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Will Black Lives Matter go the way of the Occupy movement, pushed into self-inflicted irrelevance? You remember Occupy. That movement galvanized attention to economic inequality four years ago, only to shrivel from its allergy to the kind of structure and hierarchy needed for an enduring leadership and agenda. Mentioning it in the same breath as Black Lives surely will anger admirers of the latter, given the good it has done by splashing the face of white America with the icy reality of police oppression in too many communities of color. Some Black Lives members issued a 10-point policing plan, many...

At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was asked how he planned to include black people in his campaign and get them to vote for him. Bush responded, “Our message is one of hope and aspiration.” But he didn’t stop there. He continued: “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.” There it is! If you let people talk long enough, the true self will always be revealed....

A local chapter of activist group Black Lives Matter is planning on stopping Twin Cities Marathon runners from crossing the finish line. According to a WCCO report, the protesters will form a physical barrier of people to stop runners in their tracks. Protesters told the station that the marathon is a good place to cause peaceful disruption. Some who plan on running the race said on Facebook that they were angered by the planned protest, saying it might lead to violent encounters. The protest is organized for Oct. 4 at a park about half a mile from the race's finish...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/09/elizabeth-warren-black-lives-matter

Stating flatly that the oppression black slaves faced has not changed in 400 years, progressive hero Noam Chomsky said that the time is now to pay descendants reparations for using Africans to build up the U.S. economy. Asked at a Harvard University forum about supporting reparations, he said: "Would I? Very much so. Not just African Americans. We ourselves didn't own slaves, but we -- me -- are rich and privileged because of the torture of blacks for centuries. And yes we own them reparations," said Chomsky, the Institute Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. JFK Jr. Forum...

Jeb Bush had yet another uncomfortable moment at a town hall in South Carolina yesterday. While he was trying to fend off questions about The Donald and get out his message on economic growth and jobs, a questioner (who was a white guy, by the way) stood up and tagged him with something completely out of left field. (Washington Post) Jeb Bush said here Thursday night that Republicans can win more African American voters by emphasizing a positive message that does not involve promising “free stuff,” a remark that bore echoes of comments by Mitt Romney that drew criticism in...

Reihan SalamSeptember 25, 2015 I live in a small slice of Brooklyn wedged between Brooklyn Heights, one of New York’s most prosperous neighborhoods, Dumbo, a relatively new neighborhood that is essentially a forest of condominiums catering to financiers, techies, and “creative professionals,” and Farragut Houses, a sprawling public-housing complex that borders the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Though you won’t find gated communities in this part of Brooklyn, you will find buildings with doormen, which is of course a quite similar phenomenon. The retail establishments catering to affluent professionals don’t formally exclude poor residents, but their high prices do the work of...

On Thursday, Atlanta news channel WSB reported that Latausha Nedd, a supporter of Black Lives Matter who goes by the name “Eye Empress Sekhmet,” was arrested after she reportedly posted YouTube videos calling for a war on white people and police. The videos, WSB said, "are filled with profanity and hate for white people." Nedd also called for activists to "take over" police stations. In one video removed by YouTube, she is seen issuing threats against white people, declaring "open season" on "crackas," a racist term referring to whites. "I say let's have a take a gun day, and start...

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has been criticized by his rivals over his comments about minority groups, said on Wednesday he is the rare Republican who could win a sizable portion of the black vote. Trump, the Republican front-runner, spoke in South Carolina at a meeting of the Greater Charleston Business Alliance, which supports minority businesses and is affiliated with the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce. He cited a recent poll from the firm SurveyUSA that showed him getting support from 25 percent of black respondents in a match-up against Democratic front-runner...

BRUNSWICK, Maine — Civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson was welcomed back to Bowdoin College on Tuesday with the sound of hundreds of fingers snapping. This form of applause is reserved only for certain speakers with whom students feel a special kinship, according to Ashley Bomboka, president of the college’s African-American Society. Mckesson, a 2007 graduate of Bowdoin, returned to visit classes, meet with new college President Clayton Rose and speak about his experiences as perhaps the most visible face of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Tuesday afternoon’s conversation, “The Intersection Between Education and Justice,” was moderated by Bomboka and Bowdoin...

In South Carolina, he confronts a changing Republican Party trying to bury its past.Donald Trump is campaigning Wednesday in a South Carolina where the Republican Party has been turning the page on a divisive racial past: The state boasts the first black Republican U.S. senator elected to Congress from the south in over a century, an Indian-American Republican governor, and a Republican-controlled legislature that voted in July to remove a Confederate flag from the grounds of its State House. So much for all that. As Trump prepared to attend events with Sen. Tim Scott and the state’s African American Chamber...

Wesleyan’s student newspaper faces a defunding threat for (sort of) criticizing the movement. Colleges keep finding new ways to define “hate crime” down. This week, more than 140 students and faculty at Wesleyan University in Connecticut have signed a petition to defund the school’s newspaper for running a student op-ed that (sort of) criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. The petition will be the subject of a university town-hall meeting next Sunday. The column had the temerity to suggest that the drumbeat of vitriol that Black Lives Matter has unleashed on police may be sparking violence against police officers. Eager...

The party has looked unified compared to the fractious Republican presidential field, but contentious issues—like increasing crime—are starting to tear it apart.Nobody explained the crack-up of the New Deal coalition better than New York Mayor Ed Koch at the 1980 Democratic convention: When I ran for Mayor, I went up to a Bronx senior citizens center, and I told 200 senior citizens: “Ladies and gentlemen, a judge I helped elect was mugged recently. And do you know what that judge did, ladies and gentlemen? He called a press conference and he said to the newsmen, ‘This mugging of me will...

A Philadelphia-based clothing company Cult Classic has launched a clothing line inspired by Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson last year and the Black Lives Matter movement that followed, according to NBC Philadelphia. PHL Business Journal ‎@PHLBizJournal Philly's @cultclassicUSA clothing brand launches #BlackLivesMatter-inspired line http://bizj.us/1jadrm 9:04 PM - 17 Sep 2015 Per the report, the co-owner of the company aimed at channeling his, and the country’s, confusion over the matter into his work. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit after-school programs in North Philadelphia....

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - The group "Black Lives Matter Saint Paul" announced their plans on Facebook Thursday to shut down the light rail before the Vikings' home opener this Sunday. “Sunday September 20th is the Minnesota Vikings’ home opener, big money day, so what better day to shut the light rail down and disrupt business as usual,” they said in a press release. “Enough is enough of business as usual! We must bring an end to white supremacy and the status quo.” Black Lives Matter Saint Paul refers to an incident on Aug. 31 when Marcus Abrams, 17, "was beaten into...

It is curious that blacks, the least educated thirteen percent of the population, the least productive, most criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit. Courses of instruction in the schools, academic rigor, codes of dress, rules regarding unceasing obscenity, all must be set to suit them, as must be examinations for promotion in fire departments, the military and police forces. Blacks must be admitted to universities for which they are not remotely qualified where departments of...

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric carries with it a deeply unsubtle context.As we head into tonight’s second Republican presidential primary debate, we already know what to look for: All signs point to it being the Donald Trump show, once again. Which means it’s worth unpacking the fact that Trump has managed to maintain his sizable lead in the polls in no small part by repeatedly referring to his followers as the “silent majority.” Recently, he even complained that Baltimore has been set “back 35 years in one night because the police weren’t allowed to protect people. We need law and...

When Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign, he promised to be a Republican who wouldn't just support criminal-justice reform as a policy platform (as some other presidential candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz, have) but talk openly about mass incarceration and the war on drugs as racial issues. He was supposed to be running to reach out to non-traditional Republican constituencies: young voters and African Americans. During most of the campaign, that Paul hasn't been much in evidence. Over the summer, when he has talked about race, he's sounded more like a typical Republican:...

When Obama was speaking to environmentalist supporters in 2008 regarding his plans to address “climate change,” he candidly revealed, “Under my plan, electricity costs will necessarily skyrocket.” Obama’s White House Science Advisor John Holdren later elaborated, “We need to de-develop the United States to bring our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.” The so-called Clean Power Plan proposed by Obama’s EPA is well-designed to do precisely that -- de-develop the United States. A new study from the National Black Chamber of Commerce estimates the regulation will cause job losses reaching 7 million...

As polls show Donald Trump performing better than ever with black voters, progressive rapper Azealia Banks is expressing support for Trump’s popular immigration policy because of the positive impact it could have on black Americans.“Do you think it’s bad that I sort of agree with [Trump’s] stance on immigration?” the rapper wrote on her Instagram account on September 7th. Banks, a black rapper from Harlem, made headlines in March of this year by declaring her hatred for “this country” and “white Americans.” Banks explained that her support for Trump’s immigration plan is based on the detrimental impact mass immigration has...