A Political Season

#BreakTheNFL

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 25 May 2018 23:36:00 +0000

#BreakTheNFL The NFL owners decision to ban African American players from kneeling in protest against incidents of unjustified killing of black citizens by law enforcement during the national anthem is an assault on the dignity and citizenship of all African Americans. it represents a clear calculation by the NFL owners that it is more profitable for them to be enablers of racism than Justice. Their decision should not be permitted to stand unchallenged or unanswered.

A for-profit league whose teams are composed of 70% African American players should not be allowed to profit from the labor of African American citizens they employ while simultaneously enabling the suppression of their dissent against racial Injustice. in a more perfect world, the players union would denounce this action and all players would refuse to take the field until this decision was reversed. I do not believe the Players Union would be willing to take such a stand, although they should. It falls to the African American players, to their fellow African American citizens and to all persons of goodwill who understand essential wrongness and racism of the owner's decision, to give a definitive answer. In taking this decision, the owners intend to compel the silence of black players by holding their livelihoods hostage.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. The NFL owners should be confronted with the same mutually assured financial destruction of the value of their franchises if they do not rescind this policy. The league is made up of 70% African American players. Every single one of those players should refuse to take the field for a regular season game in the 2018 season until this policy by the owners is rescinded.

Such an action will require the same commitment and courage that Colin Kaepernick has displayed. It will require a willingness to accept the possibility of defeat and take a stand anyway. It will require the same resolve that was displayed during the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted 381 days. African American players must do what Montgomery protesters did. They must plan this action, prepare for it, announce their intention to do it and if the decision is not rescinded, implement this protest unrelentingly until it is.

The African American players must not be expected to do it alone either. All of black America must stand with them in this fight, because they will be on the front lines, fighting for our dignity as citizens. That means as individuals, we don't watch football, we don't buy merch, and we do everything in our power to cut off any and all direct or indirect financial support of the NFL from our own pockets. In addition, we ask our non white friends and neighbors of goodwill who understand why the NFL cannot be permitted to assault the dignity and citizenship of African Americans and profit from it, to stand with us and to also deny the NFL their financial support. We use crowdfunding mechanisms to raise money to help ensure that the players who expose themselves to potential financial ruin in this fight, can feed their families, obtain health care and survive the hardship that will certainly befall them as the owners employ every tool at their disposal to break their resolve.

Collectively, African American organizations from the NAACP to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from the Divine Nine to every type of black professional organization, should collaborate to enable and force multiply the financial impact of a black player walkout.

This is the proper and required response to a multi-billion dollar for-profit entity like the NFL deciding that it is more profitable to enable racism against African American citizens than to support justice for African American citizens. If it is allowed to stand, the message sent to every other powerful for-profit company or group of business people is that its good business to knuckle under to racial bigotry and disregard the dignity and citizenship of African American citizens. It is not in the interest of Black America to permit business models to operate in this fashion with impunity. It must be decisively demonstrated that enablement of racism against African Americans for profit DOES NOT PAY. #BreakTheNFL

Star Trek Beyond - Stop Killing the Enterprise!!

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 27 May 2016 15:12:00 +0000

Okay, the first trailer for this movie was a mess and did not say Star Trek to me at all. This trailer is much better. It feels like the Trek vibe, some focus on Kirk that makes sense. I think action in these flicks is good, particularly if it has a point, if it's action grounded in a reality that action must be taken. So I actually think this trailer is a serious win, BUT......the trailer and the movie if these things remain, has two fails, one minor but annoying and the other just really problematic as hell to me.

Fail 1 - minor, more annoying than it should be, and that is the villain looks just like G'Kar, the Narn diplomat in the Babylon 5 series. Was instantly my first thought when I saw him. That is a fail and how the character designers miss that the villain looks like a ripoff of that is beyond me. I'm going to spend the whole movie feeling like the Federation is facing off against the Narn. it will be an irritant the whole film, like a fly buzzing around that you can't shoo away.

FAIL 2 - All caps because this is the big one. WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ARE WE GETTING ANOTHER TREK FILM WHERE THE ENTERPRISE IS DESTROYED!!!

The ship is a character in Trek as pivotal and key as Kirk himself. It's like the unnamed member of the team -Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Enterprise. And we now have in multiple movies, this key member of the team getting killed off and not only killed off, but getting taken out in ways that give her no opportunity to even demonstrate her mettle, to give as good as she gets and to go down hard, go down fighting and bloody up the other son of a bitch on the way out. They keep killing this character, but they never give her death any meaning!

You sacrifice key characters for impact in a story, but this particular plot device of the Enterprise being destroyed merely to allow the crew to then be forced to operate in other ways is becoming a regular thing. It's treating Enterprise like Lois in BVS, having her get in trouble just so Superman can save her. But Enterprise doesn't even get saved, it just gets wasted to be resurrected for the next film, so she can be beaten to death again.

This is the huge and seemingly repeating fail for me with this Trek and the one before it. You can't keep killing this key member of the team and treating the Enterprise like a throwaway plot gimmick.

These new movies need to figure out some balance between the interplay of the human characters and giving the Enterprise an opportunity to shine in some serious ship to ship combat where everything is on the line. But you just can't keep throwing away the Enterprise every movie. It's not iconic, full on Trek without the goddamned Enterprise!

Use of Force Legal Review Standard Obviously Flawed

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 11:39:00 +0000

L.A. declines to prosecute CHP officer for assault caught on video http://flip.it/WtZy0

The legal standard for review of police use of force needs to change. Under current legal standards, police behavior like this and worse is permitted and allowed as lawful. The standard is clearly out of alignment with decency and human rights.

Confederate Flag Wavin

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 03:08:00 +0000

Jazz Shaw over at Hot Air opines about NYT reporting on what looks to be a new round of "fly or do not fly" arguments about the confederate flag getting ginned up in Missippi.

“The South” – at least as defined as a unique, richly flavored heritage in the American melting pot – nearly died at the end of the 19th century. But it hung on in the tenacious way that southerners have always held on. They held on even as they came (as Virgil Cane said) and tore up the tracks again. And as they held on and regrouped through the 20th century, they had a symbol to cling to. It might not have been the best symbol, and others would obviously see it as a sigil of war, but it was the symbol they had. And they hung on to it. It grew to mean something deeper and more profound about the cultural identity of just being from The South when everyone else wanted to pretend that The South had never existed. That’s what it’s all about. And it’s what it’s been about for a very, very long time.

I don't think he explains much about the meaning of the confederate flag at all with the above, but let's set that aside. Here's my personal take on the confederate flag. I don’t think the confederate flag should be the official flag of any federal, state or local public entity, and I don’t think anybody should want it to, but that’s for the people of those different jurisdictions to decide. I think people should be able to fly it or otherwise display it, because that’s freedom of speech. If their community ostracizes or otherwise responds negatively to them because of it, I say great. If their community thinks it’s fine or actively cheers, I say shame. But that’s America.

A lot of the Hot Air comments have said that people who are not from the south simply don’t get it. That the confederate flag symbolizes something deep and fundamental, a history and heritage encompassing any number of things about the south, its culture, its history and people that are elemental to it’s meaning to southerners. They suggest that racism and slavery, while certainly bound up in the flag’s symbolism, are merely incidental to it’s meaning, rather than core to what it stands for. You can have a lot of fine debate about it, a lot of fascinating historical discussion. I suppose there is something to that argument. Personally, I don’t think race and racism are incidental to the confederate flag’s symbolism, but I’ll accept this view of it at face value as sincerely felt and believed by its proponents.

As a black citizen, as a descendant of people who were enslaved, as a descendant of people who wore the Union uniform (13th US Colored Heavy Artillery) the confederate flag is the symbol of the people, who had they won, would have kept me and mine enslaved to this very day. It’s the symbol of the people who fought and died by the thousands, who were willing to kill thousands of their fellow white citizens, for the right to maintain my family members who came before me as chattel within a routine and organized system of degrading, violent and inhuman slavery so that I could one day be born into it as well. When I look at the flag, what I see are the colors of the people who desired to perpetuate a continuous and barbaric crime against humanity on me and mine and were willing to kill and die for it. Show a swastika to a Jew and you get a visceral reaction that pretty much anybody understands. Show me or any other regular black citizen a confederate flag, pretty much the same thing. It’s the symbol of people who fought a war to preserve their ability to enslave and degrade us. That’s what I see and that’s never gonna change.

Every local official associated with cover up should be politically destroyed

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 14:03:00 +0000

Every local public official that facilitated the delay in releasing the video and covering up the crime should be pilloried .

Laquan McDonald’s Death Is an Outrage. The Charges Against His Killer Are a Political Triumph. http://flip.it/W-p.n

If we're not careful, it could happen

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 13:37:00 +0000

We might really elect a loon: Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and a GOP gripped by wingnut fever http://flip.it/ZL8UA

Listen to the spymasters

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 12:20:00 +0000

‘The Attacks Will Be Spectacular’ http://flip.it/3BzwV

We must play the long game

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 20:17:00 +0000

White Republicans are revolting: They keep winning elections, and keep getting angrier http://flip.it/Usn4A

This issue ought to be a drumbeat

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 08:05:00 +0000

Bernie Sanders Slams GOP On Voting Rights: 'They're Political Cowards!' http://flip.it/qjctV

Is the Debt Limit Statute Even Constitutional?

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 20:32:00 +0000

John Boehner and Paul Ryan's Clean Debt Limit Imperative: Raise and then Raze the Debt Ceiling (Part II) http://flip.it/l1PV1

The GPS FACE off with Hillary over Benghazi and don't lay a glove on her.

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 05:25:00 +0000

Even conservatives admit the Benghazi show trial was a flop: “Could make you feel sorry for Stalin” http://flip.it/ZWsAn

Ending Mass Incarceration

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:37:00 +0000

Why some in law enforcement want to bring down mass incarceration http://flip.it/LgwYG

My Dream Ticket and We'll Never See It

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 02:25:00 +0000

You know what? There is a truly dream ticket to be had out there in my book. Its called Powell Rice 2016. In this combo we have two black Americans of unquestioned accomplishment, personal integrity,leadership quality and global stature, with conservative positions and compassionate viewpoints. That ticket in my view destroys any other ticket the democrats or GOP would hope to field. White America would vote for that ticket. Black America would vote for that ticket. America would vote for that ticket.

Its a ticket we'll never see. They won't run, separately or together. Both of these individuals have been the peoples' choice for President in the recent past. Colin is still remembered fondly by the American people and his name mentioned often as the one person in the Bush administration who understood the stakes going into Iraq. This is the man who told the President "If you break this country, you own it". He was a good soldier and did his job. He's combat tested and knows the cost of war and why you avoid it when its possible, but knows that when you can't avoid it, you fight with overwhelming force and you fight to win it decisively. We call that kind of thinking the "Powell Doctrine". Condi is an outstanding administrator. A brilliant woman in every respect. Again, her accomplishment and integrity are above reproach. I would be proud for my daughter to emulate her. Though Alaine would say different, the fact she has done her duty for the President that appointed her in the prosecution of an unpopular war is no disgrace in my book. She has played the hand she has been dealt and faithfully discharged her responsibilities as best she knows how.

What cruel twist of political fate denies the American people candidates whose leadership they can truly respect? Neither of them appears to have any desire to serve in the White House and no doubt there are various political and personal reasons for this, all of which I'm sure are entirely legitimate. I generally tend to think that the Presidency is a post that an aspiring candidate should want to hold, but in the case of these two, their seeming lack of desire for the role makes me gravitate to them all the more. Colin, Condi, your country needs you. No doubt their reasons for not running are good, but at this time in the life of our country, we need leadership we can believe in again. Besieged by enemies from without, torn by division from within, we need leadership we trust. They'll make mistakes, but we'll believe they are honest mistakes. It doesn't matter why they don't want to run. The country requires their service. It requires that they try. Its a heavy burden but the American people will help them to carry it because they believe in both of them together.

You want an unstoppable ticket? Powell Rice 2016 is it; and we'll never see it. What's your dream ticket and why? The comment section awaits your picks.

Why Don't Black People Just Do What the Police Say?

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 02:31:00 +0000

A common response I hear to the different incidents of police killings of unarmed citizens due to excessive force, mostly from white people and from some blacks occasionally, is basically along the lines of "why didn't they just do what the police told them to do?....why didn't they comply?.... "why don't blacks respect police authority?"

So, to this point about compliance, watch the video for the context of what I'm saying. The police in Cleveland shot 12 year old Tamir Rice who had a toy gun within 2 seconds of arriving on the scene. Their vehicle did not even come to a full stop. John Crawford in Dayton was basically shot on sight in Walmart, again with a toy gun, in an open carry state. Those two and Garner in NY, who was also unarmed and who had NOT committed any crime at the time NYPD attempted to arrest him, were not given a fraction of the deference the armed and openly defiant white man in this video was given. Look at the number of officers on the scene. Listen to how much compassion and empathy they show this man.

No compliance. Armed. Openly defiant. Yet shown so much deference. You don't even have to ask what would happen if he were a black male behaving this way because we already know what happens to UNARMED black males who are even mildly non-compliant (Garner). Police would have responded with lethal force. So the operative issue in these situations is not about compliance with police authority.

Police can and do exercise their discretionary authority differently for white people and black people. A black child with a toy gun in Cleveland is shot dead in 2 seconds, while this armed non-compliant white male is cajoled, coddled and catered to in an effort not to harm him. Blacks in encounters with police rarely if ever receive such deference. You can find a variety of videos like this online that demonstrate how differently this issue of "compliance" with police authority is dealt with for blacks. His life seemed to matter to the cops. Too often it appears that ours do not. So I think the issue of compliance is merely a distraction from the real issue at hand, namely the arbitrary and racially discriminatory fashion in which police exercise their authority and discretion to act or not to act with escalating levels of force against people of color.

In other words, it is the wrong approach to define black noncompliance as the problem in these cases when this video clearly demonstrates the wide array of effective responses available to police to deal with a person who is ACTUALLY armed and dangerous. The problem is that when it comes to people of color, police far too often bypass such responses and jump right to the use of force to compel compliance, typically leaping over readily available intermediate steps in the continuum of force in the process.

12 year old Tamir Rice came to the attention of police in exactly the way this man did, a citizen called it in. He would be alive today if he had been handled as this man was.

"Why didn't they just do what the police told them to do?....why didn't they comply?.... "why don't blacks respect police authority?"

Respect is continually earned and can be easily lost. When black people repeatedly observe police engage in excessive use of force or otherwise exercise heavy handed tactics and poor professional judgement in our communities, police erode respect for their authority. Beyond that, when blacks easily observe wide vast differences in the exercise of police discretion to use or not use force to obtain compliance, differences that are clearly based on the race of the citizen involved, police degrade their authority.

Furthermore, when Blacks repeatedly see these behaviors result in catastrophic consequences to citizens in death, injury or other egregious harms for which their should be accountability and police mislead, mischaracterize, outright fabricate or lie about their actions, all while relying on the societal presumption of their veracity, to avoid accountability, police erode respect for their authority.

When police departments and court systems tell the community that while its really too bad about what happened to your family member or loved one that was caused by police actions, its really not our fault, its not anyone's fault and no one will be held accountable, respect for police authority is lost.

Long story short: blacks have little reason to respect the authority of police if police are themselves not subject to any authority or accountability no matter how egregious or destructive their behavior is.

It's Supposed to be a Free Country, But It Don't Feel Free

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 03:44:00 +0000

This incident occurred in a downtown skyway in St. Paul MN. The brother unlawfully arrested by police is named Chris Lollie. All counts were dismissed July 31 after his attorney went to court with surveillance video from the skyway and witness statements.

It's supposed to be a free country. But it don't feel free.

I don't feel free, my sons are not free, when I get up and go to work, and walk the streets of my city every day knowing that if you are black, you can have done nothing at all and still have to justify everything you do to a cop to satisfy their sense of being in charge and having authority over you or risk being arrested, physically restrained or beaten, tasered or even killed. The straight up reality of life is that it can go down on you just like it happened to this brother in even the most trivial interaction with police. I know cops personally that I respect and like. I work with cops. I've sat across the table with law enforcement men and women of my city from the Public Safety Director to the Chief, District Commanders, Lieutenants, right on down to patrol officers. All people of integrity and yet it is still the reality that this can happen to you, does happen with frequency. And there is little accountability. The St. Paul police retained this cell phone recording of the incident for 6 months. We pay most of the price. The charges against this brother were eventually dropped, months later. This brother had to go to court, pay costs, pay for a lawyer and fight the entire system for the right to be accorded some basic respect for his rights as a citizen and the expectation that police officers will use sound professional judgement. I doubt much of consequence happened to the officers who arrested him.

He was subjected to this treatment because someone called the police on him for simply being black and sitting in a public space trying to pass the time waiting for his children to get out of school. He explained all that, the children were there. The officers didn't use any judgement to assess the situation. It was all about compelling him to do as he was told, not about determining if there was some threat to public safety. He was polite, he was articulate and none of it mattered because the objective wasn't determining if there was a real problem, it was just about making him do what they told him. In Aurora Co., where a white teen walked into a theater and shot multiple people dead, another teen walked around on the streets recently with a gun as a political statement about 2nd amendment rights. Onlookers were alarmed and called the police and when they came, he refused to give his name and refused to relinquish his weapon. After some conversation, the police left him alone. Contrast that with this. No weapon, no real or implied threat, sitting in a public place he had a right to be in. That got him physically assaulted, tasered, arrested. In front of his kids daycare class and teachers.

Make no mistake. I'm a grown, law abiding citizen. I've never been in trouble with the law a day in my life. But whenever I have an encounter with police in the performance of their duties, I do so with a profound awareness and the complete conviction in the back of my mind that if I'm not careful in word and deed its entirely possible that even a trivial police interaction could get me hurt or killed.

It's supposed to be a free country. But it don't feel free.

Open Carry Advocates Fight for the Right to Intimidate You

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 04:40:00 +0000

Lately, there have been a variety of news stories out of Texas about open carry advocates down there traipsing into big box retail chains like Target openly carrying loaded weapons such as shotguns or semi automatic weapons. **Rant beginneth here**

Walking around a suburban Target store with a loaded shotgun or semi automatic weapon for what??!! Because you can? Mass killings aside, there is little justification on personal security grounds for this behavior. All it does is sow fear in the unarmed people around them. Nobody knows if they are crazy or not. You worry about what might happen if you have a funky interaction with one of these people. Carrying around lethal weapons in public is threatening to other people and begets more crazy, because if these people become the norm, I'm going to pack because every damn body else is packing and I feel threatened, NOT because I have some rational personal security fear based on something more than politics driven paranoia.

And while they don't want to admit it, the reality is that people who do this nonsense want other people to be intimidated. You openly pack a weapon so that people can see you are armed with a lethal weapon and they will act accordingly. Nobody openly packs like this simply to make a statement of how much they love the constitution. You pack openly to let everybody who sees you know that you are able and willing to kill anybody that crosses or threatens you. These open carry advocates don't want to cop to that motivation, but it's laughable to claim it's not part of what's going on. Why else are housewives gonna pack shotguns slung over their backs and slep kids and a stroller into Target to do serious shopping? It's not even a practical thing to do to haul a damn shotgun in and out of every commercial establishment you visit.

Carrying a weapon openly has deterrent value, it's about the only reason to do it. The intent is to intimidate, and the rest of us normal, unarmed people don't know whether you are crazy or not. You walk in doing this unnecessary display, and now some poor slob sales clerk or cashier has to approach you about it? These days, someone walks into a place with a gun visible, there is no good reason to believe they are not about to kill everyone in the joint. This is ridiculous, juvenile behavior from a bunch of adults doing it just because they can and because they enjoy looking intimidating to all the unarmed people around them, whether they admit it or not.

What they don't seem to realize is that their tactics actually hurt their cause and even more importantly, that their cause is not supported by the majority of people. Most people don't see any reasonable justification for openly carrying loaded guns around in the course of everyday life. You simply won't get the vast majority of people to agree that it is reasonable to carry loaded weapons to the grocery store, dry cleaners, barbershop, amusement park, family restaurant, beach, school, church, work, average big box store, city park, etc. The reason for this is simple to understand. It's NOT reasonable. It does nothing but produce fear in the minds of all the unarmed people around them, which is what they intend.

It is completely unreasonable for them to think that unarmed men and women with their kids around them at Target should be comfortable with people they don't know, walking around openly brandishing loaded weapons which could be turned on them or their loved ones at any moment. If these people carry a concealed weapon in the event they may need it for personal protection, that's totally reasonable, I have no objection. But the purpose of openly carrying a weapon is to put everyone around them on notice that they are armed and dangerous, yet they somehow expect all the rest of us unarmed people who would be at their mercy to be sanguine about it. It's a ridiculous expectation on their part and the fact that they are perfectly happy to carry these weapons into public places and make everyday people not just uncomfortable, but fearful, justifiably makes the rest of us wonder if they should be permitted weapons at all. Their obliviousness to this leaves them completely open to being judged as people who are unreasonable and potentially dangerous, irregardless of whether that's actually true or not.

Guerrilla World Press nails it: "All of this is allegedly being done to protect our freedoms. But it’s only the “freedom” of the person wearing a firearm that matters. Those parents who want their kids to feel safe in a public park aren’t free to tell a man waving a gun around to leave them alone, are they? Patrons and employees of Starbucks aren’t free to express their opinion of open carry laws when one of these demonstrations are taking place in the store. Those Jack in the Box employees aren’t free to refuse service to armed customers. Sure, they are all theoretically free to do those things. It’s their constitutional right just like it’s the constitutional right of these people to carry a gun. But in the real world, sane people do not confront armed men and women. They don’t argue with them over politics. They certainly do not put their kids in harm’s way in order to make a point. So when it comes right down to it, when you are in the presence of one of these armed citizens, you don’t really have any rights at all."

This is how places like Iraq, Syria and Lybia work. Armed men in the streets and your rights, safety and dignity as a human being isn't protected by our shared agreement as a society that this is how we live together, but by every bullet you have available to fire from the barrel of a gun.

Exit thought: I promise you that if I marched 10 sketchy looking black or latino brothers into Target stores for a week, legally and openly packing shotguns and semi automatic weapons, Target would cease debating and mulling over the wisdom of allowing weapons to be carried in their stores so fast, we would all develop whiplash from the about face.

*Here endeth the rant*

On Offer From the GOP Today: Naked Rhetorical Contempt

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Tue, 20 May 2014 04:47:00 +0000

The RNC/Ebony dustup and subsequent statements from RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer about it, can lead any rational observer to one of two conclusions, which are not mutually exclusive:

A. The Republican National Committee organization has nothing but naked rhetorical contempt for black voters and their intelligence, or

B. Sean Spicer and the RNC's entire communications apparatus are utterly, irrevocably and irredeemably incompetent.

My vote? All of the above. Let me explain myself.

Back on March 27th, the lovely Jamilah Lemieux, a senior editor at African-American magazine Ebony, exchanged words with young Republican National Committee staffer Raffi Williams after she voiced her disdain for a new black conservative publication in the offing. In the course of the exchange, not having examined Raffi's twitter photo very closely, she took the light skinned Raffi for a white guy and dismissed his comments on that basis.

Jamilah Who?@JamilahLemieux Follow

@Raffiwilliams @BETpolitichick @SistahScholar @orlandowatsonOh great, here comes a White dude telling me how to do this Black thing. Pass.

9:46 AM - 27 Mar 14

Raffi Williams@Raffiwilliams Follow

@JamilahLemieux You are questioning someones blackness.sorry I do not fit your stereotypes @BETpolitichick @SistahScholar @orlandowatson

9:50 AM - 27 Mar 14

Jamilah Who?@JamilahLemieux Follow

@Raffiwilliams I was looking at your avi without blowing it up. I apologize for that. However, I care about NOTHING you have to say.

9:51 AM - 27 Mar 14

The RNC then made a calculated decision to escalate this rather typical of Twitter exchange into a full fledged liberal media bias attack opportunity. The next morning, party Chairman Reince Priebus let fly with a letter calling on Ebony to apologize for Jamilah's behavior and stated a hope that “we can use this unfortunate episode as a catalyst for greater engagement and understanding between the Republican Party and the black community.” Hours later, Ebony caved and the RNC trumpeted a liberal media takedown to the base and went home to dinner very pleased with itself.

So that's the background. After all this goes down, RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer later tells Buzzfeed that the RNC's decision to escalate the flap with Ebony was meant to show black voters that Republicans took their votes seriously. “This was not meant to be provocative,” Spicer told BuzzFeed. “What this was really about was letting the readers of a very prominent African-American magazine know the Republican Party is fighting for their vote.”

My one word reaction to Spicer's statement? Horseshit.

My apologies readers, I generally avoid profanity on my blog, but somethings simply require it.

This brings me back to conclusions A & B which I began with;

A. The Republican National Committee organization has nothing but naked rhetorical contempt for black voters and their intelligence,

Truly, what else can it be? Are we actually supposed to take Spicer's comment seriously? Are we actually supposed to believe that the RNC was trying to open a dialogue with African American voters by attacking a young black female editor and the highly regarded black magazine she works for, because she expressed the opinion that she didn't think black conservatives or a white male had anything to tell her about the expression of her blackness, political or otherwise? It was a nothing exchange, a million like it occur every day, but the RNC decided to make a point with it, so they could trumpet to the base about how they are taking it to liberals over their media bias. So they leaned on Ebony about it and Ebony caved, which they promptly crowed over and in the process of all of this, simply ticked off the vast majority of black voters who were aware of it. That's an entirely predictable communications result and not the right one if you are actually trying to tell the black voting constituency that you are fighting for their vote. That being the case, its nothing but a demonstration of pure contempt for Sean Spicer to claim this was not about being provocative, it was about communicating with black voters. Letting that ridiculous claim come out of his mouth is a complete insult to the intelligence of black voters and merely confirms the very low regard with which we are held by the RNC and frankly the party more broadly. His statement is the equivalent of urinating in our faces and telling us its rain showers. It's naked rhetorical contempt, but if you don't think that's accurate, then the explanation can only be;

B. Sean Spicer and the RNC's entire communications apparatus are utterly, irrevocably and irredeemably incompetent.

This is the conclusion I'm drawn to if I'm being charitable, and it's entirely fair. I'm not being mean to suggest that the RNC's communications team that is dropping $10M large on minority outreach may just be seriously stupid. What else can I think? Raffi picks a fight with Jamilah over her personal opinion, expressed on her personal account, then the RNC escalates this throwaway twitter exchange into a liberal media attack pressure campaign on a venerated black magazine and Jamilah herself. And according to Sean Spicer, it did these things so that the the readers of a very prominent African-American magazine know the Republican Party is fighting for their vote.”. I'm sorry, that's just.....stupid. It's among the stupidest tactical communications actions I've ever seen. If Spicer truly believed that somehow this would engender a positive disposition of black voters towards the GOP, then he ISa complete incompetent. My 12 year old son could have done a better job than that. How black voters would respond to the episode was entirely predictable to anyone with an IQ of 1.

Just for kicks, I'll throw in a bonus exit thought. Jamilah, then Ebony, was attacked for expressing perfectly valid opinions. She was attacked for expressing the opinion that she didn't think a white male had anything to tell her about the expression of her blackness, political or otherwise. As a black female, that's a perfectly valid opinion and entirely reasonable point of view for her to have. It's irrelevant that Raffi is actually black. Focusing on that ducks the issue. She's entitled to hold that opinion, and can do so with justification. When she realized her ethnic identification of Raffi was mistaken, she stopped dismissing him because he was white and then dismissed him as a black conservative, which she clearly also regarded as having nothing to tell her about the expression of blackness. That's certainly a more debatable position than her first, but still a quite defensible point of view.

RNC, if you would like some help with your messaging tactics to black voters, I have a 12 year old you can borrow.

The Donald Sterling Scandal: What Should We Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:41:00 +0000

Homeboy Sandman at Gawker penned a piece on the NBA Donald Sterling scandal titled Black People Are Cowards. His basic beef was that black people are simply being too timid in our response to the Sterling comments. We need to be getting radical, quitting our jobs and boycotting and stuff till Sterling is out as Clippers owner.

I had the following in response.

As a people we deal with a thousand levels of injustice on the daily. While I can understand Homeboy Sandman's desire to see more substantive action and response to the Sterling situation and indeed to a variety of issues impacting black people's lives , the idea that we should quit jobs until we get this or that change and we are cowards if we don't is simply flat out wrong.

Rather than trying to pull every black person's cahones card, I think what would have been a better use of his intellect was to really analyze the situation and think about what substantive, meaningful measures could be taken by us, the general black American public.

While all the brothers on the team refusing to play would be a satisfying thing to see, I'm not throwing shade on any of them or anybody that works in that organization for going to work. Nor am I throwing shade on black people because we didn't all walk out of our jobs over this mess, which in the scheme of things to walk away from your job over, this does not rank. He talked like someone who does not have children to feed, clothe and protect. I have a family and I don't quit a job without another to go to because the boss is a racist (a lot of us would be out looking for gigs if that were the case).

He made lots of sense when he got a little concrete about what we could do and he should have stayed with it. Let me help you all dear readers with that. Boycott is a reasonable strategy in this case. Sterling says he doesn't want black people at his games. I think we should grant that wish and more.

I think every black person in America should not watch or attend a Clippers game until Sterling is no longer the owner.
We should encourage every non black person we know not to attend or watch a Clippers game until Sterling is no longer the owner.
We should identify every other business venture Mr. Sterling is involved with and contrive to deprive it of any of OUR dollars until Sterling is no longer the Clippers owner.
The NBA is still figuring out what its going to do. If their action is insufficient, the remaining NBA owners and the league itself should be the first boycott target.
The man is a real estate mogul. Any black people or companies that are his tenants should be encouraged, assisted and helped to move to other acceptable business or residential spaces where ever possible.

Since he is clearly a racist by his own words and past behavior such as the discrimination practiced in his real estate holdings, we know that his racist thinking permeates his business dealings. Therefore:

Every other business venture of his should be subjected to public scrutiny and daylight to determine where else his racism is being brought to bear. All his business ventures should be identified, made public and we should spend some time examining them until Sterling is no longer the Clippers owner.
We should direct letters to the editor, emails and phone calls to all the local media in the Clippers market asking for his business ventures to be profiled, examined, discussed in the media until Sterling is no longer the Clippers owner.

The above is a pretty decent list for starters. I could think of more, so could you, so could we all. Have fun with it.

These are things I think black people can and should do in response to this incident. These things are substantive, but are also based in an appropriate amount of perspective on the situation. I'm not quitting a job that feeds my family over this fool. That's crazy talk, especially when with a just a little bit of thought, we can make our displeasure known to very great affect without such unnecessarily dramatic foolishness.

We got enough people out there trying to tell us we ain't shit. We don't need to do it to ourselves. We're not cowardly. We're powerful. We just have to get back to using our power for our own good. What is that power? It's the power of our community, of our unity, of our shared history. Of our minds. And the thing is, we don't even have to get as deep as the civil rights leaders that stared down segregation and Jim Crow did. Think about it. Those brothers and sisters went out and told other brothers and sisters in the South, who were living in a straight up racist terror state where the slightest defiance or no defiance at all could get you killed, to do things that seemed crazy. They told them, go sit at the lunch counter, go register to vote and TAKE THE HIT. People did it, and what did they discover? That we could take the hit if that's what it took to get our basic rights under the law to be respected, and history got made.

We're not cowards. We're just unfocused

The Sterling scandal? It ain't that deep. We don't even have to open that civil rights era can of whoop ass to fix this mess. All we gotta do is get in agreement with each other that we are going to be in one accord to collectively turn up the heat on this racist until he is no longer the Clippers owner. We can put the fix on him sitting in front of our computers, picking up our phones, doing a little research, writing some letters and bringing the pressure and patiently applying it. We bring the pressure and we don't stop until the justice starts. So if we gotta do the list above for a month, or a year or a decade, that's what happens. We have that kind of power. We just gotta use it in a smart way. We help Democrats win the White House because 98% of us move in the same direction on election day. IMAGINE what we could accomplish if we started using that 98% power for our own community directly? 98% of our money. 98% of our time. 98% of our investment. 98% of our courage. 98% of our collective will.

Better yet, lets NOT IMAGINE. Let's practice. Starting with this fool.

Talking SYG and Marissa Alexander on HuffPost Live

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 05:41:00 +0000

I joined the Huff Post Live crew for a discussion on Marissa Alexander, Stand Your Ground laws and a bit of gun control.

Tickets Available for Colin Powell Speaking Engagement in Indianapolis April 10 ~ Join Us

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 19:43:00 +0000

General Colin Powell (Ret.) - Former United States Secretary of State
April 10, 2014, Indianapolis Downtown Marriott, 350 W. Maryland Street

Dinner 6:45pm, Lecture 7:45pm

A man of great intelligence, versatility and presence, Gen. Powell served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was appointed secretary of state by President George W. Bush. A four-star general, Gen. Powell's numerous awards include two Presidential Medals of Freedom. He is the author of a best-selling autobiography, My American Journey (which I own). His second book, an instant New York Times best-seller titled It Worked For Me (May, 2012), reveals the lessons that shaped his life and career. He will be speaking in Indianapolis on April 10, 2014 at the Indianapolis Downtown Marriot. I'm pleased to be part of the organizing effort and have a very few tickets remaining. Tickets are $125. Just follow the link below to purchase.

Your tickets will be available on a "will call" status at the event. I'm looking forward to hearing Gen. Powell's thoughts on the issues and challenges facing the world today. I hope you will plan to join us.

Paul Ryan Leverages White Voter Hostility to Black Americans

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:25:00 +0000

Paul Ryan Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

Paul Ryan made an appearance on conservative Bill Bennet's show and let fly with the following:

"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work, so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."

This is party leader Paul Ryan, advancing the idea of blacks (albeit in coded language) as possessing deficient culture and producing generations of men lacking in work ethic. Predictably, he got pushback, with plenty of people on the left calling him out for this language and some plainly calling him a racist. Conservatives came to his defense, some citing Barack Obama to make their case, as the American Thinker blog did, using selectively cut sentences stitched together to make their point. Hardly convincing. A little rooting around also reveals that its not the first time Ryan has given the impression that inner-city poverty is linked tothe supposed cultural deficiencies of black Americans.

Ryan has of course backtracked from his comments on Bennet's show, issuing the following statement:

After reading the transcript of yesterday morning’s interview, it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to make. I was not implicating the culture of one community—but of society as a whole.

Sorry Paul. I say bollox on that. You said what you said and you meant what you meant. The PublicHealth blog summed up the paternity of this line of thinking nicely:

the claim that black people have “bad culture”, may be genetically defective, and do not have “normal” “middle class” values about the merits of “hard work”, is a simple channeling of legendary Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s tactics for mobilizing white voters by leveraging their hostility to black Americans.

Whether it's Paul Ryan or Barack Obama suggesting it, I reject the theory of deficient culture, work ethic or other such deficits ascribed to African Americans. From a historical perspective, I find it bitterly ironic that a population whose labor was stolen under threat of violence for two hundred years to build this country is denigrated as lazy. That scurrilous claim was made even during slavery itself. It's a vicious stereotype that continues to be used to ascribe laziness to African Americans writ large.

There is also the matter of context. The reality is that when Paul Ryan advances the idea that blacks have a deficient work ethic or possess deficient cultural values, he's talking to a political base of white voters on the right who largely view blacks through this same contemptuous lens. He advanced these ideas while a guest on a white conservative radio show that commands a white conservative audience. He's also speaking as a party leader of the GOP, a party which often engages in coded language and political messaging that is both overtly and covertly hostile to African American voters. He speaks as a leader for a party which has championed partisan so called vote integrity initiatives like voter ID and restrictions on voter registration, which are widely (and correctly) perceived by African Americans as partisan system rigging intended to diminish their voting power at the polls (if only at the margins). So when he uses this kind of language, as a leader of a party widely perceived (with justification) by African Americans as hostile to their community, its no surprise that his language is called out as a racially stereotypical dog whistle.

Even if you accept the American Thinker's take on Obama's comments in his book "Dreams of My Father" as fundamentally the same in content to what Ryan said, context applies here as well. Like him or not, Obama simply has far more moral authority to address the issue than Paul Ryan does among African Americans. Its an issue he can address and no black person will for an instant perceive him to be stereotyping African Americans writ large as lazy, but rather talking about the choices of INDIVIDUALS. Neither Paul Ryan nor the GOP at large, benefits from any such presumption within the African American community.

Bridging the Digital Divide: A Strategic Necessity for African American Neighborhoods

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sat, 28 Dec 2013 05:34:00 +0000

The digital divide is most commonly defined as the gap between those individuals and communities that have, and do not have, access to the information technologies that are transforming our lives. The Pew Research Center’s Internet Project found that internet use continues to be strongly correlated with age, educational attainment, and household income. One of the strongest patterns in the data on internet use is by age group: 44% of Americans ages 65 and older do not use the internet, and these older Americans make up almost half (49%) of non-internet users overall. while 76% of adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack home access. Groups that are significantly more likely to rely on internet access outside the home include blacks and Hispanics, as well as adults at lower levels of income and education. Poor neighborhoods lack deep penetration of computers and high speed internet and in many low income African American neighborhoods, this population of older adult, black/hispanic and low income non users often times constitutes the majority of the neighborhood population.

In poor neighborhoods, only a small portion of households have any kind of high speed internet access which permits utilization of various apps, video and other communication tools. Further, poor neighborhoods typically lack few high speed public access options either. Without this infrastructure, these neighborhoods cannot deploy internet enabled strategies that leverage concepts like crowdfunding, the collaborative economy, and most importantly for rebuilding neighborhoods, web enabled community organizing.

Think about it. Organizing a neighborhood's disparate people, factions and institutions around common strategies for the neighborhood, developed through a consensus building process, is extraordinarily difficult. The digital divide becomes even more of a consideration at that point, since the internet is among the few tools which can connect a widely varying group of people engaged in a collaborative work across a geography in real time. This absolutely requires a functional network that can scale as needed. Its the definition of the internet. The true power of it is that as a communication network, its unbelievably cheap, enabling huge information transfer with pretty much zero incremental cost.

But when neighborhoods lack widespread internet access, often coupled with low levels of literacy, none of this is available. This means that the cost of maintaining the network of people implementing a neighborhood plan is significant and goes up as the number of people involved grows. As a practical matter, the network has to be maintained with high levels of one on one, face to face engagement (meetings). That kind of network management is scaleable, but only up to a certain limit given the effort and people resources required. Filling the gap with volunteers is difficult beyond a certain point.

The indispensable strategic necessity of bridging the digital divide in African American neighborhoods is vividly apparent. Without widespread internet deployment in neighborhoods, the task of network building and organizing is more difficult, more expensive and harder to maintain and sustain. Beyond that, second order effects such as leveraging ecommerce, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are largely unavailable as well. These are all creative strategies that piggyback on the ubiquitous presence of the web.......except when its not. The cost of being offline is greater now than it was 10 years ago. So many important transactions take place online, not to mention information access and commerce opportunity.

What does this mean for community building? A significant effort at driving investment into African American neighborhoods ought to focus in on bridging the divide so that neighborhoods can better leverage the advantage of an incredibly cheap, real time global communications and data network. This can and should take a variety of forms, from digital education efforts to teachyouth how to build mobile apps, to expansion of public access computers andleveraging the deep penetration of mobile, wirelesstechnologies in distressed neighborhoods to move beyond basic access

Indeed, the rise of mobile is changing the story. Groups that have traditionally been on the other side of the digital divide in basic internet access are using wireless connections to go online. Among smartphone owners, young adults, minorities, those with no college experience, and those with lower household income levels are more likely than other groups to say that their phone is their main source of internet access. Even beyond smartphones, both African Americans and English-speaking Latinos are as likely as whites to own any sort of mobile phone, and are more likely to use their phones for a wider range of activities.

If we're not working on the digital divide in some form or fashion, we're leaving on the table one of the most profound and powerful game changers for our neighborhoods. Let's cross the digital divide.

The Tea Party: Fighting a White, Black, Brown and Beige Future

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 05:35:00 +0000

The Gadsden flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Britt Hume delivers a succinct explanation of the Tea Party's motivations:

"Veteran political observers on both the left and right are still trying to figure out what the House Tea Party caucus and its Senate pied piper Ted Cruz were thinking when they insisted on using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. "It was a hopeless strategy that has not only failed in its stated goal, but helped send the Republican Party to its lowest favorability ratings ever. "In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. [emphasis mine]

Hume's analysis is good, as far as it goes, but he ignores the elephant at the Tea Party. As much as no one wants to deal with it or address it or give it credence, the demographics of the tea party are pretty clear. It's adherents are overwhelmingly white and tend to be older and a bit more affluent than average. Because we lack the courage for tough conversations, we try desperately not to frame tea party faction as more or less a grouping of white reactionaries, hell bent on reducing the size and scope of a government they feel is increasingly out of their control as the changing demographic reality of America takes hold, reducing their power to unilaterally dictate the policy direction of government from majority status.

Hume dances around it. "They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew." Wonderfully coded language for the way the Tea Party views the browning of America.

Their angst over the changing complexion of the electorate has been growing, but the election of a black president crystallized it and gave it a focus. Hume highlights the fact that the Tea Party is fiercely determined in their intentions to reduce the government's power and the intensity of that determination has near hysterical elements to it. Hysteria is a fair word and its evident. Buying guns by the droves, embracing forced backdoor austerity by breaching the debt ceiling, the belief that most of the electorate is stupid because it disagrees with them.

rac·ist

ˈrāsist/Submit

noun

a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

synonyms: racial bigot, racialist, xenophobe, chauvinist, supremacist More

(racially) discriminatory, racialist, prejudiced, bigoted

adjective

noun: racist; plural noun: racists; adjective: racist

2.having or showing the belief that a particular race is superior to another.

The dictionary definition of racism above says racism is a belief in the superiority of one race over another.

To be sure, the Tea Party is motivated by concerns about the growth of government, the size of the debt, the erosion of freedom and liberty. Those issues are real to them because they are real issues and it would be unfair to say that those concerns don't motivate the Tea Party. But its no coincidence that these concerns racheted up to near hysterical levels of anger, venom and activism when there was a black president to personify the government and all the concerns, spoken and unspoken, the Tea Party has.

I don't charge that racism is what typifies the Tea Party faction of the GOP. That's not accurate. But it seems to me that there is little denying that part of what is operating in their mental background is a concern that their control of America and its government as part of a white voting majority in this country is coming to a close. The transition to a country politically guided by a multiracial electorate is one that they fear.

Here is where the smallness of the Tea Party vision is exposed. Rather than pursue a path of inclusion or of shared opportunity, the Tea Party champions positions which will help to preserve the political strength they have enjoyed and maintain their competitive advantage as against other demographics (voter integrity drives for example). It is true that government is too big and spends too much money. But the makers vs. takers meme widely bought into by Tea Party supporters betrays the other impulse at work here. Within 40 years, a multi racial electorate will determine our elected leaders, not a white majority. Tea Party fervor is about shrinking and diminishing government power to tax them, or to restrain their behavior before that moment arrives to preserve their advantage. If that means breaking government or pushing the economy into a train wreck, even one that threatens US global power, on the assumption that a country boy/girl can survive the apocalypse, but these others will fade....then so be it.

UPDATE: My #GOP Shutdown Prediction: Obama Will Blink First, But If Not, Greek Style Forced Austerity Is Next

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Here is where this is going. If my working assumption that Obama is not prepared to deal with a post hit the debt ceiling world and that the GOP would be happy with such a universe is correct, the #GOP is going to mostly get its way. I think Obama is going to blink. I think they are going to get right up to the debt ceiling deadline and the House GOP are not going to back down, and he's going to blink. He's blinked before and that argues for him blinking again. So far, he's played it like I would were I him, played it like somebody who has finally woke up to who he is dealing with, like he actually understands that his political foes absolutely want to crush his presidency. He's told the #GOP to pound sand.

But the WH has already hinted about being open on the timeframe of a CR. He hinted first and that tiny questing shows his orientation to deal rather than take it to the edge. I think he'll offer a deal first and when he does, he's toast. The only way he wins this political contest is to be every bit as willing to go over this cliff as the GOP is. He's not facing re-election, maybe he's up for it, but his track record in these matters doesn't convince me he has the requisite ice water in his veins.

And those moderate republicans the MSM keeps saying would vote for a clean CR if they could get one? Not so much. They fear the base backlash they will surely get if they buck their leadership, a leadership itself looking fearfully over its shoulder at the base and asking "is this okay?" Take into account the House GOP's Dirty Thirty or so, who were all for a shutdown and say they are not backing down. They have whole communities of constituents, along with Rush, Hannity and the entire FOX Network telling them to stand fast or be put out of office at the very next primary. They say, hey, we won't default. They say, "There is more time, the government can manage a prioritization of payments scenario if we don't raise the debt ceiling. It's all scare tactics coming from the administration of dire consequences if we don't raise the debt ceiling'.

Maybe it is scare tactics, but even assuming they can prioritize payments (this is the same government the GOP points out can't get health care websites to work, right?) that will only stave off the worst consequences of not raising the debt limit for a very short period. After that, guess what? It's forced austerity, Grecian style baby. Because if Obama goes over the cliff, he will stave off default by making sure that those interest payments are made. But of course, then you start figuring out who you are not paying.

That's where this is going boys and girls. And we already know what forced austerity looks like and who takes that hit, the middle classes and the working poor. Black folk are represented heavily in those two groups, with our grip on the former far more fragile than our presence in the latter. The rich will ride austerity out just fine. And the white working class base of the GOP, the ones cheering on the House Dirty Thirty, who will also take austerity in the teeth? They are okay with that idea, I guess because they feel like "hey, a country boy (girl) can survive".

UPDATE: Well look at that. The Dems maintain unit discipline and the GOP caves like a house of cards.

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Another Opportunity to Show Up for Conservatives: Marissa Alexander Wins New Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Political Season) — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 02:25:00 +0000

From Battered Wife to Battered Citizen

Marissa Alexander

Marissa Alexander has gone from being battered by her abusive husband to being battered by an inflexible criminal justice system. But she got some good news this past week.

The Florida Court of Appeals has overturned her conviction and granted Marissa Alexander a new trial. The appeals court cited the jury instructions provided at trial as being fundamentally flawed. The appeals did court upheld the outcome of her Stand Your Ground hearing, so there will not be a new SYG hearing. However, she will get a new trial. Hopefully, this time around, evidence of her husbands abuse and prior behavior with other women will not be kept from the jury, as it was in her first trial. The press release by her attorneys can be read here.

At her trial, volumes of mitigating and exculpatory evidence were withheld from the jury. Her husband Rico had tried to frame two different partners previously. Not admissible. Rico had beaten Marissa into the hospital previously. Not admissible. Rico had a long history of violence against women. Not admissible. Rico had a restraining order against him and if he had obeyed it none of this would have happened. Not admissible. Rico's testimony was purchased by the prosecution by not trying him for violating the restraining order Marissa had against him. Not admissible. All of the women in his prior relationships had lived in terror of this man. Not admissible. Marissa was an excellent shot and could have riddled him with bullets. Not introduced. Marissa most likely was suffering from post partum depression, traumatic brain injury, and or post traumatic stress disorder. Not introduced. Under Florida's mandatory minimum sentencing laws, Marissa received a sentence of 20 years in prison. Ironically, she might have received a lesser sentence under Florida law if she had actually killed Gray and been convicted of manslaughter.

Call to Action for Conservatives and the GOP

My conservative colleague Lenny McAllister highlighted a year ago why this case should be important to conservatives and the GOP;

This is not a Black-White issue, as the Martin case has become. Although she is Black, domestic abuse is not a social condition that only impacts minorities or the poor. Domestic abuse cuts across socioeconomic lines to remain the “dirty little secret” costing Americans thousands of broken lives and $700 million in lost business productivity annually.

For conservatives that regularly talk about the impact of the family on America’s future and the waste of resources as we struggle to revive our economy, the Alexander case highlights much of what we stand for.

What conservatives should do:

Respectfully call on the Florida Asst. Attorney General's office to reconsider and withdraw the states resistance to Marissa's appeal
Raise/contribute money to support court costs. Her lawyers are working pro bono.
Collaborate with African American community organizations and citizens to analyze, investigate and craft criminal justice system reforms
Support sensible reforms to mandatory minimum sentencing laws

Whether conservatives want to address this case on the issue of SYG application in domestic violence cases, ameliorating unintended mandatory sentencing impacts or exploring concerns of racial disparity in the application of SYG statutes, conservatives should engage and courageously dialogue with black voters around these and other issues of criminal justice reform when legitimate issues are raised.

African Americans have frequent contact with the criminal justice system as both victims and defendants. Criminal justice reforms are an issue of significance to this voter segment. African American voters are as interested in appropriate sanction for crime as much and perhaps more than other communities. However, the African American historical and current experience of the criminal justice system is replete with examples of justice denied or injustice imposed by a legal system whose judgments they are bound to respect.

That ongoing experience makes this voter segment very sensitive to criminal justice reform issues. As conservatives who are traditionally concerned with the rule of law, this is a sound foundation and opportunity for engagement with black voters on the fair and equitable administration of justice. If we are serious as conservatives and as the republican party about winning support from African American voters, then we must get into the thick of gateway issues such as criminal justice reform, in the very same manner that we have determined we must engage on immigration reform in order to get a hearing on our ideas from the Hispanic community.

Its been said that in life, eighty percent of success is just showing up. So too with politics. Democrats understand this well. Where are the conservative faces and voices on Marissa's behalf? African American voters pay attention to who stands with them in response to real or perceived injustice. Conservatives need to show up.