Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
I remember reading the story of the little Dutch Boy who stuck his finger in a dam in a desperate attempt to protect his village from being flooded. It’s highly unlikely that the thumb of a small boy could hold back the force of water that could lead to the destruction of a village, but that’s not the point of the story. The moral lies in his willingness to do the only thing that he could think of, however small, however improbable. His action was motivated by love for his fellow humans and love for his village. That little hero stayed there all night not because he thought he could save his village all by himself, but because he just couldn’t walk away and do nothing.
The image of the little Dutch boy came to mind as I watched the the final moments of Hakeem Jeffries’ marathon address to Congress. Jeffries knew that he was never going to stop the passing of a bill that symbolized the effort to remake the USA into the tiny, hateful, mean-spirited, and cruel image of its authors. He couldn’t stop the tidal wave of hate that could gleefully promote and celebrate the idea of sending living, breathing human beings to live on a tiny island surrounded by amphibious alligators in a known hurricane alley. No, his act of self-sacrifice wasn’t going to stop that or any of the other acts of mind-blowing, unhinged cruelty, but what he could do is force them to conduct their hateful business in the light of day and not under the comforting cloak of darkness. In that he succeeded.
Hakeem Jeffries isn’t necessarily known for the soaring rhetoric and impassioned delivery of Obama, but for the part of his speech that I caught, he was downright Obamaesque. We needed his words. I needed to hear that speech. He managed to inspire a nation and I know he inspired me. He brought me to tears as he stood there, surrounding by people who understood the urgency of this moment, invoking the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King and Representative John Lewis.
Quotes from the speech:
You see, budgets are moral documents. And in our view, Mr. Speaker, budgets should be designed to lift people up. This reckless Republican budget that we are debating right now on the floor of the House of Representatives tears people down.
"This reckless Republican budget is an immoral document, and everybody should vote no against it because of how it attacks children, seniors, and everyday Americans, and people with disabilities. This reckless Republican budget is an immoral document. And that is why I stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives with my colleagues in the House Democratic caucus to stand up and push back against it with everything we have."
More:
“It’s not the type of leadership that this country needs right now. But that’s what we’re getting — chaos, cruelty, and corruption. //
“Extraordinary to me, Mr. Speaker, that you got folks in this town talking about draining the swamp. Guess what? You are the swamp. You are the swamp. You are the swamp. We’ve never seen anything like this. The type of corruption that has been unleashed on the American people and has poisoned, Mr. Speaker, this bill.”
And then he took us to church:
“I know that there are people concerned with what’s happening in America, but understand what our journey teaches us is that after Project 2025 comes Project 2026. And you will have an opportunity to end this national nightmare. We’re going to press on until victory is won. I yield back.”
Hakeem Jeffries’ 8 1/2 hours speech did nothing to stop the tidal wave of suffering coming our way, but it was one tiny island of hope and beauty in an ocean of ugly. We needed it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-in-waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It has been more than a decade since 2014, when a Michigan state-appointed emergency manager decided it was a good idea to save money by a contract with Detroit’s water system and switched to the Flint River, causing the Flint water crisis by ditching a system that didn’t need treatment to prevent corrosion that put lead in the water pipes for one that did. It’s been eight years since 2017, when Flint entered into a settlement that required the replacement of all lead pipes so residents would be assured clean water to drink and bathe in.
Well, apparently, the job still ain’t done.
(Side note: If anyone is banking on the Trump administration to reinforce the mandate in a predominantly Black city, they should probably know that the same administration, in April, ended a wastewater settlement for a mostly Black Alabama town, falsely calling it “environmental justice as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” simply because environmental racism was addressed in the reaching of the settlement. Seeing as the Flint water crisis has often served as a rallying event for pro-Black activists and environmentalists, one shouldn’t put it past President Donald Trump and his MAGA-fied Justice Department to simply decide the federal mandate was “woke” waste, despite it being implemented during his first term. Just sayin’.)
According to AP, when the city of Flint entered into the agreement, funds were directed to fix homes that had known lead lines, meaning contractors weren’t able to simply go neighborhood by neighborhood and fix everything. And because many city records were inaccurate or missing, with “some handwritten on notecards dating to the early 1900s,” AP reported, even finding those select homes proved difficult.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While debating an amendment to restore a gun rights provision of President Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” during a House Rules Committee hearing, Frost called out his Republican colleagues for saying their care about the life of children as a moral issue when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to gun violence.
The amendment, introduced by Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., would eliminate regulations on gun silencers and short-barreled firearms, which gun violence prevention advocates argue would make it easier for such guns to get into the wrong hands. The U.S. Senate removed the amendment before passing it and sent it back to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Frost, who began his political career almost exclusively to end gun violence and its impact on American youth, attended Tuesday’s hearing as a witness. When asked about the gun violence epidemic that has left tens of thousands dead each year, Frost did not mince his words.
“They have no problems with more people dying, as long as they can sell more guns,” said the 28-year-old Florida congressman, who accused Republicans and the National Rifle Association of prioritizing the needs of gun manufacturers and not everyday citizens impacted by gun violence.
Frost added, “It’s despicable that the gun industry, the gun lobby, wants to push forth amendments like this that would result in more people dying.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The newest justice has emerged as the court’s left-wing iconoclast, unafraid to break unwritten rules in challenging her conservative colleagues’ ideological project. The New Republic: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Heterodox Critiques of SCOTUS’s Right Wing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jackson’s recent dissents show a growing willingness to criticize her colleagues and the Trump administration in both legal and nonlegal terms—a departure from the court’s typical unwritten norms on how the justices interact with each other in their formal writings. She is not merely arguing that her colleagues are wrong about the legal questions before them but that their goals and efforts are not exactly judicial in nature.
Her dissent in Trump v. CASA last week illustrated her approach. The 6–3 majority forbade lower courts from issuing “nationwide injunctions,” a tool to constrain allegedly illegal policies by presidents of both parties, especially over the past decade. The ruling allowed the White House to partially move forward with its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship, something that is explicitly forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the main dissent for the court’s liberals, where she condemned her colleagues for “playing along” with the Trump administration’s procedural gamesmanship and warned that “no right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates.” Her 44-page dissent was a thorough, holistic evaluation of the legal flaws in the majority’s reasoning and the dangerous outcomes it could produce.
Jackson, who joined Sotomayor’s dissent, also wrote her own. “I write separately to emphasize a key conceptual point: The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law,” she wrote. From there, she dispensed with some of the typical rhetorical norms that the justices use when speaking ex cathedra.
“It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called ‘universal injunctions’ is, at bottom, a request for this court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior,” she wrote in her opening. While Sotomayor addressed this danger in more abstract terms, Jackson made clearer that the threat is the Trump administration itself, and that its lawlessness is by design.
She then criticized Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion, for reducing the case to a “mind-numbing technical query” about the equity powers of England’s High Court of Chancery in the 1790s—a not-so-subtle dig at originalism’s emphasis on history and tradition. “That legalese is a smokescreen,” she wrote. “It obscures a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law? To ask this question is to answer it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The earth beneath Jimmy Antoine’s apartment shuddered and for a split second he feared another natural disaster had struck, like the 2010 cataclysm that brought Port-au-Prince to its knees.
“The ground shook like it does during an earthquake. You tremble like everything might collapse,” said the 23-year-old trainee mechanic, recalling how he and his panicked neighbours raced out on to the street.
This time, though, the jolt had come not from deep below, but from high above: it was the detonation of a weaponized drone of the sort being used to hunt Haitian gang members who have hijacked most of the country’s capital since the start of a coordinated criminal insurrection early last year.
“People had told me about drones … but this one caught me off guard … It felt like it exploded right where I was standing,” said Antoine of the 6am attack last month near Sico, the working-class neighborhood where he lives.
.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A famous chess club in a slum of Uganda's capital that became the focus of the Hollywood movie Queen of Katwe is still producing champions - but faces a daily struggle to survive.
Run by chess coach Robert Katende, played by actor David Oyelowo in the Disney film released in 2016, he still believes that despite financial struggles he is managing to change children's lives for the better through chess.
"We use chess as a teaching tool. To identify the potential of the learners and guide them to their destiny," Mr Katende told the BBC on a visit to his SomChess Academy in Katwe, a poor neighbourhood of Kampala.
Shortly after graduating as a civil engineer, he first began volunteering in Katwe as a football coach before deciding on chess - starting up with a single chessboard in 2004 and a determination to help.
Within a year nine-year-old Phiona Mutesi, who had dropped out of school, joined up - and went on to become a chess prodigy.
She took the title of national women's junior champion three times, competed in several prestigious international chess Olympiads and by the age of 16 was given the title Woman Candidate Master by the World Chess Federation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF
