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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 reported that the m

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 killed by security forces ever

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 walking throug

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 Leone. H

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 community it served. Officer Darren Wilson was a member of the 45-employee Jennings, Mo., Police Department that was fired by its city council in 2011 and replaced by St. Louis County Police,  the W

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