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Unequal justice?

Perhaps.

In August 2019, Larosa Waller-Asekere and Dwight Broom Palmer were high school basketball coaches at the Elite Scholars Academy in Clayton County, Georgia. Both are Black Americans.

70 percent of the students at Elite, which is located in Jonesboro, are Black Americans. The rest of the students are Hispanic or some other ethnic group, less 0.9 percent who are white (or roughly 6 students out of a total of 686 students).

In August of 2019, Imani Bell was a 16-year-old student at Elite. She was a member of the school’s basketball team. On the 13th of that month she died after suffering a heat-stroke during an outdoor 97 degree practice session.

Last month a Clayton County grand jury indicted Waller-Asekere and Palmer for involuntary manslaughter and reckless cruelty in connection with the teenaged athlete’s death.

In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control reported that heat illness during practice and competition was the leading cause of death and disability among high school athletes. Between 1995 and 2018, an average of three football players died each year from heat stroke, most of whom were high school athletes. A more recent 2021 report by ther International Journal of Biometeorology nearly tripled between 1994 and 2009.

In other words, there was ample evidence in the public record that high or extreme heat during practice or competition was killing student athletes at an alarming, even unprecedented rate. Coaches, athletic directors, school administrative officials, and especially parents were aware of the deadly dangers of high school athletics in the summer time.

Many of these student athlete deaths, including in Georgia, were caused by white high school coaches engaged in intense practice and competition.

So, why were none of them indicted?

Just recently a 16-year-old white high school football player named Drake Geiger at Omaha’s South High School died on August 11, 2021 after practicing in a 91 degree and 105 degree session. Omaha is experiencing one of its more severe heat waves.

Will the white coaches involved in young Geiger’s death be indicted in Nebraska?

I doubt it.

The indictment of Waller-Asekere and Palmer attracted national media attention. A cursory Google search produces nothing about any white high school coach being indicted in connection with a heat-related death of one of their athletes.

I will not pass judgment on whether Waller-Asekere or Palmer should have been indicted for Imani Bell’s death. Most of the grand jurors were probably Black Americans since 72 percent of Clayton County are Black Americans.

Still, the social optics is not good. Two Black American coaches get indicted while white coaches under similar circumstances routinely get free passes.

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Richard “Bigo” Barnett.

This Gravette, Arkansas resident is one of the thousands of traitorous insurrectionists who stormed the nation’s Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Loud-mouthed Bigo garnered international media fame as the as the moron sitting behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk with his booted left foot sitting atop of some of the Speaker’s official documents lying on her desk. His left finger was pointed at the two tiny balls between his legs that he later boasted about scratching while sitting at the Speaker’s desk.

Put simply, this redneck white supremacist, Richard “Bigo” Barnett, not only defiled the Capitol Building with his very presence but disgraced the history and purpose of its founding.

Barnett’s violent break-in of the Capitol Building also garnered him, and more than 500 of his co-conspirators, a host of federal criminal charges. They were all then placed in what is commonly referred to as the “D.C. jail. Some of the insurrectionists, like little “Bigo,” made bail after spending weeks or months in “protective custody” on lockdown tiers (also called “solitary confinement”) in the jail facility.

Barnett, one of the leaders of January 6 treason, recently decided to speak out about “conditions” at the D.C. Jail.

In a television interview, Bigo said he was frequently targeted for punitive treatment by DC Jail guards because he was outspoken about the way he and his fellow insurrectionists were being treated. He said the harsh treatment he received was made even worse when he informed the guards they were violating their own “rules.”

In this pearl of wisdom, Barnett told the television reporter:

“You can love me. You can hate me. You can love me and hate what I did. You can not like anything about me. But you have to put that aside because this isn’t about me. This is about our federal prison system in America.”

It is rather peculiar that not once in his miserable lifetime did Bigo ever offer a personal concern about “our federal prison system in America” for January 6. About the only imprisoned people he was ever concerned about may have been the Aryan Brotherhood. He was certainly never concerned about the roughly 40  percent of the black inmates in that prison system, although black people comprise only 13 percent of the general population.

Gator mouth Bigo, and some of his U.S. Congressional supporters, are particularly incensed that the Capitol insurrectionists are being held in “solitary confinement.”

Folks, there is no other place to house these white supremacist goons. 87 percent of the DC Jail population is black- Bigo, his legion of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and Three Percenters, would not fare too well in general population in the DC Jail. They would quickly learn lessons about “our federal prison system in America” they would never forget, not in this lifetime or the next.

Jails are not nice places. Most are actually worse than prison, especially the larger jails like New York’s “Rikers Island” or the Los Angeles County Jail.

But what did Mr. Bigo expect after he flopped his nasty ass in Speaker Pelosi’s chair and threw his dirty boot upon her desk?

That sight may have been charming to the Proud Boys or the remnants of the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan, but it certainly was not an endearing image for most law-abiding Americans.

The tragedy with the Capitol insurrection is that the insurrectionists themselves and their supporters think of them as “American patriots.”

When did it become American patriotism to storm the nation’s Capitol Building, urinate and defecate in its hallways, destroy government property, beat and injure and kill Capitol Police, try to lynch the Vice President of the United States, and seek out Democrats to kill or maim.

Is this the new American Patriotism?

Will this new “Jim Crow Order” personified in Richard “Bigo” Barnett really “Make America Great Again?”

Have the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys become America’s new symbol of the “rule of law?”

The Richard “Bigo” Barnetts may have wormed their way into mainstream America, and gained some political support along the way, but they are not “true Americans.”

They can best be described as “Putin Americans.”

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Mile Pence.

The former Vice-President of the United States.

I don’t agree with most, if any, of his political, social or religious views.

But I admire that he is an honest Republican and a decent human being.

During the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the nation’s Capitol Building, a treasonous mob stormed through the house of freedom shouting “hang Mike Pence.” Some of the murderous white supremacists goons even brought the building supplies necessary to construct the gallows from which the Pence hanging would take place.

Some federal and state lawmakers, former disgraced political figures, and a legion of their gullible followers would now have the public believe that the Capitol insurrection was actually just “another tourist day” during which there were showers of “love and hugs and kisses” among the “white patriots” as they made their peaceful tour of the Capitol Building.

I guess the demand “hang Mike Pence” was a new form of tough love. That the people who brought the building supplies to the love picnic for the Pence Gallows were simply going to lynch the vice president as a new form of “time out.”

Truth and facts are rare commodities in the American market place these days.

But here is the truth, folks.

Some of the January 6 insurrectionists indeed shouted “hang Mike Pence.” They had every intention of lynching him if they could have laid hands on him. The fact is: these thugs had been given instructions to kill the vice president. Proof of this fact is the gallows construction material brought to the traitorous uprising.

Someone, somewhere, at some point, ordered the killing of the Vice President of the United States.

That is the truth. That is a fact.

Perhaps one day it will be revealed who ordered the killing and set it in motion.

Maybe in the QAnon World the lynching of the Vice President is a “love fest” but in the world where the rule of law and human decency prevail, it is a crime.

If nothing else is learned about the January 6 insurrection, those investigating the tragic event must not only identify the on-scene thugs who wanted to “hang Mike Pence” but identify the sick traitor who ordered the hit—that’s the motherf..ker who needs to be introduced to an orange jumpsuit.

Hopefully he will be placed on the same pedophile tier with Matt Gaetz where the two of them can receive regular “hugs and kisses” when Marjorie Green visits them.

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FIRING SQUAD

South Carolina recently became the fourth state in the nation to offer the firing squad as an alternative method to a lethal injection execution.

The change created considerable consternation among death penalty opponents and some media outlets. The general consensus of opinion is that any alternative method of execution reinforces the inherent barbarity of the death penalty itself.

I agree … but to a point.

There is nothing cruel and unusual about giving a condemned person the choice of execution method.

In fact, giving the condemned an alternative to lethal injection is actually humane. Lethal injection is the cruelest execution method ever employed in the United States—worse than hanging, the electric chair, and, yes, even worse than the gas chamber (the second worst execution method in America).

Facts bear on the tree of truth.

There have been more than 1300 lethal injection executions carried out in the U.S. since it was first used in Texas in 982. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, roughly 7 percent (or 75 altogether) of these needle executions were horribly botched inflicting immeasurable but certainly excruciating pain to the condemned person. That’s the highest botched rate of any other method of execution used in this country, with the gas chamber coming in second with a 5 percent botched rate.

Compare that to the 0% botched rate of firing squad executions—not a single botched firing squad execution over the past 140 years. The DPIC does point to an 1879 firing squad execution carried out in territorial Utah during which the shooters missed the condemned man’s heart creating a 27 minute death cycle.

The traditional firing squad involves five shooters, each armed with a 30-caliber Winchester rifle. The shooters stand behind a wall with rifles pointed through holes in it. Four of the rifles are armed; the fifth is not. This practice is done so no one in the firing squad will know for sure which fired the fatal shot. The condemned person is restrained in a chair in front of a wooden panel 25 feet from the wall. A target is placed over their heart. Four bullets, any one of which is capable of killing, will simultaneously rip through the heart, producing an almost instantaneous death. The condemned person will never hear the explosion of the rifles.

It is virtually impossible to botch a firing squad execution—even with three blind shooters. The 30-caliber Winchester rifle was not made until 1895—some 16 years after that 1879 botched execution in the Utah territory.

There will be more executions carried out in this country. The appetite for violence, especially state-sanctioned violence, is rooted in the American DNA.

Giving a person facing execution a choice in how that execution will be carried out is not cruel or unusual.

It is a humane grace.

There is ample space in the public marketplace for a continuing honest debate about either the humanity or morality of the death penalty.

The firing squad issue in South Carolina is rather simple: a condemned inmate is given a choice of how they want to die. There is no cruel or unusual debate in the exercise of that freedom. No one to my knowledge has ever argued the cruelty of a Last Meal. It has always been considered an societal acknowledgement of a condemned person’s humanity in their final hours. The individual choice of execution method should be viewed through the same social lens.

I am opposed to the death penalty. I spent six years on Louisiana’s death row followed by another 34 years in the state’s prison system. Had I been given a choice in 1966 between death in the electric chair or 40 years of imprisonment, I may well have chosen the electric chair.

Somehow, through the grace of God, I survived both fates. I entered death row in 1966 at age twenty and walked out of prison in 2006 at age sixty-one. I know about which I speak. All anyone must do is research the 1983 electric chair execution of John Lewis Evans in Alabama to know that the firing squad is a more humane method of execution.

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DEATH

Like the tick of a clock, death inevitably visits each of us and then vanishes like silence into the night.

In a simple word, death follows each of us throughout our lives. Some, like Thomas Wolfe, say death is a “proud brother” while others say it is a grim reaper. Whatever one’s perspective, each of us at a certain age of vulnerability understands that any sudden sharp pain casts an immediate pall over the certainty of our lives.

Death indeed makes each of us fragile. When it enters of life’s orbit, it too often marries us to a stricken grief still our last day on this earth.

More than 600,000 people have died from the Covid pandemic—and they left behind millions of grieving family and friends. These family and friends will never truly heal just as the families of the Surfside collapse will never view the sun as brightly as before the collapse. They know this now as they stand before shrines, photos, and flowers gifted to those who death claimed without rhyme or reason that dark early morning.

Gun violence has turned our cities into war zones, claiming lives of the guilty and the innocent. The blood is spilled and wiped away leaving no trace of life except in the memories of those left behind.

We know not why a deranged person walks into a former workplace and slaughters former friends and associates. We know not why teenage gang members trade gunfire in the streets where innocent children play.

The six o’clock news brings us after dinner a steady diet of stabbings, shootings, car crashes, and neighbor attacking neighbor—all of which brings the reminder of death into our living rooms forcing us to confront our own fragile existence.

We have been forced to collectively realize that at least one-third of this nation—more than one hundred million people—either advocate for or express an acceptance of civil war on our soil. These civil war buffs want to transform the landscape of all our lives into boiling hot volcanic lava with no end in sight.

And for what?

Half of this country hates the other half, so the warped one-third believes the best way to resolve the half-on-half dispute is to have a bloody civil war.

All the parades, fireworks displays, and holiday celebrations offer no real solace and peace. They are mere interludes that momentarily take us away from the rage, frustration, and anger that now resides in the soul of this nation.

And all the while death sits at the river’s edge, smiling and waiting for all these lost souls to come his way.

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said that we come from nothing, live for nothing, and pass into nothingness.

But how does something come from nothing?

Scientists say we came from the Big Bang.

Okay, so where the fuck did the Big Bang come from?

Rest assured of one thing: death does not give a plug nickel about any of this philosophical mind-tingling shit. It simply feasts off mankind’s primal instinct to destroy, plunder and kill off all life forms.

Some at the CDC say that the Covid pandemic made us more prone to violence.

That raises the interesting question of how many people have died because of the pandemic, not by it.

A philosopher once wrote that the world will never know peace until the last general is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.

Perhaps so – but I think this world will never know peace until death has summoned its last victim across the river.

That does not mean life cannot be better. It can be. But first we must learn how to make a better future and dislodge the grip of our violent, evil past. Good can triumph over evil but it must earn the right to do so.

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