ScottinSoCal 🇺🇦 🕊 🏳‍🌈 @ScottSoCal@computerfairi.es

WOW: The College Board erased everything from AP African American history course that Ron DeSantis objected to. This is how White supremacy thrives. The College Board should have held their ground but now they have sacrificed academic freedom to make white nationalists happy

@ParanoidFactoid @Greengordon @Melody @servelan @Faithinbones @oldmanmike @Raven47 @nitrofurano @therobburgessshow

"Why assume Malcolm X's speech was in any way a deciding factor?"

Let me preface this by stating that this argument isn't one I coined nor can I take credit for its genesis. I first heard it in the 1990s, in college, studying history.

Anyway, to answer your question, why connect those dots? Well, for starters the speech occasioned a great deal of buzz in the black community, which was an extremely important voting bloc in America in an election year where a somewhat unpopular Democratic president was up for reelection. You're tracking on that, right? In case you weren't, Malcolm X was; it was a primary theme of the speech.

And Malcolm X was not only considered a leader within a radical portion of the larger black community, but he had just proven that he could get a lot more blacks to listen to him than the white establishment had previously assesed as being possible, given that he was Muslim. The speech had resonance in the wider black community.

And if you're aware of the history surrounding those times, that's not much of a surprise. If you read the speech it's absolutely explosive. Malcolm X was stating a few different things that scared the white establishment of the time. He stated that blacks shouldn't just vote for the lesser of two evils but should withhold their vote altogether until someone offered them the freedom they were looking for. He stated that the powers that be were about to flood black neighborhoods with a bunch of stale empty promises upon which they would never deliver a thing. He stated that it didn't much matter whether blacks were wealthy or poor, Muslim or Christian, that they were all at risk from white supremacy and that whoever came for one of them would eventually come for the rest. He stated that blacks should embrace the concept of arming themselves instead of choosing the path of nonviolent resistance. And he said that blacks should ultimately stand up and state to white folks that if they kept on failing to deliver equality to the black community via the ballot, that blacks should be willing to fight for their freedom with guns, and that it was time to stop giving Washington any choice but these two.

It might seem an abstraction to you now but historically it shook up a lot of people who saw it as the spark that could ignite a godawful fire -- and even if it didn't, they REALLY didn't like the message that blacks should stop voting for performative politicians altogether. And they REALLY REALLY didn't like the idea that Christian congregations full of blacks were listening to this man and grudgingly nodding their heads -- again it had been concluded that folks like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X did not have that sort of crossover appeal, so when Malcolm lead out his speech with being a black minister of Islam just as Dr. King was a minister of Christianity and both were looking out for the community, and people got it instead of rejecting it, that was a shock. So when the sentiments of The Ballot Or The Bullet turned out to have a lot of unexpected traction in the black community that upset a lot of political calculus in Washington. And it also scared the snot out of those portions of white America that still went to bed at night scared that black people might one day rise up in anger against them. Suddenly they had real evidence that if they kept fucking around they just might find out. They did not want to find out.

Putting it simply, Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, and the emerging crossover power of the Black Power suddenly became the 'bad cop' that made the American establishment much much more interested in working with the 'good cop' represented by Dr. King. Both men would probably dislike the use of that analogy for good reason, but it's the one most people get. And it's an old old theme in American and indeed as near as I can tell global politics -- the extremist wing scares the powers that be into making a deal with the moderates. When Earth First starts spiking trees and sabotaging bulldozers, suddenly Congress starts paying more attention to the Sierra Club. When a socialist runs for President suddenly billionaires start pouring money into centrist coffers. This is how our country works, and it was no different in 1964 when the emergence of a popular strain of radical and revolutionary black politics suddenly made Congress a lot more willing to embrace the civil rights legislation that had been championed by moderate blacks the year before. Malcolm X simply cracked Door number 2 open wide enough for Congress to see what was behind it, and they wanted nothing to do with it.

I should add that if you remain unconvinced by these arguments, that's ok with me. I'm sharing them because you asked, not because convincing you is my goal. That's entirely up to you and indeed you're the only one who can do it. To me, it requires a much greater leap of faith to say the connection doesn't exist than to look at the timeline and understand the times and recognize the linkage for what it is.

Massachusetts prisoners may get shorter sentences for organ donations | Massachusetts | The Guardian

I wonder how much time off they get for donating a heart????

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/01/massachusetts-prisoners-organ-donations

I wouldn't live there if you paid me to.

@ScottSoCal 🤣🤣 you have brought back so many similar memories of doing reckless stuff as a child, but I don’t want to be the kind of person who’s trying to be a one upper, so let me know whenever you want to hear my own car cigarette lighter story or the one about the melted crayons or the one about the Publisher’s Clearing House stickers.

Doctor told me I should eat better, drink less, and exercise more.

We laughed and laughed! And then he gave me a bunch of prescriptions.

@Talia_christine
You know how I know this is a proper "social" network? The random cute shit and the random funny shit I post gets waaaaay more engagement than the political stuff 😂 🤷‍♀️

When I was nine, my mom forced my older brother to take me with him while he was hanging out with his friends and I remember being SO excited that I was hanging out with the cool kids.

We were out wandering around the neighborhood when we came to this part of a street that was blocked off because it had just gotten fresh cement.

My brother’s friend stepped down and noted that the cement was dry and said that I could be the FIRST person in the group to walk on it.

I was so excited that they would let me have that honor, so I proudly stepped forward and immediately felt my shoe sink into wet cement because it turned out that my brother’s friend hadn’t actually stepped down and was just messing with me.

Any NORMAL person would have lifted their foot and stepped back, but I was a standard-issue idiot child, so I panicked and proceeded to run DIAGONALLY across the entirety of the wet cement.

Once I made it to dry cement, I looked back and saw my tiny footprint trail across the hypotenuse and became paranoid that police would use forensics to track me down, so I ran to a gas station and threw my shoes in the dumpster and then went home where I proceeded to blame my missing shoes on our dog because I clearly wasn’t just an idiot but also a complete monster.

@shaungdavey #dogs #nodogisgratuitous

The only way to end illegal immigration is to end the wars that we keep fueling to get the most of those Countries resources, to invest in turning those same Countries in true democracies and to level up education, health care and pay for those who still live there.
Is not Utopia, is the only way out of the claws of the greedy; dirty, rich billionaires and polticians, that play with our fears and their despair.

Tomorrow is the beginning of #BlackHistoryMonth and this Friday is my birthday, so I'm engaging in some shameless self-promotion!

I'm a #queer #Black #trans #vegan #blogger who writes about #gender, #SocialJustice, #veganism, and #atheism, among other topics.

Subscribe to me on @medium:
https://funcrunch.medium.com

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#BlackMastodon

Don’t get cocky.
#Humor #Funny

Selfish reasons why you, a US person who doesn't have #adhd should care about the ADHD meds shortage in the US right now:

- We are your employees who were making money for you but are suddenly unproductive

- We are the irate customer who can't calm down and isn't hearing what you're saying

- We are driving on the same roads as you and your loved ones and we're not texting while driving but we might as well be

Unselfish reason: when untreated, this disorder makes us miserable.

HourlyWolves presents: https://nitter.net/hourlywolvesbot/status/1620482109545619462/photo/1

🐦🔗: https://nitter.net/hourlywolvesbot/status/1620482109545619462

Always a great feeling: this year, I did not even miss any tipples. Why? No more knee pain: no need to self-medicate to simply move or fall asleep. Wish I'd swapped out that knee years ago. 🎉🥰🏆 #DryJanuary

U.S. border officials copy the contents of up to 10,000 phones and computers every year and save them to a big database for 15 years, as we first reported in September: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/15/government-surveillance-database-dhs/

Following pressure from Sen. Wyden, the agency, CBP, now says it's considering shrinking that 15-year save time and plans to give people more details about what they're doing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/31/abraham-accords-expand-with-cybersecurity-collaboration/

Coming this summer, Owen Wilson in his most challenging role yet…

Brick road printer 🖨️

Sunsets, skate boarding & his positive nature were all things Tyre Nichols was known for.

When Nichols was murdered by cops, he was on his way home from taking sunset photos at a park.

He was 100 yards away from his parents' house when he was stopped by cops who killed him.

Nichols is survived by his 4 y/o son.

He loved being a father & loved his son.

When he wasn't working, Nichols headed to Shelby Farms Park to skateboard, something he'd been doing since he was 6 y/o.

Continued (1/ )

When someone else’s happiness is your happiness, what are you? A loser? Get your own fucken happiness.