‘The 13th’ by Ava DuVernay
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12:42 - Lyndon Johnson told the nation we must make our nation whole and signed into law the Civil Rights Act in 1964. This bill passed the House 289 to 126 - 153 democrats and 136 republicans voted in favor and 91 democrats and 35 republicans voted against. This bill passed the Senate 73-27. Forty six Democrats and 27 Republicans voted in favor while 21 democrats and 6 republicans voted against.(39)
In 1965, Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act. The bill passed the House 333 to 85.(40) A total of 221 democrats and 112 republicans voted in favor of this bill while 62 democrats and 23 republicans voted against. The bill passed the Senate by 77 - 19. Forty seven democrats and 30 Republicans voted in favor and 19 democrats and 2 republicans voted against.(41)
13:38 - After the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws had been passed, crime began to rise. Michelle Alexander claims whites believed that blacks who now had full freedom would repay society with crime. In many ways, they did. There were 159 race riots across the US in 1967.
Gang violence made life in American cities more fearful. One example is Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who was convicted of murder in Paterson, NJ in 1967: (42)
"We were looked upon as a rough, menacing phalanx, an anti-social mob. To live up to this reputation, I must admit, we performed deeds that one might easily classify as being against the best interests of society. But we were Apaches-so we raided the enemies' neighborhoods, fought to a standstill the marauding gangs that violated our territorial boundaries, and pillaged the downtown market places."
"One day, while returning home from the movies, we decided to perform a feat of daring. There were about fifteen or twenty Apaches along, since the movie house was situated in enemy territory and we needed a show of force to deter any possible attack. We were approaching a store that had racks and racks of clothing displayed outside on the sidewalk. The object of each Apache was to run past the display, grab as much of the merchandise as he could handle, and then escape without getting caught."(43)
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15:20 - Domestic terrorist James Kilgore claims the call for law and order was code for attacking the black power movement, black panthers, gay rights movement, womens liberation movement and the anti war movement. This often repeated claim is simply bogus. Law and order meant that if you break the law you will be prosecuted.
James Kilgore was born in 1947, grew up in California and graduated form the University of California at Santa Barbara 1969. He became active in the anti-war protests of 1969 and 1970. In 1974, Kilgore joined the domestic terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) - which robbed banks that resulted in two murders. Kilgore joined the group after 6 members were killed in a shoot out with Los Angeles police in May, 1974 and helped other members to elude police. Kilgore took part in a number of crimes in the San Francisco area in 1974 and 1975, including a bank robbery in Carmichael, California in April 1975. During the hold up, bystander Myrna Opsahl was shot and killed. After 3 members of the SLA were arrested in Sep. 1975 for the bank robbery, Kilgore managed to flee the country and lived in Australia and Africa. In 2002, he was arrested in South Africa and extradited to the US - the last fugitive SLA member.
Kilgore pleaded guilty to second degree murder - he did not kill Opsahl - and possession of an explosives charge. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released in 2009. Kilgore was hired by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014, where he is an adjunct instructor of global studies and urban planning.
17:15 - Jelani Cobb claims Nixon used the law and order issue as a strategy to get white democrats in the south to become Republicans - an effort known as the ‘southern strategy.’ The film claims the law and order message against crime was really an appeal to racism. This is not true and this film inadvertantly admits it - stating people were worried about ‘the chaos of our urban cities.’ People around the country, not just the south, were genuinely concerned about what was happening to American society with its rising crime rate. This is another bogus argument by DuVernay.
18:00 - Film quotes Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Noted writer Dan Baum (1956-2020) interviewed Ehrlichman in 1994 when he allegedly made this statement but never publicized this statement until 2012 - 18 years later and 13 years after Ehrlichman died. It is doubtful Ehrlichman ever said this, so this quote should not have been used. But of course this is a propaganda film.
There is no known recording of this conversation. Baum tracked down Ehrlichman for an interview. Any good reporter would have audio of an interview, especially one as important as this.(44)
There was no legitimate reason for Baum to leave this quote out of this 1997 book "Smoke and Mirrors," which is all about the failed war on drugs. He feebly claimed it didn’t fit with the book’s narrative style, according to CNN. But Baum DID use the quote in 2012 in the book “The Moment,” a collection of stories about moments that changed writers’ lives. It was now safe for Baum to report this alleged quote since Ehrlichman died in 1999 and couldn’t dispute Baum’s claims.
Ehrlichman’s 5 children don’t believe their father said it. "The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him. We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.”(45)
Former Nixon officials don’t believe Ehrlichman made this comment. “The comments being attributed to John Ehrlichman in recent news coverage about the Nixon administration’s efforts to combat the drug crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s reflect neither our memory of John nor the administration’s approach to that problem,” wrote Jeffrey Donfeld, Jerome H. Jaffe and Robert DuPont in a joint statement sent to The Huffington Post in March, 2016.
They added that Ehrlichman was “known for using biting sarcasm to dismiss those with whom he disagreed, and it is possible the reporter misread his tone ... John never uttered a word or sentiment that suggested he or the President were ‘anti-black.’” (46)
President Ronald Reagan is then condemned by none other then domestic terrorist Angela Davis. Davis is a fierce defender of communist dictators and claimed the election of Ronald Reagan in Nov 1980 was “transformative in a negative sense.”
Angela Davis was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her mother was a national organizer for the Communist Party and Davis grew up surrounded by communists at the house. Davis joined a communist youth group in high school and attended communist events. As an adult, she joined the Communist Party USA and the LA chapter of the Black Panther Party. In 1969 she became an acting assistant professor at UCLA. In 1970, she was fired for her incendiary rhetoric.
Davis had become a supporter of three black prison inmates in Soledad Prison in California known as the Soledad brothers. They were indicted for first degree murder in the death of a prison guard. The death of the guard was believed to be in retaliation for the shooting of 4 inmates by a guard during a fight in the yard 3 days earlier. Three blacks inmates were shot dead while a white prisoner was seriously wounded.
On August 7, 1970, a 17-year-old black high-school student Jonathan Jackson, whose brother was one of the three Soledad Brothers, snuck guns into the courtroom in Marin County, CA and took everyone prisoner. He armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages in their attempt to escape.
Judge Haley had the end of the shotgun taped to his neck. While leaving the courthouse, one of the black defendants, James McClain, shot at the police. The police returned fire. Judge Haley was executed and the three black men were then killed in the shootout; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured.
Davis had purchased several of the firearms Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun that killed Haley, from a San Francisco pawn shop two days before the incident.
Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. Davis went into hiding. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at a motel in New York City and she was jailed pending trial.
On Jan 5, 1971, Davis appeared in court and declared she was innocent of all charges. Davis became a celebrity. The political left in the U.S. and around the world donated money and rallied for her release.
She was represented by Leo Branton Jr., a superb lawyer who hired psychologists to help the defense determine who would be sympathetic to their cause, a technique that has since become more common.
Branton may have been the first lawyer to successfully play the race card at a trial. On the closing day of the trial, he stood before the jury with an easel holding a drawing of Davis wrapped and bound in chains. He ripped down that drawing to reveal a picture of Davis unbound, and exhorted the jurors to “pull away these chains as I have pulled away that piece of paper.”
He then proceeded to tell the jurors a moving summary of African American history and asked the panel to “understand what it means to be black.” Davis was found innocent of all charges by the all white jury.(47)
In 1975, Russian Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sharply criticized Davis for refusing to support political prisoners in communist countries around the world. He said a group of Czech prisoners had appealed to Davis for support, which Solzhenitsyn said she had declined believing that the Czech prisoners were undermining the communist government of Czechoslovakia: "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison." (48)
Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz also asked Davis for support for a group of political prisoners in the USSR. Dershowitz said that a "secretary" of Davis called and claimed they were not political prisoners: “They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of socialism." Davis would urge that they be kept in prison where they belonged.(49)
In September 1972, Davis visited East Germany, where she had a love fest with communist dictator Erich Honecker and received the Star of People's Friendship from the previous communist dictator Walter Ulbricht. Davis visited the Berlin Wall, where she laid flowers at the memorial for Reinhold Huhn. Prior to the Berlin Walls construction in 1961, hundreds of thousands of people fled East Germany for West Germany. In 1962, Huhn was killed by a family desperate to get to West Germany. Davis said "We mourn the deaths of the border guards who sacrificed their lives for the protection of their socialist homeland.” (50)
On May 1, 1979, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. She visited Moscow later that month to accept the prize, where she praised "the glorious name" of Lenin and the "great October Revolution.”(51)
Davis was an honorary co-chair of the January 21, 2017, Women's March on Washington. The organizers' decision to make Davis a featured speaker was criticized. Cathy Young, opinion contributor to USA Today wrote that Davis is a “Communist Party veteran with a long record of support for political violence in the United States and the worst of human rights abusers abroad.” (52)
Davis claims Reagan launched a “frontal assault on institutions that are designed to assist human beings - the education system, welfare, jobs, health care.” (21:45) An unnamed voice in the film then announces that under Reagan, “the number of Americans dipping under the poverty level has reached the highest rate in two decades.” There is no way to know what time frame this anonymous speaker is refering to. Regardless, ALL of these allegations are LIES. Black leadership spent 8 years unfairly criticizing Reagan. The truth is Reagan was a great president!!
Reagan was president from January 1981 to January 1989.
In 1981 the poverty rate was 14%. In 1988 it was 13% In 1965, the rate was 17.3%
Jobs - Unemployment rate in November 1980 was 7.5% In Nov. 1988 it was 5.3%
Inflation - Jan 1981 was 11.83% Inflation in Jan 1989 was 4.67% (53)
The economic lot for blacks and Hispanics improved far more than it did for whites after Reagan's tax cuts. In late 1982, Reagan's second year in office, the unemployment rate for blacks was 20.4 percent. By 1989, his last year, the black unemployment rate had fallen to 11.4 percent -- a 9 percent drop. In late 1982, the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 15.3 percent. By 1989, it had fallen to 8 percent -- a drop of over 7 percentage points. White unemployment, by contrast, fell "only" 4 percentage points.
What about black-owned businesses? In 1982, according to the Census Bureau, there were 308,000 black-owned businesses. By 1987, the number had increased to 424,000, up 38 percent. The number of all U.S. businesses was up "only" 14 percent. Receipts for black-owned businesses went from less than $10 billion to nearly $20 billion -- a 100 percent increase. (54)
Reagan did not gut welfare. Ronald Reagan recognized that the expansion of the welfare state was the greatest threat to the financial prosperity of the country and fighting it was a driving force throughout his political career.
California in 1971 was heading toward bankruptcy because of the massive growth in welfare spending. As Governor, Reagan discovered he was greatly hampered by federal welfare rules and policies. But Reagan was still able to achieve great savings for the state’s taxpayers and better serve the poor by focusing assistance to those most truly in need.
As a result of the tremendous savings generated by removing the non-needy from the welfare rolls, Ronald Reagan was able to INCREASE benefits to California’s most needy citizens in over a decade and a half. As Reagan expressed his concerns on the subject at the time:
“Welfare needs a purpose: to provide for the needy, of course, but more than that, to salvage these, our fellow citizens, to make them self-sustaining and, as quickly as possible, independent of welfare. There has been something terribly wrong with a program that grows ever larger even when prosperity for everyone else is increasing. We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.” (55)
The cost of Health care increased under Reagan but it has increased under every administration, Republican or Democrat. This is an ongoing issue.
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(22:58) When crack cocaine stormed the nation in the mid 1980s, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which created a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of five grams (or just a few rocks) of crack cocaine. Crack was considered far more addictive then cocaine.
(24:38) Democrats - black and white - supported this measure. Former black Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, along with mayors across the country felt crack was a imminent threat to cities and supported tough sentencing.
Suddenly, too many blacks were being put into prison on drug charges and Civil Rights ‘leaders’ denounced the law in hysterical language.
Domestic terrorist Angela Davis again lied that the war on drugs was really a war on communities of color - black communities, Lation communities. Michelle Alexander called the war on drugs “nearly genocidal for poorer communities of color.”
Pat Nolan of Prison Fellowship ranted that “a scythe went through our black communities - literally cutting off men from their families “ “Literally huge chunks just disappearing into our prisons . . .”
All of these insane claims were simply lies intended to absolve blacks of crime. Nolan, Alexander and Davis should feel happy that drug dealers who got out of prison went back to dealing drugs and were no longer bothered by the police.
To this film’s credit, they interviewed Grover Norquist of the American Conservative Union for 23 seconds in a 1 hour 40 minute film. Norquist ridiculed this narrative that enforcing drug law was a conspiracy to put blacks in jail. Norquist correctly stated this film is attempting to rewrite history and blame white people for blacks going to jail - and absolve blacks of criminal behavior.
26:00 - This movie claims the “southern strategy’ was based on racism to get the white southern vote and quote political strategist Lee Atwater as proof: “Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968 you can’t say nigger, that hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced-busing, state’s rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now. You’re talking about cutting taxes and all of these things you’re talking about are totally economic things. . . And the by-product of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Atwater was a brilliant political strategist, but he certainly was not politically correct in expressing himself. But claiming Atwater was racist is not true. Plenty of black civil rights leaders have said far, FAR worse. Atwater was a skilled guitar player who jammed with B. B. King and produced a record with Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, King and himself.
Forced-busing was opposed all around the country. Atwater was not an economist. Reagan’s tax cuts was designed to spur the economy and did not have a negative effect on anybody, blacks or white. These tax cuts were supported by a majority around the country. State’s rights was no longer merely a southern state issue. Many states around the country opposed the expansion of federal control over states which had grown considerably in both size and scope by the end of the 20th century.
So Atwater’s quote does NOT prove their narrative. This is just more hysteria by so-called civil rights leaders.
27:30 The film condemns all the times black males are seen on TV and in the news as criminals. Then attempts to say that what is real - rampant black crime - isn’t real. Malkia Cyril, Executive Director, Center of Media Justice declares: “Black men and black people in general are over represented in news as criminals. And I say over represented that means they are shown as criminals more times then is accurate - that they are actually criminals. Right, based on FBI statistics.”
WRONG. Many newspapers in large cities around the country go out of their way to hide or delay showing the race of a criminal if he is black - particularly a violent criminal.
Later in the film, Malkia Cyril says: “So you have educated the public deliberately over years, over decades, to believe that black men in particular, and black people in general, are criminals. . . .Black people also believe this and are terrified of our own selves.”
Law abiding blacks see black crime like everyone else. Crime creates ghettos.
(28:00) Baz Dreisinger, author of “Incarceration Nations” makes an incredibly ignorant comment: “I’m a big believer in the power of media full of these cliches that basically present mostly black and brown folks who seem like animals in cages and then someone can turn off the TV thinking it’s a good thing for prisons because otherwise those crazy people would be walking on my block.”
What an ignorant comment. Baz should be glad - and feel safe - that those crazy people ARE in prison and not next door. Would she mind having serial killer Samuel Little living next door? Would Dreisinger like living near these crazy people:
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* March 2021 - Virginia police arrested a 14 year old black juvenile and charged him in the murder of 13-year-old white girl, Lucia Whalen Bremer, who was shot while walking down the street with a friend. It was a targeted attack. Virginia will charge the suspect as an adult (56)
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* Feb 2021 - Antoine Watson, a 19 year old black man, ran up behind an 84-year-old Asian San Francisco resident - Vicha Ratanapakdee - and slammed him to the pavement, killing him. After Watson appeared in court, where he pled not guilty, Watson’s grandmother proved she was as clueless about right and wrong as he is. When asked outside the courtroom what she wanted to see happen to Antoine, Watson’s grandmother said, “To see him walk out this door like I’m walking out right now.” (57)
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* On 12 April, 2019, a black man picked up a 5 year old white boy and threw him over the third floor railing at a shopping mall in Minnesota. The child nearly died but is now making a slow recovery. In June, Emmanuel Aranda, 24, pleaded guilty to attempted premeditated first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison. (58)
Deborah Small, Founder - Break the Chains. “Many black communities began to support policies that criminalize their own children.” They are only criminalized if they commit a criminal act.
29:19 - Film discusses the Central Part gang rape case. On April 19, 1989, a gang of about 30 black and Latino youths allegedly attacked 9 people. The most serious attack was on Trisha Meili who was on her regular jog in the Park. About 9 pm, she was knocked down, dragged nearly 300 feet, raped and nearly beaten to death. She was found four hours later naked, gagged, tied, and covered in mud and blood.
Meili was so badly beaten that she was in a coma for 12 days. She suffered brain damage, her skull was fractured and her left eye dislodged from its socket, which was fractured in 21 places. Miraculously she survived and despite lingering disabilities, returned to work after 8 months.
This case made national news and police were under intense pressure to arrest the perpetrators. Six youths from the gang of about 30 youths were tried for the beating and rape and five were convicted.
In December 2002, the New York Supreme Court vacated the convictions of the Five, acting upon the recommendation of the District Attorney’s Office. Earlier that year, a murderer and serial rapist named Matias Reyes had admitted that he, alone, raped Meili and DNA results confirmed his confession.
The 5 men filed a lawsuit against New York City (2013) and State (2016) and received a total of $44.9 million in compensation. It should be noted the 5 men were in the gang that attacked 8 other people that night. These 5 youths were not angels.
The film argues that they were arrested because they were black and people assumed they were guilty since they were black. Witnesses told police most of the attackers were black. The gang attacked 8 different people so there was no reason to believe they hadn’t raped Meili in the same time frame. This film ignores the fact that some of the victims were spanish and two of the five convicted of these crimes were spanish. But the film only shows the blacks being taken into custody. The film also doesn’t mention that the real attacker, Reyes, was spanish.(59)
In 2019, Ava DuVernay producted a film on this case called “When They See Us.” The NYPD detective who made the first arrests in the case claimed the film is inflammatory and full of lies. Prosecutor Linda Fairstein similarly criticized the Netflix series, which she said is “so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.” It’s a given that any movie done by DuVernay is propaganda and lies.(60)
(31:00) During the 1988 presidential race between George Bush and Michael Dukakis, Bush used an ad about a black criminal named Willie Horton to prove Dukakis was soft on crime. This ad propelled Bush to victory over Dukakis in the November, 1988 election. To this day, the ‘Willie Horton’ ad sends black activists and white liberals into a tizzy. WHY? Nothing in the ad was false.
On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Willie Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a white 17-year-old gas station attendant. Although Fournier cooperated by handing over all the money in the cash register, Horton stabbed him 19 times and stuffed him in a trash can where he bled to death. Horton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On June 6, 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program supported by Dukakis but did not return. On April 3, 1987, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a woman after pistol-whipping and knifing her fiancé in a home invasion. He then stole her fiance’s car. He was shot and captured by Maryland police and on October 20, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge, Vincent J. Femia, refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again." Horton is still in prison in Maryland.
In 1976, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill preventing murderers from being furloughed, but Dukakis vetoed the bill. When Horton’s victims attempted to meet with Dukakis to persuade him to eliminate the furlough program, he refused the meeting. In 1988, when Dukakis wanted to run for President, he quietly ended the furlough program.
The Willie Horton ad showed how soft Dukakis was on crime. Dukakis didn’t care about putting the public at risk. This was a GREAT ad. Horton was the only inmate released that murdered someone. If Horton had been white, Bush would still have used the ad. It was not racial at all - it was factual. Criticism of this ad is unwarranted. (61)
DuVernay attempts to link Horton’s brutal crimes to the lynching of an innocent black man for rape in the racist 1915 movie Birth of a Nation. This is another truely asinine comparison by DuVernay - looking for any excuse to excuse black crime. Race hustlers like DuVernay incite black crime:
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* April 7, 2021, a black male - former NFL pro Phillip Adams - killed Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70, and his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69, along with Lesslie’s grandchildren - Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5. Adams also fatally gunned down two HVAC technicians working at the Lesslie home.
Adams then killed himself. Some have tried to excuse this massacre due to head injuries that a lot of football players and boxers suffer from. But they don't massacre people - especially children. He still knew right from wrong.(62)
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* On May 31, 2019, a black male, DeWayne Craddock murdered 12 people and wounded 5 others at a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia before he was shot and killed by police officers. In the days prior to the shooting, he was involved in physical scuffles with fellow city employees and threatened with disciplinary action. A few hours before the shooting, he resigned from his position in an email he sent to city management. (63)
(40:00) The movie then condemns the 1994 crime bill signed into law by President Clinton. Sen. Cory Booker D-NJ, then claims this bill is overwhelmingly biased against black people.
(43:00) Malkia Cyril, Executive Director, Center of Media Justice declares that Bill Clinton “forced millions of people who would not otherwise be in prison today into prison.”
None of these allegations are accurate. The ‘millions of people’ sent to prison went there because they broke the law that had wide support. Had nothing to do with race. The 1994 Crime Bill provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs.
Violent crime was seen as out of control in the US. Starting in 1987, the homicide rate in the US was increasing by 5% each year, peaking in 1991 with 9.8 deaths per every 100,000 people. Many of those victims were young African Americans. Robbery and assault rates had exploded beginning in the late 1960s, and the crack cocaine epidemic was devastating the nation's urban centers.
The bill had bipartisan support, and easily passed both the House and Senate. Bill Clinton pointed out that both black politicians and community leaders backed the law, and in general supported increased law enforcement in order to help quell street violence destroying inner cities.
Since most crimes are committed by a relatively small number of people, the bill included a ‘three strikes, you’re out’ provision. This law requires both a severe violent felony and two other previous convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison.
Two states implemented a "three-strikes" law before Congress did. Washington voters approved a "three-strikes" law in 1993. California passed its own in 1994 by 72% in favor and 28% against. There was a rapid increase in state prison population due to legislation passed by the states. Washington is mostly white.
The crime rate declined throughout the 1990s before levelling out in the early 2000s.
Today the 1994 Crime Bill is condemned by most blacks and deemed racist - which it is not and never was. Clinton later decided the bill didn’t work the way he had hoped, believing the three strikes and you’re out provision was too harsh and sent too many people to prison for life. Regardless, this bill had the same provisions for everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity, so it was not racist. The issue is blacks have a far higher crime rate then other races and ethnicities.
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(43:15) More lies from Van Jones, who claims an entire generation of black leaders were martyred. “Let’s not forget how many martyrs we put in the ground in the 60s and 70s. Let’s not forget how many of our leaders had to leave the country or are in prison. You strip out a whole generation of leadership. You ran them out the country - you put them in prison - you put them in cemetaries. And then you unleash this blitzkrieg and we don’t have the ability to defend ourselves.”
Sounds like Jones is talking about some sort of genocide. With the exception of Martin Luther King, the people Jones is talking about are violent criminals or supporters of a communist dictatorship.Van Jones concept of right and wrong is flawed.
Jones mentions:
* Martin Luther King. He was certainly a martyr - but not by the government. There has never been evidence that the assassination of Dr. King was a conspiracy by the government. James Earl Ray - a white man - was the killer.
FBI Director J Edgar Hoover intensely disliked King because he criticized the FBI. But it didn’t matter. On December 10, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Prize for Peace during an awards ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
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* Malcolm X, (1925 - 1965) who converted to Islam in the 1950s and later became a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X advocated separation of whites and blacks and believed in black supremacy. But he became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and in 1964 founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. His dispute with Nation of Islam intensified and on Feb 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by 3 black members of the Nation of Islam - NOT the US government. Two of these men were later found innocent, but the third, Mujahid Abdul Halim, admitted to the assassination.
* Fred Hampton, the head of the Illinois Black Panthers, was a dedicated communist who preached violent revolution. Hampton read Marcus Garvey, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Mao, Marx, Lenin, and DuBois. Hampton once said, “You kill one pig, you get some satisfaction, you kill all the pigs, you get complete satisfaction.” (64) Hampton declared: “We know that political power doesn’t flow from the sleeve of a dashiki. We know that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.”(65) Hampton admired mass murderers: “We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung, and anybody else who ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that a revolution is a class struggle.” (66)
Hampton was found guilty of helping to rob an ice cream truck in 1968. (67)
It is difficult to understand how Hampton and other black revolutionaries would became such committed communists, considering their record of slaughtering tens of millions of innocent human beings.
Marcus Garvey: (1887 - 1940) supported the Back-to-Africa movement and racial separation. He built a relationship with the KKK to advance their shared interest in racial separation. He envisioned a unified Africa under an authoritarian, one-party state, governed by himself. He would enact laws to ensure only racially pure blacks would be allowed to go back to Africa.
Che Guevara, Mao and Lenin are all communist mass murderers and dictators. Mao is probably the worst mass killer in history - with tens of millions of innocent victims slaughtered.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848. It calls for a progressive income tax; abolition of inheritances and private property; outlaws religion; abolition of child Labor; free public education (paid for by taxpayers); nationalization of industry, commerce and finance; expansion of publicly owned land and eventually a stateless and classless society where workers own the means of production. Interestingly, a successful economy has never been built on the communist model since it was written in 1848. In practice, communism was an oppressive dictatorship with government hierarchy and their supporters living rich and the workers with no rights living in poverty.
Police viewed the Black Panthers as a terroristic threat to the country - and for good reason.
The Black Panthers were founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Manifesto (68) of the black panthers almost guaranteed there would be violent clashes with police because their Ten Point Plan was extremist - and blames whites for all black problems. Nothing is the fault of blacks. Point ten of the Manifesto says: “We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.” Is that all??? Black children go to school though many don’t receive an education because they are not motivated.
Point one of the Manifesto said: “We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.” But blacks already had the ability to determine their destiny - both Newton and Seale went on to higher education. Blacks who refuse to learn in high school or drop out have determined their own destiny.
Seale dropped out of high school but later worked as a sheet metal mechanic for various aerospace plants while studying for his high school diploma. After earning his high school diploma, Seale attended Merritt Community College where he studied engineering and politics until 1962.
Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959. Newton attended Merritt College, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1966. Newton then studied at San Francisco Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he earned a bachelor's degree. He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma. He then earned a PhD in social philosophy at Santa Cruz.
Point two demands full employment or a guaranteed income. Otherwise the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
Point three demands reparations. “The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.”
Obviously, fifty million blacks have NOT been murdered and reparations have already been paid. Since 1965, TRILLIONS of dollars have been spent on the War on Poverty - largely benefiting blacks. We have had quotas in everything for 50 years. Other nationalities have been denied college admission and employment opportunities due to quotas.
Since the 1980s, private businesses have spent over a BILLION dollars on programs directed specifically to blacks. ALL of this money and effort was intended to pull blacks into the mainstream of society - and KEEP THEM OUT OF JAIL!! A lot of blacks haven’t taken advantage of all this help - which is not the white man’s fault.
Point six: “We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world. . .”
The US has never gone to war with a black country. Between 7 April and 15 July 1994 in the African country of Rwanda, around 500,000 to 800,000 black Tutsis were slaughtered by black Hutu militias. Some estimates put the total death toll as high as 1,100,000. The Rwandan genocide is never mentioned by black militants. Blacks only care about other blacks being killed when a white cop does it. Most blacks don’t care about the rampant black on white crime or black on black crime.
The Rwandan genocide is never mentioned by black militants. Blacks only care about other blacks being killed when a white cop does it. Most blacks don’t care about the rampant black on white crime.
Point eight: “We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.” The Panthers wanted a lot of violent criminals released.
Although the Panthers were prone to violence, the killing of Hampton was probably not justified. But Hampton preached violence so he got what he preached. Hampton was shot dead by police in a raid on his apartment in Chicago on Dec 4, 1969. Four were wounded and three escaped injury. Police had a warrant authorizing a search for weapons. There where 19 guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition there.
A lawsuit was filed by family members in 1970 and after 12 years, they were awarded $1.85 million. A federal grand jury investigation stated: “the whole concept of going on a raid in a high crime density area to obtain weapons from known militants—led by a convicted felon believed to be dangerous—with only fourteen men in plainclothes, in the dead of night, with no sound equipment, no lighting equipment, no tear gas, and no plan for dealing with potential resistance—seems ill-conceived.” (69)
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* (47:00) According to Van Jones, “Assata Shakur was one of the great leaders of the Black Liberation Army. They put her in prison and her allies said ‘we’re not going to leave her in prison.’ She had white allies that said ‘we’re not going to leave her in prison.’ Pulled her out of prison and got her to Cuba.” “You can’t tell the story of black leadership - not one - without having to deal with the full weight of the criminal justice system weaponizing against black descent.”
Shakur was not a civil rights activist. She was a violent criminal that Jones is speaking so highly of.
In 1971 Shakur joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an offshoot of the Black Panthers - and much more violent. The BLA supported "armed struggle", and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out bombings, murders and robberies - what participants termed "expropriations.”
On 2 May, 1973, Shakur and two friends - Malik Zayad Shakur and Sundiata Acoli - were stopped by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike because of a shattered headlight. A shootout broke out and Malik Zayad Shakur and Trooper Werner Foerster were killed. In 1977, Assata Shakur was convicted for her part in the shootout and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1979 she escaped from prison with the help of other members of the BLA and fled to Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum. Shakur is living in Cuba to this day. (71)
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