TGIF Everyone!
Carla Hayden, first female and African-American Librarian of Congress, confirmed by Senate
WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed the longtime head of Baltimore’s library system to be the next Librarian of Congress. She is the first woman and the first African-American to hold the position.
The vote was 74-18 for Carla Hayden on Wednesday. President Barack Obama had nominated Hayden to be the 14th Librarian of Congress in the institution’s 214-year history. He called her milestones on gender and race “long overdue.”
Obama signed a law last year establishing a 10-year term for the Librarian of Congress with an option for reappointment. The position was previously considered a lifetime appointment.
The previous Librarian of Congress, James Billington, was criticized for not keeping up with advances in technology. Billington was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and served for 28 years before stepping down last year.
Photo courtesy Library of Congress
Wiki: Dr. Hayden is a graduate of Roosevelt University and received her master’s and doctorate degrees in Library Science from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School.[7] She taught as an Assistant Professor of Library Science at the University of Pittsburgh before returning to Chicago to begin her professional career as a children’s librarian at Chicago Public Library. She was appointed second-in-command at Chicago Public Library in 1991.[8] In 1993, she was appointed to the position of Director at Enoch Pratt Free Library.[8] She was honored as the national Librarian of the Year by Library Journal in 1995,[9] becoming the first African American to receive the prestigious award.[10] Dr. Hayden has twice given the Jean E. Coleman Library Outreach Lecture.[11]
As ALA President in 2003–2004, Dr. Hayden was vocal in her public opposition to the Patriot Act, leading a battle for the protections of library users’ privacy. She especially objected to the special permissions contained in Section 215 of that law, which gave the Justice Department and the FBI the power to access library user records.[14] Hayden often sparred publicly with then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft over the language of the law. Ashcroft often ridiculed the library community, and stated that the ALA had been “misled into opposing provisions of the act that make it easier for FBI agents to fish through library records”.[14] Hayden’s response was immediate, stating that the ALA was “deeply concerned that the Attorney General would be so openly contemptuous” (to the library community), while also pointing out that librarians had been monitored and been under FBI surveillance as far back as the McCarthy Era. Hayden asserted that Ashcroft should release information as to the number of libraries that had been visited under the provisions of Section 215.[14]
Along with her objections of the Patriot Act, Dr. Hayden has done much in her career in outreach programs. As ALA President she wrote:” At a time when our public is challenged on multiple fronts, we need to recommit ourselves to the ideal of providing equal access to everyone, anywhere, anytime, and in any format. . . . By finally embracing equity of access we will be affirming our core values, recognizing realities, and assuring our future.[15]
One program she is notable for is for the outreach program she began at the Pratt Library. This outreach program included “an after school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling.” Because of this, Dr. Hayden received Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award.[16]
In January 2010, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Dr. Hayden as a member of the National Museum and Library Services Board and National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities.
On February 24, 2016, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Dr. Hayden as the next Librarian of Congress. In a press release from the White House,[17] President Obama stated:
Michelle and I have known Dr. Carla Hayden for a long time, since her days working at the Chicago Public Library, and I am proud to nominate her to lead our nation’s oldest federal institution as our 14th Librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to modernizing libraries so that everyone can participate in today’s digital culture. She has the proven experience, dedication, and deep knowledge of our nation’s libraries to serve our country well and that’s why I look forward to working with her in the months ahead. If confirmed, Dr. Hayden would be the first woman and the first African American to hold the position – both of which are long overdue.
Hayden was subsequently confirmed by a 74-18 vote in the United States Senate on July 13, 2016.[6]
Fortune magazine ranked Dr. Hayden among the World’s 50 greatest leaders in 2016.[18]
https://twitter.com/ErickFernandez/status/754041710829789185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
With Obama, the Personal Is Presidential
Timothy Egan
JULY 15, 2016
We always knew he could keep his head when others were losing theirs and blaming him, knew it from the 2008 financial crisis and on to the hard, lasting words he spoke at Tuesday’s memorial for the slain police officers in Dallas.
What we didn’t know, what could not be predicted of one so young and new to the impossible task of living round-the-clock under the glare of the entire world, was how Barack Obama would hold up as a father, a husband, a man.
No matter what you think of Obama the executive branch, it’s hard to argue that Obama the human being has been anything less than a model of class and dignity. If, as was often said about black pioneers in sports, you had to be twice as good to succeed, Obama’s personal behavior has set a standard few presidents have ever reached.
………………………………………..
You see him teasing, bantering or dancing with his wife of nearly a quarter-century. And while no outsider can know what goes on inside another’s marriage, you can’t help feeling some of the joy of that union. They still finish each other’s sentences.
It’s not fair to give him his due as a person, his high grade for character, for being scandal-free in his private life, just because a potential successor has no character, no class, and breaches a new wall of civility every time he opens his mouth. If Obama had bragged about infidelities and the size of his genitals, if Obama had talked about wanting to date his own daughter and reduced women to a number on a hotness scale, it would be about race. But when Donald Trump says such things, nobody ties it to his being white, nor should they. Trump is a singular kind of vulgarian.
And those who praise Obama as a model father or husband for the black family do him a disservice. He’s a model, without asterisk for race. It’s a hard thing to go nearly eight years as the most powerful man in the world without diminishing the office or alienating your family. He’s done that, and added a dash of style and humor and a pitch-perfect sense for being consoler in chief.
https://twitter.com/DShaywitz/status/753983985689112576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/754002751487631360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Raising my fist at the Olympics cost me friends and my marriage — but I’d do it again
After I retired from running, I was a counselor for 20 years at several schools in Southern California. At first, no one knew I was an Olympian who’d made international news for raising my fist on the medals podium in 1968 — not the district, and definitely not the students.
One morning I spotted four kids sneaking out of the school building, trying to play hooky. I ran after them, and I was right on their butts. Then they turned a corner and disappeared. At first I didn’t know where they’d gone. And then, from the bushes, I heard one of the kids saying to the others:
“Man, who the hell is that old man? He can run.”
When I told them to come on out, they asked me, “Who are you?”
I said, “Maybe if you was in school, you might look up one day and find out who I am.”
A year later the very same kids came to me with a history book. They said, “Man, we see this picture in the history book and they don’t have any story about it. It’s just a two-liner with the people’s names. We see this guy with your name. Were you in the Olympics?”
I said, “I’ll tell you what. You guys go back and research it. Then come back and we’ll have a discussion about it one day.”
That right there is a pretty good illustration of how I’ve approached my fame as an athlete. Ever since I was a teenager and realized I was good at running, I wanted to use my skills as a way to help people.
Why I protested on the Olympic podium
That was the same attitude I had in 1968 in Mexico City. Before the games, some other athletes and I tried to organize a mass boycott to protest the International Olympic Committee and the low numbers of black coaches at the games. It didn’t work, but I still wanted to make a statement.
So after Tommie Smith and I came in first and third in the 200-meter race, we went to the medals podium without our shoes on. We were both wearing black gloves on one hand. And when we stood on the podium, we lowered our heads and raised our fists in protest.
I’m really frustrated with a lot of today’s stars, who have an opportunity to speak up but don’t
I don’t care what your ethnic background was, how much money you had in the bank, or how much money you didn’t have in the bank, whether you lived in the hills, or whether you lived in the gutter. It didn’t matter. You never saw anything like that before.
As soon as we raised our hands, it’s like somebody hit a switch. The mood in the stadium went straight to venom. Within days, Tommie and I were suspended from the US Olympic team and had to leave Mexico City early.
The aftermath was hell for me and my family
The first 10 years after those Olympics were hell for me. A lot of people walked away from me. They weren’t walking away because they didn’t have love for me or they had disdain for me. They were walking away because they were afraid. What they saw happening to me, they didn’t want it to happen to them and theirs.
My wife and kids were tormented. I was strong enough to deal with whatever people threw at me, because this is the life I’d signed up for. But not my family. My marriage crumbled. I got divorced. It was like the Terminator coming and shooting one of his ray guns through my suit of armor.
Still, I wouldn’t change what I did.
That picture of me and Tommie on the podium is the modern-day Mona Lisa — a universal image that everyone wants to see and everyone wants to be related to in one way or another. And do you know why? Because we were standing for something. We were standing for humanity.
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/753888627013349376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/TravelGov/status/754079912399609856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/stephenlautens/status/754073891903897600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/Lina_Serene/status/754080367636873216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/754022753968152576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/Kiran_WAFB/status/754034014554435585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
What it’s like to be black in Naperville, America
Editor’s note: Brian Crooks moved to Naperville when he was in the 5th grade; his parents still reside here. On Saturday, he wrote a Facebook post about his experiences being an African-American living in America that has since gone viral and has elicited hundreds of comments from people around the world. Because of its length, we’re publishing excerpts here. To read the entire post, go here.
The first time I was acutely aware of my Blackness, I was probably 6 or 7 years old. Like, before then obviously I knew I was Black, but I hadn’t really had it put in my face like this until I was about 6 or 7. I used to go to daycare back then, and we went on a field trip to a water park one time. One of the other boys from the daycare came up to me and told me he was surprised I was going on the trip because his dad told him all colored people were afraid of the water since we sink to the bottom. He didn’t know he was being offensive. He was just curious why someone who would sink to the bottom would want to go to a water park.
•••
From elementary school through middle school, I can’t remember how many times the White kids asked if they could touch my hair. I’m not kidding when I say it happened pretty much once a week at least. At first, it didn’t bother me. But eventually I felt like an exhibit in a petting zoo. And I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain to them that it was really weird that they kept asking to touch my hair all the time. See, I was a pretty shy kid. I was the only Black one, I was overweight, and I’d moved three times before I turned 10. So, rather than tell the White kids that no, they couldn’t rummage through my hair, I just said yes and sat there quietly while they marveled at how my hair felt.
………………………………………………..
I got pulled over a lot in high school. Like, a lot a lot. By this point, I was no longer driving the Dodge. I had a Mazda of my own. It was flashy and loud, but this was 2002 and everybody with a Japanese car was doing a Vin Diesel impression, so it’s not like mine stood out that much more than anyone else’s. I spent a ton of money on my car and was especially aware of its appearance. You can understand, then, why it was weird that I was routinely pulled over for a busted taillight. After all, that’s the kind of thing I would’ve noticed and gotten fixed, especially if that taillight tended to burn out once a week or so. My parents had told me how to act when pulled over by the police, so of course I was all “Yes sir, no sir” every time it happened. That didn’t stop them from asking me to step out of the car so they could pat me down or search for drugs, though. I didn’t have a drop of alcohol until I was 21, but by that point I was an expert at breathalyzers and field sobriety tests. On occasion, the officer was polite. But usually, they walked up with their hand on their gun and talked to me like I’d been found guilty of a grisly homicide earlier in the day. A handful of times, they’d tell me to turn off the car, drop the keys out the window, and keep my hands outside the vehicle before even approaching.
……………………………
I’ve never had a Black boss. I played football from middle school through senior year of high school and only had one Black coach in that whole time. Not just head coaches, I’m talking about assistants and position coaches. I’ve had two Black teachers in my entire life. One was for my Harlem Renaissance class, and one was for my sign language class. I’ve never been to a Black doctor, or a Black dentist. I’ve never been pulled over by a Black police officer. What I’m trying to explain is that, in 31 years, I’ve seen three Black people in a position of authority. Think about what that does to the psyche of a growing young man. I remember being excited just a few years ago when we started to see Black people in commercials without there being gospel or hip hop music in the background (remember that McDonald’s commercial where the little kid was pop-locking with the chicken McNuggets?).
•••
When we say “Black Lives Matter,” understand what that actually means. We aren’t saying that ONLY Black lives matter. We’re saying “Black lives matter TOO.” For the entirety of the history of this country, Black lives have not mattered. At a minimum, they haven’t mattered nearly as much as White lives. If a Black person kills another Black person, and we have it on tape, the killer goes to jail. If a White police officer kills a Black person and we have it on tape, the entire judicial system steps up to make sure that officer doesn’t go to jail.
That is why Black people are in such pain right now. The deaths are bad enough. But having the feeling that nobody will ever actually be held accountable for the deaths is so much worse. And then watching as the police union, the media, and conservative politicians team up to imagine scenarios where the officer did nothing wrong, and then tell those of us who are in pain that our pain is wrong, unjustified, and all in our heads just serves to twist the knife.
If you read all this, I really, really want to say thank you. I know it was a lot to get through. But this is real. This is me. This is what my life is and has been. And I’m not alone.
https://twitter.com/NOLAnews/status/753985240348041216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/cabrasted/status/754018111561629696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Fox News commentator who feds say faked a CIA career sentenced to 33 months in prison
By Rachel Weiner July 15 at 2:22 PM
Wayne Simmons was a professional football player, a drug trafficker, a nightclub doorman, a Fox News guest analyst and an intelligence adviser in Afghanistan.
What Simmons , 62, was not, according to all available evidence, was a CIA agent. In federal court in Virginia Friday, just before he was sentenced to 33 months in prison, he apologized for lying about his security clearance, his criminal history and his finances.
“There is not a day that goes by that I am not haunted by these mistakes,” Simmons said. “I stand before you a shameful and broken man.”
jelani cobb @jelani9 22h22 hours ago
It amazes me that both white liberalism & conservatism continually reiterate black homicide rates to black people. As if we don’t know this
https://twitter.com/jazziz2/status/754050096220831744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/NCaucasusCaucus/status/754064926554091520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/753999735418159104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/HSajwanization/status/754059337761423365?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Congratulations, Dr Hayden!
GOP senator: Confirming judges unrelated to ‘doing our jobs’
07/15/16 10:00 AM—UPDATED 07/15/16 10:11 AM
By Steve Benen
If there’s a compelling defense for how Senate Republicans are treating President Obama’s judicial nominees, no one has shared it yet. This goes well beyond the unprecedented mistreatment of Merrick Garland: Politico reported yesterday that this GOP-led Senate has confirmed “just 20 district and circuit court judges … a time when the vacancies are hampering the federal bench nationwide.”
This may seem like predictable partisanship – there’s a Democratic White House and a Republican majority in the Senate – but note that when Democrats ran the Senate for the final two years of the Bush/Cheney era, they approved 68 federal judges, more than triple what we’re seeing now.
Also note, some of the pending nominees who can’t get floor votes are jurists who enjoy bipartisan support. The White House routinely accepts consensus recommendations from senators from both parties, and there are plenty of judicial nominees championed by Republicans who are currently stuck – because GOP leaders want to shut down the confirmation process altogether out of partisan spite.
But the fight took an unintentionally funny twist yesterday when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said that when it comes to confirming judicial nominees, it’s not part of senators’ job. The Huffington Post reported:
Democrats including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) made repeated requests Wednesday to confirm a batch of Obama’s judicial nominees who are ready for votes. Each time they tried, Tillis objected and suggested the Senate shouldn’t be spending time on judges.
“What we get are things that have nothing to do with doing our jobs,” he said. “I’m doing my job today and objecting to these measures so we can actually get back to pressing matters.”
I realize that Tillis, a far-right freshman, hasn’t quite learned how to be an effective senator yet – the North Carolinian just took office last year – but to say that confirming judicial nominees has “nothing to do with doing our jobs” is baffling.
Mike Pence is Not a Conventional Politician
by BooMan
Fri Jul 15th, 2016 at 01:15:00 PM EST
In one way, Donald Trump’s selection of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate is already a partial success. The early media narrative seems to be that Pence is a safe choice or, at a minimum, the least worst choice. And I obviously disagree, since I recently wrote that selecting Pence would make no sense at all.
Clearly, you can summon up worse options, but that’s not the same as saying that Pence is the least worst option that Trump had.
Let’s start with some things that are being said that simply aren’t true. Writing for the BBC, Anthony Zurcher says “In a year that has defied political conventions, he was a very conventional choice.”
But there’s absolutely nothing “conventional” about Mike Pence. He is a man who cannot say if he believes in the theory of evolution and has spent twenty years spreading doubt about climate change. He’s a man who wants teenage girls (including victims of incest) to get parental consent to use contraceptives, who has done all he can to deny contraception to women of every age, who signed a law mandating that all aborted fetuses should receive proper burials, who supports discrimination against gays and wants to withhold federal funding from any organization that “encourage(s) the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus.”
Is this now “conventional” politics?
His hostility to the LGBT community isn’t somehow mitigated because he disappointed some of his fellow-traveling extreme social conservatives and (partially) watered down a bill allowing legal discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender people. His hostility to women’s reproductive health and freedom isn’t transformed into conventional pro-life ideology just because he consented to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
Mike Pence isn’t remotely conventional on economic issues, either. During the Debt Ceiling Crisis, then-Rep. Pence insisted that any deal with the president include a Balanced Budget Amendment. The Balanced Budget Amendment is not only the dumbest idea ever promulgated by sentient beings, but it’s an amendment to the Constitution. Do you know how long it takes to pass a Constitutional amendment and how unreasonable it is to default on the nation’s debts because you insist on such a thing?
On foreign policy, a federal judge had to compel Gov. Pence to back down in his effort to block the resettlement of Syrian refugees because Pence didn’t care about the Constitution. He may have said that Trump’s absolute ban on Muslim immigration was unconstitutional, but that doesn’t make him a moderate or “conventional” on these issues.
From Benen: Let’s put this another way: during his congressional career, Pence wasn’t just more conservative than Paul Ryan. His voting record also put him to the right of Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, Steve King, and even Louie Gohmert. That’s not an exaggeration. Bachmann, Akin, King, and Gohmert all had voting records less extreme than Mike Pence.
About Pence from a local in Indiana:
The Near Certainty of Anti-Police Violence
By ignoring illegitimate policing, America has also failed to address the danger this illegitimacy poses to those who must do the policing.
TA-NEHISI COATES JUL 12, 2016 POLITICS
Last month, the Obama administration accused Donald Trump of undercutting American legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Trump’s call to ban Muslims wasn’t just morally wrong, according to Vice President Joe Biden, it called “into question America’s status as the greatest democracy in the history of the world.” President Obama followed Biden by asserting that Trump’s rhetoric “doesn’t reflect our democratic ideals,” saying “it will make us less safe, fueling ISIL’s notion that the West hates Muslims.” His point was simple—wanton discrimination in policy and rhetoric undercuts American legitimacy and fuels political extremism. This lesson is not limited to Donald Trump, and it applies as well abroad as it does at home.
Last week, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson murdered five police officers in Dallas. This abhorrent act of political extremism cannot be divorced from American history—recent or old. In black communities, the police departments have only enjoyed a kind of quasi-legitimacy. That is because wanton discrimination is definitional to the black experience, and very often it is law enforcement which implements that discrimination with violence. A community consistently subjected to violent discrimination under the law will lose respect for it, and act beyond it. When such actions stretch to mass murder it is horrific. But it is also predictable.
To understand the lack of police legitimacy in black communities, consider the contempt in which most white Americans hold O.J. Simpson. Consider their feelings toward the judge and jury in the case. And then consider that this is approximately how black people have felt every few months for generations. It’s not just that the belief that Officer Timothy Loehmann got away with murdering a 12-year-old Tamir Rice, it is the reality that police officers have been getting away with murdering black people since the advent of American policing. The injustice compounds, congeals until there is an almost tangible sense of dread and grievance that compels a community to understand the police as objects of fear, not respect.
What does it mean, for instance, that black children are ritually told that any stray movement in the face of the police might result in their own legal killing? When Eric Holder spoke about getting “The Talk” from his father, and then giving it to his own son, many of us nodded our heads. But many more of us were terrified. When the nation’s top cop must warn his children to be skeptical of his own troops, how legitimate can the police actually be?
And it is not as if Holder is imagining things. When the law shoots down 12-year-old children, or beats down old women on traffic islands, or chokes people to death over cigarettes; when the law shoots people over compact discs, traffic stops, drivers’ licenses, loud conversation, or car trouble; when the law auctions off its monopoly on lethal violence to bemused civilians, when these civilians then kill, and when their victims are mocked in their death throes; when people stand up to defend police as officers of the state, and when these defenders are killed by these very same officers; when much of this is recorded, uploaded, live-streamed, tweeted, and broadcast; and when government seems powerless, or unwilling, to stop any of it, then it ceases, in the eyes of citizens, to be any sort of respectable law at all. It simply becomes “force.”
In the black community, it’s the force they deploy, and not any higher American ideal, that gives police their power. This is obviously dangerous for those who are policed. Less appreciated is the danger illegitimacy ultimately poses to those who must do the policing. For if the law represents nothing but the greatest force, then it really is indistinguishable from any other street gang. And if the law is nothing but a gang, then it is certain that someone will resort to the kind of justice typically meted out to all other powers in the street.
The Talk is testament to something that went very wrong, long ago, with law enforcement, something that we are scared to see straight. That something has very little to do with the officer on the beat and everything to do with ourselves. There’s a sense that the police departments of America have somehow gone rogue. In fact, the police are one of the most trusted institutions in the country. This is not a paradox. The policies which the police carry out are not the edicts of a dictatorship but the work, as Biden put it, of “the greatest democracy in the history of the world.” Avoiding this fact is central to the current conversation around “police reform” which focuses solely on the actions of police officers and omits everything that precedes these actions. But analyzing the present crisis in law enforcement solely from the contested street, is like analyzing the Iraq War solely from the perspective of Abu Ghraib. And much like the Iraq War, there is a strong temptation to focus on the problems of “implementation,” as opposed to building the kind of equitable society in which police force is used as sparingly as possible.
There is no shortcut out. Sanctimonious cries of nonviolence will not help. “Retraining” can only do so much. Until we move to the broader question of policy, we can expect to see Walter Scotts and Freddie Grays with some regularity. And the extent to which we are tolerant of the possibility of more Walter Scotts and Freddie Grays is the extent to which we are tolerant of the possibility of more Micah Xavier Johnsons.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/the-near-certainty-of-anti-police-violence/490541/
I appreciate what TNC is saying, there really is no argument against “building the kind of equitable society in which police force is used as sparingly as possible.”
But I’m also a strong believer in picking the low hanging fruit. And there is so much of it.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/753960841096159232
DA PHUQ?
White Supremacy won’t stop.
Yeah, the only thing worse than a white supremacist is a demented white supremacist. I’m afraid there are going to be many more of them.
(I’m in kind of a bad mood.)
Newt Gingrich needs to ride off into the sunset. His delusions of grandeur were not fully realized and brought to fruition by his becoming the president, and now he is really just a geriatric pain in the a$$.
Go away, Newt. Take a cruise somewhere and play shuffleboard.
The GOP’s got nothing but rehashed old white men they take off the shelf every few years.
No new ideas, no nothing, just greed, power, racism, Xenophobia, ANTI-EVERYTHING
Here is an exchange that occurred in the discussion Wednesday night on CNN’s “Black, White, and Blue” broadcast:
Travis Sattiewhite (News Editor, CNN Political Desk)
Mark O’Mara
Charles Blow (Op-Ed Columnist for New York Times)
I have a problem with O’Mara calling the situation in America “a racial divide” when in fact we have a White power/structure system that has always given up to the present the Black community “the short end of the stick” and not given the Black community the same equal justice, social equality, advantages, privileges, and safety that the White community has been given.
When the term “racial divide” is used, it avoids the root causes and, to me, basically says that Blacks have equal responsibility for the division. This gets us nowhere in solving the problem.
(I also think O’Mara with his history of accepting money for GZ’s defense from many who are haters and racists and what he did during the trial, invalidates his genuineness in today’s present discussion.)
Mark O’Mara had no business there, IMO. He went to the crossroads and sold his soul to the Devil, as far as I’m concerned. He defended a racist murderer and he did it for fame and money and a future income stream. His opinions are not worth air he expends in stating them, and they are subject to change at any moment.
CNN, of course.
From CNN’s Wednesday night broadcast of “Black, White, and Blue” :
Monifa Bandele (Senior Campaign Director of MomsRising.org)
Corey Hughes
“One of the things that will bridge the gap between Blacks, Whites, and police is acknowledgment.”
T.D.Jakes
Rory Ranchman (NYC Councilman)
Charles Blow (Op-Ed Columnist for New York Times)
Col K.L. Williams (Kinloch, Missouri Police Chief)
Dimitri Roberts (Former Chicago police officer)
(Note: Col K. L. Williams and Dimitri Roberts are Black.)
FUCK CNN
Congratulations Dr. Hayden on your historic appointment.☺
Yes, congratulations Dr. Hayden!
Good Morning 😊, Everyone 😆