tulipsandroses
tulipsandroses's JournalWhat Mayor Pete could learn from Bobby Kennedy
I mentioned that I was thinking about Bobby Kennedy as I watch Mayor Pete navigate this tragedy. This is a bit of a read. But relevant for these times.
The Most Trusted White Man in Black America
[link:https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/robert-f-kennedy-race-relations-martin-luther-king-assassination-214021|
Bobby Kennedy started out clueless on race, and yet he died a civil rights hero. His learning curve should inspire today’s leaders.
The best clue to where the participants at the historic gathering stood was where they sat. All 11 African-Americans lined up on one side of the Kennedy family drawing room overlooking Central Park, the five whites on the other. It was Harlem vs. Hickory Hill. The partition was a fitting one for the spring of 1963, when demarcation of the races was written into law across the American South and into practice in the rest of the land. But it was not an auspicious beginning to an urgent conclave that the black novelist James Baldwin had pulled together, at the request of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to talk about why a volcano of rage was building up in Northern ghettos and why mainstream civil rights leaders couldn’t or wouldn’t quell it as summer approached.
A second sign that the meeting was ill-fated was not who had been invited but who had not. Baldwin assembled a motley collection of fellow artists, academics, and second-tier civil rights leaders, along with his lawyer, secretary, literary agent, brother, and brother’s girlfriend. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t welcome, nor were the top people from the NAACP and the Urban League, because Bobby Kennedy wanted a no-holds-barred critique of their leadership. He also hoped for a sober discussion of what the Kennedy administration should do, with African-Americans who knew After feeding his guests a light buffet and settling them in chairs or on footstools, Bobby opened the discussion on tame and self-serving notes. He listed all that he and his brother John F. Kennedy had accomplished in advancing African-American rights, explaining why their efforts were groundbreaking. He warned that the politics of race could get dicey with voters going to the polls in just 18 months and conservative white Democrats threatening to bolt. “We have a party in revolt and we have to be somewhat considerate about how to keep them on board if the Democratic Party is going to prevail in the next elections,” said the attorney general. He had already implied that he was among friends by tossing his jacket onto the back of his chair, rolling up his shirtsleeves and welcoming everyone into his father’s elegant apartment. Now he wanted these friends to explain why so many of their African-American brethren were being drawn to dangerous radicals like Malcolm X and his Black Muslims.
Kenneth Clark, black America’s preeminent psychologist, came prepared to lay out studies and statistics to document that corrosive racial divide, but he never got the chance. Jerome Smith, a young activist who had held back as long as he could, suddenly shattered the calm, his stammer underlining his anger. “Mr. Kennedy, I want you to understand I don’t care anything about you and your brother,” he began. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, listening to all this cocktail party patter.” The real threat to white America wasn’t the Black Muslims, Smith insisted, it was when nonviolence advocates like him lost hope. The 24-year-old’s record made his words resonate. He had suffered as many savage beatings as any civil rights protester of the era, including one for which he was getting medical care in New York. But his patience and his pacifism were wearing thin, he warned his rapt audience. If the police came at him with more guns, dogs and hoses, he would answer with a weapon of his own. “When I pull a trigger,” he said, “kiss it goodbye.”
Bobby was shocked, but Smith wasn’t through. Not only would young blacks like him fight to protect their rights at home, he said, but they would refuse to fight for America in Cuba, Vietnam or any of the other places the Kennedys saw threats. “Never! Never! Never!” This was unfathomable to Bobby. “You will not fight for your country?” asked the attorney general, who had lost one brother and nearly a second at war. “How can you say that?” Rather than backing down, Smith said just being in the room with Bobby “makes me nauseous.” Others chimed in, demanding to know why the government couldn’t get tougher in taking on racist laws and ghetto blight. Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote the play A Raisin in the Sun, stood to say she was sickened as well. “You’ve got a great many very, very accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General. But the only man who should be listened to is that man over there,” she said, pointing to Smith.
Thank you Julian Castro for addressing terrorism against minorities
Yes I am calling it terrorism. I am sick of politicians afraid of addressing this issue. Afraid of police unions. I don't think he has a shot. But I am so glad someone brought it up.
Black Harvard Students Want The University To Divest From The Prison-Industrial Complex
Black Harvard Students Want The University To Divest From The Prison-Industrial Complex
[link:https://www.essence.com/news/black-harvard-students-prison-industrial-complex/|
THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRISON DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGN FIGHTS FOR THE INCARCERATED, BUT HARVARD PRESIDENT LAWRENCE BACOW REMAINS UNMOVED.
Harvard University students are attempting to push the institution to divest from the prison-industrial complex. For a center of learning that claims to value truth above all else, these students say that Harvard’s significant investment in the suffering of others delegitimizes that stated value.
According to the students, the administration — led by Harvard President Lawrence Bacow —has been resistant to resolving concerns about the endowment’s large investments in the horrors of mass incarceration.
Poring through U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings pertaining to Harvard, the campaign says that they were able to determine that at least 3 million dollars of Harvard‘s 39.2 billion dollar endowment were being funneled into the prison-industrial complex. The students stress that they know the details of only a small portion of the endowment — 425 million dollars. It’s possible that Harvard has profited even more from this oppressive industry.
According to the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign Website, through a Mid-Cap ETF Fund, the university is connected to private prison operators like Core Civic and the GEO Group. These companies own immigrant detention centers, where people are often subjected to human rights violations. Children have experienced sexual abuse, mental trauma, and many immigrants have died while in custody. Other detention centers have denied adequate health care to pregnant women.
And another one - Baltimore Police Officer Charged With Assault And False Imprisonment
Baltimore Police Officer Charged With Assault And False Imprisonment After Brutal Arrest Is Caught On Camera
[link:https://blavity.com/baltimore-police-officer-charged-with-assault-and-false-imprisonment-after-brutal-arrest-is-caught-on-camera|
Police Sgt. Ethan Newberg was charged with assault, false imprisonment and misconduct after tackling and arresting a bystander.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said Sgt. Ethan Newberg has been charged with assault, false imprisonment and misconduct after bodycam video footage showed the officer tackling and arresting a man.
Newberg, 49, has been on the force for 24 years and The Baltimore Sun noted that he was the city's second highest paid employee in 2018. Through his work and overtime, he was able to rake in $243,000. In fact, he made more than the mayor last year.
Footage from the bodycam showed Newberg arresting another man on May 30 and forcing him to sit on the curb. Lee Dotson was walking by and asked the officers why they were leaving the man on the wet sidewalk.
Newberg immediately became enraged and tackled 30-year-old Dotson by the neck, hitting him while dragging him down. His partner joined him in holding him down by the neck and handcuffs him. As the incident unfolded, Dotson asked why he was being arrested.
"Because you don’t know how to act,” Newberg says in front of about eight officers." "Just go to jail and take your charge like a man.”
The other officers allowed Newberg to arrest Dotson and bring him to the station, where he was later released once prosecutors learned of the situation. Newberg initially lied on the police report and said Dotson was impeding his arrest of the other man by "creating a hostile crowd." Once the bodycam video was released, it was clear the officer's account was untrue.
Why won't someone ask him for proof? He keeps saying companies are moving to the US
See this is the bullshit that his followers believe. I wish reporters would push him on this. What companies? Can you give us a name?
I have yet to read this anywhere. From what I have read, companies considering leaving China are not coming to the US, so still No US jobs!!! They are even considering Mexico!!! - Some of these companies were already planning to move before the tarrifs by the way. Why do they allow him to get away with lying.
Better Schools Won't Fix America
Abigail Disney's discussion this morning on Stephanie Ruhle's Show made me think of this article I read yesterday.
Better Schools Won’t Fix America
Like many rich Americans, I used to think educational investment could heal the country’s ills—but I was wrong. Fighting inequality must come first.
[link:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/|
Long ago, i was captivated by a seductively intuitive idea, one many of my wealthy friends still subscribe to: that both poverty and rising inequality are largely consequences of America’s failing education system. Fix that, I believed, and we could cure much of what ails America.
This belief system, which I have come to think of as “educationism,” is grounded in a familiar story about cause and effect: Once upon a time, America created a public-education system that was the envy of the modern world. No nation produced more or better-educated high-school and college graduates, and thus the great American middle class was built. But then, sometime around the 1970s, America lost its way. We allowed our schools to crumble, and our test scores and graduation rates to fall. School systems that once churned out well-paid factory workers failed to keep pace with the rising educational demands of the new knowledge economy. As America’s public-school systems foundered, so did the earning power of the American middle class. And as inequality increased, so did political polarization, cynicism, and anger, threatening to undermine American democracy itself.
Taken with this story line, I embraced education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission. I co-founded the League of Education Voters, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education. I joined Bill Gates, Alice Walton, and Paul Allen in giving more than $1 million each to an effort to pass a ballot measure that established Washington State’s first charter schools. All told, I have devoted countless hours and millions of dollars to the simple idea that if we improved our schools—if we modernized our curricula and our teaching methods, substantially increased school funding, rooted out bad teachers, and opened enough charter schools—American children, especially those in low-income and working-class communities, would start learning again. Graduation rates and wages would increase, poverty and inequality would decrease, and public commitment to democracy would be restored.
But after decades of organizing and giving, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I was wrong. And I hate being wrong.
What I’ve realized, decades late, is that educationism is tragically misguided. American workers are struggling in large part because they are underpaid—and they are underpaid because 40 years of trickle-down policies have rigged the economy in favor of wealthy people like me. Americans are more highly educated than ever before, but despite that, and despite nearly record-low unemployment, most American workers—at all levels of educational attainment—have seen little if any wage growth since 2000.
Disney CEO makes 1424 more than the median Disney worker- Who decides who brings value?
A big problem in this country is income inequality
Stephanie Ruhle had an excellent piece this morning with Abigail Disney talking about this topic - Stephanie mentioned that the Disney CEO has brought a lot of value to the company. I thought about the article that someone posted a few days ago about a boy with autism that was having a melt down and the Disney worker laid on the floor with him. That made the trip so much better for that boy's parents. That was not the first time I heard of a Disney worker doing such a thing.
When these workers do this, these stories often go viral - That brings tremendous value to the company. How many other parents with children with autism on the fence about taking their children to Disney decided to go to Disney after reading that story? Yet they don't make the big bucks these CEOs make.
Seriously, it should be criminal that CEOs and people that sit in boardrooms make insane amounts of money and people that are doing the work on the ground can hardly make ends meet. These people had to fight to make $15 per hour. Insane!
Nurse Beaten by Patient Denied Request for Unpaid Time Off and Fired
This is what happens when we let money influence politicians. I don't blame the sick patient.
Nurse Beaten Unconscious in Iowa
State law limits unions ability to bargain safety; putting public employees at risk
[link:https://ucommblog.com/section/state-politics/nurse-beaten-unconscious-iowa|
Iowa’s decision to weaken collective bargaining for state employees is putting state employees at risk. This claim was made by the AFSCME Council 61 after a nurse was beaten unconscious at a state mental health facility.
The nurse, Tina Suckow who was attacked by the patient, was put in the hospital for weeks and required surgery. Although the attack happened in October, she is still recovering. After she was unable to come to work due to her injuries and the state denied her request for time off without pay, Suckow was fired.
According to AFSCME, a 2017 state law limits the ability of government employee unions to negotiate resolutions on issues other than salary, including safety matters. The law also resulted in changes in employee grievance procedures. The union believes that this change prevented them from being able to fairly represent Suckow.
“Any reasonable human being should have concern because if it’s OK for the state of Iowa to treat workers this way, then Casey’s can do it, Ruan can do it, any employer in the state of Iowa can do it,” said Danny Homan, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61.
The union also has said that since the law took effect, terminations and forced resignations have tripled. They also warn that hospitals are becoming understaffed putting both workers and patients at risk.
The law, which was passed in 2017 with the help of big money groups backed by the Koch Brothers, was recently upheld in a 4-3 decision by the Iowa Supreme Court.
Gillette's Trans teen's first shave ad- Cue the faux outrage
Gillette Ad Features Black Trans Teen Shaving for the First Time
With Pride season soon upon us, we’ll soon be inundated with rainbow apparel and items from brands falling over themselves to remind us all how inclusive and woke they all are.
Every once in a while, however, a brand gives us something genuinely heartwarming and good.
In the latest ad from Gillette, posted to the brand’s Facebook on Thursday, Samson Bonkeabantu Brown, a trans teen from Canada, is shaving for the first time with his dad nearby.
Take a look at the ad—and the joy on Brown’s face—and try to keep it together.
[link:https://www.theroot.com/gillette-ad-features-black-trans-teen-shaving-for-the-f-1835028856|
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