[Gay]McDougall, who was originally nominated by former president Barack Obama, is widely regarded as an expert on international human rights. She has recently spent much of her time highlighting the ongoing plight of Uighurs and other Muslim populations in western China, where an estimated 1 million or more Muslims are currently held in internment camps and forced to praise the Chinese Communist Party.
Source: Trump blocks U.S. from nominating anyone to U.N. racism committee – ThinkProgress
Charles Rettig is Running the Tax Agency for One Reason Only—To Keep His Boss’s Returns Locked Up
“Unless they are too brazen or clumsy, very rich tax cheats with very good lawyers get to deal with their tax offenses behind closed doors. As a criminal tax defense lawyer once told me, “I get paid to save people from indictments for their tax crimes by settling cases before their names go into the public record.”
Source: Trump’s Man on the Inside at the IRS | DCReport.org
“But there is no real debate about the outcome: The dreams of cord cutters are largely unfulfilled. A transition that some hoped would provide more choice, lower prices and more simplicity instead has delivered frustrating levels of complexity. There still may be more choice, but each choice comes with price tags that, taken together, may well approach the cable bills of old.“It’s not going to come for free,” said Michael Powell, president of trade group NCTA, representing pay television and broadband providers. “People want to watch their ‘True Detective,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and that stuff costs a fortune.”
Source: How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess – The Washington Post
It is important that we applaud Kaepernick and the NFL for addressing racial injustice. But NFL players taking a knee is only the beginning. Eventually, they must also fearlessly stand for something—and they should look to the leadership of today’s important and successful movements, like Black Lives Matter, to decide just what that something should be.
Source: Here’s How the NFL Could Make #TakeAKnee Mean Something | Dame Magazine
“For Black girls like me the transition out of childhood into a complex and ill-defined “womanhood” happens swiftly and without warning. According to a Georgetown Law study released earlier this year, Black girls are stripped of their innocence as early as the age of 5. The study, called “Girlhood Interrupted,” found that survey participants perceived that Black girls need less nurturing, protection, support, and comfort, and that Black girls are more independent and know more about adult topics, including sex. This phenomenon was dubbed “adultification” by the study authors, and they wrote that it refers to “the extent to which race and gender, taken together, influence our perception of Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers.”And sadly, America’s fraught history with race plays a role in this: The “adultification” of Black children has its roots in slavery, when Black girls and boys were treated like chattel and subjected to cruel treatment, just like their adult counterparts. And in the case of Black girls, it’s further exacerbated by the often early onset of puberty. As the study reported, “on average, African American girls mature physically at a faster rate than [w]hite girls and as a result can be perceived as older.”
Source: Sexualizing Young Black Girls, Growing Up Too Fast
Cornel West recently expressed support for the ADOS movement . . . not surprising… Martin Luther King, whom West has written about, was not a Pan-Africanist, but he clearly saw the connection between the African struggle for freedom and the African American struggle for freedom. King said:
The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”
In embracing ADOS, West is embracing the opposite of King’s vision.
Source: Cornel West and the Intellectual Dishonesty of the ADOS Movement
“It’s your responsibility to continue to work,” a parole board member reportedly told Henry Montgomery.
Rodney K. Stanberry- Innocent and Incarcerated for 20 Years
Rodney K. Stanberry spent 20 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. He received three 20 year sentences to be served concurrently for burglary, attempted murder, and robbery. He was arrested in 1992, convicted in 1995 and began serving a prison sentence in 1997. He left prison on March 13th, 2017. Like Thompson, like Williams and Myers, like Michael Morton, like so many others, his case should have been an open and shut case. The prosecutor had a confession from another individual who was actually present when the crimes took place. The individual who confessed did so BEFORE Rodney’s trial. He had one of the best attorneys in Mobile, AL as his attorney and his attorney told the prosecutor that he would tell him everything. Why would he do this? Because the person who confessed thought the prosecutor was actually interested in arresting and convicting the actual culprits. He knew an eyewitness on the ground saw him as he was exiting the victim’s home. He thought he was caught. He, the person who actually was one of the two people present when the victim was brutally shot, got a firsthand view of how prosecutors will let the guilty go free in order to convict the innocent. And less he thought it was just one prosecutor, Joe Carl Buzz Jordan, he would discover that on Rodney’s appeal, another prosecutor also with the Mobile District Attorney’s Office would go out of her way to ensure that he did not say in court what she knew he would say. So she said if you talk, you are going to get life. She did not want him to go on record to tell the truth, for that would mean that the record further reflected that the Mobile District Attorney’s Office convicted an innocent man. Upholding the conviction should not be more important than letting an innocent man out of prison. http://www.freerodneystanberry.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/tierny_redo.9113550.pdf)
Democratic presidential hopefuls are talking about reparations for slavery. They’re talking seriously, but with few specifics. What would a reparations policy actually look like?
Source: The Cases For Reparations: How 2020 Presidential Candidates Address The Issue | On Point
“In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter.”
Source: Reparations, systemic racism, and white Democrats’ new racial liberalism – Vox
OCG 