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  Posted By:
  spiker at 05/12/2008 12:58:11 PM
  Comment:
  Sean Bell was at a seedy strip club, someone in his party threatened someone by saying something like, "Go get my gun," the car these guys were in crashed into an unmarked police vehicle. Those are some facts I've gathered.
  
  The truly righteous moment passed with Amadou Diallo in 1999 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo. Why weren't these protest done back then? They may have averted Sean Bell's death. A death whose facts are not nearly as eggregious as Diallo's. As a matter of fact Bell seems to be a lot less clear.
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  Posted By:
  Freedom_Jury at 05/12/2008 3:35:19 AM
  Comment:
  Sharpton is correct in this case, but not for the reasons he believes...
  
  "Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footsteps of our flying brother" -Frederick Douglass (from 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave')
  
  How is it that there are still Jim Crow laws in all of our major cities, and that the citizens of the USA are not educated enough to oppose them, in the year 2008? A full 143 years after the fall of slavery, the laws treat black men and women horribly unequally... WHY?
  
  Well, my brothers and sisters, I have done my research, and I have found the answer to this question.
  
  SIMPLY: The culture of prohibition is the factor that allows the unequal enforcement of the law. Any law that violates inalienable property rights allows a minority to be singled out and targeted by law enforcement. The 4th amendment, the 2nd Amendment, the entire Bill of Rights cannot exist as the Supreme Law of the land, so long as there is prohibition of private property. The abolitionists of our time, the libertarians, are in agreement with me. Frederick Douglas would certainly have been a Libertarian Party member, if he had lived in our time: he fought for equality under the law, and justice for all.
  
  Equality under the law is the last thing that modern liberals or conservatives want. The liberals want to control your pocket book, and the conservatives want to control your thinking and social behavior.
  
  Douglass noted that the religious slaveowners were the most vicious, and he was right. The mask of social respectability is used to hide tyranny from the gullible and conformist. And the prohibition laws are championed loudly by the religious blacks. (Of course, the black panthers once saw the contradiction, and fought valiantly for their rights. The answer of the Chicago police was to literally murder thier leadership. One more reason to educate EVERYONE.)
  
  Make no mistake: the preachers and politicians who want the inner cities to be unarmed want one thing: they want black men to be unable to properly wield force. What does this say, when the people being disarmed have committed no crime? It is racism, pure and simple, based on geographical demographics. (Sure, the occasional white man is sent to jail for gun ownership in the city, but this is simply a ruse used to propagate a system that is predominantly racist. I know of three times when whites in Chicago went unpunished for gun possession that would have carried a 14 year prison sentence had they been "uppity" black men.) The racism is institutionalized to the extent that those who claim to be fighting racism propagate it, in their simpleminded acceptance of the status quo.
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  Posted By:
  Freedom_Jury at 05/12/2008 3:34:06 AM
  Comment:
  
  Where is the friend of the black 19 year old who owns a gun and is sent to jail for felony gun possession? Where is Sharpton then?
  
  Remember this: the very first Jim Crow laws in the USA were the laws that disarmed southern blacks after the civil war. Those laws required the permission of white sherriffs for any citizen to own or carry a pistol or firearm. Although those laws directly contradicted the 2nd amendment, they were tolerated by the white and black majority that failed to understand their implications. The laws allows every southern sherrif to literally condemn disarmed black families to lynchings.
  
  And now, in the inner city, those same laws keep the upstanding black men from taking back their neighborhoods from lawlessness and crime. And that's where the new prohibition comes in: Ever since the beginning of prohibition of drugs (other than alcohol, since alcohol was the Christian white man's drug, and that somehow put it in a separate artificial category), the prohibition was directed at negroes and non-conforming whites.
  
  The prohibition of drugs has turned a minor social ill into a money-making opportunity for street gangs and criminals who naturally have contempt for the law. The violent and uneducated naturally hold contempt for the law. So prohibition both punishes them, and provides a financial incentive for those criminals to exist outside the law.
  
  In most urban areas, there are gun bans in the cities, and the drug laws are PRIMARILY enforced in the inner cities.
  
  This is the last vestige of institutionalized racism in America.
  
  In all other areas, a black individual is every bit the equal of the white man.
  
  But leave chance to a darkened street, and the police man quickly becomes the overseer. All to the ignorant delight of the black churches and "neighborhood watch communities".
  
  And what is the answer to the prohibitionist system, from those who claim to fight racism? SILENCE. Preservation of the politically-liberal status quo at all costs. Obama has offered plans for a new DEA office in New Orleans, in order to better aid the gestapo in rounding up his "fellow" negroes. He is also a champion of the "Jim Crow" gun laws that knock down the doors of responsible black men, and throw them into slavery cells for exercising their 2nd amendment RIGHTS, in order to preserve the power of the Democratic Party.
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  Posted By:
  Freedom_Jury at 05/12/2008 3:33:13 AM
  Comment:
  Every election, the Democratic Party hires expensive lawyers to strike competitors of theirs from the ballot. So much for "Democratic" (this was the fate of Humberto Prado in Chicago who dared to challenge a stooge of the Daley administration, the drug warrior John Pope). A truly Democratic Party would welcome competition...
  
  And the Republicans are equally bad. McCain is a drug warrior who wants to use your tax dollars (and military equipment they pay for) to bomb coca farmers in Colombia with paraquat. He wants to wage a holy war against the very idea of private property. And these holy warriors of his ---Do they knock down the doors of suburban white families? Or mostly poor black ones in the inner city? Who goes to jail?
  
  Cindy McCain (John's wife) didn't go to jail when she was busted with illegal painkillers. She cried and whimpered, and pissed herself in submission, and stated her support for the war on private property. Smack on the wrist! She cowarded out, and blindly served her husband's career!
  
  SO WHO BELIEVES IN EQUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS FOR ALL?
  
  If you want to vote for the abolitionist and the suffragist of today, you need to vote for whomever the Libertarian Party runs for office.
  
  If you, the black American, were to show this simple capacity for independent action, you would quickly see an end to the knocking down of doors, and the filling of prisons with your youth and economic lifeblood. You would see an instant respect for your voting power, and an instant catering to demands that the racist prison industrial complex be halted in its tracks.
  
  But this would require you to break rank. To walk away from your bought and paid for counselors of conscience (be they religious or political).
  
  I expect this message to be ignored and/or hastily taken down. And that would be too bad, because it is the living message of a dead and buried Frederick Douglass: the message of individual freedom, the message of abolition, born again.
  
  I am a white man, and I can't stand to see young black men and women preyed upon mercilessly by the prohibitionist police and prohibitionist courts. ( for advice about how to legally prevent this predation, I suggest http://www.fija.org and http://www.isil.org ) If only one black man in a thousand demanded justice, the statist city regimes of Daley, Bloomberg, etc... would crumble, and the police would once again be our servants, not our masters.
  
  No Peace for the Wicked,
  
  -A. Not Guilty Verdict
  
  http://www.blackmanwithagun.com
  
  http://www.rootforamerica.com
  
  http://www.lysanderspooner.org
  
  http://www.lp.org
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  Posted By:
  debrabrown at 05/10/2008 1:18:25 PM
  Comment:
  MY NAME IS DEBRA BROWN AND I THINK ALSHARPNER IS DOING WHAT IS RIGHT. THEY HAD NO RIGHT SHOOTING MR. SEAN BELL THAT MANY TIMES. IWILL SUPPORT HIM 100%. HERE IN STATESVILLE N.C. IS A PROBLEMALSO. I WOULD LIKE TO GET IN CONTACT WITH HIM. I HAVVE A FRIEND WHO WAS ARRESTED. HE WAS TREATED UN FAIRLY. HE WANTS TO FILE SUIT. HE WAS GIVEN TWO OPUS NUMBERS. NOW THEY HAVE HIM UNDER AS A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER. WHERE THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS CAN YOU HELP ME.
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  Posted By:
  JazzyD at 05/09/2008 11:48:31 PM
  Comment:
  I am incredibly proud of the way in which the community has responded to yet another disregard for black life. However, I have been very disappointed with the way in which the media has (yet again) chosen not to closely report on the actions being taken against the NYPD. The holes in our justice system need to be repaired and I think Gov. Paterson has the wherewithal to do it. I have faith that he will be our trailblazer. May the spot light continue to shine on the Bell family because this act of murder is indicative of the culture of the police--kill at will mentality and extreme policing of black and brown communities? The U.S. Attorney's office ought to take heed and proceed with making civil rights charges because black people have had enough.
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  Posted By:
  Alfiaj at 05/09/2008 3:33:18 PM
  Comment:
  We cannot let this die!! Amen to Rev. All and the rest of those who courageously protested. A similar incident happened a few years ago to a brother outside of Atlanta who, while driving in an SUV with two other friends, was shot and killed by the police. There was no national protest about this, so I believe that we need to keep this up, as America doesn't seem to take us seriously. How many more of these Amadou Diallo type situations need to arise?
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  Posted By:
  tbyrd324 at 05/09/2008 1:40:39 PM
  Comment:
  AMEN!! These police officers should be punished for the crime of murder they committed. The courts acquitting these men sends out a loud message to other police officers across this country that they are above the law when in fact they are not. This should not be allowed to fade away in the media. This should be "in your face" until justice is finally served. Keep up the good work Rev. Al.
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  Posted By:
  tbyrd324 at 05/09/2008 1:38:01 PM
  Comment:
  AMEN!!! These police officers should be punished for this crime they committed. This type of behavior on the court's part by acquitting these officers sends a message to other police officers across the country that they are above the law and can get away with murder. I live in Atlanta and the same thing happened when police stormed a 92 year old woman's home. In defending herself with a gun from who she thought were burglars, she was shot and killed and these officers planted evidence as well as falsified statements. However, they are on trial and Atlanta is watching very closely. Good for you Rev. Al!!!
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  Posted By:
  klmstar at 05/09/2008 12:16:38 PM
  Comment:
  I think having non-violent protests to protest the violent shooting of an unharmed AA male with no history of a police record is a brillant strategy. Rev. Sharpton should continue to keep it up and make this a nation wide media event. For 50 days around the country various demonstrations should be taking place.