On 4/10/2014 1:38 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 4/10/14, 2:29 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/10/2014 12:05 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:


All the cites quote back to a 20-year-old item that allegedly
appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, and virtually all the cites
are from right-wing sites. I've never seen a cite that
definitively proves Jackson said any such thing.



You'd deny he said it even if you originally reported in the Kansas
Star that he *did*. The statement has been (and remains) directly
quoted in many different sources. What one *cannot* find anywhere
is a report that he never said it, nor what he meant by it. You
claim never to have seen a cite that definitively proves Jackson
said any such thing, yet you previously tried to explain away what
he meant by it. If he never said it, why do you need to explain
it?

One of the problems in our society is that racism exists and it
originates from all sides and people, whites, blacks, brown,
yellow, whatever. Unfortunately a few (including Jesse Jackson
and Al Sharpton) have made the issues of racial relationships and
conflicts a means of making a very good living. That's what they
do.


No person or entity in politics has had more success being racist
than the Republican Party since the mid-1960s. About all the GOP has
these days is racism and hatred and division.

That is so wrong, that it is a lie. Stop lying.



Detroit violence has reached a tipping point
By Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press (MI) April 14, 2014 6:55 am


Driver of pickup.

Driver of pickup.
So what are we going to do now?

I'm not asking what black people are going to do.

I'm not asking what white people are going to do.

I'm asking what we all are going to do about the violence escalating in
our region.

The conversation didn't begin with the beating of Steve Utash, the white
Macomb County tree trimmer who was brutally attacked after stopping to
help a black child he hit by his truck.

We've been talking about it all the time, about ?

.... the elderly women who've been raped

.... the elderly security guard shot while patrolling his church grounds

.... the 17-year-old with a future shot by a guy who didn't like how he
looked at him

.... the young woman shot on the stoop of a man who didn't bother to look
out through the door to see who was there

.... the elderly men and veterans attacked at gas stations

.... and the stand-your-ground incidents of people shooting home intruders.

We can stop the train and treat the violence like it's a problem for all
of us. Or we can keep pointing fingers.

Since the Utash beating, some people have been upset that everybody's
upset. Some white folks want Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to come and
march in honor of Utash. (No, I don't get it either). Some black people
are asking where the outrage has been over the other instances of crime
that have plagued the city for so long that we stopped counting the victims.

Why didn't the community care in a big way until a black mob beat a
white guy?

That is the wrong question. The question is: Why didn't the community
care in a big way until THIS guy?

And that is why we need to stop the train.

Everyone cared so much this time because this community, this entire
community that includes three counties, more than a hundred townships
and the state's only true urban city, finally reached its tipping point.

Defined by author Malcolm Gladwell as "the moment of critical mass, the
threshold, the boiling point, when an idea, trend, or social behavior
crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire," the Utash beating
brought to a boil all the outrage over every beating, every shooting,
every killing, every assault.

Most of us aren't more outraged by what happened to Utash. It was just
the incident that made so many of us say: "Enough."

There have been dozens of innocent victims of crime in our
neighborhoods, day after day after day. We have mourned them all. We
have talked about them. I have written about many of them.

They weren't all in Detroit.

A Grosse Pointe man hired a hit man to kill his wife.

A St. Clair Shores woman was charged with killing her 32-year-old son,
dismembering his body and stuffing his remains in garbage bags.

Utash -- who was awake Friday, his family said, for the first time since
the beating -- wasn't just innocent, like so many victims.

Steve Utash was innocent, AND he was doing a good deed. He could have
driven away from a kid crumpled in the street. Instead, he got out of
his truck and went to try to tend to him.

And a mob stopped him from helping a kid.

The beating and its aftermath have ignited a conversation that -- if we
put on our big-girl and big-boy pants and just do it -- could change the
way we see each other and could go a long way toward easing decades-old
racial tensions in our state.

Jerry Carr was right. The Grosse Pointe Park security consultant and
musician said it's time for black people to have a conversation with
black people about the violence in predominantly black Detroit.

But it's also time for white people to have a conversation with other
white people who can help them understand that not all black people are
alike. And you can no more call me and blame me for a mob attack than I
will call you and blame you for a kid stabbing 22 people at one school
or shooting 26 at another elementary school.

Those kids didn't represent all white people. That mob on Detroit's east
side doesn't represent all black people. But we still need to do
something about all of it, all of us.

We have reached a tipping point.

What are going to do with it?

___

(c)2014 the Detroit Free Press