Roger’s note: Here, believe it or not, is a true story about NRA supported Republican sponsored legislation on gun control. It happened in my and maybe your lifetime; I remember it well. I guess all things are relatives. For Republicans and the NRA when oppressed people begin to arm themselves, that is another thing. In other words, Black Panthers trump (no pun intended) the Second Amendment. Getting back to the present, unless and until Blacks, Latinos, and Women begin to arm themselves en masse; it’s open season on assault gun sales. Government tyranny must be addressed; and when the attack begins we will need those AK-15 to mow down as many as we can of those government soldiers, even though, of course, we support our troops.
Huffingtonpost, 01/06/2016 01:38 pm ETUpdated Dec 21, 2016
Nearly 50 years ago, a group of armed Black Panthers entered the California state Capitol to protest a gun control bill.
If you’re not familiar with the history of protest in the U.S., you might not know that the armed occupation of government buildings hasn’t always been just for white guys. In fact, on May 2, 1967, a group of 30 Black Panthers walked into the California state Capitol building, toting rifles and shotguns and quickly garnering national headlines.
Just to be clear, there are a world of differences between the Black Panthers’ demonstration and what’s happening in Oregon now (although it is noteworthy that you have to go back to 1967 to find an example of black activists doing something even remotely analogous). The two groups employed different tactics, fought for different causes and — predictably — elicited different reactions in vastly different places and times. But the 1967 incident serves as one example of the way Americans tend to respond to black protest — which some say is always likely to be different from the way Americans react when it’s white people doing the protesting.
SACRAMENTO BEE/MCT VIA GETTY IMAGES
Members of the Black Panthers hold guns during the group’s protest at the California Assembly in May 1967.
In October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense as a small community organization based in Oakland, California. Its members — including the 30 people who would travel to Sacramento the following May — believed that black Americans should exercise their constitutional right to defend themselves against an oppressive U.S. government. At the time, California lawmakers were trying to strip them of that right, and the Black Panthers wanted to tell the U.S., and the world, that they found this unacceptable.
Among other things, the Black Panthers’ agenda involved taking up arms and patrolling their communities to protect against rampant racism in policing. And that’s what they did in the first few months of the party’s existence, carrying guns openly in compliance with California law, driving around their neighborhoods, observing arrests and other law enforcement activity — effectively policing the police. Newton was even known for packing a law book alongside his rifle that he’d recite from when informing an officer that a civilian’s rights were being violated.
The patrols weren’t meant to encourage violence. The Panthers were committed to using force only if it was used against them, and at first, their mere presence appeared to be working as a check on abusive policing. But the Panthers’ willful assertion of their rights — like the day Newton reportedly stood up to a cop in front of a crowd of black onlookers — was unacceptable to white authority figures who’d come to expect complete deference from black communities, and who were happy to use fear and force to extract it.
Don Mulford, a GOP assemblyman who represented Oakland, responded to the Black Panther police patrols in 1967 with a bill to strip Californians of the right to openly carry firearms.
Nobody tried to stop the 30 Black Panthers — 24 men and six women, carrying rifles, shotguns and revolvers — as they walked through the doors of the state Capitol building on May 2 of that year. This was decades before Sept. 11 or the Oklahoma City bombing, and the protesters were, after all, legally allowed to have their weapons. They entered with their guns pointed at the ceiling. Behind them followed a horde of journalists they’d called to document the protest.
As the rest of the group waited nearby, six Panthers entered the assembly chamber, where they found lawmakers mid-session. Some legislators reportedly saw the protesters and took cover under desks. It was the last straw: Police finally ordered the protesters to leave the premises. The group maintained they were within their rights to be in the Capitol with their guns, but eventually they exited peacefully.
Outside, Seale delivered the Black Panther executive mandate before a crush of reporters. This section of remarks, reprinted in Hugh Pearson’s The Shadow of the Panther, still resonates today:
“Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people. All of these efforts have been answered by more repression, deceit and hypocrisy. As the aggression of the racist American government escalates in Vietnam, the police agencies of America escalate the oppression of black people throughout the ghettoes of America. Vicious police dogs, cattle prods, and increased patrols have become familiar sights in black communities. City Hall turns a deaf ear to the pleas of black people for relief from this increasing terror.”
Shortly after Seale finished, police arrested the group on felony charges of conspiracy to disrupt a legislative session. Seale accused them of manufacturing “trumped up charges,” but the protesters would later plead guilty to lesser misdemeanors.
Mulford’s legislation, which became known as the “Panthers Bill,” passed with the support of the National Rifle Association, which apparently believed that the whole “good guy with a gun” thing didn’t apply to black people. California Gov. Ronald Reagan (R), who would later campaign for president as a steadfast defender of the Second Amendment, signed the bill into law.
Although the May 2 demonstration failed to sway lawmakers into voting against the Mulford Act — and may have even convinced some of them that such a measure was necessary — it did succeed in making the Black Panthers front-page news. Headlines ran above evocative photos of armed black protesters, many wearing berets, bomber jackets and dark sunglasses, walking the halls of the California Capitol. And the American public’s response to that imagery reflected a nation deeply divided on the issue of race.
On one hand, such a defiant demonstration of black power served as recruitment fodder for the Black Panther Party, which had previously only been operating in the Bay Area. It grew in size and influence, opening branches in a number of major cities, building a presence on college campuses and ultimately surging to as many as 5,000 members across 49 local chapters in 1969.
The party even attracted a number of radical-leaning white supporters — many of whom were moved by the Black Panthers’ lesser-remembered efforts, like free breakfasts for children in black neighborhoods, drug and alcohol abuse awareness courses, community health and consumer classes and a variety of other programs focused on the health and wellness of their communities.
But it was clear from the moment the Black Panthers stepped inside the California Capitol that the nuances of the protest, and of Seale’s message, weren’t going to be understood by much of white America. The local media’s initial portrayal of the brief occupation as an “invasion” would lay the groundwork for the enduring narrative of the Black Panthers first and foremost as a militant anti-white movement.
SACRAMENTO BEE
The front page of The Sacramento Bee on the night of the protest.
In August 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took steps to ensure that public support for the Black Panthers would remain marginal. In a memorandum just months after the armed protest, he deemed the group a “black nationalist, hate-type organization“ to be neutralized by COINTELPRO, a controversial initiative that notoriously skirted the law in its attempts to subvert any movement that Hoover saw as a potential source of civil disorder. A 2012 report further uncovered the extent of the agency’s activity, revealing that an FBI informant had actually provided the Black Panthers with weapons and training as early as 1967.
As the Panthers’ profile grew in the months and years following the California Capitol protest, so too did their troubles — something that many of the Panthers themselves regarded as no coincidence. Just two months after Hoover put the Black Panthers in his sights, Newton was arrested and convicted of killing Oakland police officer John Frey, a hotly contested development and the first in a series of major, nationwide controversies that engulfed the movement. (Newton ultimately served two years of his sentence before his conviction was overturned in a set of appeals.)
The strength of the Black Panthers ebbed and flowed in the years leading up to the organization’s dissolution in 1982. The party struggled to find a balance between its well-intentioned community efforts and its reliance on firepower and occasional violence to bolster its hardened image. High-profile shootouts with police and arrests of members created further rifts in the group’s leadership and helped cement the white establishment’s depiction of Black Panthers as extremists.
Many white Americans couldn’t get over their first impression of the Black Panthers. Coverage of the 1967 protest introduced them to the party, and the fear of black people exercising their rights in an empowered, intimidating fashion left its mark. To them, the Black Panthers were little more than a group of thugs unified behind militaristic trappings and a leftist political ideology. And to be fair, some members of the party were criminals not just in the minds of frightened white people.
The Black Panther protest in 1967 is not the “black version” of what’s happening in Oregon right now. Those demonstrators entered the state Capitol lawfully, lodged their complaints against a piece of racially motivated legislation and then left without incident. But for those who see racial double standards at play in Oregon, the scope and severity of the 1967 response — the way the Panthers’ demonstration brought about panicked headlines, a prolonged FBI sabotage effort and support for gun control from the NRA, of all groups — will serve as confirmation that race shapes the way the country reacts to protest.
This article has been updated to specify that one has to go as far back as 1967 to find black activists — rather than any activists of color at all — participating in a protest similar to the Oregon occupation.
Roger’s note: Youth have always been at the head of social and revolutionary change. I wonder if they are aware of the antecedent for the cheer: “Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today?” Substitute LBJ for NRA and it takes you back to 1968.
POLITICS Huffpost
02/19/2018 12:39 pm
Several student-led demonstrations also erupted across Florida on Presidents Day.
The demonstration was organized by Teens For Gun Reform, an organization created by students in the Washington, D.C., area in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Protesters participated in what they said would be a three-minute lie-in, which began around 12:30 p.m. on Presidents Day. They lay down in front of the White House “in representation of the victims of school shootings,” according to a post on the group’s Facebook page.dogu
ZACH GIBSON/GETTY IMAGES
Demonstrators on the ground during a lie-in demonstration supporting gun control reform on Monday.
“By doing this, we will make a statement on the atrocities which have been committed due to the lack of gun control, and send a powerful message to our government that they must take action now,” the group wrote on Facebook.
Following the lie-in, protesters continued to hold signs in support of stricter guns laws and shouted phrases including “Shame on you” and “Disarm hate” toward the White House. The group also chanted “No more deaths,” “Am I next?” and “Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?”
ZACH GIBSON/GETTY IMAGES
Protesters hold signs during the demonstration against gun violence.
Last week’s massacre at the South Florida high school, in which a 19-year-old former student opened fire using an assault-style rifle, sparked protests and calls to action from students nationwide.
A group of students who survived the Parkland shooting have been outspoken in their criticism of Trump and lawmakers who receive financial contributions from gun lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association.
Whitney Bowen and Eleanor Nuechterlein, both 16-year-old high school students from the D.C. area, started Teens For Gun Reform just two days after the Parkland shooting.
We might be 16 now and we might not be able to vote, but we can protest and we can use social media and we will make our voices heard.Whitney Bowen, co-founder of Teens For Gun Reform
“You never wake up thinking it’s going to be your school or it’s going to be your friends or family,” Bowen told HuffPost. “The Parkland kids didn’t either. … They woke up and went to school for the last time because there’s not enough gun control.”
Monday’s protest at the White House was planned on Presidents Day for symbolic reasons, Nuechterlein said. It’s not enough for President Donald Trump and other politicians to say “sorry” after school shootings, she said, they also need to start taking real legislative action to prevent them from happening.
Both Bowen and Nuechterlein said they plan to attend next month’s march on Washington.
“We might be 16 now and we might not be able to vote, but we can protest and we can use social media and we will make our voices heard,” Bowen said. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to politics. It comes down to kids dying in classrooms.”
Elodie Camus, a 15-year-old student at the British International School of Washington, D.C., participated in the White House protest Monday with her mother
.
U.S. gun laws “have put so many people in danger over the years in this country and there needs to be reform,” Camus told HuffPost, adding that she no longer feels “safe at all” at school.
“Something needs to be changed so not as many people are harmed,” she said.
Felicia Garber, whose two daughters survived the Parkland shooting, was in D.C. with her family when she heard about Monday’s protest and decided to attend the demonstration.
“We felt it was important to be present and thank the people who felt it was worth coming out here on this cold, dreary, rainy holiday to help let whoever is in this beautiful White House know that we will not take this any longer,” Garber told HuffPost.
“These legislators need to step up for our children and not just for these lobbyists,” she continued. ”[Parkland] kids are smart, educated, savvy … and they are outraged. These are young adults who are ready and unforgiving, and I can only hope this is the beginning of the change they can create for our country.”
Several other student-led protests against gun violence erupted across Florida on Monday. Students staged a walk out at Olympic Heights Community High School in West Boca Raton, while parents joined their kids in front of American Heritage School in Plantation just 30 miles to the south.
Another student-led protest in response to the Stoneman Douglas High massacre. This one is happening now outside American Heritage School. The kids, joined by some parents, are demanding more gun control. @nbc6
Roger’s note: Last week a nine year old girl from New Jersey was on vacation with her family in Arizona where she was taken to a gun range (the Last Stop shooting range) by her parents where she was given a Uzi sub-machine gun to fire at a target. Something went wrong, probably with the weapon’s recoil, and she occidentally shot and killed the instructor at her side. Unlike the article below, I am not making this up.
AUGUST 28, 2014
BY ANDY BOROWITZ
CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY SVEN NACKSTRAND/AFP/GETTY
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Across the United States on Wednesday, a heated national debate began on the extremely complex issue of children firing military weapons.
“Every now and then, the nation debates an issue that is so complicated and tricky it defies easy answers,” says pollster Davis Logsdon. “Letting small children fire automatic weapons is such an issue.”
Logsdon says that the thorny controversy is reminiscent of another ongoing national debate, about whether it is a good idea to load a car with dynamite and drive it into a tree.
“Many Americans think it’s a terrible idea, but others believe that with the correct supervision, it’s perfectly fine,” he says. “Who’s to say who’s right?”
Similar, he says, is the national debate about using a flamethrower indoors. “There has been a long and contentious national conversation about this,” he says. “It’s another tough one.”
Much like the long-running national debates about jumping off a roof, licking electrical sockets, and gargling with thumbtacks, the vexing question of whether children should fire military weapons does not appear headed for a swift resolution.
“Like the issue of whether you should sneak up behind a bear and jab it with a hot poker, this won’t be settled any time soon,” he says.
Roger’s note: I am reminded of the drop drills we had when I was in elementary school in the immediate post WWII years. In case of atomic attack, the teacher would yell “DROP!” and we would dive under our desks. This surely would have protected us from an atomic blast. Security is not a matter of weapons or bullet proof accessories, but rather a just social and economic system. Of course, fear mongering is good and profitable for enterprising capitalists such as the one described here. So, hurry, get your bullet proof blanket today, supplies are limited! And pick up your automatic weapon and rounds while you’re at it!
When will they ever learn?
06.10.14 – 11:13 AM, Common Dreams
by Abby Zimet
An Oklahoma podiatrist has designed the Bodyguard Blanket, a bulletproof pad offering “an extra layer of protection” against “90% of all weapons that have been used in school shootings in the United States.” In their soft-focus, schmaltzy-music-festooned video, kids romp on “just an ordinary day” until – dark music for “when seconds count” – they dutifully strap on their blankets and hunch on the floor under some capitalist’s wet dream of a money-making scheme because that’s all the kids will have thanks to gutless politicians who’ve failed to do anything else to protect them against our national lunacy, and no this is not The Onion.
#2 pencils
3 ring binder
loose leaf notebook paper
blue or black ink pen
backpack
lunch money
bullet proof blanket
bullet proof helmet
Gun (if you’re a good kid…that way you can kill bad kids)
a conformist attitude
manners
a battle plan
bullet proof vest
Lesson of the day: The pledge of Allegiance and American exceptionalism
…and be sure to wear clean underwear, just in case.
…and make sure you hug Mommy before leaving for the school bus.
…and feed the dog because you never know when or if you will be coming back home.
Published: 12:00 a.m., May 5, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon
Two weeks ago, an undergraduate woman at the University of Oregon was sexually assaulted. She wasn’t the only one: Statistically, on a campus of 20,000 students, it’s likely that at least 10 women were sexually assaulted that week, and 2,175 of the women currently enrolled will have been assaulted before graduation.
They are assaulted by friends they trusted, by acquaintances, by classmates, by partners, and, rarely, by strangers. Most of these assaults are not reported to any authority, and most perpetrators suffer no penalties.
In January, President Obama appointed a task force to begin to address the problem of campus sexual violence, and the task force released their report last week. The report highlights four action items: collecting better data on the extent of the problem, evidence-based prevention programs such as bystander intervention, improved institutional responses, and more effective enforcement. These are all excellent and much-needed steps.
However, the task force’s suggestions leave out an important prevention strategy, and I believe that by doing so they do women a grave disservice. Here is the problem: What is a woman to do when her friend, acquaintance, date or partner begins to assault her? Is she to sit and wait for a bystander to intervene, or for data to be collected? Or is there something she can do in that moment, or perhaps even earlier, to prevent the assault?
There actually is something she can do, and it is very effective: She could learn basic skills to prevent and respond to assault. Self-defense classes have been taught in the United States since the 1970s, developed by feminists who saw rape and other forms of violence against women as a key source of social inequality. The best classes are holistic, teaching awareness and verbal self-defense as well as physical self-defense.
Emerging research on self-defense training is finding that these classes are very effective in preventing sexual assault. They don’t just teach women how to stop assault once they happen — they actually prevent assaults from happening in the first place. In addition to reducing women’s risk of violence, these classes are also extraordinarily empowering, increasing women’s self-confidence and decreasing their fear throughout their lives. Self-defense training may also have mental health benefits, such as decreasing depression and anxiety.
So why not include self-defense training in our portfolio of prevention strategies? Some people simply don’t believe that women can be strong enough to effectively fight back against violence. However, women defend themselves from violence all the time, even without self-defense training, and their resistance often stops assault.
One recent study found that when women used physical resistance strategies during an attack, there was an 85 percent decrease in the odds of being raped.
Other critics argue that advocating self-defense implies that women bear responsibility for stopping assault. But regardless of whether they defend themselves or not, victims are never responsible for assault. Indeed, every self-defense teacher I’ve ever seen has taken great pains to make clear that the only ones responsible for violence are perpetrators, and that women should not be blamed if they choose not to resist or if they are unsuccessful in doing so.
In addition to the important strategies suggested by the task force, college campuses should make self-defense training available to all women. Learning self-defense doesn’t replace these other strategies — but it ensures that until the other strategies begin to work, women have the backup skills to protect themselves, rather than waiting for someone else to intervene.
We know that learning self-defense reduces women’s risk of assault. To leave this important strategy out of our college sexual assault plan is to deny women access to information that may protect them from assault — right now, not at some vague time in the future.
Jocelyn Hollander is an associate professor and head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon.
Roger’s note: I am not that big on organized Christianity or the nativity myth, but there are some few who call themselves Christian who actually do reflect the ethic of love and peace. And I am big on remembering Trayvon Martin and the institutionalized racism and gun industry that were responsible for his murder as much as the fool Zimmerman.
Posted: 12/27/2013 1:41 pm EST | Updated: 12/27/2013 6:02 pm EST Huff Post
Trayvon Martin hasn’t been forgotten at Claremont United Methodist Church in Claremont, Cali.– in fact, he appears front and center in their Nativity display. He serves as a bloody and tragic reminder of the dangers of gun violence and racial privilege in today’s America, reports David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.
Amongst the traditional holy family, Martin sits hunched over in his iconic black hoodie, blood pouring from his chest and pooling at his feet, reports Patch.com. The title of the scene, “A Child is Born, a Son is Given,” is outlined within the blood and evokes themes of both Christmas and Easter, according to artist John Zachary, who has been creating thought-provoking displays since 2007.
Zachary told Allen in an interview that the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot the unarmed teenager in 2012, “struck him as a worthy subject for Christmas comment.”
“There is no better time to reflect on gun violence than advent, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus,” says a sign at the church.. “Jesus was born into a state of total vulnerability as an innocent, unarmed child during a time of great violence much like Trayvon Martin.”
As families gather together at Christmas to celebrate, Zachary hopes to get them to think long and hard about their own blessings and privileges. He told Allen that many Christmas traditions of gifts reflect “privilege, and there’s a lot of people who don’t have that privilege. Maybe I should do something that’s provocative, that’s more in keeping with the teachings of Jesus.”
Artist John Zachary
This isn’t the first time that the church has used the Nativity as an opportunity to remind people about issues of social justice and inequality, which probably would have been of great concern to Jesus himself. Past displays have included Jesus and Mary as a homeless couple struggling to feed their newborn child, as Iraqi refugees next to U.S. soldiers, as immigrants from Mexico stopped by the wall at the border, among others. In 2011, Zachary’s Nativity display was of the outlines of three couples, two of them same-sex, gathering under the banner “Christ Is Born.”
Sharon Rhodes-Wickett, lead pastor at the church, told Allen that she finds this year’s scene difficult to look at, due to its violence. “It’s hard to look at a young man who’s shot and bleeding to death,” she said. “But even though I’m uncomfortable, that’s the point. We have to take a look at the violence.”
Response to the display has been surprisingly muted. “I thought this would be more controversial, but I come to find out people don’t really like people getting shot,” Zachary told Allen. “They may not agree what to do about it, but they agree it’s a bad thing.”
Rhodes-Wickett said that her congregation is progressive, and that “Most people like something that makes us think and makes us search our hearts.”
One more time: A guy – an unstable veteran who drank alot, suffered from anger management and other ill-defined mental issues, and “had a gun at all times” – killed at least 12 people at a D.C. Navy yard. There have been so many mass shootings in this country, and this country alone, that there are currently several battling definitions for mass shootings. If one uses the FBI definition – a spree in which four or more people are killed in one location – there have been six mass shootings in the past nine months and 20 during Obama’s presidency. If you broaden the definition to include people killed or wounded in the spree, as the folks at the database Guns Are Cool have reasonably done, the number comes to 250 in 2013, or almost one a day. Yes. Almost one a day. You can scroll down them. Scroll and scroll. While details are still emerging on this latest travesty, we do know a few things: that gun freaks should shut up already with their crap about how none of this would have happened if there had been more guns at the Navy yard – a notion Chris Hayes obliterates right quick – and that the body count in this country is well past obscene. Obama called the shooting “a cowardly act.” You wanna see a cowardly act? Congress persistently, unfathomably, unconscionably failing to halt the bloodshed.
A National Receipt from the 45 senators who blocked gun control, and who received $8,165,490 from the NRA and other gun-toting advocates. From Demand Action.
roger hollander 
Posted: 12/27/2013 1:41 pm EST | Updated: 12/27/2013 6:02 pm EST Huff Post