Free Republic

Our belief that the government wants to help us achieve fairness is lower than ever—leading to fantasies of lawless revenge. The events in Ferguson and elsewhere across the U.S. have launched a heated national dialogue that questions our faith in the benevolence of government institutions — especially police, judiciary, and politicians. Dead black bodies always makes us wonder whether they really have the best interests of the American people at heart, or just the best interests of some American people. Sometimes in the dense fog of passion and tear gas it is hard to see what values a country as...

What is occurring in communities across this nation is tragic. It is as if a dark cloud has enveloped and fallen upon this nation when it comes to homicides by whites of black youngsters and black men. Blacks in Sanford, Florida; Jacksonville, Florida; New York City and now Ferguson, Missouri have had enough. The killings were all suspicious in nature and in each instance the black victim was unarmed. Many of you know the details. Trayvon Martin, a youngster of 17 years was stalked and killed by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford as he was making his way home from...

Here’s an excerpt from an administrative decision I just read, DeMay v. Richmond County Dep’t of Social Servs., 2014 WL 4206296 (N.C. Office of Admin. Hearings); it was filed July 2, 2014, but just posted on Westlaw on Wednesday. The petitioner was demoted because of a statement she made at a meeting, and the administrative decision upheld the demotion: 3. The [Department of Social Services’] Policy Concerning Unlawful Workplace Harassment provides in pertinent part: The policy of [DSS] is that no employee may engage in conduct that falls under the definition of unlawful workplace harassment. All employees are guaranteed the...

“Support Daren Wilson.” These three words emblazoned at the top of the GoFundMe website in support of the Ferguson, Mo, cop who gunned down Michael Brown said it all. In the span of less than 48 hours, nearly 5,000 donations were received and the site got tens of thousands of Facebook looks and tweets. The fund’s beleaguered sponsors pleaded for patience while they tried to respond to the flood of emails that poured in supporting Wilson. The organizers announced triumphantly that they’d raised three times more than their goal. This was no surprise. The instant Wilson was fingered as the...

TWO US lawyers who represented the family of slain teen Trayvon Martin and police shooting victim Michael Brown have joined the legal team of Mario Deane, a Jamaican construction worker who died three days after being beaten by inmates in his cell. Justine Rand and Benjamin Crump agreed to join the team after hearing about the tragic circumstances that led to the death of the 31-year-old. In an email to The Gleaner’s news centre, Rand said human rights violations cannot be tolerated in the USA or Montego Bay, Jamaica. She added humanity in itself is universal and what happened to...

The events that have unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, in recent weeks have revealed many tragedies, among them the fact that the death of so many youth of color in this country is still debatable in its status as a vaunted “feminist issue.” But it is, and the expansive definition of reproductive justice, which reaches into the universe of conditions necessary to create and sustain life, shows us how. As RH Reality Check Senior Legal Analyst Imani Gandy put it so well in a recent tweet: Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady I saw so many people on Twitter saying "I don't want to...

The Harvard Law professor who mentored President Obama and the first lady during their time in Cambridge has compared the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown to the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, Charles Ogletree also compared the police shooting of 18-year-old Brown to the 1955 killing of Emmett Till. “Looking at what’s happened, this is just like the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, when everybody was very upset trying to figure out what was going to happen,” he said. “It’s like the killing of Trayvon Martin two years ago. “This is...

Killings of unarmed black men are now commonplace in the USA. These tragedies are also opportunities for honest reflection on our role in dismantling white supremacy. Trayvon Martin was a 17-year old African American high school student who was shot and killed on February 26th 2012 by George Zimmerman, who was later found not guilty of his murder. Martin was unarmed. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law - which enshrines the right to self-defense even when lethal force is used against someone who doesn’t have a weapon and where there are no witnesses - played a prominent role in Zimmerman’s acquittal....

ST. LOUIS — The father of a black 18-year-old shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson pleaded Sunday for a “day of silence” as he lays his son to rest Monday. “Tomorrow all I want is peace,” Michael Brown Sr. told hundreds of people in St. Louis’ largest city park during brief remarks at a festival that promotes peace over violence. “That’s all I ask.”(continued)

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Sharpton is again working both sides of the street, and it’s paying off for him. As he’s inserted himself into the tense situation in Ferguson, he’s had an assist from none other than the president of the United States. And he continues to bask in the spotlight at MSNBC, where he uses his nightly cable show to advance the causes he fights for as a civil rights activist. But these two roles are increasingly coming into conflict. It happened last year with the killing of Trayvon Martin, and it’s happening again with the death of Michael Brown. Sharpton is...

ST LOUIS, MO, August 25 (RIA Novosti) - The protesters rallying against the police killing of an unarmed African-American teen in Ferguson, Missouri, headed to a peace festival in central St Louis on Sunday to hear the address of the parents of another victim of a race-related killing. The parents of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager who was shot dead in 2012, were expected to join the family of Michael Brown, 18, killed by a police officer in Missouri this month, in a rally against police violence downtown Forest Park. In light of the mass protests in Ferguson and the...

<p>Both sides lined up pretty much as expected over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Social media is full of people on both sides making presumptions, and believing what they want to believe.</p> <p>But it’s the white folks that don’t understand what this is all about. You see, Ferguson wasn’t about Michael Brown specifically, just like the outrage over Trayvon Martin’s death wasn’t about Trayvon Martin specifically. Let me put it as simply as I can for you.</p>

This not a hard one to answer. Once again we have lost another young, black man at the hands of a police officer. I really tried to find the best way to write this without seeming so over-the-top, emotional or making it an issue of race. Well as you can see that was not possible. Yes it’s probably over-the-top, but so are the numbers of our black men dying at the hands of police officers. Yes I am emotional because when I see the Michael Brown and the Trayvon Martin I also see my own 14 year old son. I...

President Obama is under siege. Not enough having to put out fires in far flung places he was suddenly faced with a domestic flair in Ferguson, Missouri. The brutal shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year old unarmed African American kid, by a white policeman, brought Ferguson, a quiet rundown St. Louis suburb, to the brink of civil unrest. The rest of the country was put on edge. That was until the even gorier spectacle of the beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, by an Islamic State executioner in Syria, hit the news waves. The beleaguered President first took time...

Only the courts can judge Michael Brown’s killer – but this is the system that let George Zimmerman walk free.Just outside a mall in Ferguson, Missouri, shortly after 10 o’clock on Wednesday, a black man in his 30s was stopped and frisked by around eight white policemen. As he gingerly emptied his pockets, careful not to move too quickly, he yelled at them. It was a soliloquy of pure rage; a fluent, apparently unstoppable oration against not just the men who had apprehended him but the system they represented. “Yes I’m angry,” he shouted. “Four hundred years we been here....

SELMA, Ala. - An Alabama teacher was suspended without pay after being accused of having sixth-grade students re-enact the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida. The Selma Times-Journal quoted Dallas County School Superintendent Don Willingham as saying the social studies teacher used poor judgment during a lesson on current events. School officials haven't identified the teacher, who works at Brantley Elementary School....

Much too quickly after the death of big Mike Brown in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, the Trayvon Martin dream team -- ambulance chasers Benjamin Crump and Daryl Parks, media hound Al Sharpton -- descended on his still warm body like so many turkey vultures. One would have hoped that their twisted performance in Florida during the previous two years would have taught America’s liberals something -- prudence, restraint, skepticism -- but it did not. Led by their media, liberals once again rushed in where wise men fear to tread. As expected, the media insisted on telling the same embarrassingly...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)In Washington 21/2 years ago, the nation's top civil-rights enforcer, Thomas Perez at the U.S. Department of Justice, sat down with Sanford's mayor, city manager and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown and promised to investigate whether Trayvon Martin was the victim of something more heinous than a homicide. Was he also the victim of a killer intent on harming him because he was black? That was March 20, 2012. The Department of Justice still has no answer to that question. Civil-rights investigators are due back in Central Florida this week to continue their work on the case. The agency has repeatedly...

Another black child is dead. And while the taste of the Trayvon Martin verdict still lingers in our mouths, injustices in the African American community have made headline news with an unexpected frequency in the last few weeks. Eric Garner. Renisha McBride. And now, Michael Brown. And while the community of Ferguson, Mo., deals with their grief and outrage, the best way they know how, I feel it most important to address this community, our community, and anyone with an open ear and open mind. Before there was a Michael Brown, there was a Trayvon Martin, before him an Oscar...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'll tell you what. Let's listen to some Obama sound bites here. Let's just see. Start here at number two. This is yesterday afternoon in Washington, at the White House. The president came back from vacation. Oh, try this. People have been asking, "Why did he come back? Why did he come back to Washington from the Vineyard just for three days? What's the point? Just to meet Biden? Why couldn't they have had Biden go to the Vineyard?" Nobody in the Vineyard wants Biden there. "Oh. Well, he's gotta meet with people in Iraq and so...