Amilcar Shabazz (center rear)
Organized by nationally known race relations guru Amilcar Shabazz and the local branch of the NAACP, the Amherst edition of the "National Day of Solidarity Actions: Justice for Mike Brown" attracted 75-100 demonstrators of every age, color, and gender to the heart of downtown Amherst.
The protest was of course peaceful
54 comments:
Would any of these folks waving signs, in their own professional lives, be able to live up to anything like the demands they routinely make on police officers (upon whom they have dumped a good deal of society's problems)?
We've already seen that, in a public meeting setting, Mr. Shabazz couldn't exercise the level of self-discipline required to avoid violating the privacy rights of a young person.
So perhaps the answer to the question is: not bloody likely.
Another noble cause, funny how in most cases the injured or killed is less than a positive contributor to society.
Anon 4:37: Respectfully, your post attacking a democratically elected school committee member for "violating the privacy rights of a young person" is offensively based on defective legal reasoning intended to manipulate your fears and divide the school committee into warring factions. How does such a divisive strategy help us better provide a quality, cost-effective education for all our schoolchildren?
Perhaps the divisive act was the actual violation of a student's privacy and not the calling out of the act. Shabazz is THE most divisive member of the SC by far.
How does such a divisive strategy help us better provide a quality, cost-effective education for all our schoolchildren?
That's what many were asking after Shabazz employed the divisive strategy of lying about school leadership's actions and inactions while acting in his official, duly elected capacity as a school official and chair of a subcommittee. That's what many were asking when he committed the divisive act of repeating a rumor he heard in the community, that the three teenage aggressors went looking for "the greatest student racist they could find" before pummeling one single teenager, thus violating the privacy rights of 4 young students. That's what many were asking when Shabazz resigned in a huff, from the one sub-committee he was on, citing that he "doesn't have the time", moments after not winning the election for SC chair. That's what many were asking--"How does such a divisive strategy help us better provide a quality, cost-effective education for all our schoolchildren?--when Shabazz made accusations on facebook that Appy supporters were committing civil rights violations against Vira supporters, by "intimidating" them and destroying campaign material (both untrue and unfounded allegations.)
How does encouraging people to gather on the common to antagonize police personnel by raising their arms in the air with signs saying "don't shoot me", thus implicating officers everywhere, including our town--a clear strategy intended to "manipulate our fears" and stoke our discontent--bring us together as a community as opposed to divide us?
And on and on, and those are just his public divisive acts. My perception of how most folks in town feel about Shabazz does not mirror the perception held by his very small band of cheerleaders. Michael, set your discontent and anger aside, and take a clear look at WHO is doing the dividing in this town!
No matter how many times you repeat a falsehood, Ms. Pinocchio (4:37 and 7:16), you cannot turn a falsehood into a truth. Dr. Shabazz didn't violate any student's privacy.
On an even more somber note, please join me in support of our friends and neighbors who came together today in peaceful protest to speak out against the senseless killing of an unarmed African American teenager, Michael Brown, when his hands were raised in surrender. May God have mercy on our souls!
Isn't it funny how a group of people who probably don't trust the media completely have decided without a full investigation completed that Brown was innocent and the police officer guilty. They are so sure they are holding signs up to voice their certainty.
Here is a thought, lets wait until we get lots of solid facts and then make a decision.
People are just to quick to judge these days. It seems the ring leaders of this protest look for any excuse to blame the man for everything anyone.
Is that all you have Michael H? That's barely a defense of the good Dr.
No matter how many times you say it, Michael, he did violate the students' privacy. A fake meeting to "disavow the process" doesn't undo a lie, a relaying of a rumor" he heard in the community (no one believes that, however,) and an infraction of 4 students' rights. Sheer arrogance and not apologizing doesn't undo those things either.
Maybe when they have to hire personal attorneys you'll see things a little differently, Michael. When the student who was beat up, or the three who did the beating, turn eighteen, they can sue Shabazz and Baptiste themselves, they won't need their parents' permission at that point. And they'll have several years to decide if they want to once they turn eighteen.
I ask you Michael: Have Shabazz's actions over the last year brought you and I together, or divided us? Is your "Ms. Pinocchio" taunt part of your grand plan to bring us all together in harmony?
Right, you and Amilcar are the ones who are going to bring us all together. Wake up Michael.
These protesters are insignificant, what do you let them rent space in your brain?
These "protesters" are not insignificant when they call a middle school aged white kid "the greatest student racist", and they're not insignificant when they demand the stepping down of white school committee members, and they're not insignificant when they disrupt our kids' school days by "protesting" in their space during school hours, and they're not insignificant when they shout at white SC members and school personnel and leadership and call them "white supremacists" and "racists" during public meetings, and they're not insignificant when they publicly and falsely accuse competing campaigns of committing civil rights violations against voters in an attempt to smear and divide... and now, antagonizing our public safety personnel with the taunt "don't shoot me, I have my hands up", (who else could they be directing that "rallying cry" toward?) as if an Amherst cop has ever shot anyone. I wonder what they hope to achieve other than strife and division?
These aren't people just sitting in town with signs, they are actively engaged in spreading false information and deliberately disrupting the business of our duly elected town officials, in attempting to damage the reputations of white school leaders with lies and innuendo and implication, and in disrupting the hard work that needs to be done by thousands of students and teachers and staff and administrators, and they are engaged in making OUR cops seem complicit in the crimes that took place in Illinois.
Here here Anon 919! Thank you! We need to take our community back from these people whose only goal is to divide!
There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions match the actual consequences of their deeds?
San Francisco is a classic example of a city unexcelled in its liberalism. But the black population of San Francisco today is less than half of what it was back in 1970, even though the city's total population has grown.
Severe restrictions on building housing in San Francisco have driven rents and home prices so high that blacks and other people with low or moderate incomes have been driven out of the city like Amherst.
Liberals try to show their concern for the poor by raising the level of minimum wage laws. Yet they show no interest in hard evidence that minimum wage laws create disastrous levels of unemployment among young blacks in this country.
The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.
Liberals have pushed affirmative action. But two recent factual studies show that affirmative action in college admissions has led to black students with every qualification for success being artificially turned into failures by being mismatched with colleges for the sake of racial body count.
(Check out "Mismatch" by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., and "Wounds That Will Not Heal" by Russell K. Nieli to see.)
In all these cases, and many others, liberals take positions that make them look good and feel good — and show very little interest in the actual consequences for others, even when liberal policies are leaving havoc in their wake. Look at Amherst.
The current liberal crusade for more so-called "gun control" laws is more of the same. Factual studies over the years, both in the United States and in other countries, repeatedly show that "gun control" laws do not in fact reduce crimes committed with guns.
Cities with some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation have murder rates far above the national average.
Although gun control is not usually considered a racial issue, a wholly disproportionate number of Americans killed by guns are black. But liberals' devotion to their ideology greatly exceeds their concern about what actually happens to flesh and blood human beings as a result of their ideology.
One of the most polarizing and counterproductive liberal crusades of the 20th century has been the decades-long busing crusade to send black children to predominantly white schools.
Yet within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this pronouncement of "black inequality" was made was an all-black high school that had scored higher than two-thirds of the city's white high schools taking the same test — way back in 1899! But who cares about facts, when you are on a liberal crusade that makes you feel morally superior?
To claim that blacks get a better education if they sit next to whites in school is something that goes counter to the facts.
Many liberal ideas about race sound plausible, and it is understandable that these ideas might have been attractive 50 years ago. What is not understandable is how so many liberals can blindly ignore 50 years of evidence to the contrary since then.
So true of Amherst and taken from http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell011513.php3#.U-_v-khXOTN
Where are 75-100 people. Picture shows about 40.
The Gazette is reporting "more than 100."
Where are 75-100 people?
A better question, considering the "Amherst United for Change" poster which depicts hundreds of black teens with their hands (photoshopped) in the air: where are all the outraged black teens from Amherst? I count two who seem to be there because their parents dragged them there. Where are Shabazz's colleagues and their children? Where are the parents who represent the children of color in our schools, whom Shabazz claims make up a majority of students at ARPS?
Also, I love that Shabazz is holding a sign that says I am Michael Brown"...because HE's the victim after all, don't you know!
Let me sort this out for you:
An African American teen is shot during a police altercation, and the nation reflexively convulses in outrage and shame. As the facts come out, it appears that security video shows the young man stealing cigars and physically confronting the store employee during an un-armed robbery. In the ensuing struggle between police and the suspect, a policeman shoots the youth dead.
Very possibly, the policeman used inapporpriate force.
Certainly, this is a tragedy, and an unnecessary death, and anyone with a heart wishes that the robbery had ended differently.
However, the martyrization of Michael Brown seems premature. He gambled in breaking the law, and in resisting arrest. The consequences were horribly final - fatal - but he took a dangerous risk in forcibly robbing a store.
Make room for the possibility that many well-meaning liberals now are being manipulated in a rush to excuse the young man from the consequences of his actions. Why? - because he is black. Needless to say, if he were a white boy from Chicopee or Turners Falls, we'd not be seeing such public behavior, nor granting such a 'pass.'
This is a sad and heartbreaking tragedy for the family of Michael Brown. No less. And, Amherst race hustlers, also no more.
At least in the future we will all know the kind of people Shabazz, Kathleen Anderson, Russ Vernon Jones, etc really are.
Their actions speak louder than their words every could. Though there words are by no means stifled in our liberal bastion of Amherst.
I am a member o f the liberal bastion Amherst and I am disgusted by the actions of Kathleen Anderson, Russ Vernon Jones, Shabazz, Baptist and the rest of them. Their actions have done nothing to further the cause they say they are fighting for. As a matter of fact their actions have had the opposite affect. I believe only their small band of followers think they are doing good work. The rest of the community wants them to go away so we can do the important equity work that is currently being done in the schools and greater community.
"where are all the outraged black teens from Amherst?"
You won't find blacks in Amherst, too expensive to live for them. You'll find larger populations in Sunderland and Hadley and anywhere but Amherst. Ask them why and second to economics they'll tell you Amherst isn't friendly to blacks. The liberal town likes to preach how it's all for blacks but what it says and what it does are two different things.
Sadly as one poster said, this is more about a liberal cause than reality. A black man robs a store. Ten minutes later police stop him for another crime not knowing he committed robbery. He struggles with the police officer and attempts to take the officers gun and is shot in the struggle.
In any logical evaluation he was a criminal shot in a confrontation with police. But he is black so he is a hero and a martyr. They use the famous cry to vindicate him - "He had his hands up". Of course the poor community of the town sees this so-called racial killing not for what it is, but an excuse to rob, steal, and pillage the businesses of the town.
Shabazz and others who are the Al Sharptons of Amherst look at it as an opportunity to cry foul, appear as civically and racially minded and further perpetuate a cause when there is no cause, just self interest misguided by ignorance no different than racism itself. Being black these days has become a free "get out of responsibility" card.
You can even be black and haze and target whites all you want and you are free and clear. We'll even suspend any white kid you bother and fire his father if he dare asks for justice.
Oh and if you are a police officer doing your job, you are a racist who targets blacks even though blacks accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the NYC alone were the work of black criminals. Must be the police according to the party line. Blacks aren't guilty of anything but being held down by whites. Whites are the ones committing the injustices against blacks, so the Shabazz sect will tell you.
Sort of strange when you think about it as an analysis of ‘single offender victimization figures’ from the FBI finds blacks committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study.
So although blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.
In Amherst, the result is to punish whites, to blame them for all of the 'ills' that keep blacks from succeeding or so the subtext goes.
Funny, you'd be scratching your head to try and find any black people either living in Amherst or visiting it. Wonder what Amherst is really doing wrong. It's that liberal thinking that says act the act, but don't play the part. The only blacks that exist in Amherst are the Shabazz types who live the white dream and play the part to fit in and not be seen for what they really are and who they really serve.
As I look at all the posters in the photo, I wonder why none of them have any mention of Mike Brown's community service resume:
Description: Burglary - 1st Degree { Felony B RSMo: 569.160 }
Date: 11/02/2013 Code: 1401000
OCN: AJ006207 Arresting Agency: ST ANN PD
Description: Armed Criminal Action { Felony Unclassified RSMo: 571.015 }
Date: 11/02/2013 Code: 3101000
OCN: AJ006207 Arresting Agency: ST ANN PD
Description: Assault 1st Degree - Serious Physical Injury { Felony A
RSMo: 565.050 }
Date: 11/02/2013 Code: 1301100
OCN: AJ006207 Arresting Agency: ST ANN PD
Description: Armed Criminal Action { Felony Unclassified RSMo: 571.015 }
Date: 11/02/2013 Code: 3101000
OCN: AJ006207 Arresting Agency: ST ANN PD
Seems he truly was a gentile giant who was taken advantage of for being black, or so they'd have you believe.
Is it out of the realm of possibility that Brown did grab onto the officers gun, a life and death struggle ensued and the officer used deadly force to save his own life?
Autopsy results will go a long way towards confirming that, one way or the other.
All judgments about the Michael Brown case seem premature to me, but that doesn't stop the sign- waving on the Common.
Ever notice that these controversies seem to occur in or around August, when our giant infotainment organizations (who call themselves "cable news") have a giant news hole to fill, with shark attacks and other trumped-up stuff.
So the annual "conversation about race" doesn't just occur organically. It occurs because it gets people upset, there's a ready supply of individuals eager to get on camera and rage about it, and there's nothing else going on, including in Washington.
The Law of Conservation of Outrage states that there must be something outraging us nationally at all times, in order to create ratings for cable channels.
Plus Shabazz has a paid summer off so can do all the protesting he sees fit to wave flags for. Come to think of it, based on what his students say about him as a teacher, he's not there during the school year much for them either.
Could have formed a rally in support of our cops and our community that doesn't mirror what is happening in Ferguson, a real community event where everyone felt welcome to show up and take part in something positive, and be grateful for the kind of cops we have and community we DO live in. We could have sat down on the common and discussed ways to help the community of Ferguson and discussed ways to talk to our kids about what happened. Instead it's more negativity and finger pointing and "Look at me! I'm standing in public holding a sign! Take my picture!" What are these people actually contributing to the solution?
These people are NOT interested in solutions. They are all about look at me, look at me.
The question I ask is if this was a racist White cop shooting an innocent unarmed Black man, why didn't the officer shoot the other one too?
Racists hate on the basis of race. He's already murdered one man, why not murder two and avoid leaving an unfriendly witness to testify against you in court?
After all, the cop killed him because he is Black, and the other one not only is too, but has Dreadlocks.
That make sense?
Now how about something quite different -- two black men, one tries to murder a cop, the other doesn't, and hence only one is shot.
Doesn't that make a hell of a lot more sense?
Trying to shoot a cop with his own gun isn't exactly a gesture of affection -- it really isn't...
Granted, the cop f*cked up -- regardless of how legitimate it was to do it, any time a police officer has to shoot, he/she/it has f*cked up because the situation should never have been allowed to get that far.
Remember that they stole cigars.
Cigars are often dipped in PCP -- also known as Angel Dust. That stuff is SCARY, it is *the* drug I am most afraid of hearing that someone has taken, I once had to deal with someone who was on it and violent and once is enough for a lifetime.
Female friend of the cop is saying that perp came AT HIM a second time which is why he shot him and cop thinks he was "high on something."
I believe a basic tox scan will find PCP during the autopsy -- if it is there. Now will they tell anyone about that or not -- that is another question...
What's more important: vilifying cops or advancing the opportunities for black teens?
Oh my GOD. Ed has finally gone beyond! Into the nether-regions of reason. He stole cigars... he must be lacing them with PCP!!
Have you even HEARD of blunts, erudite Ed?
"shot at least six times, including four times in the right arm and twice in the head. All of the shots, the Times reported, were fired from Brown's front — a finding that could contradict a witness statement indicating that Brown was hit as he ran away from police."
Now why would you shoot someone four times in the right arm? Shots intending to kill are to the chest and head.
Ed, does your obtuseness have no limits? You shoot someone in the arm because your aim is bad!
Please continue to stay hunched over your keyboard, where you can harm no one.
I'm still thinking that Ed's comments are a very elaborate spoof, an astute satire of Internet craziness, a knowingly arch riff on the web tendency to speak with authority based on extremely limited evidence and experience, creating completely wildly speculative conclusions with a straight face.
Ed, you are second only to The Onion in intelligently capturing the nuttiness of news consumption in the Internet age.
He's had us all going for years now.
Does Shabazz plan to loot the stores in Amherst too, in solidarity with those doing the same in Ferguson?
Kid may not have deserved it this time, but it was just a matter of time with an idiot like this anyway. He just saved the taxpayers and the justice system time and money.
Has anyone ever done research on the topic of looting in response to "social wrongs? "
Is it only black communities who loot their neighborhood stores? Do white communities also do it? This is a serious question that I do not have the answer to.
There is nothing to loot in Amherst. Amherst has made retail non-existent. Best Shabazz could do is break into a restaurant, have a seat and smoke a blunt.
People chillax.
The looting was all a justified response to centuries of oppression.
No surprise to me, but based on many of the comments above, it is clear that racism and tribalism still reign supreme. The insensitivity and ignorance from some on here is appalling.
Is it racist to point out that Mike Brown had a rap sheet with four criminal charges within the last year, robbed a store minutes before the unfortunate shooting, and refused the officer's instruction to move out of the street ?
If so, then you can call me and everyone in Amherst 'racist.' If not, then kindly cease your foolishness. And face facts.
Anonymous said...
The looting was all a justified response to centuries of oppression.
_______
Yeah and Obama is still trying to sort out the mess George Bush left him. LOL!!
To anon @ 12:48. First, you clearly assumed much with your commentary about my post. My post could have been in reference to commentary to Shabazz, school committee and divisiveness, the critique of activists, or the interesting comments Blacks not living in Amherst because it is too expensive or not 'friendly'. I never specified which comments. To me, it shows you are a person who is quick to rush to judgement. Luckily, on here the consequences for that are minuscule. It simply shows that you don't quite always pay close attention to details and reveals your stance on the Michael Brown shooting. However, since you went there, I will too. Mike Brown may have had a rap sheet a mile long and refused the officer instruction to move out of the street, but to me that still does not mean that his punishment should be death by a least six gunshots (see recent autopsy reports; shot twice in the head and no signs of struggle). As someone with a family member and a number of friends who have the dangerous job in law enforcement in a nearby city, I know that many people with rap sheets refusing an officer's instructions have been subdued in other ways. Additionally, I never referred to "everyone" in Amherst as racist. I simply wrote that because of some post it is clear that racism and tribalism still exist? Do you deny that? By the way, I have lived in Amherst for many years. Although it is a great place and everyone here is not racist, this part of the happy value is not void of such individuals. To end, I will just say that I am glad that I live in Amherst. I feel fortunate that the police officers here not felt like they need to subdue through deadly force when people refuse their instructions. It might seem trite to you but imagine what could happen to some of those college students who year after year refuse Amherst police officers' instructions to get out of the street and disperse late at night (for example, see reporting about 2014 UMass Blarney Blowout). If they are found to have a 'rap sheet' should the officer rush to judgement and shoot them? I do hope that you answer is a resounding no.
The assumption that we are being asked to take a bow to is: "there is racism to be found in every institution in America."
I am hearing speakers of color state this as almost an aside, as if "of course, we all believe this."
Racism is a force in American force to be pointed out and confronted. Racism seems to have been a potent force in the Ferguson Police Department, for example.
Racism as a force within every institution in America? Sorry, I'm not on board for that.
"He's had us going for years now."
He
and everyone else you've ever
known.
Noblesse oblige, one supposes.
-Squeaky Squeaks
p.s. May I offer you a banana?
Ed, does your obtuseness have no limits? You shoot someone in the arm because your aim is bad!
If your aim is that bad at 10 yards, you don't hit him at all. Four rounds in the same general area, you aren't a bad shot.
And explain the wound that went in through the top of the head -- Oh, I understand, the racist cop just happened to be 30 feet tall and able to shoot down at the perp. Right...
phTOOM- phTOOM-
(That's the sound of a little rat skull being crushed with one of those wooden mini baseball bats they used to sell at Fenway back in the seventies.)
What a super idea WHMP had to inflame our situation days before the restart of school by asking our town manager to be part of a panel discussion about race issues in town, and then after getting an agreement, announcing it would actually be a community forum broadcast live on the common.
The media, including our local media, including the Gazette, is all about entertainment, in other words, all about money.
The community, including our children, be damned.
If our sanctimonious "journalists" can keep the pot boiling, they will.
Reconciliation does not make news.
WHMP and especially Flaherty: go _ _ _ _ yourselves, stay the _ _ _ _ out of our way, you are _ _ _ _ to us. You are _ _ _ _ ing with our kids' educations, go to Hell you pieces of _ _ _ _.
"Many liberal ideas about race sound plausible, and it is understandable that these ideas might have been attractive 50 years ago. What is not understandable is how so many liberals can blindly ignore 50 years of evidence to the contrary since then."
Unfortunately modern liberalism, as it is sometimes deemed, has become nothing more than a religion. Modern American liberals criticize religious dogma. Yet they practice their own. I use the word "they" even though I agree with some liberal sentiments. It only goes to show, in the end, that they are no more ethical or logical than many "moderates" or "conservatives." In a place like Amherst, this becomes apparent quite readily.
I keep getting reminded of Reconstruction. Anyone remember how that one ended?
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