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Actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd, known for his roles in Spike Lee films, has been shot and killed in Atlanta, police said Sunday. Police responded to a call around 1:45 a.m. Saturday and found the 70-year-old Byrd unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds in his back, police spokesman Officer Anthony Grant said in a statement. Responding paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene on the city’s southwest side, where he lived. Grant said homicide detectives were working to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting and declined to provide further details. In an Instagram post Sunday, Lee said he was sad to announce...

The FBI has arrested the founder of a Black Lives Matter group in Atlanta on fraud and money laundering charges. Sir Maejor Page, 32, was accused Friday of misappropriating $200,000 in donations he solicited through Facebook on behalf of Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta, Fox 5 Atlanta reported Friday. Page was arrested in Toledo and released on bond after appearing before a judge via video. He did not immediately return messages Saturday from Fox News. The Toledo FBI office opened an investigation last year after a cooperating witness submitted a fraud complaint against Page, whose real name is Tyree...

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In the middle of the protests over police brutality and a pandemic, 19 black families have joined forces and purchased 96.71 acres of land in Toomsboro, Georgia. They plan to build a new, safe city there. Ashley Scott, a Georgia-based realtor, started The Freedom Georgia Initiative with a few like-minded people. In an op-ed for Blavity, Scott explained that the idea came after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was killed by a group of white men while out on a jog. “I am concerned. At times distraught. For the first time ever in my life, I...

U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., is demanding that Frontier Airlines officials explain why a gate agent banned an air marshal from wearing an American flag-themed mask on a flight. The agent at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta claimed other passengers would find his mask "offensive," according to Collins. "This infringement of a law enforcement officer's right to free speech was clearly a decision made by one of your gate agents based on their own politics," he wrote. "This is made even more clear by the fact that many passengers allowed to board the flight in this incident were permitted to...

A pastor of a Georgia megachurch who also is running for U.S. Senate said last week he believes legalized abortion is “consistent with” Christianity and he would “fight” to ensure it remains legal. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and a Democratic candidate trying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in November’s election, made the comments to WGAU’s Tim Bryant. Bryant asked Warnock how the pro-choice views of the Democrat Party “square with” his “role as a minister, a leader of a church, a man of God.” “I believe that healthcare is a human right,”...

Law Enforcement Today has received numerous reports from law enforcement sources in Atlanta that a number of officers have come under attack as riots are popping off in the city. Heavily armed groups of protestors have been seen in the streets. Images are starting to flood in now of what’s happening. Rioters are laying down metal slabs, reportedly to block emergency responders from being able to get to the scene. The riots are said to be in “solidarity” with protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin over the shooting of an armed criminal.

Just before the Democratic National Convention kicks off Monday, Joe Biden’s campaign staged a national virtual event Saturday in which a parade of Latter-day Saints told fellow church members why they support the former vice president. And sometimes they also said why they see President Donald Trump as wicked. It came during an event where participants opened and closed with prayer, quoted scriptures, repeated teachings of church leaders and sometimes shared testimonies that helped put Biden in a divine light. “We can probably all agree that Donald Trump isn’t good or right,” said Abigail Woodfield, president of BYU College Democrats....

Ruptly is live from Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta on Saturday, August 15, as right-wing groups are holding a rally at the location. In response, anti-racism groups from across the country have called to counter the protesters with a large rally on the same day.

I’m happy to report that Paul Howard, Fulton County, Georgia’s district attorney, has gone down to crushing defeat in his primary race. Howard, who has been the DA for more than two decades, lost his runoff race with Fani Willis by more than 45 points. Readers will recall that Howard charged Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe with felony murder in the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks. Brooks had fired a taser gun at Rolfe. Howard had recently declared a taser to be a deadly weapon under Georgia State law. Charging Rolfe with murder is indefensible. It’s doubtful whether Rolfe even...

Braves owner Liberty Media disclosed the team’s second-quarter financial results Monday, revealing dramatic losses that underscore the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the sports and live-events industries. The Braves’ revenue plunged 95% in the April-through-June quarter, compared with the same period a year ago, falling from $208 million to $11 million. The team posted an operating loss before amortization and depreciation of $26 million for the quarter, compared with a profit of $62 million in the same period last year.

A record number of people from the country's largest metropolitan areas, including New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, are flocking to smaller, more affordable cities amid the coronavirus pandemic, new data reveals. A recent report by real estate company Redfin shows 27.4 per cent of website users were looking to move to smaller metro areas in the second quarter of 2020, with the top five destinations being Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Austin and Atlanta. The migration analysis was based on a sample of more than 1million Redfin users who searched for homes across 87 metro regions in the...

WNBA players on the Atlanta Dream squad, which is co-owned by Sen. Kelly Loeffler, showed up to their Tuesday game wearing t-shirts promoting the Georgia lawmaker’s Democratic challenger. The statement against Loeffler, who is unpopular among many WNBA players for her opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement and the league’s affiliation with it, was captured on camera and posted to social media. Members of the Dream’s Tuesday opponent, the Phoenix Mercury, even joined in — with players on both sides entering the arena wearing shirts emblazoned with “Vote Warnock” and “Black Lives Matter.”

Washington, D.C. attendees to the Atlanta funeral of the late Rep. John Lewis are exempt from following the District of Columbia's strict quarantine rules after returning home from Georgia, the D.C. mayor's office says. Lewis, a longtime member of Congress and one of the major figures of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, died on July 17 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. After lying in state at the United States Capitol, his body was returned to Atlanta for a funeral at that city's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” movie mogul and actor Tyler Perry expressed his concerns over the so-called “Defund Police” protests around the country. Perry indicated he was “worried” the message was “being hijacked” for the sake of politics in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in the custody of Minneapolis police. “So, when they saw George Floyd’s death, this horrific, horrible death played out as this man pleaded for his life and begged and said ‘please’ many, many times, it — seeing it changes everything,” he explained. “So I became very, very optimistic when everybody galvanized together because...

It has become a common sight around the city of Atlanta — groups of boys selling bottled water at intersections of busy city roads. Recently, some of those kids have started to get violent with drivers. Now, several victims are calling on the mayor, Atlanta City Council and Atlanta Police Department to put a stop to what many are describing as a growing problem. In an interview with Channel 2 Action News on Monday, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms described some of the teens as “up-and-coming entrepreneurs.” She’s even created an advisory committee that’s going to come up with possible...

Democrats have fully pivoted on the nightly Portland riots. They’ve gone all-in on blaming the riots on President Trump thus allying themselves with the antifa and Black Lives Matter anarchist and communist mobs. Instead of black bloc balaclavas or masks, the politicians have donned the cloak of civil libertarianism. In doing so, they make a mockery of it. Democrats, so far as I can find, have never denounced the violent mobs, though New York Governor Andrew Cuomo once wagged a finger at George Floyd rioters while simultaneously explaining that it wasn’t really their fault because “income inequality” led to violence....

Atlanta Black Lives Matter protesters blasted a federal building with fireworks and shattered windows as they took out their wrath on an immigration office there on Saturday, according to reports. Demonstrators smashed windows and set fires outside the downtown building, which houses Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, while footage from the protest posted on Twitter shows fireworks being hurled at the entrance. “DHS/ICE Field Office ransacked by frontliners in Atlanta in solidarity with the freedom fighters of the #PortlandProtests and every other suffering poor person trying to build a new world,” one of the posts...

As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing “learning pods” or “pandemic pods” — small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns. At face value, learning pods seem a necessary solution to the current crisis. But in practice, they will exacerbate inequities, racial segregation and the opportunity gap within schools. Children whose parents have the...

The death of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta is a terrible event, and my hope is that this helps us all see more clearly what happened. May we give Officer Garrett Rolfe and Officer Devin Brosnan the presumption of innocence while GBI finishes their investigation and while the legal system gives them due process. https://youtu.be/Z0L-2_75Ark