Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Abigail Weinberg at Mother Jones writes—At George Floyd Memorial Service, Al Sharpton Announces March on Washington to End Police Brutality:
On August 28—the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech—Americans will once again gather in the nation’s capital to protest racism. Civil rights activist Al Sharpton announced the new march, which will focus on ending police brutality, while speaking at a memorial service for George Floyd in Minneapolis on Thursday. As he spoke, Martin Luther King III—who will be involved in organizing the march—sat clapping in the front row. […]
At Floyd’s memorial service, Sharpton led mourners in an 8-minute, 46-second moment of silence—the amount of time former police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, killing him. Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers involved in Floyd’s death are also facing felony charges.
“We need to go back to Washington and stand up—Black, white, Latino, Arab—in the shadows of Lincoln, and tell them this is the time to stop this,” Sharpton said.
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QUOTATION
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.” ~~Thurgood Marshall, Acceptance speech for Liberty Medal (1992)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Racists crying racism:
Even before President Obama named Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, we knew that the rightwing noise machine would come after whoever was nominated. But what we didn't know was how much of an advantage they would have with the nomination of Sotomayor, because with their planned line of attack against her, they finally had an issue that they were intimately familiar with; racism. And who better than Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo to speak with authority about that?
But with their emergence as vocal critics of Sotomayor, almost lost among their shouts of racism, quotas and affirmative action, was their own Marcus Epstein. Almost. Who is he?
Epstein is the protege of Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo, serving as the executive director for both of their virulent anti-immigration groups. He's a "frequent contributor of racist essays to the white nationalist hate website VDARE.com," named for Virginia Dare, "the first white baby born in the English colonies." Subtle, eh? And here's Epstein's take on the proper degree of diversity in our country:
Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin sneaks in a roundup Trump's plummeting polls in the face of nationwide protest. Who are the people who thought his bible stunt was a home run? Is there a tipping point with using the military? What ever happened to that pandemic, anyway?