NFL RACISM. REALLY??
GOAT
HATE CRIME??? AHMAUD ARBERY
Why “hate crime” has to be determined in court just shows how embedded racism in all American systems of justice.
PROSECUTOR READS RACIST MESSAGES BY AHMAUD ARBERY’S KILLER
Posted at 9:03 PM, November 12, 2020 and last updated 9:40 AM, October 13, 2021
By RUSS BYNUM Associated Press
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery had previously used racial slurs in a text message and on social media, a prosecutor said Thursday as a judge weighed whether to grant bond for the defendant and his father.https://players.brightcove.net/6009760719001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6209523115001
Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, have been jailed since their arrests in May, more than two months after Arbery was slain. The McMichaels, who are white, chased and fatally shot the 25-year-old Black man after they spotted him running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.
In this image made from video, from left, father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, accused in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia on Feb. 2020, listen via closed circuit tv in the Glynn County Detention center in Brunswick, Ga., on Thursday, Nov. 12, as lawyers argue for bond to be set at the Glynn County courthouse. The McMichaels chased and fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, after they spotted him running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.(AP Photo/Lewis Levine)
Questions about whether racism played a role in the killing sharpened during a previous hearing when an investigator testified that a third defendant, who took cellphone video of the shooting, told authorities he heard Travis McMichael, 34, utter a racial slur after he blasted Arbery three times with a shotgun.
In the courtroom Thursday, Zachary Langford — a friend of Travis McMichael’s since boyhood — testified his friend was a jokester who got along with everyone and had at least one Black friend.
Then prosecutor Jesse Evans asked Langford about a text message Travis McMichael had sent him last year that used a slur for Black people when referring to a “crackhead … with gold teeth.”
Langford at first said he didn’t recall receiving the message. Then after reviewing a transcript of the exchange, he answered: “He was referring to a raccoon, I believe.”
Evans also cited a photo Langford posted to Facebook last year to which Travis McMichael replied: “Sayonara,” along with an offensive term for Asians followed by an expletive. Langford said he didn’t recall that, either.
Defense attorneys for both McMichaels have denied any racist motives in the shooting. Right after the Feb. 23 shooting, Gregory McMichael told police that he and his son armed themselves and got in a pickup truck to pursue Arbery because they suspected he was a burglar.
“These men are proud of what they have done,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told the judge as she asked him to deny them bond. “They want to go home because they think in their selfish minds that they are the good guys.”
Prosecutors say Arbery was merely jogging when the McMichaels pursued him. Their defense attorneys insisted in court Thursday that’s not true.
“We have substantial evidence that, on the day in question, Mr. Arbery was not a jogger,” said Robert Rubin, one of Travis McMichael’s attorneys. “He was there for nefarious purposes.”
Rubin gave no evidence in court that Arbery was doing anything wrong the day he was shot.
Langford’s wife, Ashley Langford, testified that Travis McMichael expressed remorse about shooting Arbery.
“He told me he wished it never happened like that,” she said. “He prayed for Ahmaud’s mother and his family daily.”
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley adjourned court Thursday evening without a bond decision because there was still more evidence to be presented. He planned to continue the hearing Friday.
The McMichaels weren’t arrested until the cellphone video of the shooting leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case. In June, a grand jury indicted both McMichaels and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, on charges.
In this image made from video, from left, father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, accused in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia on Feb. 2020, speak to each other via closed circuit tv in the Glynn County Detention center in Brunswick, Ga., on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. The McMichaels chased and fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, after they spotted him running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick. (AP Photo/Lewis Levine)
Each is charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
Travis McMichael’s mother, Lee McMichael, testified that he lived with her and his father, has a 4-year-old son and doesn’t have a passport. His attorneys cited his past service as a U.S. Coast Guard mechanic as proof of his character.
“In no way, shape or form is Travis hateful towards any group of people, nor does he look down on anyone based on race, religion or beliefs,” Curt Hall, a former Coast Guard roommate of Travis McMichael who described himself as “multiracial,” wrote in a letter supporting bond for his friend.
Gregory McMichael, 64, is a retired investigator for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit district attorney’s office and a former Glynn County police officer.
The McMichaels’ attorneys are also asking the judge to reject the indictment’s malice murder charge, saying it was written in a way that improperly “charges two crimes in one count.” They made a similar argument for tossing out a charge of criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
Bryan was previously denied bond. His attorney has argued in court motions that the entire indictment should be dismissed.
WHEN ALL WHITE WAS ALL RIGHT
There is no legitimate or logical argument against inclusion. Consciously including racial groups can be one of the most effective reparative remedies for centuries of racial exclusion.
Only when we disentangle the concepts of whiteness and maleness from the concept of power can we see the damage the association has done. Only then can we truly accept and celebrate the power of inclusion, diversity and equity. Only then can representative democracy in a pluralistic society begin to live up to its ideals.
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POWER OF BOOKS
But those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be. Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question. A book can open doors and show the possibility of new experiences, even new identities and futures.
DON’T LET RACISM DEFINE THE EGYPTIAN PROTESTS
Chaos. Anarchy. Looting. Violence.
These are words you associate with any political activity that you want to discredit in the eyes of mainstream America. That is why it is essential to challenge any attempt by the media or politicians to frame the political protests in Egypt using such terms.
We must understand why this language is particularly loaded. It connects sweeping generalizations of the Muslim world with racist fears that many Americans associate with the urban “riots” of the 1960s, as well as the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In places like Detroit, as with cities across America, thousands of suburbanites still wrongly believe that everything was fine in the city until violent, extremist, and hate-filled blacks forced them to flee during the 1960s. The reality is that a situation that the white middle class viewed as normal, stable, prosperous was premised on job discrimination, housing segregation, political disenfranchisement, and police abuse against people of color.
While not a solution, the uprisings drew overdue attention to a dehumanizing and often violent system that millions of American overtly or tacitly supported. That is why political activists called them “rebellions” rather than “riots.” But Nixon’s conservative call for “law and order” fed on anxiety and prejudice.
In Egypt, a popular protest movement that has been widely supported by diverse and peaceful sectors of society is seeking the downfall of the three-decade long Mubarak dictatorship, which has quashed democratic opposition while reaping billions of dollars in American aid.
Yet, with millions of Americans paying at best cursory attention to these events and the history leading up to them, many will view Egypt primarily through the lens of fear and misguided self-interest. Scenes of looting and burning will be easily taken out of context unless we act quickly to counter these trends.
In one of his trademark mash-ups of Islamophobia, McCarthyism, and xenophobia, Glenn Beck has been warning listeners that revolution in Egypt “sets the entire Middle East on fire.” This will trigger “the communists and the Muslim radicals” taking over all of Europe. He then implies that sleeper cells will awaken to destroy America from within.
Egyptian blogger Mona Eltahawy chastised CNN, among many less extreme but still complicit outlets portraying “chaos” and “anarchy” using narratives and footage provided by Mubarak’s state-run media. Indeed, many Egyptians are convinced that the Murbarak regime is instigating violence in a desperate hope that Egyptians will welcome a return to his authoritarian control.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is frantically trying to change course after first defining the Mubarak regime as stable and then issuing equivocating statements calling for restraint on “both sides”—one, the largely unarmed protestors, and the other, the heavily armed state police with a pattern of jailing, beating, and sometimes torturing dissidents.
No matter the outcome, the uprising in Egpyt, following the revolution against the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Tunisia, has upended a pillar of American foreign policy and caught our government flat-footed. While steering clear of Bush’s neoconservative hubris, President Obama has yet to enact new policies to match his lofty rhetoric about partnership and understanding.
As my colleague Juan Cole has pointed out, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been stained by “domino theory” logic—the fear that Islamic terrorists might take over one country and expand their control one-by-one to other countries in the region. Just as during the Cold War (Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc.), this has meant supporting autocratic and repressive regimes while squandering opportunities to build democratic alternatives.
This crisis provides an opportunity for all Americans to wake up and accept responsibility for transcending the failures of the past. We need to reject racist images that depict legitimate protestors as savages that must be corralled.
Instead of fearing democracy, we must recall JFK’s famous words: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” More than any previous generation, those coming of age in the Obama era can now witness the cost and consequences of a strategy predicated on support for friendly dictators.
Wisdom
www.facebook.com/1263271265/posts/10221216070572340/
Powerful words to live by.
THIS IS RIGHT ON THE NOSE. …….READ IT SLOWLY… I DON’T KNOW WHO WROTE IT, BUT I AM GUESSING IT WAS A SENIOR!!! I FIRST STARTED READING THIS AND WAS READING FAST UNTIL I REACHED THE THIRD SENTENCE. I STOPPED AND STARTED OVER READING SLOWER AND THINKING ABOUT EVERY WORD. THIS IS VERY THOUGHT-PROVOKING. MAKES YOU STOP AND THINK.AND THEN IT IS WINTER You know. . . time has a way of moving quickly and catching you unaware of the passing years.It seems just yesterday that I was young, just married and embarking on my new life with my mate. Yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all the years went. I know that I lived them all. I have glimpses of how it was back then and of all my hopes and dreams. But, here it is… the winter of my life and it catches me by surprise…How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my youth go?I remember well seeing older people through the years and thinking that those older people were years away from me and that winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like. But, here it is…my friends are retired and getting grey…they move slower and I see an older person now. Some are in better and some worse shape than me…but, I see the great change….Not like the ones that I remember who were young and vibrant…but, like me, their age is beginning to show and we are now those older folks that we used to see and never thought we’d be.Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore… it’s mandatory! Cause if I don’t on my own free will… I just fall asleep where I sit!And so…now I enter into this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do things that I wish I had done but never did!But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I’m not sure how long it will last…this I know, that when it’s over on this earth…it’s NOT over. A new adventure will begin!Yes, I have regrets. There are things I wish I hadn’t done…things I should have done, but indeed, there are many things I’m happy to have done. It’s all in a lifetime.So, if you’re not in your winter yet…let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. So, whatever you would like to accomplish in your life please do it quickly! Don’t put things off too long!Life goes by quickly. So, do what you can today, as you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not! You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life…so, live for today and say all the things that you want your loved ones to remember…and hope that they appreciate and love you for all the things that you have done for them in all the years past!”Life” is a gift to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after. Make it a fantastic one.LIVE IT WELL! ENJOY TODAY! DO SOMETHING FUN! BE HAPPY! HAVE A GREAT DAY! REMEMBER:….”It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”LIVE HAPPY IN THIS YEAR AND EVERY YEAR!LASTLY, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:TODAY IS THE OLDEST YOU’VE EVER BEEN, YET THE YOUNGEST YOU’LL EVER BE SO – ENJOY THIS DAY WHILE IT LASTS.~Your kids are becoming you…….~Going out is good.. Coming home is better!~You forget names…. But it’s OK because other people forgot they even knew you!!!~You realize you’re never going to be really good at anything~The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don’t care to do them anymore.~You sleep better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring than in bed. It’s called “pre-sleep”.~You miss the days when everything worked with just an “ON” and “OFF” switch..~You tend to use more 4 letter words … “what?”…”when?”… “what?” . ???~Now that you can afford expensive jewelry, it’s not safe to wear it anywhere.~You notice everything they sell in stores is “sleeveless”?!!!~What used to be freckles are now liver spots.~Everybody whispers.~You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet…. 2 of which you will never wear.~But Old is good in some things: Old Songs, Old movies, and best of all, OLD FRIENDS!!Stay well, “OLD FRIEND!” Send this on to other “Old Friends!” and let them laugh in AGREEMENT!!!
It’s Not What You Gather, But What You Scatter That Tells What Kind Of Life You Have Lived.
datruthchronicles 
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