A friend of mine sent me
this article on Obama's decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. It included this powerful quote from Muhammad Ali, speaking about his famous decision to not go to war in Vietnam:
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and deni…
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Added by Kazu on December 5, 2009 at 2:00pm —
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Cell phone cameras have been a bad thing for the BART police this year. As we all know, passengers used their cell phones to capture video footage on New Year's morning of then BART officer Johannes Mehserle shooting 22 year old Oscar Grant in the back, killing him hours later. Then, just last week,
this footage came out of another BART officer making an arrest, smashing a guy's head through a window in the process.
We all…
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Added by Kazu on November 27, 2009 at 3:21pm —
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So I was at an event last night welcoming the new Oakland Police Chief, Anthony Batts. The event was the brainchild of Minister Keith Muhammad, and the host committee included public officials and community based groups alike.
It was a good event, packed with folks from all walks of life. It was good to see such a diverse group taking an interest in working together to fight the violence in the city. We have a looooonnng ways to go, and we need the participation of every individual, agency, org…
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Added by Kazu on November 24, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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Plenty of people talk about accountability, and about holding people accountable, but few people ever talk about what that actually means and what it actually looks like. When we say that we want to hold someone accountable for their actions, what exactly are we saying?
Is punishment in and of itself accountability? If we lock someone up and treat them like an animal, are we holding them accountable?
To me, in order to truly, genuinely hold someone accountable, the person that committed the in…
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Added by Kazu on November 21, 2009 at 7:51pm —
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Original Post
HERE
PDF's BASE Initiative just returned from a community board meeting in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Twenty two participants flew in from twelve states, representing fifteen community based organizations. The diversity of the BASE initiative was well represented, with youth and elders, community based organizations and funders, African American, Latino/a, and Indigenous leaders all participati…
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Added by Kazu on November 5, 2009 at 1:11am —
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Check out this video
before you read any further, then read on.
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Watch.....
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First......
THEN......
Scroll.....
Down.......
Did you see it? Pretty cool?.
I was at a briefing the other day featuring john powell, Executive Director of the
Kirwan Institute. H…
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Added by Kazu on October 21, 2009 at 2:34pm —
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The following is an update from www.wearealex.org. Alex is a friend of mine and to many of us, and is a member of The Gathering. We can't let this stand, please spread the word and get folks involved. You can check out the website for more details and updates.
Greetings!
It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that Alex Sanchez was denied bail today. Our belief in his innocence remains firm and we are comitted to doing everything in our power to ensure a fair trial.
We thank you for your…
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Added by Kazu on October 19, 2009 at 10:30pm —
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According to
this Reuters article, there are well over 12,000 registered lobbyists in Washington.
Last year, there were close to 14,000, and they spent a total of $3.3 billion.
Do you realize that there are only 535
lawmakers in Washington? 435 House members and 100 Senators? Even if you count the President, cabinet members…
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Added by Kazu on October 16, 2009 at 3:32pm —
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What century are we in again?
I love the guy's argument that he's not racist.
"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
He lets black people use his bathroom. Well that changes everything.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091016/ap_on_re_us/us_interraci…
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Added by Kazu on October 16, 2009 at 3:00pm —
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The media and pundits are now
coming down hard on…
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Added by Kazu on September 4, 2009 at 2:07pm —
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David Sirota on Salon wrote a
great article on the people bringing guns to Health Care town forums and Obama's events.
As I was reading it, I was thinking that just because you didn't fire a gun, it doesn't mean you didn't use it. Those protesters weren't going to those rallies with the plan of actually killing anyone. Their plan was to intimidate people. So even though they didn't fire a bullet…
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Added by Kazu on August 26, 2009 at 2:30am —
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True stories from the
retreat.
My introduction to this work came in 1998, on the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage. When the Walk passed through North Carolina, we were hosted by the
Human Kindness Foundation. Two years ago, they sold the land that they hosted us on to some people who started…
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Added by Kazu on August 26, 2009 at 2:07am —
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I wrote earlier about public
displays of anger as an organizing strategy. There is another fatal flaw to using public spaces to release people's anger.
I just came back from a retreat for the…
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Added by Kazu on August 26, 2009 at 1:00am —
1 Comment
I visited my little sister and her fiance recently. Her fiance tends to lean more toward the conservative side. When I got there, one of the first things he showed me was this poster above.
What that poster is insinuating is that the democratically elected President of the United States is a psychotic serial killer. That's a dangerous statement f…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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We all know about the Right organizing to
shut down various Town Hall meetings. The Left has pretty much universally condemned these actions.
But haven't folks on the Left also used
these same exact tactics?
The issue here isn't with ideology. The issue is with the use of a tactic that stymies dialogue, debate, and an effort to create solutions to so…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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When this image, along with videos of kids lighting fires and breaking windows in Oakland, were broadcast all over the country during the
Oscar Grant protests, I thought at the time that it was a mistake. I had a lot of disagreements with people about this. A lot of folks though…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 2:00pm —
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Rachel Maddow did a
great skit the other day on her show, where her and Kent Jones were ordering Pizza. It went something like this:
Rachel: So you want Pizza?
Kent: Yes.
Rachel: How about pepperoni?
Kent: No
Rachel: Peppers?
Kent: No
Rachel: Onions?
Kent: No
Rachel: Sausage?
Kent: No
Rachel: Ham?
Kent: No
Rachel: Cheese?
Kent: No
Rachel: Sauce?
Kent: No
Rachel: We…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 2:00pm —
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Violence is like a virus, and like any virus, it needs a host to survive. And that host is tension, conflict and injustice. The virus that is violence transfers from conflict to conflict, from host to host.
If you try to resolve conflict by using violence, you may temporarily subdue the conflict, but the tension and injustice survives through the violence you inflicted, and it will eventually pop back out.
In gang warfare, many gang members have legitimate beef with other gangs. Many have lost…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 1:48pm —
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Part of the fear that's spreading in the health care debate right now is that of bigger government and more public spending. And you can easily see where that fear comes from. People are already broke, and they're being told that taxes are going to go up. And that's a legitimate concern. We're in a huge deficit, the federal debt is out of control, and people are concerned about digging further into that deficit.
But some folks are also talking about how much worse things could have been had Oba…
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Added by Kazu on August 20, 2009 at 1:47pm —
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BART just released the public findings from Meyer Nave's investigation into the
Oscar Grant incident as well as the review of their
policies and procedures.
I haven't read the official reports yet (reading for the plane), but here are some initial thoughts just from reading BART's…
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Added by Kazu on August 19, 2009 at 1:05am —
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