Category Archives: Antifa

The authors perfectionism counted for everything in the meticulousness of the novels conception, the confidence of its structural devices and especially in the lavishness of its rhetorical displays. A summary of the book does not really give a sense of its constant alertness, its insistent attention to the smallest detail in a scene. Moreover, Ellison succeeds in getting the reader to wear the invisible mans mask, to look through the eyeholes he provides. Sinister forces want people in Harlem to be guilty of their own deaths. In the end, the invisible man has fallen into a manhole, where he takes up residence to wait out the chaos, to learn to live with his head in the lions mouth.

Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran, 1978: Set largely in New York in the early 1970s, Dancer From the Dance is a hymn to gay liberation in the city, and to male beauty. Cruising is an honorable quest, no matter how sordid the baths or open the subway station. Magic can happen see the dark-eyed, grave young man who might stay beyond morning. Beautiful, enigmatic Malone has such a face; hes a Midwesterner who has made, or is trying to make, his peace with being gay, his constraint. It is hard for him to be faithful to one man or to hang on to what he says he wants, and when he meets Sutherland, a veteran of every conceivable high who challenges Malone to be real, not to fool himself, he has already lost one true love.

We watch Malone in his travels from door to door to door, and New York City gay nightlife is rendered in shimmering prose. The novel is saturated with the homoerotic, too mesmerized by the cohorts of the brave to be sorry. Holleran was part of a new wave in American literature that said the gay character didnt have to die at the end of the book anymore. To bring up the subject of same-sex love no longer meant that a dream hunk had to pay for the vision by getting murdered. No one knew when it was published that Hollerans was to be a portrait of a gone world, a vanished city: We lived only to dance. The best fiction turns into a work of history as time goes by.

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, 1979: New York City is the best place for Elizabeth, the first-person narrator of Hardwicks Sleepless Nights (1979), as she concludes early on in the book. We know that she is a reader of profound intensity, and that she is alone but was once part of a we. Hardwicks husband, the poet Robert Lowell, had treated their marriage and divorce at length in his work. Sleepless Nights has telling omissions. The novel is a meditation on a life, and has the feel of lyric poetry in that the I is perhaps meant to stand for the general significance of the solitary self.

Hardwicks I is a woman, and the experiences of others that she is drawn to wonder about tend to be those of women. Her social range is broad: a rich girl is a Stalinist with a boyfriend who wont shape up; here is the sad arithmetic of a drawn-out love triangle, and here are the cleaning women she has watched go about their work. Hardwick remembers from her youth the women alone in their rooming houses. Or she encounters on the street older women at the mercy of their decay. Joan Didion noted that Hardwicks method was like that of the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss in her hunt for the revealing detail. But Hardwicks freedom of speculation about the people she meets comes from her ability to achieve parity with whomever she is thinking about or talking to. She never talks down; shes never bamboozled. It is a great historical pageant that New Yorkers are a part of, they who live in this place where people come to get away from somewhere else. In Hardwicks work, the city is a drama of those who dont fit elsewhere, a cast of souls calling out for memorial.

Latin Moon In Manhattan by Jaime Manrique, 1992: A droll picaresque like no other. Manriques fabulous cast of characters includes artists, hustlers and a cat living la vida loca in the lowdown Times Square of the 90s.

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Candace Bushnell, Hanya Yanagihara and More on Their Favorite New York City Novels - The New York Times

In the back of the crowd, protesters challenge patriots to define Nazi.

We love America, says one.

If Ashli Babbitt were here, continues Allman, I guarantee you shed be out thereon the edge of the fightingtalking to those people.

Scum! a patriot screams at the protesters.

Ashli Babbitt does not want you to be afraid, Allman says, ever again. Present tense. Ashli Babbitt lives, in the hallucinatory. Allman says the patriots will return to Washington, to remember her. Ashli Babbitt dies, in perpetuity.

I suffered, says Riley. But I didnt pay the price Ashli did. Im like the guy from 300. I lived to be able to tell her story.

Martyrdom is a magic trick, a sleight of hand and soul by which the dead substitute as the center of the story for those who survive to tell it.

At the podium, Allman: What her death does, when we compare it to Crispus Attucks, isit calls for a revolution!

It calls. The myth of history is calling the patriots. The spirit of 1776 and 300, the 2006 CGI blood opera, 300 Spartan warriors battle against an overwhelming Persian horde until all but one Spartan falls. Attucks, the first man to die in one war, and the fictional Spartan warrior who was the only survivor of the latter, the source material of which is a comic book. Sacrifice stripped of history. Trial by combat, as Rudy Giuliani promised on January 6, hours before the mob made it real. The first Patriot Martyr of the Second American Revolution, an Oath Keeper posted before anyone knew who the martyr was, only that hers was the mythical victimhood of a white woman, killed by a Black man, they could now claim.

Now comes the mother: Michelle Witthoeft, who goes by Mikki, with an i, for independence, she says, which is why she named her firstborn Ashli with an i. Mikki and Ashlis father, wordless beside her; the mother adrift in her oversized Ashli T-shirt, wrists ringed by red plastic Justice 4 Ashli bands, her white hair pulled back severely. A doleful woman, her proud, lupine face that of her daughters but whittled by grief. She hides behind sunglasses, giant black lenses, white-rimmed.

As Mikki begins, antifas chant of BLACK LIVES MATTER ricochets off the Capitol, at the entrance to which she has erected a banner: Ashlis big grin on the left, Ashli flashing a shaka sign on the right.

I miss her every day, says the mother. There are things I want to tell her. Her voice wobbles. Questions I want to ask. She pauses, then lets it in: the fury. My daughter was publicly executed! She gathers herself. Everybody knows Breonna Taylor, she says. From the back: BLACK LIVES MATTER! Everybody knows George Floyd, Ashlis mother says. The two women sitting next to me, Jorge Rileys girlfriend, Kelli Morgan, in a sun hat with a leopard-print band, and a friend in cutoffs bedazzled in red, white, and blue across the back pocketsshe says her name is Freedomscream Criminals!

Princeton, Indiana.Photographs by Jeff Sharlet.

Why dont people know who Ashli Babbitt is? asks Ashlis mother.

The criminal frickin media! affirms Freedom.

Exactly, says the mother.

Antifa: BLACK-LIVES MAT-TER!

Let your representatives know, pleads the mother, voice wavering. Over, and over, and over.

Antifa: NO MORE NAZ-EES!

The mother stops. Pulls the microphone close: ASH-LI BABB-ITT! The same up-down cadence as Black Lives Matter. ASH-LI BABB-ITT! Four syllables like fingers folding into a fist.

A young white street pastor named Thomas, standing with the Saviors, says, Were the MLKs, not the Malcolm Xs.

Theres no shame in what happened January sixth! she cries.

BLACK-LIVES MAT-TER! antifa responds.

To which the patriots finally have a reply they think equal: ASH-LI BABB-ITT!

One white woman.

I ping-pong between the front of the rally and the back, the rhetoric and the action. Ashlis mother tells the crowd to be proud Americans. Be proud white Americans! She goes on to list other races she feels should be proud Americans, too, but shes hard to hear over Kelli and Freedom shrieking.

Toward the back, a livestreamer named Julius is providing commentary. Shes right, he tells his camera. Slavery, slavery, slavery, he says, imitating his imagination of the nerdy voice of a leftist. No one got time for all a that. Julius is Black; hes wearing a Saviors T-shirt, with bleached-white Lady Liberty.

Photographs by Jeff Sharlet.

Julius is not alone as a man of color in this crowdtheres Jorge Riley, and a Black Second Amendment speaker. I meet nearly as many self-identified Latino people as white ones. Nearly all want it known that patriots are more diverse than liberals think. This is true. And yet the crowd cheers for proud white Americans not because they are blind but because they want to beto believe in what historian Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism, calls the promise of whiteness offered to people of color willing to collaborate with white supremacy. This bait and switchthe mythical promise of whiteness is unfulfillablemay be the next American contribution to fascism. Purification projects have become impractical for a nation in which the rightist ascendency can contend for the loyalty of a third of Latinx voters. Now, white supremacy welcomes all. Or at least a sufficient veneer of all to reassure its more timid adherents that border walls and kung flu and Black crime and replacement theory somehow dont add up to the R-word, which anyway these days, in the new authoritarian imagination, only happens in reverse, against white people. Such victims feel themselves drawn together not by whiteness but by that of which it is made: their belief in a strongmanTrumpand their desire for an iron-fisted God, and their love of the way guns make them feel inside, and their grief over COVID-19, and their denial of COVID-19, and their loathing of systemic as descriptive of that which they cant see, cant hold in their hands and weigh, and their certainty that children are being taken, stolen, if not in body then in spirit, indoctrinated to hate themselves. They are drawn together by their love of fairness, which is how it used to be, theyre certain they remember, or, if theyre too young, theyve been told. And yet, slavery, slavery, slavery, murmurs the past. It gets to be too much, sometimes, Julius laments.

Link:

January 6 Was the Beginning of Ashli Babbitt as Martyr in Trumps Cult - Vanity Fair

One of the apparent frontrunners in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Illinois was part of the protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has characterized the fatal insurrection as a party at Showbiz Pizza.

Just days ahead of the Capitol riot, Peggy Hubbard told her Facebook followers that she intended to board a Washington, D.C.-bound bus with my fellow Illinoisans/Patriots to take the fight for our Constitution directly to the establishment or, the swamp, as she called it and to stir things up!

Now, Hubbard, who has indicated she does not regard President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, is tied or leading in polls heading into the June 28 primary election. The winner of the seven-way race will go on to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth this fall.

The Washington Post recently reported that more than 100 GOP candidates across the country who embrace the false claim Trump makes that Biden isnt Americas legitimate president have won Republican primaries through the end of May.

If Hubbard gets out of her primary, she could be in that same company, and that alarms people such as Joanna Lydgate, co-founder of the States United Democracy Center, a bi-partisan election watchdog that monitors election deniers winning state-level campaigns for posts that oversee vote-counting or certification.

Were seeing people, who are stop the steal supporters, whove spread lies and conspiracy theories about our elections, some who were even at the rally at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, trying to take over these positions, Lydgate said. Its like putting arsonists in charge of the fire department.

We saw in 2020 the importance of having senators who in the process of certifying the presidential election results will follow the will of the American people. We saw an effort by a sitting president to overturn that will, she said. So those positions are essential.

Lydgates group identifies other election deniers in Illinois, including gubernatorial candidate Max Solomon and attorney general candidate David Shestokas. U.S. Rep. Mary Miller is another one on the ballot this spring and, like Hubbard, she took part in protests on Jan. 6 in the nations capital.

Their apparent unwillingness to acknowledge Bidens win in 2020 seems to be in lockstep with the Illinois Republican primary electorate. This months WBEZ/Sun-Times poll showed that 67% of those likely primary voters surveyed did not view the results of the presidential election as legitimate; another 15% werent sure.

But former two-term Republican Gov. Jim Edgar and the pollster involved in the WBEZ/Sun-Times survey said Hubbards extreme positions on Bidens election and on Jan. 6 could make her politically toxic this fall, should she get out of the primary.

There are a lot of Republicans, unfortunately from my point of view, that probably agree with some of her views. But if she was the nominee for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket, I dont think she could win, said Edgar, who served between 1991 and 1999.

She also could cause some drag on the people down the ballot. Thats the fear if you have somebody in the U.S. Senate or the governors race (who) have kind of extreme views, Edgar continued. Not only may they not win, but they might take a lot of other people with them.

A WBEZ/Sun-Times poll taken on June 6 and 7 had Hubbard, a Navy veteran and former cop from downstate Belleville, in a dead-heat at 10 percentage points apiece with Mundelein attorney Kathy Salvi, whose husband, Al, was the GOPs 1996 U.S. Senate nominee against Democrat Dick Durbin.

A week later, a poll by the Trafalgar Group had Hubbard in the lead.

Others in the Senate primary include Matthew Dubiel, Anthony Williams, Jimmy Lee Tillman II, Casey Chlebek and Robert Piton, who also is an election denier. All but Dubiel were polling in the low single digits in the WBEZ/Sun-Times survey while Dubiel stood at 7%. The polls margin of error was +/-3.8%.

Politically, Hubbard is not a household name in Illinois, and there are suburban mayors with larger campaign kitties than she has at less than $24,000 as of earlier this month. In terms of money, shes trailing three of her primary rivals and hasnt had an advertising presence on Chicago-area television. Hubbards previous foray as a statewide candidate ended in marked failure in 2020, when she finished a distant second in the five-way GOP U.S. Senate primary to take on Durbin.

Hubbard didnt respond to inquiries from WBEZ over multiple platforms her email, her campaign website or through her Facebook pages, including one named, Peggy Hubbard American Patriot.

But its there, on Facebook, before a combined audience of 360,000 followers, that she posts lengthy, vitriolic monologues targeting Democrats and Black activists. Hubbard herself is Black.

Shes also used that online platform to defend people, like herself, who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest Congress certification of the presidential election.

In a more recent Shaw Local News Network candidate questionnaire, Hubbard described her position on the Jan. 6 riots: I was there, I know what happened. I will keep MY opinions to myself.

Pressed on whether events at the Capitol constituted an insurrection, Hubbard said no. And she advocated for the pardoning of anyone convicted of crimes related to January 6th a position Trump himself floated recently.

But in front of supporters, Hubbard has minimized what happened while stumping on the campaign trail, telling an audience at a Back the Blue rally in downstate Bloomington last August: I was there Jan. 6th. It was like a party at Showbiz Pizza. Im telling you the truth. It wasnt what everybody thinks it was.

Hubbard said she was kicked off Facebook for a period of time following the insurrection.

They took me down off of Facebook. I had 567,000 followers. I told the truth. Facebook shut me down within eight hours, she said at that August law-enforcement rally in Bloomington.

But some of her posts before Jan. 6 and afterward are still accessible.

In 2021, after displaying a graphic with the U.S. Capitol in the background and announcing her plans to join a bus trip to Washington, Hubbard gave a daily snapshot on Facebook into some of her activities before and after the insurrection.

In a Jan. 5, 2021, post at 2:13 a.m., Hubbard talked about feeling anxiety and excitement about how she soon was going to bare (sic) witness to greatness and be demanding that WE the people will be heard. Win, lose or draw. History is about to be made in Washington DC.

Once in Washington, Hubbard did not make clear exactly where she was when the violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. On Facebook, Hubbard said she was at the Capitol with other Trump supporters and saw people that were there to support fair and transparent elections.

On the night of the insurrection, at 7:52 p.m., Hubbard posted that what I witnessed today, is the warning shots of a civil war in the making.

And in a later post that day, at 10 p.m., she pointed blame at Antifa, a leaderless, sometimes militant movement that has confronted white supremacists and is a frequent bogeyman of the far right. (Ongoing congressional hearings on the insurrection and federal prosecutors have attributed the days violence not to Antifa but instead to hard-right, Trump-aligned extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.)

We are taxpayers who believed in fair elections and watched in real time the steal of our values and our country, Hubbard wrote. What we saw was the people pushing back and revolting against the corruption.

Earlier this year, on the year anniversary of Jan. 6, Hubbards said those who breached the Capitol should be held accountable for their actions, but she still engaged in significant political whatabout-ism regarding the day itself.

People stood up and wanted their voices heard and for that, were belong labeled as terrorists. But you dont say anything about Black Lives Matter. You dont say anything about Antifa taking over a city, destroying a community, she said.

One national pollster sees a scenario where Hubbard, with her election denialism and involvement in and statements about Jan. 6, could win the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Illinois.

Were in a position where the race is pretty wide open, said Jim Williams, an analyst with Public Policy Polling, the North Carolina-based firm that conducted the WBEZ/Sun-Times poll. And in a situation like that, it often comes down to who is Trump for, if hes going to be for anybody.

What we know about Mr Trump these days is that he likes it when people are on his side with this whole thing about hes the one who actually won the 2020 presidential election. So if thats the base that shes building herself, Williams said of Hubbard, she could be positioning herself to maybe get that nod, explicit or not, from Donald Trump and go ahead and win this Republican primary.

Even if a Republican wave reaches Illinois as is expected in other parts of the country, Williams said he doesnt foresee someone like Hubbard being competitive against Duckworth this fall unless there is some kind of political tidal wave.

Wed have to have quite a big collapse in Democrats fortunes for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois to really be in danger, he said. I dont think that nominating somebody with these fringe views, or these hardcore views about the election, would be the way to win a general election in Illinois.

A representative for Duckworth did not respond to WBEZ regarding Hubbards candidacy. Nor did anyone from Salvis campaign.

But Edgar believes the same thing about Hubbard that her views on the election and Jan. 6, stances the ex-governor characterized as a little scary, make her a likely electoral non-starter this fall if she makes it out of the primary.

In fact, he doubts there is any way hed consider voting for her should she win the GOP nomination.

Its not somebody I would feel comfortable with, with those views, being in the U.S. Senate, Edgar said.

Dave McKinney covers Illinois politics and government for WBEZ. Follow him on Twitter @davemckinney.

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Leading Illinois GOP U.S. Senate candidate protested at the Capitol on Jan. 6 - WBEZ Chicago

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U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, was among the members of Congress who asked former President Donald Trump for a pardon after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, according to a testimony shown at a hearing Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the committee that Gohmert asked for a pardon. The other Republicans who asked for pardons were Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Hutchinson said.

The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think youve committed a crime, said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of two Republicans on the House committee.

In a statement Thursday, Gohmert suggested he did not ask for a pardon for himself. He said he made pardon requests for brave U.S. service members and military contractors who were railroaded by the justice system due to superiors playing politics, as well as a civilian leader who was also wronged by a despicable injustice. These requests were made prior to and were unrelated to the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to the statement.

He also said the committee hearings have become nothing more than a Soviet-style propaganda production.

I had and have nothing for which to seek a pardon and my requests were for others unassociated with government in Washington, DC. Any assertion to the contrary is unequivocally and maliciously false. Any Committee Members or witness involved should be ashamed for perpetuating such a falsehood, but that would require a conscience to feel such shame."

Gohmert was mentioned several times during Thursdays hearing, which focused on the coordinated effort by Trump and his allies to convince the Justice Department to investigate voter fraud and help overturn election results.

His chief of staff, who was not directly named during the hearing, was copied on an email that included allies of Trump saying Vice President Mike Pence would benefit greatly from a briefing by John Eastman, the architect of the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Eastman, who began advising Trump in August 2020, authored a memo that outlined the steps Pence should take to throw out the results of the 2020 election by rejecting Biden's winning electoral college count. Pence ultimately went against Eastman and the president, and Trump supporters called for him to be hanged on the day of the insurrection.

Ken Blackwell, a former secretary of state of Ohio, wrote the email on Dec. 28, 2020. Among the recipients of the email was Eastman and Ken Klukowski, a former White House lawyer who joined the Justice Department in December 2020. Klukowski served in the White House as a special counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. He joined the Justice Department to become the legal counsel to the division run by Jeffrey Clark, also a key figure in the plot to overturn the election whom Trump briefly considered naming as attorney general. Federal authorities searched Clarks home on Thursday.

The revelations are the strongest connections yet established by the committee between a Texas lawmaker and the efforts to undermine Bidens presidency.

The committee also showed a video of Gohmert targeting Justice Department officials for not investigating the unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Theres widespread evidence of fraud because people havent done their jobs, Gohmert said in the clip shot on Dec. 3, 2020. [John] Durham and [William] Barr will deserve a big notation in history when its written of the rise and fall of the United States if they dont clean up this mess, clean up the fraud. Do your jobs and save this little experiment in self-government.

Barr, Trumps former attorney general, has said multiple times that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, despite Trumps insistence to the contrary.

Gohmert has been a member of Congress since 2005. This will be his last year as a congressman after he vacated his seat to challenge Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He lost in the March primary.

He was the first Texan to be mentioned in the committee's hearings so far. Thursday's hearing was the fifth by the committee, and more will take place in July.

The hearings have shown how Trump and his allies engaged in a thorough and coordinated attempt to convince others of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, with the hopes of overturning the results. The hearings have revealed how members of Trump's inner circle, including his daughter Ivanka, were aware that the allegations of widespread fraud were unsubstantiated an argument that Barr frequently reiterated in his own testimony to the lawmakers. The committee has also laid out how Trump's allies orchestrated "fake electors" to try to overturn the election results and pressured state officials to discredit the election results.

The committee consists of just two Republicans after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy effectively boycotted Republican participation in the committee, which he and others have blasted as a form of political theater.

Gohmert was early to speak out against the results of the 2020 election.

He joined a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to discard the votes in four swing states Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that helped hand Biden the presidency. He also sued Pence days before Jan. 6, 2021, arguing Pence should assert unilateral control over the certification of the election results.

Days before the Jan. 6 attack, the U.S. Capitol Police flagged comments by Gohmert as potentially inciting violence. Speaking on the conservative news network Newsmax, Gohmert said that letting President Joe Bidens electoral win stand would mean the end of our republic, the end of the experiment in self-government.

Gohmert also said on air, The ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and [Black Lives Matter]. He later said he was not advocating for violence.

During the insurrection, Gohmert urged people to not be violent. Hours later, Gohmert was among the members of Congress to vote against the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.

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Correction, June 23, 2022: A previous version of this story provided an inaccurate date for the airing of a clip of U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert. The clip of him speaking, which was replayed during the U.S. House committee investigating the insurrection, aired Dec. 3, 2020, not Jan. 3, 2021.

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U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert asked Trump for a pardon after insurrection, Jan. 6 committee reveals - The Texas Tribune

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Two Georgia school board candidates who criticized the hiring of a Black educator focused on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives lost their runoff elections this week. Meanwhile, a person who helped organize the effort to push educator Cecelia Lewis out of her job is narrowly losing her bid for a seat in the state House of Representatives.

The three were described in a ProPublica story last week that detailed how Lewis was attacked in both Cherokee County and neighboring Cobb County by white parents making baseless claims that she was bringing critical race theory to both school districts. (CRT maintains that racial bias is embedded in Americas laws and institutions and has caused disproportionate harm to people of color; its rarely if ever taught in K-12 public school systems.)

State House candidate Noelle Kahaian, a paralegal and conservative nonprofit leader, is trailing her opponent by 23 votes. The state has until July 1 to certify results, and candidates who come within half a percentage point of their opponent can request a recount.

The two Cherokee County school board candidates, Sean Kaufman and Ray Lynch, were defeated by wide margins on Tuesday. They were part of a four-candidate slate attempting to gain a majority for a more conservative school board. That collective effort, dubbed 4CanDoMore, was endorsed by the 1776 Project PAC, a new super PAC that touted victories of far-right school board candidates it had backed in multiple states. The two other 4CanDoMore candidates, Michael Cam Waters and Chris Gregory, had lost to incumbents in the May 24 primary.

In a statement to ProPublica, Cherokee County School District Chief Communications Officer Barbara Jacoby said that the group of people who targeted Lewis do not speak for our community, as was illustrated when their candidates failed in their recent attempt to win a majority on the School Board. We do not support hate, and we are deeply sorry for how Ms. Lewis and her family were treated by these members of our community.

Kaufman, Lynch and Kahaian did not respond to requests for comments. In a public statement to his Facebook page, Kaufman congratulated his opponent, Erin Ragsdale. I truly believe that Cherokee County had some incredible candidates and we really could not lose, he wrote. I wish her the very best and give her my full support in the November election.

Lewis, an accomplished middle school principal from Maryland, was hired in the spring of 2021 as the Cherokee County School Districts first-ever administrator devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Community members targeted Lewis soon after her hire was announced. Kahaian, the state House candidate, was a presenter in a meeting during which plans to push Lewis out of her job were hatched. Parents went on to attack Lewis credentials and wrongfully accuse her of promoting critical race theory.

Lewis quit the job before she even started, following a chaotic school board meeting during which board members and students were evacuated and escorted to safety amid threatening outbursts from attendees.

White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One.

Why the Black Educator Forced Out Over Bogus Critical Race Theory Claims Agreed to Share Her Story

Months later, parents using a private Facebook group began complaining that Lewis had a new job in neighboring Cobb County. (People with access to the group shared screenshots of posts with ProPublica.) Shed been hired as that districts social studies supervisor. She lasted just two months there, resigning from the position after the district received an onslaught of erroneous complaints about her supposed intentions to indoctrinate children through CRT.

After ProPublica published its story about the communitys campaign against Lewis, one woman wrote in the parents private Facebook group: Looks like we should prepare for antifa here in Cherokee County. Im genuinely concerned for those names listed in that piece.

Community members who disagree with those who targeted Lewis have been hesitant to speak up, according to Mandy Marger, a mother of two whose family moved to Cherokee County a decade ago.

Marger said she was encouraged by the outcome of the runoffs.

The idea that groups who had such extreme views thought that they could grab a hold of our community was frightening, Marger said. They made it very clear that those of us who did not align with them were going to have to stand up, and Im really, really proud of our community especially today that we did.

Jacoby said in her statement that Lewis departure was the districts loss.

No one wants their community to be the place where a story like this unfolds, but it is important for us all to understand what happened and reflect on what we can do to ensure it doesnt happen again, Jacoby said. Its a cautionary tale about the dangers of misinformation and what can happen when you judge others based on falsehoods spread on social media or by people with political agendas.

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School Board Candidates Who Criticized the Hiring of a Black DEI Educator Lose Their Elections - ProPublica

An anti-Trumper who allegedly crashed his car into a New England For Trump store over the weekend has the logo of the hard core Pro-Antifa band Ministry tattooed on his arm.

Sean Flaherty, a 46-year-old father from Raynham, Massachusetts, also has an anti-Trump bumper sticker on the 2015 Volkswagen Jetta that video shows he drove into the store in Easton in the southeast of the state.

Flaherty, who was charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle and malicious destruction of property, could not be reached for comment by The Epoch Times. No date for a hearing has yet been set in the Taunton District Court.

A video of the crash shows Flaherty circling the store and then accelerating towards it, smashing his car through its front and narrowly missing an employeean American veteranbefore stopping just before the back wall.

What made matters worse for storeowner Keith Lambert, he said in an interview with The Epoch Times, was that he has received emails from supporters of Flaherty wishing for more violence against his store.

Youre a [expletive] cancer. All of you. The driver had a great idea, read one of the emails Lambert shared with The Epoch Times.

Another person posted on Facebook not all heroes wear capes, in referring to Flaherty.

In addition to the New England For Trump store, Lambert owns several Lets Go Brandon stores around New England, including three in Massachusetts, one in Rhode Island, and one in New Hampshire.

Merchandise sold by the store includes Trump Won T-shirts, mugs celebrating the Second Amendment, and a variety of bumper stickers.

Lambert, who has had signs broken and stolen and his store vandalized with graffiti, emphasized that he also received a groundswell of support, but was disgusted that anyone would celebrate such violence.

Theres just really some hateful, evil people in this world. Its scary, said Lambert, who estimates he suffered about $40,000 in damage from the crash.

Patty Locke, chairwoman of the Easton Republican Committee, told The Epoch Times that she sees the medias coverage of the incident as a primary example of the double standards it practices when it covers what it perceives as political violence.

Referring first to the recent tragic Uvalde shooting, Locke said the media was quick to use the incident as a means to promote gun control, even though it was clear that the shooter suffered from severe mental illness.

She also pointed to the contrasting coverage of the recent firebombings of pregnancy centers by pro-abortionists and the lack of outrage from the media over the killing of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 protester fatally shot by a Capitol police officer.

When it comes to conservatives, they will spin a story negative any way they can against them; they dont waste a second to blame it on Republicans and label them as bad people, said Locke.

Some media reported on Flahertys injuries following the crash and didnt initially use his name in any of its reports until Turtle Boy, a popular blogger among Massachusetts conservatives, called them out for withholding it.

According to Lambert his store clerk told him that Flaherty allegedly said he was undergoing shock treatment and that he heard voices in his head.

There were no initial reports of Flahertys anti-Trump bumper sticker, even though it is visible in the video.

The sticker depicts a picture of Trump made to look like Hitler with the slogan those that make us believe absurdities, make us commit atrocities.

Media also did not report on his ties to the metal rock band Ministry.

A Facebook picture of Flaherty shows him brandishing the same symbol pictured at the beginning of a music video of the bands song Antifa, a violent anti-Republican song with lyrics that include we are the Antifa, right wing is in freefall, they wont survive Antifa is coming for you, and Ill back it up with my fist, sick and tired of dealing with [expletive], thats why I resist.

An introduction to the song refers to all people who voted Trump into office as Nazis.

Lambert, the son of a U.S. Navy veteran and grandson of an U.S. Army veteran, pointed out that the majority of his employees are former military service people.

The store clerk nearly run down by Flaherty is a U.S. Navy veteran who served in Vietnam.

The video of the crash shows that after the clerk consoled Flaherty and stayed with him waiting for an ambulance to come, he went outside and picked up a large American flag swept outside by the force of the crash.

Locke said the image brought tears to her eyes.

And yet they are calling this crazy person who could have killed someone, the hero, she said.

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Alice Giordano is a former news correspondent for The Boston Globe, Associated Press, and New England bureau of The New York Times.

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Man Who Crashed Car Into Trump Store Had Pro-Antifa Band Tattoo - The Epoch Times

As the sun set over Washington, D.C., hundreds of pro-abortion demonstrators stood chanting and holding signs outside the Supreme Court.

Rally speakers called for protesters to take to the streets in response to the Supreme Courts ruling Friday that overturned Roe v. Wade.

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In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.

The protesters outside the Supreme Court on Friday night appeared to disagree.

Below are videos and pictures from the Night of Rage, as it was dubbed by the pro-abortion demonstrators.Warning: Rude language ahead.

Around 8:30 p.m., a group of 30 protesters dressed in black and carrying an Antifa sign arrived at the Supreme Court and proceeded to march down Constitution Avenue toward downtown Washington.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.comand well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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What We Saw During 'Night of Rage' Pro-Abortion Protest - Daily Signal

American News Jun 26, 2022 10:00 PM EST

Pro-abortion activist Michael Ortiz was arrested on June 26th after allegedly attacking police with a makeshift flamethrower during a violent riot over the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Pro-abortion activist Michael Ortiz was arrested on June 26th after allegedly attacking police with a makeshift flamethrower during a violent riot over the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

As the New York Post reports, several others were arrested during the Los Angeles riot, including 23-year-old Juliana Bernardo who allegedly tried to steal a police officer's baton amid skirmishes with law enforcement. The pro-abortion protestors shut down the LA freeway, harassed and attacked drivers, broke building windows, and lobbed a firework explosive at police.

Juliana Bernado, who was arrested at the #Antifa Los Angeles pro-abortion riot & charged with a felony for allegedly trying to steal an officer's baton, listed herself on LinkedIn as a @USArmy Cadet & recent graduate of Santa Clara University. She comes from a well-to-do family. pic.twitter.com/690aQevzDI

Video posted by The Post Millennial's Andy Ngo shows Ortiz discharging the makeshift weapon while hiding behind a black bloc militant who was holding an umbrella.

Los Angeles: At the pro-abortion #Antifa riot overnight, one of the violent extremists hid behind a black bloc militant with an umbrella & tried to burn a @LAPDHQ officer using a homemade flamethrower. https://t.co/lqnQ3eHNZ9

Ortiz allegedly fired the flames around 8:20 pm amidst a progressively violent riot.

Another angle shows a rioter at the #Antifa pro-abortion riot in Los Angeles using a homemade flamethrower to try to burn police. Antifa also throw an explosive mortar firework right at @LAPDHQ officers. A suspect who tried to escape was arrested. pic.twitter.com/98vhnv6EmE

LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore said in a statement that, "Individuals participating in such criminal activity are not exercising their 1st Amendment rights in protest of the Supreme Court decision. Rather, they are acting as criminals. The Department will vigorously pursue prosecution of these individuals."

The violence comes after radical pro-abortion groups have called for nationwide protests including one group, Jane's Revenge, promising a "Night of Rage" to protest the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.

Were independent and cant be cancelled. The establishment media is increasingly dedicated to divisive cancel culture, corporate wokeism, and political correctness, all while covering up corruption from the corridors of power. The need for fact-based journalism and thoughtful analysis has never been greater. When you support The Post Millennial, you support freedom of the press at a time when it's under direct attack. Join the ranks of independent, free thinkers by supporting us today for as little as $1.

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Suspect accused of using flamethrower in attack at Los Angeles Antifa riot charged with attempted murder - The Post Millennial

Country

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IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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Freedom will always defeat tyranny | Opinion | news-graphic.com - News- Graphic

Dont fall for Joe Namaths ads

You probably have seen Joe Namath on television hawking Medicare Advantage plans. Dont be fooled! Joe was a decent quarterback, but a health insurance expert, he is not. Right now, there are two versions of Medicare: Original (federal) and Advantage (commercial). In addition, there is a new program called REACH which can switch your plan from Original to a commercial plan without your consent. Commercial insurance companies such as United Health Care, Cigna, and Aetna make huge profits if they can sell their Advantage plans. These insurers are overpaid middlemen. They spend your premium dollars on fat-cat executive salaries, lobbying, investor dividends, advertising, and political donations, not on your medical care. In addition, the government subsidizes Advantage plans using Original Medicare funds, thereby making the Advantage plans even more profitable and depleting the Medicare Trust Fund.

Advantage plans will limit your care if they can. They will insist that your doctor prescribe certain drugs and not others. You will be restricted to a certain panel of doctors, and they will make it difficult for you to go to anyone outside this panel. If your doctor orders a test, they might not pay for it unless you get prior approval. If you get really sick and you want to switch back to Original Medicare because it provides more options, you will do so at a greater cost. If you switch from one Advantage plan to another, you may have to switch doctors as well.

Dont be fooled by Joe Namaths slick but empty promises. Commercial insurers have turned our health care system into an expensive, poor performing mess. They are profit motivated not patient-care motivated. The only way out of this mess is a federally funded single payer system which would insure everyone from birth to death.

G. Richard Dundas, MD

Bennington

When you opt for Medicare Advantage (MA) instead of traditional Medicare, you place decisions about your health in the hands of a big insurance company intent on making a profit. Three quarters of the MA business is currently in the hands of six huge insurers: Humana, CVS, Anthem, Kaiser Permanente, Centene, and Cigna.

Because of the potential incentive for Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs) to deny beneficiary access to services and deny payments to providers in an attempt to increase profits, the Health & Human Services agency Inspector General just reviewed the performance of MA insurers. The results were not good. Of the prior approval requests that MA insurers denied, 13 percent should have been approved. Of the payment denials by MA insurers, 18 percent were improper under both the rules of Medicare and the MA insurers own rules.

Some improper decisions were reversed by the MA insurer, but this often happened only after a beneficiary or provider appealed or disputed the denial. The three causes of these improper denials: Using clinical criteria that Medicare does not impose; requesting unnecessary documentation; and errors in the insurers manual review or system.

Since every improper denial is a money-saver for the insurance company, you have to wonder how intentional this rate of impropriety is. Since every improper denial is a hardship to a patient and/or medical provider, you have to wonder how the government can allow this kind of behavior, while also allowing MA insurers to tout the MA program as Gods gift to seniors. The government also knows that MA insurers are also manipulating the system to increase the amount of money they get from Medicare, a fiasco that is surely a testament to how much money these insurers devote to shaping regulators opinions.

It will get worse. Ideas similar to those behind the Medicare Advantage program underlie Medicares new mania for value based care. The agency recently announced that all Medicare beneficiaries should be in value-based care programs by 2030.

Lee Russ

Bennington

President Biden recently said, the MAGA crowd was the most extreme group in the Country. I usually dont believe in slogans but, in these trying times, how could make America great again be a bad goal for us. Then I asked myself the question did this Group burn down and loot our cities and kill and maim our citizens? The answer to this question is no. He must have been referring to ANTIFA and the gangs of losers and have-nots.

Is President Bidens MAGA statement another one of his euphemisms, to be later clarified by his handlers? Did he realize that he was referring to 50 percent of our nation, and its leader, past Pres. Trump who gave us so many successful plusses during his term that he in fact made America great again?

Lets imagine getting back to energy independence, no budget busting inflation, full employment, respect from our allies as well as our enemies, stability in the Middle East, and too many other plusses to list here.

Lets make it happen at the Polls this November, and at future elections.

Perry Green

Manchester Center

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Letters to the Editor | Opinion | benningtonbanner.com - Bennington Banner