CARL LUMBLY TALKS FATHERHOOD AND AUGUST WILSON'S FENCES

ACTOR CARL LUMBLY - English Major, Started Acting Along Side Danny Glover (Both in the movie "Buffalo Soldiers"), Journalist That Stumbled Into Acting, Husband of the Late Vonetta McGee

ADVICE FROM
MOTHER AND FATHER
Hold on to who you are

And protect who you are

Do not sink beneath your own standards

Do not let anyone set a standard for you that is not your own.

ON OUR RESPONSIBILITIES TO YOUNG BLACK MEN

Barbara Rogers: Does it break your heart to see what is happening to so many young black men in our society?

Lumbly's Answer (at minute 5:30 in video)

Completely

Completely

And it feels like despite the fact
that there have been advancements...not only in society also...
in a generation of young black men
there's a dearth of hope,
there's a disconnect somehow
and I feel responsible for it in some ways,
not with my own son
but we haven't
[]but my generation maybe has not
formed enough of a bridge,
[] that we've been maybe
blinded a little bit by our own success,
by access to opportunity, to capital...
that it hasn't been as difficult a row to hoe
so we haven't, maybe,
prepared those coming behind us enough

See Carl Lumbly's full 8 minute interview here 

ON HIS FATHER

I used to chaff about how strict my father was.
But he was there
He set a tremendous set of examples for me
I never had to wonder if he cared.

THE BROWNIE, THE BUSH, AND THE HURRICANE TEN YEARS LATER

Excuse me, but the story below is the kind of story you have written about yourself when you are an empathy-free, elitist dumb@$$

Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina

Ten years later, the name ‘Brownie’ is still identified with the government’s failures. Here’s what really happened.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/katrina-ten-years-later-michael-brown-121782.html#ixzz3k5EKnaMv

* * * * *

FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency: a US government body intended to coordinate responses to a disaster in the US itself.

* * * * * 

Believe it or not, this entire article is about people not leaving New Orleans 2 or 3 days before the hurricane hit like Brownie, the FEMA DIRECTOR at the time, thought they should.

And this Michael Brown (Brownie) gets suspiciously close to blaming the victims for their own deaths, same as the other Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland.   

Brownie appears to have forgotten that the 1,833 people that died and those that barely made it out were mostly black and POOR.

I thought it was crystal clear that the poor people in New Orleans couldn't afford to leave home for 2 or 3 days, spending money they don't have, only to have the hurricane be downgraded like dozens of hurricanes had been so many times before.

Just like the white crew of the Titanic, whose extensive experience on the ocean led them to cruise through those icy waters way too fast in 1912, the poor people of New Orleans in 2005, let their extensive experience of hurricanes lead them to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm...just like they'd done so many times before.

Overconfidence kills lots of people. But in this country, you only sit back and see how things play and out when the people drowning are black and brown.

In the article, "Brownie" said the governor and state officials were complacent too. Maybe they were. Experience and overconfidence might have been their enemy as well.

Then again, maybe it wasn't overconfidence at all. 
Maybe Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco  experienced numerous hurricanes that fizzled out before they made landfall too? Or maybe these state officials already knew that the thousands of poor people they were responsible for didn't have money to cover 2 or 3 days at a hotel? Maybe their own state budget didn't have money to put them anywhere but that inadequate stadium?  Maybe they didn't make the call to evacuate until it was too late because there wasn't a call to make for that many people without money.


And maybe "Brownie" and other government officials contributed to this problem by being completely freaking deaf to the fact that "lack of money" means no movement until poor people are SURE the hurricane is really coming. Maybe the federal government should have supplied money and an exit plan if they were sure the hurricane was going to hit land at class 5 strength.

According to this article, plenty of people didn't get completely sure that Hurricane Katrina would be making landfall at class 5 strength until it was way too late.  From the timeline I've looked at, nobody declared a state of emergency at the federal level until New Orleans was already in Brownie's "too late zone," the day before Katrina arrived.

The last minute run to the Superdome
FEMA has food for 15,000 people for 3 days
There are 20,000 people there
The Superdome isn't strong enough for a class 5

And many of the people that would have been helping FEMA are, instead, fighting in Iraq

We won't talk about
the wetlands that were destroyed by dams and pipelines,
the same wetlands and barrier islands
that used to be hundreds of square miles bigger,
the same wetlands
that used to be the first natural barrier
a hurricane would hit and slow down over,
once upon a time.

We won't talk about
how many people
might still be here
if the profits of greedy corporations,
especially gas and oil companies,
weren't put ahead of our ecology.

We won't talk about any of the reasons
other hurricanes lost strength
before they got to the poor people
living in the low-lying areas.

We won't talk about the people
that got rich while destroying those
wetlands

More on how appreciating nature saves lives

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332684/

But let's do talk about Brownie's argument that it was all the state's fault for not evacuating. This excuse, pardon the pun, doesn't hold water. His argument about people not leaving New Orleans completely misses the one and only point there is.

We know that some citizens of New Orleans didn't leave. We even know that some of the poor black people there might have been over-confident about being able to ride out the storm.  But those of us remember this debacle were not angry, then or now, at "Brownie" for failing to make people evacuate--or not very angry for very long about that particular point.

What happened immediately after Katrina passed by is what made us snarl.  And what happened immediately after Katrina passed was damn near nothing.

Governor Blanco ordered 68 school buses into New Orleans from surrounding parishes to begin evacuating any survivors that remained in the city. 6908 Army National Guard and 933 Air National Guard were deployed (7,841 total). Governor Blanco and the National Guard stated that they could "handle it".

 FEMA Director Michael Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana,Alabama, and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff five hours after landfall to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region. Brown acknowledged that this process would take two days. He described Katrina as a, "near catastrophic event."

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Hurricane_Katrina


This idiot was blamed for the lack of response to the predominantly black victims of Hurricane Katrina. His defense of so off track it would be funny if 1,833* people hadn't died with another million people displaced.   How dare he convince himself he doesn't know this 10 years later?

* * * * *

FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency: a US government body intended to coordinate responses to a disaster in the US itself.

* * * * * 

Imagine someone saying to Brownie, "You crashed your car into my car!"

And imagine Brownie responded, "My wife sent me to the store to get cigarettes," saying nothing more which would tend to imply that he wouldn't have been in the car at all if his wife hadn't asked for cigarettes. Therefore the crash is not his fault. 

So he is technically correct, in precisely the same way as described above in the cigarette scenario. There wouldn't have been a catastrophe for Brownie to manage so badly if nobody had been in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.  But there were people there. And Brownie and Bush didn't move like people who mattered were dying.

And, if it wasn't FEMA that failed to haul ass once the fat was in fire, then which government agency was it that failed? Our fearless leader at the time, Bush Jr., stayed on vacation until optics got bad in the national news. Was it Bush Jr that failed to send the right agency in to coordinate the rescue? Was Bush Jr. too busy on the 17th hole to send the right people?

 BUSH'S VACATION DURING HURRICANE KATRINA,
STORY FROM 2005 http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2005/08/30/1683/as-katrina-struck-bush-vacationed/.  

And even if this dipstick "Brownie" and FEMA hadn't been at fault in any way, how does the president have the audacity to say anything that even sounds like,

".... you're doing a heckuva a job,"

...ABOUT ANYBODY, ANYWHERE while bodies are floating down the street,  even if person X actually IS doing a good job?


Let me tell you how you say something like that when bodies are floating down the street. You only do that crap when you and yours are white or white-adjacent and the bodies floating down the street are black or at least not-white. 

"Brownie" got most of the blame because HIS PRESIDENT, Bush Jr, made it very clear that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" by arranging his lips to say, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva a job" at the most callous, self-serving moment possible.


All sorts of black pundits got themselves on television and used million dollar words to describe President Bush's lack of response. In dignified fashion, black academics rambled for paragraphs at a time about what the lack of response to Katrina victims should tell us about race in America.

Then Kanye West got on television and said what we were all thinking, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." (Of course, my version of this sentence had the f-word in it)



I'll probably never read enough to know if Brownie and FEMA were most at fault for the deaths of 1,833 people, most of them black, but I do know that it is our federal government's responsibility to take care of national disasters. And they were obviously dragging their feet when it was black people dying. And in that moment our government was being led by George W Bush, who couldn't be bothered to stop his golfing vacation at the Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in Arizona.

<---If you see "Brownie" you tell him I said that I don't care what percentage of this was his fault and that I said,  'F-you and the horse you rode in on for trying to shift the blame elsewhere.' You tell him that, as the former head of FEMA, he doesn't get to finger point when 1,833 people are dead, not even when it's 10 years later.

 
Brownie and Bush Jr. just are cut from the same ugly, superior, empathy-less cloth as far as I am concerned.

And that's the big thing that Brownie and Bush will never get. Their lack of empathy was very likely based on the racial-otherness of the victims and the class-otherness of the victims. That heartlessness combined with the greed led destruction of the wetlands is to blame for some percentage of the 1,833 dead.

A passive form of racism intermingled with standard conservative disdain for poor people kills. It always has. It did.  May we never, ever forget the lessons that Hurricane Katrina gave us...again.

MAIN STORY ON BROWNIE ABSOLVING HIMSELFhttp://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/katrina-ten-years-later-michael-brown-121782.html#ixzz3k5EKnaMv

MORE ON BROWNIE ABSOLVING HIMSELF
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/katrinas-heckuva-job-brownie-absolves-self-from-disaster-and-you-wont-believe-who-he-blames/
 More on Wetlands

http://people.uwec.edu/jolhm/eh3/group7/WhyNOVulnerable.htm

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/08/wetlands_restoration_mrgo.html

NEWS FLASH! WHEELS ARE ROUND AND PRISONS ARE FULL OF POOR PEOPLE

Prisons of Poverty:   

Uncovering the pre - incarceration incomes of the imprisoned

The findings [of this report] are as predictable as they are disturbing. The American prison system is bursting at the seams with people who have been shut out of the economy and who had neither a quality education nor access to good jobs. We found that, in 2014 dollars, incarcerated people had a median annual income of $19,185 prior to their incarceration, which is 41% less than non-incarcerated people of similar ages.

READ MORE: 

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html

A BLACK LIVES MATTER SUCCESS: FERGUSON JUDGE WITHDRAWS ARREST WARRANTS BEFORE 2015

After a year of sustained protests, after the resulting Department of Justice Investigation, changes are happening in Ferguson.

The municipal court judge in Ferguson, Missouri, in [August 2015] announced sweeping changes to the city's court system, including an order to withdraw all arrest warrants issued in that city before December 31, 2014.

Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, who was appointed in June, also changed the conditions for pretrial release. According to a press release put out by Ferguson, all defendants will be given new court dates with alternative penalties like payment plans or community service.

Read & Hear More http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/us/ferguson-missouri-court-changes/

WHITE RACIAL APOLOGY #100,840,017 - THE NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN INCIDENT

Over the weekend 10 women, 9 of them black and one white, were marched off something called a Napa Valley Wine Train for laughing too loudly. 

A maître d’ also told them they were making too much noise. Asked who was complaining, he said that “people’s faces are uncomfortable.”

Johnson said the group of women — 10 black and one white — were then paraded through all six cars and escorted off the train where police were waiting for them.

photo and quote from thinkprogess.org 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/08/24/3694422/black-women-train-laughing/

Then the company added insult to humiliating injury. They posted this on company facebook page.






Finally, after two or three full days of being trounced in the news and on social media, the Napa Valley Wine Train issued this excuse list rather than an apology: 

Clearly, we knew in advance when we booked your party that you would be loud, fun-loving and boisterous—because you told us during the booking process that you wanted a place where your Club could enjoy each other’s company. Somehow that vital information never made it to the appropriate channels and we failed to seat your group where you could enjoy yourself properly and alert our train’s staff that they should expect a particularly vibrant group...  

We were insensitive when we asked you to depart our train by marching you down the aisle past all the other passengers. While that was the safest route for disembarking, it showed a lack of sensitivity on our part that I did not fully conceive of until you explained the humiliation of the experience and how it impacted you and your fellow Book Club members.

We also erred by placing an inaccurate post on our Facebook site that was not reflective of what actually occurred. In the haste to respond to criticism and news inquires, we made a bad situation worse by rushing to answer questions on social media. We quickly removed the inaccurate post, but the harm was done by our erroneous post.

Frankly, I'm even angrier now that I know that the woman who made the reservation asked if it was okay if they were noisy. 

I've been on a bus full of drinking women going to a winery. It's not the same as two or three women going to a winery.  That's a loud and different trip when there are 10 to 15 women and women at the front of the bus know and want to talk to the women at the back of the bus. A group of any size talking to each other while drinking is a party.

Party's are loud.

And I'm supposed to believe NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN has never had a rowdy group of drinking white women on a train that's essentially a rolling bar?

I'm supposed to believe that laughing and joking and singing is prohibited on a train where the point is to drink wine during the entire trip?

I'm supposed to believe that NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN has never accidentally seated a party's worth of loud white women next to quieter white couples or quieter white groups of two or three before? I'm supposed to believe that NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN has no other strategy to deal with something (loud laughter) that absolutely cannot be an isolated incident?

?

I want to see their training manual. I refuse to believe the employees have no guidance for an event such as this. The only thing NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN employees found unusual about this group of women was that they were predominantly black.  


Clearly, NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN has had to move people because one group was too loud for another before. Just because they couldn't this time because the train was full, what made it okay to march these women down the train aisle and eject them into the hands of armed policemen? What is it other than black skin that could have made this seem like a reasonable response?


And I'm supposed to believe that the apology is an apology? 

Again:

"We were insensitive when we asked you to depart our train by marching you down the aisle past all the other passengers. While that was the safest route for disembarking, it showed a lack of sensitivity..."

And where's the apology for this:

A maître d’ also told them they were making too much noise. Asked who was complaining, he said that “people’s faces are uncomfortable.”

I suggest to you that the only thing on the faces of the other passengers was white skin.

"Lack of sensitivity" is not the problem here. Removing 10 customers, most of whom are black, in favor of one (or none if you believe the maitre'd) complaining white customer is the problem. It's a wonder one of their staff didn't yell "get these thugs of the train" when they rolled into the station where the Lisa Renee Johnson and her friends were thrown off. 

I wonder if the white women in the same car cheered when this predominantly black group was removed?

In 1881, when Ida B. Wells was thrown off the a train for being black and having the audacity to sit in the first class ladies the white customers remaining on the train most definitely cheered as Wells was removed. The white people of that era were openly and overtly racist, therefore they could only laugh and cheer at  Wells humiliation. I've never heard about what the white passengers did when Rosa Parks was thrown taken off the bus by police in 1955 but I always imagine openly racist, white southerners as being quite happy when Parks was taken off the bus. 

Then again, now that I think about it, "lack of sensitivity" is exactly the problem. There's a lack of sensitivity to white racism. In 2015, it can't be seen, felt, or heard by those executing it. Surely, this is the core problem. Because I find it hard to believe that there is even the slightest chance that NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN would have handled this so badly had this been a group of white women. And if this incident had happened to a group of white women, the first thing in the apology would have been an assurance that the responsible party had been severely reprimanded or fired. 

NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN offered the women another trip on their train after they were shamed into apologizing.  Yeah, right.  Try refunding all their money then offering them accommodations at your competitors business. NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN might not ever get Renee's Book Club to ride their train again, but they might get other black people to believe

1) the apology is a sincere one.  
2) Napa Valley's predominantly white population isn't a population hostile to black people in general. I mean, how did the staff's behavior pass for "normal" for two or three whole minutes much less the two or three days it took NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN to apologize.

NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN might have admitted that they were 100% wrong but I don't think too many dark-skinned folk think that they are 100% sincere. 

They should have apologized before they were outted and trounced.

UPDATE: Video of the police with guns talking to the women after they were thrown off.  I promise you, this going national is what prompted the NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN remorse.
SEE, HEAR, AND READ MORE
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Napa-Valley-Wine-Train-Ejection-Spawns-LaughingWhileBlack-Backlash-322699711.html


By they way don't forget about the black family that was arrested for cheering too loud at a graduation in Mississippi.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mississippi-school-backs-down-on-graduation-cheering-arrests/

BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER

Black Lives Matters organizers across the country will hold rallies on Tuesday calling attention to the number of black trans women who have been murdered this year. The rallies will be organized and led by organizers who are black and cisgender—men and women whose gender identities matched their sex when they were born.





Read More:
http://fusion.net/story/187673/blacklivesmatter-organizers-to-rally-for-black-transgender-women/

HUCKABEE MISAPPROPRIATES MARTIN LUTHER KING TO BASH BLACK LIVES MATTER

THEN JANET MOCK
SHUTS  DOWN HUCKABEE 
WITH A QUICKNESS

Mock pointed out that Huckabee’s attempt to misrepresent King was a way “to silence the very people and ideas that he fought to protect and died to protect.”

Janet Mock photo by Juston Smith

Offering ‘all lives matter’ in response to the assertion that ‘black lives matter’ diminishes the black lives that have an continue to be lost, and you should know that by now,” Mock insisted.

“Because, yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was appalled by the notion that we are elevating some lives above others,” Mock said. “But you’re a little confused about the ‘we’ he was talking about.

“The message from BLM is that black people don’t have the power to stop the violence against them from agents of the state,” she pointed out. “It’s why they are appealing to people like you, people vying to represent the state."

READ AND SEE MORE:
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2015/08/watch-janet-mocks-flawless-shut-down-of-mike-huckabees-black-lives-matter-criticism/

ON BEING THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT

NATIVE AMERICAN GRANDMA'S PLAY CAPTURE THE FLAG

WITH NEO NAZIS DURING AN
ANTI-RACISM PROTEST
AND WIN!!!


BWAAAAAA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!

Feeling rebloggy (an old story from 2013 or so)

Leith is right next to the Standing Rock Indian Nation, and as of last Sunday, Leith has seen scores of Native American and other Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist protestors swarming the town in an attempt to show the Nazis that they are not going to be intimidated nor driven out by any hate group.

Perhaps the highlight of the protests was when four Native American grandmothers came together to play an improv “game” of “capture the flag” from the Nazis.

~politicalblindspot.com

lol omg I love them!!!


READ MORE:
http://politicalblindspot.com/native-american-grandmas-capture-the-flag-from-neo-nazis-in-north-dakota/


Apparently this is part of a much larger story.  The residents, including Native American Tribes, stopped a Neo-Nazi named Cobb from buying up and taking over the small town of Leith, North Dakota. From what I've read the town had a 2 year battle with this man and the white racists he called in to buy up property from across the country. 


Read More on

"The North Dakota town that thwarted a neo-Nazi takeover"

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25646954

SHAUN KING's BLACKNESS WAS NEVER REALLY IN QUESTION

Shaun King

BUT THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT
TO QUESTION
THE LEGITIMACY
OF BLACK LIVES MATTER



Questioning the legitimacy of Black Lives Matter was Brietbart's true objective, in my opinion. And if you're still trying to avoid talking about Shaun King's blackness, color, and colorism as if that was actually the point, then Brietbart's mission has been accomplished.


I don't know how many black people were confused about Shaun King's blackness after looking at him, but that doesn't matter even a little bit. What does matter is that the ultra-conservative, republican, cro-magnon man once known as "Breitbart" and his followers were the ones that were NOT confused because Shaun King's blackness was never the real issue

The writer at Breitbart.com wasn't even feigning confusion over blackness. Pay attention. He was feigning confusion over whiteness.  And if you've read more than a couple of items he's written, then you know confusion over *who is white* and *who is not-white* is impossible coming from somebody like him.

Andrew Breitbart photo by Gage Skimore
(from wikipedia)

I've come to the conclusion that many white people, especially the white racists among them, can discern who is pure enough to be white with barely a glance and from 1/2 a mile away.

I've met Latinx and did not know that they were Latinx until I heard a surname or they volunteered the information.  I've met Jewish people I didn't know where Jewish until they told me as well. However, the white person standing next to me each time?  They may not have known what ethnicity the person was but many a white person was crass enough to ask, "What are you?"  And that white person asked the "What are you?" question because, unlike me, a lot of white people can identify not-white instantaneously.

Black people, like me, may be confused by someone exceptionally pale, think they are white and not really care one way or the other.  Latnix may be confused by someone exceptionally pale, think they are white and not really care one way or the other.  Asians may be confused by someone exceptionally pale, think they are white and not really care one way or the other.  But the vast majority of white people that I've come across---and I mean white people who are unquestionably white (WASPs and WASAs*) and especially overt white racists-- are rarely confused about not-white.

*  WASP = White Anglo Saxon Protestant

WASA = White Anglo Saxon Atheist/Agnostic

Again, those at the Breitbart site did not look at Shaun King's birth certificate with two white parents listed on it, then look at Shaun King's face and assume Shaun King was another Rachel Dolezal.  


I say this with such sureness because the ability to tell who is purely white and which kind of "white person" is accepted "as white" has been handed down from generation to generation in many-a-white family.

This ability to identify whiteness has to have been passed down from generation to generation in the dominant white culture because there are a few things in our collective history that couldn't have taken place if this weren't so. 

For example: 

More Jewish people would have been able to "pass" as white in this country in the early part of the 20th century and during the latter stages of WWII in Europe, wouldn't they?

There wouldn't have been an argument as to whether Italians should be accepted as white a century or so back if white people couldn't tell one set of pale people from another.

In a class I took in order to be an EEO Counselor years ago, the instructor  stated that Cubans identify as "white" on census forms regularly. And, I'd be curious to see Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio identified as before being "Hispanic" became a political asset.  But many white people who are unquestionably white don't consider Cubans to be white. And white people consider  Cubans not-white by looking at their faces, not via checking their census forms.

And for sure there wouldn't have been laws put on the books in this country saying that anybody that with more than 1/32 black ancestry is black without white folks being able to discern white purity by looking into a person's face.

Race in general and whiteness specifically, is a social construct based on APPEARANCE. 


Of course people have "passed" despite all these written and unwritten rules about who is allowed to claim whiteness, but in order to pass or construct racist laws you'd have to be reasonably sure you could  question a person's ancestry by looking into their face.

And maybe I'm simply not paying attention, but I seriously don't remember anybody but white people asking another very pale person, "What are you?" Each time I turned to look at the pale person being interrogated, I wondered, 'How did she know he wasn't white?' 
But I probably shouldn't have wondered. Whiteness requires purity. And hypodescent's creators know what whiteness looks like better than most people of color do. And if you don't think the dominant culture gatekeepers know who is in and who is out of whiteness, you  haven't been paying attention.

Based on a lot of what Breitbart and followers have written, they ought to have "white gatekeeper" stamped on their foreheads in invisible ink.

There's simply no question in my mind that the Brietbarts of this world can recognize Shaun King's inability to join a Klan meeting from 3 miles away and blindfolded, much less from the usual 1/2 mile.

This conservative jackal was not confused. Breitbart set out to embarrass Black Lives Matter and Shaun King. Being proved wrong will barely put a hitch in his giddy-up because we're all talking about the wrong thing he wants us to talk about: Shaun King's blackness and his explanation of his blackness while hyper-ventilating about colorism.

Post Dolezal, Shaun King probably couldn't avoid answering the accusation that he is actually white. But it irks me that King's explanation likely gave Breitbart more garbage to play with before that ugly fan base of his.

By the way, this racist door of hypocrisy swings both ways.  Do you remember a black person being repeatedly criticized, nationwide, for claiming blackness, for deciding to identify as "African American" instead of "biracial," until President Obama became the most powerful man in the world? I don't.  And the hollering about Barack Obama denying his whiteness came at me loud and clear from the more overtly anti-black racists on the right. It's as if some believe that President Obama's white DNA is what enabled Barack Obama to be smart enough, good enough, and strong enough to become the President of the United States...despite having black skin.
The only thing we should do now, other than get over our touchiness in regards to colorism, is re-recognize this low-life Breitbart by his behavior and keep steppin'. Black Lives Matter and Shaun King will surely do the same thing.

But we should also celebrate. Because this latest failed attempt to embarrass and/or derail Black Lives Matter means Black Lives Matter is seen as powerful enough to effect change. And it has.

New York now has a special prosecutor to investigate suspicious deaths at the hands of police. Raynette Turner's death is being investigated by a special prosecutor.

California is getting rid of the secret tribunal process (grand jury process) when cops kill. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation makes the whole indictment process public. No more mystery releases of known killers.

This is in addition to nationwide spotlight Black Lives Matter has been able to turn onto a number of black unarmed deaths---which is a necessary preliminary change that will eventually lead to more convictions of bad cops. 
 
Hallelujah Baby!  Black Lives Matter organization, including Shaun King, are rattling all the right cages. The cheap pot shots are the proof. 


http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/20/us/shaun-king-controversy/

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2015/08/black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-confirms-he-is-indeed-biracial/





Updated 8/22/2015 9:56AM

WHEN COPS EARN DISTRUST YOU GET WHAT YOU GOT IN ST LOUIS

SAINT LOUIS POLICE HAVE EARNED
SO MUCH DISTRUST
THAT THE COMMUNITY THEY SERVE
DOESN'T TRUST THEM
TO DO THE THINGS THEY ACTUALLY WANT DONE

Ordinarily, a lower income, black community is behind the police when they take down a drug house. But the police have such total disregard for the black community that it's probably a toss up between the drug dealers and police as to which gang is worse at this point.

PROTEST OBSERVERS CLAIM POLICE REACTION TOO AGGRESSIVE: 10:35 p.m.
The Rev. Renita Lamkin of St. Charles, who regularly attended protests in Ferguson, went to Page Avenue with several other clergy members Wednesday evening. She accused the police of engaging in an overly aggressive response.

“There has to be a better way, but the better way is not to terrorize an already terrorized community,” she said. “How they deal with the situation is classist and dehumanizing. The people here don't matter as much to them.”

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/fires-set-off-police-confront-crowds-hours-after-st-louis/article_9eae9155-9f8e-5296-b836-45326918fda3.html

 Then again, I'd probably put up with a lot over a few days to be rid of drug dealers. But it's a choice I shouldn't have to make as an American. I shouldn't have to make choose who I am more afraid of  just because I'm black. I shouldn't have to think about the likelihood of being hurt by police versus being hurt by a drug dealer. But too many people of color are finding themselves having to make that choice daily in the United States


I don't get what's so hard for people who are policeman to understand about the concept of caring about your fellow human beings as you would want to be treated yourselves. 

When you maintain a racist belief system and are unconscious about your own racism, you have a fearful over-reaction to people identified as not-like-me.  If police, for example, had found a drug house in predominantly white neighborhood --and I promise you, there are some-- tanks and tear gas shouldn't have been seen as necessary or logical, not even if they were sure somebody had a gun or three.

You only escalate to tanks and tear gas when you don't care about the people in the neighboring houses at all. I'm wondering if that tank is the military surplus equipment that President Obama decided to limit police access to the Spring of 2015 

And police used so much tear gas in Saint Louis that innocent people were gassed out of their own nearby homes.

We don't know how any of the car fires started, but we do know that tear gas explosions are capable of starting such fires. 

According to the twitter essay below, tanks and teargas were taken away, then brought back again. Because maintaining a racist belief system and willfully remaining unconscious about your own racism leads to having a fearful over-reaction to people identified as not-like-me, right?

Most murders of unarmed black people by white and white appearing police officers have been done in the name of being "afraid."  Police escalating the situation in Saint Louis is more of the same. When you maintain a racist belief system and are willfully unconscious about your own racism, you tend to have a fearful over-reaction to people identified as not-like-me.



* * * * *
This twitter essay, in the link below,  was written by Antonio French.

https://storify.com/mdp99/st-louis-8-19-2015



SOURCE OF PROTESTS: MANSUR BALL-BEY, SHOT IN THE BACKhttp://www.ibtimes.com/mansur-ball-bey-st-louis-police-shooting-shot-back-killed-black-teen-chief-says-2063192

A TALE OF TWO ERICs WHO CAN'T BREATHE

REPOST FROM APRIL 2015

When I heard that Eric Courtney Harris died in Tulsa, Oklahoma while listening to some white cop say,

"F*ck Your Breath"

because Harris dared complain about being shot while lying on the ground (ala Oscar Grant) then complained further about being unable to breathe (ala Eric Garner)  I had a moment, maybe two, where I hoped that Harris was a drug dealer or big time gun runner, directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of dozens of people. 

I have no excuse for thinking such a horrible thing.

I was only thinking about myself, about comforting myself. I just wanted there to be a reason, not a good reason, just some kind of reason for that police officer to put his knee on Eric's head and respond "You f*cking ran...Fuck Your Breath"  after he heard another human being, shot and frightened of dying complain  about "losing my breathe"

I just wanted one of the unarmed black people killed over this month to have been killed for a reasonable reason. But instead we get...

"F*ck Your Breath"

What's worse is that the white man that shot Eric wasn't really a police officer. 

Seventy-three year old Robert Bates is a rich man who was only playing cops-and-robbers as a "volunteer reserve deputy." And because of his money, somebody thought it was a good idea to turn him loose during an undercover operation---or just after. It's hard to tell. But it was Bates who accidentally grabbed his gun instead of his taser and shoots Harris.

You can hear apologizes to the white officers for shooting Harris in the video.  It's unbelievable. Watch at your own risk

Now, I really did think about scanning the net to find out who 44 year old Eric Harris really was but it really doesn't change anything about how he should have been treated. Having dealt with racists in some form or fashion all my life, I know you cannot let evil people make you evil too, not in retaliation, not even when they deserve it. You cannot let other people's garbage reduce you as a human being.

And one would think that police officers would have to learn something similar in order to routinely come into contact with and attempt to control the worst that our society has to offer. 

Officer F*ck-Your-Breath" must have skipped class the day they taught being civilized at the police academy because he's an animal in uniform no matter what Eric Harris did or didn't do.

Daniel Pantaleo never, ever said anything like "F*ck Your Breath" but he sure acted it out, didn't he? He just kept on choking Eric Garner with the same callous disregard for the pain, fear, and suffering of another human being as Officer F*ck-Your-Breath.

And I don't know why, but I am damn near certain that Mike Brown was bent over in pain,  curling into a more fetal position than demon charging position, when Darren Wilson gunned him down.

When an animal in uniform can't see a black person as a human being it can't. 

73 year old Rich Man
Playing At Cops and Robbers
Robert Bates
kills Eric Harris
Apologizes to Officer "F*ck Your Breath"

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THIS STORY FROM CNN

"Fuck your breath!" a cop responds. "Shut the fuck up!" "You shouldn’t have fucking ran!" his colleague adds as they hold Harris down. Harris died about an hour later at a nearby hospital.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/fck-your-breath-says-cop-to-man-who-was-shot.html