Due to an unexpected inability to write, access and update temporarily this site for the past week, very little new material has been added. But that is sure to change within the next few days, beginning with an in depth article about NBA star Jason Collins’s historic announcement to live his life openly and freely. Stay tuned…
![Rep. John Lewis (GA) [IMAGE]](https://americanstatehypocrisy.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/johnlewis.jpg?w=229&h=350)
“Don’t turn away from rap music simply because it’s loud or violent or sexist or lewd – which so much of it is. Don’t turn away from the damage and destruction of drugs by simply declaring ‘war’ on them and filling our prisons with the people who use them. Look hard at where the need for those drugs is coming from. Look hard at what’s behind the anger and rage of that rap music. Pay attention. These are symptoms. They are responses. It is not the heroin-filled syringe of the addict that is the problem. It is not the hateful verses of the gangsta rapper that we must outlaw. It is the conditions and circumstances out of which the user and the gangster spring that must be looked at, understood and addressed. Change the world in which the addict lives and you’ll change his need for the drug. Change the world about which the rapper chants and you will change his words and his music.” – Congressman John Lewis of Georgia from Walking With the Wind: a memoir of the movement.
“The system used the main nonviolent themes of Martin Luther King’s life to present a strategy designed to protect its own interests – imagine the most violent nation on earth, the heir of Indian and African genocide, the only nation ever to drop an atomic bomb on a civilian population, the world’s biggest arms dealer, the country that napalmed over 10 million people in Vietnam (to “save” it from communism), the world’s biggest jailer, waving the corpse of King, calling for nonviolence!”
– Mumia Abu Jamal quoted from Live from Death Row
“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner… and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”
– W.E.B. Du Bois
UPDATE: I am aware I am incredibly late on getting this story out. It’s obviously almost a week from the promised Feb. 27 date. The story took me longer than expected to write and I’m in the process of typing it up now. Thanks for your patience.
Coming Wednesday, February 27, 2013 – Christopher Dorner: ‘Django Unchained?!
The notoriously puzzling case of a former Officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, Christopher Jordan Dorner, has sparked a heated and polarizing debate over the man at the center of the controversy. His opponents contend the man was a ruthless brutal murderer and a ‘cop-killer’, whereas his supporters have knighted him the latest ‘hero’ in a long line of fallen freedom fighters victimized by a corrupt State. The truth, however, may lie somewhere in between. Join us on Wednesday as we examine the recent case of Chris Dorner and the LAPD from a historical perspective. Was he a violent bloodthirsty villain? Or was he instead a casualty of LAPD racism? We’ll be examining the credibility of Dorner’s allegations made in his “manifesto” against the very same police department responsible for some of the biggest scandals of the 1990’s: the beating of Rodney King and the Rampart corruption case.
“…the struggle against the death penalty is bigger than me. The struggle against the prison industrial complex is bigger than me. The struggle for social justice is bigger than me. And they will continue long after I’m gone. Struggle goes on. It’s just important to know which side you’re on.”
–Mumia Abu-Jamal quote from The Classroom and the Cell: conversations on Black life in America w/ Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marc Lamont Hill
United States Hypocrisy 