That it is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor
Imagine this discussion if you were children in the mid-seventeen hundred’s in Colonial Maryland near what is now Hyattsville on a farm. You hear your father talking or debating, with others from surrounding farms, that he is thinking of freeing his slaves. Lit by candle or oil lamp, the room would have been a place of flickering light, warm most of the year, an interesting place to be. The discussion going from farm house to farm house. Farmers of the land, tobacco the crop. Farms powered by slavery.
Questions about what would happen to the slaves once they became freemen, with questions about what would happen to the farm if the freemen decided to leave. How would others see the freeing of the slaves. Would others do the same or complain to the King’s agents?
You are one of many families farming the area. You are looking forward to moving somewhere with game and fresh dirt. The wild game in the area has been hunted to extinction. Your fields are producing fewer crops, especially tobacco. It is time to move. With your father, Basil Foster marrying Mary Acton, you have some favors from William Penn, governor of Pennsylvania colony and grandfather of Mary. Might as well go north to Pennsylvania.
But what about your slaves. Keep them as slaves? Release them as freemen? Pennsylvania was tending to stop the owning of slaves in the colony.
Basil Foster made freemen of his slaves. They, the clan and freemen, moved north to Pennsylvania colony and started clearing land around Bedford, Round Top. The clan just north of them was massacred, the bodies stabbed onto the stubs of where tree branches had been prior on the large trees. The Foster clan, including the new freeman, returned to the old farms around Hyattsville. After the Revolutionary War, they all moved back to Round Top.
Consider that we, as a nation, are still debating this issue.
nbc news:
Anthony Borges, the young man credited with saving up to 20 lives during the Parkland, Florida, school rampage, doesn’t believe he’s a hero.
Finally home from the hospital after nine surgeries, Borges, 15, told the “Today” show’s Kerry Sanders in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that he simply feels lucky to be alive.
“I think I was going to die,” he said.
Borges was shot five times during the Feb. 14 school shooting, which killed 17 people. He barricaded a classroom door and used his body as a shield as the bullets flew, protecting a class full of students from harm.
[…]
Borges has been flooded with boxes upon boxes of letters from strangers thanking him for his bravery, some from as far away as Venezuela, the family’s home country.
A third of Borges’ lung had to be removed. One bullet came dangerously close to his liver, and three others tore through his legs.
“He’s a hero,” Arreaza said. “He’s the real deal.”
His family has moved from their walk-up apartment to a ground-floor unit to accommodate Borges as he continues to recover. But the future looks promising: Doctors have told the family that Borges will be back to playing soccer eventually.
And Borges has kept a positive outlook.
[…continues…]
BlueBronc… what a wonderful post! Much food for thought near the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination. I just don’t get at this point why some refuse to see people of color as our fellow Americans. That the selection of SFB has brought forward so many white supremacists groups is frightening. I feel all I can do is continue to speak out against bigotry and vote Democratic.
RR – thank you. We are the majority, no matter how hard the media tries to make sound like we are equal in numbers.
Right now, with no more baby sitters in the WH, the petulant little five year old is throwing his toys around, oblivious to the damage being caused to his room and the world. The only hope we have is a clean sweep in October and having a country left to govern in January when the new Congress convenes.
“I just don’t get at this point why some refuse to see people of color as our fellow Americans.”
renee, it is a puzzlement especially when they hear of young people and others like Anthony Borges above who courageously and selflessly saved 20 lives of his fellow americans.
bbronc, thank you for the personal history lesson. wish more stories like that were told during American studies programs in our schools.
the guardian:
Dangerous, growing,
yet unnoticed: the rise of America’s white gangs
White gangs are less covered by the media, and less punished – even though 53% of gang members in Mississippi are white
[…very long article….]
Surveys of young Americans have shown that 40% identifying as gang members are white, but police tend to undercount them at 10% to 14% and overcount black and Hispanic members, says Babe Howell, a criminal law professor at City University of New York who focuses on crime and race.
“Police see groups of young white people as individuals, each responsible for his or her own conduct, and hold young people of color in street gangs criminally liable for the conduct of their peers,” she says.
How law enforcement labels specific gangs may also obscure white membership, a 2012 study published in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law posited.
Jordan Blair Woods researched how the feds had applied the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) to various gangs. Congress passed Rico in 1970 to target the mafia as organized “criminal enterprises”. In the early 1990s, the attorney general, Janet Reno, started using Rico to charge criminal street gangs.
Woods explains that law enforcement typically splits gang activity into three groups: white supremacist prison gangs, outlaw biker clubs and criminal street gangs. He concluded that systemic racism often keeps white gangs categorized as prison and biker groups instead of street gangs – the category drawing the toughest charges and sentences.
This means white gangs are not typically policed as stringently, he writes, and their members can miss interventions sometimes offered to more publicized gangs of color. That help can include job and life skills training, or interaction with trained “violence interrupters”, who are often former gang members.
Woods blames the media for underreporting white gangs. He backs up Ivey’s point about this lack of attention, writing that media may be more prone to cover black and Hispanic gangs “because of consumer demands for stories of sensationalized racial gang violence.”
“How can you help [with a problem] if you don’t recognize it’s there?” Ivey says. “A lot of white kids, 15, 16 years old, look at white gangsters as rock stars.”
[…..continues…]
*
I am the old guy in charge of a multi-racial family. Our motto? “Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.~~” People are impressed by our strength as a family.
Good post, BB and we have replaced our slave labor with the migrant worker…taking the “I’m” out of immigrant! Second-tier fake citizens only during harvest. Yet, we have been the most progressive of countries until now. Women were behind as they did not get the vote in the 1800’s emancipation proclamation. But, we were moving forward by inches last century with gender equality by allowing women credit, the vote and the right-to-choose. Today, all of that progress, the protests, the lost lives being slashed-away by goppers and their phony potus.
In New Mexico, NMSU dean offers scholarships to Parkland students.
Chaiken sent out an email to Hogg’s school principal and guidance counselors, praising them for educating articulate, thoughtful, and kind young people. She also asked Hogg and his fellow student leaders to give her a call, writing “I can assure them that they will be admitted to our university and I will personally make it my commitment to raise as much funding as I can to support them with scholarships.”
Current, fbi #2, Bowdich is an alumnus of NMSU. NMSU is located in Las Cruces which is the happiest city in New Mexico and is the nation’s 4th best run city. Could it be Las Cruces has been getting greater since martinez our ‘lame duck, low approval gov, more vetoes than johnson’ hasn’t lived here in eight years? You betcha! Currently, martinez is supporting her guy like the rest of the border gop govs.
I live 30 miles from the border…there is no crisis and trump and kelly’s gf are treating this area like the yellow cake of iraq. The annual march of activists from central America is not the threat that Obama faced when all of the those Cuban refugees just walked into our southern border into instant citizenship…ask trump and rubio about that! Now that immigration wave was rigged in favor of gopper votes and the group came from Cuba via Central America.
Article from 2015 about Cuban immigration .
Under long-standing U.S. policy, Cubans who make it to the U.S. are almost always granted political asylum and put on a path to permanent legal residency — a green card.
Everything changed dramatically in 2017.
Mexican authorities announced Friday that they have deported dozens of Cubans who had arrived at Mexico’s southern border hoping to reach the U.S. — the first deportation by the country since a repeal of the so-called “wet foot/dry foot” policy.
It was the first deportation by Mexico since President Obama revoked the “wet foot/dry foot” policy on Jan. 12 that awarded Cuban migrants amnesty if they reached U.S. soil. The repeal caught hundreds of Cubans who were trekking across Central and South America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border by surprise.
thanks BB, glad my KY ancestors fought for the Union
Trump’s Monthly Approval Rating Hits Record Low in March
Trump’s net approval rating was 13 points underwater, a 4 point decline from February.
Biggest drop was in Iowa — a net swing of 9 points from the previous month.
Several of my ancestors also fought (and one died at the Battlefield of the Wildreness) for the Union. Don’t I get to be pissed off about the statues paying homage to the Confederate Generals in these parts?
My Texas ex and his mom were going through a trunk of a relative who had recently died. There was an old Confederate flag & other stuff from that period of time. They were quite excited. They didn’t take too kindly to me saying, “but you know WE won, right”? I guess I had trounced on their family history, but still…
Thank Heaven and Mexico ! I have been losing sleep, worrying about the invasion of Hispano-Islamic Cubans across our Liberally porous South border. The thought that these disease-carrying, drug-distributing, terrorists might take over Minnesota and institute Sharing Law, turbans, bad music, garlic, and other bad food, leaves me fearful that bad cigars could soon ruin our ludefisk celebrations.
All the worry has me on the edge of my seat, staring at hannity !
Depending on the condition (and which flag), Ms Dallas, an actual, period, confederate flag could fetch a handsome price.
There weren’t many 7 Star ‘Stars and Bars’ (the 1st flag) or ‘Blood Stained Banner’s (the last flag). And, the “Bonnie Blue Flag” is very rare.
From Mother Jones —
Donald Trump Was Sued for Violating a Key Part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy
The Fair Housing Act of 1968—the last major piece of 1960s civil rights legislation, and one that King had vigorously pushed for—was passed a week after King’s assassination. Five years later, Trump and his father, Fred, were sued by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department for violating the law by refusing to rent to black tenants at Trump-owned apartment complexes in New York City. According to the New York Times, applications from black apartment-seekers were marked “C” for “colored” and rejected by Trump Management employees.
The Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in housing, but 50 years later, with Trump as president, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has dramatically scaled back enforcement of the law. HUD Secretary Ben Carson even removed the words “free from discrimination” from the agency’s mission statement
trump’s top nazi troll identity revealed.
Huffpo broke the story — ricky vaughn is douglass mackey.
To get a sense of how powerful the account was, consider this: The MIT Media Lab named him to its list of top 150 influencers on the election, based on news appearances and social media impact. He finished ahead of NBC News, Drudge Report and Stephen Colbert.
Trump ditches ‘boring’ tax script for Mexican rapists, illegal voting claims
From politico.
President Donald Trump on Thursday ditched his “boring” prepared remarks at a tax roundtable in West Virginia, instead repeating his claim that “millions” of people are voting illegally and boasting that he was right about the threat of Mexican rapists.
BW
Tandem Brain. I just posted on Twitter about the “prepared” remarks being tossed in favor of the usual spate of Lies and racism.
I should have been clearer on the date, this little story would have been in 1750 to 1760. In 1778 the clan went to Pennsylvania Colony where the Indian massacred the clan north of the Fosters. They returned in July, 1778, and several of them served in the Revolutionary Army. Afterwards they returned to the state of Pennsylvania.
Corey Lewandowski: prick or asshat?
Devin Nunes: Russian puppet?
Ms Dallas, I’ll pick All Of The Above.
“You can’t have a binding agreement if you claim that you never knew about it,” Avenatti told TheWrap Thursday.
On Twitter, Avenatti celebrated Trump’s denial more openly. “Good (actually GREAT) things come to those who wait!!! The strength of our case just went up exponentially,” he tweeted. “You can’t have an agreement when one party claims to know nothing about it. #nodiscipline #thanksforplaying #basta”
Miami herald:
Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.
Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.
Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.
The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.
It’s unclear how many properties or deals the Mueller team might be looking at; the Trump Organization’s foreign business relationships span the globe from properties in Panama, Brazil and Uruguay to Azerbaijan and Georgia. Trump’s children — Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric — were parties to talks involving many of the dealings. Generally, the discussions revolved around licensing fees for use of the Trump name.
[….continues…]
abc news: Mueller has evidence raising questions about Prince testimony on meeting with Russian: Sources
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained evidence that calls into question Congressional testimony given by Trump supporter and Blackwater founder Erik Prince last year, when he described a meeting in Seychelles with a Russian financier close to Vladimir Putin as a casual chance encounter “over a beer,” sources tell ABC News.
Well-connected Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, a key witness given limited immunity by Mueller, has been interviewed seven times by prosecutors on a wide range of subjects. He told investigators that he set up a meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Russian sovereign wealth fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, mere days before Trump was inaugurated, sources familiar with the investigation said this week.
Nader has submitted to three interviews with special counsel investigators and four appearances before a federal grand jury in Washington since agents stopped him at Dulles International Airport in January, served him with a grand jury subpoena and seized his electronic devices, including his cell phone. Documents obtained by Mueller suggest that before and after Prince met Nader in New York a week before the trip to the Seychelles, Nader shared information with Prince about Dmitriev, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News, which appears to be inconsistent with Prince’s sworn testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives investigative panel.
“I didn’t fly there to meet any Russian guy,” Prince told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in November. He testified that he travelled to the Seychelles for a meeting with United Arab Emirates officials about possible business opportunities, and they introduced him – unexpectedly – to Dmitriev.
As of late March, Mueller’s team has not asked Prince – whose sister Betsy DeVos serves as Trump’s Secretary of Education – to appear before the grand jury being used to investigate whether Trump campaign officials or transition aides colluded with Russian government operatives, according to one of Prince’s friends.
Prince told the House Intelligence Committee that his meeting with Dmitriev was a chance encounter “down in the bar” at the suggestion of “one of the brothers” of the United Arab Emirates’ leader Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nayhan.
“At the end, one of the entourage says, ‘Hey, by the way, there’s this Russian guy that we’ve dealt with in the past. He’s here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him. He’d be an interesting guy for you to know, since you’re doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space,’” Prince told lawmakers under oath in his sworn testimony. “So, as I recall, I met him, this same guy I talked about, Kirill Dmitriev. Met him down in the bar after dinner, and we talked for 30 minutes over a beer, and that was it.”
Sources say Nader — who worked at the time for the Emirati leader, known as “MBZ” – tells a different story……
[….long article continues….]
so Betsy’s little brother lied to congress?
LOL. Eric Prince lie? Tell me it isn’t so.
When Mueller is done & the book has been written on Trumpsky, it’s gonna be longer than War and Peace.
I’m a little concerned about this Nader guy, though. He Dems a little bit Baghdad-Bob-let-me-tell-you-a-story. I hope he has the real goods Put-ey & Trumpsky.
Betsy D-student Vos was here yesterday. Teachers were told not to protest. Some folks did show up to protest, but she snuck in the back door. Everyone is on on to her; they know she doesn’t want to improve schools, she wants to privatize them. Public schools in TX are not good, and yet, teachers in OK cross the border to at least make a living here.
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