Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

WOOSTER The city's Black Lives Matter daily demonstration movement reached its 600th consecutive day on Friday. It is among the longest-runningdaily rallies in the nation.

SinceGeorge Floyd's death in May of 2020, the movement, led by the Wayne County Racial Justice Coalition and members of the Wooster-Orrville NAACP, has assembled daily at the city square to protest police brutality, racism and encourage law enforcement policy reform.

Activism: Nearly 600 days of protests and counting; Wooster BLM seeks police policy changes in 2022

To keep the movement going, three to four sign holders stand at Liberty and Market streets each day, no matter the weather.

The demonstration shows no end in sight as it enters2022. At the top of the priority list for the group remains community outreach and police policy reform.

Reach Bryce by email at bbuyakie@gannett.com

On Twitter: @Bryce_Buyakie

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600 consecutive days of demonstrations: BLM protests in Wooster show no end in sight - Wooster Daily Record

The Black Lives Matter narrative is powerful and emotive: black Americans, it says, are being murdered in large numbers by a racist police force. This narrative was repeated and amplified by the media in the days and months following the horrific murder of George Floyd. But what if it isnt actually true? According to data scientist Zac Kriegman, the statistical evidence is just not there. Last May, Kriegman posted an essay criticising BLMs claims and his employer, Thomson Reuters, for treating them as established facts. This set in motion a chain of events that led to his firing. spiked caught up with Kriegman to find out what happened.

spiked: What did you say that got you into trouble?

Zac Kriegman: I wrote an essay that summarised academic research showing the damage that the BLM movement had been doing. In vulnerable communities there had been thousands of murders directly as a result of BLM falsehoods. I posted the essay on an internal company forum. And that precipitated a barrage of extremely hateful, belittling and highly racialised attacks on me.

The companys response was to censor everything and to shut down any internal criticism of BLM. Thats a pretty remarkable thing for a media company to do. It raises the question of how it can accurately report on what is going on in the world, if its own employees literally cannot discuss facts, evidence and statistics relating to the issues they are reporting on.

I sent an email to my colleagues and to the senior leadership complaining about this racialised bullying, saying it had completely shut down any discussion about this matter of critical public importance. And I said our reporting was implicated in the problem. They fired me for sending that email.

spiked: What were the key claims you made in your essay?

Kriegman: The key claim BLM makes is that police more readily shoot black people than white people. It turns out that there is actually no evidence this is true at all.

BLMs core claim is false. But it has nevertheless driven huge reductions in policing around the country, especially in the communities that are most vulnerable to violence. Those are the communities where police face the most criticism and the most personal risk of their lives being ruined if they end up having to shoot someone. So they have pulled back their policing from those areas. Also, defunding the police has resulted in skyrocketing violent crime and thousands of additional murders of primarily black people in these vulnerable communities.

spiked: You have said that the consequences of BLM are racist. What did you mean?

Kriegman: Its hard to imagine our society perpetuating a falsehood that was resulting in thousands of wealthy white people in well-to-do neighbourhoods being murdered.

In my hometown, if there were dozens of kids being murdered, residents would not be calling for less policing. They would want a police officer on every single block. But when there are dozens of kids being murdered two neighbourhoods away, their response is to support BLM, which is calling for fewer police. I dont know that this is overt racism. It is just that most of the people who get to decide whether to perpetuate these falsehoods are not at risk from the increased crime.

spiked: What concerned you about the way that Reuters was reporting on BLM?

Kriegman: The biggest problem was that it was perpetuating this core falsehood. Reuters would fact-check other people who pointed out that it was false, and would imply that those people were wrong, or that their take was somehow misleading.

Police kill more white people every year than black people. When people said that, Reuters would say that actually you have to benchmark the number of people killed against the percentage of the population they make up which is wrong. What you should do is benchmark the number of people killed against the number of risky encounters they have with police. That would tell you whether or not police are more likely to use lethal force against them.

spiked: What kind of things did your colleagues say to you in response to your essay?

Kriegman: They said that as a Reuters employee with white skin, it was not my place to criticise BLM. That they were embarrassed for and ashamed of me for doing it. That my summary of the academic literature was whitesplaining. That I was a troll and not worth engaging with. They even compared me to the Ku Klux Klan.

Really, I think this is what is going on across the news media. Why are the press perpetuating this falsehood? It is this bullying, where a large portion of the people at these news companies know that they cannot say anything critical of BLM.

spiked: Are journalists letting down the public when reporting on BLM?

Kriegman: News agencies have a responsibility to tell people the truth. To report honestly and accurately, especially about a matter of great public concern, where peoples lives are at stake. But they are failing completely.

Zac Kriegman was speaking to Paddy Hannam.

Correction: an earlier version of this article stated that Zac Kriegman was an employee of Reuters instead of Thomson Reuters.

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Black Lives Matter and the death of journalism - Spiked

Crosswalks painted at six southern Dallas neighborhoods were dedicated on Monday, in recognition of the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday.

The City of Dallas dedicated painted crosswalks emblazoned with the phrase "All Black Lives Matter."

The crosswalks are located at six intersections along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Al Lipscomb Way:

Al Lipscomb Way and S Ervay St

The latest news from around North Texas.

Al Lipscomb Way and S Harwood St

Al Lipscomb Way and Malcolm X Blvd

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Colonial Ave

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Malcolm X Blvd

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Jackson Blvd

Crosswalks painted at six southern Dallas neighborhoods will be dedicated on Monday, in recognition of the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday.

The crosswalks are painted a bright red, with black lettering that spells out "All Black Lives Matter" with the words outlined in yellow.

The red symbolizes blood (i.e., Life), yellow symbolizes optimism and growth, and black signifies progressiveness and strength, according to the nonprofit Abounding Prosperity, Inc. that partnered with the city to install the crosswalk artwork.

"Streets connect people and this street installation project reminds us to join hands, hearts, and minds to make our communities safer with opportunity, freedom, and justice for all, said Kirk Myers, CEO of Abounding Prosperity, in a statement. The crosswalks can be a symbol of a new chapter for the city of Dallas. I want to thank all involved in this process for their collaboration and partnership to bring this project to life."

Abounding Prosperity has agreed to pay for the artwork and to maintain it for the next 10 years. The organization is dedicated to improving the lives of Black Americans, with a particular emphasis on gay & bisexual men, cisgender women, transgender women, and their families, according to a statement.

A public unveiling of the first completed intersection, at MLK and Malcolm X Boulevards, took place Monday at 12:30 p.m.

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All Black Lives Matter' Crosswalks Unveiled in Dallas on MLK Day - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Citation From the January 20, 2022, edition of Westwood One's The Mark Levin Show

MARK LEVIN (HOST): It was originally slated for December 9, because of Pearl Harbor. Hitler declared war on the United States right after. The Wannsee Conference was rescheduled for January 20, 1942. 80 years ago. Reinhard Heydrich, deputy SS chief and head of the Reich Security Main office, summoned the state secretaries of Germany's most important ministries to coordinate their participation in achieving the final solution to the Jewish problem. Better methods had to be implemented. The participants around the table 80 years ago were no ordinary thugs. Most had attended Germany's most respected schools and universities. Eight of the 15 invitees held doctorates, and while they knew that Jews were being murdered en masse in occupied USSR,Heydrichleft little doubt that Hitler had ordered a final solution to the Jewish problem, meaning all of Europe's Jews were to be annihilated.Heydrichsought to involve Germany's government ministries to help achieve that goal.

Now, you expect opposition from some attendees, but according to Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann, who was present,Heydrichfound an unexpected air of agreement. Rather than expressing concerns or outright opposition, the eight PhDs in attendance expressed enthusiasm about being included in the plan. At his trial in Jerusalem many years later, Eichmann testified these gentlemen were sitting together and minced no words about it. They spoke about methods of killing the Jews, about murder, liquidation, about extermination. Gassing Jews drew particular interest. The importance of the Wannsee Conference 80 years ago cannot be overstated.

It marked the point at which Hitler's plans for genocide were shared with Germany's major ministries. It also demonstrated the need for the participation of those bureaucracies to accomplish genocide. And just as important, the summaries typed at the end of the conference, the Wannsee protocol is the only document in history codifying genocide as official state policy. The Wannsee Conference took fewer than 90 minutes to devise a plan to wipe out an entire population in Europe. It took place not in some backward country, but in one of the world's most technologically and scientifically advanced societies. 80 years later, the world must not ignore the Wannsee legacy. Everyone should read and ponder the Wannsee Protocol.

Never again should anyone confuse being educated with having morals. Some of Germany's most educated enthusiastically followed Hitler, and educated people today still forge strategies to legitimize crimes in the name of greater good. Never again should leaders of democracies turn a blind eye to evils unleashed against innocents by governments such as Communist China, or Iran's Mullah-ocracy with the hope that somehow playing pussyfoot with tyrants will change the course of history. That didn't work for Neville Chamberlain, and it won't work now. Finally, in the Middle East, we cannot expect Israel, the Gulf States and Egypt to accept a new Iran nuclear deal. A nuclearized Ayatollah would mean a possible nuclear holocaust with Jews, again, the principal target.

We've learned the hard way that words have consequences, and we must take tyrants at their word. If the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and other democracies would pause to study the Wannsee Protocol might save the world from another Holocaust. Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the center's associate dean and global social action director. And you should take a look at the Wannsee protocol, January 20, 1942 and the detail it provides.

Approximately 11 million Jews were to be involved in the Final Solution of the Europe Jewish question. They broke down the numbers by country, how they would handle the problem. How there would be proper guidance. What about people of mixed blood? Well, it depends. Mixed blood of the first degree or the second degree or other degrees, it would depend. What of the children of mixed blood? It would depend. They would either go to that line or the other line. What about non-Jews who married Jews, how were they to be treated? What about sterilization and abortion? What about all of it? How are they to be dealt with?

In 90 minutes, they made those determinations. The Final Solution, 80 years ago today, hatched the Wannsee protocol. We ever taught about this, Mr. producer? No. Mr Call Screener, you ever taught about this? The Final Solution, the Holocaust, and nobody's taught about this in our public schools today. One of the great websites is the Avalon Project. I use it all the time. I mention it in "Liberty and Tyranny" as a resource. They have original documents to look at on the -- on their website. For American history, for world history, ancient history. Medieval history 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century. It's a fantastic site, but all the propaganda and so forth and so on.

It makes you wonder when you think of modern times, groups like Black Lives Matter, anti-Semitic groups, does it not? Being supported byhosts at ESPN, by its corporate masters, Disney. By the teams they cover, the NBA, the NFL. By mayors who write "BLM" and "Black Lives Matter" in their streets. In the original mission statement, not only are they Marxists, but they're anti-Semites. Makes you wonder about critical race theory being pushed by the left, including people in the media, in the media. Being pushed by the NEA and the AFT and superintendents all over the country. Critical race theory is an anti-Semitic, racist Marxist ideology.

Things can happen in industrialized society, in advanced societies. Things can happen. The Communist Revolution in Russia was not led by a peasant, a janitor. It was led by a college graduate, Lenin. The communist revolution in China was not led by a peasant, janitor. It was led by an educated man who studied Marx while he was working at a library. Mao Tse Tung. The communist revolution in Cuba wasn't led by a peasant or janitor. It was led by a lawyer by the name of Fidel Castro.

These Marxist movements, and in many cases, these fascistic movements, are led by highly educated people. Look at Italy. Mussolini was a journalist. A journalist, and a fascist. Marx was a journalist, wrote for American papers for over 12 years. And obviously, the Marxist.

I just thought I'd point it out, 80 years ago today the Final Solution was hatched in 1942.

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Fox News' Mark Levin compares Black Lives Matter to the Nazi architects of the Final Solution. The Holocaust - Media Matters for America

One of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter explains that she never expected the civil rights movement to become as monumental as it has.

Peacocks upcoming documentary Use of Force: the Policing of Black America features interviews with numerous individuals who are fighting injustice and police brutality, including Alicia Garza.

Garza, along with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, first coined the phrase Black Lives Matter in 2013, USA Today reported. It was created after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Cullors is executive director of the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in L.A. Jails. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

Garza, who is also special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told USA Today that the Black Lives Matter movement is intended to gather people "so they can connect offline and actually do something in their communities.

It was something that Garza had already been doing in her own community.

In Use of Force, Garza reflected that after attending college she returned to her hometown of Oakland, California where she hoped she could make a difference. There, she began doing advocacy work with organizations that fought against police brutality. She said she spent a decade organizing in San Francisco and more than five years in Oakland before taking on a more national cause.

No, I did not know that Black Lives Matter would become the force that it is today although I certainly want to say it was something that I wished for, but couldnt see beyond my own faith that it could happen and my own determination that we should try it," she explained.

She said that she, Tometi and Cullors created the platform for people so people could do more than be angry on social media.

On their site, they say their mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

They have organized some of the most impactful protests following police-involved shootings in recent history. Many of the hundreds ofprotests that erupted following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 were organized under the Black Lives Matter banner. Black Lives Matter has since become one of the biggest social justice movements in modern time.In fact,the New York Times reportedlast yearthat the movement may possibly be the largest in American history.

Use of Force: the Policing of Black America debuts on Friday.

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Black Lives Matters Co-Founder Alicia Garza Never Expected The Movement To Get So Big - Oxygen

This column is part of our ongoing Opinion commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith. Find the full series here.

One of the more important and often overlooked moments of the civil rights movement was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s midnight kitchen table experience in 1956, which shaped his (and our) future.

King was 27 years old and in his second year as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, within eyesight of the Alabama Capitol. He had been helping lead the city bus boycott, which prompted an ongoing barrage of death threats to his house, mail and phone. Some days, there were as many as 30 to 40 calls, often in the evening, trying to force him to return to Atlanta.

King would just lay down the phone and, if at night, go back to bed. But one call, around midnight on Jan. 27, became pivotal for him, as he wrote in his autobiography.

While his wife, Coretta, and their infant daughter slept nearby, the caller, a man, said, [N-word], weve taken all we want from you; before next week youll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.

Shaken more than usual, King, as he later wrote, went to the familys small kitchen, made a pot of coffee, buried his face in his hands, and prayed aloud: Lord, Im down here trying to do whats right. I think Im right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that Im weak now, Im faltering. Im losing my courage.

King wrote in his autobiography: It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world.

His fear quieted at that moment and left him, though the threats never did. A bomb blew up on the front steps of his home three evenings later. Fortunately, despite the wreckage, no one was injured.

From the damaged porch, King called his gathered supporters out of their anger, and into nonviolence and love for their enemies.

King lived without fear for another 12 years, always going forward, knowing his life was at risk. He said: if I am stopped, this movement will not stop. The world is better for his having lived without fear.

What we can learn from Kings kitchen table experience is the importance of spiritual grounding to move onward in the hard, sometimes perilous struggle for justice, allowing no fear to detour our journey forward.

King learned his anchoring from the Revs. Howard Thurman and James Larson, forerunners of Black Liberation Theology, and Mohandas Gandhis nonviolence. King was carried along by gospel music and spirituals.

Spiritual grounding is essential. Our human history teaches us that. This is not about religiosity, going to church, and so on, but that deep personal spiritual anchoring, whatever ones faith tradition (or none).

If we lack this tethering, our striving for justice will be short-lived and yanked away by distraction or fear of societal disapproval, retaliation, physical danger, financial insecurity, and so on. (The list is long).

Community grows because we give back; it does not grow in a vacuum.

Our annual commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. should honor not only him, but, as he often pointed out, all those who struggled in danger to themselves without fear. We should reflect on how their deep spirituality moved them (and us) closer to the dream. Consider Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, and all those anonymous people before us, many of whom faced repercussions or death. We should honor, and imitate, their spiritual grounding and fearless courage.

Black Lives Matter has raised up a challenge and put it directly in our faces. Likewise, the pandemic, now two years in the making, has laid bare the extravagant economic dislocations that oppress people of color and poor people.

Many want to rise to the challenge. Others will drift in their solipsism. People who want work for justice should consider more deeply grounding themselves so as to be fearlessly true to the struggle, and not wind vanes.

James C. Harrington is the retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project and an Episcopal priest in Austin. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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What Black Lives Matter can learn from Martin Luther Kings religious faith - The Dallas Morning News

SARATOGA SPRINGS Kevin Luibrand, the lawyer for Schenectady School Board member Jamaica Miles, said in City Court Thursday that undercover officers were present during the July 14 Black Lives Matter protest, in an operation called Take Back the Narrative.

Miles was one of 13 people who were later charged with offenses associated with blocking traffic during the protest at a busy intersection during the height of the citys summer tourism season.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph Frandino said Miles was charged because she is observed during parts of a 9-minute video blocking a car.

On four separate occasions, motorists asked the crowd to allow them through, including a man who said he needed to get medication for his heart condition.

Miles has been charged with unlawful imprisonment and disorderly conduct.

Frandinosaid he offered to drop the unlawful imprisonment charge if Miles pleads guilty to disorderly conduct, a noncriminal disposition.

Instead, Miles lawyer filed a motion to dismiss the case in the interest of justice, arguing Miles is being treated more harshly than Molly Dunn, a white woman who protested that day and was observed on video blocking traffic for the entirety of the video while holding a sign.

Dunn was a defense witness in Miles case. Dunn had already accepted the prosecutors offer of an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal of the same charges after 30 days. Luibrand had also represented Dunn.

Luibrand described Miles as a person of good character, a single mom roughing it out with four kids who has no criminal record and is engaged with her community as co-founder of the activist group All of Us.

Dunn is also an activist in her own right, and she, too, has no criminal record. Yet Luibrand said the prosecutor treated them differently.

Its hard to say the difference, but its real, Luibrand told Judge Francine Vero. Mollys white. Jamaicas not.

The protesters were present to decry comments made by retiring Assistant Police Chief John Catone, who had complained during a June 28 press conference that a recent spate of violence had been caused by gangs from Albany, and that the police department had been damaged by activists who were portraying officers as racist killers.

The longtime police official vowed to pull out every single connection my family has made over the last 130 years, and I will stop your narrative.

In court, Luibrand asked rhetorically: How do you protect the narrative? You cut the legs off people that speak.

Luibrand said the judge couldnt force the prosecutor to offer Miles an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.

But Luibrand said Vero could give confidence to the community by affording the Molly Dunns of the world the same treatment as the Jamaica Miles of the world.

In describing a portion of the video footage, Luibrand said Miles for a time pushed her toddler who was in a stroller.

The lawyer said Miles, who spoke from a bullhorn, wasnt paying attention to the occupants of a car that protesters had blocked.

She spoke to people across the street at the Adelphi Hotel, among others.

Shes almost oblivious to theres even cars there as she moves around, Luibrand said.

The lawyer contrasted that with the white girl, Dunn, who stood in front of the car.

However, the ADA rejected that his offer was motivated by race, saying Luibrand had wildly neglected to mention that three white protesters and eight people of color received adjournments in contemplation of dismissal.

The ADA said Miles absence of acriminal history, and the fact shes a hardworking, respected, accomplished member of her community with four children werent in dispute.

However, Miless part in ignoring the pleas of the motorists couldnt be ignored, the prosecutor said, while noting that a older gentleman in the video, who was visiting Saratoga Springs from California, was visibly shaken when describing what happened.

Frandino also explained why officers in attendance didnt immediately arrest the protesters.

Instead, the defendants were summonsed six weeks after the event.

Rather than sprinting in and disrupting the protest, rather than rush and arrest everyone in the middle of the street and cause even further congestion and potential public safety issues, Frandino said, law enforcement purposefully and carefully waited, gathered all the digital evidence that they could [and] identified everyone they could from the videos and later issue warrants.

Law enforcements concern then, and law enforcements concern now, remains public safety, and to turn that afternoon into even more of a chaotic event would have endangered the safety of everyone on the street protesters and onlookers alike, Frandino said.

The prosecutor asked the judge to imagine if the circumstances were reversed, and it were Miles driving down Broadway and had been stopped in traffic while surrounded by a crowd of people carrying signs and screaming into bullhorns.

I envision her press conferences on the steps of City Hall to demand that I place this man in jail for as long as possible, as opposed to supporting a full and complete dismissal of the charges against him, Frandino said.

Frandino said he prosecuted all 13 cases without taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

All 13 of them received an individual independent analysis by our office to determine their level of culpability, he said.

Luibrand said no ones life was changed by what was observed on the video.

Vero said she hoped to prepare a written decision on the request for a dismissal by early next week.

Contact reporter Brian Lee at[emailprotected]or 518-419-9766.

Categories: News, Saratoga County, Schenectady County

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Lawyer says Jamaica Miles, a Schenectady School Board member, treated more harshly than fellow white protester at summer Black Lives Matter protest ...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (NEXSTAR) Invoking the dream of his formerly enslaved great-grandfather, Richard Irvin, the mayor of Illinois second largest city, jumped into the Illinois Republican primary race for Governor on Martin Luther King Day.

Richard Baxter Irvin was born a slave, but he dreamed of being free, Irvin said in a campaign launch video. I dont just share the name Richard Irvin, he said. I share his dream of what Illinois could be: where a growing economy provides ladders of opportunity for anyone willing to work; where families are safe; where kids are educated, not indoctrinated.

Before he was elected as the mayor of Aurora in 2017, Irvin fought as an Army soldier in the Gulf War, returned home and graduated from law school at Northern Illinois University, went on to work as a prosecutor in the Cook County States Attorneys Office, and eventually became a community prosecutor in his hometown.

I grew up in Section Eight public housing in Aurora where I now serve as mayor, Irvin said in his campaign video. Mom had me at 16, a single mother working two jobs. Didnt have much of a father, but my granddad, son of Richard Baxter Irvin, taught me to believe in myself, to do the best I could in whatever I did.

He ran for mayor in 2005 and 2009, and lost both races. Former House Republican Leader Tom Cross endorsed him at the time. Irvin later became a local precinct committeeman in the Republican party. However, Kane County election records show Irvin pulled a ballot to vote in recent Democratic primary contests in 2014, 2016, and 2020, including both presidential races where Donald Trump was on the ballot.

Irvins voting history raised questions about his political allegiances and created an opening for his GOP opponents to attack him. State senator Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) labeled him as a career Democrat. Gary Rabine (R-Bull Valley) sarcastically welcomed Irvin to the Illinois Republican Party. Jesse Sullivan (R-Petersburg) said the people of Illinois are sick of career politicians whove been given ample opportunities to fix our state.

Illinois Republican Party chairman Don Tracy called on the candidates to play nice, and said hed enforce Ronald Reagans so-called 11th Commandment, Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.

Tracy also dismissed the attacks questioning Irvins conservative credentials.

Hes definitely a Republican, Tracy said on Monday morning at a Martin Luther King Day breakfast. Up in that area, in Chicago in particular, people tend to pull Democrat ballots because thats where the action is.

Just because people have voted in Democratic primaries before does not disqualify them from being Republicans or voting Republican, Tracy said.

Irvins announcement also drew swift reaction from billionaire and Republican megadonor Ken Griffin, who has discussed plans to spend up to $300 million backing Republican candidates in Illinois in 2022.

Unlike the current Governor who was born into wealth and has demonstrated little urgency or progress in improving our State, Richard Irvins life embodies the American Dream and a real commitment to making communities stronger, Griffin said through an emailed statement from his spokesman at Citadel Strategies.

From humble beginnings, he put himself through college with the help of the GI bill and chose to enter public service to make a difference in the lives of others, Griffin said. As Mayor of Aurora, he has successfully delivered on the issues Illinoisans care most about strengthening the education system, improving public safety, creating economic opportunities and governing with integrity. I am excited that he has decided to join the race, and look forward to the opportunity to meet him and learn more about his ideas in the weeks ahead.

The timing of Irvins campaign launch on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day irked top Black leaders in Springfield. Senator Robert Peters (D-Chicago), and Representatives Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) and Sonya Harper (D-Chicago) slammed the shallow opportunism of the Republican party.

The co-opting of a day of great significance to justify a political platform that from its onset seeks to strip protections from working families across Illinois, minimizes the struggles of the past, and rolls back the progress that weve made to expand rights is highly disappointing, the chairs of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus said in a press release.

On Irvins campaign website, he claims he called in the national guard to respond to looting in the aftermath of protests over the murder of George Floyd. However, a spokesman for the Illinois National Guard confirmed mayors do not have that authority, and would have to make any request through the governors office.

Governor Pritzkers office declared states of emergency in several counties during the protests and looting incidents of the summer of 2020, and issued deployments of the national guard to assist local police departments in several cities, including Aurora. Calls to Irvins office in Aurora were not returned on Monday.

The next year, while he was running for re-election in Aurora in the spring of 2021, Irvin told a local news outlet, I support Black Lives Matter strongly and passionately.

This year, now that hes running for governor in a Republican primary, Irvin repeated critics of the Black Lives Matter movement who often retort, I believe All Lives Matter.

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In bid to become first Black governor of Illinois, Richard Irvin says All Lives Matter - wcia.com

Martin Luther King Jr., a reverend who charted a colorblind approach to racial injustice, was a man of honor. Read his famous speeches and you will be in absolute awe.

Oh, how we need a King now. Hed set race-baiters everywhere straight. Hed tell them to love their fellow, flawed human beings as individuals, not attack them as irredeemables.

Today, Black Lives Matter the group, not the concept should review MLKs approach to civil rights. The organizers and adherents have chosen a different approach to racial reconciliation: belittlement, division and wholesale condemnation.

King was a modern saint, a modern Moses, leading his people out of separate-but-equal bondage and into a land of equal opportunity where skin color and background was secondary to content of character and ambition.

He was all about love real love which is intentional, reality-based and long-suffering with a pinch of forgiveness thrown in for good measure. Listen to King describe his main motivating idea of pacifism as the only way to win hearts and minds:

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, Love your enemies. It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. Thats love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. Theres something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

This is the King-led civil rights movementin one paragraph. It defeated its enemies by loving them. Blacks were separated, ostracized, threatened, beaten, killed, shot with fire hoses and all other kinds of evil, but they persevered because they were led by King, who believed love was the answer, not revenge, hate and violence.

If King wanted, he probably could have led Civil War II, with the likes of Malcolm X and other clench-fisted Black Power haters leading followers into armed confrontation. He did not, thankfully. And, in hindsight, he didnt have to. The patient, pacifist approach earned respect from the multitudes who were confronted by white supremacy and rejected it in its raw, hateful form.

Those who need proof BLM is taking a completely different tactic from King need only look up clips from rioting in major cities everywhere in the summer of 2020. Watch as demonstrators in these oft-touted peaceful protests took over whole city blocks and fought against police officers, burned businesses, carried bullhorns during early-morning parades threatening and mocking residents who just wanted a peaceful nights sleep and went on network news shows threatening to come for all white people when they got done destroying cities.

The whole experience was surreal, as if we were watching the Bolshevik Revolution scene in Dr. Zhivago when hordes of communists overran a familys home during dinnertime. But this was America in 2020. It was scarier than any novel coronavirus could ever be.

And BLMs message has gotten more divisive as the years pass. They reject the nuclear family. They align themselves with Democrats and progressives and are hostile toward Republicans and conservatives at every turn. They reject capitalism. They sow distrust of Americas venerate institutions. They tell us to beware and defund the police. The groups website requests readers to report any suspicious disinformation regarding BLM, as if were in Stalinist Russia.

After the recent Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty jury verdict, an official BLM tweet responded to Rittenhouses magnanimous, turn-the-other-cheek support of the BLM movement by simply stating, (Expletive) you. Would King ever use that hateful expression? Of course not. He wasnt that crude, unforgiving or ungracious.

We were lucky to have King in the 1960s. We need similar wise leadership now, and its not too late for BLM to start forming bridges, rather than creating further division. If it did, it, too, might still be relevant 50 years from now, just as King is.

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Here's Something: BLM should learn to be more like MLK - pressherald.com

If youve ever owned a slave, please raise your hand, Jeffery Robinson asks a live audience at the beginning of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, a searing documentary based on a lecture he has spent a decade perfecting.

Obviously, nobody in the auditorium raises a hand. This is 2018 New York. But the few seconds that follow the question are probably the only chance these audience members have to put some distance between themselves and the countrys sorry record of racial oppression. No, explains Mr. Robinson, slavery may not be our fault, but it is our shared history.

And then Mr. Robinson, a longtime criminal defense lawyer and former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, launches his harrowing journey through centuries of institutionalized racism. Along the way, he points out both the well known (the plantations, the lynchings, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre) and the less widely known (the troubling third verse of The Star-Spangled Banner or the advertised offer by future President Andrew Jackson of $10 extra for any 100 lashes given his escaped slave).

No matter how much you think you already know, youre bound to learn new things from Who We Are, a 117-minute documentary directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler and released by Sony Pictures Classics. And to be stunned, at some point.

How did this lecture come about?

Mr. Robinson explains that he became a father in 2011, when his sister-in-law died and her son, then 13, moved in. Suddenly, Mr. Robinson needed to teach a Black teen about racism. In educating himself, he says, he was stunned by what he himself lucky enough to have a stellar education, including a Harvard law degree didnt know.

He began sharing his findings wherever he could in community centers, churches, conference rooms. The directors, after hearing him speak, suggested a movie. Their resulting film is anchored by the 2018 lecture in New Yorks historic Town Hall and filled out with archival footage, photographs and current-day interviews with the likes of 107-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle, one of the last survivors of the Tulsa massacre, and Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, whose death from a police chokehold became a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter.

Mr. Robinson also argues briefly with a man holding a Confederate flag, who insists the Civil War had nothing at all to do with slavery.

At a slavery museum in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Robinson examines two pairs of shackles. One is adult-sized, the other toddler-sized. We also see an oak hanging tree and later, photographs of white Americans standing next to the bodies of Black people who have been lynched, a sight Mr. Robinson says was once normal and accepted in America.

But despite the many references to painful periods in U.S. history, its also the smartly placed sprinklings of Mr. Robinsons own life experience that help personalize the proceedings and give the film its emotional wallop.

A number of these moments take place in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 but also where Mr. Robinson grew up. He travels back to his hometown, where, he tells us, his parents tried to buy a house in a white neighborhood but were turned away, until white friends went and bought it for them. Then, when the family moved in, a neighbor showed up with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for the lady of the house but turned and left, cookies in hand, when Mr. Robinsons Black mother came to the door.

In another scene, a white high school friend confesses he never told Mr. Robinson that theyd all once been denied entry to a basketball game because of Mr. Robinsons race; a pastor intervened, without Mr. Robinson ever knowing. Both men are reduced to tears at the story.

Mr. Robinson closes on a note of tentative hope. The Black Lives Matter protests united people of all races in American streets, he ob- serves: The possibility of radical change is in the air. But he also warns: The things theyre saying about Black Lives Matter today are the exact same things they said about Martin Luther King in the 60s.

If the format of a lecture is inherently limiting, the directors do a superb job of weaving a compelling visual and emotional experience. One can only hope they, and Mr. Robinson, get the wide audience the film deserves. The documentary is part of a broader educational initiative, the Who We Are Project.

Mr. Robinsons final point is that were at another tipping point just as we were in the late 1960s. Will we fall back again, he asks?

Or, will this generation decide to do something different?

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'Who We Are' offers a searing view of racism in U.S. - Richmond Free Press