Updated March 13, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Jamiel Shaw Sr.

From a reader:

Anyone with a heart aches at the 2008 murder of Jamiel Shaw Jr.—a Black youth who was a high school football star in Los Angeles and who had his eyes set on college ball and perhaps a professional career.

But as happens all too often in the inner cities, it seems another young man walked up on him and asked: “Where you from?” What followed next was the sound of two bullets fired from a .45 caliber gun, one to the torso... another to the head... and Jamiel Shaw Jr.’s blood covered the pavement a few feet from his parents’ home.

Pedro Espinoza, an undocumented 19-year-old immigrant, was convicted of this crime. He now sits on death row at San Quentin prison awaiting execution.

Now, Jamiel Shaw’s father, the senior Shaw, is supporting an incomparably greater crime than what happened to his son. He sat in the gallery at Donald Trump’s February 28 speech to Congress. At one point, Trump introduced Jamiel Shaw Sr. while promoting a new Homeland Security program that is part of the intensification of suppression of undocumented immigrants. Trump said:

“We must support the victims of crime. I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called VOICE―Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests. Joining us in the audience tonight are four very brave Americans whose government failed them. Their names are Jamiel Shaw, Susan Oliver, Jenna Oliver, and Jessica Davis.... His father [the father of Jamiel Shaw Jr.], who is in the audience tonight, has become a good friend of mine.”

It is both shameful and criminal what Jamiel Shaw Sr. is doing. He is allowing his loss, his pain, to be used to demonize, ostracize, criminalize, and terrorize—to unleash the brutal arm of a fascist state and its street thugs—against the entire group of Mexican people and immigrants who are not white.

Fascism is a living process. It grows... rapidly. It takes leaps. It comes after this group then this group. First they come for Mexicans. Then they come for immigrants. Then they come for Muslims. Then they come for the youth in the inner cities. Then they come for...

Jamiel Shaw Sr. is aiding and abetting the fascist Trump/Pence regime.

Collaborating with them. Singling out and making it easy for them to come after Mexicans and immigrants, especially (for now) those without papers as: “lawbreakers,” “murderers, rapists and drug dealers.”

Demonizing a whole people. Justifying and legalizing immensely greater crimes against people from Mexico, Central and South America—unleashing a greater crime against HUMANITY in the name of making “right” a wrong that was done to you. Give us a fucking break!

Jamiel Shaw Sr. is being played big time.

Played like a Black overseer on the slave plantation—to keep the whip cracking and the slaves working, keeping them in the dark about what is really going on, keeping the plantation secure and safe—ironically keeping safe and secure its foundation and authority of white supremacy.

Today, keeping safe and secure the agenda of Trump/Pence is to put “America First.” This is what U.S. troops do around the world, killing the innocent, killing hundreds of thousands of people, uprooting millions more, bombing the hell out of the country based on that lie about weapons of mass destruction.

That is what “America First” means in the world.

Shaw Sr. calls people who cross the border “lawbreakers.” He says they should be punished.

This is shameful. Disgraceful! How many laws, Mr. Shaw, do you think Black people broke in an effort to live as full human beings? What about during slavery? What about the abolitionists, Black and white? What about the fight for civil rights? What about Jim Crow?

What should people be willing to do to prevent the police murder of people like Mike Brown? Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice? Antonio Zambrano-Montes? Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez?

What are people willing to do—in the name of humanity, to oust fascism?

Being a collaborator for the Trump/Pence fascist regime is inexcusable! It is the outlook of a narrow slavish seeker of revenge.

Think about it: Any crime against other people is justified to set “right” what was done to me. This is unacceptable! It is a mental (ideological) chain that contributes to sapping our strength and holding the people down.

Humanity can do better than that!

Martin Luther King III

On MLK Day, January 16, 2017, Martin King III made the Walk of Shame into and out of Trump Tower, to meet with Trump. He then came out talking about the “constructive” meeting he had. King III said he talked with Trump about voting rights and that Trump likes the idea of registering everyone with photo voting ID. Registering everyone? Wonder what a Trump regime would do with that?

This meeting was two days after Trump's vehemently racist attack on Congressman John Lewis. About that, MLK III said, “In the heat of emotion a lot of things get said on both sides”(!) and it's time to move forward and come together as a country.

MLK III is lending not just his own reputation but his father's in the service of leading Black and progressive-minded people into the deadly embrace of a fascist Trump-Pence regime.

Steve Harvey

On Friday, January 13, TV personality Steve Harvey joined the parade of shameful collaborators consorting with Donald Trump by meeting with him at his plantation—known as the Trump Tower. Harvey said after the meeting, “We had a great conversation. We’re gonna get some things started. They have a plan for the inner cities, but they need help. And so that’s why they called me. So, we’ll see what I can do.”

It’s a fascist, white-supremacist, anti-immigrant “plan” for the inner cities. And this clown, Steve Harvey, says he’s going to collaborate with these horrible outrages.

As criminal as that is, Harvey wasn’t acting on his own. Harvey told reporters, “It’s just me following orders from my friend President Obama who said ‘Steve, you’ve got to’—as he told everybody—‘get out from behind your computers, stop tweeting and texting and get out there and sit down and talk. So I stepped from behind my microphone and I came and talked to the guy that’s going to be the 45th president of the United States. I did what I was supposed to do.”

Obama is lending the power and prestige of his office to legitimize a fascist and his regime, and pave the way for a “smooth transition.” And Steve Harvey is acting as a despicable emissary in this low and shameful crime.

Caitlyn Jenner

A number of news sources have reported that Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner) will be attending Trump’s inauguration. Caitlyn Jenner is probably the most well known transgender person in the world, and millions had supported her sex change as popularizing transgender rights. But as Eliza Thompson, an associate editor for Cosmopolitan.com, said in the headline for her January 11 article: “Caitlyn Jenner's Attendance at the Inauguration Would Be Unforgivable: She cannot simultaneously advocate for transgender rights and support Trump.” Thompson wrote, “Caitlyn’s decision to come out will likely remain a landmark in the march toward trans acceptance and equality, but supporting Donald Trump would be an unconscionable step in the wrong direction.”

In 2016, during the presidential campaign, Jenner made the totally idiotic statement about Trump that “I think he would be very good for women’s issues.” Jenner’s embrace of the Trump-Pence fascist regime is not just a betrayal of LGBTQ and women’s rights. It is a betrayal of humanity for her to act as a high-profile cheerleader legitimizing the American Hitler and his Nazi minions.

Billy C. Hawkins

The president of Alabama’s Talladega College, Billy C. Hawkins, just announced (Jan. 5) that this oldest Black liberal arts college in the U.S., set up just after the Civil War by freed slaves in 1867, will send its marching band to be part of the Trump-Pence Inauguration. This is in the face of many students, alumni, and others who called on the college to not participate in the inauguration. Nikky Finney—poet, literature professor, and an alumnus of Talladega—said that the school had “sold out the history of Talladega College for chicken change” and “maybe a tin star on a hatemonger’s parade route” (quoted in New York Times, January 5, 2017). Hawkins’s justification is that the inauguration is “not a political event but a civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power.” Yes—transfer of power to the fascist Trump-Pence regime! It is akin to leading your college band to march for Hitler, or march for the KKK moving into the White (Supremacist) House. How is that not political? How is that not ugly betrayal wrapped in sugar-coated words?

Don King

The award for December 29 goes to boxing promoter Don King, who appeared before TV cameras with Donald Trump and mouthed Trump’s slogan, “Make America great again.” “Only in America” is it possible to fetch a Black man in minstrel black face to the estate of the fascist, white supremacist, sexual-assaulting misogynist pig—to skin and grin while holding American and Israeli flags—as he dances down the walk of shame for collaborators for the incoming Trump-Pence regime.

Leonardo DiCaprio

The award for December 21 goes to Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leonardo DiCaprio met with Trump to discuss "green jobs." That is, all the jobs people could be put to work doing (like making solar panels) to "save" the environment. Leonardo, you may think you can “change his mind,” but what you are really doing is normalizing Trump and his fascist program. And be careful what you wish for...remember what the Nazis put at the entrance of Auschwitz and other concentration camps where they gassed and murdered Jews: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free). 

Jim Brown and Ray Lewis

Brown, a retired NFL star, claims a reputation for speaking out against how Black people are treated in this country. On December 13, after meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in NYC, he told the press, "...I fell in love with him [Trump] because he really talks about helping African-American, Black people, and that's why I'm here."

Ray Lewis joined Jim Brown in the collaborator walk of shame—being fetched to the Trump Tower and stepping in line to legitimize the fascist Trump/Pence regime. Ray Lewis, like Brown, is a former NFL great. He is also a gibberish-speaking Christian theocrat and blames especially poor Black people for the madness the system forces them to get caught up in. For some time this asshole has been a physical fitness trainer for the brutalizing murdering police in the city of Baltimore.

 

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