Quote of the Day -- Racial Obscenity Edition

"In America, it's safer to be a white man, overthrowing the government than it is to be a Black man doing anything." --Middle Age Riot.

Thanks, Republicans!

On Whose Side Will You Stand?

Question of the Day -- Officer Chauvin Edition

If Officer Chauvin did nothing wrong and didn't, in fact, murder Mr. Floyd---which he did, the video shows it, of course--why did the city of Minneapolis give Mr. Floyd's family 27 million dollars?

Because they just had it lying around and wanted to be nice?

Question of the Day

How could anyone, anyone, anywhere think it's somehow bizarrely okay if a rogue police officer ends up killing another American citizen who is only SUSPECTED of having passed a counterfeit $20 bill?

How and where does that make ANY sense? #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd

Quote of the Day -- Pre-Trump Edition

 

86 45

BYEDON

Vote

Vote blue

#BlueWave2020

Quote of the Day -- Equality Edition

Equality.

Justice.

Equity.

Fairness.

In America.

Whodathunkit?

 

Quote of the Day -- BLACK LIVES MATTER

Quote of the day, quote of the moment

"It's just so sad. You know, what stands out to me is, just watching the Republican (National) Convention, and they're spewing this fear, right. Like, all you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. 

We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones who are denied to live in certain communities. We've been hung. We've been shot, And all you do is keep hearing about fear. It's amazing. Why do we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back."

--Los Angeles Clippers Head Coach Doc Rivers

BLACK LIVES MATTER

Link:

Doc Rivers delivers powerful speech on Jacob Blake shooting, racism in America

We Must Make Black Lives Matter in America

Four examples. Following are just four very recent examples of what's gone on in America.  And for far, far too long.

--Tamir Rice was 12 years old. He had a toy gun. Within 3-1/2 seconds of the police officer arriving on scene, he had already shot and killed the boy.

--Breonna Taylor was at home. She was an EMT. It was around midnight. The police officers came crashing through her apartment door on a no knock warrant. They immediately shot and killed her. They had the wrong address.

To this day, from March to today, July 26, those officers haven't been arrested.  For anything.

--George Floyd was THOUGHT, only thought to have passed a counterfeit $20 bill. Eight minutes and 46 seconds after the officer began knee pressure on Mr. Floyd's neck/throat, he had killed him, Mr. Floyd. The officer, therefore, made himself judge, jury and executioner right there on the street.

--Auhmaud Arbery was jogging, out jogging, in his mother's neighborhood when two brothers, one an ex-police officer, thought he looked suspicious so they accosted him and within minutes shot him with a shotgun. Twice. Killing him.  Again, they made themselves judge, jury and executioner, no less, and in only a few minutes.

All 4 were Americans. American citizens.

Those are just 4 very recent situations, with their facts. 4, frankly, nearly insanely, of many here in the US both recent and going far back in our nation's history.

How could any of that be okay or right? How can any of that be okay here in our nation, in the United States of America?

We must make Black Lives Matter.

See for yourself:

A brief history of police officers killing black people

Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and stories of other black

George Floyd: Timeline of black deaths caused by police

"Say their names": The list of people injured or killed in officer ...

Search Results

Web results

Know their names: Black people killed by the police in the US

Black Lives Must Matter

Langston Hughes was writing about this back at the beginning of the century, folks. And it certainly goes back farther than that, to the beginning, the founding of our nation.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

--Langston Hughes

Poem originally published 1926

Black Lives Matter didn't grow out of a Black issue or a problem Black people have or only Black people have, no. Far from it. It is a problem white people in America have. It's a problem we all have and share as Americans. If you don't see that, you don't know our own nation. You likely don't know our own nation's, your own nation's history.

A Timely Must-Read

Sunday's New York Times Magazine had a magnificent, even important article I think it's safe to say all adult Americans should read.

America’s Enduring Caste System

Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. 

Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries.

We heard the man on the ground pleading with the man above him, saw the terror in his face, heard his gasps for air, heard the anguished cries of an unseen chorus, begging the lighter man to stop. But the lighter man, the dominant man, looked straight at the bystanders, into the camera, and thus at all of us around the world who would later bear witness and, instead of heeding the cries of the chorus, pressed his knee deeper into the darker man’s neck as was the perceived right granted him in the hierarchy. The man on the ground went silent, drained of breath. A clear liquid crept down the pavement. We saw a man die before our very eyes.

What we did not see, not immediately anyway, was the invisible scaffolding, a caste system with ancient rules and assumptions that made such a horror possible, that held each actor in that scene in its grip...

On This Day, -- July 5, 1852

"In 1852, the Maryland-born abolitionist Frederick Douglass was invited to address the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Association’s 4th of July celebration in Rochester, N.Y. President Millard Fillmore, national political leaders and abolitionists from across the country were among those in the audience.

The speech, which was become known as “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” was in fact delivered on July 5. In many ways, it seems every bit as relevant today as it did 168 years ago."

A Marylander's Words That Still Resonate 

168 Years Later

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

If you can, at least once, read the entire piece. 

Entertainment Overnight -- "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"

Everyone needs to see and know and be aware of this. As it says it's from the Broadway play "Avenue Q." Great, great, even fun play. Important subject and subjects.

Congratulations, Kansas City?

Kansas City just made a big, rather important, national list and it's in and from The New York Times, too.

Here Are the 98 U.S. Cities 

Where Protesters Were Tear-Gassed

98 U.S. cities where protesters were tear-gassed recently, as we know, for protesting the murder of an  American citizen by a police officer on the streets of Minneapolis.

And yes, Kansas City, Missouri, you're on the list. Our own Kansas City, Missouri police force gassed fellow citizens.

Not legal in war but a-okay for our police to use on tax-paying, American citizens here on our streets.

Ain't we great?

Aren't we special?

American exceptionalism, all right.

Link:

Tear gas has been banned in warfare. 

Why do police still use it?

On This Day, June 12, 1963

On this day, June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of  his home in Mississippi by a white supremacist.

How long, Amerca?

How long?

The Present Racial, Police Brutality Problem As Today, But 50 Years Ago

I found this yesterday on YouTube. Some of their marketing their own videos, I'm sure. Regardless, it is stunning that it's the same, exact discussion and debate and problem we have today, now---and it's from 50 years ago.  This was posted on the video by one David Hoffman:

This was on national public television (PBS) in the prime time in 1971. It was considered shockingly bold to present this debate and to hear police officers and chiefs of police honestly and bluntly state how they saw the racial injustices in the department and in the society. Some things have clearly changed for the better. But it is, at least for me, strangely familiar and uncomfortable to see what has not changed. Since the murder of Floyd George, once again, police injustice and inequality is front and center in the news across America.

Stunning.

We haven't changed a bit.

Pertinent 'Toons of the Moment.

First this one, so appropriate when the Republicans were forcing through Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to, of all things, the Supreme Court.

And now this.

Geez, guys, ladies and gentlemen of the Republican Party...could you give us a break out here?

Please?

Necessary In 1968, Still Poignant Today

I just coincidentally, fortunately ran across this video yesterday. It's a talk by and from James Baldwin, American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. in 1968 concerning the race riots of that day.  Still so very poignant--and necessary--today, of course, sadly, even maddeningly.



Let's do better, America.

Quote of the Day -- On Racism

“There is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat.”

--Robert F. Kennedy, 1968, shortly before his assassination

Nicholas Kristof Poses a Great Question---and Indicts Our Own Home State of Missouri and the Nation

Today's op/ed piece in the New York Times from Nicholas Kristof poses a great question.

What if There Were No George Floyd Video?

A great, even important question.

We wouldn't be trying to, at long, long last, heal these racist, racial wounds in the nation.  

George Floyd's death should never have taken place, of course.  At least we are finally, finally addressing these problems, these issues, this issue of race in America.

But by way of asking this question and addressing these issues, Mr. Kristof also makes a great and important point---and indicts our own state of Missouri, too. He states:

There is no video to show that a black boy born today in Washington, D.C., Missouri, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or a number of other states has a shorter life expectancy than a boy born in Bangladesh or India.

Get that.

To repeat, a black boy born in these states, including our own home state of Missouri, has a shorter life span expectancy than that of a boy born in Bangladesh or India.

That is obscene.

It's also racism. It's one of the many results of racism in our nation.

We have got to do better.

And we've got to do better quickly. 

Now would be good.

Additional links:

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It

Aug. 30, 2014

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 2

Sept. 6, 2014

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 3

Oct. 11, 2014

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 4

Nov. 15, 2014

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5

Nov. 29, 2014

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 6

April 2, 2016

Opinion | Nicholas Kristof: When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 7

Oct. 1, 2016

From Barack Obama---to Donald Trump??

Maureen Dowd poses a great question today in the New York Times:

"How could we possibly, in a brief stretch, have gone from the euphoria of our first black president to the desolation of racial strife ripping apart the country?"

It's from her column.

Bonfire of Trump’s Vanity

And the answer, of course, is racism.

And Donald J Trump.

Thanks, Republicans.