Free Republic

Black Lives Matter Chicago and other social justice groups filed suit Thursday against several federal law enforcement agencies seeking to prevent agents deployed in Chicago by President Donald Trump from harassing and detaining protesters. The civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court comes a day after Trump said the federal officers would assist local police in reducing violent crime - and not form a camouflaged paramilitary strike force like the one that detained protesters in unmarked vans in Portland, Ore. recently. Trump, however, did not rule out a heavier-handed response in the future. “We know the authoritarian tactics they...

Recently, when disrupters showed up at a Trump rally in Chicago, the first thing that came to mind was that America’s most notorious community organizer could be the wizard behind the curtain orchestrating what was being sold as an organic occurrence. In Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book Rules for Radicals, the late author could have been describing Obama’s last seven years in office when he wrote that an efficacious organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.”...

A Chicago activist turned down an invitation to meet with President Barack Obama on Thursday prior to the annual White House Black History Month reception. Aislinn Pulley, who co-founded Black Lives Matter: Chicago, was among about 20 people invited to what the White House billed as an intergenerational meeting of black leaders to discuss criminal justice reform throughout the U.S., according to a White House official. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also was expected to attend the event Thursday afternoon. Other invitees included the Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP President Cornell Brooks, University of Missouri student organizer DeShaunya Ware and DeRay...

I was under the impression that a meeting was being organized to facilitate a genuine exchange on the matters facing millions of Black and Brown people in the United States. Instead, what was arranged was basically a photo opportunity and a 90-second sound bite for the president. I could not, with any integrity, participate in such a sham that would only serve to legitimize the false narrative that the government is working to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it. For the increasing number of families fighting for justice and dignity for their kin slain by police,...