The Black Woman Who Biked Across the US Alone During the 1930s Jim Crow Era – Broadly
Bad. Ass.
Category: Race,
Alton Sterling shooting: Baton Rouge officer is fired for excessive force
One of the two white officers who wrestled Alton Sterling to the ground and killed him outside a Louisiana convenience store was fired after an excessive force investigation. The second officer will be suspended for three days.
…Salamoni, the only officer to open fire, was terminated.
…After the announcement Friday, the department released graphic body camera footage showing Salamoni calling Sterling a variety of profanity-laced names while the injured man lay bleeding to death on the concrete.
Alton Sterling shooting: Baton Rouge officer is fired for excessive force
Not enough. A three day suspension is an embarrassment to the city of Baton Rouge and advertisement of a city and its police department’s willingness to shield murderers in their midst.
It’s nice that the fired the shooter but if he isn’t in jail for this violent crime all it amounts to is a slap on the wrist and a tacit nod of permission to officers to act above the law and commit violent crime with clearly racist undertones without fear of consequences.
No police officer who takes the law into their own hand is qualified to uphold the law. Period.
Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg urges others to ‘use white privilege’ to ensure gun violence in ‘black community’ is heard
Student survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have said they have to use their “white privilege” to make sure that the stories of other students across the country who experience gun violence are also heard.
…“There is a lot of racial disparity in the way that this is covered,” Mr Hogg said of last month’s shooting. “If this happened in a place of lower socioeconomic status, or a….black community, no matter how well those people spoke, I don’t think the media would cover it the same.”
“And I think it’s important that we point that out as Americans and realise that. Because, we have to use our white privilege now to make sure that all of the voices that….all of the people that have died as a result of this and haven’t been covered the same can be heard,” he continued. “It’s sad, but true.”
…In doing so, the students highlighted the high rates of gun violence in the city, which rarely get national media attention. There were 4,000 shooting victims in the city in 2016, contributing to a spike in homicides that year.
Sam Zeif, one of the students who visited Chicago, called it “heartbreaking to know they’ve been feeling this pain and fear for nearly their whole lives”.
Well, good on you for choosing to operate in and react to the real world, kiddo.
California sues over Census citizenship question – CNNPolitics
Progressives, states and civil rights advocates are preparing a flurry of legal challenges to the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the next census, saying the move will penalize immigrants and threaten civil rights.
The late Monday move from the Commerce Department, which it said came in response a request by the Justice Department, would restore a question about citizenship that has not appeared on the census since the 1950s.
…The state of California immediately challenged the plan in federal court.
…”The citizenship question is the latest attempt by President Trump to stoke the fires of anti-immigrant hostility,” Padilla said in a statement. “Now, in one fell swoop, the US Commerce Department has ignored its own protocols and years of preparation in a concerted effort to suppress a fair and accurate census count from our diverse communities. The administration’s claim that it is simply seeking to protect voting rights is not only laughable, but contemptible.”
New York announced it would also lead a separate multi-state lawsuit to challenge the move on Tuesday.
California sues over Census citizenship question – CNNPolitics
sigh…
Tumblr’s Ban Of Russian Accounts Adds Detail To Targeting Of Black Americans
Tumblr has listed a number of accounts linked to Russian social media agitation giving the newest look at a sophisticated effort to sow discord among Americans — including black users.
…That included using fake online accounts to organize real-world political events and posing as black Americans to address real black Americans discussing race, law enforcement and the 2016 political campaign.
…Russian influencemongers bought a relatively small number of paid ads on Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns, but once they had been shared and users began seeing more free content, about 150 million people saw some Russian material, the social media giant said.
Black users and Black Lives Matter were a target on Facebook as well, according to Mueller’s indictment. The best-known account, “Blacktivist,” and others sought to divide black users from within. In another example from Mueller’s indictment, Internet Research Agency influencemongers used the Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to encourage followers not to vote for any candidate in 2016.
“[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL,” a post from the account said.
…”They want to drive a wedge between us so that we spend our time fighting with each other instead of building towards the future,” Tumblr’s post said. “We’ll be watching for signs of future activity, but the best defense is knowing how they operate and how to judge the content you see.”
Tumblr’s Ban Of Russian Accounts Adds Detail To Targeting Of Black Americans : NPR
hmmmm
GOP Cuban-American lawmaker defends Emma González from racist reactionary troll, Steve King
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) on Tuesday came to the defense of Parkland student Emma González after Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) shared a photo criticizing her.
…”Many #Miami homes also have Cuban flags, @SteveKingIA,” said Ros-Lehtinen, a fiery critic of Castro.
“That doesn’t equal support 4 Castro. Folks should learn about our community before criticizing a high school student.”
GOP Cuban-American lawmaker defends Emma González from Steve King | TheHill
hmmmm
Afghan war vet deported to Mexico and left ‘homeless and penniless,’ his Chicago family says
Ending a 16-month quest to stay in a country where he was raised and that he fought to defend, Miguel Perez Jr., a veteran who held a green card, has been deported to Mexico, where he has not lived since childhood.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Sunday that Perez boarded an ICE Air Operations flight at Gary International Airport and was flown to Brownsville, Texas. There, ICE officers escorted Perez across the U.S.-Mexico border and turned him over to Mexican authorities.
Perez was deported without the customary warning and opportunity to say goodbye to his family. He had no money or clothes and was left in a border town on the U.S. travel warning list, advocates said. His family will fly to Mexico on Monday to help him gather resources and ensure his safety.
Afghan war vet deported to Mexico and left ‘homeless and penniless,’ his Chicago family says
What a fucking horrible thing to do to a veteran! Especially one whose troubles wouldn’t have started if the military was responsible enough to provide the post combat support he needed in the first place….
The Banking Bill Could Hurt Black Homeowners
Today—50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, 40 years after the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, and a decade after the subprime-loan crisis—that black family would be 5.6 times more likely to be denied a conventional mortgage than that white family, a damning report released last month by the Center for Investigative Reporting found.
…Redlining and other forms of discriminatory lending practices remain a defining feature of the American housing market, and they have profound consequences in terms of wealth-building, equality, and equity.
…The legislation in process includes a number of technical changes that stand to put borrowers of color, mobile-home owners, and rural residents at risk. Chief among these is a change letting banks that make fewer than 500 mortgage loans a year report less data to the government on who they lend to and at what rates—data meant to help show whether financial institutions are discriminating against families of color.
…The Trump administration, for instance, has hollowed out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development is removing its mandates for inclusion and consumer protection from its mission statement.
The Banking Bill Could Hurt Black Homeowners – The Atlantic
Sigh…
Alton Sterling case: No charges for La. officers in black man’s shooting death
Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot to death July 5, 2016, as two white officers pinned him to the pavement outside a Louisiana convenience store where he had been selling CDs.The officers were responding to the report of a man with a gun. Officer Blane Salamoni shot and killed Sterling during the struggle. Officer Howie Lake II helped wrestle Sterling to the ground, but Lake didn’t fire his gun.
The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely online, sparking demonstrations across Baton Rouge.
Alton Sterling case: No charges for La. officers in black man’s shooting death – CBS News
Apparently murdering black men is legal in Louisianan, as long as it is done by a police officer.
Army veteran deported to Mexico after drug conviction
A veteran who did two tours of Afghanistan has been deported to Mexico after his citizenship was denied due to a felony drug conviction.
…Perez-Montes was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had his green card taken away after he was found guilty of delivering cocaine to an undercover cop, CNN reported. He served half of his sentence when deportation proceedings took place.
…“This case is a tragic example of what can happen when national immigration policies are based more in hate than on logic and ICE doesn’t feel accountable to anyone,” Duckworth said in a statement on Saturday.
Perez-Montes reportedly arrived in the U.S. when he was 8-years-old with his parents and sister who are now naturalized U.S. citizens. He has another sister who is an American citizen by birth.
Perez-Montes said his conviction was the result of his PTSD, according to CNN.
Army veteran deported to Mexico after drug conviction | TheHill
Sigh….
A new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) delves into the Negro Motorist Green Book
Nat King Cole was the first to record the song and the great irony is that while the jazz legend helped romanticize the highway, it was incredibly dangerous for him: Route 66 snaked through cities and towns that were hostile and often violent toward black travelers.
However, touring musicians, like Cole, and other travelers had a secret weapon to bypass racist towns, restaurants, motels, gas stations, and other businesses across the country: The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to establishments that were safe for and welcoming to African Americans.
…“The Green Book was like a treasure map that led [black travelers] to places that they could stop, from gas stations to food to hotels,” Adams tells Curbed.
…“America was promoting this idea of travel and using automobiles and trailers to explore the country, but it wasn’t something that black Americans had the privilege of doing,” Dexter Wimberly, the exhibition’s curator, tells Curbed. “What Green did was try to construct a space where black travelers can feel like all the other [white] Americans who can travel.”
…“In society, there so many opposition forces to deal with; focusing on the effects of the Green Book would be more enlightening to future generations,” Adams says. “Something so simple as putting a book together can be a way to deal with political unrest; something so simple that you can do on your own can affect people in a constructive way.”
How the “Green Book” changed travel for African Americans – Curbed
hmmmm
Georgia Gilmore: The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement
Georgia Gilmore, the Montgomery cook, midwife and activist whose secret kitchen fed the civil rights movement
When King and others held meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association at the Holt Street Baptist Church, Gilmore was there, selling fried chicken sandwiches and other foods to the African-American men and women gathered there who’d pledged not to use the city’s buses until they were desegregated. Gilmore poured those profits back into the movement.
…Gilmore organized black women to sell pound cakes and sweet potato pies, fried fish and stewed greens, pork chops and rice at beauty salons, cab stands and churches. “She offered these women, many of whose grandmothers were born into slavery, a way to contribute to the cause that would not raise suspicions of white employers who might fire them from their jobs, or white landowners who might evict them from the houses they rented,” Edge says.
The money they raised helped pay for the alternative transportation system that arose in Montgomery during the 381-day bus boycott: hundreds of cars, trucks and wagons that ferried black workers to and from their jobs across town each day. Gilmore’s cooking helped pay for the insurance, gas, wagons and vehicle repairs that kept that system going.
She called the group of women who worked with her in this project “The Club from Nowhere” because, as Betty Gilmore, Georgia’s sister, told Edge years later, “It was like, ‘Where did this money come from? It came from nowhere.”
Meet The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement : The Salt : NPR
cool!
Philando Castile charity wipes out school lunch debt in district where he worked
Philando Castile, who was killed by a police officer during a 2016 traffic stop, used to help kids who couldn’t afford lunch. The school nutrition supervisor would dip into his pocket and pay the bill.
Now a charity run in his name has multiplied his mission by thousands, wiping out the lunch debt of every student at all 56 schools in Minnesota’s St. Paul Public Schools, where Castile worked.
…Pam Fergus, the Metro State University educator who runs the fund with her students, dropped off a check for about $35,000 this week at the school district’s office, she told CNN.
The money will clear every cent families owe for school lunches. That’s important because until the debt is paid, students’ caregivers cannot submit paperwork to request free to reduced-price lunches, based on need, Fergus said.
“They just keep accruing the debt, every day getting (further and further) into debt,” she said, adding that some families owed as much as $1,000.
Philando Castile charity wipes out school lunch debt in district where he worked – CNN
sigh….
When ICE Tries to Deport Americans, Who Defends Them?
The fact that Busse was almost deported from a country where he should have been protected by law as a citizen should not be understood as a freak mistake. For decades, U.S. citizens have been deported repeatedly, in isolated cases and en masse, due to racism and bureaucratic indifference, as well as the complexity of federal immigration laws, which can make it difficult for some bona-fide U.S. citizens to understand and document their status.
…In July, 2017, after some back-and-forth with Customs and Border Protection, Busse returned to J. F. K. for what he thought was a routine appointment. He found himself in a room with eight to ten officers. As he recalled, someone informed him, “You’re going into the deportation process.” He was handcuffed, shackled, and transported to the immigration detention wing of the Bergen County Jail, in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Busse found the detention facility “pretty hard to deal with,” he told me later. He shared a cell with a detainee from Guyana and encountered others in the facility who had been there for as many as five years.
…Two months after he was detained, Busse received his first hearing in immigration court, on Varick Street, in Manhattan. Immigration detainees arrive there early most weekday mornings, in shackles, wearing orange jumpsuits. When Busse arrived, he encountered a lawyer for the first time since his detention, thanks to a recent program enacted by the New York City Council, which pays lawyers to represent poor immigrant detainees. At “intake,” Gregory Copeland, a staff attorney at Legal Aid, appeared before a group of between ten and twenty detainees, and he and a colleague made a short presentation in English and Spanish.
…In the labyrinth that is U.S. immigration law, certain immigrants automatically become citizens if, when they are minors, their parents become naturalized citizens.
…The obvious solution to avoid mistakenly deporting citizens would be to provide lawyers conversant with immigration law to represent people in detention and at deportation proceedings, when they lack resources to find their own lawyers. …Yet the Supreme Court has not recognized that people facing immigration detention and deportation have a universal, constitutional right to a lawyer.
…Busse is back at his financial firm. Given the number of people like him who pass through immigration detention but have no lawyer to represent them, it is hard to know how many Americans have been inadvertently banished from their country during the last decade. To an extent, their typical profile is not hard to guess at: people with low incomes, without a high level of education, or who belong to certain ethnic or religious groups. Or maybe, some days, just Americans with bad luck.
When ICE Tries to Deport Americans, Who Defends Them? | The New Yorker
Jeezus….
Sacramento police release video of fatal shooting of unarmed man
Community activists and relatives of Clark have questioned why officers needed to fire 20 shots. In a statement, police said: “At the time of the shooting, the officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them.”
In the three law enforcement videos — one from each of the two shooting officers’ body cameras and one from a sheriff’s helicopter that aided them in tracking down the suspect — officers report several times before they confront the man that they believe he is armed.
…At no time can the officers be heard identifying themselves as police.
…Police acknowledged in their statement Wednesday that no weapon was found.
…They said, ‘Put your hands up, gun,’ and then they just let loose on my nephew,” Durham said.
“They didn’t give him a chance to put his hands up or anything, and then when they shot him down.”
Sacramento police release video of fatal shooting of unarmed man – NBC News
Incompetent, lawless, murderous thugs like these have no business wearing a badge. The idea that murdering someone is OK because you are scared is bullshit. If an officer can keep calm in a tense situation they have no business being an officer in the first place.
All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018
Arthur Jones: Neo-Nazi running for Congress in Illinois
Paul Nehlen: White-Nationalist running for Congress in Wisconsin
Sean Donahue: Paranoid White Hater running for Congress in Pennsylvania
John Abarr: White Supremacist running for State Representative in Montana
Joe Arpaio: America’s Most Racist and Criminal Sheriff
Steve King: Iowa Congressman who is a blatant White Supremacist
Corey Stewart: White Nationalist running for Senate in Virginia
Matt Gaetz: Florida Congressman who pals around with Alex Jones, Holocaust deniers and other loser assholes
Dana Rohrabacher: California Congressman who hangs out with Holocaust deniers
Lou Barletta: Anti-Semitic Congressman running for Senate in Pennsylvania
All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018 | HuffPost
Oh, and they’re all GOP. Except Abarr, who has run as a Republican in the past.
…But you could have guessed that part, right?
Sessions Says to Courts: Go Ahead, Jail People Because They’re Poor
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, where people who are too poor to pay fines are sent. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.
The Justice Department helped shine a light on the harms of fine and fees when it investigated Ferguson, Mo., three years ago after the killing of the teenager Michael Brown by a police officer.
…Ferguson used its criminal justice system as a for-profit enterprise, extracting millions from its poorest citizens. Internal emails revealed the head of finance directing policing strategy to maximize revenue rather than ensure public safety. Officers told us they were pressured to issue as many tickets as possible.
Even the local judge was in on it, imposing penalties of $302 for jaywalking and $531 for allowing weeds to grow in one’s yard. He issued arrest warrants for residents who fell behind on payments — including a 67-year-old woman who had been fined for a trash-removal violation — without inquiring whether they even had the ability to pay the exorbitant amounts. The arrests resulted in new charges, more fees and the suspension of driver’s licenses. These burdens fell disproportionately on African-Americans.
At the time of our investigation, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants from Ferguson, a city of 21,000. Untold numbers found themselves perpetually in debt to the city and periodically confined to its jail.
These problems were not unique to Ferguson.
…Sessions pulled 25 guidance documents last week. Sixteen of those involved civil rights protections — including 10 related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and one on the special harms that unlawful fine and fee practices can have for young people. Withdrawing these documents is consistent with the Trump administration’s hostility to civil rights in a host of other areas: abandoning oversight of police departments, reinterpreting anti-discrimination statutes to deny protection to L.G.B.T. individuals and switching sides in key voting rights cases.
Opinion | Sessions Says to Courts: Go Ahead, Jail People Because They’re Poor – The New York Times
Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years
The teens from Parkland who’ve volunteered to speak with reporters and in front of cameras have eloquently and pointedly stated why they believe gun control laws are needed. They’ve repeatedly taken on the National Rifle Association (NRA) directly.
… Young black people have been fighting to save lives through gun reform laws for years without the support and energy given to the Stoneman Douglas students. In fact, black youth, who’ve been passionately advocating for gun control measures, have been demonized, obfuscated, and overlooked.
…These organizations, largely centered around anti-violence, have been led mostly by young black women and black teens — and not only in recent years. Through different groups, across different cities, they have been organizing anti-violence rallies, have been meeting with presidential candidates, proposing policy ideas, participating in national debates, and organizing intensely to advocate for more equitable state and federal gun laws that impact black and brown people. They put forward policy strategies to curb violence, looking for reform and accountability in policing, especially concerning the lethal use of force by guns.
Black Lives Matter, perhaps the most well-known and visible of these organizations, was conceived in 2013 as a response to the acquittal of the man who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who lived and died in central Florida, about three hours away from Parkland. After Martin was shot, the Dream Defenders, a student-lead group fought tirelessly with a straight-forward and well-articulated goal, demanding that lawmakers repeal the state’s “stand your ground” law. They even organized a weeks-long sit-in at the Florida Capitol.
…anti-violence black activist groups were formed, including the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, and the Wear Orange campaign, which was started by black teens in Chicago, who were close friends with Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old, who was shot and killed on January 29, 2013, shortly after performing in President Barack Obama’s inauguration parade.
Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years | Teen Vogue
Sigh…
(not your Mam’s Teen Vogue!)
‘Let them call you racists,’ Bannon tells far-right French party
National Front leader Marine Le Pen is working to unite her divided party and bolster her ability to lead it as the party meets for the first time since she lost resoundingly to Emmanuel Macron in the final round of the French presidential election last May.
Macron won with 66% of the vote vs. 34% for Le Pen, who had threatened to curb immigration and pull France out of the European Union, among other measures.
Macron’s victory followed defeats for right-wing populist candidates in Austria and the Netherlands and was largely seen as a counter to the anti-establishment fervor sweeping Europe.
[in light of those realities Bannon’s advice to the crowd seems simply delusional]
Bannon told the crowd, “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists,” The Post reported. “Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”
Steve Bannon addresses French far-right party
Good lord!
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 