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During a Senate Judiciary hearing on white supremacy and domestic terrorism, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that the "machinery of the federal government should not be used as a tool to target and persecute your political opponents."

Cruz went on to say that Democrats repeatedly attempt to "politicize acts of violence," adding that they're trying to erase the history of the KKK, which was formed "by elected Democrats" and whose leadership "was almost entirely elected Democrats" as well as the "authors of Jim Crow laws."

Cruz said that Democrats use the "white supremacy" label to attack their political opponents while at the same time "diminishing anti-Jewish violence, anti-Asian violence, violence directed at white people, violence directed at police -- my view is simple: violence is always wrong whatever your ideology, left-wing, right-wing, no wings."

Cruz then listed examples of violent attacks carried out by Black nationalists, mentioning "the violence of the antifa riots and the Black Lives Matter riots that wracked this country" in the summer of 2020. "Stores were looted, police cars were fire-bombed, people were assaulted, people were murdered," Cruz said. "My colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle sought to excuse, sought to apologize, four even went to so far toraise moneyto bail out of jail the violent rioters committing these acts of violence."

When Cruz finished his remarks, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said that Cruz's comments failed to mention "that the FBI reported that of the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists ... 87 percent were white supremacists."

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Amy Klobuchar shuts down Ted Cruz's attempt to use Buffalo hearing to rant about Black Lives Matter - Salon

Stanley Hunt (left) as Blood and Dane Troy as Acts in Oakland Theater Projects The Mojo and the Sayso. Photo: David Flores II / Oakland Theater Project

Its been three years to the day since Linus, a Black child, was killed by plainclothes police officers. But none of his family has been set free yet not from any physical barrier, nor from their blinding grief or righteous yet futile rage.

In Aishah Rahmans 1987 play The Mojo and the Sayso, if justice was ever a hope, it was a slim one, now long buried. The freedom the Benjamin family seeks is to love one another again.

Each character in the play, now in an Oakland Theater Project production that opened Sunday, June 5, channels his or her unrequited feeling into a false idol and tries and fails to convert the others to worship.

For Awilda (Paige Mayes), its a church led by a snake oil salesman of a pastor (Reginald Wilkins). For her husband, Acts (Dane Troy), its the car hes been building in their living room out of junkyard scraps, the car whose metal tube outline ingeniously dominates Karla Hargraves set. As Acts tinkers on the vehicle throughout the show, he might hang gears and other parts by string to the contour, almost as if hes trimming a Christmas tree or as if hes literally pinning his hopes on a castle in the air.

For the couples surviving son, Blood (Stanley Hunt), the false idol is weapons. Every shadow and rustle is a threat to him now, and brandishing a handgun or a knife isnt just his way of protecting home; its his way of being seen in it.

The poetic, probing play, directed by Ayodele Nzinga, is sharp about the ways family members can live right on top of each other without ever intersecting or seeing or hearing one another, and how sorrow and guilt and fury only further entrench that isolation. Even when the Benjamin family members finally cry out for connection with all the fire in their bellies, even as all sides want it, none can say so in a language the others understand.

But even at a mere 80 minutes, the show frequently languishes. A fight scene is so clumsily realized that its not clear if anyone onstage believes the weapon is real. Its as if the only direction the performers got was to improvise and hope for the best when that scene rolls around. And Hunts Blood aimlessly drifts about and circles the stage to the point of distraction, like a blinking light that wont turn off.

Turn your gaze instead to Mayes, whose performance here suggests shes ready for the meatiest roles on the Bay Areas most august stages. She moves with the crisp focus and expansive communicative power of a dancer. Her voice, which the script affords frequent, glorious opportunity to burst into song, can rip a hole in the air one Troys Acts can almost walk through, but not quite.

Mayes shapes each moment shes onstage with athletic prowess, intellectual precision and emotional clarity. Wherever she trains her blazing eyes, you know its the most important thing or person in the scene.

The Mojo and the Sayso needs Mayes remarkable talent and skill when, after one of the best reveals of true colors in Bay Area theater design history (the specifics must be kept vague for your full enjoyment), she must instantly give up on her beliefs in order to take her husbands hand. Together, they all leap into a dreamland that, in the magic of the show, has burst through the walls of their home.

In our own era of police violence, the plays finale reads as a special gift. One way we must insist that Black lives matter is to let families like the Benjamins dream impossible dreams and then pave their way to reality, if at first onstage, then everywhere else.

LThe Mojo and the Sayso: Written by Aishah Rahman. Directed by Ayodele Nzinga. Through June 26. One hour, 40 minutes. $10-$52. Flax Art & Design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 510-646-1126. https://oaklandtheaterproject.org

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Review: At Oakland Theater Project, a play written in 1987 has a new way to say Black lives matter - SF Chronicle Datebook

The Wire was brilliant, but its a daunting five seasons with strong Baltimore (USA) accents if you havent seen it.

Not to worry We Own This City (Sky Atlantic and NOW TV app) is just as good. Its the same writer (David Simon) looking at policing and gangs in the same city (Baltimore) and the accents arent as hard. In fairness, thats probably because The Wire started a trend of realistic accents and were used to putting in the work to understand them.

Where The Wire eased us into the crossroads of politics, race and policing, We Own This City is a gripper from the first episode. Its a real-life story, pivoting on eight officers from the Baltimore Police Departments Gun Trace Task Force they were right bad 'uns, convicted of racketeering and extortion among other things in 2017.

This is the story of how they were caught, but like everything else David Simon does, its about a lot more as well. If you ever wonder where the Black Lives Matter movement came from, watch 10 minutes of We Own This City and youll get it (you might even join the movement).

While high-profile shootings by police bring matters to a head, its the low-level harassment of African Americans that lay the groundwork. Its brought to life here by Detective Daniel Hersl, a particularly nasty piece of work who is shown assaulting and humiliating people for what looks like pleasure.

Just as in The Wire, David Simon brings us into the heart of the action. His trick of using background sound hip-hop music at a drug-dealing location, the constant babble of the police radio makes it feel like we are walking around behind the characters, rather than observing them.

The convicted cops are different shade of bad. Hersl is proper bad, while another detective, Wayne Jenkins, has a wild-eyed cocky charisma that invites you to see things from his side of the fence.

But its the story-telling that makes this show. For the first 15 minutes, it felt like I was watching a police procedural, another episode of Law & Order, as we joined drug squad cops on an everyday bit of surveillance. Next thing I know, were with a civil rights lawyer, trying to find out why cops with a string of complaints against them are still out on the street.

Then it gets confusing, when three gang members steal another dealers drug stash, but the next morning I see them out on the beat, wearing Baltimore Police Department stab vests.

The plot unfolds from here, jumping around in time a bit, because all TV shows must jump around in time now, for reasons that arent very clear.

It doesnt matter. We Own This City is like getting a hug from The Wire, a short and sharp reminder of the best TV show Ive ever seen. And if you liked Sgt Jay Landsman in the five seasons of The Wire, hes the police commissioner in this, hogging every scene he enters. Its a gem.

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TV review: The Wire was brilliant and We Own This City is just as good - Irish Examiner

In the face of heated criticism, the Oregon School Resource Officers Association has voted to cancel next months appearance of David A. Clarke, a controversial former sheriff from Wisconsin who had been set to speak at its annual conference.

The associations leaders announced the sudden reversal on the nonprofit groups website Thursday night, less than 48 hours after The Oregonian/OregonLive wrote about the concerns of police reform advocates who were stunned that the group was giving such a public platform to a polarizing figure who has been an outspoken critic of the Black Lives Movement while defending the Proud Boys.

Clarke, who resigned as Milwaukee County sheriff in 2017, was under contract to speak for two hours about leadership and policing at the associations annual conference, which is scheduled July 24-27 at the Mt. Hood Resort in Welches. The association supports police agencies that assign officers to school districts.

The associations board announced it had voted unanimously to drop Clarke as one of its speakers, noting his politics have caused a number of Oregonians to reach out in protest.

If any presenter, in the eyes of some, is going to damage our credibility and/or ability to fulfill that mission, then we will make the necessary changes, wrote Mike Jackson, association president, and Rick Puente, association vice president. Days earlier, both had defended the choice of Clarke as a guest speaker, saying they werent interested in his politics.

On Thursday night, they wrote that Clarke had been chosen to be one of the keynote speakers based partly on what they described as his popularity with his constituents, his unabashed support for police officers around the United States and his support for police dealing with post traumatic stress. The association, they added, only cares about two things: safe schools and safe kids in Oregon.

Another speaker will take Clarkes place and be named at a future date.

Great victory! wrote Kathy Selvaggio, a West Linn community activist, on the West Linn Community for Police Reform Facebook page. So grateful for those who spoke out about their concerns.

Selvaggio has sought changes in the citys police department after West Linn paid $600,000 in February 2020 to settle a wrongful arrest suit filed by Michael Fesser, a Black man and Portland resident.

Community activists from West Linn and Lake Oswego and a city councilor from West Linn were among those who urged their police chiefs and school districts in the last week not to send their school resource officers to the conference.

Imagine how our Lake Oswego students will feel if they learn that Lake Oswego SROS (school resource officers), educators, and administrators are spending time learning from a man who is openly biased and who openly has disdain for some of them, wrote Willie Poinsette, president of the community-based group Respond to Racism, in a letter to Lake Oswegos city manager and school superintendent.

On the associations Facebook page announcing the decision to exclude Clarke, Pam Ashton commented, Tough decision. I admire your commitment to children, above all else.

Clarke has supported defunding schools to boost police ranks instead, mocked coronavirus safeguards such as mask mandates and amplified conspiracy theories about liberal philanthropist George Soros having his fingerprints all over the activism of student survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

Clarke, who is Black, has consistently referred to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations for civil rights and against police bias as Black Lies Matter. In recent weeks, he has defended the Proud Boys, calling the prosecution of some of the groups leaders on sedition charges in the U.S. Capitol insurrection an abuse of power. He also criticized the U.S. Justice Departments decision to investigate the police response to the Uvalde school shooter as improper.

During his tenure as sheriff, there were numerous reports of inmate abuse, staff harassment and five deaths in the county jail. The county paid out $6.75 million to settle a civil suit filed by the family of one man who died in custody from dehydration after they said he was denied water for six straight days.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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Oregon association for school resource officers cancels controversial ex-sheriffs appearance at conference - OregonLive

Guns are the leading cause of death among children, new CDC statistics show. But while the horrific massacre in a Texas elementary school rightly outrages the nation, such mass shootings are not the primary reason for that grim statistic.

Most young people killed by guns are shot in gang violence or other crime which has only gotten worse since the George Floyd race riots and their long anarchic aftermath.

Homicides of youth between the ages of 10 and 17 rose 47% in 2020. That 47% increase far outpaced the record-breaking 29% spike in post-Floyd homicides across all age groups in 2020.

Black youth between the ages of 10 and 17 were killed at 11 times the rate of white youth in 2020. Virtually none of those black deaths was protested by Black Lives Matter activists, since the victims were killed overwhelmingly not by the police and not by whites but by other blacks and thus did nothing to advance the narrative about lethal white supremacy. Blacks between the ages of 14 and 17 commit gun homicide at more than 10 times the rate of white and Hispanic teenagers combined.

Children under the age of 10 were also mowed down in barbaric drive-by shootings. Examples of the youth carnage in 2020 include:

This carnage is out of sight, out of mind for most of the country. If these children had been white, there would have been a national revolution. The media ignore the routine killings of black children just as assiduously as the race activists do and for the same reason: They were not mowed down by alleged lethal white hate. In fact, the lethal-white-hate narrative that has entranced Democratic politicians and the press for the last two weeks is false: Blacks commit hate crimes nationally at more than twice the rate of whites. In New York City, blacks commit hate crimes at 2.43 times the rate of whites.

Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update.

The killing will not stop until the family and cultural breakdown that drives it is confronted head on. As then-candidate Barack Obama observed in 2008, too many black fathers are ignoring their children and abandoning their responsibilities. Boys grow up without learning impulse control and respect for authority. The intact, biological family is the best form of crime prevention because it is the best way to socialize children.

That fact breaks a number of taboos, however, and so forms no part of our cultural discourse. Until the inner-city family is restored, policing is the second-best solution for saving black lives. Too bad President Joe Biden again regurgitated the fiction this week that law-abiding black Americans are at daily risk of their lives from the police, a fiction that will only cost more black lives.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The War on Cops.

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BLM is silent on the top killer of black kids - New York Post