Tuesday, May 25, 2021


Grand jury refuses to indict police who restrained drugged up and aggressive black man

I have removed most commentary from this NYT article and just left the facts

Some of the witnesses who were called by prosecutors appeared to absolve the officers of wrongdoing. The revelation prompted fierce criticism of Ms. James specifically, and anger more broadly over a legal process that often seems to shield the police from criminal consequences.

Only prosecutors may call witnesses during grand jury hearings, and jurors never hear from the defense. In the case involving Mr. Prude’s death, prosecutors from Ms. James’s office called police trainers who testified that the officers who restrained him did not violate protocol with their techniques. The state’s lawyers also presented a California doctor who is known for defending police actions. He said the officers had not caused Mr. Prude’s death.

The officers testified that they decided to use force after Mr. Prude did not follow their instructions to stay on the ground.

“We told him to calm down, and he’s telling us he wants to take our firearms,” one of the officers, whose name is redacted in the transcripts, said. “And then we tell him to stay down and he still tries to get up.”

Mr. Prude encountered the Rochester police on March 23, 2020, shortly after he became emotionally unstable and sprinted out of his brother’s home. Fearful for Mr. Prude’s safety, his brother called 911.

Responding officers found Mr. Prude several blocks away. He was naked and spitting and claiming that he had the coronavirus. They put a mesh hood, or spit sock, over his head and handcuffed him, then pressed his head to the pavement until he lost consciousness. Although it was snowing, no one covered his body or helped him when he vomited, body camera footage shows.

Mr. Prude died a week later. The medical examiner determined that his death was caused by factors that included oxygen deprivation and PCP drug intoxication.

Body camera footage showed Mr. Prude becoming more agitated after the officers placed the hood over his head. The officers said they feared contracting the coronavirus.

The transcripts revealed Ms. James’s selection of an important expert witness: Gary Vilke, a San Diego doctor who is typically hired by the police to defend them. (All witnesses’ names were redacted in the transcript, but some were easily identifiable.)

Dr. Vilke testified that the weight of the officers pressing on Mr. Prude’s back and legs did not impair his breathing, the transcript showed, leading him to conclude that the officers had not contributed to Mr. Prude’s death

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Critical Race Theory Weakens Society and Breeds Hate, Minorities Say

Critical race theory, at one time limited primarily to academia, has become a controversial issue as it increasingly is showing up in K-12 school curriculums and in training in government agencies and corporate America.

Speakers at a May 6 virtual event sponsored by Latinos for Tennessee, a traditional values advocacy group, explained what critical race theory is and why it’s so pernicious.

The Rev. C.L. Bryant, a Baptist minister and a senior fellow at FreedomWorks, had been a proponent of critical race theory as a young man, but has since turned against it.

“Critical race theory was something that was formed back in the 1950s, along with black liberation theology,” he explained.

Though its proponents are often compared to civil rights advocates of the past, Bryant said, their goal is really to ensure that the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and others were all for nought.

One of the more prominent aspects of critical race theory, Bryant says, is how it changes the definition of racism.

“When you change the definition, you change the destination,” he said, and that destination is moving people away from traditional ideas about education, family, gender, and marriage.

“What it has done is, it has weakened society as far as its core values are concerned,” Bryant said.

Also, among its most pernicious aspects, the minister said, is how critical race theory ideology makes Americans hate one another and hate their country.

“Critical race theory is a tool, a mechanism,” Bryant said, to make young people of all colors think America was founded in slavery and racism.

Bryant explained that he grew up experiencing actual “systemic” racism under segregation and that his parents had been civil rights advocates. But the legal segregation that was present in America’s past no longer exists.

“Is there anything you can do in America today where the color of your skin would stop you from doing it?” he asked.

He said that most critical race theory proponents have no clue what actual systemic racism is, and that if anything, it’s critical race theory ideas that are becoming so common.

Robby Starbuck, a director and producer, spoke about how critical race theory mirrors how Marxists have used racial division in other countries to empower their ideas.

Starbuck, who is Cuban American, said Cuban communists used racial division to seize power in that Caribbean island nation.

Another way radicals usher in revolution is through the changing of shared language, he said, and that is one of the core tenets of critical race theory.

Starbuck cited the word “Latinx”—widely used as a gender-neutral stand-in for “Latino” and “Latina” in left-wing academic circles—that has now become commonly used in the media.

That’s despite the fact that very few Hispanic people actually want to be called that, he said.

Despite many of the concepts and ideas of critical race theory being unpopular, the constant exposure to them, Starbuck said, “creates reality for people.”

Indoctrination is a powerful tool in the hands of left-wing ideologues, he said, and that’s unfortunate because America’s children deserve a “politically neutral education.”

While critical race theory may be becoming pervasive in America, Starbuck offered that there is hope in countering and defeating it. He cited the May 1 election in a Dallas suburb in which candidates who supported critical race theory curriculum were resoundingly defeated at the polls.

Dr. Ming Wang, a surgeon, author, and refugee from Communist China, said there are parallels between what is being peddled by advocates of critical race theory and what he encountered living in a communist country.

“To me, America is so unprecedentedly polarized, it’s deadly,” he said. “And that polarization is defined by the increasing fixation on our differences, rather than appreciating what we have in common.

The problem is, we are told to focus on our differences rather than what unites us, he explained

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House Republicans Target Teaching of Critical Race Theory

House Republicans seek passage of legislation to push back against a rule proposed by the Biden administration to promote teaching Americans to judge each other based on skin color.

At least three House GOP members last week announced legislation, with two bills targeting schools, one the military, and one all federal institutions.

Public comment closes Wednesday on the Department of Education’s proposed rule to prioritize K-12 grants based in part on whether schools teach critical race theory. This would include teaching The New York Times’ disputed 1619 Project, as well as the teachings of controversial author Ibram X. Kendi.

Critical race theory is a theoretical framework that contends individuals either are oppressed or are oppressors based on their skin color; it makes race the prism through which proponents analyze all aspects of American life.

Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, introduced two measures last Thursday in response to the Biden administration’s proposed rule to fund education based on the teaching of critical race theory.

“I grew up attending segregated schools in the Jim Crow South during a time when people were treated differently based on the color of their skin,” Owens, who is black, said in a public statement. He added:

Critical race theory preserves this way of thinking and undermines civil rights, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection before the law, and U.S. institutions at large. This is the United States of America, and no one should ever be subjected to the discrimination that our laws so clearly prohibit.

One of the proposals by Owens, a former pro football player, is a bill that would prohibit teaching of critical race theory within federal institutions, according to a press release. The other is a resolution highlighting the dangers of teaching critical race theory in U.S. schools and decrying the “damaging philosophy within this prejudicial ideological tool.”

Both measures have 30 co-sponsors.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, proposed legislation to block federal tax dollars from going to schools that teach critical race theory. Roy calls his bill the Combating Racist Teaching in Schools Act, or the CRT Act, using the same initials as critical race theory.

Roy’s bill would include any elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education.

“Critical race theory, like all its racist derivations, is a direct affront to our core values as Americans,” Roy said in a public statement, adding:

No one in America—be they students, servicemen and women, government employees, or anyone—should be indoctrinated to hate our country, its founding, or our fellow citizens. Worse yet is its pernicious demands to ‘divvy us up by race’ and perpetuate the lie that we should be treated differently by virtue of our skin color. There is no room for state-sanctioned racism anywhere in our society, and we must oppose it with all our might. …

As Americans we believe that all are created equal by God Almighty, regardless of their skin color. That self-evident truth, and the American promise that comes with it, are worth fighting for.

Specifically, the Roy legislation would ban federal funding for teaching that any race is inherently superior or inferior to any other race, color, or national origin; teaching that the United States is a fundamentally racist country; that the Declaration of Independence or Constitution are fundamentally racist documents; and that an individual’s moral character or worth is determined by the individual’s race, color, or national origin.

It also would ban federal tax dollars from being used for teaching that an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; and prohibit money for schools teaching that an individual, because of the individual’s race, bears responsibility for the actions committed by other members of the individual’s race, color, or national origin.

Roy’s legislation has 26 co-sponsors.

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http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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