It's good to see you. Come on in, leave your shoes in the hallway, we've got fire on the stove preparing lunch for later. In the meantime, browse the bookshelves and plunk down on the sofa with one, or pick out some tunes from the music library or come in to the kitchen to help with the cooking. Our special blend of tea is steeping and will be right up.

Make yourself at home...

I have to admit, when the weather finally makes a turn for the better with cooler temps, one of the first things I still think of, thanks to my American male conditioning, is football. And although I've rejected pro sports for years now and probably won't watch much of the NFL again at all this year, I will be taking more than a mild interest in a few individuals or teams who have shown courage to stand against systemic racism and police brutality. Most owners are raving RW oligarchs in fascist collusion with the military who give nary a fuck about police brutality, imperialism, healthcare for all or economic inequality. So it's important to recognize what those courageous young men are up against.

The NFL owners of the following teams gave ONE MILLION DOLLARS to Trump: Redskins, Jaguars, Texans, Patriots, Jets and Rams. #ImWithKap

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) August 24, 2017

And there seems to be more and more brave young athletes coming out lately. For instance, check out the Cleveland Browns and "How the youngest team in the NFL staged its largest national anthem protest."

Twelve Browns players knelt in a circle and prayed, while five others, including McCourty, stood with a hand resting on a kneeling player’s shoulder before Monday night’s preseason contest against the New York Giants. Seventeen players in all participated in the demonstration to call attention to racial injustice in the United States.

The Browns’ protest stood in contrast to the scenes this preseason on many sidelines, where anthem displays have been confined to a modest group of players on just a handful of teams. Although many more players share a simmering unhappiness with team owners about Kaepernick’s continued unemployment and about issues such as police brutality and mistreatment of blacks and minorities, they’ve chosen to remain largely silent.

I'm enamored of star quarterback Colin Kaepernick's courageous stand, which has led to this current expansion upon his protest of kneeling during the national anthem last year. Just this last week there was a long overdue public showing of support for him, on the thrust of him being blacklisted from the NFL (all rumors of signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars aside), which has brought out and together many folks from all walks, including a big protest in front of the NFL's headquarters in Manhattan. Even members of the NYPD showed up, with the great One Honest Cop, Frank Serpico joining them. Hank Aaron has also made public comments to say #ImWithKap too.

At the same time the bigots crawl out of their holes in times like these, as evidenced by Drumpf's ignorant and reckless deep-seated bigotry and racism. But it's always a little creepy, at least initially, when we the true colors come out of people you'd expect would at least try to hide it professionally a little more than the imbecilic buffoon who snake-oiled into the White House (Thanks $hillary, and the collusion of the Dem Party!).

But there has been a noteworthy amount of criticism of the Browns’ action on social media for disrespecting the flag and the military. It included Justice William M. O’Neill of the Ohio Supreme Court, who posted on Facebook he will “NEVER attend a sporting event where the draft dodging millionaire athletes disrespect the veterans who earned them the right to be on that field.”

It's really no surprise there are still these kinds of racist clowns occupying the highest levels of the judiciary, poisoned by a lifetime of RW propaganda to spout outdated, erroneous dog-whistle racism. "Draft-dodging" and "veterans who earned them the right..."? There hasn't been a draft in at least over 40 years, you low-grade moron. Maybe he's still a little stung over all those dirty fucking hippies and that uppity Mohammed Ali. And not one fucking veteran earned them a right to play football; they earned every cent of that with their own ability and have every right not only to be on the field but to use their freedom of speech/expression as they see fit, you fascist fuck. The collusion of the NFL and the Armed Services is one of the most toxic developments in American society.

What I'm trying to say is I think the fight against these racists is really important. They've endorsed and contributed to constructing a society of wink-and-a-nod injustice to outright unapologetic brutality and murder of black Americans.

How many thousands more will be murdered in cold-blood by Boys in Blue, with complete immunity? Our history is littered with the most gruesome snuffing out of black lives through institutional racism.

I lay in bed for several minutes trying to hear what they were talking about. The talking continued and I got up and pulled back the window shade slightly at the south window overlooking the alleyway, and peeped out to see what was going on. I saw several policemen, about four of them with a colored boy. The policemen had the boy standing up against the brick wall of the hotel with both hands raised above his head. I heard them ask him, "What in the hell are you doing out this time of the morning?" He says, "I am looking for my wife." They said, "You are telling a goddamn lie. We tried to catch you last night, but you got away. We are going to fix you tonight." He says, "Mr. Officer, if I have did anything, please ride me to the police station." They said, "We are going to give you a ride. It is going to be a damn long ride. The first one is going to be to the undertaker and the next ride will be to the goddam cemetery."

....

They beat him so they broke his neck—I tell you his neck was really broke—they took him back in the alley, hit him over the head several times; his neck shook like a chickens neck when you break it. He wasn't saying anything because they told him, "You better not holler you son-of-a-bitch." He was handcuffed all this time. They took him back in the alley just a few feet from the Third Street sidewalk and commenced shooting him while he was down. His body was on the right side. His face was turned south and his hands still handcuffed, and he was near the hotel wall. There were four or five shots fired into his body while he was down handcuffed and after his neck was broken. The boy was unable to say anything. Before they put the handcuffs on him he cried and begged them not to kill him, but after beating him over the head with their billies and breaking his neck he said nothing more and didn't cry anymore. When the police shot him they were standing over him in the alleyway. I saw three or four flashlights. There were four shots in rapid succession. Several pistols were firing.

There were at least four officers. I did not know the names of any of the officers and would not know them if I saw them. Everyone had on uniforms. After they had fired four times he was lying there breathing heavily in death. One of the officers flashed his light on him to see his condition and said, "Why that son-of-a-bitch ain't dead yet," and pulled his pistol out and shot him again in the left side of his head and the bullet came out on the other side of his head and was found in the alleyway. I saw the bullet Saturday morning. I also [saw] his blood and brains which had oozed out on the pavement. There was a drizzling rain Saturday and [it] washed the blood down the sidewalk into the gutter.

Fanny Henderson
STATE OF TENNESSEE, COUNTY OF SHELBY
[A deposition made to the NAACP, c. February 1933]

Read the deeply heart-wrenching account of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime, and when finally was released, struggling with mental health exacerbated greatly by the constant trauma of beatings in jail, hung himself out of the 2nd floor window of his mother's home.

Such a system (almost one million NYC black and brown citizens were detained as part of the racist Stop & Frisk policy) is allowed to remain in place because, in my opinion, not enough white folks will ever have to get even a whiff of just how heinous it is for our black brothers and sisters, and therefore not concern themselves adequately enough about how serious the situation remains. Here's a description of the legal labyrinth that ensnared and ultimately killed Browder as it has many millions across centuries.

Read the brutal accounts of the ocean-crossing ships carrying slaves bound in iron chains, stacked like sardines on planks below, stewing in their own vomit and defecation, fed like animals and made to dance for the entertainment of the crew during their few moments of fresh air on deck.

A sordid psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual damage has reverberated through the centuries. And every next humiliation, injustice, harassment, beating, unjust imprisonment and murder by cops rings the bell afresh for all with darker skin in America.

American legal history is just rife with scandalous, horrifyingly racist outcomes. How may "investigations" in Southern small towns end up with nothing/how many routinely trials acquit cold-blooded murderers/how many black men are executed on the flimsiest of evidence? In the North, how many in the law enforcement apparatus, from cops to detectives to prosecutors to district attorneys to judges conspire to force plea bargains, imprison, beat and murder young black men with impunity? (read the New Yorker piece on the Injustice System).

The long, horrifying legacy of racism and police brutality continues to plague the American experience, yet one can still hear well-meaning white supporters call for better strategy, or more focus on the fundamental issues, etc. While that may bear some consideration it fails to acknowledge just how deep those the public representationsof that systematic rot, symbolic or not, cut to the bone. Sometimes I think we here on C99 haven't been fully capable of dwelling on how deep it really goes. As almost entirely white folks here (as far as I know, including myself) we can't ever expect to truly understand what it must feel like to have to brace one's self every single day upon leaving one's home, to be accosted in ways large and small by a society still very much conditioned by media and propaganda to see black folks solely as otherness at the very least or to be feared and subjugated at worst.

To have one's personal space invaded out of the blue by randomly being called a "nigger" for no other reason than that of having darker skin, to be followed around a store by security for no other reason than one's skin color, to be stopped by police and viewed with suspicion for no other reason than one's skin color. To show up for a job interview or to rent an apartment that sounded on the phone or by email to be all but confirmed, only to be declined in person. To languish in jail for trumped up charges, preyed upon by a racist and overly punitive justice and penal system, or to finally be exterminated by police who "feared for their lives."

That's the history to which Kaepernick, who is an activist schooled in radical black history, and the young black athletes reclaiming the dignity of their people, are calling on for white America to face more squarely.

What we as white folks can do best to help in these situations is to listen. Just listen.

Martin Luther King reached this point not halfway through 1963, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

First, I must confess that over the last few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’

What's most important now, to me, is that there's a bubbling sense right now among its black players (and some white teammate supporters) that there is an untapped power among them, of which foisted upon them or not, can not go unignored anymore.

Perhaps nothing speaks more to the potential power of black athlete solidarity than this. The Mizzou football, after a series of racial offenses disregarded by the university president, joined together in solidarity to refuse to play their game that Sunday. College football is big money, and it was estimated the school would lose $1 million if the team didn't play. A couple of days later the president was forced to step down. It's one of those really powerful stories that, in my opinion, hasn't gotten nearly the traction it deserves because it fundamentally challenges one of the seats of power in this country.

Concerned Student 1950 movement

It's always the right time for white allies to stand up and speak out. That's really the only way things are ever going to change.

When black athletes sense their growing power and a chance to confront racism head-on, I stand with them. Taking those wretched Confederate statues that are reminders of this long, brutal history must happen. It is just a start.

OMG THIS IS BEAUTIFUL Mr. Harry Belafonte and @kaepernick7 OMG OMG OMG pic.twitter.com/bNzop2tNlX

— KnowYourRightsCamp (@yourrightscamp) August 25, 2017

So, whats going on with you?

Back in the kitchen we're listening to:

Reading/Browsing List:
"Slavery By Another Name" Douglas Blackmom
"King of The World" David Remnick
"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
"The Fire Next Time" James Baldwin

End of the Summer Spaghetti

sauté sliced onions, mushrooms, chopped green beans into bite-sized bits, sun-dried tomatoes, a couple of anchovies and crumbled walnuts. Add spinach leaves before serving over pasta.

Lemongrass Chai Blend

heaping scoop of dried Thai lemongrass
shards of cinnamon bark
a few cardamom pods
a few black peppercorns
A few cloves
fresh chopped ginger