Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

Theres barely a week goes by when our greatest wartime leader isnt slated as a racist and a tyrant by people who have no idea what he achieved and no understanding of history or of the times in which he lived.

This was a man who defeated fascism and who had the guts to take on Hitler at a time when many in our own government wanted to appease him.

But Churchill refused and because of his courage, his steadfastness we won the war.

Poll after poll shows that, despite his flaws and yes, he had some Churchill is, and always will be, a national hero. Yet Lefties are forever trying to make us all ashamed of him because they refuse to see history in context or understand the nuances of it.

It emerged this week that the latest attack on him happened at a Remembrance Day Service at the Imperial War museum.

Yep, you read that right. A bunch of teens from a youth music group were allowed to perform a vile rap song about racism, white privilege and Churchill immediately after a two-minute silence to commemorate our war dead.

Its beyond belief that at a service to commemorate those who died for our freedoms some idiot woke boss at the museum gave the go-ahead for those teenagers to insult the man whose leadership made those freedoms possible.

How dare they! And how dare the Imperial War Museum. Of course, the museum has since apologised, but that means nothing the damage has been done.

Heads should roll over this. Many people at the service walked out in disgust and even museum staff were shocked because they had no idea what was coming.

So who allowed it? Who green-lighted this vile insult not just to Churchill but to our war dead. And why havent they had the guts to own up?

A Remembrance Day Service is not the time or the place to callChurchill a racist.

Dont these idiots who trash him and other historical figures understand that you cannot apply 21 st century values and beliefs to the behaviour of people who lived and died in different times? Churchill was born in 1874 when Queen Victoria still had 27 years left on the throne.

You cant put right the wrongs of the past by trying to erase history and by heaping abuse on the people who made it. History has to be learned from.

Yes, Churchill made comments about people of colour that wouldnt be acceptable today, but he made even more denigrating remarks about Europeans that would be equally unacceptable.

The fact is that throughout his life he fought to protect the non-white people in British territories. He considered it his duty to improve the lot of the empires native peoples. So yes, black lives DID matter to Winston Churchill.

But of course actual facts dont matter to the Wokerati. Their minds areso closed they dont understand that you cant rip historical figures out of their context and expect them to have the views and values on race that exist today. The whole point about history is that we evolve and Britain has.

Yes, there is always a debate to be had on how history has unfolded the rights and wrongs of it but a Remembrance Day service isnt the place to do it.

But of course, asking these people to rationally debate history would expose the fact they know little or nothing about it. So they take to the streets instead to deface statues and trash reputations, completely failing to understand that what people thought, and how they acted a hundred years ago, wont be erased by their violence.

And neither will Churchills courage, his heroism or our respect for what he did!

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Black lives DID matter to Churchill whatever the Wokerati claim, says CAROLE MALONE - Daily Express

Todays widely accepted narrative is that we live in historically divided times. Voters are routinely described as polarised, while analysts compete to identify the essential schism of the age, whether this is metropolitan versus traditionalist, people versus democracy or anywheres versus somewheres.

For a third year running, however, the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project supports a different interpretation: that extreme views are given greater visibility by social media, which in turn creates an especially dynamic climate of opinion in that, for example, it can change quickly but one whose underlying forces are defined more by cohesion than division. Released annually by the Guardian, the Globalism Project is an international survey and the largest of its kind on the public relationship with globalisation, produced by YouGov in partnership with academics at Cambridge University. Its findings have consistently challenged popular stereotypes of public opinion in this so-called polarised age.

It turns out, for instance, that there is no deep divide between the mindsets of open versus closed societies. In fact, few voters support radically open or closed societies, while most tend to favour varying degrees of continued integration with the wider world. Academic theorists of authoritarian populism may perceive a new, mass disdain for liberal pluralism, but we found little evidence of this in public sentiment. Instead, majorities around the world maintain a determined belief in the superiority of democracy, with little partisan difference on the issue.

Nor has modern society been overwhelmed by demographic schisms. When we compared those who feel generally more permissive or restrictive towards net migration, for example, we found some discernible patterns on average between younger and older, metropolitan and provincial, graduates and school-leavers but hardly to the extent of rival demographic blocs, or splintering, parallel societies.

This is not to doubt that many countries have experienced an intensifying atmosphere of partisanship over the past decade. Strange as it might sound, however, partisanship and substantial division on policy can be two quite different things, as the Guardian recently reported. For example, in Britain, most respondents who described themselves as either leftwing or rightwing said they dislike others for identifying with the opposite camp (87% and 73% respectively). The same kind of partisan divide extended to other labels of political identity: a majority of leftwingers considered themselves feminist (62%) while a majority of the right did not (70%); or on the subject of Black Lives Matter, most of the left were favourable (70%) while most of the right felt the opposite (69%).

Yet when it comes to opinions on underlying issues, a different picture emerges. The same respondents were next shown a list of three jobs cleaner, nurse and politician and asked if each one was more suited to either women or men, or equally suited to all genders. This time, overwhelming portions of the left and right agreed, answering equally suited for every job (94% and 89% for cleaner; 90% and 74% for nurse; 88% and 83% for politician). Majorities on both sides also shared the view that it is unacceptable for a man to whistle at a woman he doesnt know in the street (85%, 58%), and that promoting equality for women should take some level of priority in modern society (98%, 88%). A similar pattern was evident for other progressive objectives of combating racism of all kinds and moving the economy away from carbon-intensive industries towards greener alternatives.

In other words, when we compare these groups by their attitudes to specific issues, rather than by markers of identity, we find a considerable amount of common ground, rather than polarised clusters of opinion or clashing visions of what contemporary society should look like. In political science, this is being increasingly recognised as the gap between issue-based versus affective polarisation, and supports a thesis that the latter is decidedly more prevalent than the former in numerous western publics.

Indeed, the study finds comparable patterns outside the UK, where notable levels of partisan antipathy coexist with significant overlap in views on gender and race equality and decarbonising the economy. This was found to be true among the rival voting camps of: Joe Biden versus Donald Trump in the United States; Emmanuel Macron versus Marine Le Pen in France; the Greens versus Alternative for Deutschland in Germany; the Left versus the Law and Justice party in Poland; Vox versus Podemos in Spain; and New Democracy versus Syriza in Greece.

This all hints at perhaps the most surprising but also reassuring finding of our research into populism and globalisation over recent years: that in countless areas of life, far from being poles apart, people tend to cluster somewhere in between that is, they fall on a generally moderate bell curve. In fact, this newspaper spotted a similar pattern when it first unveiled the Globalism Project in 2019, namely that the study was remarkable for how most respondents seemed so, well, normal. Large-scale studies of IQ and personality tell a similar story of a bell-curve distribution in which most of us are unexceptional, statistically speaking, and often share our strongest traits with the majority.

Social science researchers can be understandably keen to focus on what divides populations, or what marks out one type of person as being at odds with another. What is more striking is how much people tend to have in common, when you scratch beneath the surface of political labels and loyalties. Social media may be amplifying the role of identity markers in politics, but people are much more likely to agree than disagree on the underlying trends of what is acceptable behaviour, and what our priorities should be.

Stephan Shakespeare is CEO and co-founder of YouGov. Joel Rogers de Waal is academic director at YouGov

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Be reassured: the world is not as divided as we might think - The Guardian

I can't say I expected it to happen, but somehow it feels inevitable: Kyle Rittenhouse has endorsed Black Lives Matter. "I support the BLM movement," the culture-war lightning rod declared on Fox News last night. Rittenhouse, whose politics before his trial seemed to be those of a back-the-blue conservative, added that "there's a lot of prosecutorial misconduct, not just in my case but in other cases. It's just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of someone."

Rittenhouse, of course, is the teen who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the unrest there last year, where he shot three people, killing two of them; he faced homicide charges, argued that he had acted in self-defense, became a cause clbre on the political right, and last week was acquitted. Since he made those comments about Black Lives Matter, my social media feeds have been filled with both liberals and conservatives questioning his sincerity. And they could be right: It's not hard to think of reasons why Rittenhouse would be trying to reinvent his public image right now. It might not seem like a great P.R. strategy to alienate your most devoted fans while your most devoted foes continue to hate you, but that doesn't mean it's not a P.R. strategy.

But he could be telling the truth too. The guy just spent a year churning through the criminal justice system, and that's been known to change a person's perspective. And it's easy to forget just how fluid people's goals and loyalties were in the spring and summer of 2020especially early on, when the George Floyd movement was spilling across the boundaries on our conventional political maps.

For example: There was a time when a majority of rank-and-file Republicans supported the protests.

Officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd on May 25, 2020. Not long afterward, in the first week of June, a Washington Post poll showed 53 percent of Republicans endorsing the protests sparked by the murder. A Pew poll conducted around the same time asked the different but related question of how people felt about the Black Lives Matter movement. BLM did not get a GOP majority, but it wasn't a blowout either: 40 percent expressed their support.

This was after some of the marches had turned into riots. That Post poll even brought that up, asking if people saw the protests as predominantly peaceful or violent. The responses were split down the middle, with 44 percent saying peaceful and 42 percent saying violent. This wasn't a purely partisan gap: 65 percent of Republicans went with "violent," a clear majority but nowhere near unanimity. (I should add that calling the protests violent didn't always mean blaming the protesters. In the same poll, 66 percent of the country assigned responsibility for the violence to neither protesters nor police, but to "other people acting irresponsibly.") And the Post poll wasn't out on a limb by itself. A roughly simultaneous survey by Data for Progress had 44 percent of Republicans declaring that most of the protesters were peaceful.

The protests even had some support from people who armed themselves to repel rioters. That summer saw many temporary, informal, local groupscall them pop-up militiasmustering to defend homes and businesses against arsonists and looters (or, in some cases, against wild rumors that arsonists and looters were about to be bused in to town). In Kenosha, the most famous of these was the Kenosha Guard, which put out a call for "patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from the evil thugs." And Kevin Mathewson, the man who launched the Kenosha Guard, reportedly participated in a June 2 "Kneel for Nine" event to protest Floyd's death. "People were upset about George Floyd and what happened to him," he told The New York Times. "I was one of those folks."

If you have trouble taking Rittenhouse's statement at face value, you might be skeptical about Mathewson's sincerity too. Or maybe you just think we should draw a distinction between how he felt on June 2 and how he felt when Kenosha was exploding nearly three months later. OK: Then let's look at some pop-up crews that were active that first week in Juneand who presumably weren't driven by white paranoia, since they weren't white themselves. On June 4, Gustavo Arellano filed a dispatch in the Los Angeles Times about "a scene repeated in barrios across Southern California," where Mexican Americans, some of them armed with wrenches or pit bulls, lined up as protesters passed by. "Residents stood outside their homes and shops to support the message," Arellano wrote, "but also to offer one of their own: Don't mess with us." Pop-up security teams also appeared in Minneapolis' minority neighborhoods, and some of them were explicitly aligned with the George Floyd movement. "They support the protests against police brutality but not the destruction," NPR reported of a group called Security De La Lake. They didn't see this as a contradiction, in part because they suspected that racist agents provocateurs were actually responsible for the violence.

I'm not arguing that this was typical of the pop-up crews, any more than I'd want to suggest that they were all like those small-town conspiracists convinced that George Soros was about to bus in an antifa army. The point is how barren the more formulaic narratives about that summer's conflicts are. Groups like the Kenosha Guard were generally comprised of "guys in the neighborhood," Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League told NPR last year. His sense was that they "tend to be right-wing" but were "not typically extremists, although there's nothing that could exclude some extremists being among them."

The protesters were not typically "extremists" either, if we must use that word. If they were, there must be a lot of extremists out there: Literally millions of people participated in literally thousands of demonstrations against racism and abusive policing in the summer of 2020. The phrase "mostly peaceful" has become a caustic joke on the right, but most of these protests were in fact peaceful. And the ones that did see violence were more likely to see a little of it than a lot of it; sporadic skirmishes were more common than blocks aflame. Riots certainly did break out in several cities, and in onePortland, Oregonthey became persistent. But the George Floyd movement as a whole really was mostly peaceful, even if you also saw CNN using that phrase in a stupid way.

Republican opinion shifted by the end of the summer. And by the time Joe Biden was president, a lot of that early ideological fluidity seemed forgotten. The moment when the positions really hardened, I suspect, was the Capitol riot. One Republican rhetorical tack was to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy, claiming that they had tolerated the Floyd riots; and this was easier to do if you conflated statements of support for peaceful protests with support for the fires that sometimes followed. Sedition-hunting liberals, meanwhile, started seeing all sorts of flashpoints as either precursors or echoes of January 6. This too left little room for nuanced distinctions.

And so Rittenhouse was embraced as a hero by the sort of people who think Black Lives Matter is a subversive menace, and he was denounced as a subversive menace himself by many Americans on the other side of the aisle. (Outgoing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio reacted to the Rittenhouse verdict by calling for "stronger laws to stop violent extremism.") The one thing they seem to agree on is that there's a vast subversive menace out there, and that the nation's policing apparatus needs to be stronger to combat itthe exact opposite of what protesters were demanding last year. If Rittenhouse's remarks about Black Lives Matter and prosecutors can help break that spell, then I welcome his comments, whether or not they're sincere.

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Republicans for BLM and Other Things You Don't Remember About the Summer of 2020 - Reason

Activists are now concerned that the no guilty verdict could "give license" and send a message to others that may identify with Rittenhouse's actions.

Jacob Blake's uncle, Justin Blake, center, holds a Pan-African flag as he rallies with dozens of other protesters on the steps of the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 16, 2021. Activists are now concerned that the no guilty verdict could "give license" and send a message to others that may identify with Rittenhouse's actions. Credit - Ashlee RezinAP

On the surface, the jurys Nov. 19 verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse was all too simple. His defense team successfully pled the case that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed two people during a night of protests and unrest in Kenosha last August.

But Rittenhouses reasons for being in Kenosha, then-roiled by the police shooting of Jacob Blake, and the lack of accountability thats being placed on his behavior is something criminal and racial justice activists are deeply concernedand wholly unsurprisedabout moving forward.

During an interview with Fox News broadcast on Nov. 22, Rittenhouse claimed that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement, and argued that his case had nothing to do with race. (While the circumstances were, broadly, related to a collective response to racial justice and police brutality, Rittenhouse and all three men he shot are white.)

However, according to some activists, the ramifications of his trial are less about Rittenhouse as an individual, and more about what he is now seen as representingan opposition to protests and protesters that isnt less about protecting property or supporting law enforcement, and more about a deep-seated disdain for racial equality.

Read more: The Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict Makes Us All Less Safe

The impact of Rittenhouses trial will be seen in what happens when the people who respond to injustice are confronted by those who dont agree with the response, Dr. Amara Enyia, a public policy expert with Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) tells TIME. This verdict is more about those who disagree with people who are protesting for whatever reason. It sends a message to those peoplethat they can get involved in ways that are reckless.

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The jurys verdict upholds white supremacy, even though the victims were white. The underlying issue was about the power of Black people to push back against police violence, argues Delores Jones-Brown, a criminal justice professor at John Jay College in New York.

Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot and paralyzed during a confrontation with police officers on Aug. 23, 2020. (The officers involved have not faced any criminal charges.) To many, the incident was yet another example of the injustices that often befalls Black civilians during encounters with the policeand resonated even more after George Floyds murder and the killing of Breonna Taylor.

[Like with] many issues that people feel like are so important, Enyia says of racial justice protesters, the only way that they can get the attention of the powers that be is by being out in the streets engaging in their First Amendment rights.

And it didnt take long after news of Blakes shooting broke for protests and unrest to spread across Kenosha. In addition to peaceful protests and demonstrations led by local organizers, individuals engaged in violence and property damage. On Aug. 24, 2020, the Wisconsin National Guard was sent to the city.

Kyle Rittenhouse listens as the Judge Bruce Schroeder talks about jury deliberations on Nov. 17, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.Sean KrajacicPool/Getty Images

These are the circumstances that Rittenhouse arrived in, ostensibly to serve as a medic for people injured in clashes between protesters and counter-protesters, as well as to guard businesses deemed at risk of looting or property crimes. Regardless of his initial intentions, activists believe that his presence served to escalate tensionsto a fatal point. Before the night was out, Rittenhouse had fatally shot two men and injured a third. During his trial, Rittenhouse and others testified that his first victim, Joseph Rosenbaum, had initiated a conflict; Rittenhouse claimed he shot in self-defense. As he fled the scene, he then engaged physically with Joshua Ziminski, who was killed, and Gaige Grosskreutz, who was injured. Both of these men were armed.

I think for white protesters, this may be their first brush with the idea that if you [are] for social justice or racial justice, you are at great risk that the system is willing to harm you, Jones-Brown says. And activists are now concerned this verdict could give license and send a message to others that may identify with Rittenhouses actions. It actually emboldens them. It sends a message that they will not be held accountable for their behavior and decision-making, Enyia adds.

This in turn will most likely impact Black people engaged in protest work to a much larger extent than their white peers or allies.

Read more: In the Kyle Rittenhouse Trial, Self-Defense Took Center Stage

These are the same voices that vilify Black protesters fighting for racial justice and defend state-sanctioned police violence against them. Rittenhouse is one person, but his actions are intrinsically tied to a web of white supremacist rhetoric and the nations longstanding history of anti-Black violence, Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights activists group Color of Change, said in a Nov. 19 statement.

For those of us who believe in protest and who believe in the need for protest as a tool toward the end of systemic and structural injustice, it wont stop us, Enyia tells TIME. Protesting is a tool and we will continue to use it.

Other racial justice activists speaking with TIME in response to the jurys verdict likewise say it will not impact their advocacy. But it presents serious complications, and may well change their tacticsforcing those on the ground protesting on the defense, focused on assessing potential threats and protecting themselves as well as uplifting their cause.

In some cases, this might mean carrying a legal firearm. (An August survey from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project revealed that demonstrations involving armed individuals are nearly six times as likely to turn violent or destructive, when compared to those that take place without firearms.) It could also mean that more organizers are trained in de-escalation tactics. The big takeaway is that this is another reminder that activists and protesters cant rely on the system itself to protect them.

Furthermore, it reinforces the dangerous dichotomy that those protesting against white supremacy and racial violence will be at greater risk of it for calling it out.

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How the Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Verdict Could Devastate the Work of Black Lives Matter Activists - Yahoo News

On Monday, the Washington Black Lives Matter Alliance (WaBLM) called on the United States Department of Justice to launch a civil rights investigation into the disproportionate use of excessive force against Black people and people of color by the Pierce County Sheriffs Department.

Sakara Remmu, lead strategist for WaBLM, met with U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington Nicholas Brown to discuss the request and other urgent matters related to the Department.

Pierce County recently released a report on use of force incidents by the Sheriffs Department. Among its findings: Black residents experience 5.62 times as much police use of force as white residents. Native American or Alaska Native residents experience 2.31 times as much force as white residents.

According to the report, Black childrenthe most vulnerable in Pierce Countyexperience force seven to 13 times more than white children.

It doesnt get more clear than these numbers; the need for a new vision for justice is overdue at the Pierce County Sheriffs Department, said Carol Mitchell, former Senior Counsel for Justice Services at Pierce County, Founder of the Institute for Black Justice, and member of the WaBLM steering committee.

If the DOJ digs further, they will find that Black people are arrested more often and over-represented in the Pierce County Jail and at Remann Hall. When involved in domestic conflict, Black children are not diverted to family therapy, but arrested and sent to detention.Black children are presumed to be gang-affiliated just because of their family name, and get charged with more serious crimes than their white counterparts engaged in the same behavior.

How can residents have any faith in a department that is brutalizing young Black people? How can residents have trust for a department lead by a Sheriff facing criminal charges for false statements that nearly got an innocent Black man killed? How can residents believe in a department thats being sued by its three highest-ranking Black employees for a history of racial discrimination and harrassement?

The answer is, they cannot. Its time for the Department of Justice to step in.

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WA BLM Meets With Justice Dept Over Pierce Co. Sheriff Dept - Seattle Medium

Ever since Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two men and injured a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during racial justice demonstrations last year, legions of conservatives and far-right extremists have celebrated an 18-year-old as both a hero and a victim. Soon after receiving a not guilty verdict last Friday, Rittenhouse attempted to take part in his own beatification.

Adopting a posture both confrontational to his critics and satiating for his most ardent supporters, Rittenhouse appeared in his first national television interview on Fox Newss Tucker Carlson Tonight after a Wisconsin jury acquitted him on all charges in the August 2020 shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and injury of Gaige Grosskreutz. Even as Carlsons interview aired during primetime, protests over the verdict that began over the weekend continued in major cities.

The interview came as Rittenhouses trial and subsequent verdict has stirred up fierce debate on some of the nations most contentious issues, including gun rights and the right to protest without threat of violence. However, the court proceedings were often deeply unserious, starting with Judge Bruce Schroeder declaring that the attorneys in the case were not allowed to refer to Rittenhouses victims as victims. The defendant himself actually helped randomly select the jury, using an unusual, old-fashioned lottery-style draw. And lest we forget, there was a day of dubitable sobbing on the witness stand.

Contrary to that weepy court testimony, Rittenhouse mostly spoke with a calm voice as he swung at Carlsons softballs. The host did his utmost to center Rittenhouses trauma and pain, teeing him up to lash out at President Joe Biden and invoke incorporeal forces like a mob mentality that he blamed for his legal plight.

His guest also said that he supported Black Lives Matter and that those committing violence during the demonstrations following Jacob Blakes shooting by Kenosha police were opportunist, taking advantage of the BLM movement.

It was odd to hear Rittenhouse say that, particularly in the middle of a Fox News interview. Stating ones social-justice bonafides serves, for white liberals, to signify allyship. But for conservatives or people playing to that audiences sympathies, doing so is often a move to seek cover from charges of racism. The resurgence of extremist, white supremacist violence and intimidation during the last several years has been, in their view, an act of self-defense.

How, then, in that context, are we to take it when we see Rittenhouse argue to Carlson, It wasnt Kyle Rittenhouse on trial in Wisconsin; it was the right of self-defense on trial? When the same people who support Rittenhouse believe the country needs defending from people who arent white and dont believe in defending Black lives, he can say he supports Black Lives Matter all he wants.

Whats evident, no matter Rittenhouses intent, is that he came to the right show on the right network.

True to his programs formula, Carlsons hour was devoted to stoking misguided cultural grievances on Rittenhouses behalf. Known for its reckless demagoguery and fabulism, Tucker Carlson Tonight regularly focuses on convincing his heavily white audience that theyre right to fear a society supposedly out to get them (and only them). Throughout the broadcast, the host promoted a forthcoming documentary about Rittenhouses trial, despite the ongoing controversy about his revisionist January 6 special.

Acquittal, in the Fox News arena, became absolution. What a sweet boy, Carlson remarked about the 18-year-old before a commercial break.

It was the seventh anniversary of the day that an actual boy, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, was mistaken for a man by Cleveland police before an officer shot him dead. But on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Rittenhouse was supposedly the victim this November 22, and the host gave him every chance to deny the most injurious claim his detractors have made. No, not that he is a murderer that he is a bigot.

Im not a racist person, Rittenhouse said, adding that he felt his case was not about race. (The victims in the case were all white, but prosecutors noted earlier this year that Rittenhouse had been photographed with Proud Boys and flashing a hand sign known as a symbol for white power. ) Whether this is about race is not Rittenhouses decision, though, and whether he is in fact racist seems irrelevant. He likely wont dissuade his critics in the press and elsewhere who have labeled him a white supremacist, nor the self-identifying neo-Nazis celebrating his acquittal. More interesting, however, was how Rittenhouse described being affected by his time spent within American jurisprudence.

Rittenhouse had already twice stated his support for the Black Lives Matter movement (which strongly rebuked him in a tweet about the interview) when he took note of the inequities and degradation he experienced while in jail.

I believe there needs to be change, Rittenhouse said, I believe theres a lot of prosecutorial misconduct not just in my case, but in other cases. And its just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody. If they did this to me, imagine what they could have done to a person of color who doesnt maybe have the resources I do or isnt widely publicized, like my case.

Rittenhouse spoke of a jail cell he likened to a one-star hotel, where he had a mobile phone and tablet, but allegedly no running water. He didnt shower for nearly a month, he told Carlson. Though he complained of being pepper-sprayed in Kenosha, Rittenhouse spoke glowingly of law enforcement even thanking the guards at his first jail and praising their professionalism. But he also detailed how he spent more than 80 days in jail due to a problem too many defendants have: incompetent counsel. His allies at the time included QAnon conspiracy theorist Lin Wood; Rittenhouse alleged Wood exploited his case after Wood sought to claw back money raised for Rittenhouses bail. But some defendants are far unluckier, and some end up on death row.

Carlson reacted to these details as if he was shocked to hear such things could happen in America, as if a man named Julius Jones professing his innocence in Oklahoma had not narrowly escaped lethal injection the day before Rittenhouses verdict. Carlsons only reference to the man whose shooting prompted the Kenosha protests where Rittenhouse fired on the three men was a baseless claim that the media lies about the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Still, almost by accident, Carlsons program reinforced that there are many things wrong with the American project. They could have done an hour on Monday night reexamining Rices death and the familys campaign to have his killing reconsidered for prosecution by the Department of Justice. Such a show might have made the same or similar points, but its foolish to expect Carlson, known for his openly racist appeals to white grievances, to recognize whats wrong with America without peering through the lens of victimhood.

If only Carlson and Rittenhouse were able to discuss the terrible state of American jurisprudence without putting themselves in the spotlight. For all of Rittenhouses recognition of Americas faulty system of criminal punishment, the two still failed to acknowledge that it was the AR-15-style rifle he wielded that instigated the intimidation and harassment. Had they, the ridiculous spectacle on Fox News might have come close to having some worth.

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The ironic spectacle of Kyle Rittenhouses Tucker Carlson interview - Vox

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who was acquitted of murder last week after shooting and killing two people in Kenosha, Wis.,during civil unrest there last year,said he supports the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

"Im not a racist person. I support the BLM movement," Rittenhouse said during an interview with Fox News host Tucker CarlsonTucker CarlsonRittenhouse defense attorney says he threw Tucker Carlson's film crew 'out of the room several times' Rittenhouse after trial: 'Self-defense is not illegal' Tucker Carlson gets Rittenhouse interview for Monday night MORE, a portion of which is slated to air on Carlson's program on Monday evening.

"I support peacefully demonstrating," the teen told Carlson, according to a transcript of the interview. "I believe there needs to be change. I believe theres a lot of prosecutorial misconduct, not just in my case but in other cases. Its just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of someone."

The jury on Friday found Rittenhousenot guilty of all five counts he faced, including intentional homicide, after defense attorneys argued Rittenhouse acted in self-defense when he shot and killedJoseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26.

Rittenhouse also injured a third person during the shooting, which took place after the teen traveledto Kenosha from his home in Illinois. Hesaid he intended to help defend businesses that were under threat of being damagedduring the unrest that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, earlier that summer.

TheRittenhouse verdictwaswidely celebrated over the weekend by conservatives, manyof whom see his acquittal as a win for gun rights and self-defense laws nationwide. Many liberalshave panned the verdict as setting a dangerous precedent about self-defense claims and the disparities in the criminal justice system for defendants based on race.

Several protests have broken out in cities nationwide following the verdict.

The verdict speaks to the dramatic differences in perspective people have, based on racial background, about justice in our country, civil rights attorney Shavar Jeffries told The Hill on Friday. For many people of color, the idea that they could show up with an assault rifle at the site of a rally, kill people, and find themselves exonerated is something beyond comprehension.

Rittenhouse, in the interview with Carlson, described the fearhe saidhe felt during the confrontation that led to the shooting.

"I tell everybody there what happened," he said. "I said I had to do it. I was just attacked. I was dizzy. I was vomiting. I couldnt breathe."

Rittenhouse broke down in tears on the stand as he testified during his own trial and collapsed when the verdict was read aloud by the jury foreperson on Friday.

"The jury reached the correct verdict,"he said during a previously released portion of the interview with Carlson. "Self-defense is not illegal."

This article was updated at 7:48 p.m.

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Kyle Rittenhouse: 'I support the BLM movement' | TheHill - The Hill

MSNBC host Joy Reid said far-right groups acted like today was the Super Bowl following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. Reacting to Vice President Kamala Harris' response to the verdict, Reid said we want Harris to be all things to all people, saying she is as much a victim of "the system" as the rest of us.

Reid called for white people to "look inward" and not to rely on a black woman to "come zooming in on her white horse" to solve your problems or "fix your feelings." Reid, a guest on her own show today, told her all-black panel of cable television commentators that Harris is a "victim" of the system just as much as they are. "It's not her job to fix it," Reid said of Harris and "the system."

"We want Kamala Harris to be all things to all people," Reid said Friday. "She has to represent everything black. But she's not the only person responsible to do that. This system is not on her shoulders. She didn't create it. She's as much a victim of it, lives under it just like we do on this panel. It's not her job to fix it."

"The problem is there is an L.A. Times reporter that talked about the far-right groups from The Proud Boys on who are absolutely licking their chops today acting like they won the Super Bowl according to this L.A. Times reporter," Reid said of the Rittenhouse verdict.

"We have nothing in place culturally or socially to stop the next group of white nationalists, Proud Boys, MAGA people, whoever they want to take from this verdict what they want and to use it as permission to attack Black Lives Matter," Reid fretted.

This is a problem white America has to do. They need to look inward. And don't look for a black lady to come zooming on her white horse to fix it and to fix your feelings about it. Because the problem is there is an L.A. Times reporter that talked about the far-right groups from The Proud Boys on who are absolutely licking their chops today acting like they won the Super Bowl according to this L.A. Times reporter. What we need to worry about is we have nothing in place legally. We have nothing in place culturally or socially to stop the next group of white nationalists, Proud Boys, MAGA people, whoever they want to take from this verdict what they want and to use it as permission to attack Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter ain't just black people as we just saw. Mr. Huber and Mr. Rosenbaum are white. they are Jewish. They are also victims and easily made victims because anyone who supports Black Lives Matter should be very afraid tonight.

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Joy Reid: Nothing In Place To Prevent White Nationalists From Using Rittenhouse Verdict To Attack Black Lives Matter - RealClearPolitics

Desean Terry as Daniel on the Apple TV Plus series The Morning ShowPhoto: Apple TV+

Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the season two finale of The Morning Show. If you are worried about that sort of thing, watch the episode and come back.

Does the season two finale of The Morning Show really mark Desean Terrys departure from the show? Is his character, Daniel, really done at UBA? Honestly, considering how little theyve appreciated him, he probably should be.

We talked to Terry about all of those burning questions and more for the video interview above.

For instance, is Daniel really done? According to Terry, Itll be interesting to see exactly what Daniel does next. The actor says he admires Daniel walking away and prioritizing family, saying that his COVID experience made him reassess his life and maybe he has his priorities out of whack.

Terry says that switch up is something hes seen in his own life, and that he hopes, whatever happens with with Daniel that we get to see that he approaches the world with a new sense of hierarchy about whats important for him. Maybe some of the stress that he placed on himself to prove himself at UBA hopefully melts away and he finds out that he is destined for even greater things.

Terry also had thoughts on the shows reflection of the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, saying:

Ive always been a person whos been vocal about representation mattering and whats happening in terms of systemic racism, but during COVID, I had to go back and do even more research and more deep dives about what was going on.

I found that there were so many Daniels out there. There were so many journalists and all this amazing literature out there that was evolving our conversation about systemic oppression. How do you even have a conversation about that when youre fighting for being recognized and being seen without just talking about your relationship to whiteness? Its a very, very difficult and challenging thing to approach.

What I like about what Daniel is doing is that were seeing that he is one of those harbingers. He is one of those people who is saying, you guys have to recognize what is happening here. You have to see the level to which this system is set up against me as a black person functioning within a white space.

I think what happens three months later really opens that up, and we have not just a national conversation, but an international conversation about race.

Season two of The Morning Show is now available in its entirety on Apple TV+. You can check out our interview with the shows producer here, and with one of its stars, Jennifer Aniston, here.

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Desean Terry on Black Lives Matter and what's next for The Morning Show's Daniel - The A.V. Club

This series is more nuanced than Justified, not necessarily telling viewers that what Winslet's character did was, indeed, justified. It operates in a moral grey area often necessary for interesting drama. Other shows draw an ethical divide between police figures by contrasting good and bad behaviour, and honing in on subjects such as corruption and malfeasance creating unflattering impressions of the police force.

In recent years these more sobering series have included Line of Duty, which follows a self-professed "proper copper" (Martin Compston), along with Vicky McClure's DI Fleming and Adrian Dunbar's tough-talking quip machine Superintendent Hastings who take a moral stand against their colleagues in their work on the anti-corruption unit. In The Shield, the "bad cop" is the principal character: a dirty, in-your-face loudmouth (Michael Chiklis) who partakes in all sorts of unethical behaviour, including beating a suspect in an interview room with a telephone book.

A more cynical future?

Lamb predicts that, going forward, we are likely to see more in this already popular trend of cynical productions. He says that "at no other time" have cop dramas from both sides of the pond been "overwhelmingly invested in police corruption and going to great lengths to uncover why things are not as they first seem. To me this seems indicative of a time when faith in political leaders has been more sectarian than ever, and public trust is at an all-time low."

On the question of what else is in store for the future of the TV cop drama, like television more broadly the genre will almost certainly produce fewer shows anchored by white men. More will join a growing list of female-led procedurals, that includes Top of the Lake, Happy Valley, The Fall and Mare of Easttown. This modern twist on the genre however is not without its own challenges. Jenner, for instance, notes that female police characters often suffer more than male characters: "the outcome is always that the worst things that can happen to a person happen to them in the end," she says.

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What is the future of the cop drama? - BBC News