Tag: George Floyd

Commentary: Juneteenth Usurped the Emancipation Proclamation

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Carol Swain

How did Juneteenth, once just a regional celebration, become a federal holiday instead of the far more significant Emancipation Proclamation? The latter freed over 3 million slaves, including the ones in Galveston, Texas that didn’t know of their freedom. Let’s walk through some of the facts of the latter’s superiority over the former before grappling with the politics of our times.

President Abraham Lincoln issued The Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It never became a federal holiday despite the wishes of some organizations. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), presented a proposal in 2014 seeking to establish “A National Holiday Commemorating Emancipation of the Slaves” for the “history and story” to be “properly researched and archived for the American People. It acknowledged the importance of the document for all Americans and sought for the holiday to be celebrated on January 1 of each year as a Jubilee. The NAACP resolution was presented during the Obama Administration. It was written before the word “slaves” was swapped for “enslaved peoples.”

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Commentary: J6 Vampiress Swoops Down to Salvage Decomposing Carcass of Insurrection Narrative

Julie Kelly
Nancy Pelosi

For more than three years, Democrats, the news media, and a fair share of Republicans have insisted Donald Trump was solely responsible for security failures at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Never mind he already had warned of potential violence—not at the hands of his supporters but by BLM and antifa thugs who tried to burn down the nation’s capital for weeks after George Floyd overdosed in May 2020 then attacked pro-Trump demonstrators on the streets of D.C. during “Stop the Steal” events in November and December 2020—and urged deployment of the National Guard for that day.

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Black Lives Matter Group Sues Massive Liberal Foundation Claiming ‘Egregious Mismanagement’ of $33 Million in Funds

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BLM

A liberal foundation controlling roughly $1 billion in assets faces accusations of “egregious mismanagement” of funds from the largest Black Lives Matter group in the country.

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLM GNF) filed a lawsuit on Monday accusing the Tides Foundation of mishandling funds donated to a “Black Lives Matter Support Fund” administered by Tides, arguing the funds belong to them. Tides, however, contests this by claiming that donations to the fund were actually intended for smaller BLM organizations.

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Proposed Minnesota Legislation Would Require Study of Reparations, Formal Apology for Slavery

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Minnesota Capitol

Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation this week to establish an advisory council that would examine a possible reparations program. Introduced in the last days of the legislative session, HF 5456 would also require the State of Minnesota to “issue an apology for the past occurrence of chattel slavery and notable slave owners in Minnesota.”

Known as the “Minnesota Migration Act,” HF 5456 first makes several historical declarations.

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Restoring History: Movement to Return Confederate-Linked Names to Schools Garners Traction

Just the News
Teacher and Student

A movement to restore the names of Confederate military leaders on schools is garnering traction in a Virginia county, with the school board set to vote on the matter this week amid fierce opposition from minority groups.

Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School were renamed Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School after the Shenandoah County School Board passed a resolution in July 2020 that condemned racism and affirmed the creation of an “inclusive environment.”

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Hiring of Police Officers Increased in 2023 After Years of Decline

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New Police Officers

The year 2023 saw an increase in the number of police officers hired for the first time in several years, after widespread anti-police sentiment as a result of the race riots in the summer of 2020.

According to ABC News, more sworn officers were hired in 2023 than in any of the preceding four years. At the same time, fewer officers resigned or retired than in recent previous years. The information comes from 214 different law enforcement agencies responding to a study conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).

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Bill Ackman on Washington Post Hit Piece: ‘The Public Has Been Again Misled’

Michael Patrick Leahy

Bill Ackman, the highly successful hedge fund manager and Harvard graduate whose criticism of Claudine Gay’s history of plagiarism led to her resignation as President of Harvard University, published a lengthy tweet on his X account Sunday evening responding to an article about him published by The Washington Post earlier in the day. Here is that post in its entirety:

I am sure all of us have had the experience of reading a story about a subject you know well and finding it replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. One then turns the page and reads an article about a subject one knows less well and makes the mistake of believing that this other story is accurate. I am guilty of this sin. I am sadly repeatedly reminded to mistrust what I read in the media, and I am not alone. Destruction of confidence in our media is contributing to societal breakdown, and that is a very unfortunate state of affairs.

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Derek Chauvin Still Fighting Convictions Despite Stabbing, Solitary Confinement

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Even though he is still recovering from a near-fatal stabbing, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is seeking legal help while confined to solitary medical confinement in a federal prison facility.

“There was no question he was trying to kill him. It was more serious than anyone knew,” Carolyn Pawlenty said of the violent attack on her son in the prison law library at the facility in Tucson, Ariz., on Nov. 24, 2023.

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Businesses in Minneapolis Sue City over Lack of Policing

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George Floyd Square

Multiple businesses located in the so-called “George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis have filed lawsuits against the city government for failing to properly police the area and prevent crime.

As the Daily Caller reports, the lawsuit was filed in mid-November by businesses in the area where George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while in police custody in May of 2020, which sparked nationwide race riots that resulted in the looting and destruction of hundreds of small businesses. The plaintiffs, who have stated that “the area lacks police protection,” are seeking $1.5 million in damages.

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Businesses Ditch Diversity, Equity and Inclusion amid Economic Uncertainty

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Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives lost steam in 2023 compared to previous years as companies increasingly shift resources due to tightening economic conditions, according to Paradigm Consulting Group. Paradigm designs and helps firms implement DEI programs.

The total percentage of American organizations with a DEI budget dropped 4 percentage points, from 58 percent in 2022 to 54 percent in 2023, while the number of organizations with a DEI strategy fell 9 points in that same time frame, according to a report from consulting firm Paradigm. DEI initiatives in the workplace gained huge traction following the death of George Floyd, which encouraged companies to divert resources to the practice, but now “external forces,” including tightening economic conditions as well as public and judicial pressure, are pushing back on those efforts.

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Ex-Officer Derek Chauvin Cites New Evidence in Attempt to Overturn George Floyd Murder Conviction

Just the News

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin is arguing that new evidence proves he did not cause the 2020 death of George Floyd as part of an attempt to overturn his federal civil rights conviction.

Chauvin said he would never have pleaded guilty to the 2021 charge if he was aware of the theories from a Kansas pathologist with whom he began corresponding earlier this year, according to a motion filed in federal court this week, The Associated Press reported. 

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Commentary: Corporate Big-Mouths at Coca-Cola and Delta Wouldn’t Shut Up About George Floyd but When It Comes to Hamas – Crickets

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When radicals used the sad death of fentanyl addict and opioid abuser George Floyd to burn down America’s cities in summer 2020, they earned nothing but praise from many of our country’s biggest corporations.

Overnight, America’s corporate giants became footsoldiers in the Left’s “woke” revolution, tut-tutting their customers’ LGBTQ “microaggressions,” pouring millions of dollars into the Marxist-led Black Lives Matter, and condemning the “systemic racism” of the country that birthed them.

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High School in Minnetonka Among First in Minnesota to Use New AP African American Studies Course

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Amid declining academic test scores, Hopkins High School will be one of the first schools in Minnesota to offer the George Floyd-inspired Advanced Placement African American Studies (APAAS) course this fall.

Less than 50 percent of Hopkins High School students are proficient in reading, math or science. It will be one of just a few schools in the state to offer the class this fall along with high schools in St. Paul and Edina, the Star Tribune reported.

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Michigan Governor Shifts Tone on Police Funding, School Resource Officers

The Center Square

There’s been a shift in tone from Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer on policing issues, most notably on the funding of the state’s police and adding school resource officers. 

After the George Floyd murder in May 2020, Whitmer said that she supported the “spirit” of efforts to defund the police as a way of reallocating resources, the Detroit Free Press reported. A few years later, the state is hiring more than 200 school resource officers with state police funding on the rise. 

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Whistleblower: Top FBI Official Made ‘Chilling’ Threat to Agents Questioning January 6 Cases

Just the News

A top official with the FBI has filed a protected disclosure to the Office of the Inspector General alleging that FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told the bureau’s internal critics of its Jan. 6-related cases to seek employment elsewhere and offered to personally address his subordinates’ agents concerns.

In a sworn affidavit, the 15-year veteran FBI special agent alleges that, during a routine meeting in February 2021, the deputy director addressed internal concerns that the bureau had not taken the same approach to its investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as it did with the 2020 riots and protests related to the death of George Floyd.

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Biden DOJ Says Minneapolis Police Engaged in Unconstitutional, Racist Practices

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The Department of Justice  (DOJ) announced the results of a years-long probe Friday finding that the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) repetitively violated the rights of residents prior to the death of George Floyd.

“The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law,” the DOJ wrote in its report.

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University of Michigan’s Botanical Garden Employs DEI Manager, Hosts ‘Confronting Racism’ Training

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University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum is committed to diversity – but not simply the diversity of the plants and animals that call the facility home.

It also employs a DEI manager and actively works to combat racism within its 700 acres of gardens and natural preserves to make up for its “participation in systemic injustices.”

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Commentary: America’s Radical Criminal Justice Reform Disaster

RealClearWire

Over the past decade or so, America has undertaken a radical experiment with criminal justice reform. The consequences have been devastating.

The number of people arrested in America each year has fallen sharply over the past two decades. Public prosecutors now prosecute significantly fewer cases. Those that are convicted can generally expect shorter sentences. The combined effect of all this is that America’s prison population is now 25 percent lower than it was in 2011.

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Law Enforcers in Philadelphia Suburbs Blame Krasner’s Performance on Spreading Crime

Bradley Vasoli

In Delaware County on Monday, law-enforcement experts asked Pennsylvania GOP state lawmakers to consider a variety of responses to the state’s crime epidemic… and to one left-wing official’s lack of urgency about it. 

Speakers suggested various ideas like increased resources for detention facilities and youth courts. Over the course of the hearing, numerous testifiers complained that the leniency of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) remains a major hindrance to public safety in the City of Brotherly Love and nearby communities.

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Minneapolis Settles for Millions with Two Locals Who Say George Floyd’s Killer Also Knelt on Their Necks

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The Minneapolis City Council voted Thursday to grant more than $8 million in settlements for two people who sued over 2017 incidents in which George Floyd’s convicted killer allegedly kneeled on their necks, according to CNN.

Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in April 2021 of murdering Floyd the previous May, having knelt on Floyd’s neck during an arrest until he died. The city is settling with John Pope and Zoya Code for $7.5 million and $1.375 million respectively, resolving their separate lawsuits over Chauvin’s alleged treatment of them long before Floyd’s death, CNN reported.

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House GOP Looking to Punish Politicized Prosecutors by Stripping Them of Legal Immunity

Just the News

For months, House Republicans have decried the actions of leftist local prosecutors who free violent felons or prosecute political enemies like Donald Trump. Now they are beginning to rally around a solution that could inflict significant punishment on wayward district attorneys.

Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Just the News that Republicans are considering turning the tables in a debate started by liberals a few years ago when they tried to eliminate the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits.

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Detroit City Council President: Reparations ‘Long Overdue’

The Center Square

The Detroit City Council on Friday announced the members of the city’s new Reparations Task Force.

The Task Force was established after 80% of Detroit voters approved a 2021 ballot proposal to explore the feasibility of a reparation initiative. According to the Detroit News, the proposal from the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus came in part from the national response to the 2021 death of George Floyd.

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Law Enforcement Concerned About New Wave of Riots in Wake of Tyre Nichols’ Death

M.D. Kittle

Protesters gathered in Milwaukee over the weekend to condemn police brutality following the release of video showing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis Police officers. 

Unlike the scenes of looting, violence and whole city blocks in flame that accompanied the anti-police protests during the long, hot summer of 2020, the demonstrations in Milwaukee and elsewhere were mostly peaceful. 

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The City of Minneapolis Reaches $600,000 Settlement with BLM Protesters Who Sustained Injuries During the 2020 George Floyd Riots

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The city of Minneapolis has agreed to a settlement involving a dozen people who were allegedly injured during the protests and riots after the death of George Floyd in 2020.

In a Wednesday press release, the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that Minneapolis will pay $600,000 to be split among the 12 plaintiffs, meaning they each will get $50,000. ACLU was one of three firms who banded together in a class action lawsuit on behalf of the demonstrators. The case stems from two separate lawsuits that were consolidated.

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Commentary: Google’s Influence on Elections

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There are people who talk nonstop with their dogs and cats. When I get bored, I interrogate machines. My favorite is Google Trends because it shows a lot of things that Democrats would rather you didn’t know. For example, it demonstrates that the main concern of the American people has to do with their sports team and not with sex-change operations and things like that. This leaves Democrats deeply disappointed. A contemporary Democrat is someone who firmly believes that people get out of bed, kneel in front of a picture of the ozone layer, and beat their chests while apologizing to Pachamama for climate change.

With one eye on the elections, I asked Google a few questions, paying special attention to the search trends of American users, and the answers are interesting, to say the least. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, and using George Floyd’s death as an excuse, Democratic discourse focused on stopping the racism that Republicans supposedly encouraged, pretending that this was the country’s biggest problem. But the evolution of Google queries on “racism” reveals a fun fact: no one cared about racism in the least until the Democratic Party decided to bring it into the campaign to capitalize on Floyd’s death. And the funniest thing: that concern disappeared completely the same day Joe Biden became president of the United States, which places his government’s actions in the realm of the paranormal. To put it another way: the old zombie works miracles! As I am suffering a terrible flu (this article might turn out to be posthumous), this miracle has me now seriously thinking of catching a plane, turning up at the White House, and trying to touch the hem of Joe Biden’s robe in a desperate attempt to be healed.

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Homicides Among Young African-Americans Soared in 2020, New Data Reveals

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Recently released statistics by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed a massive increase in youth homicides in 2020, of which African-American youth made up the largest margin.

Youth homicides were up 47% across the nation, the CDC reported Monday. The homicide rate among African-American youth was nearly 15 times higher than that of white Americans and five times the rate of Hispanics. Between 2019 and 2020, the homicide rate for African-Americans between the ages of 15-19 increased by 37.38%, according to CDC data.

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Atlanta Police Got More Money, Not Less, After George Floyd’s Death

The Center Square

The head of an Atlanta suburb made national news when he said that his neighborhood is considering seceding from Atlanta due, in part, to the “defund the police” movement’s impact on public safety.

Buckhead City Committee CEO Bill White said June 28 on Fox & Friends First that an increase in crime was the reason for wanting to leave and criticized then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for supporting the defund the police movement. Buckhead has a population of approximately 100,000 people.

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Property Is Racist, Boston University Professor Says

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A Boston University assistant professor deemed property racist while defending riots in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in a Wednesday video.

Boston University assistant professor Saida Grundy compared looting in the aftermath of George Floyd‘s death to black people “looting themselves” from slavery, according to a video posted by the university. Grundy also urged people not to judge communities’ reactions and to listen to them to address their needs.

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Nashville-Based Jason Whitlock of ‘The Blaze’ Blasts Barack Obama and BLM in Wake of Texas Tragedy

Aaron Gulbransen

In an op-ed titled, “Barack Obama, BLM, and the summer of George Floyd contributed to ‘Uvalde massacre,'” Jason Whitlock of The Blaze said, “As Barack Obama pretends to grieve for the children in Texas, he should make time to recognize that America’s emotional and immature reaction to George Floyd contributed to the slaughter of 19 little kids.”

Whitlock is the host of the program, Fearless with Jason Whitlock, based out of the Nashville area.

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Minnesota Man Shot at Police, Was Beaten, Sued City, Wins $1.5 Million

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A St. Paul man who shot at police during the riots following George Floyd’s death will be paid $1.5 million plus legal fees by the city of Minneapolis.

Jaleel Stallings opened fire on police on May 30, 2020 after they first fired nonlethal ordinance at him from an unmarked vehicle. The officers were enforcing a curfew during the George Floyd riots. Stallings claimed he was acting in self defense, not knowing the police were in fact law enforcement officers. He instead thought they were some of the “white supremacists” Governor Tim Walz had warned were stalking the city during the riots, per the Star Tribune.

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Bar Praised for Trying to Revitalize Dangerous Downtown Minneapolis Reportedly Broken Into

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A bar praised for trying to challenge the public’s perception of downtown Minneapolis as dangerous was broken into, early Monday morning.

Ties Lounge & Rooftop is a recent startup that features four floors where people can congregate to drink and enjoy food. “We really want this place to be a place of healing for people, where people can come back and sit back and enjoy themselves and meet new people, network” one of Ties’s five original cofounders said in a March interview with Fox 9. MinnPost has also profiled the establishment, explaining that the founders “were driven to action by the murder of George Floyd,” taking over a space left vacant after the previous tenants were run out of business by “perceptions of crime.”

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Federal Judge Will Sentence Chauvin to 20 to 25 Years in Prison

The Center Square
Derek Chauvin

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson has accepted Derek Chauvin’s plea agreement and will sentence him to 20 to 25 years in prison, according to a one-page order issued Wednesday.

“At the change-of-plea hearing, the Court deferred accepting Defendant’s plea pending issuance of the preliminary presentence investigation report,” Magnuson said. “That report has now issued, and acceptance of the plea is appropriate.”

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Commentary: Defund the Capitol Police

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U.S. Capitol police uniform

The new intelligence chief of the U.S. Capitol Police is off to a rough start.

Ravi Satkalmi, a former high-ranking NYPD official, took over the Capitol Police’s expanding intelligence unit this month. But his agency suffered a major humiliation Wednesday night after it forced the evacuation of the Capitol and surrounding buildings after spotting “an aircraft that poses a probable threat.” Staff scrambled to exit the buildings in a panic, and news outlets interrupted coverage with “breaking news” bulletins about the suspicious aircraft.

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Dave Stewart: George Floyd Murder Brought Attention to MLB’s Lack of Diversity in Ownership

Peter D'Abrosca

On the heels of the news that World Series Most Valuable Player and Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Dave Stewart will lead a Diverse Equity Ownership Initiative for the Music City Stars baseball organization, Stewart told The Tennessee Star that George Floyd’s murder is one of the reasons why the new initiative exists. 

“Baseball has been – for as long as the sport has been played – it’s been owned, it’s been run by people other than minorities,” Stewart told The Star. “Unfortunately, the George Floyd murder brought attention to a topic that really needed to be addressed by mostly white people in America – and that is what are we practicing in our daily lives, and are we really recognizing the fact that we don’t open ourselves to people other than ourselves?” 

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Google Sued by Black Former Employees for Racial Discrimination

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On Monday, the tech giant Google was sued by a group of black former employees who claimed that they experienced racial discrimination while working at the company.

According to ABC News, the class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the group by far-left attorney Benjamin Crump, who is notorious for representing the families of some of the most prominent figures in the Black Lives Matter movement, including Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd.

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Felony Suspect Bailed Out by Minnesota Freedom Fund Charged with Auto Theft Three Days Later

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Ismail Hussein

The Minnesota Freedom Fund supplied bail for a suspect who had been in custody on a felony charge after being arrested in a stolen vehicle in Bloomington. Three days after being bailed out by the organization, the man stole a vehicle in Minneapolis and crashed it into a building while trying to flee, charges say.

The controversial nonprofit bail fund, MFF, which raised over $40 million in celebrity-fueled donations during and after the George Floyd riots in 2020, has come under fire several times since then. The organization raised millions on the premise that it would bail out any peaceful protesters arrested at the time. But instead, the organization has repeatedly bailed out offenders with violent or lengthy criminal histories, some of whom have subsequently been charged with new crimes while out on bail, including murder, sex crimes and serious assaults.

One recent repeat offender bailed out by MFF is Ismail Mohamed Hussein, 23, of Minneapolis. In addition to having ten prior convictions since 2019, including felony charges of theft and first-degree burglary of an occupied dwelling, Hussein was arrested at least four times in just 23 days in January of this year.

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