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Comic W. Kamau Bell Thinks White Liberals Need to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

The comedian reflects on the Starbucks implicit bias training and his own experience getting kicked out of a café in Berkeley.

BRANDON E. PATTERSONJUN.

link: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/06/comic-w-kamau-bell-starbucks-elmwood-cafe-racism/

In the two and a half months since the arrests of two African American realtors at a Philadelphia Starbucks in April, dozens of other racist incidents in public spaces have grabbed national headlines. The encounters have forced a shift in the national dialogue on race and policing. Now, that conversation isn’t just about officers—it’s also about customers and bystanders, who sometimes make frivolous calls to 911 because of inherent biases about people of color.

But although the conversation may be new, the encounters themselves are not. Stand-up comedian W. Kamau Bell, who hosts the CNN show United Shades of America and has a new Netflix special called Private School Negro, was asked to leave a coffee shop in Berkeley, California, by an employee who assumed he was pestering a white woman who was actually his wife. For this episode of Bite, I talked to Bell about the encounter, the implicit bias training Starbucks offered in thousands of stores in May, and the responsibility he thinks white people have to do something when they witness instances of racism.

Mother Jones: So, as black folks, it often feels like there’s nothing we can do that doesn’t run the risk of sparking a police call. We can’t go to Starbucks. We can’t go to Waffle House. We can’t barbecue. You’ve had this particular experience before back in 2015, when you were kicked out of Elmwood Cafe, a coffee shop in Berkeley, as you were attempting to show a children’s book to your wife (who happens to be white) and her friend. An employee assumed you were trying to sell them the book. What has gone through your mind as you’ve watched these other incidents happen over the past month and a half?

W. Kamau Bell: For me, especially with the Starbucks thing, it’s a way to tell America as a whole, and by that I mean white America, that these aren’t individual incidences that are just happening. It’s not just random occurrences of racism—that racism is throughout the fiber of this country.

MJ: Has Elmwood Cafe subsequently reopened?

WKB: Yeah, they’ve now reopened under a new name, but they haven’t changed a bit of paint.

MJ: In the same location?

WKB: Same location. It looks exactly the same. If you weren’t really following the story you would just think, “Oh, they must have had a plumbing issue. Now it’s open again.” There’s nothing currently that makes it look or feel different.

MJ: So they get to opt out of the consequences of having an unflattering spotlight on them over this racial incident, but we don’t get to opt out of the consequences of being black.

WKB: Yeah. I mean that’s the thing for me. I don’t tell the Elmwood story because it’s about the Elmwood. I tell the Elmwood story because it’s about America. And because I’m a black person with a platform and privilege and resources, I can actually sort of help other people who would never pay attention to other stories of racism pay attention to this. Basically, every conversation about racism is the way to go, “So, we had the transatlantic slave trade.” It’s a way to go back to the history of how this country was founded. How the country is founded is still a big force in how the country is currently run.

MJ: You did a little tweetstorm about Elmwood after the Starbucks incident. You tweeted that the Elmwood coffee shop specifically needed to “untrain” racism in its staff: Even if it didn’t necessarily create the problem, that the problem is an institutional one that existed before Elmwood existed. I wonder if you think what occurred at the Starbucks training sounds effective to you, and if not, or even if it does, what other kinds of interventions have you seen that have led people, especially white people, to behave more fairly in similar kinds of situations?

WKB: I mean, apparently the Starbucks training was effective enough that Howard Schultz decided he needed to quit Starbucks and run for president! [Laughs.] So apparently it worked for him. Nobody predicted that outcome: “Wow, we didn’t end racism, but I think I should be the president!”

So for me it’s like, you can’t think it’s going to happen. First of all, we thought they were going to be closed for a whole day, and they weren’t. And then we found out they were closed for a few hours. Then the other thing I found is that the training was the same for every Starbucks in the country. So like, the Starbucks in Minneapolis—that’s mostly run by black people—is getting the same training as the Starbucks in predominately white areas, which is just like, that’s not how it works. I’m sure that means that the black people in southwest Minneapolis were like asleep or on their phones.

That kind of thing is never going to work, in the same way that you don’t train somebody to be a barista in a few hours. You train them over time, and then you check in on their training every now and again to make sure the lattes are still the right temperature, or whatever that is (I don’t know how to make lattes.) But you sort of monitor their ability to continue with doing things the right way with coffee, and it’s the same with racism. And the thing all these companies need to realize, or we all need to realize: You have to have an investment in ending America’s racist practices—not just the racist practices in your building. And I think that’s true of all these things as far as transphobia, homophobia, you know, ableism, sexism.

MJ: You tweeted after Starbucks about telling your six-year-old daughter about what happened to you in Berkeley back in 2015. Could you talk about how you decided it was time to talk to your child about that incident, and what other kinds of conversations about race you have with your black child? And how you think white parents should approach conversations about race with their children who are your daughter’s age?

WKB: Before my six-year-old heard about the incident that happened at Elmwood, she was already maybe not the most woke six-year-old, but she’s definitely, if they could measure, she’s in the top 5 percent of six-year-olds.

MJ: Well, she is your daughter.

WKB: She’s my daughter. But then, there’s kids out there who are kids of Black Panthers. So I’m gonna say that those kids may be more woke than my kids. But so when it happened, my daughter was three, three and a half. At the time we were like, we do need to have more thorough conversations with our kids about racism, which we did. We bought books about Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. So she knows about the history of racism in this country now, thanks to us and her school.

But then we were basically walking to the library in Berkeley, and we walked past the Elmwood Cafe. And as we walked past, the woman who was then the manager, who’s now the owner, sort of looked at me and smiled. Now, I have a hard time believing that she didn’t recognize me as me, after everything they went through. So I don’t think she was just smiling at a citizen of Berkeley. So at that moment, something came over me. And I just looked at [my daughter] and I said, “Sami, let me tell you a story.” And it was like it felt like I’m going to take advantage of this moment where I’m feeling all these intense feelings about the fact that this woman just smiled at me, and also that we’re passing this place that is regularly part of Sami’s life and she doesn’t realize it because she’s always in this neighborhood and always sees this café.

So I just started to tell her the story. She understands that black people have been treated historically poorly in this country and currently it still happens. But to hear it happened to her dad and her mom and her baby sister—she just kept going, “That doesn’t make any sense. But why did they kick you out?” I was like, “I think it was because of racism.”

She was just like, “It doesn’t make any sense.” And she kept saying it over and over again and all I can say was like, “Yeah Sami, racism doesn’t make any sense.” There’s no need to explain more because it doesn’t make any sense. You know you can explain like how it benefits white people in this country to have a system of racism run the country. But still, at a basic level, it doesn’t make any sense, especially when you’re teaching a kid about a society of fairness and equity and inclusion, which is what she’s learning about. For me and my wife, Melissa, our thing is just, give the kids all the information you think they can handle and they’ll let you know when they’ve had enough.

MJ: These kinds of incidents sometimes go differently when white people intervene. I wonder if you think white bystanders have a responsibility to do something in the moment, besides just film.

WKB: I think the Starbucks incident proves the value of intervention in those situations, even if the intervention is just like, “I’m going to film this and upload it immediately” instead of like, “I’m going to film this and hold on to it.” Some white people are probably aware that their skin privilege gives them the ability to step into situations that it does not give black and brown people. So I think that yes, white people do need to do more. I mean, I understand that sometimes safety is an issue. But clearly when you’re in a Starbucks, you’re in a safe place, and there’s many ways to intervene. You can step up like their friend did and step in the middle of it and say, “What’s going on here?” We can’t expect white people to be John Brown. But there’s something between John Brown and going like, “Ah, it’ll probably be fine.”

If you want to be a white ally, or as Alicia Garza from Black Lives Matter says, a white co-conspirator, then you gotta get in and you gotta roll up your sleeves and get dirty somehow, whether that means putting your body on the line or at least putting your reputation on the line.

A white woman called police on a black 12-year-old who was mowing grass, but thanks to a viral video he’s getting more business than ever

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/police-called-12-year-old-mowing-grass-thanks-viral-video-hes-getting-business-ever-214145421.html

Reginald Fields is 12 years old and runs his own business, Mr. Reggie’s Lawn Cutting Service. Along with some of his cousins and siblings, he performs lawn care on neighbors’ yards in their community near Cleveland.

“I’m having fun at the same time I’m cutting,” Reggie told Cleveland’s WEWS.

They were mowing Lucille Holt’s grass when the Maple Heights police were called on them.

Holt was initially confused when the police arrived, but then she learned her neighbors had called the officers to complain about the children cutting a part of their property. According to WEWS, there is about a foot where Holt’s property butts against that of her neighbors.

“I guess I have a line where part of it is not my yard. They called the police to tell the police that the kids was cutting their grass,” Holt said in the video. Reggie, it seemed, was not just getting a lesson in summer business economics; he was also being schooled in the 21st century phenomenon known as #LivingWhileBlack.

The video went viral, and now Reggie and his crew are flooded with people from all over the city who want to employ them. Reggie hopes he can earn enough money to buy more equipment so he can continue to expand his business.

Reggie said, “Just give me a call. I will be there. On time!”

Firestorm after police tase unarmed black man in Pennsylvania

Video of the tasing shows the man following officers’ orders.

link: https://thinkprogress.org/firestorm-after-white-police-officer-tases-unarmed-black-man-in-pennsylvania-6300557123b6/

Video showing a white police officer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania tasing an unarmed black man has gone viral on social media, drawing condemnation from critics who say it is just the latest case of unprovoked police abuse against people of color.

Police claim that the African American man, Sean Williams was not following their orders at the time of the incident, but bystander video appears to tell a different story.

An officer can be seen shouting at Williams to sit down and stretch out his legs. He follows the policeman’s orders, and then, a second officer can be heard ordering him to “put your legs straight out and cross them now.”

When Williams begins to cross his legs, he is tased.

Williams himself maintains that he was compliant, telling WGAL News 8, “I was tased and I shouldn’t have been tased. Why do you say ‘You shouldn’t have been?’ Because I followed every direction that was given to me.”

The video was captured and posted to Facebook by a nearby witness on Thursday, where it was shared and viewed by tens of thousands of people. Social activist Shaun King also shared the video to his more than one million Twitter followers.

The video set off a firestorm in the community.

A crowd of more than 200 people gathered at the city’s courthouse, demanding justice for what they called “a shocking unprovoked incident of police brutality.” City Councilman Ismail Smith-Wade-El promised action to the crowd, saying, “we are going to get this right — and you are going to make sure of it.”

In response to the community backlash, the Lancaster District Attorney’s office tweeted that police “are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation” and would take further steps pending the results.

Lancaster mayor Danene Sorace, meanwhile, criticized police’s handling of the incident in a video posted to her office’s Facebook account, saying she was “upset by it and it is of great concern to me.” She has also vowed to continue an investigation.

Bill Shine’s Wife Darla Complained She Couldn’t Use N-Word and Spread Conspiracy Theories About ‘Blacks’

link: https://www.mediaite.com/online/bill-shines-wife-complained-she-couldnt-use-n-word-and-spread-conspiracy-theories-about-blacks/

The wife of Bill Shine — former Fox News co-president who just joined the Trump administration as White House communications chief — has a lengthy history of defending racists, promoting unfounded anti-vaccination conspiracies, writing about “Islamic Insanity,” and making racially-charged remarks on her social media pages.

Darla Shine made these remarks primarily on her Twitter account, @darlashine, which was deleted as soon as the White House announced that her husband was officially joining the Trump administration.

But not before Mediaite took screenshots.

On her personal website, Shine (who, like her husband, did not respond to requests for comment) says that she got her start in media by working as a “TV reporter and producer.” After giving birth to her first child, that site asserts, she opted to leave the office and become a stay-at-home mom while her husband Bill Shine stayed in the news industry.

She eventually jumped back into media — authoring the book Happy Housewives in 2005 and starting a blog called, “Darla Shine’s Happy Housewives Club.” On this site, Shine advocated for stay-at-home moms, whom she claims are “the most disrespected” people in America.

“I am proof that housewives don’t lose their brain or their dreams after they give birth,” Darla Shine wrote on the About page of her blog. “The days of the housewife hag image are over.”

Her Twitter account, Facebook page, and podcast all focus on this brand of traditionalist and very public mommy blogging. But she doesn’t stay confined to that one topic.

At a glance, Shine’s online habits appear to be no different than those of many conservative American baby boomers. She uses her Twitter account to complain about what’s on cable news and reality TV, as well as moan about society going downhill because of millennials.

Shine’s Twitter habits even mimic the president’s at times.

“Wow, Vanity Fair loser @kurteichenwald on #AMJoy just called ‘Americans Dumb!’ & said Trump/Russia story ‘worse than 9/11.’ Loser! #MAGA,” tweeted Shine in late 2017.

Like President Donald Trump, Shine also regularly attacks CNN in her posts, styling her writing in his recognizable prose.

“What kind of Pimp Producers are at #CNN passing around the same guest #SamNunberg like a drunk whore 5 times #JeffZucker should be fired,” she wrote amid Sam Nunberg’s infamous cable news meltdown in March.

Her posts on the subject of race, however, divert from garden variety right-wing fare.

“Black Boys”
“1 out of 10 black boys has autism!” Shine tweeted in February 2016, in a post that managed to combine vaccination conspiracies with race-baiting.

The belief that vaccinations cause autism, despite being thoroughly debunked, featured prominently on Shine’s social media accounts.

“The new stand in President at #mizzou is black,” she wrote in another tweet from 2015. “Will every white College President have to be replaced?”

A number of her posts focused on holding celebrities of color responsible for crimes committed by black people.

“Where are the black celebrities, sports stars, musicians, why [aren’t] they speaking out tonight against blacks targeting & murdering cops?” Shine wrote in one post after the Dallas, TX police shooting in 2016.

She also blamed the shooting on President Barack Obama: “You really are a terrible President @BarackObama @POTUS allowing our police officers to be gunned down like this.”

“When will Al Sharpton demand [that] young black boys do the right thing?” tweeted Shine in response to the Black Lives Matter movement devoted to combating police brutality and racism in the judicial system.

The “happy housewife” also sided with the president in his battle against black professional athletes.

“Comical to see these over paid black sports stars give Black Lives Matter speech at ESPYs,” tweeted Shine in 2016.

In response to Trump’s infamous “shithole country” comment, Shine agreed with the president and even posted a racist meme mocking the progress of African nations when compared to Europe:

She has also weighed in on the cultural appropriation debate: “If white chicks can’t perm their hair – black chicks can’t go blonde.”

Similar to the white anxiety that defined the “Knockout Game” hysteria, the newest White House official’s wife seems to focus on crime stories featuring a black perpetrator and a white victim to suggest that it represents a broader racial trend in the US.

“Imagine the protests if 3 white teens murdered a black woman #AmandaBlackburn Only Black Lives Matter I guess,” tweeted Darla Shine regarding the fatal 2015 shooting of Amanda Blackburn in Indianapolis, Indiana.

She repeated similar racially-charged fears in at least four other tweets where she shared stories about “black teens” killing a “white hubby” and a “white woman” getting “beat by a black couple for being in the wrong neighborhood.”

“Blacks stop using the N word!”

The most prominent issue Shine had with the black community isn’t crime, however. It’s that people of color can say the N-word but she can’t.

“Just singing to one of my jams ‘Golddigger’ by Kanye West when I realized If I sing along to the verse ‘Broke Nigger’ I might be a racist,” tweeted Shine in July 2015 (West’s song does not include a hard R version of the slur).

That tweet is just one of more than a dozen times Shine demanded “Rappers remove [the] N word from music” — since she, the “happy housewife,” is not allowed to say it.

Below is a sampling of her other commentary on the subject, included her repeated demands: “Blacks stop using the N word!”

“Take the N word out of the music – don’t want to feel guilty for singing songs with the N word in it.”

“Al Sharpton demanding kid Rock denounce Rebel Flag yet Sharpton not demanding Rappers remove N word from music.”

“The recurring verse in Trinidad James rap song is the n word over and over. I can buy, but I can’t sing out or then I’m am a racist?”

“Take the N word, and the C word, and the B word out of lyrics.”

“Don’t use the N word in your songs if you don’t want your teenage listeners to repeat it out loud. Clean up the music! Set an example.”

“@seanhannity @Theblacksphere I never have said the N word out loud and my white children have never either. Blacks stop using the N word!”

“Funny how critics calling to ban Gone With the Wind, Jefferson Memorial, but no talk of banning the N word or Rap songs with N word in it.”

“Remove every rap song that has the N word in it. Take them off the air. If we ban Gone with the Wind, racist rap music goes too.”

“Will Sharpton threaten rappers to remove N word from their music?”

“Rebel Flag off State Buildings in SC but cop killer rap songs, songs about rape, and songs with N word continue to play on the radio.”

“I have never said the N word out loud and my white children have never either. Blacks stop using the N word!”

Defending racists

Shine has also used her Twitter account to defend racists and white supremacists.

One such example involves the infamous University of Oklahoma fraternity incident, in which racist members of the school’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter chanted, “There’ll never be a nigger in SAE, there’ll never be a nigger in SAE, you can hang ’em from a tree but he’ll never sign with me, there’ll never be a nigger in SAE”

Shine portrayed the two fraternity members expelled from the University as victims undeserving of such a punishment, particularly compared to the crimes of black college students.

“At FSU u can punch a girl in the face & only get kicked off football team but sing a song with the N word in it & you’re expelled at Oklahoma,” wrote Shine regarding ex-Florida State quarterback De’Andre Johnson, who is black, and the white students who chanted the N-word and about the lynching of black people.

In a similar vein, Shine also defended white supremacist housewives after the New York Times published an op-ed on “traditional wives” or “tradwives.”

The Times piece explains how most women in the white supremacist movement do not have leadership roles or act as household heads, and instead believe that it’s a woman’s role to stay in the home, let their husbands lead, and not pursue a professional career. Of course, they still hold the same racist views as their male counterparts.

Shine viewed the article as a personal attack against her and she launched a tweetstorm against the author.

“OMG! I am outraged over this article!” Wrote Darla Shine in June 2018. “How dare the @NYTimes #NYTimes publish this. They call #WHITE #Mothers #TRADITIONAL #HOUSEWIVES WHITE SUPREMACIST NAZIS!”

“@anniekelly Anne are you the author behind this article? Do you realize what you wrote? Do you know how wrong how wrong you are? I am a white housewife. How dare you lump all white traditional housewives into the category of Nazi White Supremacist!” she wrote in another post.

Shine then tweeted the story at Fox News host Sean Hannity and former cable news giant Bill O’Reilly, presumably to get the two media men to condemn the piece to their massive audiences.

On the issue of Confederate flags and white supremacist gunman Dylan Roof, Shine suggested the shooting was caused by the drug “Suboxone” — not racism.

“Yes Lets blame the Confederate Flag instead of Big Pharma and the psychiatric violence inducing Suboxone Dylan Roof was taking,” she wrote in one 2015 post regarding Roof and his slaughter of nine African-Americans at a Charleston, South Carolina church.

“One psychopath Dylan Roof caused historic Rebel Flag to be removed yet violent inducing psychiatric drug he was taking still on market,” the blogger wrote in another post.

Shine even penned two 2015 tweets defending the Confederate flag after it was taken down from the South Carolina state house:

“OMG Critic calls for ‘Gone With The Wind’ ban over Confederate flag. What is wrong with everyone? Grow up!”

“@seanhannity If we ban the Confederate Flag lets also ban talking about Slavery also. Let’s ban all talk of anything before 1865.”

The mommy blogger waded in the recent racial controversy the erupted after conservative comedian Roseanne Barr called former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett an “ape.”

“Wondering what it was that set off the #ABC execs the #Ape comment or really the #MuslimBrotherhood comment?” tweeted Shine in May 2018.

“BTW Valerie Jarret is Iranian not even black,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet.

————————————

“Islamic Insanity”

Shine has also posted several anti-Muslim tweets.

“Muslims with bombs but @potus @HillaryClinton @HarryReid trying to blame their Radical TERROR on the @GOP @NRA not Islamic Insanity,” tweeted Darla Shine in late 2015.

In another tweet that year, she defended then-candidate Trump’s proposed ban on all Muslim entry into the US: “This is NOT SIMILIAR to what FDR did in WW2 @realDonaldTrump is saying we need to halt Muslims from coming in, he isn’t rounding any up!”

Darla Shine has also called for the banning of all Hijabs, niqabs, and burkas worn by American Muslim women.

“Bulgaria bans the Muslim face veil so why can’t we,” she tweeted in 2016.

Of all her controversial opinions, conspiracy theories on vaccinations appears to be what Shine is most passionate about. Mediaite found that she has posted unfounded anti-vaccination theories over two dozen times.

“Our biggest national security threat isn’t ISIS it’s that 1 out of 2 boys will be autistic by 2050. @JohnKasich @BernieSanders #vaxxed,” she tweeted in 2016, which is pretty representative of the rest of her oeuvre.

Shine also frequently writes about vaccinations on her blog and her Facebook page.

————————————

“Stop glorifying whores”

She frequently weighed in on the Clintons, repeatedly calling Monica Lewinsky a “whore” for her affair with former President Bill Clinton.

“[Bill Clinton] didn’t rape her, she said it was consensual,” Shine said regarding Lewinsky. “They had a fling. She has said interviews that she thought he would leave Hillary for her. So she is another lying opportunist whore.”

“OMG #CNN just called #MonicaLewinsky a ‘Victim, a Suvivor.’ What?” she wrote in another tweet. “Lewinsky went after Clinton. She admitted it. She is a VIXEN not a Victim. Stop glorifying whores who go after rich married men then cry when the men don’t want them!”

Additionally, Shine has issued a flurry of insults toward adult film actress and one-time (alleged) Trump mistress Stormy Daniels:

“How is a one night stand between a rich married man and a whore news?”

“I still don’t understand what the #StormyDaniels story is? A whore has sex with older rich man and takes money for it. Oldest story in the books.”

“The confusion lies in men saying they can grab women by the pussy and the whores like #StormyDaniels who sleep with men to try to get on TV. If you support a woman who will F a married man for a job, how can you be offended by a dirty comment?”

Darla Shine’s entire Twitter account was deleted on Thursday, after it was officially announced her husband would be joining the Trump administration as Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Mediaite contacted the White House for comment on Darla Shine’s posts, but did not immediately receive a statement.

To be clear, these were not the private musings of the wife of a powerful individual. Darla Shine was a public and prolific blogger and social media participant who wanted her views to be seen and heard.

Her husband Bill Shine worked his way up at Fox News from Sean Hannity’s producer to serve briefly as co-president of the network after Roger Ailes was ousted from the network amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations. Shine was never accused of any sexual misconduct but was eventually forced out in May 2017, after facing allegations that he was complicit in covering up certain claims against Ailes during his tenure at Fox News.

Woman beats a 91-year-old Mexican man with a brick, tells him to ‘go back to your country’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/09/woman-beats-a-91-year-old-mexican-man-with-a-brick-tells-him-to-go-back-to-your-country/

The Fourth of July fireworks display was just beginning when Erik Mendoza realized his 91-year-old grandfather was missing. Thinking he might have gone for his daily walk, Mendoza wandered around the Los Angeles neighborhood searching for him.

What he found was a bloodstained sidewalk.

Mendoza told The Washington Post that Rodolfo Rodriguez, a permanent resident of the United States, had been attacked with a brick and taken to the hospital with a broken cheekbone and two broken ribs.

Misbel Borjas saw the assault as it happened.

Traffic had slowed Borjas’s car at a corner in Willowbrook, Calif., around 7 p.m. on July 4. Rodriguez accidentally bumped into a young girl while walking on the sidewalk, Borjas told The Washington Post. Borjas, a 35-year-old Los Angeles resident, watched the child’s mother — a black woman — push the elderly man to the ground and repeatedly bash him in the face with a concrete brick while yelling, “Go back to your country.”

“I tried to help him, but the lady said, ‘If you come over here I’ll hit your car with the same brick,’ ” recounted Borjas, who had attempted to pull over and rescue Rodriguez.

Instead, Borjas photographed the mother and her child. Then she called 911.

Minutes later, however, the attack continued, Borjas said. A group of young men bounded down the street, accusing Rodriguez of trying to snatch the young girl. They kicked Rodriguez, who was already crumpled on the ground, and stomped on his head.

“ ‘Why? Why are you hitting me,’ ” Borjas recalled Rodriguez crying in Spanish. “ ‘Please get away.’ ”

Once the men fled, Borjas exited her car and waited with Rodriguez for the ambulance to arrive.

“It was terrible, terrible, terrible,” she said. “There was a lot of blood on his head and face. He looked like his mouth and teeth were broken.”

Meanwhile, around 8:30 p.m., Mendoza and his family had gathered outside to watch the Independence Day fireworks, but Rodriguez was nowhere to be seen.

Mendoza didn’t learn what had happened to Rodriguez until later that evening.

“I was in shock that someone would hurt my grandfather,” he said. “What kind of harm can he mean to anyone? He’s 91.”

Rodriguez’s attack comes after the Department of Justice released its recent hate crime statistics, reported by KCRA. The 2017 California report, which was the first published since President Trump took office, evinced an uptick of more than 17 percent, with anti-Hispanic and anti-Latino crimes soaring over 50 percent last year, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Rodriguez was released from the hospital on Thursday. The family set up a GoFundMe campaign for his medical costs.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident. Sheriff’s Det. Carlos Cueva said no one had been apprehended as of Monday evening.

Racist white woman harrasses Muslim woman on NYC bus, shouting anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate, including “ICE is here for you!”

Xenophobia. Islamophobia. Racism.

Hate is real, racialized, intersectional, and pervasive. pic.twitter.com/MWJBtbxW0G

— Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) July 12, 2018

Police chief told cops to randomly arrest black people to boost crime stats: probe

https://nypost.com/2018/07/13/police-chief-told-cops-to-randomly-arrest-black-people-to-boost-crime-stats-probe/

A former police chief in Florida allegedly pressured some officers to frame “anybody black” for unrelated crimes so the department could boast perfect crime stats, according to an internal probe of the small-town department.

Records obtained by the Miami Herald indicate that high-ranking officers in the Biscayne Park Police Department pressured some cops to make unwarranted arrests of random black people in order to better the department’s crime stats, one cop told an outside investigator in 2014.

“’If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through our streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglaries,’” Officer Anthony De La Torre said he was told. “They were basically doing this to have a 100% clearance rate for the city.”

Another of the officers, Omar Martinez, told investigators in a statement that he wouldn’t carry out those “illegal and unethical” orders.

“I will not arrest an innocent person to make the department look good,” Martinez later wrote the village’s manager.

In all, a total of four cops — or one-third of the small force in the 3,000-resident village north of Miami Shores — claimed they were told to file false charges. Of those, only De La Torre said he was instructed to specifically target black people, but a former village manager who called for the probe after getting letters from concerned cops said the department’s orders weren’t a mystery.

“The letters said police were doing a lot of bad things,” Heidi Shafran told the Herald. “It said police officers were directed to pick up people of color and blame the crimes on them.”

The department’s chief at the time, Raimundo Atesiano, resigned amid the 2014 probe. During his two years overseeing the department, 29 of 30 burglary cases were solved. But in 2015, that near-perfect success rate plummeted, with not one single burglary case solved among 19 reported incidents, records show.

Atesiano and two of his former officers — Raul Fernandez and Charlie Dayoub — were charged by federal prosecutors last month with civil rights violations in US District Court in the Southern District of Florida. An indictment alleges that they conspired to falsely arrest a 16-year-old juvenile identified only as “T.D.” for four unsolved burglaries.

“Atesiano directed Dayoub and Fernandez to arrest T.D. on June 13, 2013, and falsely charge him with unsolved burglaries knowing that there was no evidence and no lawful basis to support such charges,” the Department of Justice announced in a news release. “The indictment further alleges that following Atesiano’s instruction, Dayoub and Fernandez gathered information for four unsolved burglary cases, completed four arrest affidavits for the burglaries, and included a false narrative that an investigation revealed that T.D. had committed the four burglaries of unoccupied dwellings.”

All three have pleaded not guilty and Atesiano’s attorney has denied the allegations, the Herald reports.

“Encouraging, or even demanding, that public employees raise their performance levels to meet the citizens’ expectation is not an invitation for those public employee to cut corners or falsify documents,” attorney Richard Docobo said.

Fernandez and Dayoub are now cooperating with federal prosecutors against their former boss, sources told the newspaper.

Records reviewed by the Herald show that “T.D.” is a black Haitian-American who lived with his family in an area of Biscayne Park referred to by cops as “The Badlands.” Prosecutors later dropped the burglary charges against the unnamed teen, as well as previous accusations of trespassing and raping a teen girl. The man, now 21, could not be reached for comment, the Herald reports.

A trial for Atesiano, Fernandez and Dayoub has been set for July 23, but is expected to be postponed, according to the newspaper. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison.

Home Depot Fires Black Employee Targeted in Trump Supporter’s Racist Rant, Offers His Job Back After Backlash
“I am not going to accept racist behavior at work, home, the streets or anyplace else,” Maurice Rucker said.

https://www.diversityinc.com/home-depot-fires-black-employee-targeted-in-trump-supporters-racist-rant-offers-his-job-back-after-backlash

Maurice Rucker, a 60-year-old Black man working at a Home Depot, was following store policy when a customer subjected him to a racist rant. Rucker responded to the customer and Home Depot fired him last week. But after backlash, the company now wants to give him his job back.

Based in Atlanta, The Home Depot Inc. is lead by chairman, CEO and President Craig Menear and has no Black men on its executive leadership team or its senior leadership team.

Rucker was working a booth in the garden center at an Albany, N.Y., store when a customer approached with an unleashed dog.

“I said to him, ‘Sir, when you have your dog in here we prefer that you keep it on a leash,'” Rucker said of the incident that occurred on July 12, according to WNYT.

The customer turned around and said, “F**k you. You’re an a*****e you’re a piece of s**t,” Rucker explained.

The customer then brought up Donald Trump.

“If Trump wasn’t president, you wouldn’t even have a job,” Rucker said the customer told him. “You’re from the ghetto, what do you know?”

Rucker mentioned, “I’ve lived all over the country and I’ve had no one talk to me the way that this guy talked to me.”

So, he decided to stand up for himself. Rucker left his booth, walked up to the man and demanded he leave the store, according to the Albany Times Union.

“You’re lucky I’m at work, because if I wasn’t, this wouldn’t be happening, or you wouldn’t be talking to me like this,” Rucker said he told the man.

“I’m a Black man, and I have dealt with all levels of racism all my life,” he told the Times Union. “I am not going to accept racist behavior at work, home, the streets or any place else.”

The customer left the store, but came back because he left his dog. He then insulted Rucker once more before leaving again.

Five days after the incident, Home Depot fired Rucker.

“We take any termination very seriously and we’re careful to ensure associates are treated fairly,” Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes said in a statement.

“In this case, we’re appalled by the customer’s behavior and no one should have to endure verbal abuse, but we also must require associates to follow proper protocol to defuse a situation for the sake of their safety as well as the safety of other associates and customers.”

Rucker, employed by Home Depot for 10 years, worked at the store in Albany for seven years and prior to that worked at both a Vermont and Boston-area store. His hourly salary when he began with the company was $12 and his salary was only $12.78 when he was fired.

After word spread of Rucker’s termination, Home Depot faced backlash.

Shannon Berndt@Berndttoast
I bought $340 worth of stuff from Home Depot last weekend. I’ll be returning every. single. item.

Qasim Rashid, Esq.@MuslimIQ
This is how @HomeDepot rewards white supremacy
•Rucker (Black man,60) was a 10-year-employee
•A racist white man racially abused him, left, then returned & abused Rucker more
•Rucker told customer to back off. Home Depot fires Rucker—Customer goes free
https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Churchill-When-the-customer-is-terribly-wrong-13086310.php …

Qasim Rashid, Esq.@MuslimIQ
In 10 years, @HomeDepot gave Mr. Rucker only an 86 cent raise. Then they fired him after an angry racist racially abused him

If y’all can, pitch in a few bucks for Mr. Rucker at this @IndivisibleNet fundraiser for him. Let’s help right this wrong https://fundly.com/help-fired-60-year-old-maurice-rucker-1

Click here to support Help Home Depot fires 60-year-old Maurice Rucker after Trump supporter…

The retailer has now decided to rehire Rucker.

“We’ve taken another look at this and we are offering Maurice his job back,” spokesman Stephen Holmes said Friday evening in an email to the Times Union.

Whether or not Rucker has accepted Home Depot’s offer is unclear.

Ving Rhames Was Held at Gunpoint by Cops in His Own Home After a Neighbor Reported a ‘Large Black Man’ Breaking In

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/399342-actor-says-police-came-to-his-home-after-neighbor-reported

One of the stars of the new movie “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” said Friday that police officers this year held him at gunpoint in his own home after a neighbor reported a “large black man” breaking into the star’s house.

Actor Ving Rhames told Sirius XM on Friday that police knocked at his door in Santa Monica, Calif., before holding him at gunpoint until the chief of police recognized him and diffused the situation.

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“This is the God’s honest truth. This happened this year,” Rhames said on the radio. “I open the door and there is a red dot pointed at my face from a 9mm, and they say ‘put up your hands,’ literally.”

Rhames added that the officers apologized for the situation after recognizing him, and even provided him with the address of the woman who supplied the complaint. When confronted by Rhames and police, she denied calling in the report, Rhames said.

The actor questioned what would have occurred if his teenage son had answered the door instead of him, hypothetically holding a video game controller that police could mistake for a weapon.

“What if it was my son and he had a video game remote or something and you thought it was a gun? I don’t know, just like Trayvon [Martin] had a bag of Skittles,” Rhames told Sirius XM’s Clay Cane.

YESTERDAY! I was at a Panera bread in a USA basketball t-shirt, nike shorts & sunglasses on and throwing my trash away

Guy walks up to me and says “do you guys clean the tables or should we?”

Me: “I don’t work here”

Guy: “you don’t?” https://t.co/Tr5NZkYF9m

— Chillin in my Bacta (@DarthAmin) July 31, 2018