TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, PT 2 - ACCESSORIES BEFORE THE FACT

Many different things contributed to Lonnie Franklin’s ability to get away with murdering dozens or hundreds of women over 25 years.  Even the fact that he appears to have begun killing in the 1980s explains his ability to avoid detection.

He started killing during the crack epidemic. Plenty of dead bodies among which to hide his dead bodies His being a loader at the dump, working for with the sanitation department, was also a contributing factor. Being a significant player in the underground economy of the hood, he had help --that supposedly didn’t know they were helping-- getting rid of evidence.  And because he was “the rich one” in the neighborhood, the one handing out little jobs here and there, it’s likely nobody wanted Lonnie Franklin to be “The Grim Sleeper” even though so many signs were there. 

REVIEW OF THE GRIM SLEEPER Part 1 http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/11/review-tales-of-grim-sleeper-part-1.html 






In addition to his legit jobs, Franklin fenced stolen goods, his specialty being cars and car parts. This made him the go-to-guy for whatever you might need -- so long as you asked no questions. Again, Franklin’s "business connections" made him the go-to-guy for a job.

One man admitted that he was hired to burn a blood soaked car for Franklin, thinking that he was being paid to burn the car as a part of Lonnie’s insurance scam business. Franklin paid a friend that had a (likely off the books) carpet cleaning business who clean the murder sites (van and mobile home) getting rid of one stain that was an oil like substance. But the friend knew it wasn’t oil.

The alternate economy of the inner city, mostly involving not so serious crime, enabled Franklin to get rid of bodies and blood. But it was the sexism and misogyny that enabled Franklin to lure his victims and kill them without anybody bothering to notice.

Lonnie Franklin was just one of a group of men that went out weekly (at least) to pick up hookers, and/or drug addicts to pose for pornographic pictures. The filmmaker that produced this documentary covered for these “men,” calling them a sort of amateur photography club.

To many people’s ears this photographing of naked women “just” sounds harmless “boys will be boys” stuff.  But these men weren’t perusing nude women paid to pose in magazines. These men were going out with Franklin to find desperate, drug addicted women to have sex with and take pictures of. Franklin was sticking thing in these women and actually torturing them. The pictures were a way of reliving the debasement of these women.

One of Lonnie’s “friends” said that they paid as little as $2 to get these desperate, drug addicted women to go with them. A “friend” said he routinely witnessed Franklin torturing these women—and talks about the women screaming as X, Y and Z was done to

them.

Remember Delashaun,  the son’s girlfriend?
She said that Franklin’s third phone was "for his hoes, his crackheads."  This indicates that Lonnie Franklin and his pornography “friends” were hunting women barely able to give consent to "sex " and pose for sexual photos - weekly or daily.

Round mounds of flesh at chest level with a nipple, round mounds of flesh above each thigh, and a wet hole. That's all these women were to these men. Franklin was just the one with that certain something where obsessive objectification leads to murder.

There’s a lot of video of these “men” saying Lonnie couldn’t have been involved because they don’t want to believe that one of their pack was capable of this.

One of these friends/photographers talk about how Franklin showed one of them the gun, the .25 used to kill some of the women. The same “friend” tells of how handcuffs fell out of Franklin’s car one day.  Another of Franklin’s friends was actually in the car when Franklin stopped, cut a woman off who was walking, got out of the car, grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her to the car with a glazed look in his eyes, before he sort of woke up and let her go. This "friend" only thought this was “weird.”

As the documentary goes on, it becomes clear that these same friends knew that Franklin hated the women he was picking up. They said Franklin learned to hate black, female drug abusers after his wife became hooked on crack. He really loved her until he hated her, they said. There’s actually video of two men giggling, one of them laughing about female drug users, ‘You get in his car you won’t get out.’

There were so many signs that this man was a deviant and a predator. But how do you recognize this if:

TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, PT 1

Do you remember “The Grim Sleeper.”




Have you even heard of the “The Grim Sleeper” before?


Do you instantly recognize the name “Lonnie Franklin?"

 

I whizzed past “Tales Of The Grim Sleeper”  in the TV schedule then came back to it because I'd seen a black woman’s face near the title.

When I saw the name of the documentary and the black woman's face together, it came back to me.  “The Grim Sleeper” was the name given to a serial killer that murdered dozens if not 100s of black women over 25 years beginning in the 1980s.

Watching “The Grim Sleeper” documentary on HBO made me a little sick. I didn't want to watch it in the first place. I thought it would make my ears bleed to hear even one excuse for dozens of black women being murdered by a serial killer for 25 years without too many people noticing. This is especially galling since the police knew a serial killer was hunting black women in South Los Angeles by 1987 but didn't let the public know, didn't let black women in the South Los Angeles area know they were prey until 2008.

In 1985, Margaret Prescod started a black women’s group called “Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders.” She was handing out leaflets on the victims of an unknown serial killer in 1985. But leaflets were not enough. People virtually around the corner from where a body was found didn't know there was a serial killer in their midst. The police needed to make an announcement to the news outlets and they didn't let black women know they were being stalked for 22 years

It's possible that Lonnie Franklin killed hundreds of black women. The number being thrown around as the possible number of victims stands at 180.


 Cops not moving due to racism is old news. Cops not moving due to the sexism and misogyny involved in not caring about sex workers, prostitutes, or “ho-s” is not new either. Yet I have to admit I was shocked when I found out that The Grim Sleeper’s sole survivor, “Anitra” Wilson, went to the police in 1988 and not 2010 when Lonnie Franklin was finally arrested like I'd assumed.

Police ignored Wilson as "unreliable" for years because they assumed that she was a hooker. And they assumed she was a hooker because she's black. (I've experienced this personally from white men at malls and art galleries) And hookers are some of those whom police "used to" mark as NHI (No Humans Involved) on police reports, when they are hurt or murdered as a way of prioritizing their caseload, obviously.

My mouth fell open again when I found out that that Wilson also had a police sketch done of the killer and took police directly to Lonnie Franklin’s street, only to misidentify a house only two doors down from Franklin’s as the one belonging to the man that offered her a ride, shot, and raped her. Again, all of this happened in 1988 not 2010 when this killer was caught.


Prescod and her Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders and victim's parents had been pressing police to catch this serial killer for years. Yet they didn’t get to see the Wilson sketch of the killer for a decade.

How many dozens of black women died between 1988 when Wilson took police to Franklin's street and 2010? We'll probably never know. For a while police thought this serial killer had stopped killing for 14 years then resumed, hence the nickname "The Grim Sleeper." But now it looks like he just got better at disposing of the bodies. (Franklin worked as a sanitation worker, a loader at the dump for a while.) 

Still, there was so much more than racism and the usual lack of white police interest behind the Grim Sleeper’s ability to kill so many black women.

Lonnie Franklin was able use South Los Angeles like his own personal game reserve because the murderers of sex-workers, prostitutes, hookers, or hoes, whatever they’re being called at the moment, are rarely hunted down with any vigor, regardless of color.  Women that fall off the virtuous woman pedestal into the pit of "hoes" are treated like so much garbage by police, rappers, and communities, including black communities.

Somebody other than Prescod and her group should have noticed so many black women were showing up dead, shot by the same caliber weapon or strangled - in a "tight knit community" where people have lived for multiple generations according friends of Franklin's.

Arthur Shawcross killed 12 white women, mostly prostitutes, in upstate New York and was hunted down within 3 years. The Grim Sleeper, by comparison, killed dozens if not hundreds of black women over 25 years and was never actually hunted down so much as stumbled upon.


Franklin’s son was arrested. The son’s DNA led to the father, whose DNA was on the breast of at least one murder victim.  At Lonnie Franklin’s home, police found 180 photos of black women, many of them missing, some of them the faces of murder victims whose bodies have been found over the years.  At Franklin’s home, police also found the gun that was used to kill a number of women

In addition to Franklin’s sanitation job, the crack epidemic in South L.A. appears to have made it easy to hide a few bodies among so many bodies dropping dead anyway in the 80s and 90s

The underground economy in the hood (due to legitimate industry and jobs having moved to the suburbs) also enabled him to dispose of bodies with relative ease. Franklin himself fenced stolen goods, mostly stolen cars and stolen car parts in addition to his straight, legit jobs. This made him the “rich one” in the neighborhood, the go-to guy for whatever you need, and more importantly the go-to guy to get a job.

One man admitted that he was paid to burn a blood soaked car for Franklin, thinking that he burning another car as part of Lonnie’s insurance scam business. Franklin also paid a friend that had a (likely off the books) carpet cleaning business. This man likely cleaned the murder sites (van and mobile home) He said he got rid of a hard to get rid stain, like oil but he knew wasn’t oil.  

Crime, some serious and some not so serious -all the usual parts of the alternate economy that comes to exist in destitute neighborhoods, enabled Franklin to get rid of bodies and blood. But it was the sexism and misogynoir in this same neighborhood that enabled Franklin to lure his victims and kill them without anybody noticing.

Photo #147  “Delashaun” (not shown) of Lonnie Franklin's photo collection is one of those women that is still alive.  She turned out to be Christopher Franklin's, his son's, high school girlfriend.  Her photo was mixed in with what appears to be his father's “sexual conquests,” and murder victims  

“Delashaun” said she spent a lot of time at the Franklin house when she was in 11th grade.  A decade or so later(?), she described the Franklin's at home: 

 “They seemed normal typical family.  If you ever needed anything, he’d get for you. Don’t ask questions. He would go and beyond to help you…

He would have a conversation with you. During that conversation, something perverted would come out. That’s just who he was.  He was just a horny old man. That’s exactly how everybody would look at him. A horny old man. 

When she was alone with the son, Chris Franklin, in his bedroom. She said, "You could tell he was listening at the door. Sometimes it seemed like he was a pervert."

When she asked Lonnie Franklin why he had three cell phone, she he told her that  his third phone was for his hoes, his crackheads.

THE GRIM SLEEPER PART 2 TOMORROW

"Amateur Photography Club"
Franklin's First Wife
Franklin's Current Wife (at time of the arrest)
Witness to torture
Other survivors

A WOLF HIDING AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEES VERSUS HOME GROWN TERRORISTS

States protesting next year's admission of 10,000 Syrian refugees range from Texas and Maine.

 

"The announcements came after authorities revealed that at least one of the suspects believed to be involved in the Paris terrorist attacks entered Europe among the current wave of Syrian refugees....via Greece in early October..."

Only 1,500 Syrian refugees have been accepted into the United States since 2011, but the Obama administration announced in September that 10,000 Syrians will be allowed entry next year."

~CNN

There may be more governors popping off about a terrorist hiding among the Syrian refugees coming to the U.S.A. today. But a few days back 25 out of 26 governors screeching about "Don't send those people here!" were republican.
These governors are wrong. We have no choice but to help the desperate and displaced

However, I don't if we should have that much faith in United States's ability to vet refugees in order to make sure there aren't any terrorists among them. I can't stop thinking about the visas that were approved for some of  the 9/11 terrorists after they were dead. But since 9/11 thousands of refugees have been admitted to the United States. And as far as I know, none of them have a shot a black person for being black and walked away from it.

For black people, the terrorists are homegrown.


Raised on the KKK and NRA philosophies of life like it was mother's milk, Dylann Roof, Wade Michael Page, and Frazier Glenn Miller  were all raised to be the terrorists they were meant to be. 

The Sandy Hook Killer, the Batman Movie Theater Killer,  the Oregon School Killer, the Isla Vista Shooter were all terrorists too.

All of these NRA armed "mass shooters" (some of them KKK wanna-be-s)  kill for the pure joy of terrorizing  people not like themselves  instead of terrorizing people not like themselves  (just before killing them) for pseudo-political/pseudo-religious reasons.



They all get their revenge-based jollies out of terrorizing people they're killing.  Men like Jihadi John and the KKK are pretty-much interchangeable to me.

Same = Same




For most of the republican white folk, apparently, there hasn't been a true terrorist attacks in this country since the Boston Marathon.

But, the rest of us know better...I hope

To tell  you the truth, I can't imagine a terrorist sneaking in with the Syrian refugees. Our security has to be better than it was in 2001. It has to be. Again, thousands of refugees have come here since 9/11 and they haven't been the source of black terrorism or any other terrorism

Even if our new security turned out to be smoke and mirrors, I can't imagine feeling any more at risk from Syrians than I do from the police or the dozens and dozens of white supremacist terrorist groups that have cropped up since President Obama was elected. At my most paranoid, a terrorist slipping in with the refugees is a drop in the bucket of my terrorist worries.

READ MORE/SEE MORE ON THE SYRIAN REFUGEE BACKLASH
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/

"PEOPLE WANNA POP OFF...PRESENT A SPECIFIC PLAN" - PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

THIS 

IS

THE

PRESIDENT OBAMA

WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE FIRST TERM. 
When I calmed down and
stop snarling under my breath
about his silly attempts at bi-partisan b.s.
with those hyenas on the right,

THEN 

finally accepted the fact
that it was probably wiser to
keep a little bit of an eye toward a second term, 
I  DEFINITELY started looking for

THIS
President Obama.

I was looking for him the day after he was re-elected.

 Sooo, where have you been so long my love?


At the time of said clap back, President Barack Obama was defending his own record on fighting terrorism -

- as if those jackals think 9/11 happened during his administration,
- as if the visas of the terrorists were approved, post-attack, during his administration,
-as if the Republican Party dog whistle racism didn't call the Tea Party into existence,
- as if that same Tea Party rhetoric didn't help cause recent terrorist attacks in the United States by people like Dylann Roof, Wade Michael Page, and Frazier Glenn Miller.

 
Black folk know all about terrorist attacks.

Killed by the KKK

Killed by KKK wanna-be-s

The terrorist group called the KKK has been successfully attacking people of color with barely a hitch in their giddy up for more than a century.

And they have a lasting legacy that just keeps on giving.

KKK Copy Cat Killer
Dylann Roof

MORE ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S COMMENTS

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/11/obama_defends_administration_s_handling_of_isis_at_g20_summit_folks_wanna.html

BILL COSBY, AND MEN ALL OVER HOLLYWOOD, GET A MAJOR BREAK

"Earlier this month, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Debre Katz Weintraub ruled that Bloom could depose Cosby and Singer before Nov. 25. Cosby's attorneys had sought to dismiss the case.

The judge limited the deposition to evidence showing whether the comedian's denial of Dickinson's allegation that Cosby raped her in Lake Tahoe in 1982 was made maliciously. The limitation essentially prevents extensive questioning of Cosby about the 50 other women who have accused him of sexual assault or abuse."

This shouldn't be a shock because this case isn't just about Bill Cosby. There are men, many of them white, all over Hollywood watching this case, worried about what they did to young women and girls throughout their careers.
Read More: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bill-cosby-depositions-delayed-20151112-story.html

JOHARI OSAYI: THE ACCIDENTAL PROTESTER

Johari Osayi was invited to a Donald Trump rally by a friend whose family had planned to go but then bailed out at the last minute. Osayi apparently went to the rally just so she could say she'd been to see a presidential candidate at least once in her lifetime.

When she and and a few friends, one with a name that sounds Latinx, Gabby Chavez,  got to the rally, somebody from Trump's camp asked them if they wanted to sit in the VIP section. 

Let's think about this for a minute. Hmmm... Why would the very, very white Trump camp want a few black and brown nobodies to sit int the VIP section? Hmmm... I'm confused. No wait!  I know!  Maybe the VIP section is the section up front where the television cameras are going to pass by a lot?

Yes well, this little plan orchestrated by Trump's people back fired once Osayi saw how badly some "Dump Trump" protesters were being treated and heard just a little bit of what Trump had to say.




READ MORE ON THIS MINIMALIST ACCIDENTAL PROTEST:http://theslot.jezebel.com/a-conversation-with-johari-osayi-idusuyi-the-hero-who-1742082010

SONYA SOTOMAYOR; SUPREME COURT ENDORSING A SHOOT FIRST, THINK LATER APPROACH FOR COPS

The Supreme Court set another killer cop free in Texas. But Sonya Sotomayor wrote a great dissent

Back Story: A cop named Mullinex asked if he could stop a car by shooting out the engine block while it was going 85 or 100 miles per hour (I dunno fast) without knowing if that would even work or if he could do it.

Supervisor said, "Stand by" and "Let's see if the spike strips work."

Mullinex shot at the car anyway and killed the driver


Mullinex said he was scared for the other officers safety or something. Cops are always scared when they put 4 bullets into somebody without a gun. I think the dead guy had offered some verbal threats. But the supervisor said wait. Later, Mullinex offered a flippant joke just after he killed somebody which is disturbing by itself


From Sotomayor's dissent

When Mullenix confronted his superior officer after the shooting, his first words were, “How’s that for proactive?” Ibid. (Mullenix was apparently referencing an earlier counseling session in which Byrd suggested that he was not enterprising enough. Ibid.)

The glib comment does not impact our legal analysis; an officer’s actual intentions are irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment’s “objectively reasonable” inquiry. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386, 397 (1989). But the comment seems to me revealing of the culture this Court’s decision supports when it calls it reasonable—or even reasonably reasonable—to use deadly force for no discernible gain and over a supervisor’s express order to “stand by.”

By sanctioning a “shoot first, think later” approach to policing, the Court renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow. For the reasons discussed, I would deny Mullenix’s petition for a writ of certiorari. I thus respectfully dissent. 


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sotomayor-supreme-court-cop-violence_563cee79e4b0307f2cad466a

MC SOFFIA RAPS

Feeling Rebloggy

MC SOFFIA


Check out talented 11-Year-old Brazilian rapper MC Soffia. Camila Eiroa recently featured the lyricist for Black Women of Brazil, writing: "MC Soffia has sung about empowering black girls since the age of six [...] She sings about her own reality of a black girl, that she needs to love and affirm herself every day."

AfroPunk.com

Talking about a conversation with her mother

Hear more - Interview on how she became "woke,"  her music, and her influence

http://www.afropunk.com/profiles/blogs/feature-11-year-old-brazilian-rapper-mc-soffia-has-sung-about?xg_source=activity

COPS, BLUE TEAR BRIGADES, AND BLACK HISTORY

I can't stop thinking that this entire set up between black folk,* the police, the Blue Tear Brigade (defenders of police) hasn't changed much over centuries.

(Part 1 on Cops & Slave Master Mentality  http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/11/cops-cop-blockers-and-slave-master.html )

Despite our very real material advances, the patterns of behavior between groups in 2015 is the same as it was in 1715, 1815, and 1915 if you think about it. We're slow to recognize how very precisely the behavior is the same because the names (of each group) have been changed to protect the-anything-but-innocent.

The black folk of today are less like slaves of 1815 and more like the poor, black folk in a quasi-slave state of 1915 who just wanna be TRULY free.

The enforcement arm of white supremacy, the police of today are like the plantation overseers in 1815 who wanna beat on anybody who gets in their way in order to have a constant sense of their own other-based power.

The predominantly white police protectors, a.k.a. The Blue Tear Brigade are like the whites so poor they were feeding their children grass to survive in 1815, the ones whose only consolation was that they were superior to others just because they share the same skin color as the overseer's master, the slave owner

The slave owner in our scenario can be said to be representative of what the Occupy Movement called "the one percent"

LET'S REVIEW

The decisions for us are the same in 1715, 1815, 1915, or 2015 if you think about it.

A.. Keep your head down?

B. Work hard to trying to be worthy of respect as if your behavior can change white racism?

C. Forget respect and keep yourself alive?

D. Push back with allies?

E. Push back without allies?

F. Take risks and die?

G. Take no risks and die?

H. Take no risks and watch your children go through the exact same thing you did with no hope that your grandchildren will have a better life either.

You know what? Things are better for us now in 2015 than 1715, 1815, and 1915. They aren't as good as I'd hoped they'd be when I was in college, but they are significantly better. I never thought I'd see a group like Black Lives Matter be able to move the media like it has. Yet the answer to white behavioral/cultural problems today are the same as yesterday. We all do all of the approaches listed, A - G, all at once. I feel like black people were making the fastest progress when we were arguing but moving foward in all these directions all at once, only sometimes coming together for a common cause. Using all of the approaches listed above, while going very, very light on the silent compliance works. Some won't believe it but silent compliance has its place. Even the accommodationists, like Booker T Washington, and sell outs, like Ben Carson, have their place. They make white racists who don't know they are racists feel safe and a bit more complacent. That's a good cover for the rest of us. Black American History has shown this to be so over and over. That's why I don't scream about the Uncle Tomming too terribly much. Young black people really should take the advice of parents and elders on how to be as passive as possible so as to survive an encounter with police. The young are literally our future. But older folk should think about VERBALLY kicking up a fuss on a dash cam, body cam, or cell phone with hands in plain sight. Again, some of us are going to have take a few punches in order for the entire race to move forward. From what I'm reading, filing a complaint against a cop after the fact is not going to have much of an effect, not by itself. I think verbally standing your ground, on camera, getting visual evidence over and over, that can put on social media and on television news, is a path that some of us who are older might take. I haven't told a cop "no" when it was within my rights to do so yet. I haven't. However, I do know of a couple of black men that have told police officers "No. You do not have probable cause...you may not search my car." These black men were calm but firm, and no search took place. The cop piled on the charges within the ticket, but the cop walked away. One friend went to court, in his fireman's uniform, and had the ticket kicked by the judge. Yes, I'm aware that it won't always go our way. We all know that by now.Yet, we all also know compliance and accommodation has to be complimented by something else, by a something that's says "No!" in a clear strong voice. Only when 100s or 1000s of these abusive encounters are recorded and broadcast will we have ammunition to change the system so that a cop is afraid of losing his job if he's VERBALLY ABUSIVE much less physically abusive. In other words, Sandra Bland was right to behave the way she did. I'm proud of her for calmly stating that she was irritated. I'm proud of her for continuing to tell him, relatively calmly, that he had no right to tell her to put her cigarette out. She told him he couldn't touch her as she wasn't under arrest just before he finally tells her that she IS under arrest. Later, when Bland named that motherf***er Brian Encinia as the coward he is, I found that this was also appropriate for the circumstances. White people aren't afraid to get mad when somebody abuses them and we have to move to the place where we aren't either. If there was ever a form of psychological and emotional abuse that reaches the level of criminality, this is it. We have to stop letting white people force us to swallow justified anger. We have to. That means that some of us are going to have to stick our necks out just like Sandra if we're going to whittle down the Blue Tear Brigade's numbers. Getting rid of cops fan base will, eventually, yank the rug out from under the murderers in blue and their silent blue accomplices.

Again, some of us, who are older, are going to have to have an activist reaction to abuse. And we shouldn't think we have to be perfectly dignified in order to be effective either. I don't know if Ida B Wells cussed anybody out when she was literally CARRIED OUT of a white train car in the late 1800s, but she bit the white train conductor for his trouble. Wells sued and eventually lost her case. But that first protest, her loss of temper included, was practice for bigger things to come. When three friends of hers were lynched so whites could destroy their store (competition), she used her journalism skills to launch the first successful anti-lynching campaign in the United States. She started boycotts that hurt white businesses to the point that white leaders of the town wanted her dead. She even got black people to pick up their stuff and move west to Oklahoma. Then Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to England, the world's largest cotton consumer who was buying the United State's biggest export, southern cotton. Lynching dropped significantly as a result of her efforts, sociological reporting style. The NAACP,of which she was a founding member, used her methods of reporting on lynching to establish itself as a Black Civil Rights Organization.


I will never forget the example that Sandra Bland, Ida B Wells-Barnett, and Rosa Parks set for us. I'm glad they were imperfect people with imperfect lives because that means I can do something that has impact too. We just have to be willing to roll the dice and speak truth to power, knowing the outcome isn't going to be up to us. If some of us don't make space for blacks to be human, for kids to wear stupid, low hanging pants because they ARE KIDS for people to get mad when they're getting a legitimate speeding ticket when they're late for work,

then how free are we?


Despite the parallels I've drawn between 300, 200, and 100 years ago and today, all I was talking about was behavior. Clearly, we have made a lot of positive changes in during some very, very small windows of opportunity. Radical Reconstruction was one of those short periods of great advancement. Jim Crow set us back, but only some. The Modern Civil Rights Movement was another small window of opportunity and a bunch of us jumped through it. Black Lives Matter has opened another window. Black death by white cop makes news outlets enough money that they are following social media when such stories go viral. Pushing for body cameras and dash cams are only going to work if we use them go our advantage. And the way to use them to our advantage is to act like a normal human being when at a traffic stop -- except for making sure you keep your hands in plain sight. If you get beat or killed for cause, at least make sure everybody can see it in the video. If a cop says to me, "You seem like you're irritated." I hope I can only hope I have the guts to say, politely, "Yes. I am. Can I have my ticket please." I have the right to be here and act as if I have the same rights as any white person here. If I have to repeat that to myself every day in the mirror I will. In the long run, I believe these cops are about to turn into a self-cleaning oven. They feel so invincible that they're starting to beat white people too -- especially the mentally ill and the homeless. Anything that happens to the black community and is allowed to run unchecked eventually back hands white people across the face. Something is going to change. The only question is, can we help a positive change come faster for us.

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, BUTLER, WOLFE

What happened at the University of Missouri is huge. Even if you do not see it hyped on mainstream news outlets, you make sure YOU hype it up. You repeat this. You make this story huge.


We have the power. We just have to use it.



So you make sure University Presidents, Mangers, and CEOs all over the country know. Let them know that they can be removed or lose much revenue, and just not because they or their staff acted in violence based on race. Make sure they know they can be removed because they failed to act, because they failed to protect people of color.

Ex-President Timothy Wolfe has to be sitting at home shell shocked right now. He's gotta be as shocked as Hillary was when Barack Obama got the democratic nomination instead of her.

I'm thinking that what happened today, not that far from Ferguson, is the result of momentum. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's as big as Jo Ann Robinson's Montgomery Bus Boycott. But it IS big.

I wonder why this is happening now. But then again, I don't wonder why. So many unrelated things have come together to create **the now** we find ourselves in.

In 2007, subprime lending got shakey and other countries stopped buying our bank products. When our banks started to collapse, economies all over the world started heading for recession and depression because our economies are so intertwined now.

Things got so bad here in the U.S., foreclosures left and right, that some white people were willing to elect the best person for the job even if he was black (Okay--maybe only 1/3 or white people but that was enough to put Barack Obama over the top)

Having a black president for two terms has made race a much larger part of the national conversation. The Tea Party's growth and its overt racism is a response to having a black man be the most powerful man in the world.

However, the Tea Party has been less of a problem than I thought they'd be. The collective IQ is so low all they've been doing is screwing up the republican party's ability to use dog whistle racism to unite the party and run everyone else down as usual (Trust me, the republicans were united and scary a decade or so back. They'd have been able to make Trump go sit down a long time ago.)

 Black Lives Matter, born out of the frustration over The Trayvon Martin Verdict, has been pushing back by putting a huge spot light on white police officers who have walked away from murder again and again and again.

Even though anti-black racism hasn't actually increased as much as white people seem to think it has, all this in-your-face violent racism in the mainstream news all the time is having an effect on

1) what we, as black people, are willing to take while ONLY grumbling among ourselves

2) what the very white main stream media is reporting as news because they don't have the control they used to. 

Social media has control of what's news to a large extent. And  luckily we, as black people, have some significant control over social media. 

Black Twitter Detective Agency has tracked down and gotten more than one person fired over racist statements and actions.  Black Lives Matter protests "go viral" because we pass information about protests around social media until a local protest is known about from coast to coast.
And whatever we make "go viral" is big money to news outlets. To me, this means that the white, mainstream news outlets are not the gatekeepers they once were. 

I don't think we'd have heard about this protest at all if it hadn't been for black folk on social media. And this protest being so successful, so powerful, in such a short amount of time ought to be awe inspiring to you.

And now that it has hit the mainstream news, just think about other white University Presidents, middle managers of this corporation or that corporation who just poo-poo an act of barbarous racism, pass it off as an aberration, and make no effort to investigate, no matter how many acts of racism there are in a row. Some of them must be wondering about what they're going to do now that muttering, "Tsk-tsk, that shouldn't have happened to you" isn't going to cut it anymore.

We've moving.

We're not moving fast. But black progress is never smooth or fast. It's more like a car moving on bad gas. The car seems like it's gonna sputter and die, but it keeps chugging along until there is this sudden, little surge forward.

I think kicking Tim Wolfe's ass to the curb was one of those surges forward, a rather big one.



SCISSORS CUT PAPER,

ROCK BREAKS SCISSORS,

PAPER COVER ROCK,

BUTLER REFUSES TO EAT PAPER

WOLFE IS DEVOURED BY BUTLER

THEN SPIT OUT



A list of the changes coming to University of Missouri at the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/11/10/us/ap-us-university-of-missouri-initiatives-glance.html?_r=0
I'm happy.  You should be too. Do A Little Victory Dance!!!






 Do your dance quick because white entitlement is not going to go down easy. There will be push back. 

WHITE SUPREMACY PUSHES BACK AT UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Black Students at The University Of Missouri aren't feeling too safe tonight.

Rumor has it that some black students are evacuating due to death threats. Apparently, there are white students chanting "White Power." There's at least one report of a white student throwing a brick. Most of the reports are coming from social media, Twitter in particular.

Main stream media doesn't appear to have picked up this latest white on black crime story yet. 


The push back from a few or many gutless cowards running around in trucks, shouting things from the safety of a moving vehicle doesn't surprise me, given how fast Wolfe was removed as President of The University of Missouri. We'll have to wait and see what kind of  numbers white racists are able to draw out onto the streets. So keep the black students and their allies in your prayers.

But the thing that did surprise me is that there is a place called "Greek Town" near campus that the black students were afraid to be in after dark BEFORE the blow up over the last few days.

Somebody remind me what decade we're living in?


And where's The Main Stream Media?

A few years ago, three black people in counterfeit Black Panther garb, just standing around looking fierce, doing nothing in particular made the news. With white on black ACTUAL crime the predominantly white press is a little more reluctant, I see.

You know what I'm thinking?

The counter-revolution is not going to be televised either, not unless you and I make what's happening at the University of Missouri "go viral" on social media.

Keep your eyes open and re-post whatever you think is reliable.

Keep the students lifted up. 


READ MORE ABOUT THREATS TO BLACK STUDENTS ON CAMPUS
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/11/1448549/-Mizzou-Students-Evacuating-Campus-Tonight-Due-To-Death-Threats

A BUTLER, A FOOTBALL TEAM, AND UNIVERSITY FACULTY CATCH A WOLFE OFF GUARD

I've been waiting years and years for some ball team somewhere to yank some dollars out from under a team owner. Years, I've been waiting. There are so many black players on some of these individual basketball and football teams that I knew that they had the ability to make huge rivers of money dry up or flow in reverse, uphill if they'd just unite.

 Today, I pretty much got my wish. It wasn't a professional team like I've always dreamed. Instead it was a college team that stood up.

Young men that are two minutes away from being boys, young men that want to get picked up by a professional team stood firm against racism . They stood up despite knowing that most of the owners of the professional teams that they want to play on are white. Afraid or not, they stood up and got behind a black man named Jonathan Butler who went on a hunger strike to protest racism that had been ignored and/or condoned, again and again.

Then the faculty got behind Butler and the football players too and suddenly it was over. They won. 


In case you missed it because it happened so fast.

The last act of white supremacy that Jonathan Butler decided he was going to grumble about without taking action was a swastika drawn in the residence hall using human feces.

This is what a bad@$$ looks like
Jonathan Butler

When the University of Missouri refused to take a stand against racism, yet again. Jonathan Butler said a prayer and began a hunger strike sometime on or after October 24, 2015

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/06/black-grad-student-on-hunger-strike-in-mo-after-swastika-drawn-with-human-feces/

On Saturday, November 7, 2015, the University Of Missouri Football Team joined the protest.

 "[A]s America gathered to watch the racist Donald Trump get free airtime on NBC, roughly 30 black Mizzou football players, some with their arms interlocked, sent out the following message: “The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere’ We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experiences. WE ARE UNITED!!!!!” 

http://www.thenation.com/article/black-mizzou-football-players-are-going-on-strike-over-campus-racism/ 

Then University of Missouri Faculty got behind the protesters.They staged a walk out.

http://time.com/4104562/missouri-mizzou-faculty-walkout-racism/

By Monday, Jonathan Butler's protest had gathered enough force to topple a University President. On November 9, 2015, President Timothy Wolfe was forced to resign.

Chancellor R. Bowen was forced to resign as well.

http://www.komu.com/news/mu-chancellor-r-bowen-loftin-resigns-after-backlash/

"Flanked by fellow campus activists,
Butler refused to talk about his health, 

which had become a source of 

growing concern on the university's flagship 

campus in Columbia and prompted 

a critical swell of support 

from the school's football team."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jonathan-butler-how-grad-students-hunger-strike-toppled-university-president-n460161

What happened at the University of Missouri is huge. Even if you do not see it hyped on mainstream news outlets the way it should be, you make sure YOU hype it up. You repeat this. You make this story huge.

We have the power. We just have to use it. Put other universities and corporations on notice. We can unite and take you down if you FAIL TO ACT when you should.