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Representative Burgess Owens (R-UT), a retired safety for the New York Jets, made some remarks during his first day on the House Judiciary Committee that would make anyone outside of the Trump Klan cringe.

He argued that the pledge of allegiance should be recited at the start of each session, adding that the American flag is the best thing in the history of mankind. We have guys making $50 million today, to play any position they want to, but wont stand for the flag because they are taught by adults to not love our nation, he said. Its not about words, its about actions. 15 seconds to show our kids that were adults. That we can agree to disagree. That we love our country enough to at least stand and represent our flag.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) fired back at Owens, questioning if he really believed everything that he was saying. Jeffries said that if we can all agree to disagree, then why did he vote against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election? If the results stated that Biden was clearly the winner, why overturn the elections? Jeffries also questioned Owens for supporting the January 6 insurrection that left six people dead, including a U.S. Capitol police officer.

If this country is as great as Owens believes it to be, why did Americans feel the need to invoke violence on members of Congress who were just doing their jobs? Why try to overthrow the government simply because they didnt get their way? The American people voted, and they voted for President Joe Biden to lead this nation. Whether you agree with that or not, you have to accept it. Owens and the rest of Trumps followers, however, just couldnt do that. Owens is a part of the problem, and hold some of the blame for why this county is divided. Thank goodness Owenss proposal to say the pledge of allegiance at the start of each session was quickly shot down.

In 2020, Trump supporters, including Black MAGA believers, made it clear that they believed anyone who protested the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in the middle of a pandemic was out of their minds. They couldnt see that for years, Black America was tired of being forced to watch unarmed African Americans die at the hands of former and current police officers without facing justice.

Ever since George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin in 2013, many Black Americans have been angry, heartbroken and frustrated. Last year, protesters sought change and demanded police reform across the nation.

Protesting police brutality is somehow over the top in the eyes of critics, but those same critics turned around and were able to commit and/or excuse a heinous crime at the Capitol, one that couldve resulted in the deaths of lawmakers. All of this was done in the name of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Owens tried to lecture everyone during the hearing about why America is better than it was in the 1960s, and said that everyone should want to say the pledge of allegiance. He said we now see Black police officers, Black mayors, you know as we have more and more freedom to achieve our dreams Owens apparently fails to recognize that more representation in office means does not mean that the countrys racist systems have been repaired. Someone needs to tell Owens that it doesnt work that way.

For eight years this country had Barack Obama, its first Black president, but we continued to witness Black people killed at an alarming rate by police nationwide. Having Black representation isnt enough. Real policy change needs to be implemented in order to undo damages created centuries ago.

Its unfortunate that folks like Owens make it hard for the Black community to unite. They are somehow blinded to the realities that Black people face every day. People like Owens constantly find ways to diminish those realities based on their own unique, personal experiences. Until real change is made, why would anyone want to stand and pledge allegiance to a flag representing a country that doesnt value their lives?

The saddest part is that Owens is in a position to change policies and to ultimately help BIPOC thrive. If people like Owens continue to exist, those fighting for change on behalf of Black lives will continue to face resistance from naysayers. Even worse, Owenss statements will provide fuel for anyone who is actively fighting against true racial equity in the United States. They dont understand that, although Owens is Black, he doesnt speak for Black people. Instead, he is a tool for sewing division and for justifying racism. His allegiance isnt just to the flag. Its also to the corrupt system that birthed and brainwashed him.

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Rep. Burgess Owens Lives in a Warped Reality - Essence

On Tuesday, prosecutors revealed that they had lost track of Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident accused of killing two people at anti-racist protests in Wisconsin last August.

Rittenhouse, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of homicide and a felony count of attempted homicide, was seen recently partying with Proud Boys and flashing White power hand signs while out on bail. His legal team now says he is in a "safe house" after receiving death threats and that they need to keep his location secret. In the meantime, he has become a folk hero in some conservative circles, with his name appearing on T-shirts declaring "Rittenhouse did nothing wrong." Right-wing activists have raised more than $2 million in donations for a legal-defense fund.

The glorification of Rittenhouse, who apparently believed himself to be in Kenosha as part of a militia and whose lawyers have said was acting in self-defense, is part of a rising cult of the vigilante, one that has found an eager following in the past five years.

Former President Donald Trump helped fuel that rise: he personally suggested Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense, and his Department of Homeland Security reportedly sent around an internal memo directing federal officials how to respond to any questions about Rittenhouse. Trump also welcomed other vigilantes into his circle, giving a prime speaking slot at the Republican convention to Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis couple facing charges (to which they pleaded not guilty) for brandishing guns at protesters who walked down the private street in front of their house.

The embrace of these armed suspects might seem to contradict the right's "law and order" message. But vigilante violence has often been part of law enforcement in the United States, a complement to state power rather than a threat to it. Both have been required to uphold America's racial order, and both will need to be radically re-imagined -- or dismantled -- if the country is to have a fair and equitable justice system.

Though we tend to think that the state has a monopoly on legal violence, that has seldom been the case. White vigilantes have long acted as an extension of state violence against Black people and other people of color, and their allies, often with the tacit approval of police, prosecutors, and juries in a spectrum of legal and illegal acts that together create the political idea of "law and order" that has been the backbone of right-wing politics for more than 50 years.

It's easy to caricature this relationship between law enforcement and vigilantism as a feature of the Jim Crow South, when the Ku Klux Klan worked with local sheriffs to attack Black people and their White Republican allies who seemed to imperil the social and political order of the White South. But Klan violence persisted after Jim Crow, and vigilantes have worked with -- and been part of -- governments throughout the US.

This was especially true in the years after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, when White vigilantism became a powerful force in American culture and politics. A wave of vigilante films in the 1970s and 1980s depicted White men fed up with the limits of policing, eager to take the law into their own hands. In part in response to rising crime rates and in part in response to growing Black political power -- two forces routinely conflated -- White vigilantism featured in movies like "Dirty Harry" (where the vigilante himself was a cop) and "Fighting Back" (where vigilantes worked in tandem with the police).

Filmmakers were inspired by people like Anthony Imperiale, a city councilor in Newark who formed the North Ward Citizens Committee, a White vigilante group in New Jersey in the late 1960s. "If the Black Panther comes, the White Hunter will be waiting," Imperiale famously warned, referring to the Black power group that, notably, was not granted the same freedom to act as vigilantes. (Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, pushed for gun control laws in response to Black Panthers carrying firearms.) In reporting on Imperiale in 1968, The New York Times wrote that police "officially frowned on" his organization's street patrols, a description suggesting that unofficially they were more supportive. As were voters in New Jersey: Imperiale would go on to serve as a member of the New Jersey state government for most of the 1970s.

Juries, too, sometimes went easy on vigilantes. In 1984, when four Black teenagers approached Bernhard Goetz on the New York City subway and asked for five dollars, Goetz shot them all, then fled. He became known as the Subway Vigilante, lionized as a force of order in a city plagued by crime. During his trial, Goetz confessed that he'd hoped to kill the teens, who he thought were about to rob him, and that the only thing stopping him was that he'd run out of bullets. That the young people he shot had committed no crimes did not faze Goetz nor the jury that sentenced him to just eight months in jail for criminal possession of a weapon.

That vigilante spirit infused the rise of everything from neighborhood watches to militias in the decades that followed. Though the militia boom that started in the early 1990s at first centered on groups that were explicitly anti-government and anti-police, over time it has grown to include groups who see themselves as an extension of law enforcement, whether as unofficial border patrol agents seizing suspected migrants or armed groups defending Confederate statues or countering anti-racist protests.

Police have often welcomed these groups, as seen in footage from Kenosha, Wisconsin, where shortly before the August shootings, officers thanked the armed men -- including Kyle Rittenhouse -- who appeared at the protests. This was not an uncommon sight at protests this past summer.

A recent report by Michael German at the Brennan Center for Justice outlined not only these incidents, but the ways militias have maintained active ties with law enforcement -- including officers who are part of these groups. The line between police and vigilantes often blurs not only because some officers approve of vigilantism, but because some officers likewise engage in unlawful yet unpunished uses of force against Black people, as decades of police riots and brutality demonstrate.

Some lawmakers welcome them as well, helping to enshrine vigilantism in law. The radical gun jurisprudence and legislation of the past few decades has enabled citizens not only to legally arm themselves with military-grade weapons, but to use those weapons against other humans in increasingly unrestricted ways. That's the case in states like Florida, where the law allowed George Zimmerman to follow and kill 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

That said, as the insurrection at the Capitol last month showed, neither police nor lawmakers are themselves safe from vigilante violence. Considered "oath breakers" by the mob for not helping overturn the election, these members of law enforcement and Congress were no longer viewed as instruments of law and order, but violators of it. That mental shift helps to explain why people bearing "Blue Lives Matter" flags overwhelmed and injured Capitol Police, in violence that left one police officer dead.

Of course, not everyone can engage in armed vigilantism and escape unscathed, left to skip bail or ransack the Capitol. As staff writer David A. Graham noted in The Atlantic in 2016, gun radicalism has extended almost exclusively to White Americans. When Black Americans take up arms, it quickly becomes clear that they are what he called "the Second Amendment's second-class citizens": arrested, charged, and even killed for the sort of gun ownership that White Americans consider a sacred right. Thus while Black vigilantism does exist, it is far riskier to engage in and far less likely to receive the sanction of law than its White counterpart.

Rittenhouse has, of course, been charged, and the facts of his case are still being investigated. But there are many on the right who see his prosecution as a disruption of a tacit understanding that White vigilantes have been sanctioned to police, and even injure or kill, anti-racist activists who they see as disruptive. And no wonder they think so: they have more than 100 years of history showing that, most of the time, that's exactly what "law and order" means.

Continued here:
What Kyle Rittenhouse's fate reveals about 'law and order' - KCTV Kansas City

SANFORD, Fla. - Born on February 5, 1995, Trayvon Martin would have turned 26on Friday. He died when he was just 17 aftergetting into an altercation with George Zimmerman in a Sanford neighborhood.

"You left this world but NEVER my HEART Rest in POWER Trayvon!! Not even the death of my SON/SUN will separate a Mothers Love!!" his mother, Sabrina Fulton, tweeted.

On the evening of February 26, 2012,a shooting occurredin the Twin Lakes areaof Sanford. Martin was walking home from the store when he was confronted by George Zimmerman, who was a member of the Neighborhood Watch committee at the time.

RELATED:Florida road to be named after Trayvon Martin

The two became involved in a violent altercation. Zimmerman eventually pulled out a firearm and fatally shot Martin. He surrendered to police immediately and claimed that he opened fire in self-defense. There were no direct eyewitnesses to the shooting.

Following Martin's death, thousands rallied across the nation in defense of the teen's death. However,Zimmerman was found not guiltyof second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Martin.The jury was also given the chance to convict Zimmerman of manslaughter but did not do so.

Zimmermandid not face federal civil rights charges. The Justice Department said that there was not enough evidence to bringfederal civil rights charges, which would have required proof that the killing was motivated by racial animosity.

Many continued to rally behind Martin, sparking a movement that fights for equal justice even today. The case also created a national conversation about race and self-defense gun laws, as Martin was unarmed the night he was shot.

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Trayvon Martin remembered on what would have been his 26th birthday - FOX 35 Orlando

Just 21 days after his 17th birthday nine years ago, Trayvon Martin was gunned down by a neighborhood watch volunteer on Feb. 26, 2012. He would have turned 26 today.

Martins mother, Sybrina Fulton, posted an emotional tweet Friday wishing her slain son a happy heavenly birthday.

You left this world but NEVER my HEART, Fulton wrote. Rest in POWER Trayvon!! Not even the death of my SON/SUN will separate a Mothers Love!!

Social media also flooded with tweets paying homage to the unarmed teen who was fatally shot in a Sanford, Fla. neighborhood.

While Trayvon is no longer with us, his name continues to inspire millions of people in the fight for justice and equality, posted Grammy Award-winning rapper Common.

Praying for Trayvon Martins parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, tweeted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s daughter, Bernice King.

NBC 6's Derrick Lewis has reaction from family members, including his mother and activist Sybrina Fulton, after the event Thursday.

Former neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman confronted Martin as walked he back to his fathers home from a nearby convenience store when an argument ensued. Zimmerman fatally shot Martin and was later acquitted of charges in the teens death under Floridas controversial Stand Your Ground law.

Thousands of people poured out into the streets in protest of the jurys decision to clear Zimmerman in the fatal shooting, which brought life to the Black Lives Matter movement emerged.

BLM grew into a global organization with a mission to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes," according to the group's website.

After forming in response to Zimmermans acquittal, the movement also protested the more recent police-involved killings of other unarmed Black people including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

Excerpt from:
Rest in Power': Trayvon Martin Remembered on 26th Heavenly Birthday' - NBC 6 South Florida

MIAMI -- Washingtons Bradley Beal thought he had an open path to a layup in the opening minutes, unaware that Miamis Bam Adebayo was going to swat his shot out of bounds with ease.

Beals night didnt get any better.

And the Heat looked like themselves again.

Beal the NBAs scoring leader, averaging 34.8 points entering Friday missed his first 13 shot attempts, reserve Kendrick Nunn had 25 points and Miami rolled to a 122-95 win over the Wizards.

Every human being is due for a bad day," Beal said.

Adebayo scored 21 for Miami, which got 17 points from Kelly Olynyk, 17 more from Tyler Herro and a 14-point, nine-assist, eight-rebound night from Jimmy Butler.

We were competing on both ends. ... It's great to see us try to get back to that form we had last year," Adebayo said. Good to get a win."

Beal scored only seven points on 1-for-14 shooting for Washington, the first time this season he has been held below 25. Alex Len scored 18, Russell Westbrook scored 13 and Rui Hachimura added 12 for the Wizards, who won in Miami on Wednesday by holding the Heat to 35 second-half points then gave up 40 in the first quarter on Friday.

Miami (8-14) led by as many as 37, the biggest Heat lead of the season and biggest Washington deficit of the season.

We didn't come out with the right frame of mind to compete against a team that's fighting for their lives as well," Wizards coach Scott Brooks said.

Plenty changed for the Heat. They had a morning shootaround, a break from the norm. They changed the starting lineup, inserting Goran Dragic for Herro. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra even challenged a foul call, something he hardly ever does, and was successful.

We're seeing improvement," Spoelstra said. We just need time. Our core guys have not been on the court together a lot this season, and you're trying to build habits and play the right way."

And Beal simply couldnt buy a basket.

He was 0 for 6 in each of the first two quarters, and then missed his first shot of the third before getting a 3-pointer to fall with 9:46 left in the period.

That was his last shot of the night. Washington lifted all five of its starters with 4:14 left in the third, down 93-61.

They double- and triple-teamed a lot. ... They did a good job," Beal said. Very good job."

TIP-INS

Wizards: Beal's scoring average fell to 33.3. ... Washingtons 5-14 start matches the seventh-worst in franchise history. ... The Wizards are 2-0 with Westbrook in the lineup against Brooklyn this season, and 0-11 when hes in the lineup against any other team.

Heat: Dragic left in the third quarter with a sprained left ankle. X-rays were negative. ... Adebayo was 11 for 11 from the foul line in the first quarter. The last time a Heat player made more in any quarter was 2007, when Dwyane Wade made 14 in the fourth against Cleveland.

REFEREE DUO

Lauren Holtkamp-Sterling and Ashley Moyer-Gleich were two of the officials, joined by crew chief Brian Forte. It was the second time in NBA history that two women worked a game; Natalie Sago and Jenna Schroeder were on a crew in Orlando together last month.

BIRTHDAY MESSAGE

Adebayo always signs off interviews by saying Black Lives Matter" and added a new twist Friday. Everybody tell Trayvon Martin happy birthday," Adebayo said. Martin would have turned 26 on Friday. He was 17 when he was shot dead while walking to his father's home in Central Florida in 2012. The Black teen was unarmed when he was shot by George Zimmerman, whose acquittal under Floridas self-defense law in July 2013 sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

UP NEXT

Wizards: Visit Charlotte on Sunday.

Heat: Visit New York on Sunday.

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Wizards vs. Heat - Game Recap - February 5, 2021 - ESPN