On Tuesday night, James K. Knowles—the inept, whitesplaining, cop-coddling, Mike Brown-denigrating mayor of Ferguson, Mo.—was re-elected. He beat out Ella Jones, a black woman and member of the City Council, by fewer than 600 votes. This is just a few weeks after Tishaura Jones, the city treasurer, lost her bid to be St. Louis mayor by a mere 888 votes.

These results are disgraceful, inexcusable and ultimately frightening. The entire black population of metro St. Louis is in the sunken place, and I don’t think even Rod of the T.S. Mutha&^%-A could get them out.

via Ferguson, Mo., Stays in the Sunken Place: Re-Elects Failed Mayor

Ebony on Religion in Haiti

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In my travels around Haiti, I have come across many villages where there is no police presence and nor is there a clinic nearby for basic care, often leaving the Vodou priest or priestess( hougans and manbos) to serve every role from midwife to judge and jury. Yet Langlois and the Catholic Church he represents remain silent on the deeply imbedded inequality in Haiti and a Haitian government more interested in attracting foreign tourists by any means than providing basic social services to its people. He also fails to critique the international community who have little to show for $9 billion funneled through international contractors and NGOs in Haiti with little accountability since the 2010 earthquake.

Contrary to the Cardinal’s statement, Vodou is not Haiti’s problem; Christianity is. No push to spread Vodou ever wiped out entire “savage” indigenous peoples. Vodou has caused no wars due to a desire to convert as many people as possible. Vodou doesn’t tell “saved souls” that they must be complacent, accepting their lot on Earth for the potential of future salvation in heaven. Vodou never told Black people they were a curse or 3/5ths of a person.

via Haiti Doesn’t Have a Vodou Problem, It Has a Christianity Problem – EBONY

The Phoenix John Brown Gun Club. The Huey P. Newton Gun Club of Dallas. The Socialist Rifle Association. Redneck Revolt. New Black Panthers. Brown Berets. Liberal Gun Club.

I’ve only held and used a gun once. It seems like the in-thing to ditch gun control and just go stockpile some ammo.

I also think about the admonishments who blame gun control and “identity politics” for Democrats losing so much power to reactionaries in “Middle America”/”white working class America”.

Maybe this left-wing gun culture should be embraced in the same way the GOP has embraced right-wing gun culture?

How do you think this will play out?

CityLab: Pay Teens To Attend School or Keep Losing Them

Uncategorized, ,

Interesting idea about #BasicIncome:

The problem: Suspending kids who don’t go to school isn’t “different.” That’s what they did when I was there. At risk of stating the obvious here, suspension is no punishment for those who are already voluntarily suspending themselves. Suspension is better than criminalizing truancy, but it won’t necessarily inspire kids to start coming to homeroom. For that kind of inspiration—and inspiration is truly what’s needed here—educators will have to come up with something more creative, and competitive.

And here it is: We need to pay high school students to go to school. I don’t mean some punk-ass weekly or monthly allowance, or a gift card for Dave & Busters. I’m talking about a deposit of somewhere in the ballpark of $50 to $100, every school day. That’s not for making honor roll; it’s just for making it to school in the morning and staying until the end of the day. Yes, compensated just for showing up. Think Universal Basic Income—but for kids.

via Pay Teens To Attend School or Keep Losing Them – CityLab

George Chidi is right.

Let me state the obvious: whoever is responsible for storing material under the interstate that could melt a bridge had better still be in prison when Eleby gets out.

The Department of Transportation bears the true burden for this disaster. And that may be why state investigators quickly made an arrest of someone who doesn’t work in a business suit.

The second-day news stories weren’t looking at the chain of command, working their way down from GDOT Commissioner Russell McMurry, trying to figure out who had the legal authority to allow high-density plastic conduit to be stored under the highway.

Instead, it’s the easy story — pictures of the black guy in an orange jumpsuit that they’ve done a thousand times before. And, because it’s easy to report, everyone reported it, burying the real questions under a wave of sensational news about an alleged crackhead burning down I-85.

via Sure. Blame The Crackhead. – GeorgiaPol

So Mexico has had universal healthcare since 2012.

How was this “corrupt”, “poor” country able to muster the ideological, philosophical strength to do what we can’t? How is it that Americans go into Mexico regularly to receive healthcare at a fraction of the U.S. cost?

Is it Mexico’s Catholic values? Is it the lack of severe racial stratification, the comparative lack of self-identifying Afro-Mexicans in most of the country, and the refusal to include Black people in the Mexican census since the 1910s?

How?

Equal Rights Amendment Passed by Nevada

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

Today I found out that the ERA was ratified by Nevada last week, even though it’s after the deadline. It’s the first ratification to pass since the 35th ratification in Indiana in 1977.

The history of the ERA’s passage is one which is extremely complicated and is a zeitgeist of the latter 20th century’s constitutional amendments and our reticence to pass new amendments. With Nevada’s latter-day passage, the “three-state strategy” of NOW becomes a “two-state strategy”.

I’m assuming that Illinois, with a Democratic majority in both houses (but also a Republican governor​), may be the next state to experience a full fight for the ERA. But even Illinois’ Democratic Party has been tough to budge in favor of the ERA.

But after Illinois, which state? The fight for the ERA may likely stall against GOP majorities in both houses of state legislatures in most of these states. They’re all in the South.

 

I love when African Americans tell ourselves that this is our land or birthright and that no one will run us from it.

That birthright was gained through pointless, thoughtless murder and theft of both Native American bodies as well as our own. This land, this birthright, is stolen, ruined goods.

The Native Americans have aboriginal moral title over this entire continent. The descendants of African slaves are just unwilling, alienated guests.

And we will never be secure in peace.

Compare and contrast between the SBC and the largest mainline denominations:

  • SBC – 16 million US members, six seminaries, 44 Unis and colleges – highly conservative on sexuality and socio-economic justice
  • United Methodist – 7 million US members, 13 seminaries, 100 Unis and colleges – moderate on sexuality, liberal on socio-economic justice
  • Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – 3.6 million US members – 10 seminaries, 27 colleges and universities – liberal on sexuality and socio-economic justice

Mainline Protestants constitute some 16% of the US population. SBC members are 5% of the US population, and constitute just under half of the Baptist population in the US.

How “Southern Baptist” Pastors Created the Modern Republican Party

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

Just read an article about how the Southern Baptist Convention is part-and-parcel of the #SouthernStrategy, as well as the SBC’s aid in the rise of Trumpism.

After reading this, I wonder how the SBC is able to retain so much political power that even the Roman Catholic Church, the only Christian organization with a larger parishioner size in the U.S. than the SBC, can find themselves at odds with them on several economic and immigration-related issues.

  • There are 33 million Baptists in the U.S., 16 million of whom are members of SBC-affiliated congregations throughout the U.S. (as of 2013) but the highest rates of which are concentrated in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee.
  • The SBC provides funding to six seminaries, and the SBC’s state convention affiliates provide funding to nearly 50 universities and colleges in 19 states.
  • At the same time that the South was going through the end of Jim Crow and its immediate aftermath, the SBC was in the throes of its Fundamentalist Takeover.

All of this is crucial in understanding where the SBC is right now.