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Showing posts with label US racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US racism. Show all posts
Right Wing Watch 👀 MAGA Cultist Shane Vaughn Unleashes Racist Attack On Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kyle Mantyla

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit brought by the states of Louisiana and Missouri and several social media users alleging that the Biden administration has been unconstitutionally pressuring social media platforms to remove or censor conservative content.

During the hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised concerns about the plaintiff’s apparent intention to use the First Amendment to “hamstring” the government’s ability to respond to harmful or dangerous misinformation in “an environment of threatening circumstances.”

This line of questioning elicited a shockingly racist response from MAGA cultist pastor Shane Vaughn, who repeatedly derided Brown Jackson, who is Black, as “Judge Jumanji Jungle Lips.”

“I can’t even believe that that stupidity rolled from Jumanji’s jungle mouth,” Vaughn said. “It’s a Jumanji jungle now on the Supreme Court.”

“From now on, her name is Judge Jungle Jumanji,” he continued. “See, the problem is Jumanji Jungle, Judge Jumanji Jungle Lips, the problem with it is this — because what’s coming out of her lips is monkey sense, not common sense! 

Racist Religion

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Since its drafting in 1776/77 the what was then called the “Articles of Confederation” which was superseded in 1789 by the “United States Constitution” containing articles and amendments, 27 amendments, it has been and is full of contradictions. 
 

The constitution was originally based on the English Magna Carta of 1215 and the first ten articles and are known as the “Bill of Rights” offering protection to individual freedoms. This progressive sounding constitution was/is all very well if you were/are a European white settler and not so applicable to the Native Americans, whose lands had been stolen by force, cunning and trickery, black people usually slaves, Hispanic peoples, Oriental immigrants who were at best treat very unequal indeed by comparison to the white Europeans. 

When George Washington, the so-called “Father of Freedom” defeated the British commander, Lord Cornwallis ending the Siege of Yorktown which had lasted from September 28th 1781 to 19th October 1781, thus effectively ending the American revolutionary war, the hypocrisies began. It would not have been unreasonable to expect freedom and equality for everyone living in the new country, but this was not the case. Washington himself, a fighter for freedom from the British King, George III, was also a big believer in chattel slavery being an owner of black slaves himself. Indeed, just over 120 years later James Connolly remonstrated with Washington's descendants about their ongoing treatment of black people and support of the idea of slavery. 

This trend of hypocrisy is ongoing to the present day, even though the days of slavery have long gone. The attitudes of many whites, like former President Donald Trump, towards black people leaves much to be desired. The language used by such high-profile people as Trump has, in more recent years, been much more guarded than yesteryear when “Jim Crow” ruled without exception. Even as recent as the 1960/70s people like the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, still spouted such racist language. When Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States it should have heralded a new progressive era in the USA but, alas, fell short of many expectations. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House in 2016, he barely disguised his utter contempt, largely based on skin colour, for the outgoing President. There has been a trail of racism stretching back to the early days of the USA which is a great shame as it does that country much injustice.

During the Second World War the US, alongside the British, Free French, Free Poles, Free Czechs, the Soviet Union and many countries from the British Empire and Commonwealth, including India and Kenya fought against a group of the most-evil tyrannical and racist regimes imaginable. Yet, within the ranks of their own armed forces the USA practised a system of racial segregation. Black regiments were always commanded by white officers, often from the deep south of the country because it was felt men from the southern states were accustomed to handling blacks as second or third-class citizens. This was long after Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address in 1863 stating “that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom”. 

Black officers, few and far between, were usually no higher than First Lieutenant as was the case with Vernon Baker towards the end of the war. Black soldiers were considered “cowards” by the white command of the United States Army. They did not have the “backbone” according to officers like Colonel Sheridan and, therefore, had to be led by whites. A black soldier’s life was considered less worthy to that of a white soldier which perhaps explains why these “cowards” were often put in unwinnable situations, instead of white soldiers, and often came out victorious, making a mockery of the false perception these men were “cowards”. On many occasions after these thought impossible victories achieved by black regiments these soldiers would be withdrawn and replaced by white troops to claim the spoils of victory which they had never won!

Vernon Baker was a Lieutenant in the US Army in the Second World War. He was a very brave soldier, and certainly no coward. In fact it turned out to be his commanding white officer who turned heels and ran. Who was really the coward? In 1997, fifty-two years after the war ended Baker was awarded the Medal of Honour by President Bill Clinton. He was the last surviving member of his platoon of black soldiers and accepted the medal on behalf of his now dead comrades. On April 5th 1945 Lieutenant Vernon Baker and his platoon, minus his brave white superior officer who had legged it, was ordered to attack a German occupied mountain stronghold, Castle Aghinolfi near Viareggio, Italy. Lieutenant Baker personally eliminated three enemy machineguns, an observation post and a dugout. During the attack 19 of the 25 men in Baker’s platoon were killed, not bad for a bunch of “cowards”! At the time Baker and the survivors of the attack were never awarded the medals they had won which, if they had been white the Medal of Honour would have been awarded immediately. Instead, they were awarded an inferior honour and made to feel grateful. In 1997 President Clinton righted this wrong, long overdue but better late than never and fair play to Clinton.

*The USA continued to practice these forms of segregation after the war, practices not dissimilar to those practiced against Jewish people in the early days of the Third Reich. In Germany Jews were not allowed in certain public places, they were no longer allowed to practice as doctors or lawyers or teachers under the Nazis. In the USA black people had to sit in segregated areas on the bus and even then, were expected to vacate their seat for white passengers. Black people had their own enforced segregated areas in cafes, their own schools. In fact the US differed to early Nazi Germany in extremities only. In principle they were very similar. 

In 1955 a young black woman, Rosa Parks, made a stance against this racism and the “Montgomery Bus Boycott” began. It was triggered when Rosa, sat in the “coloured section” was expected to give up her seat for a white passenger who was standing because the all-white seats were full. Rosa refused, rightly so, and the boycott began until the Bus Company backed down. The fight for civil rights by American black population began and continued through the sixties and seventies even the eighties. The struggle in many ways continues to this day and this is despite the election of the USA's first black President, Barack Obama, in 2009 who held office until January 2017 when Donald Tump assumed office. In 1968 black civil rights organiser and orator, Dr Martin Luther King, was gunned down as were many lesser-known civil rights organisers. The Actress Jane Fonda was involved around the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests as were many sports people like Mohammed Ali the former world heavy weight boxing champion who had his title removed and boxing licence revoked as a result of him refusing the draft into the army for service in Vietnam.

In 1970 the US National Guard, the paramilitary domestic armed force (similar to the B. Specials/UDR/RIR/ in the six counties) shot and killed four anti-Vietnam war protestors. The protestors were students from Kent University who opposed US actions and involvement in the Vietnam War. They also shot and wounded another nine students on the same demonstration. Imagine the human cry if this had occurred in the Soviet Union?

The USA have also conducted many illegal acts of war in other countries, acts they condemn Russia for doing right now. They, the USA, bombed Iraq using depleted uranium bombs, banned under international law yet nothing was done or said. Their condemnation of Russia is well founded, if Western reports are to be believed, but also hypocritical at the highest level. Any other country bar the USA and their chief allies, Britain, would have faced sanctions for their activities in Iraq. Had the British done this without US backing they would have been sanctioned, but not the USA!

More recently we hear the United States Government banning Tic Toc from official sites and computers. They say the Chinese Government have too much access to information about people in the US on Tik Tok. The company who own Tik Tok deny this, as would be expected, but by the same token how do we know how much access the US Government have to Google? If the argument is good for the Chinese, it must also be applicable to the USA, surely? I do not trust governments, they are committees to run the affairs of the rich, elected by the poor. This rule of thumb applies to all of them, US, British, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian and our own in the twenty-six counties. They, governments, preside over a corrupt system, capitalism, and therefore cannot afford to be honest. On BBC2's daily politics programme; Politics UK, a labour politician, Jamie Driscoll Mayor of North of Tyne in England’s North East, when asked a question by presenter, Jo Coburn, he firstly said “are you asking me are politicians dishonest?” Then he answered, “I’m avoiding that question” which should tell even the least agile minded something!

Very recently the US state of Florida under the right-wing governor Ron De Santis was looking to “expand its ban on teaching young children about sexual orientation and gender identity issues to include all students in its public schools under a new rule set for a vote by the state Board of Education next (now this) month”. This is a clear attack on the LGBT community and is opposed by President Joe Biden (who is not the worst President), showing that although the US President may be a very powerful man on the world stage, at home he has only limited powers. Ron De Santis is expected to stand for Presidential candidacy on the republican right-wing ticket for the next election. He is an expansion of the discredited crook, Donal Trump, who is still ranting about being the real President. Ironically De Santis may be Trump's opponent for the republican nomination.

The United States are very good at telling other countries how to clean up their own back garden, root out the corrupt weeds, but not too clever at weeding out their own corrupt establishment. Sometimes if the offending other country do not bow to US diplomatic pressure to clean up their act, and are militarily weak by comparison, the good old USA invade them and install their own puppet regime. When the former Soviet Union did similar they were branded criminals, but not the USA, why could that be? Often, as was the case in Iraq, the deposed despot, like Saddam Hussein, was assisted in gaining power in the first place clandestinely by the US under the auspicious guidance of the CIA.

If the United States establishment, big business, CIA, FBI, National Guard, judiciary and Government which in some cases involves all six of the aforementioned, looked in the mirror you can bet your last dollar that mirror would crack! The word “hypocrisy” does not even begin to cut it!! Yet, our own twenty-six county administration are so far up the arse of the USA it beggars belief. The British are in a similar vein, creeping to the USA even allowing that country to dictate many aspects of UK foreign policy. Perhaps the USA should be replaced with the initials, USH, United States of Hypocrisy!!!

The United States are portrayed, certainly in the West, as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Only comparatively recently did a large section of the population in the USA, based on skin colour, get the vote. In the early years of the country's revolutionary war against the British that title of “freedom and democracy” relative to the times may have been well founded. However, that progressive land soon degenerated into a country of hypocrisies, lies and corruption, and allies such as Britain are forced to go along with these lies, like the weapons of mass destruction the US claimed Iraq had. No such weapons were found and British puppet Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was left looking stupid and exposed. I suppose that was one good thing which came out of the whole pack of lies!

As we in Ireland prepare for the visit of US President, Joe Biden, on 11th April and the expected tirade of “Irish Americanism” sweeps the land I for one will not be joining in. Joe Biden is far, far from the worst President the USA have had, that honour must fall to his predecessor, Donald Trump followed by Richard Nixon. As the President prepares for his visit the hype surrounding his Irishness is phenomenal, to say nothing of the expense at a time when housing is needed and the health service needs cash. For some reason because the President had relatives who left Ireland during the chalcolithic period, around 2,500- 2,200 BC, we are now told to believe he is in fact Irish, as well as American!! Perhaps the chalcolithic period is stretching it but Joe Biden’s connection to Ireland comes via his Great, Great Grandfather. If the President was young enough and resided in Ireland he would not be automatically granted Irish citizenship and would not be legible to play Association Football for the national side!! No doubt a very nice man, or he appears to be, but Irish? I’ll leave that one to the reader! 

But consider one thing, could he be any more Irish than Che Guevara? Yet there was no hype for the revolutionary Che, despite the twenty-six-county Irish state itself being formed out of revolutionary struggle. Then again so was the land which became the USA.

🖼 Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

The United States Of Hypocrisy

Right Wing Watch ✊White Nationalist Vincent James Would Happily Live in a ‘Society Where They Throw Gays Off Roofs’

 Kyle Mantyla

Near the end of 2022, far-right streamers Vincent James and Steven Franssen hosted an episode of their “White Boy Wednesday” livestream during which James said that he would be more than happy to live in a society where “they throw gays off buildings.”

James is an unapologetic racist, antisemite, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and fascist who currently serves as the treasurer of white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ America First organization. He has used his livestream program, broadcast on Fuentes’ “anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Black, antisemitic” platform, to openly advocate for throwing gay people off of buildings before, as well as calling for women to be stripped of their rights and the establishment of a Christian Taliban in this country that will “dominate without mercy.”

During the “White Boy Wednesday” broadcast, James grew exasperated by those who criticized FIFA for holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a nation that harshly oppresses and persecutes LGBTQ people.

“Who cares how they treat homosexuals?” James said. “Why do we have to measure things based on how they treat homosexuals? Can’t we measure things based on everything else? 

Continue reading @ Right Wing Watch.

Throwing Gays Off Roofs

Pete Trumbore ✒ A public reckoning with the racist imagery in much of Dr. Seuss’ work has actually been a long time coming. I’ll forgive you if you didn’t read my 2015 post on the topic.


In that piece I focused on the World War II propaganda cartoons he drew in support of the US war effort, and the dehumanized imagery he produced to depict our Japanese foes compared to his much more sympathetic portrayal of, namely, Adolf Hitler.

One of the racist images in Dr. Seuss’
  If I Ran the Zoo.

Those images were completely in line with the race thinking that serves as a foundational element of American foreign policy ideology, how we understood the world and our place and role in it. Anglo-Saxonism is its core, placing America and Britain as a single people standing atop a racial hierarchy in which Germany was a racial close cousin, separated from us only because it had “lost its love of liberty.” Asians fell far down the ladder at whose absolute bottom stood Blacks. As I wrote six years ago:

The wartime cartoons of Dr. Seuss put these [issues] on vivid display. In the images reproduced here, Hitler is portrayed as essentially an aristocrat, his head held high in a posture of contempt of others, almost attractive and noble for all his arrogance. Not so the Japanese, shown here leering with a slant-eyed squint through thick glasses, with buck-toothed grins. Or as inhuman monsters and insects with caricatures for faces.

The point I was making then, and which I want to reiterate now, is that Dr. Seuss was no outlier in the way that he thought about race compared to other Americans. The racism visible in his work was part and parcel with the systemic racism of his times which we still struggle to acknowledge and overcome.

What has changed is our willingness to continue to overlook it.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the foundation that oversees the artist’s legacy and publishes his works, announced yesterday that it will no longer publish six of his books, most notably And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, and If I Ran the Zoo, from which the image at the top of this post is taken. Mulberry Street holds a special place in my heart. It was the first Seuss book I remember reading (or more likely remember being read to me). And I’ll acknowledge not being aware that, in the words of the announcement, “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

But I can’t say that I’m surprised, and I can’t say that they’re wrong. While conservative culture warriors may race to the airwaves and Twitter to decry the decision as cancel culture run amok, reality isn’t so simple. Nor is Seuss’ legacy.

Because Seuss was on the right side of history on many of the issues of his day. He drew cartoons decrying Jim Crow laws and defending Black rights to equal employment. He drew cartoons lambasting Nazi policies and attacking the isolationism and anti-Semitism of Charles Lindbergh’s America First Movement.

And he drew a lot of things that were and are shockingly racist. We should be mature enough to acknowledge that even as we embrace the lessons of environmentalism in The Lorax and tolerance and acceptance in Horton Hears a Who!

Seuss’ liberalism, and his racism, are his legacy. And they’re our legacy too.

 ⏭Professor Peter Trumbore blogs @ Observations/Research/Diversions. 

Dr. Seuss Racist Redux

Rewire News Group ✒ Prosecutors—with the help of doctors and nurses—are punishing pregnant people using laws intended to help them.


The story of Purvi Patel is a cautionary tale about what can happen to Black and brown women when they face bias and betrayal by health-care workers who are supposed to help them, and the ways in which hospitals can become carceral. 

Purvi Patel was suffering from heavy vaginal bleeding when she walked into the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka, Indiana. She insisted that the bleeding was not the result of pregnancy. After the doctors persisted, however, she admitted that she’d had a miscarriage, and, not knowing what to do, had placed the remains in a dumpster.

What came next is a cautionary tale about what can happen to Black and brown women when they face bias and betrayal by health-care workers who are supposed to help them, and the ways in which hospitals, which are supposed to be places of healing, can become carceral.

Patel likely believed she would get medical treatment and then be able go home to her family. But overzealous law enforcement and prosecutors ....

Continue reading @ Rewire News Group.

Purvi Patel And The Case Of The Self-Managed Abortion

Harry Hutchinson believes that the current US state has taken up from where Hitler (who allegedly died in Argentina in 1962) is merely the outworking of the Nazi regime in Germany. 

Since the 1930’s the US has backed Nazi states. In Germany after Hitler’s rise to power and becoming Chancellor was aided with finance from US banks, to build public works, particularly railways to the East which became part of the war effort to be used against the Soviet Union. The rest of the bank loans were used for massive military expenditure. British PM Churchill called Hitler a ‘great man to oppose the Soviet Union.’

During the war US motor companies like Ford, GM and other energy suppliers kept Hitler's tanks and Luftwaffe production going. The US secretly supplied the Hitler government in loans and supplies as well as secretly supplying Britain, which was Classic CIA intervention of ‘backing both sides.’ It wasn’t until after the Battle of Stalingrad, which was the turning point of the war, that the US allowed the Japanese unhindered, to attack Pearl Harbour, bringing US behind Britain and other Allies.

Post War.

After the war German Nazism was defeated, US Nazism victorious. This opened the way for a new global dominance, East and West; America becoming an Imperialist power unseen like any other in history. Aided by Nazi scientists particularly in the building of the US atom and hydrogen bombs, Hitler and other Nazi leaders were allowed to escape to Argentina, under the guise of the CIA, where Hitler died in 1962.

After the war, the US took over where Hitler left off. The US have bombed 35 countries including Korea, China and Cuba in the 1950’s, Vietnam in the 60’s and early 70’s, Grenada and El Salvador in the 80’s. Iraq in the 90’s.

The Bush administration after the turn of the century began its war on terror. After the CIA orchestrated bombing of the twin towers in New York, the ‘Pearl Harbour' to the Middle Eastern wars, according to General Wesley Clarke, the US planned to invade 7 countries in 5 years. These were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

The US military is deployed in 150 countries in the world, with 170,000 overseas troops. With a military budget of $721bn. This constitutes 40% of the worlds military expenditure.

Racist State.

Racial segregation in the US grew predominantly in the 1950’s. Segregation predominately grew out of the Jim Crow laws, enacted in the late 1900’s and early 20th century. These laws enforced racial segregation in public places and removed political, social and economic gains to Blacks. Blacks in the South were unable to vote, excluding Black representation in Congress and Local Government.

Civil Rights 

Blacks in the US organized against racial segregation in the 50’s. One such incident was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person. Bus seats were reserved for whites at the front and seats at the back for blacks. Those in between were mixed, however blacks had to give up these seats if the white ones at the front became full.

A bus boycott followed. Black taxis lowered their prices to bus levels to drive people to their destinations. Pool fairs were set up and a campaign of non violent civil disobedience followed. The campaign intensified after a Emmet Till, a 14yr old boy was dragged of a bus for refusing to give up his seat and beaten to death.

The civil rights movement for political, social and economic rights led to the Racial discrimination act 1964, which prohibited discrimination of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. However this law did not end racial discrimination.

Racial Discrimination 

Racial discrimination in all sectors continued after the Racial discrimination act 1964. Most notably in employment where blacks are disproportionately discriminated by higher unemployment, fewer job opportunities, poorer pay, benefits and more job instability.

Black woman face unique barriers; 5.1% are unemployed against 2.7% white woman. Black woman earn 61.9 cents for every $ a white woman earns. Black woman make up 84% of the breadwinners in the household, exacerbating family poverty. Overall blacks earn $727/week, compared to $943/week for whites.

Violent oppression in black areas, better known as legal racial terrorism, have destroyed businesses and infrastructure. This has resulted in occupational segregation where drug addiction is rife, denying people a prospect of better job opportunities.

Institutional Racism 

At preschool level, even though black children make up only 18% of all pupils, they make up 50% of suspensions. Compared to white children, who make up 43% of preschool children, 26% are suspended. Overall, black students are 3x more likely to be suspended than any other ethnic group. At post secondary level, according to the National Centre of Educational Statistics , college professors respond more to ‘white sounding' names, reflecting institutional racism amongst the teaching profession. Black students from poorer backgrounds have higher student fees and more likely to suffer stress and mental health. Black students have also a higher drop out rate and are 2x more likely to be unemployed. Black schools are chronically underfunded. Schools have 43,000 resource officers and 30,000 other sworn police officers. Three times as many young blacks end up in prison than whites, often after minor alterations.

Prison System 

Whites make up 64% of the population of America and 450/100,000 are incarcerated. Blacks, who make up only 13% of the population have a staggering 2,300/100,000, incarcerated. Private prisons have increased by 39%, since 2000, charging $150/day per prisoner. Several Corporations like GEO group and Care Civic and Management Corporation run the prisons in security, catering etc. These private prisons rely on long term prisoners paid out of the Federal budget. The prison system is based on market forces, profiteering from inmates.

Black Lives Matter 

The BLM movement orientated in 2013 after the Police officer acquittal of the shooting dead of an African American, George Zimmerman, in 2012. The movement became further energised after further black shootings in Fergusson in 2014. The BLM movement is inspired by the black movement in the 1980’s and supported the anti apartheid movement in S. Africa. The movement also supports LGBTQ rights. BLM stood a candidate in the 2015 Presidential election.

In 2016 BLM became a coalition of over 60 groups, calling for the end of mass surveillance, investment in education not incarceration and community control of policing, with the right to hire and fire police officers. The movement is prominent in organizing the mass protests after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis adopting the slogans ‘l cant breath’ and ‘Hands up don’t shoot.’ Solidarity with the BLM comes from Australia , Canada, New Zealand, Britain and across the EU.

Changes are already taking place, like investment being diverted from Policing to Education in Minneapolis, the city George Floyd was killed and Police practice is now to be reviewed in many states; However reforms alone will not be enough to end racial discrimination in America. The BLM must development into an anti-capitalist movement and end the system of Capitalism which will continue to divide people along racial lines. This movement has the International potential world wide to unite people and raise the demand for a socialist alternative to Capitalism/Nazism.


⏩ Harry Hutchinson: Labour Party NI (EC member) - Tyrone peoples Assembly/Dail - Left Horizon (International socialist).

America - A Mature Nazi State

Dan Lawton discusses the role of lawyers in perpetuating racism.

On Tuesday, I read "Leading Change," a mass email which arrived in my in box that morning. It was another in a series of recent lawyerly declamations about racism and injustice. Its author was William C. Koch, Jr., president of the American Inns of Court. It read:

The founders of our nation ... understood that liberty under the law is the finest way of life humanity could imagine ... Lawyers, like the courts themselves ... are the protectors of the powerless ... We will encourage all members of our noble profession to look to change, to look to improvement, and promote equal justice under the law...

It went on like that.

I wondered what the average recipient's elapsed time of reading Mr. Koch's statement might be. Mine was about 20 seconds. I hit delete.

The mass of lawyers know better. We are not the problems of racism and injustice. But we are the biggest part of those problems. Let me explain.

"The founders of our nation" — please. Several of the framers of the federal Constitution were lawyers. Several also were slave-owners. Acting together, they baked federal protection of the slave trade and slavery itself into the Constitution. The fallout is still with us 232 years later. Nice going, founders.

"Protecting the powerless"? The most esteemed and well-paid lawyers of their times tirelessly petitioned legislatures and judges to squelch abolition and expand slavery into the territories. A lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, persuaded Congress to outlaw slavery, in 1865. But, afterward, generations of lawyers created Jim Crow laws, enforced them, and defended them from court challenges. They kept black Americans off juries and out of polling stations. They barred them from testifying in court even in their own defense. One county enacted an ordinance imposing a penalty for lynching. It was payment of $100 to the county where the victim resided.

In the 1960s, lawyers issued ringing denunciations of the civil rights laws with righteous passion and high-sounding oratory.

If you doubt this, listen to the audio of the oral argument of attorney Moreton Rolleston, Jr., at the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States in 1964. The issue was whether the federal government had the power to require Rolleston's client, an Atlanta motel, to rent rooms to black travelers against its will. As the hearing winds down, the justices seem skeptical. Rolleston's voice rises with indignation. Perhaps sensing he has already lost, he yells at the justices. He denounces the very idea that the law could possibly require letting paying black Americans sleep in a rented room.

Rolleston, a prominent lawyer, lost that day. But I expect he went home full of pride that, in front of the highest court in the land, he had displayed advocacy skills of which his mentors and law professors would have been proud.

In 2006, I sued police officers for civil rights violations inflicted on my client, Bernard Miller, during an early-morning arrest at a motel in the Simi Valley. The ostensible reason for the arrest was Bernard's resemblance to the "El Torito Bandit." The bandit liked to stick up restaurants after closing time in Los Angeles County. The sketch artist's image of the mysterious man shown in the LAPD composite sketch bore zero resemblance to Bernard, with one exception: both men were black.

Soon after the bandit struck again, a motel clerk told police that Bernard had checked into a room along with two other people. Six officers descended on the room. With weapons drawn, they arrested Bernard. They subjected him to a lengthy and humiliating search. Bernard feared the officers would shoot him or beat him.

In the end, they let Bernard go. There were no charges, of course. The police never caught the "El Torito Bandit."

Afterward, our noble profession and legal system let Bernard down. The police lawyered. There was no mistaking what the law firm was there to do: trivialize what the officers did, invoke qualified immunity on their behalf, and prevent by any means permissible the payment of a dime to a young man whom their clients had deeply traumatized. At a summary judgment hearing, Judge Virginia Phillips denied the officers qualified immunity. Bernard and the officers would have to face a jury, she said.

It was a fleeting victory.

On the day of oral argument at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Bernard sat in the front row of the gallery. The senior judge on the panel was Andrew Kleinfeld of Alaska. Kleinfeld either didn't recognize Bernard as the plaintiff or didn't care that he was present in person. "Nice people aren't out at 2 o'clock in the morning," Kleinfeld said, twice, distinguishing himself from Bernard Miller. "They're home and in bed."

Kleinfeld authored the unpublished decision that came out soon afterward. He ruled that the officers had qualified immunity after all. We had lost and the police had won. Kleinfeld had gratuitously added insult to the injury.

The people who made it all possible, of course, were lawyers, the "champions of reason and civility." They would tell you that they were doing their duty. I would agree with them. They would also tell you that, of course, justice had prevailed. I expect they got high-fives from their clients. In professional skill and propriety, they had deeply distinguished themselves. None of them was a racist, of course.

And yet. If you could sum up what they told Bernard Miller in one sentence, it was this:

White police officers are within their rights to point their guns at you, an innocent black man, arrest you falsely and without probable cause, humiliate you deeply, and avoid a jury trial over what they did. Sorry.

Only none of them said, "Sorry."

No one says, "sorry," either, to the white victims of police brutality.

One of them, the late Kelly Thomas, was from my home town, Fullerton. Kelly was a paranoid schizophrenic. Mostly, he lived on the street, near the train station. One night in 2011, police responded to a call about someone breaking into parked cars. When the officers approached, Kelly seemed evasive and uncooperative. The officers wanted to search him. Kelly was unarmed, and he didn't try to fight the officers. But he didn't want to be searched, either. So the officers kicked and beat him. They used fists, a Taser, batons. Their names were Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli.

In the surveillance video, Kelly can be heard screaming in pain and crying out for his father. He died five days later in the hospital. Looking at a photo of Kelly in his hospital bed reminds me of Sharon Tate or one of Charles Manson's other victims that night at Cielo Drive.

It seemed like an open-and-shut case of police brutality. But Ramos and Cicinelli lawyered up. They weren't racists. They were just murderers with badges and guns. At their murder trial, their lawyers won Ramos and Cicinelli acquittals. Those lawyers were just doing their jobs too.

These days, no one talks about Kelly Thomas. Except in Fullerton, his name has been forgotten. But he is as dead as George Floyd, and got about the same amount of justice as Floyd did.

Can you think of a disgraceful episode in U.S. history that was not either designed by lawyers or defended by them with a straight face afterward? Choose your favorite outrage. Bondage. Jim Crow. The internment of Japanese-Americans. Oppression of women and gays. Torturing prisoners under interrogation.

We lawyers enabled every one. So don't tell me how wonderful it is, because it isn't.

Enough with rhetoric meant for public consumption and our own glorification. Maybe we can do something worthwhile. At the same time, we can help our profession live down its checkered reputation, one which is well-deserved.

➽ Dan Lawton is a lawyer and writer in California.

We're The Biggest Part Of The Problem

From Vox ➤ US cities and racist policing. 

By Anna North
Eugene Williams, a 17-year-old black boy, was stoned to death by white people in 1919 after he swam into what they deemed the wrong part of Lake Michigan.

In response, black people in Chicago rose up in protest, and white people attacked them. More than 500 people were injured and 38 were killed. Afterward, the city convened a commission to study the causes of the violence.

The commission found “systemic participation in mob violence by the police,” Khalil Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of the book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, told Vox. 

When police officers had the choice to protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.

Continue reading @ Vox.

How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities, Explained By A Historian


Michael Shaw Mahoney remembers Breonna Taylor, murdered earlier this year by US police.

“Say her name! Breonna Taylor! Say her name! Breonna Taylor!” This chant has rung out in Louisville, Kentucky these past two weeks as marchers flood the streets of Breonna Taylor’s hometown. Breonna Taylor, a black woman and an EMT, was murdered in her bed by some trigger happy policemen this past March.



Members of the Louisville Metro Police Department busted down her door and emptied shells into Breonna as she slept. Her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, roused by the break-in, had drawn his gun to defend Breonna, but the cops ended up missing him and killing a completely defenseless woman. She never had a chance. She lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, in a place where a No-Knock Warrant police tactic had become common. A drug dealer, already arrested 10 miles from Taylor and Walker’s apartment, once made a drug deal at that residence. But not anytime recently. That drug deal had absolutely nothing to do with Taylor and Walker.

The Breonna Taylor case got little attention in March of this year as Covid-19 spread like wildfire across America. When the world witnessed the horror of George Floyd’s suffocation in Minneapolis, Breonna’s case bobbed up and people in Louisville, and around the nation for that matter, began to take interest. Her murder was just as egregious as George Floyd’s, but there’s no video evidence of the travesty.

The Louisville policemen who killed Breonna Taylor did not turn on their video cams. Immediately after the drug bust that should never have happened, the police shooters interviewed Breonna’s mother to find out if her daughter had any enemies, if maybe she’d been fighting with her boyfriend recently. The police were already trying to cover their tracks with some bogus narrative. 

For the past two weeks the Black Lives Matter movement in Louisville, Kentucky has occupied Jefferson Square in the center of the city. The square is flanked by local government buildings and the Jefferson County Jail, where well over 50% of the detainees are black. The Louisville chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) wants police reform and immediate justice for Breonna Taylor. They are not alone in wanting the conviction of the police officers guilty of her murder.


Some claim this is simply a policing matter, a question of policy. Others contend Breonna’s case is a function of systemic racism in American policing. The police in Louisville do not bust down the doors of white residents and shoot white women in their sleep. That pretty much never happens. There’s plenty of illicit drug use and drugs activity in the East End of town, a place with a majority white population, but those extreme police measures are not used there. Of course they’re not.

Like cities across America, Louisville has been the scene of rallies, protests, and protest marches. On Saturday, June 6, thousands gathered in Jefferson Square for a memorial service for Breonna. Thousands of balloons in blue and silver, Breonna’s favorite colors, were released at 6:00 pm to honor her memory. The Reverend Jesse Jackson was in town for the day. Pop stars like Beyonce tweeted their support. My sister Monica Mahoney, a local artist, made her own sign with a drawing of Breonna with the words “Rest In Power” emblazoned on it.

For the past week I have gone down to Jefferson Square to show my support for Black Lives Matter. My son Lorenzo Miguel Mahoney has joined me for several marches and car caravans through the city. The marches have drawn a diverse crowd, both blacks and whites. But not so much young and old. The city’s black youth has been impressively represented, and young black people, some of them just teenagers, have led at the front or held the mic for chants, which include “Not all lives matter until black lives matter” and “You can’t stop the revolution.”

The first protests in the city were greeted by the police and the Kentucky National Guard with tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray balls. Dressed like faceless robocops with plexiglass shields, the security personnel pushed the protesters aside and fired on them indiscriminately. Occasionally the protesters, enraged and justifiably so, fought back.

In one incident on June 1, two police officers and two guardsmen crossed a parking lot on 26th Street and Broadway. The location is deep in the West End of Louisville, a predominantly black section of Louisville. Cassius Clay, the man we all know as Muhammad Ali, grew up there and went to Central High School, located a block north of Broadway. The four armed security personnel descended with menace on a barbecue joint owned and run by David “YaYa” McAtee. McAtee was a popular figure in the West End, a kind of father figure to the youth and a man who regularly gave free barbecue to the police. He was known as the BBQ Man.



A group of black teenagers fled a tent erected at the front of the BBQ place and  sought shelter in McAtee’s place of business. McAtee came to the door, drew a gun, and fired two shots. There’s still some speculation about where McAtee aimed, in the air or at the four armed intruders. His shots did not hit anyone. A guardsman, however, put a bullet right through McAtee’s chest. The BBQ Man retreated into his business, dropped the gun, and found a place to fall and die.

A mural for David McAtee appeared in downtown Louisville the next day. Some say McAtee was dumb to draw a gun, others say he’s a martyr, another victim of the heavy-handed policing of blacks in a country that has descended into racial disharmony and open bigotry during the Trump presidency. McAtee’s name is also chanted in the marches, which with the exception of a few scuffles here and there have been peaceful this past week.

Last night, Lorenzo and I joined the march that set off from Jefferson Square. About 300 people, black and white, marched in the streets. Cars formed a wall in the front and back. For some it was a festive event, not much different from the huge Derby party that blocks Broadway each May in the city during the Kentucky Derby Festival. But of course even with the cars jockeying for position, with black youngsters hanging out of windows, the purpose of the marches has been clear: police brutality against black folks in the United States has to end. George Floyd’s horrific murder showed the world that things must change.

Nobody in the protests is ever going to forget the names of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. We’re never going to forget the many examples of injustice perpetrated by the Louisville Metro Police. Many of our white leaders, including Mayor Fischer, are mealy-mouthed, middle class men in button down shirts. They talk a good game but do next to nothing. Wealthy and middle class liberals in the city talk about white fragility and bemoan micro-aggressions against blacks and other minorities. They are well-meaning but have been conspicuously absent in the local marches.

There are some us, children of the sixties, who came of age around the time of the punk era. We were influenced by Bob Marley, The Clash, The Specials, and sometimes even by Stiff Little Fingers, a highly political band from Belfast in Northern Ireland. To us this time feels like the Vietnam and Civil Rights protests of the sixties, maybe with less chemical inspiration and definitely less casual sex. As Henry Rollins of Black Flag once said, “Do not be dismayed, this is what Joe Strummer prepared you for.” But we are a minority. The Black Lives Matter movement in Louisville is a youth phenomenon.

We have been living a nightmare these past four years with the abomination that is Donald Trump. We hope the tide is turning. Those of us dedicated to smashing Trump and MAGA have been so disappointed on so many occasions in recent times that pessimism has become a disease as real and frustrating as Covid-19. Maybe this time will be different. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David  McAtee, and a host of others deserve our dedication to the struggle for real change. Fight the power. 




 ➽Michael Shaw Mahoney (MA Queen's University Belfast) is a school teacher from Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

Breonna Taylor And Black Lives Matter In Louisville, Kentucky

Stanley L. Cohen with a piece on the endemic racism within the USA.

Everywhere is War

By Bob Marley

Until the philosophy
Which hold one race superior and another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war
Me say war

That until there no longer
First class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the color of a man’s skin
Is of no more significance than the color of his eyes
Me say war

That until the basic human rights
Are equally guaranteed to all
Without regard to race
Dis a war

That until that day
The dream of lasting peace,
World citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued,
But never attained
Now everywhere is war
War . . .

War in the east
War in the west
War up north
War down south
War war
Rumors of war . . .

And we know we shall win
As we are confident
In the victory

Of good over evil

Good over evil, yeah
Good over evil
Good over evil, yeah
Good over evil

I Can’t Breathe by Joni Sarah White.


Bob Marley, Rest in Power, reduced to lyric, words of consequence and self determination that have accompanied our collective journey since it began. At times, its vanguard has been the spoken word. At others, the pen; and, yes, more often than not, the rock, the mask, the gun has led the way. There is no singular correct or acceptable megaphone of resistance for those historically who have said enough. Defiance is dictated not by the aim of those who struggle but by the reach and tactic of those they fight. At times, sweet words and chant have triumphed while at others, tears and smoke and blood. But, rest assured, power concedes nothing without struggle. It never did and it never will.

Like a chorus of obedient social referees, pundits of all pedigree and purpose, the political and the pompous have tripped over one another the last few days as they race to be the first and loudest to dictate to hundreds of thousands in the streets, in this country, what is and what is not acceptable protest. All that has been missing from this stew of politically correct is announcing to the world, from statehouses and zoom alike, is the mascot… some of my best friends are …

There is nothing sui generis about rebellion. Its paradigm has generated definition and debate for time immemorial from those whose names have long outlived their imprint upon the times in which they lived… and often led. There is nothing complex about rebellion. It finds its legitimacy in the natural marrow of those who agree to step back from complete self determination with the expectation that this transfer of personal power to the state will, above all else, be met with full equality and due process. Simply put, it’s known as the social compact. It has long been the linchpin of state power, the legitimacy from which it derives that command or loses it when, like any contract, its breach outlives its defined and agreed to purpose.

At its core, the social compact reflects a long customary willingness of people to cede fundamental aspects of personal freedom to government in exchange for institutional concern and support for their health, safety and equality. This largely unconscious cede is very much a fragile connection, however, one that maintains relevance and purpose only so long and so far as people feel invested in the machinery of state, its credibility and its integrity. When those institutions that carry historically fail, people instinctively reclaim their limited loan of independence. For some, a legislative voice is the echo of that loss as they pursue traditional electoral process in an effort to regain a sense of equity and purpose. Others withdraw to the safety of their solitude finding comfort in isolation, hopeful and committed to the folly that political leadership will gratuitously meet their task if for no other reason than to hang on to personal posture and gain. Then stand those who have never found comfort or security in the notion that a loss of liberty necessarily means more freedom. It is to them that we owe much… naysayers of blind political faith who have earned the scorn of institutional liberals who, with ease, turn blind eye to the obvious… opting instead for the witting embrace of surreal political caste.
Future Now by Joni Sarah White.
Long ago compliance to comfort and denial was swept away by those who welcomed dare to the convenience of silence. There was, for example, a guy, a man named Paine, an author and revolutionary with Common Sense who with ferocious pen rejected any social compact that vested total, unilateral and endless power to a throne be it delivered from legacy birth or the voting booth. To Paine, the social compact’s aim was to protect the rights of each individual who entered into it:

A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of mind is concerned, he never surrenders it. He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is part, in preference and in addition to his own.

Never one to bind each new generation to the straps of the previous, Paine went further:

There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time or of commanding forever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be free to act for itself, in all cases, as the age and generation which preceded it.

Sage vision and powerful words by a pamphleteer-philosopher who rejected the Presidency turning, instead, caution to the wind as he returned to England and then to France where his words inspired yet another revolution. Though iconic, Paine’s voice has not been singular in the historical debate over the social compact in a country built of repression and rebellion of theft and talisman of vision and violence. These expressions speak to an inherent, ever-present, tension between an individual’s drive to climb a mountain they chase and the state’s demand it control the nature of that journey… always, of course, because it’s in their legislated best interest. Others have tasted the acidic strain between ideal and fidelity.

To liberated slave Frederick Douglas …

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

To abolitionist John Brown, pursuit of personal principle was above all else the defining expression of one’s poise:

Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the crafty, confiding with the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity.

Legendary Apache leader Geronimo summed up, like few others, the interconnect between resistance and outside stare.

I know I have to die sometime, but even if the heavens were to fall on me, I want to do what is right. I think I am a good man, but in the papers all over the world they say I am a bad man; but it is a bad thing to say about me. I never do wrong without a cause.

While crowned by some, perhaps many, for his dutiful obey to non-violence Martin Luther King reminded us that


“…a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Malcolm X opined . . .


If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her.

These words of resistance are not mere abstract sentiment of an academic circle podcast for the detached and unaffected to debate as if their target has not repeated itself over and over and over and can, by magical ignore, somehow be reduced to isolated anomaly. To the contrary, they confront a hardscrabble road of a history that has demanded silence and obedience from those against whom it has all too often extracted the ultimate pain and punishment born of race and little else.

There is no uniform shout. Nor is its march a singular one… the product of inherited skin and pain alone. Today, all over this country, young white women and men have joined their family of color in announcing in a clear, unified and unmistakable voice that the social compact is shattered… a vehicle of power and promise for but the chosen few. For the cynics who dispatch the motivation of those who, themselves, have not felt the sting of racial hate and divide, legendary anarchist Emma Goldman, spoke long ago of a bond sculpted not by the individual but the rejoice of the collective:

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political transcends anything I myself may have endured.

Long ago the social compact provided hope in the United States for a better destiny one built of equality and justice. An essential part of that historical narrative is the guarantee that a host of fundamental rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be more than an abstract tease but, rather, constitute a core warranty of various liberties to be embraced and protected by the state for generations to come.

In its best of light we have long seen many of these rights sacrificed to the mantle of political expedience. Increasingly subtle erosion has become a full-on assault by the state on the reproductive rights of women, on the LGBTQ community, on equal protection and due process, on immigrants, refuges, religious diversity and political speech and association. In its worst of glare, for time immemorial lives have been taken by the state for no reason other than the color of one’s skin.

This past week twenty-eight cities from coast to coast were shuttered by an unprecedented curfew, one reasoned to reduce “violence” but in reality designed to tamp down on mass dissent demanding an end to state attacks on communities of color and social justice. Just days ago hundreds of peaceful protestors bearing signs and song in front of the White House were attacked by a rampage of federal officers firing tear and pepper gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades, knocking demonstrators and reporters alike to the ground. All in an effort to remove them from ear and eyesight of the President as he swaggered along to posture in front of a closed church as so much a cheap prop, with upside down Bible in hand.

The streets of this country are filled with a cry of conscience not heard in more than half a century. It is a powerful united, demanding voice whether arched by passive resistance or pushed, in the eyes of some, by unsettling militant response. Yet, to ignore its shout or to reduce its legitimacy on the basis of its means of message is to guarantee history will once again repeat itself, adding to an already unbearable timeless graveyard of those entombed by race, and race alone.

The social compact is broken. It has become time worn and tattered; a failed march of madness, one that speaks yet of lofty ideal, but acts daily with the uncontrolled darkness of systemic hate and violence, its list of victims . . . endless.

Death by Police

ERIC GARNER-JOHN CRAWFORD III-MICHAEL BROWN-EZELL FORD-DANTE PARKER-MICHELLE CUSSEAUX-LAQUAN MCDONALD-GEORGE MANN-TANISHA ANDERSON-AKAI GURLEY-TAMIR RICE-RUMAIN BRISBON-JERAME REID-MATTHEW AJIBADE-FRANK SMART-NATASHA MCKENNA-TONY ROBINSON-ANTHONY HILL-MYA HALL-PHILLIP WHITE-ERIC HARRIS-WALTER SCOTT-WILLIAM CHAPMAN II-ALEXIA CHRISTIAN-BRENDON GLENN-VICTOR MANUEL LAROSA-JONATHAN SANDERS-FREDDIE BLUE-JOSEPH MANN-SLAVADO ELLSWOOD-SANDRA BLAND-ALBERT JOSEPH DAVIS-DARRIUS STEWART-BILLY RAY DAVIS-SAMUEL DUBOSE-MICHAEL SABBIE-BRIAN KEITH DAY-CHRISTIAN TAYLOR-TROY ROBINSON-ASSHAMS PHAROAH MANLEY-FELIX KUMI-KEITH HARRISON MCLEOD-JUNIOR PROSPER-LAMONTEZ JONES-PATERSON BROWN-DOMINIC HUTCHINSON-ANTHONY ASHFORD-ALONZO SMITH-TYREE CRAFORD-INDIA KAGER-LA’VANTE BIGGS-MICHAEL LEE MARSHALL-JAMAR CLARK-RICHARD PERKINS-NATHANIEL HARRIS PICKETT-BENI LEE TIGNOR-MIGUEL ESPINAL-MICHAEL NOEL-KEVIN MATTHEWS-BETTIE JONES-QUINTONIO LEGRIER-KEITH CHILDRES JR.-JANET WILSON-RANDY NELSON-ANTRONIE SCOTT-WENDELL CELESTINE-DAVID JOSEPH-CALIN ROQUEMORE-DYZHAWN PERKINS-CHRISTOPHER DAVIS-MARCO LOUD-PETER GAINES-TORREY ROBINSON-DARIUS ROBINON-KEVIN HICKS-MARY TRUXILLO-DEMARCUS SEMER-WILLIE TILLMAN-TERRILL THOMAS-SYLVILLE SMITH-ALTON STERLING-PHILANDO CASTILE- TERENCE CRUTCHER-PAUL O’NEAL-ALTERIA WOODS-JORDON EDWARDS-AARON BAILEY-RONELL FOSTER-STEPHEN CLARK-ANTWON ROSE II-BOTHAM JEAN- PAMELA TURNER-DOMINIQUE CLAYTON-ATATIANA JEFFERSON-CHRISTOPHER WHITFIELD-CHRISTOPHER MCCORVEY-ERIC REASON-MICHAEL LORENZO DEAN-BREONNA TAYLOR-GEORGE FLOYD.

This is a non-comprehensive list of deaths of people of color at the hands of police in the U.S. since Eric Garner’s death in July 2014. LA Johnson/NPR. See here for background on a few of these victims.

Death by Lynching/Execution

AZARIAH CURTIS-3 UNIDENTIFED BLACK MEN-MANUEL DUNEGAN-RAY PORTER, EDARD PRATER-ALBERT SLOSS-ALEXANDER HERMAN-5 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MEN-1 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MAN- ERNEST MURPHY-SAMUEL VERGE- ROBERT MOSELEY-HENRY MCKENNY-BUD BEARD-ROXIE ELLIOT-GRANT RICHARDSON-WILLIAM FOURNAY-JOHN BROWN-FRANK REEVES,-JESSE MATSON- JOHN CALLOWAY-JACK PHARR-WES JOHNSON-JONATHAN JONES- N/A PEDIGRIE-JOHN JONES-RAY ROLSTON-WILLIE BREWSTER-WILLIAM WALLACE-HOLLAND ENGLISH-MARSAL MCGREGOR-WALTER CLAYTON-3UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MEN-WILLIAM SMITH-JAMES JACKSON-4 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MEN-CO.ATTY. ALXEANDER BOYD-1UNIDENTIFIED BLACKMAN-
3 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MEN-CLEVELAND HARDING-WILLIAM JONES-JOHN STEELE-JAMES BROWN-JERRY JOHNSON-N/A THOMAS- WILSON GARDNER-1 UNIDENTIFED BLACK MAN- ADDIE MAE COLLINS-DENISE MCNAIRM (age 11)- CAROL ROBERTSON (age 14)- JOHNNY ROBINSON( age 16)- VIRGIL WARE (age 13)- JOHN KELLOG-JAMES THOMAS-RICHARD BURTON-MACK SEGARS-CHARLES HUNT-1 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MAN-WILLIAM MILLER-GEORGE HOES-PERRY SMALL- 3 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK WOMEN-N/A REID-WILLIS PERKINS-N/A STOVER-NEIL GUINN-WILLIAM WARDLEY-JOSHUA BALAAM-LEWIS BALAAM-HORACE MAPLES-ELIJAH CLARK-ROBERT MOSELY-2 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK COUPLES-SAM WRIGHT-4 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK MEN-JOHN HAYDEN-WILLIAM LEWIS-EPHREIM POPE-CHARLES HUM PHREY-CHARLES BENTLEY-N/A DAVENPORT-WILLIAM POWEL-JESSIE POWEL-GEORGE HARRIS-RUBEN SIMS-ISAAC COOK-OLIVER JACKSON-WILLIAM WESTMORLAND-HENRY ADAMS-JOHN DELL-N/A FOUKAL-M. PHIFER- R. CROSKEY-WILLIE EDWARDS-BUD DAVIS- ALLEN PARKER- JOHN BROWNLEE-1 UNIDENTIFIED BLACK SECURITY GUARD-TOBE MCGRADY-JAMES WILLIAMS-JOHN MARRITT-POE HIBBLER-LEMUEL WEEKS-MOSES DOSSETT-EBEN CALHOUN-THOMAS BROWNE-GEORGE MEADOWS-RICHARD ROBINSON-EDWARD PLOWLY-WILLIAM PLOWLY-JONATHAN LIPSEY- HENRY PETERS-JOHN WOMACK

This is a very partial list of past lynchings/executions of men, women and children from the 1800’s to mid 1900’s, from Alabama alone. For a more complete list of the thousands of those lynched including in all states see:

View From Here: Never Forget - (The Lynching List).

See also: Police kill unarmed blacks more often, especially when they are women, study finds

More articles by Stanley L Cohen


Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City. 
He has done extensive work in the Middle East
and Africa. 
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Everywhere Is War

Michael McDowell writing in the Irish Times on the racism driving Donald Trump.

In July, 2017, Donald Trump, newly elected president of the United States, organised a rally of uniformed police officers on Long Island in New York state. His audience were ranged in front of him and a number were seated behind him as he spoke. This was a classical visual format to suggest to television audiences that his uniformed audience were, in effect, supportive of him and his remarks.

Boris Johnson, by the way, unsuccessfully tried a similarly crass visual stunt in the course of the run-up to his 2019 election campaign, addressing police in West Yorkshire – having kept his uniformed trainee police officer audience waiting an hour. It backfired for Johnson.

But not so for Trump, who grossly abused his office (and the police officers’ offices) at Long Island to speak to his own grassroots in nasty, dog-whistle racist terms.

Referring to gang members and to what he termed “criminal aliens”, Trump told his Long Island police audience: “They’re animals.” He said that he had a simple message for them, “We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you and we will deport you.”

Continue reading @  Irish Times.

Black Americans Fear The Future And So Should We

Anthony McIntyre reflects on current disturbances taking place in the United States. 

America is turning into a police state in front of our eyes. Many might well feel it has been such for quite some time. The unaccountable actions of the racist police have caused huge frustration in which resentment took strong roots and in recent years has been articulated through the Black Lives Matter movement and campaign.

Where black lives don't matter very much is in the minds and intentions of those who sustain the systemic racism that has so characterised US society but which officialdom has sought to depict as being something from a bygone age. America is led, and continuously misled, by a racist president. The national leadership in America that was happy to allow a cretin to assume the office of president and brazenly lie every day of his incumbency has a lot to answer for.

For days now our television screens have served up incessant footage of nation wide disturbances as I Can't Breathe protestors flock to the streets.

From Los Angeles to Miami to Chicago, protests marked by chants of "I can't breathe" - a rallying cry echoing the dying words of George Floyd - began peacefully before turning unruly as demonstrators blocked traffic, set fires and clashed with riot police, some firing tear gas and plastic bullets in an effort to restore order.

At this very moment right across the US, those protestors are being confronted by mobs of Pig Power activists in police uniform. The public lynching of George Floyd in Minnesota last Monday was the catalyst but this time bomb had been on a slow burning fuse. For years we have been hearing of black men and women being murdered by the cops as US society's endemic institutionalised racism, always lurking like a croc just beneath the surface, pounced on its prey. Accountability is as rare as an honest creationist.

The charging of the brutal cop, Derekkk Chauvin, has done nothing to alleviate tensions. He is being prosecuted on a charge of third degree murder which is basically manslaughter. The lawyer representing the family of George Floyd has called for the charge to be upgraded to first degree murder. George Floyd was publicly garrotted by a racist cop. Everybody watched it. Chauvin knew what he was doing: he heard his victim's anguished gasps for breath and ignored them, appearing to derive sadistic satisfaction from the life ebbing away beneath his knee.



Last night my wife, a US national, sat up to watch live TV coverage as the cameras moved from city to city, and where those behind the cameras were also targeted by the cops, no doubt emboldened by the President-sponsored fatwa issued against the media. She felt it was a gesture of solidarity with those standing up to the Pig Power movement, much like she had sat up each night of the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza when Israel set about the murder of Palestinian civilians with a Nazi-like brutality. Then she livestreamed the war crimes being directed by the criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Last night she tweeted incessantly in support of those being attacked by Pig Power. I don’t have the stamina for it, and after watching some episodes of Le Reina Del Sur, lubricated by whiskey, I went up to bed and fell asleep, a few pages into a book on the religious right in the US. It seemed appropriate reading material given that the Pig Power offensive against black people is inextricably embedded in a crackpot culture of creationism, narrow minded bigotry and know-nothingism. Eugene Debs, in 2018, observed that "for in every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both."

Watching Pig Power jackboot through the streets of American cities, equipped with state of the art protective apparel, the contrast has not been missed. Health workers, who really were trying to make an authentic contribution to society, refusing to discriminate on the grounds of colour, were compelled to operate on the front line often with little more than garbage bags to protect them from Covid-19.

There is much at stake for the legitimacy of Western society when its supposed flagship state is licencing race war and unleashing the Pig Power Movement on its own citizens.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

America Is Burning

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