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An unidentified man in St. Paul, Minn., videotaped his arrest and reported tasing by two unidentified officers. The man claims that he was sitting in a public space when police, including the one seen here, approached him.     TWIN CITITES DAILY PLANET SCREENSHOT Updated Aug. 29, 9:10 a.m. EDT:  St. Paul Minnesota police issued a statement on their Facebook page defending the arrest of Chris Lollie in January of this year. The statement was reported by the  Minneapolis City Pages. In the statement police say they were called by a private security company because a man had repeatedly entered a private 'employees only' area in a bank. That man, identified as Lollie, refused to leave and refused to cooperate. Here's a portion of the police statement. As is often the case, the video does not show the totality of the circumstances. Our officers were called by private security guards on a man who was trespassing in a private area. The guards reporte...

Credit: www.occupy.com Police officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes  extrajudicially killed  at least 313 African-Americans in 2012, according to  a recent study . This means a black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours. The report notes that it's possible that the real number could be much higher. The report, entitled "Operation Ghetto Storm," was conducted by the  Malcolm X Grassroots Movement , an antiracist grassroots activist organization. The organization has  chapters  in Atlanta, Detroit, Fort Worth-Dallas, Jackson, New Orleans, New York City, Oakland, and Washington, D.C. It has  a history  of organizing campaigns against police brutality and state repression in black and brown communities. Their study's sources included police and media reports along with other publicly available information. Last year, the organization published  a similar study  showing that a black person is...

Lawsuit alleges brutality, racial slurs from cops at Ferguson protests In this Aug. 16, 2014 file photo, Malik Shabazz, center, president of Black Lawyers for Justice and former chairman of the New Black Panther Party, talks with Col. Ron Replogle, left, and Capt. Ron Johnson during a march with protesters in Ferguson, Mo. / AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Carson, Fi ST. LOUIS  — A federal lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that police in Ferguson, Mo., and St. Louis County used excessive force and falsely arrested innocent bystanders amid attempts to quell widespread unrest after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.  The five plaintiffs in the suit in St. Louis include a clinical social worker who said she and her 17-year-old son were roughed up and arrested after not evacuating a McDonald’s quickly enough. They also include a 23-year-old man who said he was shot multiple times with rubber bullets and called racial slurs by police while walki...

The Slave Trade (Africa In The Caribbean) The Atlantic slave trade brought about 11 million Africans to the Americas and over 40 percent of them came to the Caribbean, deeply shaping the region’s population and cultures. Africa  became Portugal’s exclusive concern after signing the Treaty of Former slaves in Puerto Rico, 1898. Credit: informafrica.com Tordesillas with Spain in 1494. The two kingdom’s agreed that Spain would have exclusive rights to the western route to the Indies while Portugal would have a monopoly on the African route. Portuguese merchants were therefore the lawful providers of African captives to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean. At first, they received individual asientos, the Spanish royal license to sell slaves in its colonies. But in 1562 the Englishman JOHN HAWKINS assembled a group of financiers to invest in the slave trade. He set sail for the African coast where he hijacked a Portuguese slaving ship near modern Sierra Leon...

Credit:  newamericamedia.org Suddenly the nation is talking about black equality. It took Molotov cocktails in Ferguson, Mo., to forcefully penetrate our slumbering racial consciousness. Ferguson has become a metaphor for race relations in the 21st century; a signifier for the convergence of poverty, segregation, police brutality, and federal and civic neglect. Most importantly, the Ferguson crisis has forced the nation to re-examine the idea of black equality. Make no mistake: Notions of black equality travel through both historical and contemporary terrain that Americans are loath to discuss. Black equality is more specific, and ironically more universal, than the generic advocacy of “racial equality.”   Read more  >> Source:   http://newamericamedia.org/2014/08/ferguson-opened-the-door-to-a-discussion-of-black-equality.php 

Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson once a member of police force disbanded over racial tension: report  The officer who shot Michael Brown six times on Aug. 9 was a former member of the Jennings Police Department, which its city council disbanded in 2011 over corruption and racial tension among its residents. Wilson reportedly did not have any disciplinary issues with the department, but all 45 officers were fired. UNCREDITED/AP                                                                             An image from a February 2014 video in which Officer Darren Wilson attends a city council meeting in Ferguson, Mo. The white cop who killed unarmed black teen Michael Brown on Aug. 9 was once part of a Missouri police force that was disbanded over racial tensions in the commun...

Credit: africanamericanhistoryonline.com Not everything that has to make a mark on the history of African American people is on the surface a positive thing. But we know that there some very terrible things that happened to the black population in America that are undeniably a big part of the history of a people. So any survey of black history could not be complete without a discussion of slavery. Few peoples of the earth have such a profoundly humiliating event to become such a central part of their heritage and their past. Yes, other tribes and races have endured slavery including the American Indian and the ancient Hebrews. Perhaps slavery is even more pivotal to the psychology of the African American culture because it is the central historical event that launched their start as citizens of this country. It was not a citizenship born in nobility and honor as many others can point to in America. No to come to America as slaves is to have come to America with little more ...

Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger." Tubman was born a slave in Maryland's Dorchester County around 1820. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields. While she was still in her early teens, she suffered an injury that would follow her for the rest of her life. Always ready to stand up for someone else, Tubman blocked a doorway to protect another field hand from an angry overseer. The overseer picked up and threw a two-pound weight at the field hand. It fell short, striking Tubman on the head. She never fully recovered from the blow, which subjected her to spells in which she would fall into a deep sleep.   Read more...

Credit: pewresearch.org America’s struggles with race and racism are never completely out of the news. But it is hard to remember when a series of stories have given this issue such resonance, whether in the rulings of the Supreme Court on  affirmative action  and  voting rights , a  tense trial in a Florida courtroom  and even the racially insensitive comments of a  celebrity chef .     Read more >>      Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/28/for-african-americans-discrimination-is-not-dead/

Racism Has Deep Roots in US, Police Killing African-Americans Has Its History - Journalist In the wake of police shooting of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown, over 140,000 Americans have supported a petition to US President Barack Obama’s administration calling for the introduction of the so-called Mike Brown Law, demanding the government “create a bill, sign into law, and set aside funds to require all state, county and local police, to wear a camera ."  © AP Photo/ Charlie Riedel WASHINGTON, August 22 (RIA Novosti), Liudmila Chernova - Racism has deep roots in the United States, as the country was built on enslavement of Africans, and police killings of African-Americans have a long history, American journalist and writer Adam Hudson told RIA Novosti. “The United States was built on the enslavement of black African slaves and the genocide of Native Americans. So racism runs deep in American history, culture and politics. The routine police killings o...

Ferguson is a story going back decades. And there is no new ending Tensions between police and residents in Ferguson have run high since the death of teenager Michael Brown. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images The story of Ferguson, Missouri, goes well beyond the tragic murder of a young black man. It is a story about demography and race going back to the great migration out of the south when many northern cities absorbed hundreds of thousands of African Americans over the course of only a few decades, creating the conditions for severe racial tension. Newly arrived black people competed for housing, land, schools and jobs with a range of white ethnic groups, many of whom bonded to suppress the "threat" from the new population. The story of racial conflict that emerged in the 20th century north is well documented in histories written by Isabel Wilkerson about the migration northward, by Tom Sugrue about the decline of Detroit, and by Arnold Hirsch about the s...

Credit: presstv.com Member of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression Joe Iosbaker says the black people in the United States are still suffering police brutality while the country’s president is an African-American. “Even though an African-American has been elected president and there is a black Attorney General [Eric Holder], the law, the police, the courts, they’re not about justice,” Iosbaker, a Leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition, told Press TV on Wednesday. “The government is there to protect the richest class in our society and the state enforces the oppression of African-Americans,” he added. American protesters are still in the streets in Ferguson, demanding justice for an unarmed black teen killed by a white policeman and an end to racial discrimination. Police officers clashed with protesters since the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9.   Read more  >> Source:   http:/...

(PHOTO: REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON) BY  STEPHANIE SAMUEL  , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER Protesters gesture as they stand in a street in defiance of a midnight curfew meant to stem ongoing demonstrations in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri August 17, 2014. The group of protesters angry at the shooting death of Brown, a black teenager, by a white police officer remained on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, early on Sunday minutes past the declared curfew, as police began to clear the streets in a tense standoff. Texas Megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes blamed racial profiling for the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, saying America is far from being a post-racial society and that racial profiling is putting black men "on the endangered list," in a blog published on Huffington Post.com. In the essay posted Tuesday morning , Jakes wrote "We are a far cry from the post-racial, peace and love society envisioned by '60...

Young boys wait to be loaded aboard a slave ship The labor-intensive agriculture of the New World demanded a large workforce. Crops such as sugar cane, tobacco and cotton required an unlimited and inexpensive supply of strong backs to assure timely production for the European market. Slaves from Africa offered the solution. The slave trade between Western Africa and the America's reached its peak in the mid-18th century when it is estimated that over 80,000 Africans annually crossed the Atlantic to spend the rest of their lives in chains. Of those who survived the voyage, the final destination of approximately 40% was the Caribbean Islands. Thirty-eight percent ended up in Brazil, 17% in Spanish America and 6% in the United States. It was a lucrative business. A slave purchased on the African coast for the equivalent of 14 English pounds in bartered goods in 1760 could sell for 45 pounds in the American market. A slave's journey to a life of servitude ofte...

Credit: www.newsnet5.com FERGUSON, Mo. -- Strict new protest rules and the presence of the National Guard in Ferguson didn’t prevent fresh clashes with police on Monday night, the ninth night of unrest since unarmed black teenager  Michael Brown was shot dead  by a white police officer on Aug. 9. Police fired several rounds of tear gas into the crowd after a small number of protesters reportedly threw bottles at the officers. Shots were fired, and the cops ordered everyone without media credentials to disperse, then evacuated the media center as well. "Air smells like gun powder,"  the Washington Post's Wesley Lowery tweeted . "Not like tear gas. Gun powder."   Read more >> Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/18/ferguson-protests_n_5689963.html?ref=topbar

Sybrina Fulton of Miami, Fla., mother of Trayvon Martin, testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Stand Your Ground" laws October 29, 2013 in Washington DC.Win McNamee—Getty Images SybrinaFulton is the mother of Trayvon Martin and the founder of the Trayvon Martin Foundation. In a letter to the family of Ferguson teen Michael Brown written exclusively for TIME, Fulton reflects on what the families now share. I wish I had a word of automatic comfort but I don’t. I wish I could say that it will be alright on a certain or specific day but I can’t. I wish that all of the pain that I have endured could possibly ease some of yours but it won’t. What I can do for you is what has been done for me: pray for you then share my continuing journey as you begin yours. I hate that you and your family must join this exclusive yet growing group of parents and relatives who have lost loved ones to senseless gun violence. Of particular concern is that so many...

A purported conversation captured on a YouTube video apparently shot in the immediate aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown has a possible witness saying the unarmed 18-year-old charged at the officer who fired the shots that have led to more than a week of sometimes violent demonstrations in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Amid angry condemnations of the police and pledges to move away from the mean streets of Ferguson, one man describes what he saw as he witnessed the shooting. He seems to describe how the 6 foot, 4 inch, 300-pound Brown tussled with Police Officer Darren Wilson and charged him, an account that may corroborate Wilson's story and cast doubt on claims of other purported witnesses who say Wilson shot Brown as he ran away, his hands in the air.   Read more >> Source:   http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/18/youtube-video-captures-purported-witness-backing-police-version-in-ferguson/?intcmp=trending

Ukrainian servicemen detain a pro-Russian activist at a checkpoint near the eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve, August 16, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko By By Thomas Grove DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukrainian rebels are receiving new armoured vehicles and fighters trained in Russia, with which they plan to launch a major counter-offensive against government forces, a separatist leader said in a video released on Saturday. The four-month conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical phase, with Kiev and Western governments watching nervously to see if Russia will intervene in support of the increasingly besieged rebels - an intention Moscow denies. Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said the rebels were in the process of receiving some 150 armoured vehicles, including 30 tanks, and 1,200 fighters who he said had spent four months training in Russia.   Read more >> Source:   h...

Protestors raise hands to show solidarity for Michael Brown, 18, who was unarmed when shot by police in Ferguson, Mo.SID HASTINGS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Counter shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown with facts, not rage Michael Brown, 18, was unarmed when a police officer fatally shot him around noon on Saturday in Ferguson, a close-in suburb of St. Louis. Some witnesses said he had his hands in the air. By Sunday night, the small city had become a repository for grief, rage and resentment over what is undeniably a stain on modern-day America — the targeting of young black men by law enforcement and its pretenders. Too little is known at this point of the circumstances of Brown’s death to draw many conclusions. Different scenarios have been put forth by the Ferguson police and a young man who was accompanying Brown. Both seem improbable on the surface, but much remains unclear. The St. Louis County police and the FBI have initiated investigations into the shooting,...

In 2013, an international   survey   determined that the country that poses as the single biggest threat to world peace is...The United States Of America. The land of the free--where government is running amok and where citizens feel less and less in control every day. It may still feel safe to live in the US, but we are headed in the direction of a full-blown police state--a reality where we are not welcome to speak out against our own government. 1. Police are killing more people every year Share Tweet ctvnews.ca While the number of officer deaths is thankfully declining, the number of killings by officers is increasing. In 2013, 33 law enforcement officers were killed by gunfire. While it is a morbid statistic, it is the lowest number since 1887. Meanwhile, in 2012, police committed over 400 justifiable homicides for the first time in more than a decade. This trend would suggest that crime is increasing...but it isn’t. It only means that officers are more freq...