#George Floyd and Breonna Taylor

[fatherlandclub]

The Right of African Descent and Thier Moves

In 1979, the UN General Assembly agreed that every member state should organize a week-long activity each year to focus on the fight against racism. It is important to recall the origins of UN Day Against Racism. It was born out of the struggles of African Descent Worldwide for their rights.

[charliejaneanders]

Change is going to happen. The status quo is unsustainable. I don’t have doubts that we are going to win. I only have doubts if I’m going to be alive to see the victory.

Four years later, has the racial-justice movement lost the fight? (gift link)

[chrisery-business]

every time a person is killed for the crime of being black, as a black person i feel like a part of me dies with them. it’s like i knew them personally and i mourn another family member every week. it’s terrifying that it’ll always be possible that i could be joining them next and that i’m just supposed to go about my day like my brothers and sisters aren’t being killed all around me

[mos-twin-mattress]

Thinkin ab you Trayvon.

You should be 29. You should have celebrated your birthday with family, you should be gettin hugged by your momma. Maybe you would have your own son or daughter by now...

What happened to you, should never happen to anyone. I wish they had held him accountable. I wish you were here... You were so young.

I cried when i heard what happened to you...

You were a bright light in this world, and I love you sib. I will continue to fight for us. I will never stop. We (Black people) are so deserving of love and care.

The things they do to keep us down, we wont buckle, not ever. I will fight for you, for Breonna, for Casey, for Mike, for George, for Eric, for Ma'Khia, for Sandra.

I HAVE to fight... I can't stop, I cant even slow down... I love being Black, I love how amazing Black people are, I love how resilient we are. But I HATE that we HAVE to be resilient...

[hopelessromanticsavage]

💙

[mannyblacque]

by Darrin Bell

[crackdaddycaine]

About the Leftöver Crack song “Shooticide” & its inspiration by Stza Crack

When I was 12, my step-father killed himself & the news was broken to me by an NYPD officer that was just inside of the apartment door when I got home from school. I was shocked, saddened & surprised. It felt like an ambush & they had no business being in our home. It was not a crime scene & was it the officers place to tell me this news when my mom was already there?

Growing up a block from Bellevue hospital, I saw police corruption, brutality & the victims of their violence up close all of the time & although I was “taught” that the police were there only to help us, as I grew, I soon learned to only loathe & fear them.

In 2014, with the public's access to video camera's on their smart-phones & with the advent & simplification of social media posting, holding police accountable for murdering people seemed to almost become a reality when news coverage momentarily shifted from the police departments “official” stories to the documented stories of civilian eye-witnesses. The evident & widespread abuse of police power & their flagrant lack of respect for human life started to trend until it was part of mainstream media & and unavoidable national conversation.

Then, all of a sudden, the "fad" waned, the media moved on to something else & nothing changed at all. Mandatory body cameras were either not worn or routinely shut off &/or "broken" at critical moments during confrontations with often unarmed black individuals many of whom were not even suspects in any crime.

With the botched “no-knock” raid that left Breonna Taylor murdered that March in Kentucky to the surfacing of footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest in Texas years earlier that led most people to the conclusion that she was murdered by the same police that had her detained illegally in a jail cell, by the time that George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, the people witnessing his mistreatment knew what to do & their film proved what most of us already knew, that the police were cruel & sadistic, but, as filming police violations became the norm & police started going on public trials for murder, the disturbing trend became more & more evident: the police were not only poorly trained & often racially motivated, but, time & time again, they explained that they were "scared". Now, this could seem like a "strategy" to get a police officer out of a murder charge, but, in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting & in light of the evacuations of their own precincts during national anti-police protests in major cities like Minneapolis & Seattle, even leaving behind guns, ammo & prisoners without food or water, a veritable checklist of state-irresponsibility, it became painfully obvious that police were very rarely "heroic" & almost always cowards.

Shooticide is about how the police in America have undermined their own authority by "outing" themselves as terrified of just about everything & that the farce of the slogan "to protect & serve" only applies to themselves & that 9 times out of 10, when they have their guns drawn, they are all pissing themselves in panic & afraid of their own shadows. Emptying their clips & their bladders simultaneously.

That's why "Defunding" the police is such an ill conceived idea (besides the fact that one vowel changed turns that slogan into “Defend the Police”, coincidence? Nobody’s that stupid, not even the cops), when these officers are so badly trained, less money means even less training. We believe that fundamentally, in its wide-spread corruption & systemic racism, policing needs to be abolished & people need to figure out a way to elect folks from their own communities to actually keep "the peace" instead of sowing chaos & fear through corruption & violence. The war on drugs needs to be suspended & condemned. And the judicial system needs to be reimagined & not as the even less equitable, zero tolerance of the cancel culture that is an essentially fascist style of moral policing that relies entirely on one person’s own testimony while ignoring any & all forensic evidence & the testimony of the only other witness present. Corruption & injustice collide with social media & the back lash of moral outrage & misinformation that used to set the dissenting & bigoted right apart from logical thinkers, but is now reserved for leftist activists in a political ruse to destroy us & our goals.

These are the themes in the song lyrics of “Shooticide”.

[krispyweiss]

Jake Clemons Recruits Allison Russell and Tom Morello for “Born Like Me”

- Released to mark Juneteenth, song commemorates the lives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor

It’s a heavy lift to fit the stories of Juneteenth, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor into a single song.

But Jake Clemons gives it a shot on “Born Like Me,” a stand-alone single recorded with Allison Russell and Tom Morello and released for the newest federal holiday, Juneteenth.

A piano ballad infused with slow-jam beats, newscast audio and a Morello guitar solo on the outro, it finds Clemons and Russell singing thumbnail sketches of Floyd and Taylor’s last moments and: I can’t breathe on the refrain.

“I firmly believe that each of us are connected,” Clemons said in a statement. “All of humanity is ultimately made up of one single, beautiful family and it requires us to love and protect every part of it to make us whole.”

6/19/24

[goodblacknews]

Apple Adds $25 Million to Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, Increasing Financial Commitment to over $200M since 2020

This week, Apple announced its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI), a long-term global effort to advance equity and expand opportunities for Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous communities, has more than doubled its initial financial commitment to total more than $200 million over the last three years. Since launching REJI in June 2020, Apple has supported education, economic…

[streetartguy]

[beenetworkmedia]

BREONNA TAYLOR AND TYRE NICHOLS ARE REMINDERS OF LESSONS NEVER LEARNED.

"The public execution of Black folks will never be normal.”  

The inhumane shootings, beatings and treatment by police officers are reminiscent of the history surrounding this nation’s Culture of Violence and Trauma impacting Black Americans. BY: GEORGE ADDISON “I can’t bring myself to watch yet another video, not because I don’t care, but because we’re all just a few videos away from becoming completely desensitized. The public execution of Black folks…

[myrling-art]

His and Clarence's relationship is one of my FAVORITE THINGS about this boss man, BUT LET ME ADD 3 MORE:

1. He is a vocal ally to the LGBTQ-community.

In 2016, Bruce cancelled a concert in North Carolina in protest to the transphobic "bathroom law" that they just had passed, arguing that this is the strongest means he has to raise his voice against bigotry. He has also stated that he has "long believed in, and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples".

2. He has spoken out about police brutality.

in 2000, he made the song "American skin (41 shots)" as a response to the death of a black man who was killed by 4 cops. The man had been reaching for his wallet, which had prompted the police to fire 41 shots at him. The police force was not a fan of the song, and refused to provide Bruce and his band with security if they performed it live. Bruce sang it anyway. He also played the song in response to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, stating that the song is 8 minutes long, and"that’s how long it took George Floyd to die with a Minneapolis officer’s knee buried into his neck".

3. He gives away songs to other musicians.

"Because the night" was a song that didn't fit the album he was working on, and when he learned that a new singer named Patti Smith needed a debut-song, he simply gave it to her. The song became a huge hit, and to this day Patti is grateful to Bruce for it. On occasion, they have been seen performing it together on stage.

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

[chaddavisphotography]

Art on the wall inside the Moxy Hotel on Hennepin Avenue in Uptown Minneapolis. A Black Lives Matter sign in the window.

[cheyroseart]

Portrait piece I painted in the wake of the George Floyd Murder. Rest in power, to each and every person impacted by police and racial violence.

[politicsnc]

False prophets and ravening wolves

Earlier this week, the Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky hosted a fundraiser that featured Jonathan Mattingly, one of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor, as a speaker. Taylor, an African American woman, was killed when three white policemen broke down her door in a botched raid of her apartment and shot her numerous times. Taylor was unarmed. The group played body…

[cyarsk52-20]

If you not giving a damn about all the black lives especially if you’re black then you basically don’t give a damn about your black life

Your activism is incomplete if it doesn’t simultaneously include the black women who die disproportionately by the hands of police.