The rapper says Sen. Sanders has been a fighter for black rights for decades.
Sen. Bernie Sanders with rapper Killer Mike after Mike’s endorsement at an Atlanta rally, November 23, 2015. Sanders Facebook page
By Lelita Cannon
Earlier this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was parlayin’ with Killer Mike, throwing up what could inevitably be mistaken for gang signs, and going to soul food restaurants in The A like it was just a typical day in the ‘hood. Now, if that’s not a white man trying to assimilate into Blackness, I don’t know what is. That’s damn near the Blackest thing I’ve seen this year. Even Obama hasn’t courted his rapper-supporters in the same manner.
Moderate historical research on The Sand Man—my personal nickname for Bernie, because I hope he puts his wack-ass rivals to sleep come the 2016 election—will hip you to just how black this man is. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. In 1941. That’s less than 100 years removed from when black slavery (allegedly) ended in the United States. Before gentrification. Way before that lone pioneer Columbused–I mean, “settled”–downtown Brooklyn. Do you realize how black that is? I’m talking a Brooklyn that preceded Spike Lee Joints and bodegas.
FBI statistics confirm a dramatic decline in violent crimes since 1991, yet the number of prisoners has doubled over approximately the same period. It’s but one sign of a deeply troubling decline. (Photo: PRCJ/file)
While Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou are vilified for revealing vital information about spying and bombing and torture, a man who conspired with Goldman Sachs to make billions of dollars on the planned failure of subprime mortgages was honored by New York University for his “Outstanding Contributions to Society.”
This is one example of the distorted thinking leading to the demise of a once-vibrant American society. There are other signs of decay:
Wealthy conservatives are pushing a bill that would excuse corporate leaders from financial fraud, environmental pollution, and other crimes that America’s greatest criminals deem simply reckless or negligent. The Heritage Foundation attempts to rationalize, saying “someone who simply has an accident by being slightly careless can hardly be said to have acted with a ‘guilty mind.'”
One must wonder, then, what extremes of evil, in the minds of conservatives, led to criminal charges against people apparently aware of their actions: the Ohio woman who took coins from a fountain to buy food; the California man who broke into a church kitchen to find something to eat; and the 90-year-old Florida activist who boldly tried to feed the homeless.
Citizens for Tax Justice reports that Fortune 500 companies are holding over $2 trillion in profits offshore to avoid taxes that would amount to over $600 billion. Our society desperately needs infrastructure repair, but 8 million potential jobs are being held hostage beyond our borders.
FBI statistics confirm a dramatic decline in violent crimes since 1991, yet the number of prisoners has doubled over approximately the same period.
Meanwhile, white-collar prosecutions have been reduced by over a third, and, as noted above, corporate leaders are steadily working toward 100% tolerance for their crimes.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 25 percent of adults experience mental illness in a given year, with almost half of the homeless population so inflicted. Yet from 1970 to 2002, the per capita number of public mental health hospital beds plummeted from over 200 per 100,000 to 20 per 100,000, and after the recession state cutbacks continued.
And that includes the Saudi kings whose funding of Wahhabi doctrine gave rise to the scourge of Islamic extremism.
Flowers are put in a window shattered by a bullet as Paris mourns the victims of a terrorist attack. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
By Laila Lalami
What happened in Paris on November 13 has happened before, in a shopping district of Beirut on November 12, in the skies over Egypt on October 31, at a cultural center in Turkey on July 20, a beach resort in Tunisia on June 26—and nearly every day in Syria for the last four years.
The scenario is by now familiar to all of us. News of the killings will appear on television and radio. There will be cries of horror and sorrow, a few hashtags on Twitter, perhaps even a change of avatars on Facebook. Our leaders will make staunch promises to bring the terrorists to justice, while also claiming greater power of surveillance over their citizens. And then life will resume exactly as before.
Except for the victims’ families. For them, time will split into a Before and After.
We owe these families, of every race, creed, and nationality, more than sorrow, more than anger. We owe them justice.
We must call to account ISIS, a nihilistic cult of death that sees the world in black and white, with no shades of gray in between.
The Progressive Democrat 
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