Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
I happen to despise black men who allow themselves to be used as tools against their community, and I loathe liars. The Attorney General of Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, is both a willing tool of whiteness and a mendacious liar to boot. He certainly earned that pat on the head from his mentor Mitch McConnell as he did his best “yes-sir-massa” jig on Wednesday. Below, we’ll take a look at the transcript of his press conference as he goes out of his way to cover for white supremacy and a criminal justice system that was not designed to recognize the humanity of people who look like him. Made me sick to my stomach as I watched him employ obfuscating legalese to ‘splain away how three white cops murdered an innocent Breonna in her own home and how he and his office did their darnedest to not only deny her justice but to also murder her stellar reputation in the process.
No earthshattering news here, but they lied to us. To be specific, Daniel Cameron lied to the people of Kentucky and to everybody who, despite the history, held out hope that just maybe this time around the system would deliver for us. The liar told us that his office had convened a grand jury to investigate the shooting of Breonna. Wasn’t true. Before they presented the case to the GJ, toady Daniel Cameron and his experts “with more than 200 years of combined career experience” had already decided to exonerate the murderers.
I think it is worth repeating again that our investigation found that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their use of force after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker...
snip//
While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law, these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation show and the grand jury agreed that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in the return of deadly fire after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker. (author’s bold)
So, before the case was presented to the grand jury, Daniel Cameron and his team had already concluded that the cops were justified in pumping six shots into Breonna’s unresisting flesh and thus should not be held accountable for their actions. Of course, this is nothing new. There’s an incestuous, co-dependent relationship between District Attorneys and cops. Cameron — despite shedding crocodile tears about his Black momma — wasn’t there to represent Breonna Taylor; he was there to defend the murderers. That’s how the system was designed to work.
Not only did Cameron work to make sure the murderers would not be charged, but he also egregiously offered Breonna’s former boyfriend — the “soft target” whom they claimed they were looking for on the night of the carnage even though he was already in custody — a plea deal if he’d implicate her in an organized crime syndicate. That’s how much the liar thought of Tamika Palmer's daughter.
There was no video or body camera footage of the officers’ attempted execution of a search warrant at Ms. Taylor’s residence. Video footage begins at the point that area patrol officers arrive at the location.
I’m shocked! No cameras?! Imagine that! No video footage of a police operation in the year 2020. This doesn’t even pass the smell test. There were no cameras because the cops wanted none and we know why. Do you think the coward questioned why cops chose not to have cameras running during this late-night operation? Did they seek to cover up the fact that for 20 agonizingly long minutes, nobody attended to the wounded young woman as she laid in a pool of her own blood? Could the fact that they initially lied about rendering aid an admission of guilt and if so, isn’t that an act of wanton disregard for human life? Wanton disregard for Breonna’s black life, that is.
The success of our legal system is predicated on the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.
Let’s note that this admonition was delivered on behalf of the white cop who attempted to direct 10 bullets through the window of Breonna’s home with wanton disregard for the precious lives within. There was no such consideration for whoever the cops claimed they were looking for that night. Or, for that matter, the more than 721 killed by cops year-to-date.
Detective Hankison fired his weapon 10 times, including from a outside sliding glass door and through a bedroom window. Some bullets traveled through apartment four and into apartment three before some exited that apartment. At the time, three residents of apartment three were at home, including a male, a pregnant female, and a child.
Apartment 3 was occupied by a white family. Their lives were endangered by Hankinson’s reckless behavior that night, but they are all still alive, thank goodness. The one charge announced yesterday had to do with their safety. Daniel Cameron saw to that. Breonna’s neighbors on the other side also had stray bullets sprayed into their apartment. They were not named in the indictment of Hankinson. They, you see, are black.
And then with sanctimonious solemnity, this craven bootlicker decided to lecture us:
If we simply act on emotion or outrage, there is no justice. Mob justice is not justice. Justice sought by violence is not justice. It just becomes revenge. And in our system, criminal justice, isn’t the quest for revenge. It’s the quest for truth, evidence and facts...
How offensive. Cops, with malice aforethought, kicked down the door to Breonna Taylor’s home and fired some 32 (maybe up to 45) shots thereafter. That was violence. That was terrorism. Imagine the fear Breonna and Kenneth felt that night. This complicit trump-lackey failed to present a case to the grand jury to get even one charge against the cops for the violence visited on an innocent employee of the city, but there he stood at the podium lecturing us about justice and mob violence. Lecturing us about strength of character when he didn’t even have the courage to tell Breonna’s mother than the one charge they brought had nothing to do with the killing of her daughter. Gah!
The bottom line is that the unrepentant, arrogant, totally entitled cops who murdered Breonna Taylor on the night of 3/13/2020 are free tonight because weasel Cameron and his experts with 200 years of experience in denying justice for black folks think that while the lives of Breonna’s white neighbors mattered, Breonna’s life did not.
A Call to Action
If his Twitter timeline is any indication, Kentuckians are eagerly looking forward to vote Daniel Cameron out of office in 2023. In the meantime, contact the offices of the Kentucky Attorney General and demand that they release the transcript of the grand jury proceedings.
Please also sign the petition to recall Daniel Cameron.
RIP, Breona. The fight continues...
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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The only person to face charges for his actions in the early hours of March 13, the day Breonna Taylor was killed, was a former Louisville Metro Police officer who, in fact, wasn’t charged with her fatal shooting at all. On Wednesday afternoon, a grand jury handed down to Brett Hankison three charges of wanton endangerment, for shots he fired that could have hit Taylor’s neighbors.
The rage from that decision seized thousands across the country, who marched in the streets of New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland to chant Taylor’s name and raise demands to overhaul the criminal justice system. In Louisville, where city officials had braced for protests since the beginning of the week, closing federal buildings and declaring a state of emergency, two officers were shot and sustained non-life-threatening injuries after responding to reports of shots at around 8:30 pm in a large crowd. The LMPD has a suspect in custody but has not released the name of the alleged shooter, reports the Washington Post.
It’s also unclear at this point whether the gunman was a participant in the protests. Earlier this year, right-wing militias and extremist groups like the Boogaloo Bois have attended Black Lives Matter protests to confront protesters or, in the case of alleged killer Steven Carillo, used the protests as cover to attack federal agents.
New York Times reporter John Eligon, who was on the scene of the Louisville protests, observed that demonstrators had marched peacefully for hours before police in riot gear “confronted protesters and then began pushing them.”
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Because the rise in Black gun ownership appears to be a direct response to the economic and racial strife America is facing. Ozy: BLACK AMERICANS ARE BUYING GUNS IN RECORD NUMBERS
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It was a sweaty summer day in northern Virginia, in a summer full of sweaty days throughout the country, and there were hours long waits for booths inside Sharpshooters Range despite the pandemic. Down the line, shooters in face masks, protective goggles and headsets peppered targets with bullets. Despite the fact that gun owners overwhelmingly trend white, almost half the patrons at Sharpshooters Range were people of color — many of them new shooters accompanied by coaches, such as the middle-aged Black woman who marveled at the kick she felt as the pistol recoiled in her outstretched hands.
This scene is growing increasingly more common across the country, as many African Americans have joined the ranks of gun owners in recent months amid the police killings and heated protests that have enveloped the United States.
That’s according to a survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which shows the largest rise in this period for any demographic. “Bottom line is that there has never been a sustained surge in firearm sales quite like what we are in the midst of,” Jim Curcuruto, the foundation’s director of research and market development, reported in July, as a record 10.3 million firearm transactions were processed by retailers nationwide.
While the country was locked down during the pandemic, involvement in Black gun groups surged. The National African American Gun Association (NAAGA) saw its annual memberships growing by as much a thousand new members a day at its height in May, up to around 35,000 people, while its social media following had three times that amount.
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Like so many tragic stories these days, this one began with an unarmed Black man killed by police over traffic violations. It was April 2001, and mass protests arose in the Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnati, leading to the most destructive U.S. riots since the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Still, with the community reeling, a number of positive reforms emerged in the protests’ wake — particularly, the Minority Business Accelerator, a task force created in 2002 that was dedicated to building scalable companies of color.
Now, nearly two decades later, the MBA has 40 African American and Hispanic firms, each earning more than $1 million in annual revenue, under its wing — generating more than $1 billion in yearly sales and over 3,500 jobs, with plans to double both those statistics by the end of 2022. It’s part of a broader environment dedicated to building up minority entrepreneurs. Among the country’s top 10 cities where minority entrepreneurs are succeeding:
That’s according to analysts at Lending Tree, in a study published last year. And Cincinnati stands out. Other Midwestern cities fared poorly, with St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cleveland ranking among the nation’s worst.
Cincinnati succeeds in part because it has matched minority-owned supply companies with its top science and research companies, from Johnson & Johnson and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to Proctor & Gamble. From its perch within the city’s chamber of commerce, the MBA often finds minority businesses making in the low millions annually and connecting them “with the buying power of that regional or national organization, building their revenue to $20, $30, $40 million or more,” says MBA Executive Director Darrin Redus.
There’s another factor that’s helping minority businesses. “More corporations than ever have diversity and inclusion plans … but are increasingly challenged to find minority firms of size,” Redus says.
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Namwali Serpell has won the UK’s top prize for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke award, for her first novel The Old Drift, which judges described as “stealth sci-fi”.
The Zambian author’s debut tells the stories of three families over three generations, moving from a colonial settlement by Victoria Falls at the turn of the 20th century, to the 1960s as Zambia attempts to send a woman to the moon, and into the near future. A mix of historical fiction, magical realism and sci-fi, Serpell saw off competition from authors including previous winner Adrian Tchaikovsky and Hugo best novel winner Arkady Martine to take the prize. Originally established by the author Arthur C Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in Britain, the award goes to the best sci-fi novel of the year.
Chair of judges Andrew M Butler called The Old Drift “an extraordinary family saga that spans eras from Cecil Rhodes to Rhodes Must Fall, and beyond”, praising it for “interrogat[ing] colonialism from within and point[ing] to the science fictionality of everyday events”.
“The Old Drift is, as one of our judges put it, ‘stealth sci-fi’, with inheritance and infection at its heart,” said Butler. “Our pandemic-ravaged world reminds us how connected our world has been for the last century or more – and this book points to the global nature of science fiction.”
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In January 1984, Tropical Storm Domoina cut a swath of destruction across the southern end of Africa. That included the mud shack in northeastern South Africa where 4-year-old Ntando Kubheka lived. Fortunately, Kubheka’s father had already started work on a formal home when the storm struck, and the family soon had a roof over their heads again. But the memory of being homeless and helpless “has been embossed on my mind,” says Kubheka. “You don’t forget stuff like that.”
Now 40, Kubheka is on a mission to insure the millions of South Africans who have for far too long been denied access to one of the world’s greatest wealth protectors: home insurance. Sugar, the company he launched earlier this year, sidesteps the need to produce a title deed by simply asking homeowners to name a replacement value. “They know how much it’ll cost to build a new one,” says Kubheka.
His off-the-peg shack insurance, in contrast to the traditional type he offers for brick homes, is a case in point: Consumers choose from four predetermined replacement values and buy a voucher that entitles them to 12 months’ coverage. The cheapest option pays out 6,000 South African rand ($360) if a shack is destroyed by fire (informal settlements are plagued by devastating fires), a gas explosion or a natural disaster, and it costs only 170 rand ($10) for the year.
Kubheka’s intimate understanding of his target market is already paying off. Despite launching just before the pandemic struck, Sugar has already attracted almost 5,000 customers, among them Makhadzi Miyen, an auditor at the National Home Builders Registration Council, who recently insured her mother’s house in rural Limpopo through Sugar. “I couldn’t believe how low the premiums were,” says Miyen. And a couple of months ago, when her mom’s water heater burst late one Friday afternoon, she was amazed at Sugar’s prompt response. “Before the weekend was over she had hot water again. That just doesn’t happen in the rural areas,” Miyen says.
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