Saturday Open Thread

Posted on July 16, 2016 by rikyrah

Hello Beautiful People Hope you’re enjoying the weekend with friends and family. Stay safe and chill.

This entry was posted in Open Thread, Politics and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

60 Responses to Saturday Open Thread

  1. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 7:24 pm

    María Agramón ‏@eclecticism 8h8 hours ago

    Black people all over NC woke up to KKK flyers on their property. But Black Lives Matter is the problem. Ok.

    Reply
  2. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 7:10 pm

    Why highways have become the center of civil rights protest
    By Emily Badger
    July 13

    After activists protesting the death of Philando Castile left the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday night, they marched through the city down Lexington Parkway and then onto the highway, across all eight lanes of traffic. There, some of them sat down, a provocative gesture of civil disobedience in the face of rushing commerce.

    They were occupying a highway that, a half-century ago, was constructed at the expense of St. Paul’s historically black community. Interstate 94, like urban highways throughout the country, was built by erasing what had been black homes, dispersing their residents, severing their neighborhoods and separating them from whites who would pass through at high speed.

    That history lends highways a dual significance as activists in many cities rally against unequal treatment of blacks: As scenes of protest, they are part of the oppression — if also the most disruptive places to call attention to it.

    “If you can find a way to jam up a highway — literally have the city have a heart attack, blocking an artery — it causes people to stand up and pay attention,” said Nathan Connolly, a historian at Johns Hopkins University. “Highways still perform their historic role from a half-century ago. They help people move very easily across these elaborately segregated landscapes.”

    Block a highway, and you upend the economic life of a city, as well as the spatial logic that has long allowed people to pass through them without encountering their poverty or problems. Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, alarmed officials.

    “We’re the home of Dr. Martin Luther King,” anxious Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said on Saturday, acknowledging the city’s legacy of protest but drawing a line at the interstate on-ramp. “The only thing I ask is that they not take the freeways. Dr. King would never take a freeway.”

    That is not strictly accurate: King led the 1965 march that iconically occupied the full width of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. But as protests in Atlanta approached the high-speed artery that courses through the city’s downtown, Reed understood that the stakes were much higher, both for the safety of the protesters and the functioning of the region.

    Reply
  4. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 7:01 pm

    I’M A WHITE MOTHER RAISING THREE BLACK CHILDREN, AND HERE’S WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY BLACK LIVES MATTER
    RACHEL GARLINGHOUSE

    Here’s my once upon a time: I’m a white woman, born and raised by a white family, who grew up to marry a white man. When my husband and I married, we decided we wanted to achieve a few life goals before having kids. And so, together we designed our future: I graduated college and then went on to grad school, while my husband began climbing the corporate ladder in the financial industry. Then the magical plan came to a halt. I got sick — really, really sick — and ended up at death’s door. Just in the nick of time, I was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disease, and I knew within days of my diagnosis that we would adopt.

    Two years later, our first child arrived. Two years after that came our second child. And like clockwork, in another two years, we welcomed baby No. 3.

    I understand that many people aren’t in our position: the white parents of black children. So please allow me to explain it to you. If you’ve never experienced being gawked at by patrons at a restaurant or ignored by a cashier — only to have her politely greet the white man standing behind you — I get it. If you’ve never had someone whisper your race in a conversation, as if it’s a curse word that cannot be overheard by nearby children, I get it. And if you’ve never had your ethnicity be the subject of a joke or the center of a stereotype, I get it.

    Because for 27 years of my life, I unknowingly basked in privilege. I was never pulled over for no apparent reason or offense, my driver’s license and registration demanded of me. I was never passed over for a job because of my name or my skin tone. I was never questioned or followed by a security officer while goofing around with my friends at the mall. I have always been believed, trusted, and respected by most people I meet, simply because I have peachy colored skin.

    But this has not been my children’s experience — and since becoming a transracial family, it hasn’t been the experience of my husband and I, either. When my daughters were 4 and 6, they were riding their bikes in our driveway when a young white man hurled the N-word at them while driving by. We later discovered that the perpetrator was the father of a child who attended school with my oldest daughter. On another occasion, my 2-year-old son was called a “cute little thug” by an acquaintance. This was shortly after Michael Brown died in nearby Ferguson. My children are now almost 8, 6, and 3-and-a-half. And as they get older, we know that there will only be more situations like these that arise. More suspicions and more stereotypes; more frequent and more troubling.

    Reply
  5. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 6:57 pm

    How Marginalized Families Are Pushed Out of PTAs
    Parents with socioeconomic resources are more likely to exert influence on school officials.

    When Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, Maryland, told parents in the fall of 2014 that it would allow students to use Chromebooks as a way to bridge the digital divide between low-income families and affluent families, there were mixed reactions. The plan was aimed at helping students become more adept at using technology, but the affluent parents, most of whom were white, were apprehensive about their children getting more screen time.

    Alison Risso, then the president of the school’s PTA, said she was frustrated by the complaints those parents expressed at a meeting. “Everyone who could pay for that Chromebook with the money in their pockets was in the room,” Risso said. As Risso recalled, one parent said to her, “I don’t need my daughter to learn to make a PowerPoint.”

    At Rolling Terrace, 68 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch. Sixty-three percent of its population is Hispanic, 15 percent is black, and another 15 percent is white. But the parents of that sliver of the student population that is white and affluent—most of whom were drawn to the school’s Spanish-immersion program—have outsize influence over what happens in the school.

    Risso explained to parents why it was important for the lower-income children to have access to the Chromebooks. Many of the school’s parents—mostly low-income people of color who didn’t attend the PTA meeting—were excited about the computers.

    Despite the differences in priorities, the school’s parents are expected to make decisions as a community. That kind of unity rarely happens in gentrifying neighborhoods, however. When white, affluent parents come into a school that has a high percentage of less-affluent students of color, the more advantaged group tends to take over parent organizations and unintentionally marginalize the parent community that was already there. Ultimately, Rolling Terrace proceeded with its plan to use Chromebooks, but not all such issues are resolved in ways that give low-income parents a voice.

    That’s unfortunate because parental engagement can greatly improve adolescents’ academic and emotional functioning, according to a 2014 study published in Child Development. A substantial body of research also indicates that parent involvement at home and school is an important factor in improving young children’s literacy and math skills. PTA membership was also associated with student achievement in a 2006 School Community Journal study authored by researchers at the University of West Florida.

    Reply
  6. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 6:44 pm

    Man Creates GoFundMe so Racists Can Send Him Back to Africa
    Let’s see if people put their money where their racist mouths are.
    BY: YESHA CALLAHAN
    Posted: July 14, 2016

    ……………..

    Larry Mitchell, of Indiana, created his GoFundMe page and is accepting money from racists so they can send him back to Africa.

    “Send me ‘back’ to Africa fund … If you want me to go back to Africa I will gladly go … you can help make your dream and mine come true … accepting all donations … KKK, Skin Heads and anyone else with like mind thinking are welcome to donate … Thank you.. God bless you and America … #putyourmoneywhereyourhateis,” Mitchell states on the page.

    So far he’s raised a little over $200, and people have left comments along with their donations. Someone named “fedup whiteguy” left $45 and told him, “You better not come back.” But there are other people who have applauded Mitchell.

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 6:41 pm

    Black Women Are Reclaiming The ‘Loud’ Stereotype With A Powerful Hashtag
    No, we won’t quiet down.
    07/15/2016 03:56 pm 15:56:00

    When Erica Garner walked into ABC News’ Presidential Townhall on race on Thursday, she expected to be productive. She expected to be respected. She expected to be heard.

    Instead, she told The Huffington Post that she was “silenced” when there was no mention of her father, Eric Garner, or their family. She said ABC producers ignored her questions for President Barack Obama, which she says she was promised she could ask. She walked off set yelling that the network used her for ratings. She was eventually able to speak with Obama, but she was livid that she had to get loud to have her voice heard. She tweeted about her disappointment.

    “It’s a shame as black people that we have to yell and become belligerent to have our voices heard,” she told HuffPost.

    What Garner faced Thursday night is something that black women face all of their lives.

    Too often, black women’s voices aren’t heard. It becomes frustrating to the point where we feel like we have to speak louder and louder until we’re screaming to be heard. Even when we’re yelling, people don’t hear us. They throw the “angry black woman” stereotype in our faces and tell us to quiet down.

    More and more black women are rejecting the label that we are “angry” and “loud,” however.

    After hearing about Garner’s situation, Feminista Jones tweeted that she could relate. She said the routine silencing of black women ― by non-black people, black men and ourselves ― builds up into rage, understandably given how much oppression we face.

    She tweeted the hashtag #LoudBlackGirls to highlight why silencing black women is dangerous. Jones also called for black women to reclaim the terms “loud,” “ghetto” and “ratchet” and share how they find their voices.

    Reply
  8. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 6:32 pm

    13 OF THE BLACKEST, MOST UNAPOLOGETICALLY WOKE NAMES TO USE AT STARBUCKS

    You know the Black Lives Matter movement has reached critical mass when activists are ordering up their Starbucks with a double shot of woke. Some crafty coffee lovers use BLM as their name when ordering, in turn prompting baristas to yell “Black Lives Matter” aloud while serving drinks.

    ………………………..

    To continue with the motion, we have devised 11 of the most unapologetically blackest names to use at Starbucks or any coffee shop.

    1. “Baby Hair & Afros”
    2. “Jumpman”
    3. “Reparations”

    Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 4:40 pm

    EDITORIAL: What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege

    Yesterday I was tagged in a post by an old high school friend, asking me and a few others a very public, direct question about white privilege and racism. I feel compelled not only to publish his query but also my response to it, as it may be a helpful discourse for more than just a handful of folks on Facebook.

    Here’s his post:

    “To all of my Black or mixed race FB friends, I must profess a blissful ignorance of this “White Privilege” of which I’m apparently guilty of possessing. By not being able to fully put myself in the shoes of someone from a background/race/religion/gender/ nationality/body type that differs from my own makes me part of the problem, according to what I’m now hearing. Despite my treating everyone with respect and humor my entire life (as far as I know), I’m somehow complicit in the misfortune of others. I’m not saying I’m colorblind, but whatever racism/sexism/other -ism my life experience has instilled in me stays within me, and is not manifested in the way I treat others (which is not the case with far too many, I know).

    So that I may be enlightened, can you please share with me some examples of institutional racism that have made an indelible mark upon you? If I am to understand this, I need people I know personally to show me how I’m missing what’s going on. Personal examples only. I’m not trying to be insensitive, I only want to understand (but not from the media). I apologize if this comes off as crass or offends anyone.”

    Here’s my response:

    Hi, Jason. First off, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve quoted your post and made it part of mine. I think the heart of what you’ve asked of your friends of color is extremely important and I think my response needs much more space than as a reply on your feed. I truly thank you for wanting to understand what you are having a hard time understanding. Coincidentally, over the last few days I have been thinking about sharing some of the incidents of prejudice/racism I’ve experienced in my lifetime – in fact I just spoke with my sister Lesa about how to best do this yesterday – because I realized many of my friends – especially the white ones – have no idea what I’ve experienced/dealt with unless they were present (and aware) when it happened. There are two reasons for this : 1) because not only as a human being do I suppress the painful and uncomfortable in an effort to make it go away, I was also taught within my community (I was raised in the ‘70s & ‘80s – it’s shifted somewhat now) and by society at large NOT to make a fuss, speak out, or rock the boat. To just “deal with it,” lest more trouble follow (which sadly, it often does). 2) Fear of being questioned or dismissed with “Are you sure that’s what you heard?” or “Are you sure that’s what they meant?” and being angered and upset all over again by well-meaning-but-hurtful and essentially unsupportive responses.

    So, again, I’m glad you asked, because I really want to answer. But as I do, please know a few things first: 1) This is not even close to the whole list. I’m cherrypicking because none of us have all day. 2) I’ve been really lucky. Most of what I share below is mild compared to what others in my family and community have endured. 3) I’m going to go in chronological order so you might begin to glimpse the tonnage and why what many white folks might feel is a “Where did all of this come from?” moment in society has been festering individually and collectively for the LIFETIME of pretty much every black or brown person living in America today regardless of wealth or opportunity. 4)Some of what I share covers sexism, too – intersectionality is another term I’m sure you’ve heard and want to put quotes around, but it’s a real thing, too, just like white privilege. But you’ve requested a focus on personal experiences with racism, so here it goes:

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 4:37 pm

    Homeless teen bikes 6 hours to get to college, sleeps in tent
    by: Hope Jensen
    Updated: Jul 15, 2016 – 6:20 PM

    BARNESVILLE, Ga. —
    At just 19 years old, Fred Barley has proven he knows what he wants out of life and he’ll do anything to make it happen.

    Officers found the teen sleeping in a tent over the weekend outside a local college. Instead of giving him a ticket for trespassing, the officers listened to his story – and that’s where this amazing story begins.

    Barley, a homeless college student, told the officers he had ridden his little brother’s bike six hours from Conyers to Barnesville to register for classes for his second semester of college. He had two duffel bags carrying all he owned and 2 gallons of water as he rode through the heat of a Georgia summer.

    Problem is, the Gordon State College campus dorms don’t open until August, so Barley pitched a tent in some bushes on campus and prepared to spend the next few weeks there, with nothing more than a box of cereal to eat.

    Barley spent the day job-searching and had just returned to his tent Saturday night when officers responded to a report of someone sleeping in a tent on campus. They told Barley to come out with his hands up, but the officers quickly realized that something wasn’t right. They sat down with Barley, who told them his story.

    The biology major, who dreams of going to medical school one day, told the officers he thought the bushes on campus would be a much safer place for him to sleep than staying in his tent in Conyers.

    “We can’t allow you to stay here, but I have somewhere you can stay.”
    “He was so understanding and he said, ‘I definitely I applaud you for doing this. We can’t allow you to stay here, but I have somewhere you can stay,’” Barley told Channel 2 Action News.

    Reply
  15. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 4:34 pm

    Being Weird and Black Doesn’t Mean You’re Interested in Being White
    Heather Jones May 18, 2016

    ……………………………………………..

    I was a weird black girl and wore my weirdness as a badge of honor. I also received my fair share of bullying for being an outlier. I’ll never forget my fifth-grade bully, Ladonna, chasing me around the playground calling me a “wannabe white girl.” Despite praying that I wouldn’t get my ass kicked, I remember feeling a great deal of pain for being accused of “acting white.” It was confusing because in my mind I just wanted to be myself and I wondered why that wasn’t enough.

    ………………………………………………….

    Although I was a weirdo, I was still accepted by my core group of black friends. We listened to Usher, The Fugees, Next and Tamia and and danced to their songs in talent shows. Even though I was criticized for “acting white” by a couple of bullies, I was also taught to be proud of my blackness from an early age.

    I celebrated Kwanzaa, played with black Barbies and Kenya dolls, and had a huge crush on Langston Hughes. In fifth grade, I won first place (by a landslide) at my school’s Black History Bee. My mother spent hours helping me study, and it gave me great pleasure to learn about the amazing accomplishments of people who shared the same hue as me. On the other hand, I also loved rocking out to Korn and Matchbox 20, but I never felt the need to reject black culture to embrace being eclectic. Both realities existed within me simultaneously and created the curious, creative and weird little girl that I was.

    The movie Dope attempted to address this conundrum of black identity as well. The lead character Malcolm gets beat up and bullied for liking “white people shit.” In his application to Harvard he poses the question, “Am I a geek or a menace?” This question contains racially charged, hidden language that really asks questions like, “Do I identify with white or black culture?” or, “Do I want to go to college or to prison?”

    Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 4:30 pm

    The Untold Stories Of Black Girls
    March 23, 20166:31 AM ET
    ANYA KAMENETZ

    The video, taken at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C., went viral last fall: A school safety officer flips a desk to the floor with a girl seated in it, then flings her across the floor. The student is African-American; the officer is white.

    Ultimately, the officer was fired based on the fallout surrounding that video. But Monique Morris, a scholar, author and activist, was concerned about what else happened, when the cameras were turned off.

    The student, 16, was both arrested and suspended immediately after the incident. So was a second student, another black girl, Niya Kenny, 18, whose role seemed to be encouraging her classmates to film the incident.

    Moreover, says Morris, “My conversations with the legal community in South Carolina revealed that when those girls came back to school they were faced with a pretty hostile environment.” Both girls started avoiding school.

    Recent research has documented that black girls are punished at school at rates that are even more disproportionate than those experienced by black boys. For example, they are suspended six times more often than white girls. Morris calls this “a story untold,” and she sets out to tell it in her new book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.

    Reply
  17. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    July 16, 2016 at 3:37 pm

    https://twitter.com/BrentNYT/status/754294822983307264

    Excerpt:

    “Voting rights advocates have been pressing the Census Bureau for more than a decade to stop counting prison inmates as “residents” of prisons — where they typically remain for only a short time — instead of the communities they call home. The bureau, in a rejection of common sense and fairness, has proposed rules for the 2020 census that continue this discredited practice.

    “Counting inmates this way allows legislators who draw electoral lines to inflate the power of certain areas with “constituents” who have been stripped of the right to vote and have no interaction with the larger community.

    “This practice made little difference during the 1950s and ’60s, when the prison population was relatively small. But with about 1.5 million people in prison today, it is easier for lawmakers to pad sparsely populated districts to ensure that they pass muster under federal law. This subverts the principle of one person one vote, shifting political influence from one end of a county or state to another.”

    Reply
  21. Ametia says:
    July 16, 2016 at 2:31 pm

    Watching Malcolm X again. Denzel Washington WAS ROBBED of that OSCAR.

    This movie and the experiences of Malcolm and NOI are chilling and eerily relevant TODAY.

    Chilling and truth, POLICE BRUTALITY is an American staple.

    Reply
  25. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 2:21 pm

    GOP convention organizers apologize to Sheldon Adelson

    A letter to the billionaire donor misrepresented how many corporations had bailed on pledge donations because of Trump.
    07/15/16 04:50 PM EDT

    CLEVELAND — The last-minute plea for $6 million from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson to rescue the Republican convention has erupted in controversy, as four of the five signatories to the letter from party organizers never saw it before it was sent and major donors flagged serious errors that forced the convention hosts to apologize to one of the GOP’s most influential financiers.

    The episode has opened a window into a host committee that is scrambling and still millions shy of its fundraising target, only days before tens of thousands of Republicans arrive in Cleveland, as it acknowledges for the first time that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has put a damper on donations.

    The letter, obtained by POLITICO on Thursday, outlined two dozen major corporations — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Duke Energy and Apple, among them — that it claimed had backed out a combined more than $8.1 million in pledged donations in recent months.

    But on Friday, Emily Lauer, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, acknowledged to POLITICO that the list of lost donors in the letter to Adelson was inaccurate — and that the committee has now reached out to Adelson’s aides to apologize.
    “Some of what were referred to as pledges were actually expectations based on pledges made to previous conventions, while a handful had been withdrawn,” David Gilbert, the CEO of the host committee, said in a prepared statement.

    Reply
  31. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 2:08 pm

    Yalini Dream has been writing about MIA and her comments on BLM. This is from her FB page:

    Black peoples have been showing solidarity with me as a person of Sri Lankan Tamil descent without even having to know a damn thing about Sri Lanka since I was a child. From teaching me to ignore racist bullies and recognize the beauty of my beautiful brown skin. From embracing me when I was outcast from Tamil communities for being too feminist & Queer. To the Black peoples on all the dance floors whose vibrations saved my life, who gave my body a language to articulate what I felt before my mind learned the language.

    To the Black artists who nurtured my poetic voice when racist professors broke my heart saying I was a bad writer. To the brothers on the corner who stopped calling me India and started calling me Sri Lanka. From the Black political thought that liberated me from my own self-hatred. To the Black Arts Movements that gave me space to write, stages to perform on, unlocked my ancestral wisdom and granted me access to a rich Black Arts legacy of shifting humanity.

    To the Black healers who taught me the remedies of genocide and intergenerational trauma, to every Black person who facilitated me connecting the dots, who taught me what solidarity looked like & felt like, who taught me the mechanics of base building, who told me to keep my head up when I was spiraling down, to the Black peoples who made me relevant when I finally went back to my war ravaged homelands in the north & east of Sri Lanka equipped with the tools & wisdom of a young woman schooled by Black America, to the Black entrepreneurs who employed me after years of barely living above broke.

    So yes I am in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Yes I will sweat and work and fight and love and heal and rage for this movement. As a feminist/Queer artist of Sri Lankan Tamil Descent raised in empire, it’s the least I could do.

    Reply
  33. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 1:58 pm

    hat tip-BJ

    Henry Rollins: White America Couldn’t Handle What Black America Deals With Every Day

    If white America experienced a fraction of what black America deals with regarding law enforcement, incarceration, the court system, employment and countless other facts of life, they would immediately and collectively lose their minds.

    Reply
  34. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 1:54 pm

    Donald Trump’s speech introducing Mike Pence showed why he shouldn’t be president
    Updated by Ezra Klein on July 16, 2016, 1:20 p.m. ET

    I do not know how to explain what I just watched.

    It should be easy. Donald Trump introduced Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. There it is. One sentence. Eleven words. But that doesn’t explain what happened any better than “I spent a few hours letting lysergic acid diethylamide mimic serotonin in my brain” explains an acid trip. What just happened was weird, and it was important.

    Back in May, EJ Dionne wrote that the hardest thing about covering Donald Trump would be “staying shocked.” Watching him, day after day, week after week, month after month, the temptation would be to normalize his behavior, “to move Trump into the political mainstream.”

    But today helped. Donald Trump’s introduction of Mike Pence was shocking. Forget the political mainstream. What happened today sat outside the mainstream for normal human behavior.

    It began in irony. Before Pence, before Trump, there was an empty podium, and the Rolling Stones blasting through the speakers. It had been widely reported that few top Republicans were willing to serve as Trump’s running mate. It had been widely reported that Trump was unsure about Pence, that he had regretted the decision almost as soon as he made it, that he had sought ways to reverse himself. Hours before the announcement, Trump tweeted that Pence was “my first choice from the start!”, which is a thing presidential candidates typically do not need to say.

    Reply
  36. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 1:41 pm

    The right to bear arms has mostly been for white people
    Gun laws, historically, weren’t colorblind.
    July 15

    When Philando Castile, a black man legally carrying a concealed weapon, was shot dead by police during a traffic stop in Minnesota this month for no apparent reason other than that he was armed, it might have seemed odd that the National Rifle Association failed to rally behind the case. The Second Amendment protects everyone’s right to bear arms, not just white people’s, right?

    By the light of the law, the answer is easy: The Constitution prohibits racial discrimination in all rights, including the right to bear arms. By the light of history, however, the answer is far more complicated. From America’s earliest days, the right to bear arms has been profoundly shaped by race. Indeed, for much of our history, the right’s protections extended almost exclusively to whites.

    Reply
  38. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 1:31 pm

    This is what Driving While Black looks like.
    ……………………………………

    The Driving Life And Death Of Philando Castile
    July 15, 20164:51 AM ET
    Heard on Morning Edition

    Philando Castile’s trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner’s permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday.

    From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions.

    Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver?

    An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler.

    The records show that Castile spent most of his driving life fighting tickets. Three months after that first stop, for example, his license was suspended and he went into his first spiral: Police stopped him on Jan. 8, 2003. They stopped him on Feb. 3 and on Feb. 12 and Feb. 26 and on March 4.

    Reply
  39. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    July 16, 2016 at 1:20 pm

    Important read here to understand how history is repeating itself:

    “Martin Luther King’s hate mail eerily resembles criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement”

    http://fusion.net/story/184032/black-lives-matter-martin-luther-king-hate-mail/

    Reply
  43. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    July 16, 2016 at 10:23 am

    “12 Ways to Be a White Ally to Black People”
    http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/08/ferguson_how_white_people_can_be_allies/
    (August 19, 2014)

    Excerpt:

    So let’s talk about an active role for white people in the fight against racism, because racism burdens all of us and is destroying our communities. White people have a role in undoing racism because white people created and, for the most part, currently maintain (whether they want to or not) the racist system that benefits white people to the detriment of people of color.

    White people who hate racism should work hard to become white allies. Here are some ways for a white person to become engaged:

    1. Learn about the racialized history of Ferguson and how it reflects the racialized history of America. Brown’s killing is not an anomaly or a statistical outlier. It is the direct product of deadly tensions born from decades of housing discrimination, white flight, intergenerational poverty and racial profiling.

    2. Reject the “He was a good kid” or “He was a criminal” narrative and lift up the “Black lives matter” narrative.

    3. Use words that speak the truth about the disempowerment, oppression, disinvestment and racism that are rampant in our communities.

    4. Understand the modern forms of race oppression and slavery and how they are intertwined with policing, the courts and the prison-industrial complex. Black people aren’t enslaved on the plantation anymore. Now African Americans are locked up in for-profit prisons at disproportionate rates and for longer sentences for the same crimes committed by white people. And when we’re released we’re second-class citizens, stripped of voting rights in some states and denied access to housing, employment and education. Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow.

    5. Examine the interplay between poverty and racial equity. The twin pillar of racism is economic injustice, but don’t use class issues to trump race issues and avoid the racism conversation. Although racism and class oppression are tangled together in this country, the fact remains that the No. 1 predictor of prosperity and access to opportunity is race.

    6. Diversify your media. Be intentional about looking for and paying close attention to diverse voices of color on television, on radio, online and in print to help shape your awareness, understanding and thinking about political, economic and social issues…

    11. Be proactive in your own community. As a white ally, you are not limited to reacting only when black people are subjected to violence very visibly and publicly. Moments of crisis do not need to be the catalyst. Taking action against systemic racism is always appropriate because systemic racism permeates this country…

    HOW TO BE A WHITE ALLY”
    https://blackmillennials.com/2014/10/16/how-to-be-a-white-ally/
    (October 16, 2014)

    Excerpts:

    1. Know what racism is
    In basic terms, racism = prejudice + privilege + power
    Prejudice is a preconceived feeling, belief, or emotion against a person of a different ethnic, cultural, economic, religious, spiritual, and/or sexual group.
    Privilege is an unearned advantage or benefit.
    Power is the ability to successfully and methodically exert influence.
    Together, these forces compose racism.

    2. Understand white privilege.

    4. Respect Black and Brown spaces.
    In a time of racial intensity, Black and Brown people need personal spaces for emotional and mental healing. By nature of white privilege, white inclusion in such spaces is a distraction. We cannot be fully candid with ourselves and each other under your inevitable white gaze.
    Respect these times for personal Black healing. It is not an attack on you. It’s a time we need for ourselves.

    5. Do not tell us Black and Brown folk what we *must* or *must not* do.
    It is not your place to tell us what we *must* do. Sure, you can offer suggestions (when they’re asked of you), but to come into our space and then dictate our course of action is redolent of the system from which you hail.

    6. Mobilize your people.
    What good is your white privilege if it only functions in Black spaces? The onus of the white ally is to dismantle the system of whiteness from within. With this, it is not enough to march with Black and Brown bodies with the expectation of likes and retweets. White allies, when armed with political education and pro-Black credo, work best in those enigmatic closed door meetings that have been historically denied to people of color.
    White people have insurmountable corporate and political power. Imagine the possibilities if white allies organized and focused their attention and clout on these forces?

    Reply
  44. Ametia says:
    July 16, 2016 at 10:20 am

    Here you go, Rikyrah

    Reply
  45. Liza says:
    July 16, 2016 at 9:47 am

    A much deserved treat for SG2, but for everyone else too.

    Reply
  46. rikyrah says:
    July 16, 2016 at 7:53 am

    Good Morning 😊, Everyone 😆.
    Off to swim 👙 and run errands. 😄

    Reply
  47. SouthernGirl2 says:
    July 16, 2016 at 7:26 am

    Good morning, everyone. Parker is here. We just finished eating bacon, eggs and grits. “Darling I love you but gimme that country life…”.

    Reply

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