Thursday Reads: Crazy is the New Red

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I really tried to watch two court proceedings and the censor vote and discussion on Paul Gosar. The Gun Fetishists have clearly moved into the territory of Vigilantism for all kinds of perceived reasons, and none of them are good.  It was clear that a high schooler with a semi-automatic dropped into a civil rights action gone wrong was a bad move that would only worsen a bad situation.  We’ve got plenty of laws against that and carrying around illegal weapons yet, the right has made a kid with the bad judgement of an immature adolescent into some kind of a marauding hero.  It is evident when you hear most of the responses that led to the murder of 2 people, and the severe injuries to one were based on them thinking he was an active shooter.  He was patrolling the street, basically looking for someone to gun down. Rittenhouse went looking to shoot someone and killed 2 people. Today is the third day of jury deliberations.

Then I saw bits and pieces of the three older vigilantes with some policing experience basically stalk a young black jogger and then claim self-defense when that’s precisely what Aubry was doing.  Figuring a white truck with armed white guys and a confederate flag license plate were likely to kill him, he tried to defend himself, and they killed him.  So, the police training and more mature minds basically led to the same outcomes.  These folks up for murder basically went looking for trouble with guns. Travis McMichael is one of three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery; his defense attorney tried to turn him into a Coast Guard hero.  His primary duties with the USCG were auto mechanic. Arbery was unarmed.

Then, we see the ever-crazy, ever-defiant Paul Gosar retweet the same violent video with him as some kind of anime hero killing his colleague and stabbing the President the morning after he was censured by the House of Representatives.

The last thing I tried to listen to was an interview with Julius Johns, who is scheduled to be executed by the state today for a murder that evidence suggests he did not commit.  One of these things is not like the others above.   Julius is a black man.

You could not possibly take all of this in and not be depressed and angry about the state of our criminal justice system.  I also watched interviews with the author of The 1619 Project. This is the basis for all the white angst and fragility over Critical Race Theory, which is basically something that’s taught in Law Schools and not in any primary or secondary public school anywhere.

This is why I am supporting Susan Hutsan for Sheriff of Orleans Parish. Our criminal justice system must be reformed, or our democracy will continue to fail to provide equal justice under the law to all.  Susan has been the New Orleans Independent Police Monitor. She opposes building a new parish jail. We already have an incredible incarceration rate here.

Charles Blow discusses ‘White Men on Trial’ in an Op-Ed for the NYT.  He includes Bannon’s woes in his analysis.

There is quite the convergence at the moment of race and justice as cases featuring white male defendants accused of everything from murder to insurrection dominate news coverage.

There is a virtual pageant of privilege as the country waits to see if our system of justice will deal as severely and unsparingly with these men as it has with others who were not white men.

All the cases are different, of course. Some are being adjudicated in the state courts, others in federal. Some have proceeded to sentencing, while others remain at the charging or trial stage. But the optics are somewhat consistent.

Blow is right. The optics are consistent and hard-to-miss.

Race hangs heavy over all these cases. They involve white vigilantes who stalked and killed a Black man, and a young man who killed two people at a protest that was in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. They involve white men who sought to overturn a fair election in which people of color secured a victory for Biden over a white nationalist president, and a white man who defied Congress to protect those white nationalists. And finally, they involve a man who posted a violent video about killing a woman of color in Congress.

I would like to return to the link at NBC about Nikole Hannah-Jones whose book is subtitled “The Harsh Truths of the Black Experience.:”  The book was released on Tuesday.

In an interview with Trymaine Lee, host of the MSNBC podcast “Into America,” in front of an audience at Harvard University where he is a fellow, Hannah-Jones spoke about the legacy of 1619, and the way Americans’ understanding of historical events can evolve.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; those words are powerful,” she said in the interview, which will be featured in the podcast Thursday. “We just have never lived up to them for a single day. So if you believe in that kind of vaunted 1776 origin story, that’s the comforting origin story. The1619 Project, I would argue, is more truthful, but not comforting. It’s not comforting at all.”

The 1619 Project received harsh criticism for the main conceit of the project, which was that America was not founded in 1776 when it declared its independence from England, but in 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to the colonies and exploited.

Then-President Donald Trump took aim at the narrative last year during a White House press conference, during which he expressed the government’s need to restore patriotic education in schools. Hannah-Jones said she received intimidating emails and voicemails that used racial slurs, as well as threats that her home would be burned down.

She said she thought about the project “all the time” as she was working on the initial magazine feature.

“I also felt a tremendous burden to get it right, to do justice to that suffering, to do justice to our ancestors,” Hannah-Jones said. “And then facing, you know, constant attacks, not just on the work, but on my credibility as a journalist, I became a symbol; and I think we would not be being honest if we didn’t say me being a Black woman in particular, a Black woman who looks and presents the way that I do, that I didn’t get a certain, extremely vicious type of pushback.”

I was  ten years old when Seperate But Equal died in the Supreme Court.  We’re talking only 55 years ago. The south gets the blame for a lot of Jim Crow but it was all over including just tryiing to take a vaction in California or Colorado. Click this link to see the photo exhibit.  This was still in operation when I was a child spending my summers in a Colorado cabin in the Rockies. There were never any black families staying with us at the YMCA Camp of the Rockies.

Lincoln Hills, 1925–1965

Coloradans love the outdoors. But African Americans were once barred from leisure opportunities most whites took for granted. Explore a Rocky Mountain haven where African Americans could hike, fish, and camp—and leave discrimination behind.

A black family that owned a camping and recreation in California had its business taken from it and turned into a public park.It’s finally been given to the grandchildren as a reparation for the theft.  The beach was seized from the family in 1924.  These are the kinds of things that impact intetergenerational wealth. The story is reported by ABC.

A stretch of beachfront land in Southern California that was seized from a Black family 97 years ago is set to be returned to their descendants.

Black couple Willa and Charles Bruce purchased land on Manhattan Beach in 1912, making them among the first Black landowners in the city. But 12 years later they were forced off their property as it was seized by the city.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to return the property to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.

The Bruces bought the first of two ocean-view lots for $1,225, a property that could now be worth millions.

They built a resort known as Bruce’s Beach to serve Black residents, making it one of the few beaches Black residents could use due to segregation. The Bruces and their customers were harassed and threatened by their white neighbors, including the Ku Klux Klan, the county board of supervisors said in a news release.

In 1924, the city of Manhattan Beach used eminent domain to force the couple off their land to turn it into a park. The city seized the property in 1929, however, it remained vacant for decades.

Think of this. From the NY:  “NASA Astronaut to Be First Black Woman to Join Space Station Crew. Jessica Watkins, who joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017, is scheduled to fly to the orbital outpost in a SpaceX capsule in April.”

All you have to do is open your eyes and seek the truth and it shall free you.  It should not make you feel aggrieved by the feelings of the victims.  There are far too many good firsts that have yet to appear for every one but White Men.  Time to change that!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?