It’s been more than a year since NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand for equal justice and against unconstitutional policing by taking a knee during the singing of the national anthem at the start of football games. A year later, he is still being made to pay the price for daring to speak out against racial injustice, discrimination and bigotry.
But the backlash against the outspoken QB has grown from sharp criticism and blame for the league’s slipping television viewership into him being blackballed and made an example of by NFL teams.
In a league where solid, competitive quarterbacks are hard to come by, Kaepernick is being told that none of the NFL franchises could benefit from his athletic services.
One might argue that such is the price a professional athlete pays for being compensated with millions of dollars annually for playing a team sport by team owners who clearly represent the ruling 1 percent.
NFL owners, executives and others might argue that athletes aren’t paid to think or to voice their personal opinions about the social and political issues of the day. But are they being handsomely compensated to shut up and play ball, a notion that inspired the concept of a $60 million slave?
On May 13, 2017 Trayvon Martin will be honored with posthumous bachelor’s degree in aeronautical science from Florida Memorial University.
The bachelor’s degree in “Aeronautical Science with a concentration in Flight Education” will be conferred to Trayvon Martin, the school said, “in honor of the steps he took during his young life toward becoming a pilot.”
Florida Memorial University is a historically black college in Miami Gardens, Florida where Trayvon Martin lived at the time of his death.
Martin had a “love of flying,” the school says, and had aspired to become a pilot.
Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, Martin’s parents, will accept the degree on their son’s behalf at Florida Memorial University’s commencement ceremony on May 13, the school announced this week. Born in February 1995, Martin would be 22 years old, an age many US college students attain a bachelor’s degree.
Fulton is an alumnus of the school, and the university already houses the Trayvon Martin Foundation, co-founded by Trayvon’s parents.
It’s an outdated, tired line of psychological manipulation (guilt trip) used as a means to influence society to elect their own systematic loss of inherent freedoms and independence by making them think they MUST make a choice… it’s called SUFFRAGE.
But the truth is PEOPLE ARE STILL DYING and more people have died BECAUSE of our right to vote then those who have died FOR the right. Take a look at the death tolls in the same war that’s been going on for the 4 different elections we have voted in; deaths are still rising regardless of who we vote for because we choose from the choices of the manipulators who replace our freedoms with fears…that’s called SUFFERANCE!
SUFFRAGE – The right to vote, especially in a political election.
SUFFERANCE – Passive permission resulting from lack of interference; tolerance, especially of something wrong or illegal.
Psychological manipulationis a type ofsocial influencethat aims to change the behavior orperceptionof others throughabusive,deceptive, or underhanded tactics.[1]By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another’s expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive.Social influenceis not necessarily negative. For example, doctors can try to convince patients to change unhealthy habits. The process of manipulation involves bringing an unknowing victim under the domination of the manipulator, often using deception, and using the victim to serve their own purposes.
Stein says this election year presents an important historic opportunity to work together right now just to break through this stranglehold and challenge the two parties right out of the gate because the meaningful benchmark for third parties would be to win 5 percent of the popular vote which would lead the Federal Election Commission to confer the classification of “minor party,” which means they’d get easier ballot access and be eligible for matching public funds.
Dr. Jill Steinwas the Green Party’s 2012 candidate for President. She holds the current record for most votes ever received by a woman candidate for President of the United States in the general election. She is a mother, an organizer, physician, and pioneering environmental-health advocate.
The 2016 presidential race features two of the most disliked candidates in electoral history, which has given a boost to Jill Stein, a 66-year-old Harvard-trained physician from Massachusetts who’s running on the Green Party ticket.
For instance, Stein favors a single-payer health care system, which she claims would cost taxpayers nothing. She also says she would pour federal money into the clean energy sector and end our use of fossil fuels by the year 2030.
Stein is the only candidate bold enough to address the epidemic problem with vaccine poisoning threaten and entire future generation and has been battling the perception that the Green Party is anti-vaccine after she told the Washington Post that there were real questions that needed to be addressed especially with regards to small amounts of mercury once found in childhood vaccines.
Stein calls the media coverage of her statements misleading and characterizes it as the “birther” issue of this election, claiming that she’s only calling for reforms to the FDA, which she sees as corrupted by lobbyists.
But because of the biased media control, the majority of voters are not even aware that Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are legitimate presidential candidates under the Green and Liberal Parties, respectively; and hardly if anything know what their running position statements are.
As a practicing physician, Jill became aware of the links between toxic exposures and illness emerging in the 1990s. She began to fight for a healthy environment as a human right, assisting non profits, community groups and Native Americans combating environmental injustice and racism in dangerous exposures like lead and mercury in air and water pollution, incinerators and land fills, toxic waste sites and more. She helped lead the fight to clean up the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts, raising the bar nationally to a cleaner standard for coal plants. She helped close a toxic medical waste incinerator in Lawrence, MA, one of the poorest communities in New England. She played a key role in rewriting the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children, Native Americans and immigrants from mercury contamination. She also helped preserve the moratorium on new toxic trash incinerators in Massachusetts.
Having witnessed the power of lobbyists and campaign contributions to block health, environmental and worker protections, Jill became an advocate for campaign finance reform, and worked to help pass the Clean Election Law by voter referendum. This law was passed by a 2-1 margin, but was later repealed by the overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts Legislature on an unrecorded voice vote. This sabotage of campaign finance reform by the Democratic Party was a pivotal event in Jill’s political development, confirming her growing allegiance to the Green Party.
Baraka is a human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.
Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. As such, he has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, has given briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and has appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council).
As a co-convener with Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, Baraka played an instrumental role in developing the series of bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers’ conferences (SHROC) that began in 1996. These gatherings represented some of the first post-Cold War human rights training opportunities for grassroots activists in the country.
Baraka played an important role in bringing a human rights perspective to the preparatory meetings for the World Conference on Racism (WCAR) that took place in Geneva and in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Latin American Preparatory process, as well as the actual conference that he attended as a delegate in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
Meet Stein’s Running mate: Ajamu Baraka
A human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.
Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. As such, he has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, has given briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and has appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council).
As a co-convener with Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, Baraka played an instrumental role in developing the series of bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers’ conferences (SHROC) that began in 1996. These gatherings represented some of the first post-Cold War human rights training opportunities for grassroots activists in the country.
Baraka played an important role in bringing a human rights perspective to the preparatory meetings for the World Conference on Racism (WCAR) that took place in Geneva and in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Latin American Preparatory process, as well as the actual conference that he attended as a delegate in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
Stein says this election year presents an important historic opportunity to work together right now just to break through this stranglehold and challenge the two parties right out of the gate because the meaningful benchmark for third parties would be to win 5 percent of the popular vote which would lead the Federal Election Commission to confer the classification of “minor party,” which means they’d get easier ballot access and be eligible for matching public funds.
Dr. Jill Steinwas the Green Party’s 2012 candidate for President. She holds the current record for most votes ever received by a woman candidate for President of the United States in the general election. She is a mother, an organizer, physician, and pioneering environmental-health advocate.
The 2016 presidential race features two of the most disliked candidates in electoral history, which has given a boost to Jill Stein, a 66-year-old Harvard-trained physician from Massachusetts who’s running on the Green Party ticket.
For instance, Stein favors a single-payer health care system, which she claims would cost taxpayers nothing. She also says she would pour federal money into the clean energy sector and end our use of fossil fuels by the year 2030.
Stein is the only candidate bold enough to address the epidemic problem with vaccine poisoning threaten and entire future generation and has been battling the perception that the Green Party is anti-vaccine after she told the Washington Post that there were real questions that needed to be addressed especially with regards to small amounts of mercury once found in childhood vaccines.
Stein calls the media coverage of her statements misleading and characterizes it as the “birther” issue of this election, claiming that she’s only calling for reforms to the FDA, which she sees as corrupted by lobbyists.
But because of the biased media control, the majority of voters are not even aware that Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are legitimate presidential candidates under the Green and Liberal Parties, respectively; and hardly if anything know what their running position statements are.
As a practicing physician, Jill became aware of the links between toxic exposures and illness emerging in the 1990s. She began to fight for a healthy environment as a human right, assisting non profits, community groups and Native Americans combating environmental injustice and racism in dangerous exposures like lead and mercury in air and water pollution, incinerators and land fills, toxic waste sites and more. She helped lead the fight to clean up the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts, raising the bar nationally to a cleaner standard for coal plants. She helped close a toxic medical waste incinerator in Lawrence, MA, one of the poorest communities in New England. She played a key role in rewriting the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children, Native Americans and immigrants from mercury contamination. She also helped preserve the moratorium on new toxic trash incinerators in Massachusetts.
Having witnessed the power of lobbyists and campaign contributions to block health, environmental and worker protections, Jill became an advocate for campaign finance reform, and worked to help pass the Clean Election Law by voter referendum. This law was passed by a 2-1 margin, but was later repealed by the overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts Legislature on an unrecorded voice vote. This sabotage of campaign finance reform by the Democratic Party was a pivotal event in Jill’s political development, confirming her growing allegiance to the Green Party.
A human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.
Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. As such, he has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, has given briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and has appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council).
As a co-convener with Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, Baraka played an instrumental role in developing the series of bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers’ conferences (SHROC) that began in 1996. These gatherings represented some of the first post-Cold War human rights training opportunities for grassroots activists in the country.
Baraka played an important role in bringing a human rights perspective to the preparatory meetings for the World Conference on Racism (WCAR) that took place in Geneva and in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Latin American Preparatory process, as well as the actual conference that he attended as a delegate in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
There are age restrictions on the freedom rights of American youth based on laws that take into consideration the stages of their ability to reason and their mental maturity or lack thereof; yet long before their undeveloped brains have reached cognizant sensibility they are legally permitted to own a gun.
Among similar laws in every state of the Union, recently the Iowa House of Representatives passed this law extending NO AGE MINIMUM in a vote of 62 to 36, even after such tragedies that occurred at Columbine and Sandy Hook schools.
In the all-girl gun club, the Austin Sure Shoots, Trainer Nikki Jones says the club is strictly for sport, however one of the “Golden Rules” is, “Never point your gun at anything you aren’t going to kill or destroy,” quite a dangerous sport for a 6 year-old.
Melanian News 