https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/06/christopher-columbus-no-monuments-murderers
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Category Archives: blacklivesmatter
The Problem With Truth, Is That It Is Unwanted
Everyone has his version of the truth but seldom share it. Whether it’s the taste, the smell or whatever, the ugly thing can help you lose friends and create bitter enemies. I wonder if it’s because once acknowledged, the truth will not leave until you do or stop doing, a particular wrong. Our criminal justice system is an apt example.
Let’s take the current situation in Missouri. Not that it’s unique. Far cry. But because it is active, makes that a good example, willing to say a textbook case of what leadership is not. Step back with me a bit.
Jay Nixon was a two-term Democratic governor when Ferguson managed to make world news. That was due to the police killing of Michael Brown and the conduct of the entire criminal justice system in Missouri. As Gov Nixon and Ferguson Mayor Knowles went into hiding for four days, the police were left to “pacify” peaceful protesters. No one could have imagined police management to be that inept, or any criminal justice system is so inbred and corrupted.
The current governor Eric Greitens is a Republican. He never went into hiding, but nothing says “I don’t know what to do”, like readying the National Guard to control a relatively small number of cooperating protesters. So far, more than 150 persons have been arrested for petty misdemeanors, especially not moving when told by the police.
Both dealt with protesters as the problem. Neither appeared capable of confronting and addressing the root of the problem. But quite willing to talk tough and use force.
No civic-minded person supports lawlessness. So let’s agree conditionally: lock them up if their behaviors are imminent threats to public safety. Not because the police told them to move. Do we have a Constitution or not? If the answer is doubtful (as it’s becoming) repeat next year and the years afterward. Finally, both the state and protesters would be locked in an increasingly dysfunctional, dangerous way of life. The state CANNOT win. That would be despite being a police state, as America already is.
Right now, both Blacks and Whites, males and females are being threatened and arrested. How long do the state and local governments think that they can keep this up? I’ll hazard a guess. When you stop seeing truth as the enemy.
If This Is Not Disturbing, Then Everyone Is Unsafe
Teen killed by stray bullet while police fire at dog during response to ‘loud music’
Authored by Sam Levin, of San Francisco. Published by The Guardian on June 23, 2017. See link below.
Sometimes one feels the urgent, compelling need to scream. At least somebody would hear. Sure, that might relieve outrage, anger, and disappointment, until tomorrow when the same thoughtlessness repeats and another family grieves. But citizens are not merely frustrated, the scream will be heard, citizens want authorities to listen and to act positively. It is a public safety issue that words directly from Attorney General, Jeff Sessions tells that he doesn’t know or want to learn, about very serious occurrences taking place in the United States. This is not a training issue.
Teen killed by stray bullet while police fire at dog during response to ‘loud music’
My Dear U. S Government, Please Stop Trying to Save Me From Myself
By Leyland A. King
September 30, 2017
After centuries of arduous work to give me freedom by saving me, I beg of you, please stop. Stop! The fact is, that when there is any rescuing done at all, the beneficiary is only you. For centuries! Heavenly inspired you were, to rescue my body from the heathens in Africa, but then changed the rules for my getting to heaven because you said, God wasn’t yet convinced and comfortable, with the question of whether (1) I had a soul, and (2) whether it was worth saving.
Of course, external threats and domestic terror are exempt. That is your cardinal role, and even that needs rethinking, but it’s not my focus here. What are my focus and consternation are the sweat and treasure needlessly expended; all devoted to saving me from myself. I never made an appeal and I am so aware that even if I did, the remedy you concoct is too often detrimental to me and those similarly entangled in the widening, strengthening, all-consuming tentacled web flung upon me. Me! A person whose greatest vice is a weekend gelato and a pecan sticky bun.
You, having made vices crimes, then turn around and tax the very crimes. I am flabbergasted that you could not have distinguished (1) the difference and (2) the consequence of the crimes you created. Oh, you’re regulating the vices to prevent their proliferation. Sorry. My friend, the neighborhood half-wit, alleged that you, the government, is a pimp. He said that a pimp is defined by what he does to enable and protect, paid sexual intercourse between consenting adults. You tax the product and intellectual property rights of sex workers and producers. Therefore, argues the half-wit, you are the worst kind of pimp and the best at managing it. When business is slow, you send goons to employ various means of entrapping and prosecuting the poor ones. The arrested pay for the meals the judge eats. That’s called fines. The legal name you created for it is “living off the earnings of prostitution.” That the government the kingpin pimp.
My friend, the neighborhood half-wit, alleged that you, the government, are a pimp. He said that a pimp is defined by what he does to enable and protect, paid sexual intercourse between consenting adults. You tax the product and intellectual property rights of sex workers and producers. Therefore, argues the half-wit, you are the worst kind of pimp and the best at managing it. When business is slow, you send goons to employ various means of entrapping and prosecuting the poor ones. The arrested pay for the meals the judge eats. That’s called fines. The legal name you created for it is “living off the earnings of prostitution.” That means the government the kingpin pimp.
Since our institutions follow your lead and adopt your worldview, one cannot be surprised that the sale of two cigarettes might be more important than human life; in your zeal to save me from myself, I pay the price through my insecurity and unceasing surveillance. Thus, I don’t have to actually engage marijuana crime, it is sufficient to lose my personal freedom or life because a cop claimed to have smelled marijuana as he passed my car. Demanding that my constitutional rights and God-given right to own and control my body are respected could bring upon me a swarm of law enforcers to kill me. I’m not exaggerating, this is what you have done to save me from potential vice. Me!
Look, gambling is a vice. You made it a crime. A few retirees and six slot machines in a storefront, bring hell’s coals delivered upon their grey heads, by men in blue carrying sticks, chemicals, and guns.
Secretive sex; having a beer all by myself on my own driveway, could get me manhandled and arrested if a paper bag didn’t cover the bottle. WTF! Masked, armed men could, without warning or warrant, break down my door and enter my home night or day and take me out or take me away, and take my money, because, I suppose, they think I am some sort of a combatant in the war on drugs. Their supposition based on your decision that I am a danger to myself and a corrupter of society. Me? All by myself.
The interesting thing is, despite my plea not to be saved from myself, you’re determined to do it anyway because you are obsessed with what you call law and order -what I hear as control and contain. We ask for jobs, you offer us 10,000 more cops. Four-fifths of them White males. Not to be outdone your Attorney General, who has panic attacks at the mere mention of the word marijuana, called for increased prison time; more private prison space; he decided, based only on his addled notion, that the police need to be unfettered from such inconsequential matters as arbitrary arrests, excessive detention, brutality, and murder. After all, they are there protecting me from social degeneration, that started the day the government decided that something ought to be done about enhancing the flow drugs into my body.
So, as state governments grapple with pressing matters like drug testing the poor, to catch one in a thousand; increasing the rate of executions lest the chemicals expire; to shoot death row criminals because it’s cheaper, unhindered by pesky constitutionality, trips back and forth to the Supreme Court or the innocence of the citizen who invariably, just happens to be poor.
So, my dear rulers, I’m not asking for much, just to be left alone to self-regulate me. Something that only you believe corporations are capable of. Why not me?
Imagine a society where this report was not necessary.
Just imagine the kind of society where this report was not necessary. But what is done is done.
Let’s now imagine a society where, having acknowledged its wrongs and flaws, actually took the report seriously, and went directly to work with the best of human resources and capital focused on fairness and justice, something like the Marshall Plan. Wow, what would America be like today?
Lastly, imagine such a dark report delivered to small, timid men, whose vision for humanity doesn’t rise beyond the walls and ceilings of their commodious offices; their loftiest dream is date-stamped on a pension, and a job held in trust for them by mysterious lobbyists.
Well, hey, time to get out of bed. Look around, nothing is there to imagine. The smell is that of wounds neglected and the body politic fast headed to mass graves. America chose that option as its destiny.
HBCU has been asked to play at Trump’s Inauguration
HBCU has been asked to play at the inauguration. The heated argument is whether to reject support for this pres-elect vs.the unique experience of playing at the ceremony. Some say let the band vote.
Will the Black College Band perform at Trump inauguration?
Somebody’s losing sleep over this?! Okay, let’s consider the issue.
1. Does participating benefit or harm the country? No impact.
2. Does it help or hurt the school in any particular way? Neither. Most Americans know nothing of the school or the historical relevance.
3. Does it help or harm the band and players? Yes, and that’s why there are two opposing petitions.
Some say the experience of playing at the event would be invaluable. That’s debatable.
4. Does it help or hurt African-Americans? Yes and with no conditions. We cannot separate the man from the Oval Office. If that were possible, we would not have had the office occupied by White males exclusively for over two centuries.
Accepting the invitation, in this case, is an endorsement of a person who spent his time and money, publicly insulting President Barack Obama for eight long years. Daily! To this day, he has not had the very basic human decency to even offer a public apology to the Nation, to President Obama and his family. Where he, Trump, was not present, he and his cohorts overtly or tacitly created an atmosphere of vileness unsurpassed. But like I wrote at my own low point, “Our Atlas Never Shrugged.” BlueGadfly.com .
Yes, we watched, worried for his safety. For 8 consecutive years, none of the ogres said a word that could help him. They ganged-up, piling unjust vilification, non-cooperation, and de-legitimization. When that did not calm their racist insecurity, they went even lower, consorting with foreign governments to defeat President Obama’s diplomacy. Protocols, laws, ethical standards could not restrain them. Now they ask us to do what?
So, tell me again about why Trump’s event is a place any African American should be.
Leyland King
Had this been about a lost election, of course. We have always done what’s right. Even with Bush v Gore, we did.
This decision lies solely with the leadership of the college’s president and board of trustees. Not what’s popular or easier.
+Leyland King Well said Mr. King as an African-American mother I would not want my child participating in that foolishness of a charade with Trump to say I like blacks, see I invited a Black band.
