support-authoritarianism-ncna877886

The future is anything but rosy……

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”