Many thanks to Drs. Kelly Harris and Pancho Macfarland for their invitation to have this discussion today at Chicago State University. We talked about the history of I Mix What I Like, #BlackLivesMatter, Colin Kaepernick and Nike, and even shared some silly intellectual “war” stories.

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  1. These 3 points may seem a bit off topic but… I could not find any site which is talking about these subjects & also allowing comments on the 3 following topics.

    TOPIC 1: On Sat [‘Shabbat’] Oct 27, 2018 a white gunman Robert Bowers, walked into a Pittsburg Synagogue during Shabbat Brit-Seder service, & opened fire w a AR15 killing 11, wounding 6 others including 4 responding COPS. He’s captured ALIVE, tho apparently he was ‘slightly’ wounded during his shoot-out w the cops, wounding 4 of them!
    – 2 days earlier on Oct 25, 2018 another white gunman Gregory Bush, guns-down 2 Black shoppers at a Krogers store in KY, one was a 69 yr old grandfather shot-down in front of his grandson, & the other a 67 yr old Black woman. It’s KNOWN Bush specifically targeted Black people in his shooting spree, because another shopper who was white, was approached by Bush. The guy tried to duck for cover behind a car in fear for his life, but Bush looked at him & said ‘Don’t worry dude, white people don’t shoot other white people.’. Bush was captured ALIVE, apparently without making a mark on him [it’s claimed he was suffers from so-called ‘mental illness’ – Well after what he said to the white guy IMO he sounds pretty damn sane & clear thinking].
    – James Holmes shot 82 people in a Denver movie theater with a shot-gun & a 100 round hi-capacity semi-automatic rifle, killing 12 of them. Holmes was then captured ALIVE outside the theater apparently without making a mark on him.
    – White gunman Nicolas Cruz shot 18 people to death in a FL school in 2018. Cruz was later that same day captured ALIVE apparently without making a mark on him.
    – And then there’s the case of white gunman Dylann Roof who walked into a Black church, sat thru prayer service, & then systematically in cold-blood shot 9 Black church members to death [most were 50 yrs old or older, 3 were over 70 yrs old & 6 were women]. Of course not only was ‘Demon’ Dylann captured alive without making a mark on him, but in fact the cops who arrested him even ‘treated’ him to a Big Mac & fries with a Big Gulp with that!!
    – Vs…
    UNARMED Mike Brown was gunned-down by Killer Cop Wilson while his hands were up & giving-up. Wilson shot Big Mike 8 – 9Xs including 3 to the top of his head execution style [apparently while Mike was either kneeling or stumbling forward after already being shot multiple Xs]. Big Mike was gunned-down like a mad-dog in the street & then his body was left in the blazing hot sun for 5 HRS!! Wilson was not charged.
    – 12 yr old Tamir Rice, ‘armed’ w a TOY ‘gun’, was gunned-down by Killer Cop Timothy Loehmann , within 2 seconds of rolling up on 12 yr old Tamir, who had his TOY ‘gun’ tucked in his waist-band [Loehmann literally jump out of his squad-car & shot Tamir before the car came to a full stop]. Loehmann was not charged & is in fact still a cop in Ohio.
    – John Crawford III was gunned-down in an Ohio Walmart within just 20-30 secs by 2 white cops as they arrived on the scene, while John was ‘armed’ w a TOY ‘rifle’ which he had just picked up off the Walmart’s shelf in the TOY section. Surveillance video clearly showed that the TOY ‘rifle’ was pointed at the ground, & it must be noted that Walmart is the biggest retail seller of REAL guns & ammo in the US, & also that Ohio is an open carry state. Neither white cop was charged with Mr Crawford’s wrongful death.
    – UNARMED Amadou Diallo was shot 41 Xs by 4 NYPD cops while entering his own home. Amadou was ‘armed’ with only his house keys. The 4 NYPD cops were charged w 2nd degree murder but were acquitted. Some of those killer cops remained on the NYPD for yrs, with one [Ken ‘Boss’] being promoted to Sgt in 2015 [Note: Sgt ‘Boss’ had gunned-down another unarmed Black-man 2 yrs earlier].
    – UNARMED Oscar Grant was shot in the back by Killer Cop Johannes Mehserle, while Oscar was laying face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. Mehserle was charged with 2nd degree murder but was convicted of just involuntary manslaughter & served just 8 months in jail, even tho he had fled the state w several thousand dollars, before his arrest.
    – Laquan McDonald was gunned-down by Killer Cop Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke shot Laquan 16 Xs, 14 Xs after Laquan was down on the ground in the prone position. Laquan was only ‘armed’ with a pocket-knife which was pointed down at the ground. Laquan was clearly walking away from Van Dyke & the other CPD cop on scene before Van Dyke arrived [the space between them & Laquan was approx 10 – 15 FT], yet Van Dyke literally stepped around the other cop on the scene to open fire on Laquan. For over a yr Killer Cop Van Dyke was not charged, due to what was effectively a cover-up by Mayor Rahmbo’s, the CPD’s & the State’s Attny’s offices, who all apparently helped to suppressed / hid the video that showed just how Van Dyke gunned-down Laquan like a mad-dog in the street. IMO Van Dyke only got charged after activists managed to over the course of a yr, get the video publicly shown- Leading to a public uproar by Black Chicagoans. Van Dyke has just been convicted of 2nd degree murder, which IMO is a bit surprising that a majority white jury in Chicago would actually convict a white CPD cop for gunning-down a Black youth.
    – And this is just a very short list of such cases, I could go on & on like this.
    – In each of the above cases of white KILLER cops gunning-down essentially UNARMED Blacks, the cops ‘swore’ they ‘felt’ threatened & were in fear for their lives &/or their dead victim made some kind of ‘threatening move’ [including Oscar Grant even tho he was laying face-down on the ground w his hands cuffed behind him, when Mehserle shot him in the back]. And this is the same LYING meme they spew out whether their Black victim is a youth, man, woman, elder &/or child!!

    But this LYING meme is belied by the fact that when it comes to ARMED white gunmen who actually have not only aimed & fired their weapons, but even when they do shoot people [even to death, including cops]- somehow the cops can manage to capture them alive, oft-times doing so without even making a mark on them!!


    TOPIC 2- Re the Recent Death of the ‘Queen of Soul’ Aretha Franklin: A bit of a fake controversy was hyped up due to the invitation of NOI leader Min Louis Farrakhan to Aretha Franklin’s funeral. Tho Min. Farrakhan sat on the front row with Jesse Jackson & ex POTUS Bill ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton, he was not invited to speak publicly at the funeral. Of course the lame-stream media made a bit of a fuss over the issue of the so-called “Black Hitler’s” presence at the ‘Queen of Soul’ funeral, but few seem to be nearly as interested at who was NOT there, one Barrack H.Obama. Amazingly Obama failed to attend Aretha Franklin’s funeral [& I don’t think he sent Michelle either], even tho the ‘queen of Soul’ personally ‘serenaded’ Obama at his Jan 2009 inauguration as the US’ 1st Black POTUS & she was in fine form, even tho she was not in the best of health. Obama’s dubious excuse for his absence, that he was schedule to eulogize John [‘insane’] McCain at his funeral the next day –YET- Slick Willy Clinton managed to attend both Aretha Franklin’s & ‘Insane’ McCain’s funerals so why couldn’t Obama do the same??!
    And this ain’t the first time Obama went MIA / AWOL during a key event for a Black iconic figure. On April 4, 2008 the ‘Obama Candidate’ also FAILED to show up / was a ‘no-show’ for the 40th anniversary of Rev Dr MLK’s death, instead choosing to keep campaigning in Hoosier-Ville Indiana. Yet both Billary Clinton & even Repug John McCain temporarily suspended their campaigns to make their appearance at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to pay their respects to MLK’s memory [McCain even used the venue to apologized for his opposition to the making MLK’s birthday an official US holiday], but NOT the ‘Obama Candidate’.
    – So Obama WTF’s up with that?? Do you get a kick out of making a point of dissing Black icons who’ve passed on??


    TOPIC 3: In a Oct 26 article @ CounterPunch titled: ‘American Racial Politics, Increased Barbarity Ahead’ [see @ http://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/26/american-racial-politics-increased-barbarity-ahead/ , the author [Reza Fiyouzat] reviews Dim Billary’s 2016 loss to Repug Trump, especially in the 3 key [traditionally ‘blue’] states of Mich, Wis & Penn State, which Billary lost to Trump[ by a sum total of just 40K – 80K votes which gave him a comfortable margin of 46 electoral college [EC] votes. Despite the article’s title & featuring a pix of 3 older white-women Trump supporters, I was a bit confused & even disconcerted with what seemed to be a main thrust of this article- Which IMO is encapsulated in these key excerpts:
    } According to the Vox article referenced above and a Washington Post report from Dec 1, 2016, between 40,000 and 80,000 voters in only three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) decided the 2016 presidential election, based on electoral college [EC] votes; the popular votes were in favor of Clinton by three million… – Here is yet another dimension to consider. How about the number of Democratic Party voters who voted in 2012 compared to that number in 2016? Maybe the lower number of Democratic voters in 2016 can account for the 40,000-80,0000 number that decided the 2016 presidential election?
    This from Forbes magazine may shed some light on the matter: “Take Michigan for example. A state that Obama won in 2012 by 350,000 votes, Clinton lost by roughly 10,000. Why? … Detroit and Wayne County should kick themselves because, of the 595,253 votes they gave Obama in 2012, only 518,000 voted for Clinton in 2016. More than 75,000 Motown Obama voters did not bother to vote for Clinton. They did not become Trump voters – Trump received only 10,000 votes more than Romney did in this county. They simply stayed at home. If even a fraction of these lethargic Democrats had turned out to vote, Michigan would have stayed blue.” (The Non-Voters Who Decided the Election: Trump Won Because Of Lower Democratic Turnout; Forbes, Nov 17, 2016)…
    “The most important states were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively — and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Those three wins gave him 46 electoral votes; if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she’d have won the electoral vote, too.” (The Democrats’ Real Turnout Problem; The New York Times, Nov 17, 2016) {
    – Thus this article via the NY-Times & especially Forbes magazine [owned by Repug billionaire Steve Forbes] curiously in effect blames not just any traditional Democrat voters, but BLACK {NON}’Voters’ in Detroit & Flint [& IMO Milwaukee & Philly too] who were too-damn lazy to bother voting, for Billary’s stunning upset loss to Repug Trump [tho the article doesn’t say this explicitly but IMO the implication’s clear]. Well I’ve got a problem with this so-called ‘analysis’. First it assumes had Billary won everything would just be ‘Cool & the Gang’ now, which IMO it wouldn’t be. But setting that aside for now, IMO this article commits several ‘sins of omission’ whether or not that was the author’s intent. There was no mention that Billary got at-least 88% – 90% [if not more] of the Black vote [along with 67% – 70% of Latinos’ vote], nor any mention of the SCOTUS Court gutting the VRA in 2013 [the yr after Obama’s successful 2012 re-election bid], nor Repugs’ shady voter-suppression tactics [IE: Cross-State Check], or that Billary failed to even bother to campaign in Mich & Wis as election-day Nov 2016 approached. And even tho this article featured a photo of 3 older white-women Trump supporters, it failed to mention that 53% – 55% of white-women voters voted for blatantly sexist-misogynist Trump, whose main opponent was ‘ironically’ a white-women; & there was even another white woman [GP’s Jill Stein] they could have voted for, if Dim Billary was just too ‘slick & slimy’ for them to vote for.
    – So let’s turn this scenario around: Instead of the author [or be it Forbes &/or the NY-Times] nit-picking about had a mere 0.2% of Black voters in Detroit & Flint voted, ditto re 0.5% – 0.6% more Black voters in Milwaukee & Philly… I won’t even say what if white-women stats had flipped to 53% – 55% for Billary vs 45% – 47% for Trump… What if Billary still just got 45% – 47% of white-women’s votes but Trump had only gotten 30% – 40% of their vote with the other 10% – 20% of white-women voters who voted Trump either staying home, voting for Jill Stein or even Libertarian Gary Johnson; or even if they’d split white-women’s vote 49% – 50% for Billary vs 48% – 49% for Repug Trump?? There’d be no-need to be quibbling over mere fractions of a percentage point in 3 states for a grand total of a mere 80,000 votes to squeak-out a 272 – 276 EC vote victory for Billary. Had she won a solid or even a slim margin of white-women’s votes in Nov 2016 & got the same number of Black & Brown votes, she’d won the EC comfortably & be sitting in the Oval-Office right now!! IMO it’s a curiously disingenuous critique to implicitly try to blame Black voters for Billary’s defeat when they voted for her to the tune of 88% – 90% while failing to even mention the fact that white-women voted FOR Repug Trump to the tune of 53% – 55%- Humm…

    1. 2 Addendums: 1: KY Kroger racist shooter Gregory bush has a long criminal record including: a protective order taken out against him by his ex-wife and charges of 2nd- and 4th-degree assault, menacing, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, terroristic threatening and intimidating a witness.

      Pnt 2: It’s known per the FBI, that substantially more cops are shot &/or killed by white perps than by Black ones.

  2. I was rightly corrected that I didn’t get the Wilderson story right. It was suggested that Mandela be released and die of natural causes not as I recount. And this was only to make a point – for me at least – about the corruption of movement and symbols and not a suggestion of what I want literally to happen.

  3. Right on. I really appreciate the thoughtful analysis that you and your guest bring to our issues.

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