Showing posts with label Las Vegas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Las Vegas. Show all posts

Monday, November 6, 2017

America can’t spell USA

America can’t spell USA

by Matt Bright

America, you are a lot. This is usually the time of year where we are planning our holiday shopping for some reason like Christmas is two days away from Halloween.   

Instead it feels like this entire White House Administration is the steroid shot to racism, white supremacy, and bigotry. Fox News, Alex Jones, and Breitbart giving dosages of ignorance and the constant refill prescription from Ben Shapiro, Tomi Lauren, and Tucker Carlson of cognitive dissonance. 

American citizens of color are having their rights either trampled or overall denied. Charlottesville, Las Vegas, and now New York are all very tragic and received different responses that we all need to ingest and see as the covert racism it is. 

Charlottesville we had to wait for a response to get all the facts, three days for that shit. Finally giving us a “very fine people” or that blame was on both sides. That Nazis and White Supremacists deserve a voice in our democracy and then coining the idiot phrase “alt-left.” 

You waited for the facts on this? The facts led you to the conclusion that violence is wrong. Anyone with a brain knows that. Secondly, this is the same person who wishes for the “good ole days” where they could “knock’em out.” 
How about the police convention where he encouraged officers to not protect their heads when they put them in the squad. You literally said you grab women by their crotch but now after a white supremacist plows into a crowd killing one and injuring multiple others you #AllLivesMatter violence by saying: "it’s all bad." You’d drown in hypocrisy if you weren’t unfortunately the racist uncle that got elected President. 


Las Vegas he was damn near silent with no real solutions. Then New York happens and the whole system has to be up ended, the same day. The Las Vegas shooter was a millionaire old white guy who killed 50 plus and injured 600 more at a country music festival. America, we have finally found something more important than white people.

Guns. 

President called NFL players son’s of bitches. General John Kelly said the Civil War happened because of unwillingness to compromise like that was bad thing. This McPick two of racism with a side of revisionist sauce is just the type of malnutrition Trump supporters eat for lunch, breakfast, and #WhiteLivesMatter rallies.

Black Identity Extremists, a new distinction by the FBI to group together black nationalists and separatists as a movement. The words “Black Identity” together says that it is literally extreme to identify as Black in America. Such a broad generalization puts Black Lives Matter Groups that peacefully protest will be thrown under this dumb umbrella of bullshit by the public. 

A young woman at a college (Stanford University) is defiled, harassed, and downright disrespected by her roommate, and that story in detail is gruesome. The roommate referred to her on Instagram as The Jamaican Barbie. Another student at K-State (Kansas State) University was also a victim of racial intimidation when students vandalized his car with “Go Home Nigger Boy.” (Turns out this student made this up and has since apologized. He'll be held accountable for this, but when white folks do black face, it's all in good fun.)

College campuses these days are the breeding ground for racists and where progressive ideas go to die. After Richard Spencer was clearly caught on video giving Nazi salutes and sieg heiling Donald Trump like the new Führer, campuses are like: Let’s see what else he has to say, let’s here all the viewpoints. We can not view Nazi and white supremacy positions as viable paths to unity and progression. I don’t see anyone in America giving a platform to The Monarch Party of America, or The Neo-Colonialists Party. (Yes that’s dumb, but so is giving a Dick a stage to spout messaging from the 1930’s in 2017.)

His speech is weaponized, it’s not an open discussion about why white supremacy is good or bad. It’s a reinforcement and recruitment tool, especially since these are not paid engagements and the universities don’t even want him on campus. 

In Tennessee there was a #WhiteLivesMatter Rally that ended with a Mob terrorizing and fighting an interracial couple. That rally was racist as shit by the way. 
No one was chanting “Bring Back Friends. Bring back Friends.” Or “Whose bucks? Starbucks!..Who’s Bucks?...Starbucks!” 

It was the same people from Charlottesville just different branding at this “rally.” 
This is like chicken tenders at McDonald’s. Those are still chicken strips McDonald’s! You learned a new word (Buttermilk) and put them in a fancy box, fed it to the public as new and better, but it’s the same shit.

Just. Like. Racism. 

This is just in the last few weeks and there’s more. People still seem to think racism is made up, that we’re just buying into the narrative of mainstream media, which at its core is racist as it gives the notion that black and brown audiences do not know how to identify racism or that they are being outsmarted. 

That black and brown audiences do not have the mental capacity to see that news media is just fueling a race war and wants to divide us, meanwhile the entire White House Administration can’t seem to identify the bad guys in these riots and displays of intimidation but the White Supremacists and Nazis of this nation go unchecked, Get respected media presence, and are giving a seat at the table to hear their grievances with the country that will take it back to the 1800’s, but hey Marcus and Myeshia you’re just playing into the hand of the powers that be. 

Reclaiming my time, this is why we kneel, and I’m voting for everybody black. 


2017 sums up like this: No Hoods required. 

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

(Opinion) Children are not the Future

In America we send thoughts and prayers as ways to deal with the chaos, frenzy, and anxiety after events like what happened in Las Vegas. We think about other's loved ones as if they were our own, because it's natural, it seems, to think how you would feel in moments of crisis such as Las Vegas.

This outcry of sympathy makes us all feel like we are healing together. As we do things like change our profile picture, or make a post with the hashtag installed within it. We move and act with solidarity with those who are affected.

When it comes to mass shootings, all that just feels empty.
When it comes to police involved killings, It feels hopeless.

Why do you ask such a correlation?
I say this to say: we do not care about the children in this country.
Sandy Hook was on my mind the other day, and as the reports rolled in about what happened yesterday in Las Vegas. All I could think was: We will be in this same predictament next year.
Children died in the school they went to at the hands of a young man who was not well that indiscriminately took his illogical frustration, rage, violent, and visceral thoughts out on the youth of this country.

We did nothing about the access to guns and weaponry. We sent more prayers and thoughts.
When Pulse Nightclub happened, to myself again I thought: "If we won't do anything about guns after children are killed we won't do anything about this either."

No effective action was taken by our legislatures. It continued, the thought that crept up. We watched news anchors die on live TV, more mass shooters take lives in the name of whatever their decree was.
I continue to be normalized by all of this, because the moment had passed. The time to act was then, and our representatives, our legislatures did nothing.

Children died senselessly at the feet of our country and we said: "We must protect our freedom."
Does a country that won't protect it's most vulnerable, most innocent, and most important part of society deserve freedom?

Tamir Rice was shot by police in a park for playing with a Toy Gun. Our country saw this video in which he was killed within two seconds and said to itself: "It wasn't marked properly."
We lost the life of a child that day (It wasn't the last.). We did nothing to protect children from the force of police brutality. No protections put in place by our leaders, as body counts continue to increase from state violence.

Our government with the most power to change the outcomes, to decrease the real dangers so that there isn't another Las Vegas, Orlando, or pick a mass shooting at this juncture, sends thoughts and prayers.
Acknowledgements at this point are routine, no matter how genuine it may seem, another bullet point on the cue card of how to not act on gun violence.
Our government who can protect the youngest amongst us so that there isn't another Tamir Rice sits back on sympathy to secure re-election and neutrality to keep lobby dollars in their pockets.

I can point to many instances where we don't think about children, how they interact with this world, and how we will preserve it for them. To even say we have enough laws in place already is a slap in the face to the ever growing list of families losing their children to these tragic events. All the donations, all the efforts by our society are for nothing when the very people we elect act as if they are powerless to do anything.

Despite our countries inefficiency and inability, children still acheive great things. Malala Yousafzai, Jack Andraka, Little Miss Flint, and many others like them. They see a world in danger, that is injured, and want to heal it. These are the types of children that care what their world looks like more than we do and will do anything to shape it in their image of equality, happiness, and love for others.

As elders, as adults, as leaders, and as the caretakers of this world until it is their turn to lead the generation after them. Why don't we protect them? Why don't we act when we lose them like we did in Sandy Hook, when we lose a Tamir Rice or TyShawn Lee, when something takes them away from us that children had no control over?
I told you, the children are not our future. They are shaping their own.