DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: “WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S BLUEPRINT?” (VIDEO)

Post Sources: Beacon Press, YouTube

DR MARTIN LUTHER “PROMISED LAND” KING JR WAS ASSASSINATED APRIL 4, 1968

~ DR MARTIN LUTHER “PROMISED LAND” KING JR WAS ASSASSINATED APRIL 4, 1968:


"A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true."
MLK; March 8, 1965
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"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
MLK; April 3, 1968


~ KING DIED YOUNG SO THAT CIVIL RIGHTS FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS COULD LIVE LONG.

~ KING DID NOT DIE A PEACEFUL DEATH BUT HE DIED FOR PEACE.


Sources: AP, CBS News, Yahoo News, Youtube


****** The view from the mountaintop: Martin Luther King's turbulent, tragic last year


On April 4, 1967, a Tuesday, Martin Luther King Jr. took the pulpit at New York’s Riverside Church, the great Gothic cathedral conceived by John D. Rockefeller Jr., to deliver a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

It announced a decisive shift in King’s message and ministry, from desegregation to a broader engagement with pacifism and social and economic justice. And it marked the beginning of the final year of his life. Exactly one year later, the concerns he spoke to that day would lead him to support a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., where he was shot and killed.

“I come to this great magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice,” he said at the beginning of his talk, before a crowd of more than 3,000 that filled the immense church. “A time comes when silence is betrayal.

That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.” He went on to describe how Great Society antipoverty programs, “the real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white,” had been left “broken and eviscerated” by the costs and the social divisions imposed by the war. “We [are] taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. … We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.” He invoked his ministry, “in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them.” And in his summation, he quoted from one of his favorite hymns, written more than 120 years before by the abolitionist James Russell Lowell:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decideIn the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side
Opposition to the war was not a new position for King, although it may have been news to some of his followers. Two years before, he had expressed his view that military action in Vietnam was “accomplishing nothing,” but that came in a question-and-answer session after a speech, and it attracted little attention. As the war escalated through 1965, the board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference authorized him to pursue his own peace initiatives, drawing a warning from an assistant secretary of labor, George Weaver, described by the New York Times as “one of the highest-ranking Negroes in the Johnson administration,” that he risked provoking a “miscalculation” by the North Vietnamese or their patrons in the Soviet Union or China.

So he understood the risk he was taking. He would be breaking decisively with Lyndon Johnson, the president who had done more than any other since Lincoln to advance civil rights. He was being challenged on the left by a new generation of Black Power advocates and harassed by J. Edgar Hoover, whose covert efforts to discredit and destroy King would get new ammunition from his association with the people derisively called “peaceniks.” Peace activists were often labeled “Commies” in those years, and it was King’s long association with the left-wing activist Stanley Levison, whom Hoover suspected of being a Soviet agent, that brought King under FBI surveillance in the first place. Ironically, as the historian Taylor Branch points out, Levison was actually opposed to King’s involvement in antiwar causes and tried to talk him out of giving his Vietnam speech. (“I lost,” Levison told associates, in a wiretapped phone call, “and we’ll just have to live with the consequences.”)

But King was being pushed in the other direction by another influential aide, James Bevel, a fiery preacher from Mississippi, who saw the Vietnam War as an extension of America’s oppression of nonwhites. (Ironically, after King’s death, Bevel would become a supporter of Ronald Reagan and later drift to the fringes of politics as the running mate of perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.) And King was pushed, more than anything else, by the logic of his own commitment to nonviolence. How, he wondered, could he demand that his own people brave police clubs and dogs without striking back, and not denounce the bombs the United States was dropping on children on the other side of the world? “It has been my consistent belief and position that non-violence is the only true solution to the social problems of the world and of this country,” King wrote a supporter just before the Riverside speech. “The principle of love which has motivated so many to strike out against the evils of racism here in America must motivate us to protest the brutal destruction of the Vietnamese People.”

In the spring of 1967, King, notwithstanding his 1964 Nobel Prize, was not quite the towering figure we look back on today. The great victories he had helped win — the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — were receding into the (recent) past. The SCLC was in disarray and debt. King’s effort to tackle racial segregation in the North was foundering on the discovery that housing was a much more complicated and nuanced issue than whites-only lunch counters.

King’s antiwar activism, while popular among the antiwar left, wasn’t winning many converts even among his allies in the civil rights movement, some of whom supported the war on principle, while others worried it would dilute his message about race. Within days of King’s speech the leading mainline civil rights group, the NAACP, disassociated itself from his stance, with a declaration that “we are not a peace organization nor a foreign policy association. We are a civil rights organization.” An editorial in the New York Times on April 7 (“Dr. King’s Error”) chastised King, in measured Times-speak, for making “too facile a connection between the speeding up of the war in Vietnam and the slowing down of the war against poverty.”

King’s life was already hectic and was about to get more so. He spent his last year crisscrossing the country in a whirl of speeches, sermons, meetings, rallies and marches. David Halberstam, who profiled him in the summer of 1967 for Harper’s magazine, noted that “most of King’s life is spent going to airports, and it is the only time to talk to him.” The period has been chronicled in a number of places, notably including the final volume of Branch’s magisterial trilogy on King’s life, “At Canaan’s Edge,” and a new HBO documentary, “King in the Wilderness.” Local newspapers reported on his visits whenever he touched down, in articles that make for arresting reading 50 years later, with their casual references to “Reds” and “Negroes,” which is the word King himself used. (It would be another year before the Amsterdam News, Harlem’s leading publication, totally banished the term in favor of “blacks.”)

A partial list of the places King visited during that year includes, besides New York and his home in Atlanta: Boston; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Chicago; Cleveland; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Miami; Grinnell, Iowa; Clarksdale, Marks and nearby towns in Mississippi; Geneva, Switzerland (for a world peace conference); Newcastle upon Tyne, England (to receive an honorary degree); Acapulco (for a two-day vacation); and, of course, Memphis. Along the way he rebuffed appeals to run for president as a peace candidate, served a five-day sentence in the Birmingham, Ala., jail, was accused by Hoover, in a secret report to Johnson, of plotting to blow up the Chicago Loop, and was bequeathed the entire estate — amounting to less than $10,000 — of the New Yorker writer Dorothy Parker, who admired him although they had never met.

A few days after the Riverside speech, King flew to California for a series of speeches. He held a press conference in part to deal with the repercussions of the address, at which he clarified, apparently for the benefit of donors to the SCLC, that he was not seeking to merge the civil rights and peace movements — meaning their contributions wouldn’t go to support his antiwar activism. By April 15 he was back in New York for a large and unruly march and rally for peace at the United Nations, alongside the antiwar activists Harry Belafonte and Benjamin Spock. “Many Draft Cards Burned — Eggs Tossed at Parade” was part of the headline in the next day’s Times. Citing some of the banners, signs and chants, the story introduced readers of the Times to a new slogan: “No Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”

Over the next few months King made repeated trips to Cleveland, one of four cities he had designated as a focus of his campaign to improve housing and job opportunities for blacks. He denounced the city’s crackdown in response to the previous summer’s riots, telling reporters, “a get-tough policy should mean getting tough against poverty, inferior education and rat-infested slums.” Meeting with local ministers and civil rights leaders, he involved himself in the details of local organizing: rent strikes, voter registration drives and “Operation Breadbasket,” targeted boycotts meant to force businesses to hire more black workers. “We’re not begging for freedom any more,” he told a press conference in May. Among a handful of reports on King’s local activitiespublished by the Plain Dealer that summer and fall was a front-page picture of him relaxing on the lawn of a local activist, dressed, as he almost invariably was in photographs from those years, in a dark suit, white shirt and necktie. He was tossing a football to a couple of youngsters, including his sons, Martin III and Dexter, who were along for the trip.

On June 12, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of eight black African-American ministers, including King and his brother, for contempt of court, stemming from a demonstration in Birmingham four years earlier. Bull Connor, Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety, had denied the group a permit to march, but they did anyway, invoking the doctrine of civil disobedience to illegitimate authority. In a 5-4 decision, with Chief Justice Earl Warren among the dissenters, the Court overruled that defense and ordered the men to serve their sentences and pay a $50 fine. Even if forbidding the march was unconstitutional, the decision held, the proper remedy was to appeal the denial to the courts. A few months later, one of the justices in the majority, Tom Clark, was replaced by Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, a civil rights hero in his own right, became the first African-American on the court, and, it’s safe to say, would have tipped the balance to the other side.

King was in and out of Cleveland and Chicago at least a half-dozen times that summer. In August he returned to Atlanta for the SCLC convention, where he announced plans to “dislocate” Northern cities with a campaign of “mass civil disobedience.” In a long speech titled “Where Do We Go From Here?” he enumerated achievements in Chicago and Cleveland, including the hiring of more black contractors by major department stores and taking out advertisements in Negro newspapers. The speech was well received, and the audience broke into applause and affirmation as King moved into his peroration with one of his signature aphorisms: “Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But reading it today one is struck by the realization that just a few years earlier King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to overturn a century of injustice and oppression and had stood in the Oval Office as Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. A gap had opened between King’s soaring rhetoric and the grindingly slow process of bringing concrete improvements to the lives of millions of people in big-city ghettoes and the ramshackle towns of the Old South. The arc of the moral universe would have to be very long indeed if its course were to be measured by the hiring of more “Negro insect and rodent exterminators, as well as janitorial services” by chain stores in Chicago’s South Side.

At the end of October, King and three others, including his brother, the Rev. A.D. King, surrendered in Birmingham to serve their sentences. “As we leave for a Birmingham jail today,” King said, “we call out to America: Take heed. Do not allow the Bill of Rights to become a prisoner of war.” He did not follow up on plans to write a sequel to his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail” of 1963, although he did compose an essay, “A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged,” that was later published in the New York Times. The men were released after four days; King’s close aide Rev. Ralph Abernathy joked that since the lawyers had failed to keep the pastors out of jail, he was going back on his promise to keep them out of Hell. On being released, King announced plans to visit the Soviet Union. This was a trip he never made.

Now things began speeding up. On Dec. 4 King announced plans for a “poor peoples’ campaign for jobs or income,” which would take the form of a march on Washington the following spring. “In a news conference here,” the Times reported from Atlanta, “the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace acknowledged that the ugly mood of many Negroes in the nation’s slums made the campaign ‘risky,’ but he asserted that ‘not to act represents moral irresponsibility.’” The reporter observed that “the Negro leader’s mood seemed deeply pessimistic.” A whirlwind of fundraising and planning for the march ensued, interrupted by more speeches and rallies. In January, he visited Joan Baez in jail in Oakland, Calif., where she was serving a sentence for staging a sit-in to protest the draft. On the men’s wing, he visited another peace activist, Ira Sandperl. Sandperl was struck, Branch writes, by the “contrast between the well-tailored figure in starched cuffs and the face of weary depression. King asked a favor. ‘When I’m in jail in Washington,’ he said, ‘come visit me there.’”

On Feb. 4, King was back in Atlanta in the pulpit of his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, where he preached what has become known as the “Drum Major” sermon, musing on the all-too-human desire for recognition. The text is from the 10th chapter of Mark, in which the apostles James and John request the honor of sitting alongside Jesus. This impulse is the root of the social evil of racism, King said, “a need some people have … to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first,” and also of the personal vices of jealousy, arrogance and pride. That thought in turn led him to consider his own place in history and how he would want to be remembered and eulogized. “I don’t want a long funeral,” he said. “Tell them not to talk too long. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize — that isn’t important.” He wanted to be remembered, he said, as someone who served others, who tried to feed the hungry and serve humanity and who “tried to be right on the war question.” “Yes, Jesus,” he concluded, “I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason. … I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.”

It was also in February that King appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show, where Belafonte, a close friend, was filling in as host. King mentioned he had flown up from Washington on a plane that had been delayed by “mechanical difficulties,” and he was glad to land safely. “I don’t want you to think that as a Baptist preacher, I don’t have confidence in God in the air,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve had more experience with him on the ground.”

“Do you fear for your life?” Belafonte asked.

“Not really,” King replied. “Ultimately it isn’t important how long you live — it’s how well you live.” He was 39.

On March 3 he returned to Ebenezer to preach on “Unfulfilled Dreams,” about world-historical figures who never achieved their greatest goals — like Gandhi, who lived just long enough to see his dream of a united India shattered by religious war and partition, or King David, who died before he could build a temple to the Lord. Each of us is building our own temple, King told the worshippers. We are all traveling to a destination, and what matters isn’t whether we reach our destination, but that we are on the right road.

He was hurtling toward his own destiny, and perhaps he sensed it. Certainly those around him did. His aides worried he was pushing himself too hard, in danger of burning out, or of losing control of the civil rights movement as more militant figures rose to prominence, mocking his lifelong commitment to nonviolence. He spoke in Detroit in mid-March, then flew to Los Angeles for speeches and meetings where, Branch writes, he let himself be talked into committing to visit “Indian reservations and migrant labor camps from California to Appalachia and Massachusetts” in the run-up to the Poor People’s March, whose start was barely more than a month away. Then he took a call from James Lawson, a preacher and organizer in Memphis, urging him to speak at a rally in support of a strike by the overwhelmingly black sanitation workers’ union. So he flew into Memphis by way of New Orleans on March 18, arriving to a packed auditorium at the Mason Temple to deliver a rousing address.

“We are tired of being at the bottom! We are tired of our men being emasculated so that our wives and daughters have to go out and work in the white lady’s kitchen,” he thundered. As the cheers filled the packed hall, he promised that he would be back.

From Memphis, King descended into the Delta, visiting towns in some of the poorest counties in the United States, speaking in what the Times called “a shabby firetrap of a building whose interior walls are covered with funeral-parlor calendars” showing a suffering — white-skinned — Jesus on the cross. “I am very deeply touched,” King told mothers who couldn’t afford shoes for their children. “God does not want you to live like you are living.”

Then he got back on an airplane to meet with supporters in New York, visiting a Harlem tenement where a local activist, Mrs. Bennie Fowler, cooked him lunch and served it beneath a clothesline strung across her dining room. He apologized for canceling some appearances, explaining “I’ve been getting two hours’ sleep a night for the last 10 days.”

Then he returned to Memphis for a march that started late and quickly turned ugly, with looting, cops injured and shooting back and hundreds arrested. King back in his hotel room was overcome with remorse (according to FBI transcripts of his wiretapped phone conversations), blaming himself for being unable to rein in the anger he had always hoped to keep from spilling over into violence.

“Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here,” he said in despair to his aides. “And maybe we have to give up and let violence take its course.” Then he flew home to Atlanta.

Newspapers around the country denounced King as an agitator and troublemaker, following, in some cases, scripts that had been surreptitiously provided by Hoover’s agents. King flew to Washington to preach a Sunday service at the National Cathedral, describing the poverty and misery he had seen the week before in Mississippi. That day, Sunday, March 31, ended with Johnson’s speech announcing he would not run for another term as president in November.

And then King returned to Memphis for a third time. His aide Xernona Clayton had picked him up at his home, where, she recounts in “King in the Wilderness,” his two sons had uncharacteristically tried to keep him from leaving. “He said, what in the world happened to these kids. They must be trying to tell me they’re missing me more, and when I come back I’ve got to change my habits.”

His flight out of Atlanta was delayed because of bomb threats, and he arrived at the Mason Temple amid a Biblical-magnitude thunderstorm. He spoke about the strike and Operation Breadbasket, and he repeated his warnings about violence: “We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles; we don’t need any Molotov cocktails.” He recalled the time he had been stabbed at a book signing in New York, an attempted assassination that came very close to succeeding. Doctors told him just a sneeze could have ruptured his aorta, and then “I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had,” and “I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.”

“And then I got into Memphis,” King continued. “And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.

“I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man.”

And he ended with a line from the great Civil War anthem, the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

That was the night of April 3, 1968.

CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS COME DOWN, CHARLOTTESVILLE RACEWAR DEBUNKED (NIKKI HALEY)

CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS COME DOWN, CHARLOTTESVILLE RACEWAR DEBUNKED:

IT'S TIME TO REMOVE ALL PUBLIC SYMBOLS OF RACISM & DIVISION IN THIS NATION.

TAKE THEM DOWN.


It's about time America's 21st century leaders continue what former SC Gov Nikki Haley started in 2015 when she encouraged SC State House leaders to remove a Confederate flag from the State House grounds after the deadly shooting (SACRIFICE) of 9 innocent Black American citizens by Dylan Roof.

Following a recent incident in Charlottesville, Virginia which resulted in the Murder of one Civil Rights protester and serious injuries of several more Civil Rights Protestors, Confederate monuments are now being toppled all over this nation.

The possibility of a horrible RACE WAR was clearly on the horizon but for the removal of those Confederate monuments i.e., Evil ancient symbols of RACISM and DIVISION.

Thank God!

It's About Time!

TAKE THEM DOWN



Sources: ABC News, CNN, YouTube


**** Before questioning statue removal, Trump supported taking down Confederate flag


At Tuesday's combative press conference in Trump Tower, President Trump questioned the removal of statues of Confederate leaders, but at the start of his presidential campaign, Trump publicly expressed his approval of South Carolina's decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State Capitol.

“I would take it down, yes,” said Trump in June 2015 at his first news conference following the declaration of his presidential candidacy. “I think they should put it in the museum... respect whatever it is you have to respect because it was a point in time.”

The long-running debate over whether the Confederate flag should be flown over the South Carolina State House arose again after nine people were fatally shot in the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a racially charged killing.

Then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is now serving in Trump’s Cabinet as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, ultimately decided to order the removal of the flag on July 9, 2015.

Trump argued Tuesday that taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee, a civil war general who fought to keep slavery intact, would be “changing history.” A protest of the monument's removal spurred the white nationalist rally that ultimately turned violent Saturday.

“You’re changing culture,” Trump said during the news conference at Trump Tower Tuesday.

Asked whether statues of Lee should remain in place in the U.S., the president said the situation was one that should be handled on a case-by-case basis, depending on the location of the monument.

"I would say that's up to a local town, community, or the federal government, depending on where it is located," he said.

Trump then characterized removing Confederate memorials as a slippery slope, equating Lee to American Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both owned slaves.

“George Washington was a slave owner…. So will George Washington now lose his status? ... Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?” Trump wondered.

“How about Thomas Jefferson?” Trump asked. “... Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?”

Trump later added, “So, this week it’s Robert E. Lee, I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down, I wonder is it George Washington next week? Is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

TRUMP'S 1st JOINT CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESS MET W/ LOUD APPROVAL (DEMS MOCK)

PRES TRUMP'S FIRST JOINT CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESS MET WITH LOUD APPROVAL:

DEMOCRATS RESPOND WITH BITTER DIATRIBES & MOCKERY.


****** HIGHLIGHTS OF TRUMP'S SPEECH WERE:

REBUILDING US MILITARY

REBUILDING THE AMERICAN DREAM

FAKE NEWS & MEDIA PROPAGANDA

TRUE UNITY

ANTI-SEMITISM

DEFEATING ISIL

CIVIL RIGHTS & SCHOOL CHOICE

REPLACING OBAMACARE WITH REAL HEALTHCARE

PAID FAMILY LEAVE & AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE

BUILDING THE GREAT WALL TO SECURE OUR BORDERS


Sources: ABC News, Fox News, Washington Post, YouTube


~ President Trump Addresses The Joint Congress


President Donald Trump delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, addressing a host of familiar themes from his campaign and calling for unity to address a litany of issues that he says are plaguing the country.

Trump's call for an end to the "pure unadulterated division" and "trivial fights" comes in the wake of a bruising campaign and a tumultuous start to his presidency, squaring off against critics as well as waging a pitched battle against the media. The speech also comes amid a flurry of questions about alleged contacts between Trump associates and suspected Russian officials, which the president has derided as "fake news."

The time for small thinking is over," Trump said. "The time for trivial fights is behind us. We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts. The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls. And the confidence to turn those hopes and those dreams into action."

Trump began the address by condemning the recent threats against Jewish centers and a suspected hate crime in Kansas. The president had drawn fire for not immediately addressing the Jewish Community Center incidents and not making public comments about the fatal Kansas shooting until tonight's speech.

"Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries as well as last week's shooting in Kansas City remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms," Trump said.

One of the most emotional moments -- and possibly the longest standing ovation of the speech -- came when Trump praised Carryn Owens, the widow of Senior Chief William "Ryan" Owens who died in a raid in Yemen. The moment has been a political hot point since Owens' father Bill Owens and Sen. John McCain criticized the president's choice to execute the mission. but Trump used the speech to call it "a highly successful raid."

During the speech, Trump revisited what he called the movement that propelled him into the White House.

"In 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet," he said. "The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds -– families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns. But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus -- as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country."

"Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people," Trump said.

Trump ran through a series of his biggest campaign promises during much of the speech, giving updates on what he and his team plan to do about them. He talked about how "we will soon begin the construction of a great, great wall along our southern border," and later talked about plans for "a new program of national rebuilding."

His call for Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare was met with one of the loudest responses, with Republicans standing while some Democrats were seen giving a thumbs down.

He made a push for unity later in the speech, saying that "everything that is broken in our country can be fixed."

"Every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing, and hope. Our citizens deserve this, and so much more – so why not join forces and finally get the job done? And get it done right. On this and so many other things, Democrats and Republicans should get together and unite for the good of our country, and for the good of the American people," he said.

Trump touched on paid family leave, the need to make childcare more affordable, an effort to promote clean air and water -- all issues that his daughter Ivanka has reportedly championed -- as areas where Republicans and Democrats could work together, along with rebuilding the military and the country's infrastructure.

He went on to call education "the civil rights issue of our time" before asking Congress to fund an education bill that allows children school choice.

"Our children will grow up in a nation of miracles. But to achieve this future, we must enrich the mind – and the souls – of every American child," he said.

While Trump did talk about his administration's plans to build a "great, great" wall, a regular theme of his campaign, he did not talk about who would pay for it; he said regularly during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall and he has since wavered about when and by whom those payments would be made.

First Lady Melania Trump attended the speech along with hand-picked guests, including Maureen Scalia, the widow of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who is a senior advisor to the president, were also seated in the first lady's box.

A group of female House Democrats all chose to wear white in an act of support for women's rights. Their sartorial choice was particularly noticeable because they all sat together in the chamber.

On Monday, Trump's team sent out an email to supporters asking for their "input on the direction of our country" before what they called his State of the Union address.

The email called the speech "his biggest speech to date."

BLACK DEMOCRATS ARE TOO ANGRY. THAT'S WHY I LEFT THE PARTY

BLACK DEMOCRATS ARE TOO ANGRY. THAT'S WHY I 
LEFT THE PARTY:

YES BLACK VOTERS WILL SUPPORT TRUMP IN NOV 2016.

Sources: Fox News, Youtube

So why do I choose to no longer identify as a registered BLACK Democrat voter?

I explain in detail in the video above.

And yes Trump will convince more than 25% of the BLACK electorate to support him in Nov 2016.

**** Could Trump win over some Black voters?

Contest after contest has shown Hillary Clinton has the overwhelming support of black voters in the 2016 Democratic primary – but up against Donald Trump, the general election might be a different story.

To be sure, nobody expects Trump or any GOP presidential candidate to win the majority of the black vote, which has been with Democrats since the mid-1930s. Clinton has every reason to believe most black voters sticking with her in the primary against Bernie Sanders would do so in a general election as well.

However, analysts suggest that to consider the black vote a monolith for Clinton in November, should she win the nomination, would be a mistake. The Trump jobs message that has attracted so many disaffected white, blue-collar workers could resonate with black voters equally frustrated by chronic unemployment and unfulfilled promises of change – and Trump’s accelerating march toward the GOP nomination has proven his knack for bringing in voters who might not normally pick a Republican.

“If anything, he knows the economy,” Luz Nelson, a beautician and black South Carolina voter, said days before the front-running Clinton won the state Democratic primary with more than 80 percent of the black vote.

“I’m a New Yorker, too,” Nelson continued. “I know where he’s coming from. Nobody controls Donald Trump.”

If he wants to put any significant portion of the black vote in play, Trump would have to do better than past GOP nominees -- if he indeed is his party’s standard-bearer come November.

Then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got just 6 percent in 2012. John McCain got even less, 4 percent, in 2008 against Barack Obama, who became the country’s first black president. Republican President Gerald Ford won the highest percentage of the black vote in modern history -- 16 percent -- but still lost to Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter.

Influential black political commentator Tavis Smiley recently cautioned Democrats that Trump’s appeal could cross not only party but racial lines.

“If Donald Trump is indeed the Republican nominee, it might be a miscalculation for Democrats to take for granted that black voters are a lock for their nominee, even with [Bill Clinton] and Barack Obama campaigning for her,” Smiley wrote in a USA Today op-ed.

“There is no reason to believe that if he is his party’s nominee, Donald Trump wouldn’t make a serious play for black voters. Who knows how many he might skim? In a close election, it might not take much.”

Clinton has since South Carolina in early February continued winning the black vote in large numbers across the South. She did so again in the Mississippi primary Tuesday night, though Sanders’ upset victory in Michigan all but eclipsed that success.

Meanwhile, she has secured a long list of influential African-American endorsements, from actor Morgan Freeman to civil rights icon Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, while the front-running Trump appears to be struggling to make grassroots connections.

Online videos appear to show Black Lives Matters activists protesting and disrupting recent rallies, as Trump can be heard in the background of one event telling security to “throw them out.”

And critics say he failed during a recent national TV appearance to unequivocally disavow support from former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke – though Trump has since disavowed it, and downplayed the controversy.

Democratic and Republican strategists seem to agree, though, that the billionaire businessman Trump – charisma, bravado and all – has at least captured the interest and curiosity of black voters.

“Up until the KKK thing, he had been doing pretty well,” Douglas Smith, a Democratic strategist and partner at Kent Strategies, said Tuesday. “He oozes this appearance that everybody can fly in a gold jet and have a mansion. I think it’s his signature charisma.”

Smith nevertheless suspects Trump will ultimately come up short because he doesn’t have the “deep well of support” with the black community like Clinton has -- built over the course of roughly 40 years of public service.

And he says Trump lacks the ground game and the kind of party support that would coalesce around Clinton or Sanders.

“You just can’t add water,” Smith said.

Republican strategist Rob Burgess thinks some of Trump’s appeal is indeed in policy, specifically his health care proposals.

“I will not let people die on the streets for lack of health care,” he roared in a debate last month.

However, Burgess thinks other black voters believe Trump will indeed boost the economy for American workers and added, “He can sway some black voters … due to his charisma.”

The Trump campaign declined to comment on efforts to connect with black voters.

However, the campaign has occasionally used two black women – the “Stump for Trump Girls’’ -- as a warmup act on the trail and whose performances have become an Internet sensation.

“If we continue to vote left, we are going to get left,” the duo said at Trump’s military veterans fundraiser last month in Iowa. “And when we look at Donald J. Trump, he has us in mind. He wants a secure boarder. He wants to bring jobs back. He wants to make sure our veterans are taken care of. … And that’s why baby we are going to stump for Donald J. Trump.”

The Rev. Issac Holt, senior pastor at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church, in North Charleston, S.C. – who was visited by both the Clinton and Sanders’ campaigns – thinks the wild card for Trump or any other GOP nominee is the energy they are bringing to the race. But they need to get into the communities.

“What’s missing is the enthusiasm,” he said. “In South Carolina, they didn’t even seek the Black vote, in my opinion.”

ATLANTA'S DEADLY FOOD DESERTS: IT'S ALL ABOUT BLACK POPULATION CONTROL

ATLANTA'S DEADLY FOOD DESERTS:

IT'S ALL ABOUT BLACK POPULATION CONTROL

DOES MAYOR KASIM REED CARE??

ATLANTA'S WORST DESERTS & DIRTIEST WATER COMMUNITIES ARE SOUTHWEST, EAST POINT & BANKHEAD.

ATLANTA, Ga is the birthplace of Civil rights beacon Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a regional Mecca "too busy to hate", Hub for Southeastern Federal Govt offices and home of the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

ATLANTA is also a city infamously known for its many FOOD DESERTS and Poor Quality, Bacteria-filled Drinking water.

How can such a Progressive, Wealthy city of six millions residents, mostly BLACK, with so much Business Commerce, allow the majority of its BLACK citizens to prematurely Die from preventable diseases I.e. Obesity, Cancer, Diabetes, Kidney Failure and HIV, all of which derive from Atlanta's Food Deserts, abundance of Greasy Food, and Bacteria-Filled drinking water?

Is this being done intentionally for the purpose of Killing off low income BLACK residents of Atlanta?

~ Starving for nutrition

Poor diets and inaccessibility to healthy foods are creating a crisis of chronic disease.


By Gracie Bonds Staples | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In many ways, Evie and Ricky Sanders are lucky, and they know it.

On a good day, if their used 2004 Honda Pilot isn’t on the blink, it takes them no more than 10 minutes to drive the 10 miles from their home in Cumming to the nearest Kroger.

Ricky, 57, is a former flower nursery worker who is HIV-positive and struggles with the side effects of his medications. His wife, Evie, 58, is a former nursing assistant who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They live in a three-bedroom wood frame house atop a small hill in rural Forsyth County, where they eke out a living from $1,500 in monthly disability checks and $25 a month in food stamps.

What the Sanders have learned is that, for them at least, even good days have a bad side.

“Most of our shopping is done from the carts where the markdowns are,” Evie says. “We can’t afford name brands.”

To make ends meet, they rely on the monthly supply of staples they get from There’s Hope for the Hungry, a nonprofit organization that feeds 26,000 North Georgia families a year, many of whom, like the Sanders, live in what the USDA calls food deserts. Their homes are located in low-income areas more than one mile from a supermarket or other reliable source of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Nearly 2 million Georgia residents, including about 500,000 children, live in food deserts. The USDA has classified more than 35 food deserts inside the Perimeter. More border I-285 in the suburbs of Cobb, South Fulton and east DeKalb counties.

Some experts say there is a direct correlation between food deserts and the state’s high rates of obesity and chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and cancers. Stroke and heart disease are among the top three leading causes of death in Georgia, accounting for nearly one-third of all deaths in the state.

One day last January, the Sanders piled into their black Honda and headed to Kroger before the weekend rush. Ricky tuned the radio to 99.3 FM, his favorite country station.

Five minutes later they pulled into the parking lot and headed inside. Evie made a beeline to the restroom on the other side of the store while Ricky secured a shopping cart and waited near the store’s produce section.

He doesn’t make a move without her.

They are a team, and this day was no different.






Sources: AJC, YouTube

GAY FLAMBOYANT BLACK AMERICA IS THE FUTURE OF BLACK AMERICA

#gayblack

Discussion Highlights:

Since the election of Pres OBAMA there appears to be a massive effort to convert all BLACK Men and Boys to the Homosexual lifestyle.

Why is this?

No other Group within the Human race is being forced to accept Homosexuality or to become Gay for a PAY CHECK except the BLACK American community.

Again I ask why?

There can only be one conclusion.

CONTROLLING & ELIMINATING THE BLACK HUMAN POPULATION.

Although I sincerely love GAY people, as a BLACK woman living in 21st century AMERICA, I explain (crystal clear) why I can not endorse the LGBT Movement.

Sources: CDF, YouTube

ERIC GARNER - RADIO RAHEEM CHOKEHOLD DEATHS BY POLICE SHOULD BE OUTLAWED BY CONGRESS ("DO THE RIGHT THING")

CHOKEHOLDS & RACIAL PROFILING BY COPS SHOULD BE OUTLAWED IN EVERY STATE & DISTRICT OF THIS NATION:

UNTIL CONGRESS ACTS LET THE PEACEFUL PROTESTS.......ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS AND CIVIL LAWSUITS CONTINUE.

Who remembers the RADIO RAHEEM - ERIC GARNER Chokehold Death Scene in SPIKE LEE'S film "Do The Right Thing"??

The practice of COPS using CHOKEHOLDS to subdue Citizens they are trying to ARREST should be completely OUTLAWED in every State by CONGRESS immediately!

RACIAL PROFILING should also be OUTLAWED in every State by CONGRESS.

NO CHOKEHOLDS BY COPS

NO MORE RACIAL PROFILING

Until CONGRESS Acts let the Peaceful Protests........Economic Boycotts and Lawsuits continue!

Article Source: Youtube

ERIC GARNER'S FAMILY TO CA$H IN DUE TO NYPD'S CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE ("I CAN'T BREATHE")

"I CAN'T BREATHE" = HUGE SETTLEMENT $$$ FOR GARNER'S FAMILY:

IT WAS ON-CAMERA.

NYPD DIDN'T CALL A MEDIC AND CONTINUED TO CHOKE GARNER.

ERIC GARNER'S FAMILY TO PROFIT FROM NYPD'S NEGLIGENCE.

GARNER'S WIDOW & CHILDREN TO RAKE IN BIG BUCK$$$ FROM LAWSUIT.

DUE TO ON-CAMERA CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE FROM NYPD, GARNER'S FAMILY WILL MOST LIKELY SETTLE OUT OF COURT FOR AT LEAST $100 MILLION.

UNLESS PRES OBAMA BLOCKS THE CIVIL LAWSUIT WITH A PHONY FEDERAL INVESTIGATION.

Article Source: Bloomberg Business Week; NY Daily News; NY Post; Youtube

ARTICLE: "The Eric Garner Case Weakens the Argument for Police Body Cameras"

Video didn’t save the life of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man who died in July from a chokehold applied by a New York City police officer.

And now it appears that video also wasn’t enough to persuade a New York grand jury to indict the officer who helped arrest the 43-year-old Garner on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island.

That’s important because prominent public figures, including President Obama, have prescribed cameras as a way to reduce police killings of civilians, reasoning that police will be more careful if they know their actions are being recorded.

There was no video evidence—and no indictment—in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot to death in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in a case that led to violent protests.

The Obama administration said Dec. 1 it will seek $263 million from Congress for community policing, including $75 million to help purchase 50,000 body cameras for law enforcement agencies.

In the case of Eric Garner, a grand jury decided not to bring criminal charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who is seen on video grabbing Garner from behind, putting his arm across his throat, and pulling him to the ground.

Garner can be heard on the video repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe!” Medical examiners concluded that the police were the primary cause of Garner’s death, with his obesity, asthma, and heart problems cited as additional factors.

The Eric Garner case weakens the argument for cameras but doesn’t knock it out entirely. The main reason for cameras isn’t to give grand juries more information but to cause police officers to behave responsibly in the first place.

The video in the Garner case was captured by a bystander’s cellphone, and it’s not clear that the officers who wrestled Garner to the ground were aware that they were on camera. It’s possible that if the officers themselves had been wearing body cameras they might have treated Garner differently from the start.

The New York City police department’s own guidelines prohibit chokeholds. Panataleo has been stripped of his gun and badge.

The rest of the officers in the arrest have received immunity in the case.

BRANDON MCKEAN'S HANDS vs MICHIGAN POLICE (APARTHEID; STOP AND FRISK) )

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's the year 2014 but in the UNITED STATES Of America BLACK Men can't even walk down the street with their hands in pockets without being suspected of being a CRIMINAL.

Can you say "APARTHEID"??

Can you say "BLACK Men have become strangers in the UNITED STATES....Land of the FREE"??

Can you say "the U.S. Federal Gov't and CONGRESS are at Fault"??


Article Sources: AOL; Huffington Post; Youtube


ARTICLE: "Sheriff Defends Stopping Black Man For Walking With Hands In His Pockets"


A black Michigan man who was stopped by a sheriff's deputy after walking with his hands in his pockets said he believes he was the victim of racial discrimination.

The local sheriff says the deputy acted appropriately, and that the video of the incident doesn't show the full story.

Brandon McKean, 25, told The Huffington Post he was in the middle of walking a mile from a friend's house in Pontiac, Michigan to his own home to eat dinner around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. The temperature had hovered around freezing that day, and he had his hands in his pockets.

McKean had been walking for just a few minutes, he said, when an Oakland County sheriff's deputy drove up, got out of the car and questioned him. McKean began filming with his phone.

"You were walking by … well you were making people nervous," the deputy says in the video McKean recorded, above. "They said you had your hands in your pockets."

"Wow, walking by having your hands in your pockets makes people nervous to call the police, when it's snowing outside?" McKean responds.

"They did," the deputy says. "I'm just checking on you."

McKean posted the video on Facebook, intending to show a few friends what he considered an absurd and unjustified stop by police. But it quickly went viral, with many outraged commenters sharing the post.

By Tuesday, the video had been seen more than 3 million times, according to Facebook's stats, and had circulated widely, from Gawker to "The Colbert Report."

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard forcefully objected to the version of the incident that comes across when McKean's clip is viewed on its own, saying it doesn't clarify the reason for the stop and leaves out context.

McKean's video cuts off before the end of their conversation, when the deputy further explains why he stopped McKean and the importance of following up on any 911 call.

The video "was posted with an agenda," Bouchard told HuffPost.

The sheriff said that before McKean was questioned, a business owner called 911, audibly frightened, about a man who had walked by the shop six or seven times looking in the windows with his hands in his pockets. The caller believed the man was casing the business and that a robbery could be imminent. The business and its employees had reportedly already been robbed seven times.

Bouchard would not name the deputies who were dispatched nor the business, but said they had determined the person the 911 caller described was McKean, "without question." After the furor over the video, the sheriff's office posted their own video, which the deputy had also recorded with a phone.

"It boils down to this, if someone calls 911, do you want the police to come or not?" Bouchard said. "A police officer responded, made a quick ascertainment of the situation and determined that nothing else was needed, didn't pat down an individual, never detained an individual, called off secondary units and left. I think that was a very restrained, very professional approach."

McKean told The Huffington Post that the suspicious person spotted by the business owner definitely wasn't him and that he had not walked the stretch that many times.

The encounter occurred at a time when racial bias in policing has become a national conversation in part because of the death of Mike Brown, a black 18-year-old who was killed by then-police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri this summer. A grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson was announced just a few days before McKean's brush with police, and McKean said Brown's death was just one of the many situations, including several others he experienced in the past, that prompt him to record encounters with law enforcement for his own safety.

Bouchard said controversial instances of policing around the country, like Ferguson, become teachable moments for his staff, and deputies' continual training includes cultural sensitivity. When his people do wrong, the sheriff said, he wants to hear from the community and hold officers accountable. But he argued McKean's stop is not one of those cases.

"Given the sensitivity and the anxiety for a lot of people around this country, it's not helpful to the dialogue and certainly not helpful to keep the community the safe," Bouchard said.

McKean was less positive about how police handled the incident in Pontiac, despite telling the deputy he was glad officers were around to patrol. He told The Huffington Post he'd been stopped "for absolutely no reason" three or four times in the last five years.

"The crazy thing is, I know somebody who got their house broken into and they called the police, and the police took about two hours to come," he said. "And they came and pulled up on me in under five minutes for walking with my hands in [my] pockets, and that doesn't make sense."

MICHAEL BROWN'S FAMILY BLAMED FOR FERGUSON RIOTS AFTER BROWN'S FAMILY COMPLAINS TO UNITED NATIONS (APARTHEID)

MIKE BROWN'S FAMILY BLAMED FOR PROTESTS BY FERGUSON'S KLAN-CONTROLLED POLICE DEPT, MEDIA AND THE FEDS:

MIKE'S FAMILY WENT TO THE UNITED NATIONS, NOW THE OBAMA ADMIN, FERGUSON POLICE & MEDIA ARE TRYING TO SHUT THEM UP.

THE FEDS WANT TO CONTINUE MURDERING BLACK PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY BUT WANT US TO BE QUIET ABOUT IT.

THAT IS APARTHEID.

Article Sources: CNN; KPLR11; USA Today; Youtube

ARTICLE: "Police Asking: Did Michael Brown's Sep-father Intend To Spark Riots?"

To some, they're the gut-wrenching emotional cries of a man whose stepson's life was taken.

Others say they were dangerous words that sparked a powder keg as violent protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri last week.

But did Michael Brown's stepfather intend to incite rioting in the St. Louis suburb?

That's a question Ferguson police say they're looking into.

Brown's stepfather didn't hold back as news of a grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson reached Ferguson.

As throngs in front of the Ferguson Police Department listened to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch's announcement on cell phones and radios, Louis Head stepped onto a platform above the crowd and embraced his wife, Brown's mother. He then turned to the demonstrators -- some of them shouting "F--- the police!" -- and yelled, "Burn this motherf---er down!" and "Burn this bitch down!"

His comments drew widespread attention in the aftermath of the violence as a video of his reaction, recorded just after McCulloch's announcement, circulated online.

No charges have been filed against Head, but police have interviewed people who know Head and who were with him November 24, the day a prosecutor announced that Wilson would not be indicted in the August 9 shooting, Police Chief Tom Jackson said Tuesday.

Head isn't being singled out, but he's one of the people being "looked at as part of an ongoing investigation into the activities surrounding Nov 24 pertaining to the rioting, looting and arsons," Ferguson spokesman Jeff Small said.

Brown's mother has defended her husband's reaction. Last week, CNN's Sunny Hostin asked her about accusations that her husband's words single-handedly started rioting and fires.

"I say that that's impossible," Lesley McSpadden said. "These things have been going on since August 9th, when it first happened."

Protests rocked Ferguson that day, hours after Wilson shot Brown. They grew as time passed and news of the shooting spread.

When the prosecutor finally revealed the grand jury's long-awaited decision last week, it wasn't long before Ferguson erupted again.

St. Louis County Police tweeted their first reports of looting less than 15 minutes later. In the hours that followed, a row of businesses on West Florissant Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the St. Louis suburb, was engulfed in flames. Police cars and vehicles at a nearby dealership were turned into fireballs. There were so many blazes that firefighters couldn't reach them all.

Police chief: 'We are pursuing those comments'

Police have not spoken to Head about his actions, but they intend to do so, Jackson said Tuesday, adding that multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation.

The police chief told TV and radio host Sean Hannity something similar Monday, but he didn't classify the probe as formal.

"We are pursuing those comments, and there's a lot of discussion going on about that right now, but I really can't get into that at this time," he said.

But police aren't singling out Head, Jackson told Hannity.

"We can't let all that happened in Ferguson and Dellwood and the community die. Everyone who is responsible for taking away people's property, their livelihoods, their jobs, their businesses -- every single one of them needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he said.

McSpadden, who was standing next to Head when he made the comments and herself told the crowd she'd never experienced anything like this, offered some context in a CNN interview last week.

After hearing the grand jury's decision, McSpadden said she felt like she'd been shot herself and her "emotions were raging." Head was angry, too, she said.

"He just spoke out of anger. It's one thing to speak, and it's a different thing to act. He did not act. He just spoke out of anger," she said. "When you're that hurt and the system has did you this wrong, you may say some things as well. We've all spoke out of anger before."

Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump has previously called Head's remarks inappropriate but asked the public not to condemn the family for being human. More recently, he told CNN to remember that Brown's mother and father have repeatedly asked protesters to remain peaceful.

He further called Head's statements "indefensible" and "not appropriate in any way."

"We don't condone people acting on emotion calling for people to do irresponsible things at all," Crump told CNN. "And so we want his family, his mother and father's message to come across louder than anybody who might be associated with them. ... And they can't control what others do. They can control what they pray for."

Others have called for Head's arrest, including Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who told radio host Laura Ingraham last week "that he should be arrested and charged with inciting to riot."

Would prosecutors pursue charges?

St. Louis County Police also said Tuesday that they were looking into Head's comments. Police will present their investigation to prosecutors once its complete, police spokesman Brian Schellman said.

But is it a case prosecutors would pursue?

It's unlikely, CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes said.

"I think they'll have a hard time proving that somebody that heard him in the midst of all that noise actually went over and did an arson or committed an act of starting a fire. I think most of the people you see in the crowd are not watching CNN. They're not watching media reporting of him saying that," he told "The Situation Room." "So it is probably very few people that heard it at that time."

Also, Fuentes said, it's likely many people who'd gathered in Ferguson as the grand jury's decision was announced were already determined to act.

"I think the cause and effect of his words will be hard to prove," Fuentes said.

Hostin, a CNN legal analyst, said prosecutors should also weigh what impact charging Head could have on the community.

"I think any prosecutor that looks at a case like this, given what is going on, what has gone on in Ferguson, would never touch this case," she said. "You would have to be really tone deaf to the larger issues that are at play here to bring a case like that."

Ferguson police also under investigation

More than a week after the grand jury's decision, investigations into Brown's shooting and its aftermath are far from over.

The U.S. Justice Department also is investigating the shooting as part of a civil rights probe -- and investigating the Ferguson Police Department, looking at past incidents, procedures and training.

Another part of the probe, according to law enforcement officials, is a pattern of actions by Jackson, the Ferguson police chief, who critics accuse of inflaming public reactions after Brown's shooting.

Among them: the chief's decision to release a video showing a convenience store robbery in which Michael Brown stole cigars minutes before the fatal confrontation with Wilson, Jackson's comments to the media that Wilson would be welcomed back to the police department if a grand jury declined to bring charges, and, now, Jackson's announcement that his department was investigating Head for possibly inciting a riot.

Wilson resigned over the weekend, saying he was worried about putting Ferguson's residents and police officers at risk.

On Tuesday, the Fraternal Order of Police revealed that its members had been providing the officer with free protection since Brown was killed.

Wilson began receiving threats via phone, email and social media after the shooting, and "the (Ferguson Police) department being unwilling or unable as an entity to provide security for him, Fraternal Order of Police members from the surrounding area volunteered and have provided him with security from that time, right up until the present," said the group's executive director, Jim Pasco.

Despite Pasco's assertion that a police department is supposed to protect someone "when a person in the community is inundated with threats on his or her life," it's been widely reported that Wilson went into hiding so hastily after the Brown shooting that he left his lawn half-mowed.

In another development Tuesday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced that the National Guard will scale back operations in the area.

"The Guard has completed its duties within the city of St. Louis, and has begun to systematically reduce its presence in St. Louis County," Nixon said in a statement.

Troops are still supporting local law enforcement agencies in Ferguson and other parts of the county, he said.

OBAMA NEEDS TO PERSONALLY VISIT FERGUSON, NOT SEND AL SHARPTON (CIVIL RIGHTS CRISIS)

PRES OBAMA DOES NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT FERGUSON:

THE PEOPLE OF FERGUSON ARE STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE.

OBAMA NEEDS TO GO TO FERGUSON....... DON'T SEND AL SHARPTON.

WE DON'T NEED MARTIAL LAW. WE NEED POSITIVE RESULTS.

Pres OBAMA does NOT know what to do about FERGUSON because he had NOT planned on doing anything, just as he has NOT done anything for BLACK Voters since he was first sworn into office in January of 2009.

For 6 years Pres OBAMA has bent over backwards to please WALL STREET, Young WHITE Voters, LATINO Voters, NATIVE AMERICAN Voters, MIDDLE EASTERN People, GAY Voters and WHITE Women Voters.

Yet he has NOT done a darn thing for BLACK Voters in the United States!

What a shame the First BLACK Legally Elected U.S. President in History has NOT done a darn thing for BLACK Voters but Enforced MARTIAL LAW on the BLACK American Community!

Each time there was an RACE RELATIONS involving the Mistreatment of BLACK Americans, Pres OBAMA simply punted the issue to AL SHARPTON who of course took advantage of each Crisis for MONETARY Purposes and for Personal FAME.

Each time AL SHARPTON became involved there were a few CONTROLLED Marches and Protests for about 2 or 3 Months until the Crisis was SILENCED.

This pattern would be repeated time and time again.

Yet NOTHING was ever Resolved.

NOTHING was Gained except for SHARPTON'S pockets getting fatter as he communicated the Plans of BLACK People to the FBI and CIA.

It's not personal but AL SHARPTON does NOT speak for ME.

I repeat.

It's not personal but AL SHARPTON does NOT speak for ME.

This time this Crisis is DIFFERENT!

BLACK People are NOT Stupid!

In fact We have NEVER been Stupid!

We are TIRED of just Talking with NO ACTION.

We want ACTION and POSITIVE RESULTS.

OBAMA NEEDS TO GO TO FERGUSON....... DON'T SEND AL SHARPTON.

WE DON'T NEED MARTIAL LAW. WE NEED POSITIVE RESULTS.

BLACK LIVES MATTER & BLACK MONEY MATTERS.

IT'S TIME FOR ACTION, NOT JUST TALK AND BROKEN PROMISES.

CONTINUOUS NATIONWIDE PEACEFUL PROTESTS & ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS UNTIL WE SEE LONG TERM EFFECTIVE CHANGE.


ARTICLE: "What Obama Must Do In Ferguson"

It’s time President Obama step in to protect protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

As long as Black Americans have had United States citizenship, we have needed the federal government to enforce and protect our rights on the local level. Such was the case in the years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, when Union troops went state by state to wrestle enslaved Blacks away from the plantations on which they were held captive.

It was again the case in Jim Crow America when President Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to escort nine Black students into the doors of Little Rock Central High. President Kennedy stepped in to help integrate the University of Alabama and Lyndon Johnson did it in Selma. In 2005, folks in New Orleans desperately needed the intervention of the federal government when local officials failed them in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

It’s sad but a fact of Black American citizenship is that — as a minority group in every single state and as a historically oppressed people — we are not safe without the oversight and, sometimes, intervention of the federal government. And that point is made abundantly clear when watching the absolute carnage coming out of Ferguson in the days since Mike Brown was killed by local police.

In Ferguson, protesters have had their First Amendment right to freedom of assembly trampled on by local authorities sworn to serve and protect them. Peaceful protests have collapsed into outright chaos from antagonism by police officers armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry. The situation has only escalated as the days have rolled by with no end in sight and it’s becoming more and more clear that the city of Ferguson needs an intervention.

The people of Ferguson need the federal government to step in to affirm and protect their Constitutional rights. And in this moment, when the city seems on the precipice of a violent clash between citizens and police, the chief executive of the federal government, President Barack Obama, has been almost completely silent while in the middle of a two-week vacation to Martha’s Vineyard.

One year ago — to the day — President Obama spoke out on the crisis in Egypt, about 5,805 miles from Washington D.C., saying he was “concerned” by action taken by the government there.

“The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom, or that might makes right.” Obama said. “The Egyptian people deserve better than what we’ve seen over the last several days.”

The American president was a strong voice for the Egyptian people as they protested an oppressive government from Tahrir Square. He must show the same strength in affirming the rights of protesters in Ferguson.

~Obama's Comments on Ferguson. Circa August 2014:

“The death of Michael Brown is heartbreaking, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family and his community at this very difficult time,”he said in a statement. “As Attorney General Holder has indicated, the Department of Justice is investigating the situation along with local officials, and they will continue to direct resources to the case as needed.

I know the events of the past few days have prompted strong passions, but as details unfold, I urge everyone in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country, to remember this young man through reflection and understanding. We should comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. Along with our prayers, that’s what Michael and his family, and our broader American community, deserve.”

Condolences are appropriate and an investigation necessary but what is President Obama prepared to do to ensure the security of protesters who are organizing within their rights? What do they “deserve” from their government, aside from calls for “reflection and understanding?”

Like presidents Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson before him, Obama must deploy federal forces to take control of a local situation in Ferguson, one that could very well descend into total bedlam without his intervention.





Article Sources: AOL; Huffington Post; MSNBC; Newsone; Rebel Pundits; Youtube

BLACK OMAHA CURSING TODDLER UPDATE: He's In Protective Custody (Civil Rights Were Violated)

#ToddlerTHUG


UPDATE: CURSING BLACK OMAHA TODDLER MOCKED BY POLICE UNION IS NOW IN PROTECTIVE CUSTODY.

I repeat.

Posting a video of this Child's antics on a Police Union website was NOT about "Educating the Public"!

Instead it's about RACISM & perpetuating STEREOTYPES.

This Child's CIVIL RIGHTS were clearly VIOLATED.

#ToddlerTHUG

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK CHILDREN

The OMAHA, Nebraska CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES claims to have been Monitoring a BLACK Family ("Toddler Thug's") since August of 2013.

So even though the Toddler's 16-year-old Mother was Shot in front of him & he too was Injured.....

CPS still chose to leave this Toddler in the Family home with 3 other Minor Children.

Why??

When it was apparent all Minor Children in this Family were in possible Danger, why didn't Omaha's CPS officials step him to remove these Children before now??

Yet when DON LEMON & the OMAHA Police Union expose what's going on in this Toddler's world and begins to question why CPS hasn't intervened, suddenly CPS steps in and removes all Minor Children from the home.

I've just described CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICE Agencies in EVERY State & County!

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK CHILDREN





ARTICLE: "Swearing Toddler In 'Thug' Video Taken Into Protective Custody"

A Nebraska toddler who repeated a slew of profanities in an online video has been taken into child protective custody, Omaha police said Wednesday.

While authorities found nothing criminal in the video, officials from the Omaha police's Child Victim Unit and the Nebraska Child Protective Services took the infant and three other children into custody on Wednesday, the police department said on its Facebook page.

The joint investigation found safety concerns, the statement said.

CNN learned of development through Twitter.

In the video, the diapered child is bombarded with obscenities and racial slurs by the adults around him.

The African-American toddler knocks down a chair and gives nearly as good as he gets, responding to some of the comments with an upraised middle finger and telling one of the adults at one point, "Shut up, bitch." The adults laugh and prompt him to repeat other crudities.

Just another day on the Internet -- until the police union in Omaha, Nebraska, posted the clip on its website to highlight what it called the "cycle of violence and thuggery" the community faces.

The Omaha Police Officers Association came under fire from the city's police chief, the ACLU and at least one community leader. They say the move needlessly antagonizes the city's minority communities, who make up about a quarter of Omaha's 409,000 residents.

Sgt. John Wells, the union's president, said the video was "disturbing" and "offensive."

"The focus here isn't on any particular ethnic group. The focus here is on the troubling behavior towards this child," Wells said. "This behavior is going to potentially lead this child down a path that is completely unhealthy."

On the website where the video is hosted, the union said the clip came from "a local thug's public Facebook page."

"We here at OmahaPOA.com viewed the video and we knew that despite the fact that it is sickening, heartbreaking footage, we have an obligation to share it to continue to educate the law abiding public about the terrible cycle of violence and thuggery that some young innocent children find themselves helplessly trapped in," the police union wrote in a post accompanying the video.

"Now while we didn't see anything in this video that is blatantly 'illegal,' we sure did see a lot that is flat out immoral and completely unhealthy for this little child from a healthy upbringing standpoint," it added.

Wells said one of the adults mentions a local street gang in the video.

"That is why when we talk about the culture, the criminal culture, that this is to try to break the cycle and deal with the culture of violence and the culture of gang activity," he said.

But in a city where police officers' treatment of minorities led to lawsuits, criminal charges against two officers and the firings and reassignments of several others in the past year, critics say the video is poking at raw wounds. Willie Hamilton, president of the community activist group Black Men United, said the union "crossed a line by doing this."

"For them to take a video out of context -- a 2-year-old who doesn't have the brain capacity to know what's going on -- and to say that this child, because two adults acted inappropriately, is going to end up in a life of crime is totally inappropriate," Hamilton said.

And the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, which filed an excessive-force suit against the Omaha Police Department on behalf of an African-American family on Monday, said the union's use of "racially charged language" was "very disconcerting."

Police Chief Todd Schmaderer tried to distance his agency from the controversy in a statement issued Tuesday, saying that the union's website and Facebook page are separate from those of the Omaha Police Department and that he has little authority over the public statements of union members.

"With that background and understanding, I want to make it explicit and clear that the views expressed on the OPOA Facebook page do not necessarily reflect the official stance of the Omaha Police Department," Schmaderer said. "I strongly disagree with any postings that may cause a divide in our community or an obstacle to police community relations."

Wells said union members have turned the video over to the department's child victim unit, which will work with child-welfare agencies to investigate the circumstances. He said the organization "didn't think we'd get this big of a reaction."

"Hopefully, the impact is, it gives law-abiding citizens what law enforcement deals with on a daily basis, and it sort of throws back the blinders that these type of problems are going on," he said. "And we can have a very frank and open discussion on how to tackle these issues and come up with solutions."





Source: CNN, Daily Mail, Fox News, NY Daily News, Youtube