Detroit Perfume-Maker Says New Scents Will Help Us Move Past Pandemic – WDET

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If your house smelled like lemon on a Saturday morning, it was a cleaning day. That smell of fresh citrus isnt just a novelty the acidity of lemon makes it an excellent cleaningagent.

You may think of [scent] as a fashion accessory, but it really can be used to communicate. Kevin Peterson, Detroit-based perfumemaker

As we move forward in a post-COVID world, however, what will the future of scent be? Will the scent of lemon persist? Will we associate the smell of hand sanitizer with this current global pandemic movingforward?

Its a question that Detroit-based perfume maker Kevin Peterson has beenpondering.

Chris Miele

The exterior of Sfumato Fragrances and Castalia on Second AvenueinDetroit.

We dont often think of scents as a mode of communication, says Kevin Peterson, the nose at Sfumato Fragrances and co-owner and cocktail scientist at Castalia, a scent-infused cocktail lounge in the Cass Corridor (its considered the only one of its kind in the U.S.)You may think of it as a fashion accessory, but it really can be used tocommunicate.

Scent has become a focal point as we start to re-examine how we use public spaces and the smells we associate withcleanliness.

A lot of our idea of what clean scents are actually goes back to plague times, says Peterson. During the bubonic plague in Europe, the predominant theory of how disease spread was that bad smells transmitted it and the way to counteract that was with good smells, says Peterson. So things like pine, lemon and rosemary were actually what people used in theory to rid themselves from the plague. Strangely, hundreds of years later, a lot of those ideas are still what dominate our idea of what clean smellslike.

As businesses and restaurants begin to reopen with newly implemented safe and health regulations, Peterson says that identifying if a place is clean or not will be a potent form ofcommunication.

You can read a sign that says we [clean] every five minutes, but if you smell that cleanliness, you absorb that information on a much deeper level than reading a sign, saysPeterson.

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Detroit Perfume-Maker Says New Scents Will Help Us Move Past Pandemic - WDET

Cardinals lefty Andrew Miller: ‘There’s still some doubt we’re going to have a season’ – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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"I don't want to be the one that brings down a season."

The Cardinals announced Sunday that infielder Elehuris Montero tested positive for COVID-19 and has been placed in isolation awaiting the next step in the protocols. Montero is asymptomatic, an official said. The Cardinals have four other players with tests pending, including Carlos Martinez and Alex Reyes, though the team won't confirm the names of the players.

Some of the players traveled together to St. Louis and that appears to be part of the delay when it comes to their test results.

On Saturday, the players had a meeting that included messages from a veteran group: Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina, Dexter Fowler, Matt Carpenter, Matt Wieters, and Miller. They spoke about the need to remain disciplined away from the ballpark and to put aside for three months any activities that might put them in jeopardy of getting the virus and bringing it to the ballpark.

"Do everything we possibly can to assure there's a season on our end," Wainwright said.

Miller's understanding of the agreement is that players can opt-out of the season at any time -- at any time they feel unsafe, they worry for their health, or they have an issue at home that would lead to that decision. Already some high profile players have opted out of the season, including Dodgers lefty David Price, Washington Nationals lifer Ryan Zimmerman, and Colorado outfielder Ian Desmond. Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman and San Diego outfielder Tommy Pham have tested positive for COVID-19, their teams disclosed. Freeman is symptomatic, the Braves said and his wife confirmed on social media.

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Cardinals lefty Andrew Miller: 'There's still some doubt we're going to have a season' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Exposing The Black Lives Matter Movement For What It Is …

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It's time to expose the Black Lives Matter [BLM]movement for what it is:a racist, violent hate group that promotes the execution of police officers. The evidence is in their rhetoric and written on their shirts.

If you take a look at the Black Lives Matter Twitter feed, you'll find photos of activists wearing shirts that say, "Assata Taught Me."

They're referring to infamous cop killer Assata Shakur, otherwise known as Joanne Chesimard, who shot and killed a New Jersey State Trooper back in 1973. In 1977,Shakur was convicted and sentenced to prison but quickly escaped and has been a fugitive in Cuba ever since. She's also on the FBI's most wanted terrorism list. BLM glorifies Shakur as a hero and uses her writings and materials during training sessions. Lee Stranahanhas more:

Former Black Panther Party member Kathleen Cleaver, who is a supporter of Shakur, is "thrilled" about the BLM movement.

Now, onto those who condone this behavior and the rhetoric being used.

Not only have the leaders of the Democrat Party refused to condemn the movement, they've desperately tried to embrace it. In the age of Obama, where Democrats thrive on division and embrace a racial justice narrative, this isn't surprising.

Last week at the DNC summer meeting in Minneapolis, a resolution was passed in solidarity with the movement. BLM later rejected it.

"The DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming Black lives matter and the say her name efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children," the solidarity resolution states.

The day after the resolution was passed, BLM activists in Minneapolis chanted, "pigs in a blanket, fry em' like bacon," as they marched down the street. This rhetoric also came just one day after the execution of Texas Sheriff Deputy Daron Goforth while he was filling up his patrol car at a local gas station. If you aren't familiar, "pigs in a blanket" refers to the bodies of dead police officers in body bags.

Despite Richard Fowler's claims that he's "watching a different Black Lives Matter movement," we aren't and the calls for police executions are not isolated incidents (he also lied about the Tea Party connection to the Tucson shooting of former Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords, there wasn't a connection as he claimsbut that's a topic for a other post). In December the man who killed two NYPD officers while they were eating lunch in their patrol car posted on his Instagram page, "Going to put pigs in a blanket" before carrying out his killings. In Ferguson when news of the NYPD slayings hit, BLM protestors chanted and celebrated, "Pigs in a blanket!" We saw the same over the weekend in Minneapolis. This isn't happening in one place, it's happening around the country. BLM activists are using their own words and inspiration from convicted cop killers to promote the assassination of police officers.

Finally, it's important to point out two-thirds of the African American community flat out reject BLM or strongly disagree with the movement's tactics. From the Washington Post:

But at protests today, it is difficult to distinguish legitimate activists from the mob actors who burn and loot. The demonstrations are peppered with hate speech, profanity, and guys with sagging pants that show their underwear. Even if the BLM activists arent the ones participating in the boorish language and dress, neither are they condemning it.

"It's a racist movement, racist to the core...denounce the Black Lives Movement and replace it with All Lives Matter."

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Exposing The Black Lives Matter Movement For What It Is ...

NBA, players agree to Black Lives Matter and other messages to wear on jerseys – Tampa Bay Times

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With the NBA another day closer to its July 30 reopening, a piece of its plan to battle racial injustice fell into place.

The league and the players union agreed late Friday on messages players can wear instead of their names on the backs of their jerseys for the first four days of the leagues reboot.

Among the messages reportedly approved: Black Lives Matter, I Cant Breathe, Vote, Justice, Stand Up, Listen, Listen to Us, Say Their Names, Peace, How Many More, Education Reform, Liberation, Equality, Freedom, Enough, Si Se Puede, Say Her Name, Mentor, I Am A Man, Speak Up, Ally, Anti-Racist, Justice Now, Power to the People, See Us, Hear Us, Respect Us, Love Us and Group Economics.

After the first four days, players can keep the messages on their jerseys with their names below their number. Players also may forgo messaging altogether.

I just think the NBA, we lead, Lakers forward Jared Dudley said. I think (commissioner) Adam Silver, to me, is the best. Hes trying to make it right, trying to bring awareness front and center. And for the players, were kind of like, I dont know if we should go there. We dont know if the league would take over protests with a stance. And hes basically giving us a platform, a stage.

I know were going to do cool, different stuff, I even heard with commercials, not even with the court, and what theyre gonna be able to do. So with the names, I like it. I think its going to give people a different chance.

Lakers coach Frank Vogel said coaches have discussed ways that we can wear things visually, but also ways we can be very vocal and use our platform to help this movement.

The NBA also will have Black Lives Matter printed on the courts in prominent locations, according to multiple reports. The league and union also are discussing other plans to help players better use their platforms, including bringing in a series of guest speakers.

In the handbook provided to players for the resumption of the season, the league stated its intentions to use its return to amplify these issues.

A central goal of our season restart will be to utilize the NBAs platform to bring attention and sustained action to issues of social injustice, including combating systemic racism, expanding educational and economic opportunities across the Black community, enacting meaningful police and criminal justice reform and promoting greater civic engagement, the league said on the second page of the handbook. We are in discussions with the Players Association to develop a comprehensive strategy on how the NBA, its teams and players can best address these important social issues and uniquely position our league to drive action and create meaningful and generational change.

Despite such efforts, Pelicans guard JJ Redick said theres no comfort level for players right now not in the middle of a deadly pandemic, and with so many people fighting for change.

To say that we have any sort of comfort level would be a lie. There is no comfort level. Were not with our families. Were not at our homes. Were isolated in a bubble in the middle of a hot spot in the middle of Florida while theres social unrest in the country, and were three months away potentially from the most important election in our lifetimes. So theres all that going on, Redick said Thursday. Now, we have to figure out a way to perform and play basketball and all that because I do believe it is the right thing to go and play. But there is absolutely no comfort level. None. And I know the league and I know the union has tried to create this environment, and I get it.

But, theres so much else going on right now. Were going to go play and do our best, but we realize there are so many more important things.

HOW TO SUPPORT: Whether youre protesting or staying inside, here are ways to educate yourself and support black-owned businesses.

WHAT PROTESTERS WANT: Protesters explain what changes would make them feel like the movement is successful.

WHAT ARE NON-LETHAL AND LESS-LETHAL WEAPONS? A guide to whats used in local and national protests.

WHAT ARE ARRESTED PROTESTERS CHARGED WITH? About half the charges filed have included unlawful assembly.

CAN YOU BE FIRED FOR PROTESTING? In Florida, you can. Learn more.

HEADING TO A PROTEST? How to protect eyes from teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

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NBA, players agree to Black Lives Matter and other messages to wear on jerseys - Tampa Bay Times

OK, we’ve agreed that Black lives matter. Now what? – Los Angeles Times

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This sudden deluge of woke-ness flooding the country is disorienting.

Unarmed Black men have been beaten and killed by police for decades. There were protests, unrest and Black people grieving mostly alone and generally ignored.

Now suddenly there are huge multiracial crowds standing with us, protesting the death of an ordinary Black man dragged into martyrdom by the weight of a policemans knee on his neck.

Its as if the world has suddenly snapped into focus for people whod been blinded by privilege to Black peoples daily realities.

The death of George Floyd has generated outrage in places that never seemed to care before, energizing a social justice movement in ways that feel revolutionary.

Ive seen Black Lives Matters signs in places where I rarely see Black people: Theres a giant banner hanging from the Glendale animal hospital where I take my dogs, handmade posters taped to the windows of an upscale cupcake shop in Granada Hills and a placard lodged in the front lawn of the grandest house in my suburban neighborhood.

The speed and degree of this evolution both delight and puzzle me. Im heartened but still heartsick, encouraged but unconvinced.

Im glad that books about antiracism have zoomed to the top of bestseller lists, but I wonder how many will actually be read.

Im glad that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has taken a knee, but thats hardly recompense for the years his company spent discriminating against Black clients and employees.

Im glad that Walmart is unlocking its displays of Black hair products; does that mean they no longer presume that all of us are thieves?

I would love to believe that we are at an inflection point in our nations journey toward equality. But goodwill gestures are not enough to excise the demons of Americas long racist history.

Im the daughter of Black parents who grew up in the South, under oppressive, humiliating and sometimes deadly Jim Crow rules. Ive lived through too many of what felt like turning points in the last half-century from We shall overcome through No Justice, No Peace to feel fully optimistic.

Now that the exhilaration of protesting has faded, we are already seeing signs of resistance to efforts to remake the culture of policing.

Officers are resigning, refusing to respond to calls or staging sickouts in cities including Atlanta, Buffalo, N.Y., and Minneapolis, as police unions try to undermine demands for basic accountability.

Federal police reform has been stalled by the failure of Republicans and Democrats in Congress to agree on basic elements of what needs fixing.

And our country is in the grip of a malevolent president, whose looming political campaign will try to demonize progressives and protesters as Americas enemies.

Im grateful for new comrades and the passion they bring to this movement, which does have the potential to change our countrys trajectory. But marching in the streets is only the beginning.

To arm ourselves for change, we have to acknowledge the enduring reach of Americas original sin. Our nation has been steeped in racism and white privilege for the last 400 years. Thats a durable affliction, as disturbing and destructive as any pandemic.

I hear the angst in white voices today, wondering, How do we help? and What exactly can we do?

Heres an idea: You can arm yourselves and your children to sustain the energy a revolution requires.

Educate yourself in the ways that institutions from elected officials to banks and labor unions have been complicit in propping up pillars of structural racism.

Disabuse your kids of the whitewashed versions of American history theyre apt to learn in school. Only 8% of high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War, according to a 2018 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Our school systems need revolutionizing too.

The Civil War may have ended slavery but it didnt address the underlying assumption that allowed the buying and selling of people like property: that Black people were less than fully human.

Thats been a hard mindset to dislodge. Discrimination in housing, education and employment was sanctioned and supported for a century after the Civil War ended, and not only in the South.

Black children in Boston in 1974 couldnt go to integrated schools without the National Guard to protect them from angry white mobs. Trade unions in the Midwest in the 1960s barred Blacks from joining, locking them out of lucrative jobs.

And here in California, Ronald Reagan was elected governor in 1966 on a platform that promised to protect the right to discriminate against Negroes in the sale and rental of property. It took a wave of urban riots to convince federal officials to adopt a national Fair Housing Act in 1968.

The oppressive culture of policing we see today is an outgrowth of who weve been and the values weve practiced as a nation.

Deaths like George Floyds happen when one group feels entitled to make the rules, set the boundaries and monitor the actions of people below them in the racial hierarchy.

That hierarchy has to be dismantled. And that will require more than scrubbing Aunt Jemima from a box of pancake mix.

@SandyBanksLA

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OK, we've agreed that Black lives matter. Now what? - Los Angeles Times

Black Lives Matter Mural Painted By Evanston Township H.S. Boys Basketball Team Splattered With Paint; They Believe It Was Defaced – CBS Chicago

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EVANSTON, Ill. (CBS) On Friday, the Evanston Township High School boys basketball team painted a massive message of Black Lives Matter in yellow on the street outside their school.

On Saturday, the team found streaks of white paint splattered across two of the letters.

The paint was still there on Dodge Avenue on Sunday. The white streams on the letters C and K in the word Black remained visible.

The boys basketball coach tells CBS 2 he believes someone defaced the message. A neighbor told him they heard commotion around midnight Saturday morning.

The team spent 13 hours painting the mural that got city approval.

Waking up to see that on the internet, very disappointed and very saddened, said ETHS boys basketball player Daeshawn Hemphill.

I was surprised, said ETHS boys basketball player Blake Peters. This community is really progressive. A lot of people here pride themselves on being socially conscience.

I can tell you right now, Ive heard nothing but anger and resentment from our community for whomever is living in our city with those types of behaviors and how they feel about Black Lives Matter, said coach Mike Ellis.

Evanston Ald. Peter Braithwaite (2nd) has called for more discussion surrounding issues of race in the city.

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Black Lives Matter Mural Painted By Evanston Township H.S. Boys Basketball Team Splattered With Paint; They Believe It Was Defaced - CBS Chicago

Black Lives Matter protest on wheels rolls through New Bedford – SouthCoastToday.com

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NEW BEDFORD From sit-ins and marches to die-ins and walk-outs, it may seem like youve seen every type of protest. Now you can add a rollout to the list as another Black Lives Matter protest made its way through downtown New Bedford Sunday morning, this time on roller skates and bicycles.

A turnout of roughly 60 people met on Rockdale Ave. at Buttonwood Park, either riding decorated bicycles or on roller skates.

The protest was organized by Chakira Gonsalves-Elkhoury, a former New Bedford police officer, now a UMass police officer, who said she wanted to put a modern spin on the old Cape Verdean Bike Parade.

My grandmother, back in the day, was part of a board that would do the Cape Verdean Bike Ride. That kind of died off and the parade got canceled, and then with everything else in the world going on right now I was looking through some photo albums I thought, You know what? We need to do a little rollout thing. So we put together a little rollout for Black Lives Matter, pay a little homage to my grandmother and celebrate the Cape Verdean Independence Day, Gonsalves-Elkhoury said, citing her passion for roller derby as a motivator for the idea to put the protest on wheels.

I play roller derby for a womans team, which is Mass Tech Roller Derby, and I also just started a junior roller derby league in the area, which is South Coast Shipwreckers Junior Roller Derby. Then we have kids from the Star Chasers [cycling group] and we also have the Solstice kids that love to skateboard. So, I kind of modernized what my grandmother did with the Cape Verdean Bike Parade and thought this was a good way to do it, she explained. The Shipwreckers is my juniors league, so thats where the idea came from. Then I reached out to my team and Providence Roller Derby came out, I think theres Boston Roller Derby here too, and we have Chicks and Bows here from Boston.

Cyclers and roller skaters took off from Buttonwood Park just before 11:00 a.m., heading down Union Street toward downtown, weaving through various streets before heading back to the park.

Peter Walker, of New Bedford, greeted the protesters as they reassembled back at Buttonwood Park, leading the group in the chant, Solidarity and unity is our community!

Walker went on to deliver a speech to the crowd, thanking the participants along with those who brought their children to the event to learn about racial inequality.

So many different young people have stepped out here and have taken the charge and have done what matters most. It inspired us to be here today. You can never lose sight of the fact that when it matters most, you led this movement, he said, for before turning his focus onto the topic of Independence Day celebrations in America and the U.S. flag.

I will never celebrate that day. You will never see me wave a red, white and blue flag until I feel true equity for all of our children. Our futures are conjoined. Bigger than the Crayola box, bigger than the colors that were fighting over. We are on a rock, hurling through a void of endless nothingness on a conjoined ride to an uncertain destiny. We cannot waste our time arguing with each other. We cannot keep looking to the stars. We need to be reaching towards the stars, and we can do that together, Walker said.

Like the protest itself, the turnout was also unique, as a large presence of families with young children joined the groups of individual adults.

New Bedford resident Jamilyn Gordon participated in the rollout with her family, including her young daughter. Gordon said she was happy to attend the family-friendly event, with her family bringing their own wheels in the form of strollers.

Im here with my 3 year old daughter, my brother and some more family and friends and its been great. Luckily, we were all able to come together, so we were swapping strollers when need be and helping each other out. But, once you keep to the mission at hand the walk doesnt seem so bad, said Gordon.

I think today were all just in solidarity about whats going on around the country. Black lives do matter, and we understand that, but, all lives cant matter until black ones do. Today is also Cape Verdean Independence Day, and New Bedford is heavily saturated with the Cape Verdean community and culture, and so were out here representing, she said.

With the first rollout protest in New Bedford wrapped up, Gonsalves-Elkhoury said she wants to make it an annual demonstration, adding that its her responsibility as a police officer and an active member of the community.

I have a little bit of a different view because I do work for a local police department, said Gonsalves-Elkhoury.

I used to work for New Bedford Police and now I work for UMass Police, so I see this as my opportunity and my responsibility to bridge that gap between my community that I service with my juniors program and the womens program and all the other things I associate with. So, if were hurt by what the police are doing and I work for the police, its now my responsibility to step up.

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Black Lives Matter protest on wheels rolls through New Bedford - SouthCoastToday.com

How Black Lives Matter transformed the Fourth of July – CNN

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The Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's death have finally given millions of Americans renewed language to discuss the messy reality of a nation that remains in the grips of structural racism, white supremacy and a racial caste system that continues to ensure that Black babies, from birth to death, lead a life of greater risk and less prosperity than White ones.

Perhaps the biggest stride made since the protests erupted on May 26 is the fact that vast majorities are no longer conflating protest against injustice with disrespecting the flag. Black and White soccer players have kneeled together in anti-racist protest and the NFL has belatedly recognized Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protest in support of Black humanity by proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned abolitionist, journalist and public intellectual, delivered the most deeply impassioned Fourth of July speech in American history in 1852, at Rochester, New York's Corinthian Hall. He spoke on Monday, July 5 -- a date which served as part of a long-standing tradition among Black New Yorkers. In choosing that Monday, Douglass also recognized that Independence Day still remained a day when Blacks were auctioned off for sale in the South. Douglass offered the definitive explanation for why African Americans refused to embrace celebrations of freedom amid their own bondage.

Douglass mourned, like generations before and after him, the tragedy of a country whose national creed of freedom and liberty were in fact rooted in the bondage of Black souls and the exploitation of Black labor.

The tensions within a national holiday professing freedom by a country built on slavery remain with us today. The hope of this watershed moment in American history rests on the courage of ordinary Americans -- whose demonstrations, protests, anger and empathy have created a generational opportunity to confront legacies of racism that touch every aspect of our society.

If Frederick Douglass rightfully asked the question, What to the slave was the Fourth of July?, then contemporary African Americans might similarly ask what does Independence Day mean to them against the backdrop of mass incarceration, racial segregation, mass unemployment, mass poverty and a Covid-19 pandemic that has disproportionately scarred the entire Black community.

Recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday (as many businesses and multiple states now do), supporting efforts to rid public landscapes of Confederate monuments, and treating the surge in anti-racism as a means of healing a history deeply rooted in white supremacy is a start. But not nearly enough.

July 4, 2020, will be commemorated this year against the backdrop of America's Third Reconstruction, our latest effort to make Independence Day meaningful as a celebration of a republic no longer in the grips of anti-Black racism and white supremacy. This requires confronting the brutal history and contemporary evolution of white supremacy and the extraordinary ways the American, and not just the Confederate, flag has been wielded as a weapon against racial equality in this nation.

Civil rights activism across the nation paralleled these efforts, with Black Americans leading a movement that aimed to reimagine democracy and, in so doing, transform the meaning of the Fourth of July. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which grew out of lunch counter sit-ins, further challenged the nation to build a new world together. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sketched out the expansive parameters of a bold new world free of anti-Black racism at the March on Washington in 1963.

So on this July 4, let us move into a more liberated future by embracing the American past holistically. America's ultimate goal remains freedom. We must candidly admit that for the past 244 years we have failed to live up to our national creed written in documents the nation considers sacred.

Yet this Independence Day, amid a pandemic that mirrors a Biblical plague and mass protests calling for Americans to make Black dignity and citizenship the center of our democratic experiment, seems strangely hopeful. It feels as if by forging through the crucible of our bloodstained history and harrowing present, we have salvaged a tantalizing possibility of making good, for the first time, on the promise of American democracy. We must continue to confront the past in order to create a new future expansive enough to include us all.

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How Black Lives Matter transformed the Fourth of July - CNN

WATCH NOW: Black Lives Matter protests in Martinsville area have brought together inspired youth of today with the veterans of racial injustice -…

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"I truly believe the majority of the population did not fully comprehend what we live with until they saw that video," Hodge-Muse said. "I hate it that George Floyd was a sacrifice. But I think thats what it took to wake America up."

Martinsville Protest members have continued to demonstrate on a regular basis, with signs and social distancing rules in place. They recently moved to a new location in front of the Hardee's on Virginia Avenue in Collinsville.

The public's reaction has been mixed. Many drivers respond by honking, waving or raising a fist in support. Community members have donated bottled water, snacks and even gift cards to the group. At the most recent demonstration in Collinsville, Compson-Lawson said Pizza Hut offered him free pizzas and sodas.

On the other hand, they also hear a lot of calls of "All lives matter!" from passing car windows. His response?

"That's implied," Compson-Lawson said. Saying Black Lives Matter does not mean other lives do not, he explained; it means "Black lives matter, too."

However, some drivers react negatively or even threaten violence.

Last week, "for the first time since we began protesting, we heard calls of 'white power'" multiple times," he said. "There was a lot of overt racism."

At one point during the afternoon, Compson-Lawson said a man on a moped drove up on the sidewalk and cornered him, saying he was upset by the "Black Lives Matter" sign. They ended up having a "very long conversation," he said.

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WATCH NOW: Black Lives Matter protests in Martinsville area have brought together inspired youth of today with the veterans of racial injustice -...

‘Shut Down the Oceanfront’: Black Lives Matter 757 holds rally in response to ongoing racial injustices – wtkr.com

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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Black Lives Matter 757 held a rally on July 4 at the Oceanfront in response to ongoing racial injustices nationally and in the Hampton Roads area.

The group is using their voices on Independence Day to shine a light on what it means to be Black in America.

"We want to get the message out that Black lives do matter," said BLM 757 Protester Isabel Reid. "We are human. We expect to be treated with equality."

BLM 757 Protester Matt Wilco said, "Even on a day where people are celebrating their freedom, the jobs not completely over with. We still got a lot of movement to keep on going."

Black Lives Matter announced the "Shut Down the Oceanfront 2.0" protest on their Facebook page.

A line of police officers on bicycles blocked Black Lives Matter 757 protesters from making their way down Atlantic Avenue at Rudde Loop.

Virginia Beach Police told them to take their protest to the boardwalk, saying the gathering wasnt planned.

They know what they can and cant do, said one officer.

The organization says the rally is being held in response to Manny Wilder receiving minimal charges after he was arrested following a video that showed a truck driving through an Oceanfront protest crowd in May.

BLM 757 also says the rally is a call for a discussion to create a Citizen's Review Board and address the alleged systematic racism embedded in the Virginia Beach Police Department.

"Theyre not really doing their job enough for us," said BLM 757 Protester Shanice Lawrence. "We definitely want a Citizens Review Board here in Virginia Beach."

Wilco agreed.

If were not actually sitting down, away from cameras and the public spotlight and talk about the real issues then what change is actually being made, he said.

BLM 757 asks for demonstrators to come in peace so that the message behind the protest is not tainted with violence. They said they dont want the night to end up like it did on May 31 when violence erupted in the streets at the Oceanfront following a peaceful protest.

"We were greeted with tear gas when there was nothing going on," Reid said.

Police were ready Saturday night in case things took a turn for a worse. The mounted patrol was on standby a few blocks away, and a chopper flew overhead in the air.

Protesters, however, said thats not what their message is about.

We are for peace and thats what weve always been about, said Lawrence.

Protesters ended up leaving Rudde Loop and continued their rally at the boardwalk.

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'Shut Down the Oceanfront': Black Lives Matter 757 holds rally in response to ongoing racial injustices - wtkr.com

Black Lives Matter holds ‘4th of You Lie’ Rally and March – WWAY NewsChannel 3

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WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) On a day when many are celebrating, the Black Lives Matter Wilmington group led a peaceful protest called The 4th of You Lie.

The group met at 1898 Memorial Park then marched to Innes Park where speakers took to the steps discussing racial injustices in America and more.

America hasnt been good to black people. This is the United States of America. In the Pledge of Allegiance, they say Justice for All. But have we gotten justice for all? Black Lives Matter Leader Sonya Patrick asked the crowd.

They responded with a quick No!

Speakers addressed that on the first independence day Black men and women were still slaves and once they were freed, they were promised reparations that they never received.

They promised us a mule and 40 acres. Did we get a mule and 40 acres? Patrick asked the crowd again.

They responded No!

One Burgaw Black Lives Matter activist spoke about the need for reparations and why they are still necessary.

The United Nations has declared that the United States Government owes reparations and must be paid, he said. Reparations for kidnap, reparations for rape, reparations for terror, reparations for murder, reparations for slavery. The most violent crime in American history.

He says the need for them is the need to make things right, because the impacts of slavery can still be seen today.

Nothing from nothing left nothing but a struggle. Its like playing the game of Monopoly, he said. When you sit down and play Monopoly, everybody else around the table is handed out money by the banker. The banker gives everybody some money. Well, when the slaves were set free, they came to the table and they didnt get no money.

He tried to put it into perspective.

We need to realize that there is a need for reparations. Some of you might not agree with this but, if it was your people would you think that it wouldnt be necessary to make things right? he said. I know if yall had been through slavery, I would want to make it right.

Sonya Patrick says it is time for change.

America, you lie and youve got to do better, Patrick said. Were holding you accountable today. In 2020, were holding America accountable.

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Black Lives Matter holds '4th of You Lie' Rally and March - WWAY NewsChannel 3

Afro Latinx and Black Lives Matter : Alt.Latino – NPR

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In Tijuana, raised fists show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

In Tijuana, raised fists show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Let's pause the music for a bit and talk through some things.

In three segments, we're going to have a conversation about how Afro-Latinx folks often get left out of national discussions about Blackness and, in particular, the Black Lives Matter movement. Petra Rivera-Rideua, of Wellesley College, and Omaris Z. Zamora, of Rutgers, help us wade through layers of complexities. Our newest contributor to the Alt.Latino family, NPR publicist Anas Laurent, lends her considerable knowledge of Afro-Latinx culture and reggaeton to the conversation.

"I don't think that the media, on a national level, is doing the work to understand that Blackness is heterogeneous," Zamora says.

"There are Black Latinos, there are Afro Latinos who very much a part of Black Lives Matter and the experiences we're talking about," Laurent adds.

Jasmine Garsd, former Alt.Latino co-host and now a senior reporter at Marketplace, follows up her recent interview with Dominican musician and novelist Rita Indiana to discuss (en espaol) Afro-Caribbean Blackness and discrimination.

And since Independence Day is around the corner, we end the show with a meditation on a Spanish-language translation of "The Star-Spangled Banner." You can read the full story from Marissa Arbona Ruiz via Palabra.

Celebrating difference is what makes our society great. We hope, as support for Black lives grows and evolves, that this episode offers some different context. Felix Contreras

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Afro Latinx and Black Lives Matter : Alt.Latino - NPR

Martin Luther King III on a Pivotal Wave of Black Lives Matter Protests – The New York Times

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Particularly after President Obama was elected, everybody assumed other than those in the Black community that racism was toast. We elected a Black president, which was phenomenal, but what ended up happening was that those views that existed became magnified. And it made it easy for a candidate like Trump to galvanize all that energy, and it emerged in a lot of residual racism that just has never been resolved.

When you add the economic issues that existed in the nation then and now, now even worse all of that contributes to what might be, I dont like to use this term, but maybe it was a perfect storm. Because in storms, all kinds of things can happen.

There is a tendency to sanitize social movements in retrospect, to make them seem less confrontational and controversial than they were. Do you see parallels between how your father was regarded during his lifetime and how Black Lives Matter is regarded today?

Theres always going to be a group that attempts to demonize that which is being done, and for their own purposes not because its right, good or just, but just because they want to foster a different position. Dad totally used the method of nonviolence, and he was consistently criticized. If you go back and look at polling data at the time he was killed, he was a marked person.

I think the difference today is, because of what we saw in the murder of George Floyd, the overwhelming majority of Americans saw this as unjust and are understanding now that Black Lives Matter isnt saying that other lives dont matter. When Black people are consistently killed, even children like Tamir Rice I mean, a kid what is the world coming to? This is what happens over and over and over to Black people.

I dont know if we as a nation have had on blinders and all of a sudden the veil was lifted, or if the incidents were not always fully captured on video and there were always some questions.

The thing with this incident is that he was not able to move, so there was no need to use excessive force, and people see that. Theres no question about this man. He was asking for help over and over and over again. He called for his mom. Everyone can empathize with what happened and see the wrongness in what happened, and now maybe realize that this is a problem that has been going on for a while.

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Martin Luther King III on a Pivotal Wave of Black Lives Matter Protests - The New York Times

Black Lives Matter demonstration disrupted by third-party – WPTV.com

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. UPDATE at 07-04-2020 at 7:46 p.m.Black Lives Matter Alliance Palm Beach says the third-party that interrupted their demonstration was a group of protesters who were leading the "March For Peace" scheduled Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach.

"We had met with them about a month ago to try and arrange a joint organized and peaceful demonstration," said Black Lives Matter organizer Kyla Edme. She says Black Lives Matter and the March For Peace group were in talks to merge their events. We just had two very different events and two different agendas. For example, she does not want to work with police, and we have no problem working with the police. We wish her no ill will," said Edme.

PREVIOUS COVERAGEA peaceful Black Lives Matter Alliance Palm Beach demonstration held in front of the West Palm Beach Police Department was interrupted by an unidentified third-party (see video below).

"No, we are not working with the police," the third-party spokesperson screamed on a bullhorn as they interrupted the Black Lives Matter program that started with a prayer.

The third-party, consisting of almost 10 people, interrupted the Black Lives Matter program and said they were demonstrating a few blocks away at the Palm Beach Courthouse. The unidentified third-party spokesman said they were angry at the Black Lives Matter organizers for working with the West Palm Beach Police Department to hold their event.

Rick Morris, Deputy Chief Of Police, came out of the police station and told the third-party, "This is a peaceful protest, your agitating, you're going to leave."

There was a tense standoff between two West Palm Beach Police officers, Black Lives Matter, and the third-party lasting almost six minutes.

Watch the Black Lives Matter demonstration get interrupted

After the third-party left, on a sound system, Morris told demonstrators, "My job is to protect everybody. I saw you guys were in trouble, and I came out to help you. I'm going to go back into the police station."

Francky Pierre Pau, one of the Black Lives Matter organizers, is worried the agitators will put out the wrong message to the public about his mission. He said Black Lives Matter believes in tactics that always involve peaceful protesting against law enforcement using too much force, and systemic discrimination.

There was one individual at the protest holding a flag that usually represents anarchists.

WPTV NewsChannel 5's Facebook Live of the demonstration at West Palm Beach's Police Station

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered for a sit-in in front of the West Palm Beach Police Department on Saturday.

Demonstrators held up a sign with a list of names they say are people who were killed by Palm Beach County officers.

Retired Major Alex Freeman, a candidate for Palm Beach County Sheriff, attended the rally and stood near signs that read, "Remove Bradshaw."

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Black Lives Matter demonstration disrupted by third-party - WPTV.com

Fact check: Before Obama there was no Black Lives Matter, but there was ISIS and antifa – USA TODAY

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U.S. president Donald Trump announced ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a special operations raid. Here is a look at who he was. Wochit

A social media posttying together former President Barack Obama, ISIS, Black Lives Matter, antifa and a "war on police"is circulating virally online.

The post, uploaded by Facebook user Kathie Wilxox Gilmore on March 2, 2019, reads this: "Before Obama we had no ISIS! Before Obama we had no BLM! Before Obama we had no ANTIFA! Before Obama we had no war on cops!"

Gilmore did not return a request for comment.

Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. When did these groups or movements start?

ISIS, the Islamic State also known asISIL andDaesh, emerged as an offshoot of Osama bin Ladens al Qaeda Network in Iraq. It wasfounded by Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2004, according to information fromHistory.com.

ISISfaded for several years after the surge of United States militarytroops to Iraq in 2007, according to he Wilson Center.It reemerged in 2011,and over the next few years, took advantage of growing instability in Iraq and Syria to carry out attacks and bolster its ranks.

In 2013, the terrorist group changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Black Lives Matter is an organized movement that advocates for nonviolent civil disobedience and protests againstpolice brutality towardsAfrican Americans. It wasfounded onJuly 13, 2013, byAlicia Garza,Patrisse Cullors andOpal Tometi.

The group was createdin response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, a Black man, on Feb. 26, 2012. Trayvonwas targeted, pursued and shot dead by Zimmerman in a gated neighborhood in Sanford, Florida.

A Black Lives Matter Mural was painted at the intersection of W. Locust St. and N. Martin Luther King Drive on Friday, June 19, 2020 in Milwaukee.(Photo: Chelsey Lewis and James B. Nelson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via USA TODAY Network)

Antifa,an anti-fascist political movement in the United States anda defensive response to the growing presence of right-wing extremism, was founded in 1932, well before Obama was born on Aug. 4,1961.

After the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017led to violentclashesbetween white nationalists and counter-protesters, American awareness of that oppositionrose dramatically, TIME reported.

Antifa drewsupportfrom some and drew condemnation from others includingfrom President Donald Trump for what appearedto beviolent tactics. In March 2018, Merriam-Webster added antifa to the dictionary.

In July of 2016, a law enforcement advocacy group head lashed out at Obama in the wake of the Dallas shootings that left five police officers dead. He accused the president of carrying out a "war on cops."

I think (the Obama administration)continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible, said William Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. "It's a war on cops."

Pallbearers lead the flag draped coffin of slain Dallas police officer Patrick Zamarripa into place for an honor guard ceremony at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery in Dallas, Saturday, July 16, 2016. Zamarripa was one of five officers killed last week by a lone gunman during a protest march in Dallas.(Photo: LM Otero, AP)

Obama quicklycondemned the Dallas shootings, which happened at the end of a protest about the killings of two Black men by police officers, calling it a "vicious, calculated and despicable attack."

"Let's be clear: There are no possible justifications for these attacks or any violence towards law enforcement," Obama said.

Also in 2016, New York Public Radio published a story that the idea of a "'War on Cops'doesn't bear out in data, at least numerically."

According tothe Officers Down Memorial Page, which tracks police deaths, the number of officers who have been intentionally killed on the job has fallen from 101 per year under President Ronald Reagan, to 90 per year under George H.W. Bush; to 81 per year under Bill Clinton; to 72 per year under George W. Bush; to 62 per year under Barack Obama a figure that doesn't change when accounting for the Dallas ambush.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of thePolice Executive Research Forum, says that when it comes to violence against police, America is doing much better than we think.

In the '60s and '70s, you did have a lot of police officers who were killed more so than today ambush and deliberately killed, he says. You had the Black Panther movement and the fight back and forth between the police from New York to Oakland....It was a difficult time then, much like it is now, but overall, the numbers have come down.

We rate this claim as PARTLY FALSE, based on our research. It is true that Black Lives Matter was established in 2013, during President Barack Obama's second term. But it is false to say ISIS, antifa and a "war on cops" also did not exist before the 44th president entered the White House.

Reach Natalie Neysa Alund at nalund@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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Fact check: Before Obama there was no Black Lives Matter, but there was ISIS and antifa - USA TODAY

One hundred people attend Black Lives Matter rally in Hay River – CBC.ca

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Chants of "No Justice, No Peace!" rang out through downtown Hay River, N.W.T. Saturday afternoon.

A hundred people gathered in a parking lot behind the town's recreation centre to express their solidarity with Black, Indigenous and people of colour that have experienced racism in the N.W.T.

The rally was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, that was spurred after George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Vigne Sridharan and Daniella Boronka, two nurses that moved to Hay River in January, were the ones behind the town's rally. They said they were pleasantly surprised by the number of people that decided to march in solidarity.

"We thought it was just going to be the two of us standing there, holding our signs," Sridharan told CBC during the march. "It just shows that everybodyis on the same page, and they wantthis to end."

The Hay River rally is the latest in a series of marches held in Yellowknife, Fort Smith, Fort Simpson and Inuvikin response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Jason Snaggs, CEO of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, drove down from Yellowknife with his wife to deliver the keynote speech at the rally.

Snaggs' impassioned speech touched on his experience as a Black man in the North, giving examples of how he and his children had experienced systemic racism in the territory's schools, healthcare and governance sectors.

"Systemic racism is like a pesticide ... it's harmless to the plant or higher animal, but when absorbed into the bloodstream makes the entire organism toxic to some organisms, and harmless to others," Snaggtold rally participants.

"This toxic racism exists today and continues to put barriers in front of Indigenous, First Nations and peoples in the Northwest Territories."

R.J. Simpson, the MLA for Hay River South, Kandis Jameson, the mayor of Hay River, April Martel, chief of K'atl'odeeche First Nation, and Gail Cyr from the N.W.T. Human Rights Commission, also delivered speeches at the event.

Rally participants signed a petition after the event asking for a territorial summit to address systemic racism in the N.W.T.

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One hundred people attend Black Lives Matter rally in Hay River - CBC.ca

What Does "Black Lives Matter" Actually Mean? Why Saying …

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Black lives did not matter when they were inhumanely transported like livestock from Africa. Black lives did not matter when they were lynched by the hundreds at the hands of the KKK. Black lives did not matter when they were attacked by dogs as they protested for equal rights.

With the weekly news cycle seeming to, without fail, include the death of at least one black boy at the hands of the police, or the body of a black woman being thrown to the ground by local law enforcement, or a black child being manhandled by the services meant to protect them, my heart sinks as I cling to the desire that black lives will matter.

When Nancy Pelosi, as part of MSNBCs town hall last year, was asked by student Shelly Ward if she supported the Black Lives Matter movement, Pelosis response was an all too familiar Well, I believe that all lives matter. Her statement was to the very obvious disappointment of the young black woman who asked the question, and to the disappointment of an exhausted black community.

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As someone who is constantly bombarded with the howling of but all lives matterand the heated conversations that inevitably followlet me explain. Black Lives Matter is not a term of confrontation or an exclusionary demand. As Columbia Law Professor Kimberle Crenshaw explains, saying black lives matter is simply aspirational; it's a rallying cry for a shift in statistical numbers that show that people who are black are twice as likely to be killed by a police officer while unarmed, compared to a white individual. According to a 2015 study, African-Americans died at the hands of police at a rate of 7.2 per million, while whites were killed at a rate of 2.9 per million.

Anyone who has kept any type of pulse on civil rights and the black human condition in the United States since the transatlantic slave trade would understand the need to emphasize the protection of black bodies. The people who have had the luxury of ignoring this particular issue is the white community, which has had the privilege of not questioningon a large scalewhether the systems they live in are detrimental to their livelihoods, based on their skin color.

But as the Black Lives Matter movement emerged, they were all of a sudden jolted into an awareness of the intersection of race and surviving police encounters. Instead of exploring the reasons why a movement like this would even be necessary, many have a knee jerk reaction. What about me? All lives matter, they cry. Why be divisive and unfair, what about our safety? The point these people miss is that the majority of experiences here in America already tend to center and highlight whiteness and cater to its safety. The country was built to function that way. Its roots of white supremacy and the marginalized concern for people of color has remained.

Today, looking at the gross brutality and murders of black American citizens like Oscar Grant, Michelle Cusseaux, Samuel Dubose, and Jordan Edwards, we are still aspiring to convince you that black lives matter.

But let's get back to the issue of countering Black Lives Matter with the phrase All Lives Matter. I've come to describe this as a collective gaslighting from the white community. Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power (or in this case, keep their own peace), makes a victim question their reality. Why do those who counter black lives matter act as though black people aren't aware of the glaring disproportionate statistics of police brutality, of health care racism, and of mass incarceration? This is our reality. You deciding to ignore it for your own comfort doesn't make it any less true.

If a patient being rushed to the ER after an accident were to point to their mangled leg and say, This is what matters right now, and the doctor saw the scrapes and bruises of other areas and countered, but all of you matters, wouldnt there be a question as to why he doesn't show urgency in aiding that what is most at risk? At a community fundraiser for a decaying local library, you would never see a mob of people from the next city over show up angry and offended yelling, All libraries matter!especially when theirs is already well-funded.

This is because there is a fundamental understanding that when the parts of society with the most pain and lack of protection are cared for, the whole system benefits. For some reason, the community of white America would rather adjust the blinders theyve set against racism, instead of confront it, so that the country can move forward toward a true nation of justice for all.

"Stating 'black lives matter' doesnt insinuate that other lives dont."

Let me be clear: our stating that black lives matter doesnt insinuate that other lives dont. Of course all lives matter. That doesnt even need to be said. But the fact that white people get so upset about the term black lives matter is proof that nothing can center the wellbeing and livelihoods of black bodies without white people assuming it is to their demise.

My personal message to those committed to saying all lives matter in the midst of the justice-driven work of the Black Lives Matter movement: prove it. Point out the ways our societyparticularly the systems set in place to protect citizens like police officers and doctors and elected officialsare showing up to serve and protect black lives. Illuminate the instances in which the livelihood of the black community was prioritized, considering the circumstances that put us into less-privileged spaces to begin with. Direct me to the evidence of justice for the bodies discarded at the hands of those in power, be it by unjustified murder, jail cell, poisoned water, or medical discrimination.

These are the things that must be rectified for us to be able to exhale. Until then, I'll be here, my black fist raised with Black Lives Matter on my lips.

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Futurist says coronavirus could last for years ‘like the Great Depression’ – Mirror Online

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An expert has warned the world could be plunged into a new Great Depression under a coronavirus worst case scenario.

Peter Schwartz believes the 'cascading crises' currently gripping the world could result in an almost decade-long disaster.

He said these crises include the social turmoil from the Black Lives Matter movement and leadership problems in some countries.

The futurist has warned if scientists fail to find a vaccine, the world could face a Great Depression-style ordeal for years on end.

He added: "We don't have vaccines for a lot of these viruses. So it's entirely plausible we won't for this (coronavirus) either.

"And that means, in turn, that we're not going to get back to 100% of where we were before for years.

"It's like 1929-1937 that sort of timeframe. We are in the Great Depression and so we're below the economic potential for quite a long time.

"Maybe someday we'll get a vaccine but you kind of learn to live in a pandemic world.

"And that is a plausible scenario of depressed economic activity and a persistent pandemic where Covid is the new normal."

Mr Schwartz said the world is currently suffering from four crises - health, economic, social and leadership.

He has described how the situation developed from a health crisis into an economic one.

The expert added: "We had somewhat of an economic crisis going in, a trade war that has now been amplified.

"We have a social crisis now created by the Black Lives Movement worldwide and the response to the George Floyd killing,

"And then finally we have a leadership crisis in some countries. So this is the scenario where essentially the virus really persists."

Mr Schwartz, head of strategic planning at tech company Salesforce, told the World Economic Forum no 'new normal' would arrive without a vaccine.

The expert wrote: "Instead, a 'Covid normal' emerges, with continuing waves of the virus, persistent economic uncertainty and deep societal unrest."

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Futurist says coronavirus could last for years 'like the Great Depression' - Mirror Online

One Particular Spot on Earth Is Getting Colder Instead of Hotter – Futurism

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Cold Shoulder

Overall, the Earth is getting warmer at an ominous rate which, according to an overwhelming majority of climate scientists, is probably a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

Thats why its so interesting, as Mashable points out in a fascinating new story, that one spot in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean appears to be getting colder each year.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change explores possible reasons for the cold spot, which is known as the warming hole or, charmingly, the blob.

The researchers conclusion is that the blog is probably caused by a number of complex factors but mainly changing ocean currents and thick clouds that congregate over it.

Counterintuitively, the researchers say, the same greenhouse effect thats warming most of the Earth is likely causing the complex phenomena that are causing the blob to get colder.

Anthropogenic climate change changes the circuitry of the climate system, said Kristopher Karnauskas, an oceanographer at the University of Colorado Boulder who had no role in the research. [The cold blob] is an interesting manifestation of the peril were bringing on.

READ MORE: Why Earth has a stubborn spot thats cooling [Mashable]

More on climate change: Climate Change Threatens 60 Percent of the Worlds Fish Species

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One Particular Spot on Earth Is Getting Colder Instead of Hotter - Futurism

This Scientist Says He’s Built a Jet Engine That Turns Electricity Directly Into Thrust – Futurism

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This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.

The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust no fossil fuels required by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.

Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesnt require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction like the jets on Iron Mans suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Browns DeLorean to fly in Back to the Future.

But in Tangs telling, his invention lets just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.

Essentially, the goal of this technology is to try and use electricity and air to replace gasoline, he said. Global warming is a major threat to human civilization. Fossil fuel-free technology using microwave air plasma could be a solution.

He anticipates this happening fast. In two years, he says, he thinks Tang Jets could power drones. In a decade, hed like to see them fly a whole airplane.

That would all be awesome, obviously. But its difficult to evaluate whether Tangs invention could ever scale up enough to become practical. And even if it did, there would be substantial energy requirements that could doom aerospace applications.

One things for sure: If the tech works the way he hopes, the world will never be the same.

Tangs curriculum vitae flits between a dazzling array of strikingly disparate academic topics, from 4D electron microscopy to quantum dot lasers, nanotechnology, artificial photosynthesis, and, of course, phase transitions and plasmonics.

Hes held several professorships, done research at Caltech and Bell Laboratories, published scores of widely-cited papers, edited several scientific journals, and won a variety of awards. He holds a U.S. patent for a device he calls a synchrotron shutter, designed to capture electrons traveling near the speed of light.

Tang says he first stumbled onto the idea for the plasma thruster when he was trying to create synthetic diamonds. As he tried to grow them using microwaves, he recalls, he started to wonder whether the same technology could be used to produce thrust.

Other huge stories, like the coronavirus pandemic and the baffling saga of Elon Musk naming his baby X A-12, were sucking a lot of oxygen out of the news cycle in early May, when Tang announced his invention to the world. A few outlets picked up Tangs story, including New Atlas, Popular Mechanics, and Ars Technica, but no journalist appears to have actually talked to him.

Because of that, there was little fanfare surrounding the sheer scope of his ambition for the technology and it went overlooked that Tang sometimes sounds as though hes invented a hammer and is now seeing a lot of things as nails.

After describing his plans to conquer aerospace with his new thruster, for instance, he starts to describe plans to take on the automotive industry as well with jet-powered electric cars.

I think the jet engine is more efficient than the electric motor, you can drive a car at much faster speeds, he mused. Thats what I have in mind: to combine the plasma jet engine with a turbine to drive a car.

But you wouldnt want to drive behind it, he warned, because you could be scorched by its fiery jet stream.

Over the course of our interview, Tang also brought up the possibilities of using the technology to build projectile weapons, launch spaceships, power boats, and even create a new type of stove for cooking. On that last point, Tang said that hes already built a prototype kitchen stove powered by a microwave air plasma torch but its so deafeningly loud that it sounds like a constant lightning strike.

Technically, the Tang Jet is an attempt to build a plasma thruster, a concept thats periodically gained attention in scientific circles. Michael Heil, a retired aerospace and propulsion engineer with a long career of Air Force and NASA research, told Futurism that Tangs research reminds him of several other attempts to build air propulsion tech that hes encountered over the years.

Plasma thrusters like those that would power a Tang Jet have been around for a while. NASA first launched a satellite equipped with plasma thrusters back in 2006, but its capabilities are a far cry from what Tang is proposing with his research.

Engineers have long dreamed of a plasma jet-powered plane, but every attempt has been smacked down by the technological limitations of the day. For example, New Scientist reported in 2017 that a team from the Technical University of Berlin attempted to build a similar thruster but like every attempt over the previous decade, their work never became useful outside of the lab.

The problems with these attempts arent so much faults with the theory the concept of generating thrust with a plasma torch is fairly sound. Rather, issues begin to pop up when working out the logistics of building a vehicle that actually works.

Tang has little interest in commercializing the jet himself. Instead, he wants to demonstrate its merits in hopes that well-funded government leaders or titans of industry will be inspired to take the ideas and run with them.

The steps toward realization of a full plasma jet engine would cost lots of money, time and energy, he said. Such investment is beyond our present resources. Such tasks should be taken by aerospace industries or governmental agencies.

Thats a common mindset for scientists, said Christopher Combs, an aerodynamics researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Thats what us academics do, we figure out the physics and say Well I dont want to make a product,' he told Futurism. Its kind of a common refrain to see people in academia who have had something that gets a lot of attention.

Though hes intrigued by the underlying principles of the Tang Jet, Combs says its unlikely that it will scale up to the size needed to lift a plane in other words, the same challenges that proved insurmountable to previous plasma thrusters will rear their heads once again. The current prototype, for perspective, only produces about 10 Newtons of thrust about the same as a medium-sized model rocket.

Youre talking about scaling something by five orders of magnitude more than 100,000 times! Combs said. Which almost never works linearly. Lots of engineering happens in the middle.

And even if it were to scale perfectly, theres the issue of power. Iron Mans suit was powered by an Arc Reactor, and the flying DeLorean was powered by a Mr. Fusion unit that turned household trash into more than a gigawatt of power both of which, unfortunately, are fictional.

Fossil fuels store vastly more energy by weight than batteries, and thats unlikely to change any time soon. And thats too bad, because the Tang Jet needs a whole lot of power.

According to a paper Tang and his collaborators publishedabout the thruster prototype in the journal AIP Advances in May, the technology produces about 28 Newtons of thrust per kilowatt of power. The engines on the Airbus A320, a common commercial jet, produce about 220,000 Newtons of thrust combined, meaning that a comparably-sized jet plane powered by Tang Jets would require more than 7,800 kilowatts.

For perspective, that would mean loading an aircraft up with more than 570 Tesla Powerwall 2 units for a single hour of flight an impractical load, especially because the A320s payload could only carry about 130 of the giant battery units. Long story short, no existing battery tech could provide enough juice.

Does this thing just become a flying Tesla battery? Combs said. With the weight of these batteries, you dont have room for anything else.

The battery weight issue doesnt doom the Tang Jet, but it pushes options for its power source into the fringe. Tang is banking on improvements to battery technology over the next years and decades; those Technical University of Berlin researchers speculated about nuclear fusion. Unfortunately, any possible answers could be decades away or impossible.

It is worth noting that there exist compact nuclear fission reactors, like Russias KLT-40S, that produce enough power and weigh little enough that they could fit in a passenger plane or rocket.

But the safety and environmental implications of nuclear-powered aircraft are grim, and Heil was quick to point out that generating enough power isnt the only problem facing a Tang Jet. Actually getting the electricity from the power source to the thrusters would pose its own difficulties, perhaps requiring superconducting materials that dont exist yet.

You need power to generate thrust. And how do you move that power around on the aircraft? Heil said. Moving and controlling megawatts from the reactor to the jet is a huge challenge. You have to use big thick copper wires, that adds a lot of weight.

Overall, both Combs and Heil questioned the feasibility of a practical Tang Jet based on the technology we have today. Without a quick fix to the energy problem, its certainly a tall order.

But both said they were fascinated by the research and hoped to see future progress. They also pointed out that a plasma thruster could be useful for pushing satellites or spacecraft that are already in orbit though at that point it would need to bring propellant with it rather than using atmospheric air, since thered be none in the vacuum of space.

The bottom line, Heil and Combs agreed, is that we wont have a firmer grasp of the future of the tech until Tangs colleagues have evaluated and experimented with it.

Im rooting for this, and Id love to see it pan out, Combs said. But the scientist in me has some questions and some concerns.

More on Tangs plasma jets: Scientists Create Jet Engine Powered by Only Electricity

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This Scientist Says He's Built a Jet Engine That Turns Electricity Directly Into Thrust - Futurism