Page 2 The Skanner October 25, 2017
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Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Opinion
Did the FBI Just Declare War on Black People?
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
W
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
Patricia Irvin
Graphic Designer
Melanie Sevcenko
Reporter
Monica J. Foster
Seattle Office Coordinator
Susan Fried
Photographer
2017
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hile White men are
beating Black men
on the streets of
Charlottesville, Vir-
ginia, while a “lone” White
wolf is shooting people from
the Mandalay Bay Hotel, and
while the word “terrorist” is
hardly used to describe these
men, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), under
the leadership of the racist
Attorney General Jeff Beaure-
gard Sessions, has thought up
a new way to oppress Black
people. Despite the fact that
there is no evidence of an or-
ganized “movement,” the FBI
has described Black people
that have rallied for racial
equality and criminal justice
reform as “Black Identity Ex-
tremists,” who pose a domes-
tic terrorist threat to police
officers.
Hold up. We have seen do-
mestic terror threats, though
there are those of limited
intelligence who cannot
fathom them. The man who
shot up an Orlando, Flori-
da nightclub was a domestic
terrorist. Dylann Roof, who
worshipped with the parish-
ioners at Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church
in Charleston, S.C. then mur-
dered nine of them, was a do-
mestic terrorist so highly re-
garded by law enforcement,
that they bought him a meal
from Burger King. The man I
Julianne
Malveaux
NNPA
Columnist
will not mention in Las Ve-
gas was a domestic terrorist,
but the FBI is manufacturing
evidence to focus on African
Americans, who embrace our
Black identity and social ac-
tivism.
Foreign Policy, the magazine
and website that broke the
“
With the
‘Black Identi-
ty Extremist’
label, the FBI
has figured
out another
way to de-
monize Black
people
story of this new classifica-
tion of “woke” Black people,
shared the FBI document on-
line that links Black identity
with extremism and threats to
police officers. The document
mentions Black Lives Mat-
ter, although the connection
between Black Lives Matter
and anti-police violence has
not been established. For the
FBI to identify “Black Identity
Extremists” (BIE) as domestic
terrorists is to declare war on
Black people. After all, what
does it mean to be a “Black
Identity Extremist”? Does it
mean we love our Blackness
and refuse to back down when
we are attacked? Does it mean
that we revel in our identi-
ty and use every available
platform (thank you, Colin
Kaepernick) to lift our voices
up against injustice? Why is
this embrace of Blackness so
frightening to melanin-de-
ficient people? They prefer
us silent, docile, grateful and
acquiescent. They demand no
such acquiescence from their
melanin-impaired
friends,
who gleefully walk through
civilized streets of places like
Charlottesville and parry
racist chants like “You will
not replace us, Jews will not
replace us!” That’s domestic
terrorism. Call it like it is,
instead of inventing a Black
movement that does not exist.
Andrew Cohen wrote about
the FBI report for the Bren-
nan Center for Justice at New
York University and said that
“there is no “BIE movement,”
because it only exists in the
barren minds of those within
the Trump Administration
that want you to believe that
there is some sinister, Black
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force out there bent on attack-
ing police officers. No jour-
nalists or academics have dis-
covered and chronicled such
a movement or its leaders.
No such leaders have come
forward to say they are a part
of such a movement. No one
has killed a cop in the name of
such a movement. The only ci-
tations to the movement, For-
eign Policy tells us, come from
“internal law enforcement
writings made over the past
two months.”
Journalist Sam Fulwood III,
writing for the Center for
American Progress Action
Fund news site ThinkProg-
ress.com, describes the FBI
report as an “ominous siren
call coinciding with President
Donald Trump’s penchant for
stoking racial divisions in the
country.” He says that “the ad-
ministration views criminal-
izing communities of color as
a way to shield police from
scrutiny and score points
with a base of White voters.”
We’ve walked down this
path before. We can start with
Marcus Garvey, who dared to
dream of Black independence
and paid a horrible price for
it. Fast forward to the Nation
of Islam, the Black Panther
Party, and so many others
identified as “enemies of the
state.”
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
We Need a Values Revolution in America
Jeremiah 22:1-3,4-5 The Mes-
sage (MSG)
“Walking Out on the Cove-
nant of God”
22 1-3 God’s orders: “Go to the
royal palace and deliver this
Message. Say, ‘Listen to what
God says, O King of Judah, you
who sit on David’s throne—
you and your officials and all
the people who go in and out
of these palace gates. This is
God’s Message: Attend to mat-
ters of justice. Set things right
between people. Rescue victims
from their exploiters. Don’t
take advantage of the home-
less, the orphans, the widows.
Stop the murdering!
4-5 “‘If you obey these com-
mands, then kings who follow
in the line of David will con-
tinue to go in and out of these
palace gates mounted on hors-
es and riding in chariots—they
and their officials and the citi-
zens of Judah. But if you don’t
obey these commands, then
I swear—God’s Decree!—this
palace will end up a heap of
rubble.’”
O
n Oct. 13, Donald Trump
went before the annual
Values Voter Summit
hosted by the Family
Research Council and de-
clared America “a country
that never forgets that we are
made, all of us, by the very
same God in heaven.” In the
Bishop
William J.
Barber, II
President,
Repairers of
the Breach
name of Jesus, Trump vowed
to “stop cold the attacks on
Judeo-Christian values,” but
the Values Voter Summit no
more represents Jesus than
did the church authorities
“
Trump has emboldened do
not follow the Jesus I know
and preach. Their values are
not Christ, but cash; not grace,
but greed. As the Princeton
historian Kevin Kruse has
chronicled in his book, “One
Nation Under God,” they are
the heirs of preachers, who
were purchased by the rob-
ber barons of the early 20th
century to resist the New
Deal and the Social Gospel.
During the Civil Rights Move-
ment, they spoke against Rab-
The Values Voter Summit no more
represents Jesus than did the
church authorities that backed
slavery
that backed slavery.
Ironically, Trump invoked
the name of Jesus in virtually
the same breath that he an-
nounced his executive order
to stop the federal govern-
ment’s cost sharing reduction
payments, which subsidize
healthcare for lower-income
families under the Afford-
able Care Act. Throughout the
Scriptures, virtually every
story of Jesus admonishes us
to see to the needs of the poor
and vulnerable among us, but
Trump vowed at the Values
Voter Summit to defend those
who use religion to discrimi-
nate.
The Christian nationalists
bi Abraham Heschel and Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
These Christian national-
ists contradict Jesus, who said
that, “as you have done it unto
the least of these my brethren,
you have done it unto me.”
They serve only the interests
of the wealthiest Americans
and take every opportunity to
deny any provision of care or
encouragement to the poor.
They have elected far-right
extremists in the country’s
legislatures, who have be-
come paid puppets of a White
supremacist corporate oligar-
chy. Elected with the support
of wealthy despots, these men
(and a few women) pass voter
suppression laws that make
them accountable to the vot-
ers. These peddlers of piety
deliver huge tax cuts for the
super-rich, permit corpora-
tions to spew poison into the
environment, and fund a mili-
tary budget so enormous and
sacrosanct, that American cit-
izens are no longer even wel-
come to know what that bud-
get is. All of this in the name
of the Prince of Peace.
Their poisonous mix of
racism and religion hurts all
of us, but the irony is that it
hurts more poor, White peo-
ple in raw numbers. The agen-
da they are pushing in Wash-
ington and in state houses
will hurt Southern, so-called
“red” states, the worst, but at
the Values Voters Summit,
lead organizer Tony Perkins
put on duck hunting waders
and pretended to “wade into
the swamp” as a man of the
people.
The Southern Poverty Law
Center calls Perkin’s Fami-
ly Research Council “a hate
group.” Perkins denies that
Islam is a religion and regu-
larly rails against gays and
warns that LGBT citizens plan
to round up the Christians in
“boxcars.” His vice president,
William “Jerry” Boykin, Jr.,
claims that Islam is “pure evil.”
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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