Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Bree Newsome Opens Up About Taking Down Confederate Flag on SC State Capitol Grounds
Monday, June 29, 2015
Bree Newsome and Other News
Brittany Newsome is a hero. She courageously expressed her disagreement with the flying of the racist Confederate flag by climbing up the 30 ft. flagpole to peacefully take down the flag. She did this action outside of the South Carolina statehouse. She worked with James Tyson in order to accomplish this action. Bree was arrested and Tyson was arrested too. They are charged with defacing a monument, which is a misdemeanor. A freebree crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo raised almost $100,000 in less than 24 hours. Bree is now bailed out and she is free. Bree’s actions come in a long tradition. Black people decades ago did similar actions like those from SNCC, the SCLC, etc. who protested injustice. Thousands of people went into jail for civil disobedience. We know that Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, and others were arrested for civil disobedience or violating unjust laws. We are all in solidarity with Sister Bree. Bree is an artist and a film maker. She is also a social activist of the Black Lives Matter Movement, which is growing every day. That’s great. Bree has promoted voting rights and encouraged young people to vote. She quoted the Psalms as she was being arrested. The Confederate flag is a symbol of hate, bigotry, white supremacy, and treason. Therefore, we have the free speech and moral right to publicly oppose that flag. Hopefully, that flag will come down not only in the South Carolina capitol grounds, but all across America. It is time now to end racism, exploitation, and any form of oppression in the world. Racial oppression and genocide is linked to the capitalist system. The class struggle is expansive and it deals with the elimination of racism, sexism, etc. There should be no worship of material wealth, especially since imperialism is based on the theft of resources of others for the benefit of a few. In a statement through activist group #BlackLivesMatter, Newsome explained her actions, saying, "We can't wait any longer." "We can't continue like this another day," Newsome said. "It's time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality." I agree with Bree 100 percent in her statements.
Major terrorist attacks have been happened in a Tunisian beach resort, a Shia mosque in Kuwait, and in a chemical plant in France. The Kuwait attack was carried out by an organization which is tied to the Islamic State or IS or ISIS and the three attacks on the same day raised concerns about the offensive by ISIS affiliates. They came after ISIS issued an international appeal to its supporters to carry out attacks. “Muslims, embark and hasten towards jihad,” IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in an audio recording this week. “O mujahedeen everywhere, rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels.” There were no confirmed operational connections between the attacks, however. “It’s too soon to know whether these attacks were all coordinated, or whether they were all just completely separate,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren. In Tunisia, gunmen stormed the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba in the Port El Kantaoui district of Sousse. The gunmen fired assault rifles at tourists who were sunbathing on the beach. They attacked the hotel itself with hand grenades. The murderers killed 37 people and wounded 36. The Tunisian officials said that they couldn’t identify the nationalities of the victims. There are initial press reports saying that the victims included Britons, Germans, Belgians, Norwegians, and Tunisian hotel staff. Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi promised “painful but necessary” security measures and said that the government would consider banning the Islamist group Hizb Ut-Tahrir. There is conflicting information about the shooting. Security official Rafik Chelly claimed that there was a lone gunman, a student from the city of Kairouan who hid his weapons inside a folded-up parasol. Other officials said that two or three gunmen were involved. One was killed, they reported, another arrested, and the last had either been arrested or escaped. Tunisia-live.net identified the gunman who was killed as Seifeddine Yacoubi, 23, an aviation student from Gaafour. This attack in Sousse was Tunisia deadliest one ever. This came months after the March 18 massacre at the national Bado museum, claimed by ISIS. Tunisia’s tourism industry will suffer. The attack near Lyon, France was done by the commercial driver Yassin Salhi, who is 35. The place of the attack is in Saint-Quentin-Fallavir. He allegedly decapitated his boss at the ATC Transport Company. He attacked a factory run by Air Products, which is a U.S. company specializing in the production of industrial gases. There were black jihadist flags surrounding the factory gate. Salhi was arrested and his sister and wife were placed in preventive detention. Also arrested was a 33-year-old man whom security forces accused of having links with Islamist groups and monitoring gas plants in the region. Salhi himself was the subject of a special “S” intelligence file between 2006 and 2008, though police surveillance was ended in 2008. According to some reports, however, he was again monitored starting in 2013 after he entered into contact with Islamist groups. The ISIS-affiliated Najd Province organization claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in a Shia mosque in Kuwait. The attack killed 27 people and wounded at least 227 people. The target was the Imam Sadiq mosque in the al-Sawabir neighborhood of the capital of Kuwait City. ISIS came about after the U.S. occupation. Many terrorist groups were supported by the US and NATO as a way to fight the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. All three attacks will build up reactionary “law and order” polies in all three nations.
The speech from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Antioch College in 1965 was inspirational. This speech proved that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War as early as 1965 which was before his famous Riverside speech. Dr. King courageously in his words here wanted an end to the Vietnam War back in 1965. This speech was heavily international since the freedom of humanity must be an international affair. Democracy is a legitimate goal for all of us which we are fighting for. There is still massive poverty in places of the nations of Asia, Africa, the Americas, etc. There are still workers suffering lax wages (as a product of the economically regressive policies from the oligarchy) and massive amounts of war in the world over. There is still gender discrimination and we must oppose these injustices as heroes (known and unsung) have fought against. Equality means freedom excluding oppression. We must defeat imperialism and capitalism is a system based on the evil exploitation of humanity too. It's our responsibility to create action programs and to continue to make a continued fight for racial justice and social justice. The common wealth and the general welfare must be advanced, so society can fulfill its full, prodigious potential. We are against injustice, so we want justice for humanity. Many in the modeling industry have promoted certain limited, smaller images (including more Eurocentric images) for a long time. Models of diverse phenotypes and diverse sizes should have the opportunities to model. There is nothing wrong with being a skinnier model, but most of the world’s population isn’t skinny. Likewise, since we live in a new era, the young models should be encouraged and mentored on business avenues, and other ways to build up their talents. I think Tyra Banks said what she said, because some ignorant people disrespected her years ago about her weight. She went on her talk show to refute those haters and she said that there is nothing wrong with being a bigger woman. I think that is where she is coming from. She knows about the modeling industry. That industry can be cruel, so it is important to say that the beauty of the human family is diverse not monolithic.
Asian culture in New York City has a long history and it is very multifaceted as well. The New York City Metropolitan area has the largest ethnic Chinese population in America outside of Asia. It has 735,019 people as of 2012. In New York City, there are at least 9 Chinatowns (or communities with a majority of a Chinese population). Some of them are found in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, etc. The New York City Chinese cultural Center (or the NYCCC) has been dedicated in giving scholarships to Chinese Americans, to promote the arts, to offer classes to people, to promote summer camps, and be a great repository of Chinese culture. The NYCCC was created in 1974 by artists, students, parents, and community activists. There are about 82,313 Filipinos in New York City. There population has grown. Immigration from the Philippines began mostly after 1965. 1965 was the year when the national Immigration Law was passed, which gave more of an opportunity for immigrants (especially for non-European immigrants) to come into America. The law changed society for the better. A lot of the Filipino immigrants are doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, and other medical professionals. New York City annually hosts the Philippine Independence Day Parade, which is traditionally held on the first Sunday of June at Madison Avenue. The celebration occupies nearly twenty-seven city blocks which includes a 3.5-hour parade and all-day long street fair and cultural performances. A “Little Manila” can be found in Woodside, which is in the borough of Queens. Filipinos are found all over Queens like in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and in Jamaica, Queens including parts of Brooklyn. About 100,000 Koreans live in NYC with about two-thirds of them living in Queens. There are Korean towns found in New York too. Southeast Asians include those from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Inia, Sri Lanka, etc. All of these human beings live in New York City. There are about 600,000 Indian Americans who live in the New York City Metropolitan Area. In Queens, the South Asian population is almost 200,000 and growing. South Asian people live in Jackson Heights, Flushing, City Line, Ozone Park, Jamaica Queens, etc. There are also Japanese, Arabic, and other Asians living in New York City as well. One of the greatest Japanese American human rights activists, who worked in New York City, was Yuri Kochiyama. She was a victim of the Japanese internment camps, which was instituted wrongly by the U.S. government. He moved to Harlem in 1960 to be part of social movement.
She was a great friend of Brother Malcolm X. She worked with Malcolm X in fighting for racial justice and she was a member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (which was created in 1964 after he left the Nation of Islam). She was able to form a bond with Malcolm X because she knew African Americans were being oppressed as well. She was present when he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. In 1977, Kochiyama joined the group of Puerto Ricans that took over the Statue of Liberty to draw attention to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. Kochiyama and other activists demanded the release of five Puerto Rican nationalists who were jailed in the United States for more than 20 years. According to Kochiyama, despite a strong movement enabling them to occupy the statue for nine hours, they intended to "give up peacefully when the police came." The five Puerto Ricans were eventually released. Kochiyama was involved in the Asian American human rights movement and was crucial in allowing the government to send apologies for injustices done to Asian Americans. Japanese Americans received reparations for their mistreatment at internment camps during WWII. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 which, among other things, awarded $20,000 to each Japanese American internment survivor. The process of issuing reparation checks is ongoing. She fought for the rights of political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, etc. She passed away on June 1, 2014 at the age of 93 years old. Irish culture in New York City has been around for centuries. New York City’s St. Patrick Day Parade dates back to 1762. The Irish people made up a large proportion of the overall population of New York. By the year 2000, there are about 520,810 New Yorkers with Irish ancestry. The Great Irish Famine lasted from 1845 to 1851. Irish families were forced to emigrate into America form Ireland. By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million people were forced to leave Ireland. Many of the Irish worked in the cities of America when they arrived into New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. The ethnic Irish back then and today are influential in the Roman Catholic Church in America. They have created a strong network of churches and parochial schools which support their communities. Many Irish Americans in New York City play a huge role in the NYFD, and other services. A massive amount of Irish communities in NYC are found in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, Woodside, Queens, Maspeth, Queens, Riverdale, Bronx, etc. The late mayor Robert F. Wagner was Irish. Mathew Broderick, George Carlin, Jennifer Connelly, Edward Burns are famous Irish New Yorkers. Today, we see the growth of the Irish community. There is the Irish Repertory Theater. It deals with showing classic and contemporary theater, music, and dance performances created by Irish-American and Irish artists. It has promoted many theater works. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is one staple of Irish culture as well. It has existed for a long time. It has religious artwork and it was the place where the funeral of Irish American Robert F. Kennedy has taken place. The American Irish Historical Society has thousands of pieces of information that relate to Irish and American history. One of the greatest lessons that we can learn from these cultures in New York is that we ought to build up progressive institutions as a way for us to grow ourselves individually and collectively.
By Timothy
Major terrorist attacks have been happened in a Tunisian beach resort, a Shia mosque in Kuwait, and in a chemical plant in France. The Kuwait attack was carried out by an organization which is tied to the Islamic State or IS or ISIS and the three attacks on the same day raised concerns about the offensive by ISIS affiliates. They came after ISIS issued an international appeal to its supporters to carry out attacks. “Muslims, embark and hasten towards jihad,” IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in an audio recording this week. “O mujahedeen everywhere, rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels.” There were no confirmed operational connections between the attacks, however. “It’s too soon to know whether these attacks were all coordinated, or whether they were all just completely separate,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren. In Tunisia, gunmen stormed the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba in the Port El Kantaoui district of Sousse. The gunmen fired assault rifles at tourists who were sunbathing on the beach. They attacked the hotel itself with hand grenades. The murderers killed 37 people and wounded 36. The Tunisian officials said that they couldn’t identify the nationalities of the victims. There are initial press reports saying that the victims included Britons, Germans, Belgians, Norwegians, and Tunisian hotel staff. Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi promised “painful but necessary” security measures and said that the government would consider banning the Islamist group Hizb Ut-Tahrir. There is conflicting information about the shooting. Security official Rafik Chelly claimed that there was a lone gunman, a student from the city of Kairouan who hid his weapons inside a folded-up parasol. Other officials said that two or three gunmen were involved. One was killed, they reported, another arrested, and the last had either been arrested or escaped. Tunisia-live.net identified the gunman who was killed as Seifeddine Yacoubi, 23, an aviation student from Gaafour. This attack in Sousse was Tunisia deadliest one ever. This came months after the March 18 massacre at the national Bado museum, claimed by ISIS. Tunisia’s tourism industry will suffer. The attack near Lyon, France was done by the commercial driver Yassin Salhi, who is 35. The place of the attack is in Saint-Quentin-Fallavir. He allegedly decapitated his boss at the ATC Transport Company. He attacked a factory run by Air Products, which is a U.S. company specializing in the production of industrial gases. There were black jihadist flags surrounding the factory gate. Salhi was arrested and his sister and wife were placed in preventive detention. Also arrested was a 33-year-old man whom security forces accused of having links with Islamist groups and monitoring gas plants in the region. Salhi himself was the subject of a special “S” intelligence file between 2006 and 2008, though police surveillance was ended in 2008. According to some reports, however, he was again monitored starting in 2013 after he entered into contact with Islamist groups. The ISIS-affiliated Najd Province organization claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in a Shia mosque in Kuwait. The attack killed 27 people and wounded at least 227 people. The target was the Imam Sadiq mosque in the al-Sawabir neighborhood of the capital of Kuwait City. ISIS came about after the U.S. occupation. Many terrorist groups were supported by the US and NATO as a way to fight the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. All three attacks will build up reactionary “law and order” polies in all three nations.
The speech from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Antioch College in 1965 was inspirational. This speech proved that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War as early as 1965 which was before his famous Riverside speech. Dr. King courageously in his words here wanted an end to the Vietnam War back in 1965. This speech was heavily international since the freedom of humanity must be an international affair. Democracy is a legitimate goal for all of us which we are fighting for. There is still massive poverty in places of the nations of Asia, Africa, the Americas, etc. There are still workers suffering lax wages (as a product of the economically regressive policies from the oligarchy) and massive amounts of war in the world over. There is still gender discrimination and we must oppose these injustices as heroes (known and unsung) have fought against. Equality means freedom excluding oppression. We must defeat imperialism and capitalism is a system based on the evil exploitation of humanity too. It's our responsibility to create action programs and to continue to make a continued fight for racial justice and social justice. The common wealth and the general welfare must be advanced, so society can fulfill its full, prodigious potential. We are against injustice, so we want justice for humanity. Many in the modeling industry have promoted certain limited, smaller images (including more Eurocentric images) for a long time. Models of diverse phenotypes and diverse sizes should have the opportunities to model. There is nothing wrong with being a skinnier model, but most of the world’s population isn’t skinny. Likewise, since we live in a new era, the young models should be encouraged and mentored on business avenues, and other ways to build up their talents. I think Tyra Banks said what she said, because some ignorant people disrespected her years ago about her weight. She went on her talk show to refute those haters and she said that there is nothing wrong with being a bigger woman. I think that is where she is coming from. She knows about the modeling industry. That industry can be cruel, so it is important to say that the beauty of the human family is diverse not monolithic.
Asian culture in New York City has a long history and it is very multifaceted as well. The New York City Metropolitan area has the largest ethnic Chinese population in America outside of Asia. It has 735,019 people as of 2012. In New York City, there are at least 9 Chinatowns (or communities with a majority of a Chinese population). Some of them are found in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, etc. The New York City Chinese cultural Center (or the NYCCC) has been dedicated in giving scholarships to Chinese Americans, to promote the arts, to offer classes to people, to promote summer camps, and be a great repository of Chinese culture. The NYCCC was created in 1974 by artists, students, parents, and community activists. There are about 82,313 Filipinos in New York City. There population has grown. Immigration from the Philippines began mostly after 1965. 1965 was the year when the national Immigration Law was passed, which gave more of an opportunity for immigrants (especially for non-European immigrants) to come into America. The law changed society for the better. A lot of the Filipino immigrants are doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, and other medical professionals. New York City annually hosts the Philippine Independence Day Parade, which is traditionally held on the first Sunday of June at Madison Avenue. The celebration occupies nearly twenty-seven city blocks which includes a 3.5-hour parade and all-day long street fair and cultural performances. A “Little Manila” can be found in Woodside, which is in the borough of Queens. Filipinos are found all over Queens like in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and in Jamaica, Queens including parts of Brooklyn. About 100,000 Koreans live in NYC with about two-thirds of them living in Queens. There are Korean towns found in New York too. Southeast Asians include those from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Inia, Sri Lanka, etc. All of these human beings live in New York City. There are about 600,000 Indian Americans who live in the New York City Metropolitan Area. In Queens, the South Asian population is almost 200,000 and growing. South Asian people live in Jackson Heights, Flushing, City Line, Ozone Park, Jamaica Queens, etc. There are also Japanese, Arabic, and other Asians living in New York City as well. One of the greatest Japanese American human rights activists, who worked in New York City, was Yuri Kochiyama. She was a victim of the Japanese internment camps, which was instituted wrongly by the U.S. government. He moved to Harlem in 1960 to be part of social movement.
She was a great friend of Brother Malcolm X. She worked with Malcolm X in fighting for racial justice and she was a member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (which was created in 1964 after he left the Nation of Islam). She was able to form a bond with Malcolm X because she knew African Americans were being oppressed as well. She was present when he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. In 1977, Kochiyama joined the group of Puerto Ricans that took over the Statue of Liberty to draw attention to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. Kochiyama and other activists demanded the release of five Puerto Rican nationalists who were jailed in the United States for more than 20 years. According to Kochiyama, despite a strong movement enabling them to occupy the statue for nine hours, they intended to "give up peacefully when the police came." The five Puerto Ricans were eventually released. Kochiyama was involved in the Asian American human rights movement and was crucial in allowing the government to send apologies for injustices done to Asian Americans. Japanese Americans received reparations for their mistreatment at internment camps during WWII. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 which, among other things, awarded $20,000 to each Japanese American internment survivor. The process of issuing reparation checks is ongoing. She fought for the rights of political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, etc. She passed away on June 1, 2014 at the age of 93 years old. Irish culture in New York City has been around for centuries. New York City’s St. Patrick Day Parade dates back to 1762. The Irish people made up a large proportion of the overall population of New York. By the year 2000, there are about 520,810 New Yorkers with Irish ancestry. The Great Irish Famine lasted from 1845 to 1851. Irish families were forced to emigrate into America form Ireland. By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million people were forced to leave Ireland. Many of the Irish worked in the cities of America when they arrived into New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. The ethnic Irish back then and today are influential in the Roman Catholic Church in America. They have created a strong network of churches and parochial schools which support their communities. Many Irish Americans in New York City play a huge role in the NYFD, and other services. A massive amount of Irish communities in NYC are found in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, Woodside, Queens, Maspeth, Queens, Riverdale, Bronx, etc. The late mayor Robert F. Wagner was Irish. Mathew Broderick, George Carlin, Jennifer Connelly, Edward Burns are famous Irish New Yorkers. Today, we see the growth of the Irish community. There is the Irish Repertory Theater. It deals with showing classic and contemporary theater, music, and dance performances created by Irish-American and Irish artists. It has promoted many theater works. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is one staple of Irish culture as well. It has existed for a long time. It has religious artwork and it was the place where the funeral of Irish American Robert F. Kennedy has taken place. The American Irish Historical Society has thousands of pieces of information that relate to Irish and American history. One of the greatest lessons that we can learn from these cultures in New York is that we ought to build up progressive institutions as a way for us to grow ourselves individually and collectively.
By Timothy
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
Historic Decisions and a New Generation.
We have seen three historic Supreme Court decisions during this week alone. One is King v. Burwell. The Supreme Court ruled that the tax subsidies in the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The tax subsidies provided insurance coverage to over 6 million Americans from across the nation. Chief Justice john Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that Congress has already established the tax subsidies to be available in all 50 states. He was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justices Antoin Scalia along with Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito definitely opposed giving subsidies to people. To eliminate subsidies during this time will definitely cause millions of people to lose insurance, health care costs will increase and other problems will exist. The Republican candidates typically criticize the law. Everyone one of them offer no real solutions to the health care problem except for the total privatization of the entire health care industry without a public option and without a single payer system. That is their plan to be real. That is no real plan, but the status quo. It is ironic that the Affordable Care Act has parts in it that came from the pro-Republican Heritage foundation. The truth is that the ACA has strengths and weaknesses. The ACA guarantees coverage for everyone without tacking on higher premiums because of pre-existing medical conditions. It requires annual free preventive care health checks for those on Medicare. It allows young to be on their parent’s health care until their 20’s. There are many states with Medicaid expansion which has helped millions of Americans.
I have no problem with those parts of the law. The rise of health care costs is slowing (which came about before 2010. This is happening because of self-rationing as less utilization of health services come as more of health care is shifted to the individual). One issue in the law is that it empowers private insurance companies by mandating people to buy private insurance (or face a fine) while excluding a public option. There are still high administrative costs in our health system. Australia and Canada, where government medical insurance administrative fees are lower than 3 percent, similar to our Medicare. "It makes no sense," Kahn said, "to unnecessarily spend what amounts to $1,200 extra each year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. just to push papers around" as part of the billing and extraneous marketing functions of insurance companies. We have to return to a "focus on quality clinical care where the patient and health provider themselves consult directly about the best care available," Kahn emphasized, without jumping through hoops of complex and cumbersome financial restraints encoded in each policy. There are still more than 40 million people without any health care in America. That is why more and more doctors, activists, etc. want to establish Medicare for all or single payer health care, which I have no problem with. So, I celebrate the decision’s preservation of the subsidies since I don’t want people to be eliminated of health care, but the ACA is not the final goal. Universal health care is the final goal. Heath care is a human right.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was totally preserved by the Supreme Court too. The case was Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. the Inclusive Community Project, Inc. The decision was 5-4, which surprised people. The Court said that housing policies could be deemed discriminatory based on “disparate impact.” This means that plaintiffs could prove discrimination by showing that the impact of a housing policy was discriminatory, even if there was no conscious attempt to discriminate. Justice Kennedy said that discrimination must be opposed in American society whether overt or covert. . The court made clear that it is not enough simply to show a disparate impact. Plaintiffs have to prove there was a specific policy without a legitimate business purpose that created the disparity. There was the recent Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision in support of same sex marriage in a 5-4 decision. The court said that there is a constitutional right to equal protection under the law and state were unable to withhold that right from people who want to have same-sex marriage. The USA is now the 21st country on Earth to allow same sex marriage in every jurisdiction. This issue has been emotional. There are people among both sides. Supporters of this ruling love it. Opponents of this ruling want marriage solely to be between a man and a woman. The future of America will certainly deal with both maintaining equal rights, and allowing people to have a diversity of views on many issues (being expressed peacefully. There is nothing wrong with religious freedom, but we don't need religious tyranny). People have the right to agree or disagree with this ruling. We live in a new generation.
Some people haven't learned the lessons of the Vietnam War (which killed millions, caused birth defects, and harmed the environment in SE Asia). The growth of the American Empire has grown inflation, increased unemployment, and stripped resources which could have been used to help society. Today, we have seen capitalistic exploitation and greed cripple many people's lives. We need not only independent political movements, but solutions that can help the masses of the people. The end of the Vietnam was a hard end. American troops continued to come home. On March 5, 1971, the United States returned the 5th Special Forces Group. This was the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, and on that date, the military force returned home to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Paris Peace Accords was between America and the North Vietnamese (North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho worked with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in order for the accords to come about). South Vietnamese President Thieu was skeptical of it, but he agreed signed it reluctantly. The deal with those U.S. military forces would withdraw from South Vietnam and prisoners would be exchanged. North Vietnam was allowed to continue to supply communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing expending materiel. The communist leader expected that the ceasefire terms would favor their side. Saigon was given a surge of U.S. aid before the ceasefire went into effect. They began to roll back the Viet Cong. Then, the communists developed a new strategy to conquer Saigon. According to the memoirs of Tan Van Tra, this plan was mapped out in Hanoi on March 1973. Nixon implied that if the North Vietnamese violated the ceasefire, then he would militarily intervene with U.S. forces. That is why the U.S. Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit such of an intervention. In 1973, there was the oil crisis caused after the Yom Kippur War, so resources weren’t readily sent to South Vietnam and the South Vietnamese suffered as a product of these developments. The Viet Cong recaptured its territory lost during the dry season on January 1974. Gerald Ford being the new President on August of 1974 caused a heavily Democratic Congress to withhold financial aid to South Vietnam. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976. By December 1974, as Tra wanted, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phouc Long Province. Phouc Binh fell in January 6, 1975. In 1975, the South Vietnamese had more military artillery than the North Vietnamese, but the oil crisis prevented them from using much of their forces. The North Vietnamese used General Dung in March 10, 1975 to execute Campaign 275. Gradually, the South Vietnamese surrendered and experienced defeat. Hue fell in March 25, 1975. On April, the final offensive against Saigon by the North Vietnamese came about. President Thieu of South Vietnam resigned and said that the USA betrayed South Vietnam. He criticized Kissinger for tricking him to sign the Paris Peace agreement. On April 30, 1975, NVA troops entered Saigon. They overcame resistance and captured key buildings and installations. Ford ordered Operation Frequent Wind to evaluate all Americans (which included U.S. Marines and some Vietnamese people who wanted to escape from the U.S. embassy in Saigon) from South Vietnam. Soon, the Viet Cong flag was raised above the gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon. President Doung Van Minh surrendered. The war was over.
Joe Morton is right to expose the motivation of those who want to genuflect and cling onto the Confederate flag (these people promote the lie that the flag is not about racism). These people are bigots. The Confederate flag was created by Confederate people, who wanted to maintain slavery and oppression against black people. It is an emblem of racism, white supremacy, secession, and hatred. This shouldn’t even be a debate. We pay taxes, so no Confederate flag should fly on State Capitol grounds at all. There is no ambiguity on this issue. Many Confederate documents readily say that slavery and maintaining racism were key motivations on why the Confederacy existed in the first place. Nathan Bedford Forrest killed black people under the Confederacy and that Confederate flag is not the US flag. The Confederacy lost. Even Alabama has taken down those racist flags from various locations. Change is not necessarily immediate. Yet, we have to work on our steps, so when our steps acuminate, they can led the path into the Promised Land. If America is to be free, then America must acknowledge its wicked past and its wicked present (along with using revolutionary efforts to rectify problems and end oppression). I saw the Confederate flag before in urban and rural places. I never had a good feeling looking at it. Over 150 years have passed after the end of the Civil War and we are still fighting for our freedom. Freedom also deals with education. A lot of people have a historically revisionist view of history whereby some sick people want to glamorize the antebellum period and the Confederacy. We have to set the record straight and mention the fact that the Confederacy including the antebellum period was filled with tyranny against our black people. In our generation, we deal with a diverse amount of issues from ecocide, foreign policy matters, domestic issues, and other subjects. Yet, we have the same goal, which is the liberation of humanity and we are part of one black family.
#Take it Down.
By Timothy
I have no problem with those parts of the law. The rise of health care costs is slowing (which came about before 2010. This is happening because of self-rationing as less utilization of health services come as more of health care is shifted to the individual). One issue in the law is that it empowers private insurance companies by mandating people to buy private insurance (or face a fine) while excluding a public option. There are still high administrative costs in our health system. Australia and Canada, where government medical insurance administrative fees are lower than 3 percent, similar to our Medicare. "It makes no sense," Kahn said, "to unnecessarily spend what amounts to $1,200 extra each year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. just to push papers around" as part of the billing and extraneous marketing functions of insurance companies. We have to return to a "focus on quality clinical care where the patient and health provider themselves consult directly about the best care available," Kahn emphasized, without jumping through hoops of complex and cumbersome financial restraints encoded in each policy. There are still more than 40 million people without any health care in America. That is why more and more doctors, activists, etc. want to establish Medicare for all or single payer health care, which I have no problem with. So, I celebrate the decision’s preservation of the subsidies since I don’t want people to be eliminated of health care, but the ACA is not the final goal. Universal health care is the final goal. Heath care is a human right.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was totally preserved by the Supreme Court too. The case was Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. the Inclusive Community Project, Inc. The decision was 5-4, which surprised people. The Court said that housing policies could be deemed discriminatory based on “disparate impact.” This means that plaintiffs could prove discrimination by showing that the impact of a housing policy was discriminatory, even if there was no conscious attempt to discriminate. Justice Kennedy said that discrimination must be opposed in American society whether overt or covert. . The court made clear that it is not enough simply to show a disparate impact. Plaintiffs have to prove there was a specific policy without a legitimate business purpose that created the disparity. There was the recent Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision in support of same sex marriage in a 5-4 decision. The court said that there is a constitutional right to equal protection under the law and state were unable to withhold that right from people who want to have same-sex marriage. The USA is now the 21st country on Earth to allow same sex marriage in every jurisdiction. This issue has been emotional. There are people among both sides. Supporters of this ruling love it. Opponents of this ruling want marriage solely to be between a man and a woman. The future of America will certainly deal with both maintaining equal rights, and allowing people to have a diversity of views on many issues (being expressed peacefully. There is nothing wrong with religious freedom, but we don't need religious tyranny). People have the right to agree or disagree with this ruling. We live in a new generation.
Some people haven't learned the lessons of the Vietnam War (which killed millions, caused birth defects, and harmed the environment in SE Asia). The growth of the American Empire has grown inflation, increased unemployment, and stripped resources which could have been used to help society. Today, we have seen capitalistic exploitation and greed cripple many people's lives. We need not only independent political movements, but solutions that can help the masses of the people. The end of the Vietnam was a hard end. American troops continued to come home. On March 5, 1971, the United States returned the 5th Special Forces Group. This was the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, and on that date, the military force returned home to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Paris Peace Accords was between America and the North Vietnamese (North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho worked with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in order for the accords to come about). South Vietnamese President Thieu was skeptical of it, but he agreed signed it reluctantly. The deal with those U.S. military forces would withdraw from South Vietnam and prisoners would be exchanged. North Vietnam was allowed to continue to supply communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing expending materiel. The communist leader expected that the ceasefire terms would favor their side. Saigon was given a surge of U.S. aid before the ceasefire went into effect. They began to roll back the Viet Cong. Then, the communists developed a new strategy to conquer Saigon. According to the memoirs of Tan Van Tra, this plan was mapped out in Hanoi on March 1973. Nixon implied that if the North Vietnamese violated the ceasefire, then he would militarily intervene with U.S. forces. That is why the U.S. Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit such of an intervention. In 1973, there was the oil crisis caused after the Yom Kippur War, so resources weren’t readily sent to South Vietnam and the South Vietnamese suffered as a product of these developments. The Viet Cong recaptured its territory lost during the dry season on January 1974. Gerald Ford being the new President on August of 1974 caused a heavily Democratic Congress to withhold financial aid to South Vietnam. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976. By December 1974, as Tra wanted, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phouc Long Province. Phouc Binh fell in January 6, 1975. In 1975, the South Vietnamese had more military artillery than the North Vietnamese, but the oil crisis prevented them from using much of their forces. The North Vietnamese used General Dung in March 10, 1975 to execute Campaign 275. Gradually, the South Vietnamese surrendered and experienced defeat. Hue fell in March 25, 1975. On April, the final offensive against Saigon by the North Vietnamese came about. President Thieu of South Vietnam resigned and said that the USA betrayed South Vietnam. He criticized Kissinger for tricking him to sign the Paris Peace agreement. On April 30, 1975, NVA troops entered Saigon. They overcame resistance and captured key buildings and installations. Ford ordered Operation Frequent Wind to evaluate all Americans (which included U.S. Marines and some Vietnamese people who wanted to escape from the U.S. embassy in Saigon) from South Vietnam. Soon, the Viet Cong flag was raised above the gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon. President Doung Van Minh surrendered. The war was over.
Joe Morton is right to expose the motivation of those who want to genuflect and cling onto the Confederate flag (these people promote the lie that the flag is not about racism). These people are bigots. The Confederate flag was created by Confederate people, who wanted to maintain slavery and oppression against black people. It is an emblem of racism, white supremacy, secession, and hatred. This shouldn’t even be a debate. We pay taxes, so no Confederate flag should fly on State Capitol grounds at all. There is no ambiguity on this issue. Many Confederate documents readily say that slavery and maintaining racism were key motivations on why the Confederacy existed in the first place. Nathan Bedford Forrest killed black people under the Confederacy and that Confederate flag is not the US flag. The Confederacy lost. Even Alabama has taken down those racist flags from various locations. Change is not necessarily immediate. Yet, we have to work on our steps, so when our steps acuminate, they can led the path into the Promised Land. If America is to be free, then America must acknowledge its wicked past and its wicked present (along with using revolutionary efforts to rectify problems and end oppression). I saw the Confederate flag before in urban and rural places. I never had a good feeling looking at it. Over 150 years have passed after the end of the Civil War and we are still fighting for our freedom. Freedom also deals with education. A lot of people have a historically revisionist view of history whereby some sick people want to glamorize the antebellum period and the Confederacy. We have to set the record straight and mention the fact that the Confederacy including the antebellum period was filled with tyranny against our black people. In our generation, we deal with a diverse amount of issues from ecocide, foreign policy matters, domestic issues, and other subjects. Yet, we have the same goal, which is the liberation of humanity and we are part of one black family.
#Take it Down.
By Timothy
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Nixak77 on the Confederate flag
Nixak*77*
So 50 YRS after Selma & 150 YRS after the end of the Civil War, finally there's the political impetus to take down a flag that always represented slavery, racism & treason... but then only in the wake of this mass racist-terrorist killer Dylann Roof, who used the Confederate flag as one of his symbols of racist inspiration- Humm... So are they going to remove ALL iterations of the Confederate flag from ALL Southern states' official flags, emblems, seals, license-plates, etc...? And what about all those statues &/or monuments to so-called 'Heroes' [actually TRAITORS] of the Confederacy???
Then there's the US national anthem that was written by a unrepentant slave owner [Fran Scott Key] born in Baltimore MD [NOT the 'Deep South'] who as a lawyer vehemently fought against abolitionists efforts. FYI: Key's original anthem actually contained a line that effectively said slaves that rebelled against slave owners deserved to be hunted-down & 'Put to the Grave' ['In the Home of the Brave' - when his song became the official US national anthem this line was subsequently 'removed']. So maybe its time to stop singing the National Anthem & look for a new one!
Then there's this re: the 4th of July ['What do I have to do w the 4th of July' - Fredrick Douglass]: According to Black activist Kevin Alexander Gray, who's from S.Carolina & actually knew Rev Clementa Pinkney: } 'South Carolina refused to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 2nd. There had to be a compromise to Take Out the ANTI-Slavery Clause, before they would sign it on the 4th of July [IMO they were likely backed by slave-owners George Washington, Tom Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, etc]. That was South Carolina’s influence in US history. So, Black people celebrate the 4th of July along w other Americans, but that was really the Day When Slavery was Codified in this Country [the USA]...' {
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke Out Against Vietnam War in Spring of 1965, Two Years Earlier Than People Think
Cultural Information
Latino culture in New York City has a long history. Latino culture deals with music, art, dance, politics, STEM fields, and other important parts of human expression. There is the Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education. This is an 80 year old South Bronx-based community arts and educational organization that outlines diverse, contemporary visual and performing arts and educational programming for empowering the youth (and their families). They are promoting a culture of learning. Casita Maria for decades has helped Hispanic families. They have worked with homeless services, violence prevention, drug rehabilitation, and other services. Tito Puente, Dave Valentin, Rita Moreno, and Tina Ramirez have been involved in Casita Maria and they are successful people. There is also the Nuyorican Movement. This is the cultural and intellectual movement of poets, writers, artists, and musicians (like Abraham Rodriguez Jr., who made music and wrote numerous novels) who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent who live in or near New York City. The cultural organizations of the movement are found in the Nuyorican Poets Café including the CHARAS/El Bohio in the Lower East Side, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Agüeybaná Bookstore, Mixta Gallery, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, El Museo del Barrio, El Maestro, etc. There are other Nuyorican cultural hubs in this new generation like PRdream.com, Camaradas El Barrio in Spanish Harlem. Music like salsa, reggaeton, Latin house, Latin rap, etc. are commonly expressed by Latin Americans in New York City. There are many Afro-Latino cultural displays of literature, music, and art too. Yes, many Latinos are of black African descent. Each year in New York City, there is the Afro Latino Festival. In 2015, they will have musicians like Cultural Profetica, Les Nubians, Kafu Banton, Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto Danay Suarez, Que Bajo?!, and other people. One group Afro-Latino was Arturo A. Schomburg, who called himself an Afro-Borinqueño (black Puerto Rican). He worked throughout his life to record information of the rich history of the black African Diaspora. Sister Ynanna Djehuty also is an Afro-Latino who is expressing herself too. When asked how she feels about her journey, Djehuty said, “Discovering myself has connected me to my roots and a history that I’m proud of. It connects me to history before the middle passage. The more I embrace it, the more whole I feel. I encourage anyone ready to take the journey to follow that path. Know that you’re not crazy, that there’s a whole system that wants to support you. Once you can contextualize you’re experience, you can begin to heal. When you know your history and where you come from you can begin to help the world and future generations.” Sister Ynanna continues to write great literature like books and poetry. Therefore, the Latino experience is a diverse experience and it has inspired so many human beings all over the world.
Jewish culture in New York City has a very long history. Sephardi and Ashkenazi traveled into New York City from Recife, Brazil back in early September 1654 to escape anti-Semitism and religious persecution. For long centuries, we have seen the evils of oppression inflicted on Jewish people, black people, and other people of color. This is why we must show dignity and respect to the sojourner, to the refugee, and to all human life. One large part of Jewish culture deals with the synagogue. Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and other forms of Judaism flourish today. The synagogue is not just a place of religious worship. It is a place of cultural development, a meeting place for political activism, and a location where Jewish people can express their own ideals about society. Famous Jewish authors include Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Michael Gold, and others. Poet Louis Zukofsky displayed the atmosphere of New York City life. One of the greatest places in NYC to witness Jewish culture is the Jewish Museum. It has tons of art and other exhibitions from Jewish people. Organizations like the Agudath Israel of America, the Orthodox Union, Chabad, and the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute have their headquarters in New York. There are Sephardic Jewish people including Syrian Jewish people, etc. who have lived in New York City since the late 19th century. Some Jewish communities are found not just in Riverdale (which is a middle class neighborhood today), but in Queens, south Brooklyn, and the Bronx. In 2015, an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn had New York City’s highest birth rate. Borough Park, known for its large Orthodox Jewish population, had 27.9 births per 1,000 residents, making it “easily the city’s baby capital.” There is the growth of the more conservative Russian and Orthodox Jewish people. The progressive Conservative and Reform Jewish people have done many good things in advancing human rights and other progressive polices in NYC including throughout America. One great Jewish activist for social change was Allard Kenneth Lowenstein. He lived from 1929 to 1980. He worked in the Freedom Sumer movement, which occurred in Mississippi. The Freedom Summer movement was about multiracial coalition of human beings who were fighting for the human rights of black people in the Deep South during 1964. This Freedom Summer also wanted black people to have the right to vote, to get educational opportunities, and to experience total freedom and liberation. He wanted an independent investigation of the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He opposed apartheid, which existed in South Africa. He promoted human rights. Jewish people are diverse culturally and ideologically. The diversity of the cultural heritage of New York City is inspiring.
This is an important issue. When one black person is oppressed, then we are all oppressed. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So, we are in solidarity with the Haitian people. Many in the D.R. have serious self-hated issues. Many Dominicans abhor blackness and some black Dominicans even deny being black, which is a total shame. So, we know the truth. The oligarchs are exploiting this issue also, so they can make huge profits at the expense of human rights. To deport many Haitians, who are even born in the D.R., is immoral, evil, and it is racist. Even Bill De Blasio to his credit has recently condemned the D.R. immigration policy as immoral and racist. International organizations like the UNHCR have condemned the mass deportations of Haitian citizens of the Dominican Republic. Many Haitians were born not in hospitals, so many of them lack birth certificates (not because they were born in another nation). We know of the racist mobs who have assaulted, and even lynched black Haitian residents of the D.R. too. Now, this doesn't mean that all Dominicans worldwide are racists as many Dominicans are in opposition to this abhorrent immigration policy as well. This does mean that we want members of the black African Diaspora to be treated as human beings. Sister Dr. Jemima Pierre has written great literature on this issue. I respect and love her work. Also, we must know about the late human rights activist Sonia Pierre. She was a Sister who fought against discrimination, which is going on against Dominicans of Haitian descent. She was active and she was awarded by many. Sonia’s story is an inspirational one. She was a strong defender of the human rights of Haitian people in the D.R. She passed away in the year of 2011. She has 3 children. Some have called for a boycott of the D.R. too, which I have no problem with. We reject xenophobia and racism. We want liberation.
RIP Sister Sonia Pierre.
DeRay has every right to execute activism, so racial justice can be a reality. This is a new generation. Many in the younger generation have used technology and various forms of activism in real life in order for real change to come. DeRay McKesson is a grown black man. He has the right to go into Charleston to speak his mind and to express his ideals. We, as black people, will not be intimidated. We will continue to speak out against the murder of black males and black females. We will continue to oppose the prison industrial complex and seek not only an end to the War on Drugs, but alternatives to help those who are suffering in our cities and in our towns. The Brother should keep on doing what he’s doing. We need more independent political activism and the growth of progressive consciousness. There is absolutely nothing wrong for any human being to have time to relax or to recharge their energy. Self-care is never equivalent to personal selfishness. I practice self-care by listening to music. Music helps with making my thinking more creative and I become more intelligent by listening to music. I do like to read, travel to places, and to have self-reflection about my life.
There are plenty of black African models who can present the beautiful hairstyles (in the magazine). Some people confuse dissent with hatred. When many Sisters express legitimate dissent over the lack of representation of black women wearing hairstyles in that cover, these Sisters do not hate those who are biracial or multiracial. Black is Beautiful. Others try to mimic us and our dark melanin. The Sisters are sick and tired of mainstream society (via many slick ways) whitewashing the beautiful image of blackness. There is no question that there has been a problem of a lack of representation of black people (especially of dark skinned black people) in various covers. This has occurred in America and in Brazil (which has been documented). Colorism and cultural appropriation are global phenomenons that must be addressed. Free speech is a right and people have every right to want blackness to be expressed not as a token measure, but as a way for us to express authentic, creative human expression. These corporations realize that it would wise for them eliminate any Confederate flag from what they sell. Amazon has eliminated Confederate flag from their products too. The journey for justice is not going to be easy. We can’t be naïve. The flag should definitely come down from the South Carolina State Capitol area without question. That Confederate flag is a symbol of hate, division, racism, and oppression. This is just the beginning. Also, we need those of South Carolina and for the rest of Americans to have adequate healthcare, to have full voting rights without discriminatory voter ID laws, and economic justice (that means that a higher minimum wage, the elimination of unfair subsidies for the super wealthy, a job creation plan, universal Pre-K, and investments in building up our infrastructure are necessities).
#Take Down that Flag.
By Timothy
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
De Blasio condemns ‘immoral’ deportation of Haitians from Dominican Republic
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-slams-dominican-republic-expulsion-haitians-article-1.2266433
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitians_in_the_Dominican_Republic#Economic_and_social_issues
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sonia-pierre-human-rights-activist-6272657.html
http://thegrio.com/2015/06/19/black-lives-haiti-dominican-republic/
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/war.crimes/US/Wilson.htm
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo14124435.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitians_in_the_Dominican_Republic#Economic_and_social_issues
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sonia-pierre-human-rights-activist-6272657.html
http://thegrio.com/2015/06/19/black-lives-haiti-dominican-republic/
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/war.crimes/US/Wilson.htm
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo14124435.html
Haiti and the D.R.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14055
http://www.internationalist.org/dominicanrepublicstopexpulsionhaitians1506.html
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dominican-republic-hates-black-people
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration-harpers/
http://www.internationalist.org/dominicanrepublicstopexpulsionhaitians1506.html
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dominican-republic-hates-black-people
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration-harpers/
Monday News in late June of 2015
There can be no explanation about New York City without describing its culture. Its culture is very diverse and NYC has much of the most diverse, richest cultures in human history. The black experience in New York City should be honored and respected. One location that shows a lot of black culture in New York City is called the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. It is a research library of the New York Public Library of the NYPL. It has a huge archive repository on people of black African descent worldwide. It was established in 1905 (with 10,000 books originally) on 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (or Lenox Avenue) between 135th and 136th Streets in Harlem. In 1921, the library hosted its first exhibition of African American art in Harlem. It became an annual event. Black people were readily employed in the location. Also, the library is named after the African American scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. W.E.B. DuBois and Walter Francis White helped Regina M. Anderson to fight back against her experiencing discrimination involving the New York Public Library. The Library included cultural collection from African Americans from literature to artwork. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, James Weldon Johnson, Hubert Harrison, and others supported this effort. The Countee Cullen branch was created as an extension of the library which had books for young adults. The new Schomburg Center was founded in 1980. This center included exhibits about Malcolm X, literature, and art from the black African diaspora. In 2005, the center held an exhibition of letters, photographs and other material related to Malcolm X. The center has a signed first edition book of poems created by Phillis Wheatley. There is material of Lorraine Hansberry (her views were massively ahead of her time), John Henrik Clarke, Melville J. Herskovits, etc. There are papers and letters of Christian Fleetwood, Paul Robeson, Booker T. Washington, etc. The Center's collection includes documents signed by Toussaint Louverture and a rare recording of a speech by Marcus Garvey. Today, the director of the Schomburg Center is Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad. The Deputy Director is Dr. Kara Tucina Olidge. Black Culture is found all over in other places of New York City as well. There is the Apollo Theater. It is found at 253 West 125the Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass in Harlem. It has been home to so many African Americans (and people of other backgrounds as well) musicians, comedians, and other performers. It was built in the early 1910’s.
Italian Americans in New York City have a long history. New York City in fact has the largest population of Italian Americans in America. Many of them have their own ethnic communities in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Large immigration of Italians into America came about between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. About 5.3 million Italians came into America from 1820 to 1978. There were over two million people Italians who came into America between 1900 and 1910. Only the Irish and the German immigrated in larger numbers. The first New York City neighborhood to be settled by a large number of Italian immigrants (from mostly Southern Italy and Sicily) was East Harlem. It was called “Little Italy.” Back then during the early 20th century, thousands of Italians lived in the area. Even today, on every year on the second weekend of August, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated and the "Dancing of the Giglio" is performed for thousands of visitors. This celebration is supported by the Giglio Society of East Harlem. There is the Italian American museum found in Manhattan’s Little Italy as well. The San Gennaro Festival is celebrated in New York City by numerous Italian Americans. Food and Italian American culture go hand in hand Lombardi's is a pizzeria located at 32 Spring Street on the corner of Mott Street in the Nolita neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City. It was opened in 1905 and it is the first pizzeria in the United States. Many famous Italian restaurants exist all over the city. To his credit, the Italian American Francesco Vincent “Frank” Serpico blew the whistle on corruption in the NYPD. This corruption has been further documented in the landmark Knapp Commission. Maria Bartiromo is a famous financial journalist and she is an Italian American. She graduated from New York University an she was raised in Brooklyn. The late politician Mario Cuomo was a liberal and he inspired a lot of people. He was unsuccessful in his campaign to be mayor of New York City, but he made a lot of contributions in the realm of American politics. He also gave speeches from the economy to other important political issues. Italian Americans in New York City are involved in politics, art, literature, theology, medicine, and other facets of human life.
I sympathize with the Sister’s anger (when the Sister spoke to Don Lemon and the other reporter from CNN). We should be angry as the Sister said. That murderer is solely responsible for the murders period. This action in Charleston was terrorism by one white male terrorist. Respectability politics should be rejected. These victims did everything right. They worked in their communities, they spoke out against injustice, and they were just exercising their religious faith, which they had the right to do in peace. Yet, they were murdered by a racist in a premeditated fashion. We all send prayers and condolences to the victims’ families. We all want change and this change will not come by following the status quo. It will come by investments in our communities, the structures of oppression being stopped, and racism being combated. We know what Don Lemon is all about. Don has compromised and has been the face of the establishment’s agenda. Also, some in FOX News has promoted a lot of race baiting, anti-black rhetoric in a disgraceful way. We know about the President’s refusal to call out white terrorism and the evils of white supremacy by name. We want black people to be free and humanity to experience justice. I just saw the judge said that the bond was set at 1 million dollars. The judge also said that Roof's family are victims too, which was inappropriate in my eyes. The victims' families in the bond hearing have shown grace, strength, great love, and courage. My policy is to allow the victims' families decide whether to forgive or not. I can never judge that decision from the victims' families. The handwriting is on the entire wall about how vicious racism is. I do hope that the Confederate flag is not shown near the South Carolina state capitol building. There are other things that should be done, but the least that can be done is the elimination of that flag from the state capitol.
Some artists just want to get money, be merry, and put their heads in the sand. Yet, we have the right to not financially or politically support artists who do that. This tragedy is part of an epidemic of hatred found in America. This hatred is found in racism, xenophobia, misogyny, etc. We are in a war to make sure that we live in a society which is much better than the past. These complications exist because of many factors. A lot of this has been agitated by groups like the CCC and other groups who spew this hatred. This oppression is not just found in America. It is found internationally where migrants are oppressed, where civilians are killed via drone attacks (in the midst of endless wars), and the existence of other mass killings of innocent human beings. The sickness in society, the massive materialism, and the capitalist exploitation are evils that must end too. So, some artists are doing what is right. Other artists need to be braver and courageously outline the necessity to fight back against racial oppression. Black people globally have every right to make our views known and to advance not only solidarity, but liberation. Liberation is self-determination and eliminating all evils forms of exploitation and oppression against us. This year is the year of anniversaries too. It will soon be 50 years after the Voting Rights passed, 50 years after the Watts rebellion, and 70 years after WWII. It has been more than 40 years after the Vietnam War. The struggle continues, but we are in the right side of history. Truth is on our side.
It should go down. Over 100 years ago, traitors and white supremacists formed the Confederacy as a means for these evil people to expand slavery, promote racial oppression, and institute other evils in the world. The Confederacy is no more. We live in the USA and it is affront to black people (including freedom loving people in general) for that Confederate flag to still fly on the state capitol of South Carolina (which was the first state to secede from the Union). Some people say that the Civil war has nothing to do with slavery, which is a lie. Tons of black people were abused and murdered by Confederates and others who believed in the myth of white supremacy. The Cornerstone speech made by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens came about on March 1861 in Georgia where he said that the Confederacy was created on racial oppression of black people. He admitted that the secession movement was based on the Confederacy desiring to expand slavery in other lands of America (also Stephens in that speech denied the equality of black people, which is disgraceful on his part) and for them to grow their economic interests (as the Southern racist aristocracy used slavery via the cotton fields, etc. as a way for them to gain profit at the expense of human suffering). We know that trade, politics, and economics were factors on why the Civil War existed too, but slavery was one large factor on why the Civil War existed. The South attacked Fort Sumter first, which began the Civil War. The Confederacy wanted states’ rights, which was about the state brutalizing human rights. Human rights are superior to states’ rights. Also, confederate state Constitutions explicitly supported slavery in their provisions. Black Union soldiers like those from the 54th Massachusetts Regiment fought Confederates in order for them to have freedom. A lot of black folks died for us. So, this is personal for all of us. I’m glad that the Confederacy was defeated. I’m glad that Jim Crow apartheid is gone. Now, we have to defeat the agenda of the neo-Confederates in our generation in 2015. We, as black people, should always stand up for our dignity as Brothers and Sisters. We know that taking the flag (which has been embraced by racists for over a century) down is a necessity and we have to do more than that, but that flag should go down.
#TakeitDown.
By Timothy
Italian Americans in New York City have a long history. New York City in fact has the largest population of Italian Americans in America. Many of them have their own ethnic communities in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Large immigration of Italians into America came about between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. About 5.3 million Italians came into America from 1820 to 1978. There were over two million people Italians who came into America between 1900 and 1910. Only the Irish and the German immigrated in larger numbers. The first New York City neighborhood to be settled by a large number of Italian immigrants (from mostly Southern Italy and Sicily) was East Harlem. It was called “Little Italy.” Back then during the early 20th century, thousands of Italians lived in the area. Even today, on every year on the second weekend of August, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated and the "Dancing of the Giglio" is performed for thousands of visitors. This celebration is supported by the Giglio Society of East Harlem. There is the Italian American museum found in Manhattan’s Little Italy as well. The San Gennaro Festival is celebrated in New York City by numerous Italian Americans. Food and Italian American culture go hand in hand Lombardi's is a pizzeria located at 32 Spring Street on the corner of Mott Street in the Nolita neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City. It was opened in 1905 and it is the first pizzeria in the United States. Many famous Italian restaurants exist all over the city. To his credit, the Italian American Francesco Vincent “Frank” Serpico blew the whistle on corruption in the NYPD. This corruption has been further documented in the landmark Knapp Commission. Maria Bartiromo is a famous financial journalist and she is an Italian American. She graduated from New York University an she was raised in Brooklyn. The late politician Mario Cuomo was a liberal and he inspired a lot of people. He was unsuccessful in his campaign to be mayor of New York City, but he made a lot of contributions in the realm of American politics. He also gave speeches from the economy to other important political issues. Italian Americans in New York City are involved in politics, art, literature, theology, medicine, and other facets of human life.
I sympathize with the Sister’s anger (when the Sister spoke to Don Lemon and the other reporter from CNN). We should be angry as the Sister said. That murderer is solely responsible for the murders period. This action in Charleston was terrorism by one white male terrorist. Respectability politics should be rejected. These victims did everything right. They worked in their communities, they spoke out against injustice, and they were just exercising their religious faith, which they had the right to do in peace. Yet, they were murdered by a racist in a premeditated fashion. We all send prayers and condolences to the victims’ families. We all want change and this change will not come by following the status quo. It will come by investments in our communities, the structures of oppression being stopped, and racism being combated. We know what Don Lemon is all about. Don has compromised and has been the face of the establishment’s agenda. Also, some in FOX News has promoted a lot of race baiting, anti-black rhetoric in a disgraceful way. We know about the President’s refusal to call out white terrorism and the evils of white supremacy by name. We want black people to be free and humanity to experience justice. I just saw the judge said that the bond was set at 1 million dollars. The judge also said that Roof's family are victims too, which was inappropriate in my eyes. The victims' families in the bond hearing have shown grace, strength, great love, and courage. My policy is to allow the victims' families decide whether to forgive or not. I can never judge that decision from the victims' families. The handwriting is on the entire wall about how vicious racism is. I do hope that the Confederate flag is not shown near the South Carolina state capitol building. There are other things that should be done, but the least that can be done is the elimination of that flag from the state capitol.
Some artists just want to get money, be merry, and put their heads in the sand. Yet, we have the right to not financially or politically support artists who do that. This tragedy is part of an epidemic of hatred found in America. This hatred is found in racism, xenophobia, misogyny, etc. We are in a war to make sure that we live in a society which is much better than the past. These complications exist because of many factors. A lot of this has been agitated by groups like the CCC and other groups who spew this hatred. This oppression is not just found in America. It is found internationally where migrants are oppressed, where civilians are killed via drone attacks (in the midst of endless wars), and the existence of other mass killings of innocent human beings. The sickness in society, the massive materialism, and the capitalist exploitation are evils that must end too. So, some artists are doing what is right. Other artists need to be braver and courageously outline the necessity to fight back against racial oppression. Black people globally have every right to make our views known and to advance not only solidarity, but liberation. Liberation is self-determination and eliminating all evils forms of exploitation and oppression against us. This year is the year of anniversaries too. It will soon be 50 years after the Voting Rights passed, 50 years after the Watts rebellion, and 70 years after WWII. It has been more than 40 years after the Vietnam War. The struggle continues, but we are in the right side of history. Truth is on our side.
It should go down. Over 100 years ago, traitors and white supremacists formed the Confederacy as a means for these evil people to expand slavery, promote racial oppression, and institute other evils in the world. The Confederacy is no more. We live in the USA and it is affront to black people (including freedom loving people in general) for that Confederate flag to still fly on the state capitol of South Carolina (which was the first state to secede from the Union). Some people say that the Civil war has nothing to do with slavery, which is a lie. Tons of black people were abused and murdered by Confederates and others who believed in the myth of white supremacy. The Cornerstone speech made by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens came about on March 1861 in Georgia where he said that the Confederacy was created on racial oppression of black people. He admitted that the secession movement was based on the Confederacy desiring to expand slavery in other lands of America (also Stephens in that speech denied the equality of black people, which is disgraceful on his part) and for them to grow their economic interests (as the Southern racist aristocracy used slavery via the cotton fields, etc. as a way for them to gain profit at the expense of human suffering). We know that trade, politics, and economics were factors on why the Civil War existed too, but slavery was one large factor on why the Civil War existed. The South attacked Fort Sumter first, which began the Civil War. The Confederacy wanted states’ rights, which was about the state brutalizing human rights. Human rights are superior to states’ rights. Also, confederate state Constitutions explicitly supported slavery in their provisions. Black Union soldiers like those from the 54th Massachusetts Regiment fought Confederates in order for them to have freedom. A lot of black folks died for us. So, this is personal for all of us. I’m glad that the Confederacy was defeated. I’m glad that Jim Crow apartheid is gone. Now, we have to defeat the agenda of the neo-Confederates in our generation in 2015. We, as black people, should always stand up for our dignity as Brothers and Sisters. We know that taking the flag (which has been embraced by racists for over a century) down is a necessity and we have to do more than that, but that flag should go down.
#TakeitDown.
By Timothy
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Important History
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-women-played-large-role-u-s-wars-article-1.1256718
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/
http://time.com/3928713/charleston-civil-rights-movement/
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/19/takeitdown-hashtag-calls-for-removal-of-confederate-flag-from-s-c-statehouse-grounds-tweets/
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anything-race-right-wing-pundits-denial-mode-following-charleston-shooting
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/20/if-obama-calls-white-bigots-racists-they-might-shoot-up-more-black-churches-apparently-video/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/06/18/discredited-gun-researcher-john-lott-botches-sc/204052
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/19/larry-wilmore-calls-out-fox-news-for-denying-ra/204063
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alex-jones-links-charleston-shooting-socialist-race-war-plot
http://time.com/3928713/charleston-civil-rights-movement/
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/19/takeitdown-hashtag-calls-for-removal-of-confederate-flag-from-s-c-statehouse-grounds-tweets/
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anything-race-right-wing-pundits-denial-mode-following-charleston-shooting
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/20/if-obama-calls-white-bigots-racists-they-might-shoot-up-more-black-churches-apparently-video/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/06/18/discredited-gun-researcher-john-lott-botches-sc/204052
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/19/larry-wilmore-calls-out-fox-news-for-denying-ra/204063
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alex-jones-links-charleston-shooting-socialist-race-war-plot
The Charleston, SC shooting. (We will continue to fight for justice)
No words can describe the pain of the victims' families. For centuries (including in our time), black people have always talked honesty about race. It is that some people have ignored our voices and some folks have killed many of our heroes for speaking courageously about racial issues. Now, the murderer alone did this. This incident was caused by one murderer. This white savage murderer is a stone cold racist and he is the face of what white racism is all about. What that white murderer did was terrorism. We are under attack. This is a war for our survival as a people and for our community. We have every right to use nonviolence and self-defense to defend our communities. Many people (of every color and of every background) have sincerely expressed prayers and condolences to the victims’ families. We are a compassionate people. People should be allowed to grieve, to reflect, and to be inspired to carry onward in the fight for human liberation. The Pastor and others who were murdered had amazing character, they loved their communities, and they just wanted to express their faith in peace. We want white racism to end totally. We want not only self-determination, but economic (as working people should have economic rights. We reject social Darwinism) plus social justice. I'm certainly tired of black people being scapegoated for all of the problems in this country. Society must change. We are against bigotry and the culture of hate that some embrace. Injustice must be fought. The church has great historical significance in our history as black people. The innocent human beings who died (including those who survived this act) should be remembered and honored. Southern pride is nothing more than a P.C. way of outlining white racist, neo-Confederate extremism. This situation deals with how vicious white racism is and how we as black people should never back down from injustice. White terrorism is a serious problem in the world. This murderer expressed hate and executed pre-mediated murder. If I can type these words then the President can easily say these words. It is bigger than a gun violence issue. It also deals with a certain segment of the populace who just has irrational hatred of our people. There has to be structural change where people are free to experience a strong standard of living. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded by many people including our hero Denmark Vesey. I hope that the murderer is convicted on as many charges as possible.
RIP to the victims who passed.
As the old cliché goes, the more things change, the more that they stay the same. I will certainly read the entire quote later on during the day. Rod Serling made accurate points about the sanitation of Dr. King's views after he passed away. The police institution has a long, controversial history. We know how many Texas Rangers from the 19th century were racists. We know about how the slave patrols oppressed our black ancestors. Back then, many in the establishment hated Dr. King not just Hoover. When Dr. King started to see what Malcolm X was talking about and when he publicly criticized the Vietnam War (Dr. King called the America government the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today during 1967), then he was hated even more. The NY Times and other media organs criticized Dr. King. Dr. King wanted economic justice with his Poor Peoples Campaign. The FBI, Memphis police, and Military Intelligence monitored him illegally while he was in Memphis in 1968. A lot of forces in America hated him and after he was assassinated, America has promoted a whitewashing of his views and his legacy (which continues to exist presently). We know Malcolm X was a revolutionary and Dr. King was lot more progressive and revolutionary than some consider him as. Many people ignore Dr. Martin Luther King's radical side (like how he said in August 1967 that capitalism was involved in slavery. He publicly condemned the system of white supremacy and he shook hands with Malcolm X in 1964). Martin Luther King Jr. changed before he passed. Black people have expressed great courage. Our people always fought back. Evil people murdered black people for just peacefully protesting and doing basic activities to defend our human rights. We always remember the Sisters who were involved in the struggle too like Ella Baker (she was the Mother of SNCC. Ella Baker was one of the greatest civil rights activists in history), Septima Clark, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, etc. We want social change categorically. The racists are desperate for us to act docile and malleable to their interests. Yet, we will not turn around. We will fight for our rights as human beings.
This incident is truly evil (of what the girls experienced in Maryland). These girls have done nothing wrong, but they were subjected to racist taunts from vicious, brutish white racists. This story refutes respectability politics once and for all. These little girls were just trying to sincerely care for precious animals. These girls wanted to care for their community and society in general. Later, racists have spewed vile verbal abuse against black children. Enough is Enough. These girls are owed a total apology and they are owed for those racists to experience accountability. Racism is a scourge that must be eliminated. Bless the courageous girls for their strength and their wisdom. It is great for Sister Ava Duvernay to diligently classify herself as a black woman filmmaker. She is absolutely correct to say to people that there is nothing wrong with folks owning up to who they are. She has a bright future. Great people have her back and her talent is not just about filmmaking. Her gifts will inspire future generations of black people who will express themselves in filmmaking, technology, architecture, music, dance, art, and other valuable fields of human endeavors. Being a light is telling your own story and helping neighbors live up to their potentials.
Jeb Bush has officially said that he is running for the Presidency. He’s a Republican. The amount of candidates running for President on the Republican side has increased to 12. He spoke at a rally in Miami. There, he gave a 40 minute speech where he talked about his family, country, and religion. He promised to increase the growth rate of the American economy to four percent a year without many details on how he would do this (except for gutting regulations on U.S. corporations and banks). Jeb Bush is a conservative, so he praised charter schools (which is a form of slick privatization of public schools), and he believed in church run charities and businesses to impose their religious precepts on employees. Jeb Bush’s foreign policy advisors are heavily neo-cons. He has promoted a more aggressive foreign policy and greatly increased military spending. He has not talked about Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country bombed, invaded, or occupied by his father or his brother during their Presidencies. Jeb Bush declared in his speech that: “…We don’t need another president who merely holds the top spot among the pampered elites of Washington.” That is highly silly, because Jeb Bush is part of the establishment. His father is George H. W. Bush, his brother is George W. Bush, and his grandfather was U.S. Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut). Jeb Bush went into banking, real estate, and Republican politics. He was elected governor of Florida in 1998. His agenda as Governor was reactionary. As Governor, he cut taxes for corporations and the super wealthy. He created the first school voucher program and he backed the bad “stand your ground” gun law, which advanced vigilantism. He played a big role in the 2000 Presidential election theft. His state government first conducted a massive purge of voter rolls, which was mostly aimed at African Americans. Then, he acted to shut down vote-counting in south Florida in order to preserve George W. Bush’s 537-vote lead in the state. These brazenly undemocratic actions set the stage for the Supreme Court’s intervention to install Bush’s brother in the White House. He is financially aided by large financers. Some of the other candidates in the GOP are so extreme, that some view him as a “moderate.” Many Tea Party extremists abhor his views on immigration and on education. The election could be between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. We want freedom not massive unemployment, financial crisis, illegal wars, torture, and other evils. We want liberation.
Today is the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth. This is the official date of the abolition of slavery after the Civil War in 1865. During this time, people celebrate in Texas and across the nation. This is a time of celebration for us black people. Yet, under these circumstances of the tragedy of the Charleston church shooting, this is a time of reflection too. Many things have changed for the better since 1865, but we have a long way to go. We have seen the end of Jim Crow apartheid. Many racists have been jailed and convicted for their crimes. There have been a lot of black people graduating from high school including college. Yet, we have a very long way to go. We see almost half of the 2.3 million American prisoners being Black, and more black men under the supervision of the criminal injustice system than were slaves in 1850. We see crooked cops and vigilante lynch mobs terrorizing our communities. So, we have made revolutionary stands for our liberation and the reactionary counterrevolutionary backlash has fought us back. Our ancestors were a key factor in causing the Confederacy to be defeated. Afterwards, Reconstruction came about which allowed many black people to have unheard of political power during that time period. Later, Jim Crow came about as a way for the oligarchy to harm the human rights of black people. During the 1960’s and the 1970’s, the civil rights and Black Power movements inspired people of many backgrounds to radically democratize the South. These movements consisted of workers, soldiers, the poor, and other oppressed people. Today, we see the growth of the war on drugs and the mass incarceration state instead of the completion of the War on Poverty. Many prisoners--55 percent of federal prisoners, for example--are serving time for low-level nonviolent offenses, including low-level nonviolent drug offenses). We see the American capitalist state allowing the economic disenfranchisement in cities plus towns all across America. Some cops have used extrajudicial murder of black human beings. Therefore, with the Trayvon Martin case, Jena Six, Troy Davis’ death, etc. the Black Lives Matter Movement developed. This is a new movement, but it is a very powerful one. It is fighting against capitalist exploitation and police terrorism. There have been examples of evil conduct of some of the police like some of them firing tear gas in Ferguson (against men, women, and even children), conducting mass arrests in Baltimore, declaring a "wartime" footing in New York City, etc. Recall the police calling protesters "f___ animals" in Ferguson, and a mayor calling them "thugs" in Baltimore. We have to transform society, so classism, discrimination, and injustice are obliterated. Even with a black President, Black America is not free. We want Black America to be free and we have to work in social activism in order to make that a reality. Uhuru.
By Timothy
RIP to the victims who passed.
As the old cliché goes, the more things change, the more that they stay the same. I will certainly read the entire quote later on during the day. Rod Serling made accurate points about the sanitation of Dr. King's views after he passed away. The police institution has a long, controversial history. We know how many Texas Rangers from the 19th century were racists. We know about how the slave patrols oppressed our black ancestors. Back then, many in the establishment hated Dr. King not just Hoover. When Dr. King started to see what Malcolm X was talking about and when he publicly criticized the Vietnam War (Dr. King called the America government the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today during 1967), then he was hated even more. The NY Times and other media organs criticized Dr. King. Dr. King wanted economic justice with his Poor Peoples Campaign. The FBI, Memphis police, and Military Intelligence monitored him illegally while he was in Memphis in 1968. A lot of forces in America hated him and after he was assassinated, America has promoted a whitewashing of his views and his legacy (which continues to exist presently). We know Malcolm X was a revolutionary and Dr. King was lot more progressive and revolutionary than some consider him as. Many people ignore Dr. Martin Luther King's radical side (like how he said in August 1967 that capitalism was involved in slavery. He publicly condemned the system of white supremacy and he shook hands with Malcolm X in 1964). Martin Luther King Jr. changed before he passed. Black people have expressed great courage. Our people always fought back. Evil people murdered black people for just peacefully protesting and doing basic activities to defend our human rights. We always remember the Sisters who were involved in the struggle too like Ella Baker (she was the Mother of SNCC. Ella Baker was one of the greatest civil rights activists in history), Septima Clark, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, etc. We want social change categorically. The racists are desperate for us to act docile and malleable to their interests. Yet, we will not turn around. We will fight for our rights as human beings.
This incident is truly evil (of what the girls experienced in Maryland). These girls have done nothing wrong, but they were subjected to racist taunts from vicious, brutish white racists. This story refutes respectability politics once and for all. These little girls were just trying to sincerely care for precious animals. These girls wanted to care for their community and society in general. Later, racists have spewed vile verbal abuse against black children. Enough is Enough. These girls are owed a total apology and they are owed for those racists to experience accountability. Racism is a scourge that must be eliminated. Bless the courageous girls for their strength and their wisdom. It is great for Sister Ava Duvernay to diligently classify herself as a black woman filmmaker. She is absolutely correct to say to people that there is nothing wrong with folks owning up to who they are. She has a bright future. Great people have her back and her talent is not just about filmmaking. Her gifts will inspire future generations of black people who will express themselves in filmmaking, technology, architecture, music, dance, art, and other valuable fields of human endeavors. Being a light is telling your own story and helping neighbors live up to their potentials.
Jeb Bush has officially said that he is running for the Presidency. He’s a Republican. The amount of candidates running for President on the Republican side has increased to 12. He spoke at a rally in Miami. There, he gave a 40 minute speech where he talked about his family, country, and religion. He promised to increase the growth rate of the American economy to four percent a year without many details on how he would do this (except for gutting regulations on U.S. corporations and banks). Jeb Bush is a conservative, so he praised charter schools (which is a form of slick privatization of public schools), and he believed in church run charities and businesses to impose their religious precepts on employees. Jeb Bush’s foreign policy advisors are heavily neo-cons. He has promoted a more aggressive foreign policy and greatly increased military spending. He has not talked about Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country bombed, invaded, or occupied by his father or his brother during their Presidencies. Jeb Bush declared in his speech that: “…We don’t need another president who merely holds the top spot among the pampered elites of Washington.” That is highly silly, because Jeb Bush is part of the establishment. His father is George H. W. Bush, his brother is George W. Bush, and his grandfather was U.S. Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut). Jeb Bush went into banking, real estate, and Republican politics. He was elected governor of Florida in 1998. His agenda as Governor was reactionary. As Governor, he cut taxes for corporations and the super wealthy. He created the first school voucher program and he backed the bad “stand your ground” gun law, which advanced vigilantism. He played a big role in the 2000 Presidential election theft. His state government first conducted a massive purge of voter rolls, which was mostly aimed at African Americans. Then, he acted to shut down vote-counting in south Florida in order to preserve George W. Bush’s 537-vote lead in the state. These brazenly undemocratic actions set the stage for the Supreme Court’s intervention to install Bush’s brother in the White House. He is financially aided by large financers. Some of the other candidates in the GOP are so extreme, that some view him as a “moderate.” Many Tea Party extremists abhor his views on immigration and on education. The election could be between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. We want freedom not massive unemployment, financial crisis, illegal wars, torture, and other evils. We want liberation.
Today is the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth. This is the official date of the abolition of slavery after the Civil War in 1865. During this time, people celebrate in Texas and across the nation. This is a time of celebration for us black people. Yet, under these circumstances of the tragedy of the Charleston church shooting, this is a time of reflection too. Many things have changed for the better since 1865, but we have a long way to go. We have seen the end of Jim Crow apartheid. Many racists have been jailed and convicted for their crimes. There have been a lot of black people graduating from high school including college. Yet, we have a very long way to go. We see almost half of the 2.3 million American prisoners being Black, and more black men under the supervision of the criminal injustice system than were slaves in 1850. We see crooked cops and vigilante lynch mobs terrorizing our communities. So, we have made revolutionary stands for our liberation and the reactionary counterrevolutionary backlash has fought us back. Our ancestors were a key factor in causing the Confederacy to be defeated. Afterwards, Reconstruction came about which allowed many black people to have unheard of political power during that time period. Later, Jim Crow came about as a way for the oligarchy to harm the human rights of black people. During the 1960’s and the 1970’s, the civil rights and Black Power movements inspired people of many backgrounds to radically democratize the South. These movements consisted of workers, soldiers, the poor, and other oppressed people. Today, we see the growth of the war on drugs and the mass incarceration state instead of the completion of the War on Poverty. Many prisoners--55 percent of federal prisoners, for example--are serving time for low-level nonviolent offenses, including low-level nonviolent drug offenses). We see the American capitalist state allowing the economic disenfranchisement in cities plus towns all across America. Some cops have used extrajudicial murder of black human beings. Therefore, with the Trayvon Martin case, Jena Six, Troy Davis’ death, etc. the Black Lives Matter Movement developed. This is a new movement, but it is a very powerful one. It is fighting against capitalist exploitation and police terrorism. There have been examples of evil conduct of some of the police like some of them firing tear gas in Ferguson (against men, women, and even children), conducting mass arrests in Baltimore, declaring a "wartime" footing in New York City, etc. Recall the police calling protesters "f___ animals" in Ferguson, and a mayor calling them "thugs" in Baltimore. We have to transform society, so classism, discrimination, and injustice are obliterated. Even with a black President, Black America is not free. We want Black America to be free and we have to work in social activism in order to make that a reality. Uhuru.
By Timothy
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Calls are mounting for a tourism boycott of the Dominican Republic
http://fusion.net/story/151991/calls-are-mounting-for-a-tourism-boycott-of-the-dominican-republic/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/14/384344141/haitians-lynching-renews-protests-against-dominican-citizenship-law
http://gptublog.blogspot.com/2014/11/boycott-dominican-republic-no-ethnic.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/14/384344141/haitians-lynching-renews-protests-against-dominican-citizenship-law
http://gptublog.blogspot.com/2014/11/boycott-dominican-republic-no-ethnic.html
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
National and International Issues
Donald Trump has officially announced his candidacy for President for the Republican Party. His introduction speech for his candidacy on June 2015 was filled with xenophobia, racism against Mexicans, and demonization of people who disagrees with him. His speech was immature, it lacked real substance, and it was a total disgrace. He is a man who was part of the birther movement, which deal with the lie that the President was not born in American soil. He is a hypocrite. He claims to be for workers, but he works for the capitalist empire, which has shown opportunism, parasitism, and economic exploitation. Trump was already born into wealth. His family owned a 23 room house and they had a multimillion dollar real estate development business. Trump’s business dealings deal with channeling government funds to private developers, who destroyed communities and drove longtime resident out of their homes. In one of his very first acts managing an apartment complex for his father's company, Trump prevented a Black family from moving into a property in a predominantly white neighborhood in Cincinnati in the 1960s. Trump's New York real estate company was later sued by the federal government for denying rental applications from Black applicants. The man who recently claimed to "have a great relationship with the Blacks" was sued by the Justice Department for violating the Fair Housing Act. Trump has slandered the innocent Black and Latino suspects in the Central Park jogger case. They were proven innocent years later. He wants to defeat ISIS with brass militarism, but he offers no real political solution to the crisis. He opposes the ACA, gut will not offer real universal health care. His views on immigration are bigoted and nativist (by calling for a wall in trying to end illegal immigration. He called many immigrants rapists, drug posers, and other nonsense). The truth is that we need our infrastructure developed, our environment improved, and our civil liberties protected. Our trade system should not only protect American workers. It should protect workers internationally with safety standards, workers’ rights, and environmental protections. We want economic justice and social justice in the world.
I respect many of the videos from Brave New Films (that deals with voting rights, the environment, etc.). There is a double standard of some in the media. Some in the mainstream media will demonize black protesters a whole lot worst than white rioters. I agree with the short video on that issue. The video is right to describe how the media talks about the black leadership (in claiming that black leaders will not talk about rebellions or black on black crime, which is a bold face lie) when black organizations have condemned crime for decades. Thug has been used by some as a code word for the N word. I have no problem with telling the media to stop calling innocent black people collectively as thugs. Yet, the real thugs are Wall Street criminals, imperialists, and crooked cops. Police terrorism must be condemned. I do commend the video's message though. It's a great message. Ivy Taylor win was historic in San Antonio. Now, she wanted this job. She has won it and she has the responsibility to met the needs and aspirations of the citizens of San Antonio. It will be interesting to see what she will do. We want San Antonio to develop its infrastructure, to end discrimination, and to fight poverty (so human beings there can have better housing and a better standard of living in general). We want progressive solutions to problems. I wish the best for the Sister and Mayor of San Antonio Ivy Taylor and for the residents of San Antonio. Steph Curry and Ayesha are married. The ESPN host should of known better, because many sports experts know about Step Curry’s family including Curry’s adorable daughter. Many people use the term “babymama” to not only degrade black single mothers, but it has been used by some to degrade black women in general. Vicious people have always used coded language as a means for them to express false, disrespectful stereotypical views about black people and other people of color. John Buccigross is totally wrong for his immature language. People always have the right to defend the humanity of black women.
It’s a total shame that once again, some in social media want to blame black people for the Rachel controversy. Fundamentally, white privilege is real. If Rachel was honest from the start, the backlash would remarkably decrease. She not only used deception (with the employment situation, and the hate crime situation), but she made a suit against Howard for accusing Howard of discriminating against her because she is white back in 2002. Now, she is saying that she is black. That's hypocritical. I find it disrespectful for a white woman to claim to be a black woman when black women have suffered a whole lot worse than her. Rachel doesn’t deserve malicious treatment, but she deserves no passes for her actions. Rachel exploited black womanhood for her own interests, which is totally wrong. While many want to blame blacks, these same people will not hold Rachel accountable for her own actions. Using deception in a job document is not right either. We, as black people, are always blamed for lacking compassion when we have been compassionate to people historically of a diversity of backgrounds. What’s really revolting is that real issues are being ignored like police brutality, education, imperialism, social justice, etc. That is part of the hypocrisy found in American society. As for me, I will stand up for black people. If she said from the beginning about what she was, then she would have received much less backlash. She has the right to tan and curl her hair. To each its own, but there must be integrity and honesty in any liberation struggle. I understand why many black people who don't want to see this situation as a permanent pattern. Mrs. Tina Knowles-Lawson is certainly a survivor. She loves her children and her grandchildren a great deal. She has developed her own enterprises and she married a person who loves and cherishes her inner being not just her outer beauty (as she is a beautiful woman). She is honest in her words and she is determined to not only exercise, but to bless others via her charity work. We want more blessings to exist in the Sister’s life.
This story is one reason why I have my views on immigration. I know about this issue. We are in solidarity with the oppressed like the Haitian people who are born in the Dominican Republic. Not all Dominicans are racists, but many of them are. Some Dominicans even overtly deny blackness and praise imperialists like Columbus. The Black in Latin America documentary documented the massive racism found in the Dominican Republic. On February 11, the hanged body of a black Haitian man was found in Santiago. His name was Henry Claude Jean. The immigrant law in the Dominican Republic is draconian and it’s very difficult to enforce since many Haitians born the D.R. weren’t given legal documents like birth certificates since some were birthed by midwives not from hospitals. It is important to note that many Dominicans in NYC have supported the Haitian immigrants in protests. So, I want to make that clear. Haitian workers and other Haitians in the Dominican Republic have experienced racism, assault, and murder. The Dominican racist dictator Rafael Trujillo exterminated black Haitians in the Parsley Massacre of October 1937. So, this is not a recent phenomenon. Haiti and the Dominican Republic have competed with each other economically and politically in the Hispaniola region for centuries. Ultimately, this story proves to me once again that pan-African unity is important. Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, Africans, Afro-British, Afro-French, Afro-Brazilians, etc. are our Brothers and our Sisters. We want a progressive solution to this crisis. We will not back down. We will defend the human rights of Haitian people unconditionally (regardless if they are born in the Dominican Republic or not). It is a total disgrace where many black Haitians have suffered discrimination and oppression in Dominican Republic (in the D.R., many black Haitians there have experienced machete attacks from racist mobs, some of their homes have been burned, and thousands have already been expelled by force without legal procedures). This is not just. Haitian heroes established their nation first and they defeated the French, the Spanish, and the English. We will continue in the fight for the liberation of all black people globally. We love truth and we want the poor including the oppressed to be free categorically. The Haitians are our Brothers and our Sisters. Wisdom, progressive action, strength, and compassion are key ingredients which can cause justice to transpire.
Usually, I don’t cry a lot, but when I look at the late Sister’s image and read this story, I certainly almost cried. This story must be shown, because the voices of black females have been readily ignored in this society in a sick way. It’s a shame that the suffering of the Sisters have been readily ignored. Arnesha Bowers was a victim of murder. The murderers are cowards and they should be in prison for the rest of their lives. Things must change. This is a battle. We not only fight white racism. We also are against the actions of evil black people who seek to terrorize innocent black people as well. We do understand that many black people are fighting the good fight and are making a difference in real life. That's true. I’m not a conservative on every issue obviously (as I am anti-imperialist, I don’t agree with trickled down economics, and I believe in social justice), but we certainly need to promote integrity in a higher level in our communities and further develop strategies to combat the abuse and murder of black girls and black women. The solution will be diverse. We have to strengthen our families, defend innocent, strong black people literally, fight police terrorism, fight misoygnoir, and fight poverty including racism. There has to be a radical redistribution of economic and political power. We all send prayers and condolences to the family and friends of Arnesha Bowers.
RIP Sister Arnesha Bowers.
By Timothy
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
Haiti and the D.R.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/haiti-dominican-republic-ease-tensions-150324130359613.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/14/384344141/haitians-lynching-renews-protests-against-dominican-citizenship-law
http://www.thenation.com/blog/209745/we-regret-inform-you-4-days-you-and-your-family-will-be-deported-haiti
file:///C:/Users/Timothy/Downloads/AMR2714492015ENGLISH.pdf
http://www.ryot.org/5-things-know-cleaning-haitians-dominican-republic/935183
http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13635-haiti-dominican-republic-everything-is-ready-to-deport-foreigners.html
http://www.internationalist.org/haitiandominicanpersecution0601.html
http://blackagendareport.com/content/haiti-antihaitianismo-and-dominican-republic
http://blackagendareport.com/content/caribbean-nations-outraged-dominican-racism
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dominican-republic-hates-black-people
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/14/384344141/haitians-lynching-renews-protests-against-dominican-citizenship-law
http://www.thenation.com/blog/209745/we-regret-inform-you-4-days-you-and-your-family-will-be-deported-haiti
file:///C:/Users/Timothy/Downloads/AMR2714492015ENGLISH.pdf
http://www.ryot.org/5-things-know-cleaning-haitians-dominican-republic/935183
http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13635-haiti-dominican-republic-everything-is-ready-to-deport-foreigners.html
http://www.internationalist.org/haitiandominicanpersecution0601.html
http://blackagendareport.com/content/haiti-antihaitianismo-and-dominican-republic
http://blackagendareport.com/content/caribbean-nations-outraged-dominican-racism
http://blackagendareport.com/content/dominican-republic-hates-black-people
News of the world and Life in General.
There is the continued economic conflict in Greece. Greece could experience bankruptcy. The European Union is strident in putting in place even more austerity measures in Greece, which will further indebt the nation. The EU wants Greece to repay its debts and want more cuts to pensions as a precondition for new loans. Syriza is a powerful political party in Greece. Syriza delayed in their response. So, the EU threatened to cut off credit to Greece and push its state and financial system into bankruptcy. Greece is being forced to repay 300 million euros. This could make Greece to reintroduce its own national currency to stop a collapse of its banks and even set into motion the dissolution of the euro currency and the EU itself. Berlin is taking about a take it or leave it approach. Officials from the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank walked out of talks with Greek officials. Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister and current European Council president, said, “We need decisions, not negotiations, now.” The financial oligarchs are forgiving with the debt as it relates to the Kiev regime of Ukraine, but they are stricter with Greece. We know that the Kiev reactionary regime is backed by NATO, who is conducting a massive military buildup across Europe (and some extremists have threatened all-out war with Russia). Ukraine has slashed jobs and utility subsidies. They have banned the public mention of the October Revolution and communism, which is against the freedom of speech. The Syriza Party came about in response to the opposition of the six years of EU austerity policies in Greece. The European banks want their way. We see as history proves that progress can only come by the unity of the working class plus the poor internationally as a way to promote revolutionary change against capitalist exploitation. There is a global backlash against austerity in Germany, Britain, France, across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc. Many European nations refuse to veto the EU sanctions against Russia. Visiting Berlin Thursday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis made clear his government’s commitment to even further concessions to the European banks. He called for “surgery” to slash Greek pensions, saying, “We need to find ways of eliminating early retirements, of merging pension funds, of reducing their operating costs, of moving from an unsustainable to a sustainable system, rationally and gradually.” We don’t need centrism. We want revolutionary change.
The Pentagon wants a network of new U.S. military bases in Iraq. These bases will be found in strategic areas of Iraq. General Martin Dempsey or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said of these plans to reporters. These new U.S. garrisons will house further deployments of hundreds of more U.S. troops. This will be beyond the deployment of an additional 450 U.S. forces announced by the Obama administration on Wednesdays. The Pentagon aims to establish a chain of “lily pads, if you will, that allow us to continue to encourage the Iraqi security forces forward,” Dempsey said. US military planners are already looking at possible locations for bases in central Iraq, he added. “We’re looking all the time at whether there might be additional sites necessary,” Dempsey said while speaking to reporters during a visit to Europe this week. The U.S. wants to use troops as “advisors” to help train Iraqi forces, so that they can defeat ISIS forces in Iraq. ISIS is also found in Syria. We have about 3,100 U.S. troops in Iraq now. This could increase to almost 3,600 as a result of the new deployment. State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby said that this war could last for at least 3-5 more years. These new U.S. garrisons are modeled on a major joint U.S./Iraq training. The operational facilities are to be established at Tadaddum in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The White House revealed this. This new U.S. base will be part of a staging area to try to take the city of Ramadi or the capital of Anbar province. The 450 troops will train Iraqi forces at Taqaddum. These Iraqi troops will march to Ramadi and will have U.S. air support. The neo-con extremists view this as not far enough. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) demanded that US air forces escalate their onslaught against targets in Iraq and Syria, regardless of the mass slaughter of civilians that he admits will result. “The US cannot make avoiding all civilian casualties a strategic objective,” Cordesman said in testimony to Congress last week. The US is turning to the Sunni tribes in Anbar province in order to pressure the Shiite elite, now in control of the central government, which has close ties to Iran. There is an expansion of U.S. military involvement in Iraq. The plans of the White House and the Pentagon have promoted these deployments without any pretense of democratic process or debate in the U.S. Congress. ISIS came about as a result of U.S. imperialism in Iraq and Syria. The Western military intervention has caused about 4,400 air strikes in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. wants more Sunni support since the Iraqi government is mostly Shia (and ISIS has strong Sunni support too). This ethnic manipulation by Western imperialists has caused more chaos in Iraq. Ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we witness even more complex problems.
There has been massive migrant immigration to Europe. They come for many reasons. Some come to escape dictatorial regimes. Some have escaped because of ISIS terrorism or terrorism from other extremist groups. These refugees are from Africa, Asia, India, etc. The evil US/NATO military intervention in Libya back in 2011 has also increased the number of migrants traveling into Europe too. Some of these migrants have been killed in trying to survive. The problem is that many migrants readily have not been met with open arms when they arrive into other countries. Some countries greet them with racism, xenophobia, and paranoia. Some migrants have experienced violence in Europe and other places because of their nationality, which is evil. Massive migrants are found in the Mediterranean Sea. There have been 1,724 people who died in the Mediterranean Sea when they have used vessels to try to go to southern Europe from Libya. Some refugees are not just from African nations. Some came from Syria and even from Bangladesh. There has been a vessel capsizing which caused about 850 people to die while only 28 survived on April 18, 2015. This situation is a humanitarian crisis. After the Libyan President Gaddafi died (by NATO-backed jihadists. It wasn't just some Republicans who supported the evil NATO bombing of Libya. Many Democrats supported this imperialist aggression too under the guise of "humanitarianism"), chaos and civil war has plagued Libya. Racist jihadists have killed black Libyans and African migrants. Presumptive democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton infamously said of Libyan president Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” Libya had massive resources and jobs for migrants. Now, Libya can’t totally sell or extract its own oil resources. Syria with its civil war has traveled so much into Lebanon and Jordan, that they are preventing them from entering. Some Syrians fly to Sudan and then smuggled into Europe via Libya. American culpability in this tragedy has been ignored by the mainstream media (just like back in the 1980’s, U.S. responsibility for the coups, interventions, and drug policies in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala has been ignored). The migrants should have their human rights respected.
During the 1970’s in New York City, some politicians capitulated to the corporate establishment. Before, many politicians worked with various social movements and the public sector unions (like the UFT and AFSCME), who grown in size and political influence during the sixties. Now, the reactionary backlash came about in a higher level. New York’s manufacturing base declined by the 1970’s. In 1947, New York City had 1,073,000 manufacturing jobs, which is huge. As late as 1965, New York City still employed 865,000 manufacturing jobs. The radically decrease of manufacturing jobs and budgetary issues caused a loss of tax revenue. Loss of tax revenue without just compensation or alternatives will increase the risk of financial crisis. Then, you have the 1971 end of the U.S. dollar off the gold reserve standard and the oil crisis of 1973. This caused economic problems worldwide. You had low tax extraction on NYC real estate when the market value of Manhattan commercial buildings south of 59th street were worth in the billions in the 1970’s alone. NYC’s finances were run by various agencies (with influence from the city and state political leadership including the NY’s business elite). CUNY was shut down and reopened on condition that students pay tuition. Severe cuts in public housing, hospitals, schools, and transit systems cause the decay of much of the infrastructure in NYC during the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s. Ex-mayor Ed Koch sometimes appealed to the racist elements in NYC as a means for him to gain political power. Koch promoted tax exemptions for the wealthy and homelessness increased under his watch. There was bankruptcy of New York City on mid-April 1975 (during the time of Mayor Beame). The American financial banker Felix Rohatyn and others dealt with handling the financial crisis in NYC. When the NYC school bus drivers went on strike in early 1979 (and these workers were fighting for their economic rights which they had a right to do), Koch denounced them as “goons” and “bastards.” The next year, when New York’s powerful 35,000-strong subway and bus workforce defied the anti-strike Taylor Law in an eight-day walkout, Koch led a crowd across the Brooklyn Bridge, hysterically whipping up sections of the middle class. Koch, as Mayor, saw the drug crisis of the 1970's including the 1980’s with the advent of the crack epidemic. We know how the War on Drugs crippled many people. That is why people today (from across the political spectrum) are opposing the War on Drugs and desire solutions.
The video shows the truth about what happened in McKinney, TX. To see kids being assaulted, cursed at and brutalized by the police should make anyone angry at injustice. We have the right to protect our community from police terrorists. It is a total disgrace that some in social media are trying to blame and scapegoat the victims instead of the cops who assaulted innocent people and some cops stood there and did nothing to reprimand Eric Casebolt. We must not water down the truth. We have to teach the truth about the evil system of racism/white supremacy and the nefarious instruments of oppression. The two young males standing up for the teenage girl ought to be commended for their courage. One of the teenage males had an attorney to document how he slipped on the grass and he didn't intentionally lunged at the officer at all. Eric Casebolt was never assaulted by anyone, yet he pulled his gun on unarmed black youth. Crooked cops don't care if cameras are there or not. These cops will harm people all over America. Some cops tried to immediately harass black youth who did nothing wrong, which shows how micro aggressions are serious problems in American society. What the police officer did was wrong. He assaulted a non-threatening black woman, he cursed out kids, and he pulled out a gun on unarmed black males (I’m glad that she showed information as it pertains to the video). The officer disregarded the words of black kids who called him “Sir” too. Respect is a two way street. Many of the black teens respected the officer, but the officer didn’t respect the kids in the pool party area. The 2 white women assaulting a black female should be ashamed of themselves. Also, some of the whites who called black people slurs and made other disrespectful comments ought to feel shame too. The cop has guilt and that is why he acted in an irrational fashion. Later, he issued a token apology and he resigned. Cops in America as of now have killed over 500 people in 2015 alone. Cops kill more people in America than any other nation in the industrialized world. We know that Malcolm X condemned police brutality and advocated self-defense not just being courteous to people. The real issue is that we have a problem of police terrorism in America and we must find ways to end this problem. It is common for the white racists to slander the witnesses and the victims of police terrorism in McKinney, TX. Just because a grown, beautiful black woman wears a bikini (as shown in a Facebook page), doesn’t mean that she’s a criminal. The reality is that there is a difference between respect and submission to evil. We should treat our neighbor as ourselves and be strong. We shouldn't be nihilistic, but we should always stand up for our human rights. Some folks confuse standing up for human rights with outright nihilism, which isn’t the case at all. If someone is being questioned by the police, that person has the right to ask questions. Cops are not gods and they should be treated as fallible people (since we pay their salaries with our tax dollars). Cops should serve us not vice versa. We want justice.
By Timothy
The Pentagon wants a network of new U.S. military bases in Iraq. These bases will be found in strategic areas of Iraq. General Martin Dempsey or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said of these plans to reporters. These new U.S. garrisons will house further deployments of hundreds of more U.S. troops. This will be beyond the deployment of an additional 450 U.S. forces announced by the Obama administration on Wednesdays. The Pentagon aims to establish a chain of “lily pads, if you will, that allow us to continue to encourage the Iraqi security forces forward,” Dempsey said. US military planners are already looking at possible locations for bases in central Iraq, he added. “We’re looking all the time at whether there might be additional sites necessary,” Dempsey said while speaking to reporters during a visit to Europe this week. The U.S. wants to use troops as “advisors” to help train Iraqi forces, so that they can defeat ISIS forces in Iraq. ISIS is also found in Syria. We have about 3,100 U.S. troops in Iraq now. This could increase to almost 3,600 as a result of the new deployment. State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby said that this war could last for at least 3-5 more years. These new U.S. garrisons are modeled on a major joint U.S./Iraq training. The operational facilities are to be established at Tadaddum in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The White House revealed this. This new U.S. base will be part of a staging area to try to take the city of Ramadi or the capital of Anbar province. The 450 troops will train Iraqi forces at Taqaddum. These Iraqi troops will march to Ramadi and will have U.S. air support. The neo-con extremists view this as not far enough. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) demanded that US air forces escalate their onslaught against targets in Iraq and Syria, regardless of the mass slaughter of civilians that he admits will result. “The US cannot make avoiding all civilian casualties a strategic objective,” Cordesman said in testimony to Congress last week. The US is turning to the Sunni tribes in Anbar province in order to pressure the Shiite elite, now in control of the central government, which has close ties to Iran. There is an expansion of U.S. military involvement in Iraq. The plans of the White House and the Pentagon have promoted these deployments without any pretense of democratic process or debate in the U.S. Congress. ISIS came about as a result of U.S. imperialism in Iraq and Syria. The Western military intervention has caused about 4,400 air strikes in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. wants more Sunni support since the Iraqi government is mostly Shia (and ISIS has strong Sunni support too). This ethnic manipulation by Western imperialists has caused more chaos in Iraq. Ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we witness even more complex problems.
There has been massive migrant immigration to Europe. They come for many reasons. Some come to escape dictatorial regimes. Some have escaped because of ISIS terrorism or terrorism from other extremist groups. These refugees are from Africa, Asia, India, etc. The evil US/NATO military intervention in Libya back in 2011 has also increased the number of migrants traveling into Europe too. Some of these migrants have been killed in trying to survive. The problem is that many migrants readily have not been met with open arms when they arrive into other countries. Some countries greet them with racism, xenophobia, and paranoia. Some migrants have experienced violence in Europe and other places because of their nationality, which is evil. Massive migrants are found in the Mediterranean Sea. There have been 1,724 people who died in the Mediterranean Sea when they have used vessels to try to go to southern Europe from Libya. Some refugees are not just from African nations. Some came from Syria and even from Bangladesh. There has been a vessel capsizing which caused about 850 people to die while only 28 survived on April 18, 2015. This situation is a humanitarian crisis. After the Libyan President Gaddafi died (by NATO-backed jihadists. It wasn't just some Republicans who supported the evil NATO bombing of Libya. Many Democrats supported this imperialist aggression too under the guise of "humanitarianism"), chaos and civil war has plagued Libya. Racist jihadists have killed black Libyans and African migrants. Presumptive democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton infamously said of Libyan president Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” Libya had massive resources and jobs for migrants. Now, Libya can’t totally sell or extract its own oil resources. Syria with its civil war has traveled so much into Lebanon and Jordan, that they are preventing them from entering. Some Syrians fly to Sudan and then smuggled into Europe via Libya. American culpability in this tragedy has been ignored by the mainstream media (just like back in the 1980’s, U.S. responsibility for the coups, interventions, and drug policies in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala has been ignored). The migrants should have their human rights respected.
During the 1970’s in New York City, some politicians capitulated to the corporate establishment. Before, many politicians worked with various social movements and the public sector unions (like the UFT and AFSCME), who grown in size and political influence during the sixties. Now, the reactionary backlash came about in a higher level. New York’s manufacturing base declined by the 1970’s. In 1947, New York City had 1,073,000 manufacturing jobs, which is huge. As late as 1965, New York City still employed 865,000 manufacturing jobs. The radically decrease of manufacturing jobs and budgetary issues caused a loss of tax revenue. Loss of tax revenue without just compensation or alternatives will increase the risk of financial crisis. Then, you have the 1971 end of the U.S. dollar off the gold reserve standard and the oil crisis of 1973. This caused economic problems worldwide. You had low tax extraction on NYC real estate when the market value of Manhattan commercial buildings south of 59th street were worth in the billions in the 1970’s alone. NYC’s finances were run by various agencies (with influence from the city and state political leadership including the NY’s business elite). CUNY was shut down and reopened on condition that students pay tuition. Severe cuts in public housing, hospitals, schools, and transit systems cause the decay of much of the infrastructure in NYC during the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s. Ex-mayor Ed Koch sometimes appealed to the racist elements in NYC as a means for him to gain political power. Koch promoted tax exemptions for the wealthy and homelessness increased under his watch. There was bankruptcy of New York City on mid-April 1975 (during the time of Mayor Beame). The American financial banker Felix Rohatyn and others dealt with handling the financial crisis in NYC. When the NYC school bus drivers went on strike in early 1979 (and these workers were fighting for their economic rights which they had a right to do), Koch denounced them as “goons” and “bastards.” The next year, when New York’s powerful 35,000-strong subway and bus workforce defied the anti-strike Taylor Law in an eight-day walkout, Koch led a crowd across the Brooklyn Bridge, hysterically whipping up sections of the middle class. Koch, as Mayor, saw the drug crisis of the 1970's including the 1980’s with the advent of the crack epidemic. We know how the War on Drugs crippled many people. That is why people today (from across the political spectrum) are opposing the War on Drugs and desire solutions.
The video shows the truth about what happened in McKinney, TX. To see kids being assaulted, cursed at and brutalized by the police should make anyone angry at injustice. We have the right to protect our community from police terrorists. It is a total disgrace that some in social media are trying to blame and scapegoat the victims instead of the cops who assaulted innocent people and some cops stood there and did nothing to reprimand Eric Casebolt. We must not water down the truth. We have to teach the truth about the evil system of racism/white supremacy and the nefarious instruments of oppression. The two young males standing up for the teenage girl ought to be commended for their courage. One of the teenage males had an attorney to document how he slipped on the grass and he didn't intentionally lunged at the officer at all. Eric Casebolt was never assaulted by anyone, yet he pulled his gun on unarmed black youth. Crooked cops don't care if cameras are there or not. These cops will harm people all over America. Some cops tried to immediately harass black youth who did nothing wrong, which shows how micro aggressions are serious problems in American society. What the police officer did was wrong. He assaulted a non-threatening black woman, he cursed out kids, and he pulled out a gun on unarmed black males (I’m glad that she showed information as it pertains to the video). The officer disregarded the words of black kids who called him “Sir” too. Respect is a two way street. Many of the black teens respected the officer, but the officer didn’t respect the kids in the pool party area. The 2 white women assaulting a black female should be ashamed of themselves. Also, some of the whites who called black people slurs and made other disrespectful comments ought to feel shame too. The cop has guilt and that is why he acted in an irrational fashion. Later, he issued a token apology and he resigned. Cops in America as of now have killed over 500 people in 2015 alone. Cops kill more people in America than any other nation in the industrialized world. We know that Malcolm X condemned police brutality and advocated self-defense not just being courteous to people. The real issue is that we have a problem of police terrorism in America and we must find ways to end this problem. It is common for the white racists to slander the witnesses and the victims of police terrorism in McKinney, TX. Just because a grown, beautiful black woman wears a bikini (as shown in a Facebook page), doesn’t mean that she’s a criminal. The reality is that there is a difference between respect and submission to evil. We should treat our neighbor as ourselves and be strong. We shouldn't be nihilistic, but we should always stand up for our human rights. Some folks confuse standing up for human rights with outright nihilism, which isn’t the case at all. If someone is being questioned by the police, that person has the right to ask questions. Cops are not gods and they should be treated as fallible people (since we pay their salaries with our tax dollars). Cops should serve us not vice versa. We want justice.
By Timothy
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