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The National Rifle Association has been conspicuously silent on police violence amid weeks of nationwide demonstrations, despite calling itself the "America's longest-standing civil rights organization."

The NRA's leaders and social media accounts have made no mentionof the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, the protests, or the police violence against peaceful protesters.

"The NRA loves to talk about liberty, self-defense, and resisting 'tyranny,'but their actions suggest that they believe these concerns apply only to white people," Kelly Sampson, the constitutional litigation and racial justice counsel at Brady: United Against Gun Violence, said in a statement to Salon."When armed vigilantes and law enforcement infringe on Black and brown Americans' civil rights the NRA is silent."

This is nothing new. Despite NRA chief Wayne LaPierre's famous warningof "jack-booted government thugs" who want to "take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us," the group said nothing when Louisville police broke into Breonna Taylor's apartmentand fatally shot her in bed afterher boyfriend, a legal gun owner, fired a warning shot to prevent what he thought was a home invasion. It similarly stayed silent on the killing of Botham Jean, who was killed when an off-duty police officer mistook his apartment for her own, other than to suggest he might still be alive if he had beenarmed himself.

Despite LaPierre's warning that "if you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens," the group has stayed silent as federal, stateand local authorities led an unprecedented and violent crackdownagainstpeaceful protests against police brutality.

Despite the group's claim to defend legal gun owners, the NRA stayed silent when Philando Castile, a legal gun owner, was shot to death by police in Minnesota, before using his death to sellits ill-fated Carry Guard "murder insurance."

"Wayne LaPierre and his acolytes long ago embraced an alt-right version of America where more guns is the answer to every societal challenge, unless of course it is Black Americans with the guns," said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, the anti-gun-violence group foundedby former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz.

The NRA's silence dates back years. The group said nothingwhen John Crawford was shot by police in Ohio while holding a pellet gun, nor when 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by police in Cleveland while holding a BB gun. It stayed silent when Jason Washington, a Navy veteran, was killed after he tried to pick up a licensed handgun that he had dropped on the ground.

The NRA made no mentionof Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., a Black man shot three times in the back by police while carrying a legally-owned gun. The NRA was likewise silenton the police killing of Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman shot inside her home through a window while holding a legally-owned gun. The group said nothingof the police killing of Harith Augustus, who was killed by Chicago police while legally carrying a concealed gun.

Though the NRA defended George Zimmerman's right to stand his groundafter the killing of Trayvon Martin, the group had nothing to sayafter Siwatu-Salama Ra, a pregnant Black gun owner, was sentenced to two years in prison for defending her mother and two-year-old daughter from a woman who tried to ram them with her car.

Not only has the country's self-proclaimed oldest "civil rights organization" remained on the sidelines amid a mass outcry over police abuses, but many of its prominent officials, board members, spokespeopleand members have also attacked Black victims of police violence and protesters calling for reform.

"The NRA uses rhetoric steeped in racism. You only have to look at their Twitter feed to see this," Sampson told Salon. "On June 2, the NRA tweeted about apparent looting in Minneapolis and about reports thatBlack residents werepurchasing firearms, calling the Second Amendment a 'great equalizer.'But the feed madeno mention of the violence perpetrated against protesters or against Black Americans across the country. The NRA has used this tactic for decades and has created a culture of fear and paranoia that not only ignores the suffering of people of color but also actively threatens them. We see this in the NRA's unremitting defense of Stand Your Ground laws, which are proven to be more likely to be used to justify the murder of a Black man by a white man."

NRA board member Dean Cain, the actor who played Superman in the TV series "Lois & Clark," shared a video on Twitter that called protesters "rioting thugs."

"You do not have a right to be offended by stereotypes that say Black people are inherently violent, when that is exactly the way you act when given the first opportunity," Cain's video informed viewers. "Your conduct is trash ... I have a right to call you out for the warped, hateful, animalistic, shameful, thuggish, self-serving, rabid, counterproductive hypocrites that you are."

Cain also argued that the officers involved in Rayshard Brooks' killing in Atlanta were "unlawfully charged"and shared a tweet complaining that the treatment of Minneapolis police after Floyd's murder was "shameful" and "unfair."

Guy Phillips, an NRA member and a city councilman in Scottsdale, Arizona, mockingly said "I can't breathe,"the words spoke by Floyd before he died weeks earlier, to refer to his opposition to face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

NRA board member and former Georgia Republican congressmanBob Barrargued that the "riots"had"nothing to do with the death of George Floyd," insistingthat if they did, protesters "would have backed down as soon as the indictment of former police officer Derek Chauvin was announced."

Barr said he didn't sympathize with protesters because they were not themselves "victims of individual or group injustice of the sort that befell Floyd" and argued that antifaactivists had "hijacked the George Floyd murder for purposes having nothing whatsoever to do with seeking justice for his death."

President Trump and other conservatives have pushed the discredited claim that antifa was responsible for violence around the protests, but federal and local charges show no signs of any antifa involvement.

Barr penned another op-edsuggesting that Black Lives Matter was a front group for Marxism that has "little, if anything, to do with racial justice."

The protests, he argued on Twitter, are "nothing more than finding an excuse for stealing and vandalism."

NRA board member Allen West, a former Florida congressman,responded to questions about how to prevent killings like Floyd's from happening by suggesting that the military should be sent into suppress Black Lives Matter protesters and antifa,labeling them "enemies" of America.

West argued that Black Lives Matter was "no different" from the Nazi "Brown Shirts that used to roam the streets."

"I'm tired of this Black Lives Matter organization. They don't care about Black lives," West claimed.

NRA board member Mark Geist called Black Lives Matter a "rancid evil trying to take over our country."

NRA board member Ted Nugent has long been one of the most avowed opponents of the Black Lives Matter movement, comparing it to ISIS and comparing Minneapolis to the war zone in Iraq.

Nugent's social media posts have complained that Black Americans have never said "thank you" to white people for, as he put it, freeing them from slavery. He has falsely disputed that Black people are disproportionately shot by police and has defended Confederate monuments.

"The NRA claims to be a 'civil rights' organization, but their officials have spent the last month defending Confederate monuments while comparing the Black Lives Matter movement to the Nazi Party and ISIS," John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement to Salon. "That tells you everything you need to know about whose 'civil rights' the NRA really cares about."

"The National Rifle Association of today is a hollowed-out, paranoid and extremist version of the organization that once wielded so much power in Washington. Racism is business as usual for NRA leaders, who no longer speak for the majority of responsible gun owners," added Ambler. "Their extreme agenda is out of step with the mainstream and is fueling their descent into irrelevance."

The NRA did not respond to questions from Salon. The organization's recent comments show that the NRA has largely stuck with the same talking points it had after past police shootings, even as public opinion has dramatically shifted. A New York Times analysis found that Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement by a 28-point margin. A Pew poll found that the majority of every racial and ethnic group supports the Black Lives Matter movement.

But the NRA has continued to recycle years-old talking points.

Nugent said last year that Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager gunned down by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in 2014, was no better than "mass shooters and criminal thugs." Former NRATV host and spokeswoman Dana Loesch suggested that Castile was not, in fact, a legal gun owner because he was carrying marijuana "simultaneously," while fellow host Grant Stinchfield suggested that Castile was a "gun-toting thug."

Colion Noir, another former NRATV host, wrote an op-ed last year downplaying the role race plays in police shootings.

"I know that's not a popular thing to say as a black man in today's political climate, but that's why these cases are such a big deal when they do occur. And even then, the motivations behind the shootings are never clear-cut at least not clear-cut enough to say that a cop shot a black guy with a gun just because he was a black guy with a gun, and not for some other reason, justified or not," he wrote. "However, I know one thing is for sure: It has never been safer to be black and armed in this country than it is right now."

Loesch has similarly argued that "there is absolutely no statistics, no evidence at all that support thepremise that there is this open warfare by cops on black Americans. There's nothing to support this."

There is in factample evidenceto support this.

Going back even further in history, the NRA actively supported gun control measures when they were intended to disarm Black people.

The group supported the 1967 Mulford Actin California, a law aimed at disarming Black Americans amid the rise of the Black Panther Party. The group also supported the repeal of California's open carry lawafter Black Panthers members b began carrying rifles in public, disconcerting then-governor Ronald Reagan.

"The police kiIIings of legally armed Black citizens, and the refusal of leading gun-rights proponents to sincerely defend the victims, raises the same troubling question that both Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party also confronted when they tried to exercise their rights to bear arms: In practice, do Second Amendment rights protect only white gun owners?" the Milwaukee Independentasked in 2018.

The NAACP called out the NRA over its silence after the killings of legal Black gun owners after Bradford's death.

"The silence from the NRA has confirmed that the 2nd amendment does not apply to legally licensed Black gun owners," the organization said in a statement. "Instead of standing by their principles, the NRA continues to demonize and alienate people of color who are gunned downand blamed for exercising their right to own and brandish firearms. This narrative is just as old and tired as this organization and it's time for them to stop this hypocrisy and finally come to terms with this racist rhetoric. The target on the backs of Black and brown lives is getting larger and unlike the NRA, we will do all we can to stop this."

Sampson argued that the NRA stays silent on racist violence because "advocating for Black Americans' safety does not sell guns."

"The truth is that the NRA peddles paranoia to fuel gun sales: the notion is, its members are constantly under threat from a dangerous world of 'others'and from politicians, then prescribes guns as the only solution," she said. "Aside from occasionally tokenizing Black people who espouse the NRA's dangerous, false, dog-whistle talking points, the NRA doesn't bother."

If the NRA truly stood up for constitutional rights for Black people, it would not have stayed on the sidelines after Castile was gunned down, Sampson said.

"While the NRA continues to tout guns as effective self-defense, we marked the fourth anniversary of Philando Castile's murder on July 6. Castile, murdered in his car by police, was the sort of lawfully armed citizen the NRA would ordinarily praise, but he was also Black,"she said. "Sorather than focusing on how the police infringed on his life and liberty, the NRA instead emphasized that one of the officers smelled marijuana. To be clear, drug use does not excuse murder. The NRA has likewise been silent on the murders of Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, both killed by police this year. The NRA claims that it supports 'life and liberty,'but clearly only for some."

Originally posted here:
NRA silence on police violence is deafening -- its members' attacks on Black victims are even worse - Salon

When Martin Luther King Jr. staged a march in Selma, Alabama in 1965 just days after Alabama state troopers and local cops assaulted protesters in an infamous confrontation known as Bloody Sunday" it was CRS officials who worked to avert another round of violence.

More recently, in 2018, when Sacramento police shot to death Stephon Clarke, an African American man, a five-person CRS team was on the ground in less than 24 hours. The team helped to arrange an emergency meeting between the city council and a community furious over the killing of the unarmed 22-year-old.

If you can get a conversation started, things are less likely to go stupid," said Ronald Wakabayashi, the CRS regional director who led the team in Sacramento and has since retired.

But now, during perhaps the most significant civil rights moment in a half century, the CRS has been sidelined, sending out just a handful of staffers to cities experiencing unrest and making few public statements. Between May 25, the date of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, and June 15, the agency put out four Tweets and some Facebook posts none of which mentioned the growing national outcry over decades of abusive policing in communities of color.

Current and former CRS leaders and staffers say the agency's muted response reflects the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle it over the past three years, leaving it short-staffed and rudderless.

President Donald Trump, in his budget proposals, has repeatedly recommended eliminating the agency. The CRS, whose work often occurs out of public view, continues to exist only because Congress has repeatedly restored its funding.

But even with that funding, the agency's ability to carry out its mission has diminished dramatically. Though the CRS is budgeted for 34 full-time employees down from 58 in 2017 it now has 29, according to current and former employees, and the headcount was even lower in recent months. It is supposed to be managed by 10 regional directors but now has only three. As Trump's first term comes to a close, the White House has yet to nominate a permanent director for Senate approval, and at present the CRS doesn't have an acting director.

Morale is extraordinarily low. They feel like they can't do the work" said Grande Lum, who headed the CRS from 2012 to 2016 and still talks to current CRS employees. These are career employees, they're not political appointees like I was. They have been doing this under every administration, Republican and Democrat, and this administration is saying, 'We don't really want you.'"

Former federal officials said the decline of the CRS fits a broader pattern at the Trump Justice Department, which has taken an interest in religious freedom cases but has turned away from other civil rights issues. Under the leadership of Jeff Sessions and current Attorney General Wiliam Barr, the department has curtailed the use of civil litigation to reform troubled police forces and sought to roll back legal protections for transgender people.

In this administration anything dealing with civil rights has a target on it," said Becky Monroe, who served as acting director of the CRS during the Obama years and now works for the nonpartisan Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Lum compared the Trump administration's moves to gut the agency before a massive wave of protests to the administration's much-criticized decision to dissolve the National Security Council's pandemic unit before the coronavirus crisis hit. Both decisions, he said, deprived the federal government of experienced leaders at a key moment.

Though many of the marches and demonstrations over the past six weeks were peaceful, others devolved into the sort of chaos the CRS was designed to help deter, with police officers using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets to push back crowds, and protesters hurling rocks and bottles at cops, burning buildings and ransacking businesses. Gunfire has rung out in many cities, killing civilians and at least one law enforcement officer. On July 4 a driver slammed into marchers who had taken over a Seattle highway, leaving one person dead.

Current and former employees told ProPublica that some CRS staffers were reluctant to go out into the streets because of the ongoing spread of the coronavirus, though they noted that employees are continuing to work from home, using phone calls and videoconferences to conduct trainings and stay on top of events as they unfold around the country.

When similar protests occurred during past administrations, Monroe said, CRS staffers were on the ground working with community leaders" to address tensions and keep people safe.

Even if more CRS staff were being sent out now, said Monroe, the president's recent inflammatory speeches and tweets would complicate their ability to do their job. Right now, I think the president and this administration have really undermined the core mission of the agency by trying to incite racist violence," she said. We literally have a president of the United States who is doing the opposite of what the Community Relations Service was created to do."

A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency has prioritized the safety of its employees" during the pandemic, but since the wave of protests began, staffers have been allowed to meet face-to-face with small groups of people as long as they wear masks.

To date, CRS leadership has approved all requests for deployment under this procedure," said the spokesperson, who declined to say which cities CRS staff have been dispatched to, but said they were in touch with leaders in 65 cities.

The spokesperson defended CRS staffing levels and said the agency is currently hiring more employees.

Throughout our history as an agency, there have always been periods of unrest, and CRS has always responded to the best of its ability, knowing that there is always more that could be done," the spokesperson told ProPublica, noting that some of the agency's most important work begins after the protests have subsided and when community groups and local law enforcement are ready to work together on areas of needed reform."

The history of the CRS begins with Lyndon Johnson, who as a U.S. senator in the late 1950s envisioned a mediation service that would seek to quell disputes between racial and ethnic groups.

Years later, as president, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law that banned racial discrimination in housing, employment, voting education and so-called public accommodations retail businesses, restaurants, hotels and the like. Included in the sweeping and transformative legislation were a few brief paragraphs establishing the CRS.

Those paragraphs instructed the new agency to provide assistance in resolving disputes, disagreements, or difficulties relating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national origin."

For Johnson, the creation of the CRS reflected his conviction that most conflict could be negotiated," according to a forthcoming history of the agency written by Lum and another former CRS leader, Bertram Levine. It also reflected an uncomfortable truth: The Justice Department didn't have nearly enough lawyers to sue every business or local government agency that refused to comply with the Civil Rights Act and its prohibition on racial segregation.

Required by law to keep most of its activities confidential, the new agency played a quiet, behind-the-scenes role throughout the second half of the 1960s as civil rights activism swept across the country. In 1965, CRS staffers were on the ground in Selma, Alabama, the site of some of the ugliest episodes of the era. After police killed protester Jimmie Lee Jackson and brutalized marchers as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge a horrific event that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday" CRS leaders convinced local authorities not to attack subsequent marches led by King and others.

A new federal hate crimes law, passed in 2009, broadened the CRS mandate, directing the agency to work to prevent hate crimes, including those targeting LGBTQ individuals and institutions. Since then, the agency has led discussion groups for high schools torn apart by bullying and harassment and helped a state prison develop policies for handling transgender inmates.

CRS teams, at least until recently, have continued to respond to a wide range of conflicts. In 2010, CRS employees worked to defuse a tense, potentially lethal situation in Phoenix when a small band of neo-Nazis armed with assault rifles confronted a large group of demonstrators, including many Latinos, who had gathered at the Arizona Capitol to denounce a new anti-immigration law adopted by the state.

The CRS hasn't always been successful at preventing violence and chaos. Even at its peak, it was a small agency confronting entrenched and complex problems.

And over the past decade it has become something of a bogeyman for conservative activists and right-wing pundits who claim the agency has deviated from its mission and is now covertly orchestrating protests and aggravating racial discord. Those claims were strenuously denied by CRS personnel who spoke to ProPublica.

Because we work with communities of color, some people believe we're instigating these issues. We're not. We're helping them resolve these conflicts," said one CRS employee, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Much of the controversy stems from a campaign by Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, which claims that CRS staffers actively worked to foment unrest" in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager, in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.

According to Judicial Watch, the CRS helped to organize and manage rallies and protests" in Sanford as part of a Justice Department pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman," the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Martin. This incendiary narrative was picked up by a host of right-wing media outlets, including The Daily Caller, Breitbart News, WorldNetDaily, PJ Media and the biggest of them all, Fox News.

Judicial Watch said it based its assertions on some 350 pages of internal CRS documents, including emails and travel records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

But as the story began to circulate through the conservative media ecosystem in 2013, PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking site, evaluated Judicial Watch's claims and concluded they were mostly false. Justice Department employees were sent to Sanford, in part to deal with community uprising, including protests," noted the site. But they were sent with the idea of keeping the situation peaceful and calm, not to instigate or condone protests or violence."

A ProPublica review of the internal CRS documents found no support for the allegations made by Judicial Watch. The organization did not respond to questions.

CRS employees who were on the ground in Sanford said they spent their days trying to ensure that nobody got hurt during three major protest events and a student-led sit-in outside the police department. Thomas Battles, then the CRS regional director overseeing the Southeast, started conversations between the local police and members of the New Black Panther Party, who'd shown up to a demonstration heavily armed, raising fears that the protest might turn into a gun battle. In the end, there were no arrests, no injuries," recalled Monroe, who was present at the scene.

Jeff Triplett, who was mayor of Sanford at the time of the protests, has praised the CRS for its help and credited the agency for acting as an emissary between public officials and activists.

But by the time Trump was sworn in as president, in 2017, the Heritage Foundation, one of the most influential conservative think tanks in Washington, had adopted the Judicial Watch line.

The CRS budget should be entirely eliminated," wrote Heritage in its budget recommendations for Trump's first year in office. Rather than fulfilling its mandate of trying to be the peacemaker in community conflicts, the CRS has raised tensions in local communities in recent incidents."

Since then, the Trump administration has sought to do away with the CRS. The administration's 2019 budget proposal offered no money for the agency. And its proposed 2020 budget would have eliminated the CRS and directed another unit of the Justice Department to take over its work, with a greatly reduced staff. The administration characterized the plan as an attempt to improve efficiency.

Congress blocked those moves, increasing funding to the office from $14.4 million in 2017 to $16 million in 2020.

Asked how that increased funding was being spent despite the smaller staff, the DOJ spokesperson said all CRS appropriated funding has been dedicated to CRS requirements and mission accomplishment" including updated training materials, strategic planning, social media, and websites dealing with hate crimes.

The cuts in staff have shrunk the frontline team. Lum said that when he directed the agency, he had about 30 staffers, known as conciliation specialists, that he could deploy to cities and towns in crisis. Today the CRS has 16 specialists it can send into the field, according to the DOJ spokesperson.

During the Trump years, as the staffing numbers dropped, Wakabayashi, as a regional director, went from overseeing four states and Guam, to managing 15 states plus the island territory, a geographic area stretching from the far side of the Pacific to Alaska to middle America. It was a steep learning curve. If you talk about square miles or time zones, it's huge," he recalled.

The DOJ spokesperson said the agency has posted four jobs since March and is in the process of hiring another regional director.

Equally concerning for Wakabayashi, who spent two decades at the CRS, is what he sees as a movement away from the agency's legacy of acting as mediators during crises.

The conciliators have their hands tied," he said. The CRS has scuttled a lot of the custom work that we did. When you're in a conflict situation, you go in and look at what the problems are and what people's concerns are."

In Wakabayashi's view, the CRS is now focused on what he called off-the-shelf programs," including training seminars about the Sikh and Muslim faiths and community forums on hate crimes. They're not bad they come out of our own tradition of work but they're not useful if you use them mechanically."

In 2017, the CRS jettisoned a program dealing with racial profiling that brought together civilians, advocacy groups and law enforcement officers in a neutral setting to discuss bias in policing. It was replaced with a new program that makes no mention of profiling, according to the CRS staff.

Monroe doesn't think it's an accident that the CRS has gone without a director for several years. It demonstrates that they don't think it's an agency that merits the leadership it needs," she said.

See the rest here:
Trump Weakened Key Civil Rights Agency When It Is Needed Most - The National Memo

I typed the word threaten in the search on Shutterstock, and this is what came up. The original caption is Angry African-American businessman threatens colleague, conflict between male workers at workplace, bullying and discrimination, black boss blames white employee responsible for failure, your faultPhoto: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)

This wont be long, because I am not going to belabor the point.

Much in the same way white people have weaponized the police against Black bodies, they have also adopted the language of those who protect and uplift whiteness and white supremacythe police.

Historically, weve seen that the only thing a cop needs to say in order to get away with killing a Black person is I feared for my life.

Similarly, white people are using I felt threatened or that their life was in danger or that they thought someone had a gun, to get away with the extrajudicial killing of Black people.

When Amy Cooper encountered Christian Cooper in Central Park, she didnt like it that a Black man asked her (no matter how politely) to leash her dog. Never mind that they were in an area of Central Park where dogs are required to be leashed; Amy decided this uppity-ass nigger wasnt going to tell her what to do. Not tuh-day, honey. So she went into white woman-mode, put on her best victim voice and lied and told the police that Christian was threatening her and her dog. She made sure to mention that he was a) a man and b) Black, and she included the lie that he was threatening her because Black man and threat are a racist dog whistle to copsespecially cops who disregard Black lives and dont mind taking them.

Her stupid-ass apology aside, Amy knew exactly what she was doing when she weaponized the cops against Christian, and she knew that in doing so, it could result in bodily harm coming to him. She wanted him to be put in his place, and she wanted him to see and be aware that she could make that happen.

G/O Media may get a commission

It was a gross display of white supremacy, white woman victimhood and white privilege.

She knew whiteness would protect her, and she knew the police would land on the side of her whiteness.

Similarly, when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in 2012, he said he did so because he felt threatened. Floridas Stand Your Ground law had his back, making it possible for a grown-ass man to get away with killing the 17-year-old Black boy he chased and stalked against the advice of 911 dispatchers.

The thing is: when you feel threatened by someone or something, dont you move away from it?

I am allergic to bees. When I see bees, I get the fuck out of the way. I dont be bullshitting, either. We could be in the middle of a conversation, and if I see a beebitch, fuck whatever it was you were saying. Im moving away from said bee even if that means moving away from you right when you are (finally) getting to the juicy part of the story.

Similarly, when people are afraid of dogs, they dont go running toward them. They run away from them.

All that said, make this make sense:

A Florida man (lol) was caught on video losing his shit in the middle of Costco after a nice elderly woman asked him to please wear a mask.

When Mr. Roid Rage became aggressive with the woman who asked, a kind bystander stepped in to defend her. Said bystander also started filming with their phone.

Wearing a red T-shirt with the words Running the world since 1776 (the irony is making me constipated), Roid Rage charges toward the person filming. He first yells Youre harassing me, and when he is told that he is not being harassed, he begins advancing menacingly toward the person filming and yells I feel threatened! Back off! Threaten me again! Back the fuck off and put your fucking phone down!

From the way the video is shot, you can tell that as Roid Rage advances, the person behind the camera continues to try and retreat away from him.

How are you being threatened by someone who is running away from you?

That is a question for every cop, and I suppose now it will become one for everyday regular degular white people, too.

View original post here:
White People Have Weaponized I Feel Threatened the Same Way They Have Weaponized the Police - The Root

Like teammate Kyrie Irving, Garrett Temple is a vice-president of the NBPA, the players union, and as such, Temple has said he believes the NBAs return-to-play can be a vehicle for enhancing players social justice goals.

Some have reported that Irving had his doubts about the return, suggesting a boycott might have been a better way to point up inequities in American society, including the police brutality the led to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25. .

I think we utilize the situation being in the bubble as a way to continue to push it because there are going to be so many eyes watching these basketball games, Temple told a Nets media Zoom call, noting that while he and Irving might have had their differences, they agreed on the ultimate goal.

Everybody has their own thoughts on how to affect change, Temple said. The main point is that everybody wants the same thing. Kyrie, myself, most of the black men in the NBA that are passionate about this or if they werent passionate, most of them are now we want the same thing. There are a lot of different ways to skin a cat.

The conversations were actually those conversations: Thinking about whats the way we can most utilize this extra push, these extra ears, and extra eyes that are on this situation. Everybody realized this is a little different than three or four years ago. The world was at a standstill, and this happened again; and because of the situation in terms of the pandemic, people have to watch. Its the only thing that was going on.

Temple added that by having so many eyes focused on Orlando and the fight for change, the NBA players wont let the nations focus shift.

As black men, black people in America, this is an everyday struggle. So the way we can utilize those two or three months in Orlando to continue to push the narrative, to have it fresh on peoples minds, is something we can do in terms of keeping it on peoples minds. We can really utilize our bubble and ESPN and Turner to help us push that narrative.

Still, he noted that like so many players whove thought about not going, he has a nervous anxiousness about the bubble.

There is no way to be comfortable when you think about where youre going to be, for the amount of time youre going to be there and the restrictions that you have there, Temple told reporters. The question of us being comfortable; that will not be the case whatsoever.

We will have to adapt. We will get tired of it. But in no way, shape or form will anyone actually be comfortable, whether it be on the court or off the court, during leisure time or not.

Temple also discussed meetings the team had with Van Jones, the CNN commentator and CEO of the REFORM Alliance, Zoom get-togethers arranged by Clara Wu Tsai, a partner in the Alliance which aims to reform Americas criminal justice system.

One thing he was saying was we want yall to keep playing. Yall are some of the few black people in America that have a little bit of money, so we dont want yall to stop that, Temple said. But his biggest thing to us was to continue to have home as black men, black women in America, that he does see a change in how things are going.

One of the most rewarding parts of a difficult time, Temple volunteered was that so many young and old white people had joined in the protests, compared to when George Zimmerman was acquitted of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin.

Nobody seemed to care, Temple said. It made me angry that it was so foreign to so many people, or people just didnt even pay attention to it.

Fast-forward eight or nine years later, it seems like people are finally starting to care about unarmed black men being brutalized by the police and black Americans in general being marginalized. So the biggest thing I see is the difference in how that has affected or everybody is trying to help.

On a personal note, Temple said that he will be at his fiance Kara McCulloughs side when she gives birth to their first child, expected sometime in September.

Im coming back to see my first child being born, Temple said. Thats not even in the question.

Of course, the Nets would have to take down one of the top seeds in the first round of the playoffs for them to still be playing when Temple becomes a father.

Chris Chiozza spoke with reporters as well on Sunday, saying that if Spencer Dinwiddie isnt be able play, hell be ready. Without Dinwiddie, the Nets seem to be ready to Caris LeVert man the point, which will give Chiozza a significant role as a back-up.

Asked if he was disappointed that the Nets didnt convert his two-way deal to a standard contract last week, Chiozza said it wasnt as if he expected it.

I wasnt sure that they were going to do it or not, so when it didnt happen, it didnt bother me too much because of the circumstances, he said. Im still going to be ready to play. Thats all I really cared about ... being able to be in the playoffs and the last few games of the season.

Under normal circumstances, two-ways like him and Jeremiah Martin wouldnt have been eligible for post-season play but under NBA rules adopted for the bubble, the two were added to the roster to fill in for the injured Irving and Kevin Durant.

As to whether hed want to come back next season hell be a restricted free agent come October Chiozza said he definitely wants to return.

Ive gotten comfortable here, enjoy the teammates, the staff, all the coaches. So I would love to back for sure.

The 24-year-old said he spent most of the last three-plus months at home in Memphis where he worked out with his father, his high school coach, at the schools gym. Like high school days, he joked.

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Garrett Temple hopeful that bubble will advance social justice goals - NetsDaily

Tina Knowles-Lawson and Sybrina Fulton want to ensure fair and safe elections this fall as they stress the importance of the Black vote as a driver of change.

The mother of music superstar Beyonc and the mother of Trayvon Martin spoke with Sheinelle Jones on the 3rd hour of TODAY Thursday about their call for the U.S. Senate to pass the HEROES Act, which includes a provision for $3.6 billion in grants to states for planning, preparation and security of elections.

"Voting, absolutely, though it is not the key to success for all the problems, certainly does make a difference, especially at the local level," Knowles-Lawson said. "Just connecting the dots is what we're trying to do because sometimes in the Black community just because we have gone unheard for so long, people have the feeling that their votes don't count, that their voices don't count.

"So voting is the best way, the first way, for us to make our voices heard and to show our power because we get to elect the officials that govern these situations."

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Knowles-Lawson has joined forces with Fulton and other mothers of those like Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor who have been lost to gun violence to write an open letter to Senate leaders to pass the bill. The Democrat-led House of Representatives voted to pass the bill last month, but it has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.

"We decided to come together to make our voice even stronger, to make our voice even more powerful," Fulton said. "It's very important to us that we stand together and we stand up for what's right."

Knowles-Lawson said her fear for the presidential election in the fall is a scene like the one this week in a primary election in Louisville, Kentucky, where voters were pounding on doors to get into the one polling place in a city of 600,000 people.

Voters in minority communities in Georgia had a similar issue earlier this month when they waited hours on line to vote due to fewer polling locations, lack of staffing and inoperable voting machines.

Knowles-Lawson also advocated for more absentee voting as a safer option during the coronavirus pandemic.

"You shouldn't have to decide between your health and going to vote," she said, adding, "Our prayer is that this lights a spark in that everyone will be outraged by the fact that this bill has not been passed and it's so badly needed."

Fulton continues to push for voting rights and racial justice eight years after her 17-year-old son was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted. Her son's name has been a rallying cry at protests around the world against racial injustice since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

Fulton has also decided to run for political office, competing for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners in Florida.

She was asked about the indictments handed down Wednesday to the three suspects in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood in February.

"That's very hard," she said. "They will be setting a precedent that says that Black lives matter, and I think that it's time, it's time for people to see that you just can't go out and shoot and kill us and not be held accountable, so I'm hopeful that they will be not only indicted, but convicted as well."

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Tina Knowles-Lawson and Trayvon Martin's mom emphasize 'power' of the Black vote - Today.com