2022 Year In Review
Commentary by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
We’ve nearly reached the end of another long year. December is when we the editors at Black Kos enjoy looking back at the highlights of our writing throughout the year. We covered a lot of ground on Black Kos in 2022, from criminal justice to protest, election wins and court losses, history and law, local politics and international events, from prose to poetry, as well as great black scientists and vile right-wing racists.
But we have now come to the time of the year, when we the Black Kos editors take our annual holiday break. We will not be returning until Friday January 13th, 2023. But before we go, I would like to once again thank everyone who reads and participates in Black Kos for continuing to support us. Putting these diaries together is both a group effort and a lot of individual work. I have always viewed it as a blessing that our diaries are so well received.
But as for 2022, let’s look back at this year. One of the things I have always enjoyed is to spend a little time each year looking back at the great work this team has put together. Here are some of the highlights from this year’s edition of Black Kos. So on behalf of Deoliver47, Justice Putnam, JoanMar, Chitown Kev and myself, I would like to say thank you to all our readers.
Have a safe holiday season, and a happy new year.
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Cynicism Is The True Enemy Of Progress
BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS, MANAGING EDITOR
2021 was another exhausting year in what seems like the middle episode of a three part dark trilogy 2020, 2021,...2022.
2021 was a year that once again showed that the forces of antiscience, self-centered libertarianism, and political violence that the former guys welcomed into the public sphere are alive and well (sort of) in America even after the former guys was shown the door.
2021 was also a year that again further seemed to bury the idea (and hope) of a post racial America, where the absence of the former guy and the election of the Biden/Harris administration signified a return to normalcy. If we learned anything n 2021 it’s that a return to what we consider a “normal” America (rule of law, democracy, a social safety net, respected public institutions) is not a one election project. To get back to that America we all desire is going to require fighting all all three levels of government federal, state, and local. We have to fight for change.
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Isolation Day 5
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Today is Day 5 of my home isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 using an at-home test last Thursday morning.
And I feel pretty good.
I’ve felt consistently good, physically, these past 5 days. My temperature has always been in a normal range, no fatigue, no COVID symptoms, whatever.
Asymptomatic means asymptomatic, I suppose.
I’m vaxxed, boosted, a consistent wearer of masks; all of which, I would guess, are contributing factors to that asymptomatic status.
Physically, I’m good.
Mentally, emotionally and, dare I say, spiritually, I feel...strange.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor JoanMar
In 2021, the G-7 countries of Canada, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, and Italy with a combined population of approximately 437M people, had a total of 78 police killings between them. The United States of America with some 333M people had somewhere around 1000 people killed by law enforcement officers. The most conservative of the databases, The Washington Post, has the number killed in 2021 at 860. The website MappingPoliceViolence.org has the number of police killings at a whopping 1136 and every killing is documented.
In the 13 days since the beginning of the new year, police have already killed some 9 people. The Washington Post database shows that since the murder of Michael Brown 7 years ago, cops have killed a further 6842 people.
As someone who has been following this gruesome, bloody trail, I’m not surprised by the numbers; what I find absolutely shocking is that the mainstream media has largely ignored the mass slaughter of Americans by American cops. On his program on 1/13/2022, Jake Tapper managed to do a segment about the admittedly high number of cops killed in 2021 without mentioning how many people they themselves sent to early graves. Silence means consent.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I realize that right wing, racist forces are helping send this country to hell in a handbasket. They also have the help of members of the mainstream media who seem to spend most of their time hitting POTUS Biden, MVP Kamala Harris and the Democratic administration with criticisms, while allowing the Orange Former Idiot and his cult followers to continue to spew hate and COVID disinformation unchecked.
I realize that a lot of us are worn out, tired, grieving, financially distressed, angry and depressed.
The 2022 elections for the Senate are going to be key in changing the current power dynamics in D.C. Currently Senate Democrats do not have a majority, no matter how the critics whine and point blame fingers. The reality is, we need two independents to vote with us, while two other so-called “Democrats” are enabling Republicans to torpedo critical voting rights legislation. We can’t undo the racist filibuster unless we get more Senate votes.
Instead of wasting a lot of time moaning that the sky is falling, and the end of democracy in the world is nigh — we can do something. We can ensure that we elect Black Democrats to the Senate who will change the balance of power.
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Black History is all year round. We cover it.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
As we enter into this year’s Black History Month, with white supremacist forces threatening to ban Black books and whitewash already sanitized school curricula, while bomb threats are being made to our HBCUs, our history as Black people becomes even more important to disseminate. A history with roots on the African continent, and sustained through the time of enslavement in the New World by the hands of multiple European colonizers throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America as well as here in the United States. It is a vast history that spans many millennia, passed on in multiple languages through numerous cultures.
Our history here in “the New World” is not simply a story of pain and suffering — though rooted in travail. It is a story of rich survival and uplift, of creativity and passion, of the arts and sciences, of the human strength and will to face all odds and win. We win because in spite of everything thrown at us we have made an indelible mark on this world, and we continue to do so. Every day.
What would the world be without our beauty, our music and arts, our spirituality, and our passionate embrace of freedoms?
Here at Black Kos we cover all aspects of Black, history, politics and culture twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5PM EST, all year round. If you feel that Black contributions to the world we live in are important, especially now that we are all imperiled, we are asking you to step up your support for our team effort. To be honest — it is a bit disheartening that for the most part, after all the years we have been here at Daily Kos, with Black Kos having 1.0k followers, and with the Black Kos Community having 438 members, and 983 followers, that we hear from so few of you each week.
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Black Journalism and Black Journalists: Dorothy Butler Gilliam
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Reading the online edition of the Columbia Journalism Review celebrating the 60th anniversary of the magazine, I came across a reprint of a 1972 essay titled “What Do Black Journalists Want?” by Dorothy Gilliam, the first Black woman reporter hired by The Washington Post in 1961.
Probably many of the same things that Black journalists still want, I said cynically to myself: opportunity, understanding, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Granted things have become better since the pre-Civil Rights Era as Butler Gilliam documents in both her 1972 article and in her 2019 autobiography, Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America. From the CJR essay:
Before 1954, there was near-total neglect of the black community—as well as black journalists—unless the story dramatized some sensational aspect, by and large crime. After the 1954 Supreme Court decision, when the struggle for civil rights equality escalated, the white media helped to make known the wrongs, although they often misinterpreted what they heard and misrepresented what they saw. Then came the riots, and rebelling blacks—fired with the pent-up injustices of long years—roamed their neighborhoods, burning largely the white- and black-owned businesses that had bled them economically. Here was a new phenomenon: white reporters were chased away when they showed up. Obviously newspapers had to have some black faces. Black copyboys and messengers, even, became instant reporters during that period. And most metropolitan newspapers, wire services, and TV stations started taking the hiring of black professionals seriously—more or less.
In the wake of those rebellions, in 1968 the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) reported that its “major concern with the news media is not in riot reporting as such, but in the failure to report adequately on race relations and ghetto problems and to bring more Negroes into journalism.”...
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Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
American history is replete with examples of members of the majority community treating the lives of members of marginalized communities as of no importance. We can find a ton load of evidence of people actively taking our lives or directly causing our deaths with impunity. In recent times — 10 years ago, to be exact — George Zimmerman stalked and murdered teenager Trayvon Martin. Cops were called to the murder scene where they found Sybrina Fulton’s precious child on the ground and the murderer with a smoking gun, and yet they concluded that no crime had been committed and thus the murderer should not be charged. It took months of formal and informal protest before the murderer was arrested and charged with manslaughter. Exactly nine years later, three white men knew that they had the God-given right to accost and then murder Ahmaud Arberry. They tracked him like an animal and took his life; cops were called to the murder scene, tended to scratches and scrapes on the murderers, and concluded that they had committed no crime for which they should be held accountable. Even after public pressure persuaded them to charge the murderers, the DA’s office initially declined to prosecute the case against them. Police watched Kyle Rittenhouse murder two people and chose not to take action against him because the victims were associating with a Black cause. It is as it has always been.
The law does prescribe legal remedies for all kinds of killings; the problem is that on so many occasions, law enforcement officers have blatantly refused to apply the law when there’s a Black victim and a white perpetrator. It is a pattern and practice rooted in systemic racism. I searched and could not find a single, solitary case where a Black or Native person is seen to have killed a white person — or any person for that matter — and cops then allowed the known killer to spend the night in his/her own bed. It may have happened, I just couldn’t find a record of it.
Malcolm X, “The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.”
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Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
In her emotional victim impact statement, Chyna Whitaker, the mother of Daunte Wright’s son, said, “I’m now a single mother, not by choice, but by force.” Kim Potter killed her son’s “Dada,” and Chyna wants the world to know that young, though he may have been, Daunte understood what it meant to be a father. And once again, one little Black boy will grow up fatherless and the same people who deprived him of that loving presence will one day sneer at him when they ask “Do you even have a father?”
Ask Taco Bell and the majority community, and they will gladly inform you that Black fathers are to be found on the bottom rung on the fatherhood ladder. Truth be told, a lot of Black folks also subscribe to what the media has been relentlessly peddling for generations. The prevailing narrative is that Black dads are sperm donors and are absent from the family and home because they are inherently unloving and irresponsible...and ungodly, let’s not forget how good Christian people see Black folks. I still remember that one of the first times I gave my favorite president the side-eye, was when he went to a church in Chicago and found himself lecturing Black people. True, he did say “absent” fathers, but haters inserted “all Black fathers.”
Heaven knows, the gatekeepers of white supremacy did everything in their mighty power to perpetuate those preconceived notions about Black men. From the ghastly, dehumanizing practices during slavery to the welfare programs of the 1960s; from over-policing so as to feed the prison system to the not too subtle media campaigns, powerful forces have been working against our menfolk to rob them of their manhood and of their right to call themselves fathers. Raping and whipping them in front of their womenfolk, selling their children, controlling their sex lives, calling grown men boys in front of their families, letting them know in no uncertain terms that they are unable to protect their women and children against attacks... yes, Black men could be forgiven if they had allowed historical traumas and generational shame to keep them from looking into their women’s eyes or to see the censure in those of their children. Ah, but we as a people are made of very stern stuff.
And still, the forces of evil will not let up. I just watched a documentary about the show Good Times which showed how hard Esther Rolle had to fight Norman Lear and his producers to get a responsible father figure on her show...a show about a family, let’s be clear. Lear is an enlightened, liberal man who was instrumental in getting a lot of Black actors on TV, but systemic racism is insidious and good men like Lear can be just as blind as their openly racist brethren...a function of generations of unchallenged assumptions and deliberate lies. I was still marveling at the bravery of Ms. Rolle when I was hit with one of the latest pieces of evidence of insidious racism at play: Taco Bell’s new ad campaign. In 2022!
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
While the eyes of the world, and much of the media is focused on Ukrainian’s battle to preserve their freedom from a Russian invasion, another battle is being waged here at home. This one is over President Biden’s promise that he would nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. He fulfilled that promise by appointing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. All hell broke out from the right wing, when he made his plans perfectly clear, before he had even made his choice. I wish I could say it was only attacks from those supremacist asshats. Sadly, some of our not-Black so-called allies have also been whining about “qualifications” and that limiting the selection to a Black woman is somehow “biased.”
Biden had a pool of eminently qualified Black women to choose from. All of the finalists were more qualified than some of the Republican appointed justices currently warming the bench. This doesn’t matter. Biden selected a woman who has already cleared the Senate three times in the past, which makes perfect sense.
That didn’t stop us having to see this crap from Moscow Mitch.
Or from Lindsey Graham
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
It is the parade of indolent progress, it is a parade of influence marching across islands and continents, a flotilla churning across oily-foamed seas and jet-set through nitrogen-acid skies. It is a procession of killers and victims stumbling across the black pavement at the corner of Main Street and International Blvd. It is a march of wardens ordering leg-irons and yokes to weigh down the hopes of our better angels, while assuring a cheap labor force for the Captains of Industry as they guide the Ships of State in a firing line outside the Bay of Sugar and Blood.
(Miss Directed America dances a drum major goosestep while twirling a chrome-plated baton on the, Make America Great Again Hay Ride Monster Truck.)
The Oligarchs and the Generals ride in a bubble-top convertible, supplied by medical companies saving dollars and commonsense selling diluted milk powder and super-charged bacterial water to the victims of earthquakes, hurricanes and famine. It is a slow march to a nuke plant on fire from tank shells and arrogance. It is a parade of dead children and legless grandmothers on a rocky beach in Greece, it is a parade of wailing mothers wearing Syrian muslin, bloodied and torn.
It is the parade of indolent progress, it is a parade of influence marching across islands and continents. It is a march across a time-clock bridge and back again. Day after day after day.
Until someone starts counting.
The water is one thing, and one thing for miles.
The water is one thing, making this bridge
Built over the water another. Walk it
Early, walk it back when the day goes dim, everyone
Rising just to find a way toward rest again.
We work, start on one side of the day
Like a planet’s only sun, our eyes straight
Until the flame sinks. The flame sinks. Thank God
I’m different. I’ve figured and counted. I’m not crossing
To cross back. I’m set
On something vast. It reaches
Long as the sea. I’m more than a conqueror, bigger
Than bravery. I don’t march. I’m the one who leaps.
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Differentness
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I’m coming off of working a split shift (last night and this morning) so I’ve felt like not doing much at all but doom-scrolling and I scroll past the news about the passage of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill in the Florida State Senate.
James Call: USA Today/Tallahassee Democrat
Florida lawmakers on Tuesday passed a bill restricting speech in public school classrooms on sexual orientation and gender identity, sparked by one lawmaker's concern that children were being "trendy" in coming out as gay.
The legislation — titled "Parental Rights in Education" (HB 1557) but dubbed by critics the "Don’t Say Gay" bill — now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has suggested he will sign it into law. If so, it goes into effect July 1.
The 22-17 vote came after weeks of national attention over the measure, which has grabbed the attention of international newspapers, Hollywood actors and the White House.[...]
What has caused the most contention is one section of the bill: It prohibits public school teachers from "instruction" about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten-3rd grade — though it's already not taught in those grades — and limits it to “age appropriate” in other grades.
The bill, however, doesn't provide a bright line between "classroom instruction" and "classroom discussion," which the bill's supporters say it won't prevent.
First of all, I understand that being gay is more acceptable nowadays than it was back in the 1980’s when I was a teenager but to say it’s “trendy” is to imply that a child has a choice whether to be gay or not to be gay based on its “trendiness” (never mind those teenagers who “experiment” with same-sex and those kids do exist).
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Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
As cops led the handcuffed young director out of the Bank of America building, the voice of a woman can be heard in the background praising them.
“Good job, officer. Good job, officer.”
I wanted to get into that woman’s head… to understand her motivation. Did she only see the cops and see them as saviors? Was she doing her masters’ bidding? Or was she seeing a young Black man who was not bloodied—who was not laying with his lifeblood decorating the marbled floor of the Atlanta Bank of America building and praising the cops for their restraint and professionalism? Exactly what was she praising them for?
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I was sitting here reading an advanced copy of “The White Allies Handbook” by Lecia Michelle, who I follow on Twitter, thinking about how I wish that 100’s of thousands (really millions) of white folks would miraculously receive a copy of it, actually read it, and then put the very basic, clearly written, principles the author invokes in the book — into action. Read the blurb:
You’ve read White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist, but what comes next? The answer lies in this clear, actionable guide providing an invaluable 4-week program for becoming an ally who makes a real difference in the racial justice fight. Get the tools you need to get off the sidelines and onto the frontlines of allyship, combat racism while supporting Black women, and avoid common pitfalls white people fall into when they think about and discuss racism.
Black women have always been the driving force behind real change in this country—especially when it comes to racial justice work. But they shouldn’t have to do it alone. If you’re ready to stop standing on the sidelines and become anti-racist instead of passively “not racist,” then this book is what you need.
You’ll discover:
• How to have difficult conversations about white supremacy, racism, and white privilege
• How to listen to criticism without defensiveness
• Why it’s harmful to ignore race or claim to be colorblind
• How to expand your racial justice circle by joining groups led by Black women and cultivating a group of like-minded allies
Racism can only be defeated if white people educate themselves and actively engage in antiracism work, especially in their inner circles. With this book, you’ll learn how to change from someone who defends and protects racism to someone who fights against it. And you’ll become an example to others that true allies are made, not born.
We learn a little bit about her in her author description:
“I'm a librarian and anti-racist educator. In 2016, the created the Facebook group "Real Talk: WOC & Allies for Racial Justice and Anti-Oppression" to address the importance of white women becoming allies to WOC. Since then, I've spoken on panels, mentored potential allies and written articles about systemic racism. I wrote my book "The White Allies Handbook" because allies needed an action-based resource to help them begin their journey as an ally. It's not enough to read about racism. We must take action. My book is the first step in a lifelong journey of allyship.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
The dull, the ignorant, the loud, the haters, and the traitorous came for Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown this week… she who had the temerity to have put herself in the position that she could be offered the nomination to the SCOTUS, and the audacity to accept! Racial hatred, hypocrisy, and gaslighting tried their best to overshadow and overpower Black excellence, professionalism, beauty, and Black Girl Magic. Frothing, grandstanding members of a party that is home to donald-effing-trump, “Gym” Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, and other assorted scums-of-the-earth put on a show that was worthy of their slave-owning fore-parents.
But this is 2022 and not 1822. Amidst the sound and the fury of the criminally impotent and the reticence of the Democrats, a hero stepped forward. Nope, there’d be no lynching on his watch. This Black woman was not going to be left out there to fight all by herself. Not this time. Senator Cory Booker, who made absolutely no attempt to hide his great love and admiration for Judge Ketanji Davis Brown, would have his say...for the record.
At the end of the day, it will not be racist white men showing their racist arses that will define this hearing. It will not be the bitchiness, incoherent ramblings, and superior air of Marsha Blackburn that people will be talking about 10 years from now… Cory Booker made damn sure of that.
Senator Booker had a mission on Wednesday. He understood his assignment and he met the moment. He made the soon-to-be Justice cry, and he had me and Black women around the nation bawling our eyes out.
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Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein won a well deserved Oscar for Best Documentary feature this year. From my perspective, Harlem won as well.
The Harlem of the Renaissance, the Harlem of the Apollo Theatre, the Harlem of Malcolm’s mosque and the Abyssinian Baptist Church — a Harlem that was home to the Negro Ensemble Company, the Black Arts Movement, the Schomburg Library, Striver’s Row, the Harlem River Houses and Carver Projects. Marcus Garvey Park was Mount Morris Park in 1969 when the Harlem Cultural Festival took place on Sundays at 3 PM, from June 29 to August 24, 1969.
An event that would have been lost to history, except in the memories of the many thousands who attended, had not Hal Tulchin’s film of the event that had never acquired a producer been given daylight and a successful premiere at Sundance, which I wrote about for #BlackMusicSunday in 'Summer of Soul' is a musical celebration of Black joy. I pointed out that the film “represents a sweeping range of Black music genres, including gospel, R&B, jazz, salsa, blues, and African drumming, as well as pop and rock. More importantly, it is not simply a series of performances; The film is about music that is inextricably linked to the lived political, cultural, and historical experience of Black people, not only from Harlem, but in the Black diaspora.”
Important also is that the film unites a diverse Harlem — East and West, Black American and Puerto Rican. The absurd artificial and false dividing line of 5th Avenue — with one side as “Black Harlem” and the other as “Spanish Harlem,” dissolves when you watch the film.
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Commentary: African American Scientists, Explorers and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor, businessman, and community leader. His most notable inventions were the three position stop light (stop, go, caution traffic signal) and the gas mask (smoke hood). Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hair-processing and straightening solution. He created a successful company based on his hair product inventions along with a complete line of hair-care products, and became involved in the civic and political advancement of African-Americans, especially in and around Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan sold the rights to his traffic light invention to General Electric for $40,000.
I first heard of Garrett Morgan, when I was in junior high school and I needed to do a research paper. A family friend who worked at GE asked me if I knew that the stop light was invented by a black man, and suggested I look it up. I ended up writing my paper on Garrett Morgan.
Morgan was born in 1877 at Claysville, Harrison County, Kentucky an almost exclusively African American community outside of Paris, Kentucky. His father was Sydney Morgan, a son and freed slave of Confederate Colonel John H. Morgan of Morgan's Raiders. His mother was a slave called Elizabeth Reed, daughter of Rev. Garrett Reed; she was part Native American.] He had at least one sibling, a brother named Frank, who assisted in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue. With a sixth-grade education, from Branch Elementary School in Claysville, Morgan moved at the age of 14 to Cincinnati, Ohio, in search of work.
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Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
In its 233-year history, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has never had the unique honor of having a Black woman grace that vaunted bench of justice...until now. It has been (wilfully) denied the particular wisdom and unique sensibilities of the Black Woman. It could have happened before when Bill Clinton briefly considered nominating Barbara Jordan for one of the two opportunities he had. It could have happened under Barack Obama, but the Republicans made it clear that they were never ever even going to consider a Black Supreme Court nominee from a Black president. That would be far too much melanin in the halls of supreme power. In fairness, they didn’t consider one of his white nominees either. Then it was all about his Black skin, you know.
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise”
The GQP fought to the last second to upend the confirmation of Judge Brown Jackson. They threw the worst garbage out of their kitchen sinks at her and projected all their deep, sick fantasies onto her. They knew they would lose in the end, but they’d do all in their power to dull her shine...they failed at that too. Putin’s agent, Rand Paul, tried his best to have one pitiful last stand; he was successful in getting the 15 minutes of Twitter recognition that he so desperately craved, and nothing else. In the end, the GQP remained true to themselves and reminded us yet again that they are a party filled with classless, graceless, tiny little yellow-bellied cowards. My reaction to watching the 40 white men, 6 white women, and one toady [Tim Scott] marching out of the room, was somewhere at the nexus of disgust and hilarity. They had lost, and they all looked like the slimy losers they are as they acted out some pathetic show of disrespect. They be mad. They can stay mad.
The celebration continued without them.
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Where do I find “community”?
Commentary by Chitown Kev
For last Sunday’s Abbreviated Pundit Roundup, the opening was a link to and an excerpt of new Pew Research Center polling that identifies how Black people link their Blackness to a sense of personal identity. Because I had only begun to read the Complete Report (located at the top and to the right of the summary of findings) I did not want to comment much on the report other than to say that the nuances of the report were “very interesting.”
Including this bit:
A small share (14%) of Black Americans say they have everything or most things in common with Black people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ). The majority of Black Americans say they have few things or nothing in common (60%) with LGBTQ Black people.
As Willona Woods would say, “Ain’t that a blip?”
I even went into the questionnaire itself and one question in this survey was, “How important are each of these characteristics to how you think about yourself?”
Perhaps I need to delve deeper into the data to discern what the answers given to that question actually means; for example, both my Blackness and my being a gay man are very important aspects to my identity and I could well see how both straight and LGBTQ Black folks would say that their sexual orientation or/and gender identity is an important part of their identity... and their Blackness.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor, Denise Oliver-Velez
By now, even those people who don’t have Twitter accounts have heard that Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has bought the entire social media platform, which currently has about 396.5 million users. This has of course ignited a firestorm of discussion — a lot of it centered on whether or not the new owner will allow the Orange Racist aka the former President back onto the platform from which he was banned.
As a direct result, conversations have sparked on Black Twitter about whether or not people will be staying or leaving to find new spaces to gather and create communities.
I realize that quite a few readers here at Daily Kos are not on Twitter. Some of you may also not know much about Black Twitter — so I’m posting this program from 2 years ago from the PBS series “Say it Loud: to introduce you.
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by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
Angelina Grimké, devoted daughter to one of the most iconoclastic leaders of racial equality of the 19th and early 20th centuries, advanced the cause in her own right, though in a much more quiet but equally powerful way as her father.
Archibald Grimké was born into slavery in South Carolina in the mid-1800’s to
Nancy Weston, a slave, and Henry Grimke, her owner. After his father’s death, he and his brother lived as freemen for eight years, when under subterfuge, their half-brother Montague, offered them employ as servants, but enslaved them again, instead. Archibald escaped and hid with his mother’s relatives until Charleston fell to the Union in 1865. In 1872, he became one of the first Black students at Harvard Law School, and later in private practice, became an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage and Black civil rights. Archibald married a white woman, Sarah Stanley, and Angelina was born in 1880, but the couple soon separated. Unable to reconcile, Angelina began living with her father exclusively at age seven, and Sarah poisoned herself in 1898.
At odds with Booker T Washington for his “accommodationist” approach to the race problem, with its emphasis on manual labor, and a strained relationship with DuBois because he did not feel W.E.B.’s
Niagara Movement fought hard enough for blacks’ rights, Grimké became a founding member of the NAACP in 1909.
Named after her great-aunt,
the abolitionist and suffragist Angelina Grimké Weld, Weld Grimké embarked on a teaching career where she first began to write. Cited as one of the first Black lesbian poets of the Harlem Renaissance, her poetry, short stories and essays were published in
The Crisis, Alain Locke’s
The New Negro, in Countee Cullen’s
Caroling Dusk and in
Robert Kerlin’s Negro Poets and Their Poems, but she is best known for her play
“Rachel”,
a three–act drama that was performed by an all-black cast and served as a vehicle for the NAACP to rally support against the KKK-centric film originally entitled, “The Clansman”, but more commonly known as, “The Birth of a Nation.”
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A Visit with Jessica B. Semple (aka: my Mom)
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Sometimes, my Mom almost reminds me of an Earth-15 version of Jessica B. Semple, a female pseudonym for the fictional character Jesse B. Semple that held court for over 20 years in Langston Hughes’s Chicago Defender column from the 1940’s to the early 1960’s.
She’s not a church lady that wears a beautiful crown every Sunday. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Nor is she quite (I don’t think) a stereotypical “blues woman”: hard-drinking, perhaps, with a long string of lovers; someone who has, perhaps, lived a hard life and wants to tell you all about it (granted, she does cuss an awful lot and nowadays, my brother and I play a game with her where we try to provoke her into saying a string of words that would feed The Porch Cuss Jar for damn near a year!).
Shug Avery, she’s not.
She eats pretty healthy and has for as long as I can remember.
Mom raised children and grandchildren, she’s well read, she has an opinion about most things including the ways of the world and the times that we live in. She’s been retired for over a decade and now, since 2016, she divides her time between watching MSNBC and movies (and now, thanks to her oldest son, Wordle: “I play Wordle every day”) when she’s home and she loves to go out of the house every so often and do other things.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
There is much irony in the fact that a woman may be responsible for the leaking of the latest broadside in the continuing war against women. If it turns out that Virginia Thomas did in fact leak Alito’s draft, then we know her motive was primarily to aid and promote patriarchy and the continued control and infantilization of women. The right and the people they’ve connived to put in positions of power do not see women as sentient beings who have the right to make intelligent decisions about our physical, psychological, or financial wellbeing. I saw a quote — may have been a tweet — where some wise soul wrote, “All this time conservatives have been condemning Sharia Law, turns out they were only jealous.” Ain't that the truth.
But what’s the end game here, I wonder? Could it be that they just hate women and want to inflict as much pain and suffering on us as they can muster? It certainly seems that way. A Venn diagram would show that the same people who are salivating at the thought of Roe v. Wade being overturned are the same people who declined the Medicaid Expansion program offered through the Affordable Care Act; they are also the same people who objected to the employer mandate providing free contraception under the aforementioned Affordable Care Act. As Justice Ginsberg noted at the time, the Supreme Court upholding the exemptions to the contraception mandate meant that some 100,000+ women were forced to find money out of pocket to pay for birth control or to do without...thus making them more likely to have unplanned pregnancies in the future.
Why do they want to force women to get and stay pregnant, and to have children they do not want and cannot afford? As has been shown over and over again, these same sick, twisted Bible-thumping hypocrites do not give a rat’s ass about babies once they exit the womb. They are all for cops summarily executing 12 & 13-year-olds and cutting school lunches; they are the same ones who are even now actively fighting against Biden’s Child Tax credit designed to get and keep children out of poverty, and yet they claim to be pro-life. Make it make sense.
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Lather, rinse, repeat.
Commentary by Chitown Kev
The white supremacist mass-murderer of ten Black people in a TOPS supermarket in Buffalo, New York left no doubt as to his motives, based on what was written on his AK-47.
Some people, however, still have doubts.
Can’t blame this one on the South, either.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
I have many problems with CNN. I tire of their bothsiderism, the penchant to blame Democratic Presidents for systemic problems, the overuse of the breaking news chyron, their self-congratulatory smugness, and on and on. But every now and again they do manage to hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer. Case in point, John Avlon on his 6/2/2022 Reality Check program. It was a devastating commentary on the Republican Party actively promoting and encouraging a politics and culture with guns as the centerpiece. Not both parties (as loudmouth Stephen A. Smith said as he erroneously claimed that the Democrats had “50 Senators and two Independents caucusing with them”).
The Republicans and the Republicans alone of the two major parties are responsible for the proliferation of semi-automatic guns in the hands of private citizens in this country. The Republican death cult, ably aided and abetted by the terroristic National Rifle Association, is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the thousands of gun deaths and mass murders committed with semi-automatic guns, (and, by their inaction, for the thousands killed each year by law-enforcement officers,) and they need to be called out.
John Avlon came with receipts. He told no lies. See for yourself:
Transcript:
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I was scrolling through Twitter the other day, and saw this thread initiated by Lecia Michelle, author of the soon to be released "The White Allies Handbook," which I wrote about here in March. Given that we are faced with more and more openly hostile armed white supremacists, many of whom are willing to kill us off, like in the recent Buffalo massacre, we Black folks who are only around 14% of the U.S. population are going to depend on white, and other allies of color in the days ahead. This means that we have to have open discussions with allies around race, racism and white supremacy, as well as being clear about microaggressions — whether or not harm was intended. One of those issues is how to deal with people who say to us “ I don’t see color” or “I’m colorblind” or who constantly lob an out of context quote from the Rev. Dr. MLK Jr. at us, which his daughter Bernice King referenced this week:
That said, here’s the thread that sparked this post.
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Scattered pieces
A brief comment by Chitown Kev
Chile, it’s too hot!
1. Oh, This James Patterson stuff.
First of all, James Patterson needs to write his own books.
Second of all, I’m not going to even critique the books that James Patterson outlines (but doesn’t write) I mean, it’s thrillers and not literature.
Third, this really is the Great Replacement Theory, writer’s edition, or, perhaps, now that now that a few more people of color are competing in a world wide book market, maybe white male writers have to simply have to learn how to write better rather than rely on a marketing dept to lift their mediocre writing.
Whatever.
Still should be writing your own books.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
We — every jack one of us on this site — all know that there was not a chance in hell that police departments around the country would be defunded. It was never, ever going to happen.
From President Biden’s 2022 SOTU address:
We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.
Given that indisputable fact, why do you suppose that Republican candidates, the mainstream media, and some Democrats spend so much money, energy, and time talking about the slogan itself and not the anguish that gave birth to it?
I’ll hazard a guess here: could it be because they have no interest in attacking the real problem? Whacking at a phantom issue draws everybody’s attention from the literally thousands of dead bodies, the grieving hearts, the broken/lost dreams, and the terrorized communities left in the wake of police murders.
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Combat Toxic Online Haters.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
As Vice President Kamala Harris pointed out last week in her remarks announcing the formation of a White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse, we live in a world where the internet, and social media platforms have become a part of most of our lives, for better or for worse.
The results of the downside can be debilitating or fatal for far too many of us who become targets of hate — murder, terrorism, suicide, PTSD, fear — it’s a long list.
I realize that a lot is going on to hold our attention, and you may have missed the news of her latest efforts on our behalf (easy for that to happen given the MSMs failure to highlight much of what she is doing and instead spew disparagement) however I wanted to applaud this start.
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Commentary: Get Out The Vote
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
I don’t do a lot of rants (I had a different story I was going to go with ), but today’s radical Supreme Court decision calls for a rant. Beyond the (in my opinion) justified finger pointing at 2016 we need to look at the larger picture. As a veteran of GOTV (get out the vote campaigns) of over 30 years, we as progressives have been getting outworked the last 10 years on the campaign trail. When I started out in the early nineties it was Democrats and Progressives who outorganized the Republicans and Conservatives, now that advantage has whittled away. Many causes to why that is true some more outside our collective control (demise of unions, big money legalized, etc.) but many are within our control.
We (meaning all of us) need to focus more on local races. Too often I see huge vanity online campaigns raising huge sums of money going to federal candidates in uncompetitive races, when local state legislative races in swing or competitive districts remaining underfunded. We need to be smarter, more focused, and more informed on local races. Gerrymandering is an issue, but smart organizing can flip these lower level, lower turn out races.
We need to be more focused on courts. For too long Democrats just underplayed the issue, while Republicans heavily invested in it. The composition of courts need to be front and center of progressive campaigns. Unpopular court decisions need to be tied to conservative judicial movement. Not just on Roe v Wade, but also issues like civil forfeitures, lax gun rights, the attacks should be just focused on the Supreme Court but on the entire conservative legal movement. Conservatives turned the term “liberal activist judges” into an effective political slurs. We need to do the same, staying on, on message, and reinforcing it.
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Mood
Rant by Chitown Kev
As I am writing this rant, I am also listening to the Jan. 6 committee meeting featuring witness testimony by executive assistant to former Trump Chief of Staff Cassidy Hutchinson about, among other things, Trump wanting to choke a Secret Service Agent in the Presidential limousine on Jan. 6.
I am listening to the hearing in the aftermath of last Friday’s overturning of Roe v. Wade by a 6-3 extreme right wing majority by the Supreme Court which, in effect, turns the matter of legal and safe abortions over to the states.
I am also thinking of what I interpret as a threat by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion.
In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents.
I’ve been reading the reactions to the expected Supreme Court decision at Daily Kos, Twitter, and other places on the web. And...I mean…
Am I reading that some Democrats (or so-called “Democrats”) want to withhold votes and money from Democrats trying to get elected this November because they blame the overturning of Roe v. Wade on...Democrats?
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
Those fighting for racial justice have long advocated for a police force that mirrors the communities that they purport to serve. Sadly, getting more Black & Brown cops may not have the effect we’d hope for. Anecdotal and empirical evidence show that Black & Brown folks can and should take no comfort when seeing melanin clothed in blue. In fact, in my own personal experience, Black cops I’ve encountered here in Connecticut tend to be more aggressive than their white counterparts.
A recent controversial study found that “black police were more likely to kill black civilians than white civilians.” While the study drew well-deserved criticism for both its methodologies and conclusions, the raw data did support the fact that Black cops were just as eager to kill Black people as their white comrades. Of course, there’s no great mystery as to why that is the case. We’ve all been socialized to devalue Black lives.
Given the history of policing in this country, it was with some excitement that I read of the appointment of Michael Cox as the new Police Commissioner for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The new commissioner has a very interesting history, one that gives me confidence that he just may be the right man for the job.
Cox suffered through an attack by fellow officers who mistook him for a murder suspect in 1995, the new commissioner noted that he remained on the force because he believes in the mission of policing. Cox brought a civil lawsuit against the department, but eventually settled.
None of his colleagues faced criminal charges over the incident of what he describes as “unconstitutional policing.”
“The reality is, I was a victim of that, but that's not who I am," he told reporters Wednesday.
“I spent 24 years in the Boston Police Department after that incident, and in that time, I've gone to school multiple times and, got multiple degrees, focused a lot of concern and effort around making the police department better so we can serve the public in ways that are make us more effective and efficient.”
Yes, back in 1995, Officer Michael A. Cox was in the act of apprehending a murder suspect when members of Boston Finest “mistook” him for the criminal and beat the living daylights outta him leaving him unconscious. It would take him 6 long months to recover from the beating. He knows firsthand what his police departments are capable of. What gives me hope is that despite the unified front against him — the intimidation, harassment, lies, and coverup — he kept on fighting for justice. He fought in state and federal courts and while he fought, he was going to school even as he continued to serve in the force. Let’s put some respect on his name.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Crowds of convention goers poured into the Atlantic City Convention Center, to hear Vice President Kamala Harris deliver her keynote speech on Monday, July 18, 2022 at the NAACP’s 113th annual convention, whose theme this year is “This Is Power.”
This was her second address this week to a predominantly Black audience; she delivered a speech to a packed house of over 13,000 of her Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority sisters in Florida on July 14, which I wrote about on Saturday.
Here are her remarks at the NAACP Convention:
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
Since I was a child, I have been both enamored and appalled at the increasing militancy of our nation. We glory the Soldier as a Hero, one whose pedestal is not to be sullied. Songs are sung and films are broadcast about yellow ribbons and Gold Stars and red sky at morning and Johnny come marching home and tears at Arlington on Memorial and Veteran's Day with 20 gun salutes and full metal jackets shredding jungles and deserts and seas and air.
Everywhere I look, supplicants genuflect and tithe at the Altar of the Military. Politicians, preachers and pandering coaches sky pilot high school football game homecoming prom dances, while daddy works in a coal mine going down down down burning fossil microbes to steam a turbine while economies and marriages suffer from codified martial strategies of weapons procurement and international arms sales.
A pedestal not to be sullied, a Hero exalted. Semper Fidelis until Johnny needs a job and a shoulder to lean on when the slide show of dismembered limbs and dead babies scorched against the charred breasts of scattered skeletons scrolls behind closed eyelids on a lazy summer afternoon, an exalted Hero until stumbled on the cold winter night theater district broken sidewalk, hungry and lame and mumbling about the Southampton Insurrection and how he is just a festering scar on the nation and no amount of cleaning the wound will stop the seeping ooze of his forgotten service, no amount of slicing away the rotting flesh will justify the public amnesia.
What if Nat Turner’s Rebellion had succeeded. Maybe he would
have birthed a trend, the way protests now bloom viral after black
bodies are rendered fallow. Would people still root for a Nat
who craved more sumptuous fare; to be free sweet in his mind
like cane-cum-refined sugar his hands once cultivated,
or the way a cotton shirt reminded his fingers of the pluck
of white bolls he hated. Today’s revolt, ,
John Woo-style, before it landed. These thoughts rise up
like discontent-lined hymns to shorten bondage, planter eulogies
sown, hoed, and flowering amid sonorous darkness.
A love of jesus grew Nat’s courage skyward in lofty sway
from bondage to freedom. To wit, one has to reap carefully
to glean the long-buried dead. Dismay mourns
the insurrections of the past while fearing
the bitter uprising never quite going down as planned.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
In these troubled times it’s real easy to fall into a depression, or panic mode and become swamped in negativity. This pit is dug deeper each day by the media horse race, which bothsides what is happening in America, and political pundits who spend far too much time either Biden-Harris bashing, or ignoring the good work being done by members of the Biden-Harris administration, starting with VP Kamala Harris, and including cabinet members and administrative staff. From a Black observational perspective, I see almost zero major media coverage of the work of Black and poc members. While the media salivates over the next Orange Guy on-dit and is focused on 2024 — important work is getting done every day that goes unheralded and unnoticed.
From my pov, we’ve come a long way in Democratic representation in just a few decades. I’ve lived under 14 Presidents since I was born in 1947, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, and have watched our battle for civil rights force a change in the make-up of government officials. That does not mean we don’t have more to do, however we need to acknowledge hard-won victories. Since the MSM won’t do it for us, we need to step up and boost the positives!
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Not With Stupid
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I suppose that I should be considerably less upset that the Republican candidate for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat Herschel Walker said yet another thing that’s...well, totally stupid.
The former NFL football player, who was encouraged to run by former president Donald Trump, has made head-scratching comments that have drawn ridicule. In a July 9 appearance, he spoke about climate change, suggesting that Georgia’s “good air decides to float over” to China, replacing China’s “bad air,” which goes back to Georgia, where “we got to clean that back up.”
In an appearance Sunday, according to an account by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Walker reiterated his opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by Biden last week, that invests in curbing global warming, among other things.
“They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out. But they’re not,” Walker said. “Because a lot of money, it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
I mean, the state of Alabama did choose to elect an equally stupid former Auburn Tigers coach Tommy Tuberville to the United States Senate, so I can’t even say that the GQP’s excuse for promoting totally stupid candidates for important elected office positions is entirely racist.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
By now, most of you have probably read the story of what happened to Black Duke women’s volleyball starter Rachel Richardson, who had to play while being called “ni**ger from the stands at a game against Brigham Young University (BYU) in their stadium, according to her report.
The initial social media report came from her godmother, Lesa Pamplin.
Richardson issued a statement.
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The water crisis that’s been a “crisis“ for years
Commentary by Chitown Kev
For the past week-and-a half, the story of the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi has captured national attention.
Eliza Fawcett/The New York Times
The water supply in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, reached a crisis point early last week when the city’s largest water treatment plant failed, leaving Jackson with little to no water pressure to fight fires, flush toilets or perform other basic municipal services. Volunteers struggled to distribute millions of bottles of drinking water to residents, and Mr. Reeves summoned the National Guard to help.
The city’s tap water has not yet been deemed safe to drink, however, and a state-issued boil-water notice remains in effect. In an
update on Monday, city officials said that they would resume sampling the water this week, provided that the water pressure is maintained, and that the city would be able to lift its boil water notice after two rounds of clear samples.
Benji Jones of Vox succinently outlines the specific reasons for this failure of the Jackson water supply system.
There are two main issues affecting Jackson’s water system, according to recent reports.
Days of torrential rain in August flooded Mississippi’s Pearl River and the Ross R. Barnett Reservoir, a 33,000-acre lake that provides water to Jackson. Before making its way into homes, the water passes through the O.B. Curtis treatment plant, which is just north of Jackson.
Floodwaters often contain large amounts of contaminants from runoff that can be hard to filter and change the water’s chemistry. That can, in turn, strain treatment plants and slow down the speed at which treated water fills the city’s water towers, many of which are at extremely low levels. Without water in these towers, there’s not enough pressure to feed the city’s system.
The other problem has to do with water pumps. For weeks now, the main pumps at the Curtis plant — the city’s largest facility — have been out of service and the plant has been relying instead on weaker backup pumps. Those backup pumps may have malfunctioned. Other parts of the plant, including motors and water screens (which filter out large objects), are also in need of repair, state officials said Wednesday.
As soon as the Jackson water crisis story broke, I wasn’t shocked or surprised. I’m pretty sure that I had linked to at least one story about Jackson, Mississippi’s issues with attaining clean safe drinking water in the past for the Overnight News Digest before the onset of the current crises And I did remember that the city of Jackson, MS was in the news in 2016 because of alarming levels of lead in their drinking water, although the water crisis then was overshadowed by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
The winners of this year’s US Open Tennis Championships will be decided this weekend, but for those of us who love Serena, her three matches last week were the highlights of the tournament. And yes, she lost in the third round. But what a tremendous (maybe) final gift that match was to her fans! Those who were privileged to get into Arthur Ashe Stadium, the thousands gathered outside, and the record-setting 4.8 million who watched on ESPN were treated to a vintage Serena performance and were left giddy with overflowing love and appreciation for their tennis queen:
She saved one match point with a swinging backhand volley. She saved a second with a cocksure forehand approach that Tomljanovic could not handle. She saved a third with a clean forehand return winner that had fans in the sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium shouting: “Not yet! Not yet!”
She saved a fourth match point. She saved a fifth, and by now it was clear, as the winners and bellows and clenched fists kept coming, that Williams would get a fitting finish.
The commentators/analysts were on their best behavior...well, almost. As usual, Chris Evert could not help her-damn-self.
(“...find...” uh!)
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Vote for and Support Black Democratic politicians
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Today, I am turning over the bulk of today’s message to a lady that I had the pleasure of very briefly meeting at the 2018 Democratic National Committee Summer meeting which was held in Chicago: Donna Brazile, writing for The Grio today, National Voters Registration Day.
While about 13 percent of America’s population is Black, only 3 percent of the 100-member Senate are Black. That goes up to 4 percent if you add in Vice President Kamala Harris, who can vote to break ties.
Not a single governor in office today is Black.
Fortunately, we have strong representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, where 58 of the 435 members—13 percent—are Black. Many serve as chairs of powerful committees like homeland security, education and labor, financial services and science and technology. But that could fall if Republicans pick up seats during the midterm elections, as all but two Black House members are Democrats. [...]
Democrats have nominated extraordinarily qualified Black candidates who take centrist positions. They support protecting voting rights, abortion rights, job creation, reducing poverty, safer communities, combatting climate change, making health care more affordable, expanding educational opportunities and LGBTQ+ rights, among other issues.[...]
The key to election victories for Black candidates is forming broad coalitions and appealing to people of all backgrounds, as Douglas Wilder of Virginia did when he became the first Black person elected governor in U.S. history in 1989 and as Barack Obama did when he was elected as the first Black president in 2008.
Black folk are a key constituency and base of the Democratic Party and have been so since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
However, it is only since the 1970’s, really, that we have had a bloc of elected politicians who are Black that have represented Black interests and...really, every American’s interests.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
Ooh, chile! I survived the ten days of celebration and glorification of white supremacy!
Of course, American & British media used those 10 days to attempt to rewrite and sanitize the history of an empire led by a family that actively and eagerly participated in and profited from chattel slavery. Monarchists didn’t take too kindly to anyone daring to question the deification of the “Defender of the Faith.” See one response below:
“She isn’t just a 21st century monarch, she’s something more,” Chris Rowe, 60, who was camped out on a grassy bank of The Mall to watch the funeral procession with his wife, told CNN. The Queen represents the “continuity of a hundreds-years-old tradition,” he said, adding that he came to London to see “the continuity of the nation.”
I bolded the sentence in the quote, but isn’t that what anti-monarchists have been saying, Mr. Rowe?
In her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth saw the last brutal gasps of colonial oppression, with British soldiers on three continents trying to maintain an imperial government formed in her name. The queen was the last vestige of a British Empire that stole from my ancestors and broke the sub-continent into pieces.
But my goal here is not primarily to revisit the vulgarity of American media outlets devoting hours and hours of prime time to highlighting one white family and all of its ill-gotten gains and undeserved fealty. Rather, my aim is to look at some of what they wilfully ignored in order to lovingly fawn over a family whose history is known to be inextricably linked to the worst of mankind’s evils.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
I went to see The Woman King two Saturdays ago, and it was everything they marketed it to be. It was spectacular. I have to admit that I thought twice about writing this, as I know how some people are about spoilers. I have one of those kinda people in my family… she’s downright anal about not wanting to hear ANYTHING about the movie, show, or book before she’s watched or read it. Me? You cannot spoil it for me. I reason I listen to my favorite songs a hundred times in a row, or I’ve read my favorite books — I refer to them as my old friends — tens of times and it doesn’t stop me from enjoying them one bit. But out of respect for those of you with a different view on the issue, I will try my very best not to spoil your fun… because you will go to see it, right?
There has been some controversy surrounding the movie. ADOs and FBA people boycotting the film because they are just churlish haters made in the image of their MAGA sponsors. White content creators, especially on TikTok, jumping in to let us know that a movie about Africans, directed by a Black woman, starring dark-skinned Black women must by very definition be an inferior product. Most of the criticisms of the movie center on “historical inaccuracies.” Bwahahaha!! “Historical inaccuracies?! Really?! Now you are gonna criticize a Black (although written by a white woman) film because of historical inaccuracies after generations of making films about Egypt without showing Black people in any meaningful roles? After years of showing Jesus as a willowy white man with blue eyes and blond hair? After years of portraying Custer and his ilk as the heroes and Native Peoples as savages? Dang!
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
“White Lives Matter” touting and tee-shirt wearing, anti-Semite, MAGA Trump supporter, and Tucker Carlson new guest-buddy-bro rapper Kanye West should have been dis-invited from the barbecue a long time ago.
This:
I really haven’t been focused on him at all since his music ain’t on my playlist however the tweetstorms he evokes are hard to ignore and his ability to garner attention intrudes even into my mentions and I so did make a comment.
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Jamaica's Warrior Queen Nanny of the Maroons
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Nanny, Queen Of The Maroons
Oh Portland! Oh Portland where my forefathers thrived,
Where rivers meet with bustling waves, they fought and they survived,
The homeland of our great Maroon warriors and fighting braves,
Your valleys were shelter for their safety, its bushes and hidden caves.
A son from your bowels spewed I traced my ancestral line,
Your culture and your destiny are all wrapped up in mine,
I want to tell your story and publish your name,
And tell of brilliant Nanny our Queen, that has brought us fame.
With warriors fought red tunicked invaders time after time at wars,
Defeating these soldiers in battle superiority by far,
Nanny Queen, Great Chieftainess you fought relentlessly,
Bringing freedom to our Maroon Nation and great liberty.
Nanny, known as Granny Nanny, Grandy Nanny, and Queen Nanny was a Maroon leader and Obeah woman in Jamaica during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Maroons were escaped slaves throughout the Americas who formed independent settlements. Nanny herself was an escaped slave who had been shipped from Western Africa. It has been widely accepted that she came from the Ashanti tribe of present-day Ghana.
Growing up, I learned about Nanny from my Jamaican elders. She is an official national hero in Jamaica and is on the island’s currency. My family also has Maroon blood from my mother’s side, so I grew up knowing all the stories of her heroics by heart.
The island of Jamaica was under Spanish rule for nearly two hundred years, from Christopher Columbus’ arrival in 1494 until 1655 when the British captured it. During their rule, the Spanish first enslaved the native Arawaks (Taino) Indians, but they quickly succumb to diseases introduced by the Spanish conquerors. The Spanish then turned to the importation of African slaves, a practice that was replicated throughout the Spanish territories in the Caribbean and the Americas.
By 1530, slave revolts broke out in Mexico, Hispaniola and Panama with many fleeing to create independent colonies. The Spanish called these free slaves "Maroons," a word derived from "Cimarron," which means "fierce" or "unruly". Ironically the name is also a description of people marooned on lands far from home with no way to return home.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I don’t care if we are talking about Herschel Walker, Clarence Thomas, Kanye West, Killer Mike, Candace Owens...or any other melanated political pawns and panderers to right-wing, supremacist politics. They all fit a pattern. They are tools of a white supremacist agenda to give license to their open suppression of Black folks. They are used as the “see, I’m not racist cause one of my besties is Black” facade that doesn’t begin to mask the virulent racism of the U.S. Republikklan Party and its MAGA adherents.
It isn’t just here either, and not just about putting blackface on right-wing politics — there’s brown face as well. Look at the Tory mess in England, where the Tories are celebrating the “first” South Asian Prime Minister as if that has any meaning at all for the people they oppress.
I’m in agreement with political commentator, author and lawyer Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu:
Anybody here remember Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal?
Let’s also not forget that Ted “Cancun” Cruz and “Little” Marco Rubio are poster children for anti-immigration, racism, and homophobia.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
We totally repudiate and reject the prevailing mainstream media narrative that the Democrats should hang it up and mosey on home. They aren’t going to dampen our spirits and take our joy. Let’s remind ourselves that none of the experts saw the decisive, historic win for the forces of good on the abortion amendment in Kansas earlier this year.
Abortion opponents were shocked this week, having assumed that Kansas would be a great place to start the state-by-state struggle over abortion rights that the Supreme Court has set in motion.
It seems that they, too, had too many presumptions about Kansas.
None of them saw it coming. None of their much-vaunted polls predicted it. Not that little twit Harry Enten on CNN, not @CNNPolitics; not the hyperactive, hyperventilating Steve Kornacki on MSNBC; not the smug, self-congratulating editors and pollsters over at 538.com, and certainly not the pompous punditry class repeating the same old stale phrases over and over and over again. And now we are supposed to trust them?
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A comment on the midterm elections
Commentary by Chitown Kev
As a teenager, I once considered a career of being a Vegas bookie.
I think that the years of spiral notebooks in which I meticulously predicted college and professional football games have, sadly, been trashed but I do remember that for at least a couple of those years, my prognostication record (winning percentage wise) was better than Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder.
My uncle even used to bring home one of his football sheets from the Chrysler plant especially for me to mark up.
Other than taking the occasional brief glance at the point spreads in the Chicago Sun-Times, I don’t dabble with sports prognostication all that much anymore but I do remember some general rules that I observe; for example, all other things being equal or almost equal, it is critical to know whether one team matches up with another team by, for example, having the exact strengths needed to neutralize what the opponent does best.
Historical precedent is also an important factor. For example, I never picked a Peyton Manning-led football team in a big game because of Manning and his teams tendency not to win the important games, be it the Florida Gators in college or Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the National Football League (meaning that I was on the wrong side of a few predictions).
Other than reading and observing, I have little to no experience in predicting the outcome of the nation’s elections. I do know some of the necessary components that go into making such predictions (i.e. poll averages and aggregates, notating significant geographical changes in districts, etc.) and some of the components that go into such forecasting, after all, have some similarities to the way in which I do football predictions.
Let’s take historical precedent, for instance.
Yes, historical precedent says that the party of the president frequently loses seats during midterm election campaigns with some exceptions.
Another historical precedent: Number 45 is a loser.
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Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
Michelle Obama has a new book on the bestseller list, and she’s been out and about doing the obligatory press tour. Having just seen her husband on the campaign trail and been transported, however briefly, back to the time before The Orange Plague forced itself onto the public stage and into our national consciousness, it is with something akin to joy that I welcome this development. Personally, I can’t get enough of the light they [the Obamas] carry.
In her new book, “The Light We Carry,” the former first lady shares coping strategies for surviving stress and uncertainty.
As usual, the unfailingly honest and down-to-earth former first lady is not holding back on this latest press tour. One of the secrets she’s shared and that has inspired me, is that she taught herself how to knit as a way of coping with the pandemic lockdown. I crochet (or I used to crochet; I haven’t done a piece in a long time) and I do macramé, but I’ve never learned to knit. I plan to learn in the coming weeks. I look forward to knitting pieces for some of my favorite people.
But by far the most devastating thing Mrs. Obama shared about her time in the White House, was that she had to mute herself in order to preserve the peace. She had to deny her Black self so as not to have racists be even more hateful than they were to her, her family, and her husband’s agenda.
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Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
I don’t know how many times I’m gonna have to state this. Madame Vice President Kamala Devi Harris plays a key role in preserving Democracy in this nation, and has broad cross sectional appeal to diverse Democratic constituencies, with one exception — media punidjits who pound the anti-Kamala drum almost daily on cable news, in newspapers and on certain self-appointed “liberal” and “progressive” blog spaces. Those media bloviators who aren’t dissing her, are ignoring the key work she has been doing, both nationally and internationally.
I was elated to see this diary from BlackGrannyRising, "Dump President Biden in 2024?" Will Y'all PLEASE Get tf REAL!," addressing the abject stupidity of certain folks purportedly on “our side,” who are talkin’ out the sides of their necks on this issue, and I have joined in (again) with folks from #BlackTwitter and #KHIVE and other allies, to address the trashing of our Madame Vice President Kamala Harris.
It happens here at Daily Kos too, in some comments sections, though not here in Black Kos. As you may or may not know, each Black Kos diary, in the Twitter Roundup in the comments section, includes a section on “MVP Harris,” making readers aware of what she has been doing (see this link) The problem is that so few people read and participate in Black Kos that it doesn’t filter over to the outer site. I would like to see “more and better Kamala coverage” here, however I don’t have the time to do it myself, so I’m asking for your help. Time for y’all to get to writing.
On Twitter (which may be ending soon) the attacks against her continue, but not without significant pushback. The most recent atrocity from a misogynoir minion came from Slate Magazine senior writer, Christina Cauterucci. (I’m not linking to the heifer)
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The Freedom House Street Saviors
Commentary by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
A cry in the night
She's not breathing
Such a frantic sight
Call for an ambulance so frightening
We wait and wait doing our best
CPR ongoing we struggle on
It goes to ten then twenty, thirty minutes our quest
To save a life but it is now lost and gone
An ambulance service way under staffed struggling with care
Driving from emergency to emergency an endless song
I wonder if the politicians would think different if it was theirs
Waiting and hoping for an ambulance all along.
Paramedics serve as lifelines in the US, responding to all kinds of medical emergencies. Yet the history of the emergency medical services (EMS), and the crucial role African-Americans played in that development is mostly unknown. The first professional trained EMS service in the United States started as a jobs program for Black men in Pittsburgh. I first heard this story during Netroots Pittsburgh many years ago, but I didn’t remember it until recently hearing it again on the radio.
In 1966, the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a white paper that was a damning indictment of the nation’s emergency response system. “Essentially, paramedics weren’t plentiful enough to be there when you needed them and then weren’t well trained enough to be of much use when they were there,”.
Ambulances existed, but they were privatized and didn't offer emergency care or go everywhere. In many cases “ambulances” were just hearses driven to accidents by undertakers from a funeral home that would later help plan the patient’s funeral. In other cases, the sick or injured might be tended to by police officers or volunteer firefighters who were not trained to provide emergency care. "Back in those days, you had to hope and pray you had nothing serious," recalls filmmaker and Hollywood paramedic Gene Starzenski, who grew up in Pittsburgh. "Because basically, the only thing they did was pick you up and threw you in the back like a sack of potatoes, and they took off for the hospital. They didn't even sit in the back with you."
That changed with the start of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, the city's first mobile emergency medicine program. Starzenski tells the story in his documentary Freedom House Street Saviors.
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A Worldwide “Problem”
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Much of the subject matter here at Black Kos is “problematic” news.
That is, the very existence of Black people is defined and treated as “a problem” to be solved rather than as human beings who simply want to survive and, if possible, thrive in a world of other human beings.
I’m not pleading here that Blacks are, per se, a unique case in respect to being treated as “a problem”: people such as the Kurds in parts of Asia (particularly Turkey, Iraq, and Syria), the Roma in Europe, and the Rohingya in Myanmar (just to name only a few) are defined and treated in similar ways, if not worse.
Which brings me to the case of Tyler Adams, Captain of the U.S. Men’s national soccer team, at a World Cup media session in Qatar.
First of all, kudos to Tyler Adams for responding to the Iranian journalist’s question in a diplomatic fashion.
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We are gonna win this!
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
The final day of voting in the runoff election for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s seat is being held today in Georgia. The polls close at 7PM. “Any voter who is waiting in line to vote at 7:00 pm will be allowed to vote.”
The very idea that anyone sane would cast a ballot for his completely unqualified ignoramus Trump tool of an opponent is mind-numbingly distasteful to me, however the reality of deeply embedded racism in this country is no surprise. I’ve been living with it for 75 years. There are people who will continue to vote against their interests, the interests of their state and nation, in order to maintain white supremacy, even when the person they vote for is Black. It’s been made perfectly clear that Herschel Walker is an obsequious sycophantic Trump tap dancing buffoon. We in the Black community know these fools well. They are the ones that Harriet Tubman would have never taken on a freedom journey. We are simply gratified that there are so few of them. Racists will find them, use them, and throw them overboard when they are no longer useful. I don’t give a shit about their fate. They are traitors. They have been permanently dis-invited from the BBQ.
Don’t get me wrong. Racism is not a particularly Georgian disease. It’s an affliction with no geographical boundaries. We see it daily — north, south, east, west and mid-country. It is an affliction we have suffered for hundreds of years, alongside of the genocide unleashed on Native Americans upon the founding of this country. The ultimate losers are white people and the quislings who have helped them maintain this state of affairs. Some have awakened to the reality of how it harms them and the very fabric of the “democracy” which we tout and don’t live up to. Not enough — yet. One day we’ll get there, though I won’t live to see it.
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Flooding the zone
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I had to surf the net and check the date to remind myself that Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection to the U.S. Senate for a full six year term only a week ago.
I don’t think that I expected the celebration for Sen. Warnock becoming the first Black person to ever win a full term as United States Senator in the state of Georgia to last an entire week, the news cycle being what it is.
But...and maybe it’s just me, but it seems as if the zone has been flooded with waves of news steeped in anti-blackness more than usual.
I’m not alleging a conspiracy theory or anything like that; in fact, I’m pretty sure that the MSM news zone is no more flooded with anti-blackness than usual.
I mean, if it’s not the muted, confusing and...let’s face it, racist reaction the Biden Administration winning the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner, it’s watching the rapid descent of a social media platform into conspiracy theory and bigotry, an outpouring of racist commentary from across the pond because The Duke and Duchess of Sussex deigned to make a Netflix documentary, or even (check this out!) a comparison between the new coach of the Colorado Buffaloes and Number 45.
Sigh!
Now do people understand the need for Black owned and operated media? I mean, we’re swimming in anti-blackness in the media and it does affect Black mental, emotional, spiritual and, yes, physical health.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr./AFRO News
As the racial demographics of our nation continue to diversity, American media must intentionally become more representative of that growth. One reason is because diversity is simply good for business. Another reason is because it is right, and it is just to include the very people on which one’s business success depends.
But perhaps the ultimate reason is because the greatest issues of our day – economic inequity, health disparities and systemic racism – pure and simple – will be best impacted when addressed by a multiplicity of people of all races.
Truthfully, all that I would like to do today is to sit back and just be able to read some news—any news and on a number of subjects— on this laptop screen without feeling that I need to go see a therapist.
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THANK YOU EVERYONE SEE YOU IN 2023
THE PORCH IS NOW CLOSED