What Looks Like a Media Enabled False Equivalency on an Ordinary Day in #SweetHomeAlabama

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck marched with over 20,000 supporters Saturday through the streets of Birmingham. The "All Lives Matter" march started at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended at the BJCC where Beck is holding a Restoring Unity Rally. (Joe Songer/jsonger@al.com).

Fresh off of what looks like Stupid on an ordinary day in Bama comes what looks like fake activism in Bama, thanks to Glen Beck, Chuck Norris, with Alveda King and Bishop Jim Lowe  thrown in for *cough cough*... color.

Led by conservative activist and talk show host Glenn Beck, more than 20,000 people chanting "All Lives Matter" marched the historic civil rights route from Kelly Ingram Park to Birmingham City Hall this morning.

"It's about taking our church out in the streets," Beck said. He said marchers came from as far away as China, Dubai and the Netherlands.

Actor Chuck Norris, a conservative activist known for his martial arts, action movies and TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger," marched about two rows behind Beck. Alveda King, a niece of civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., marched in the front row. Bishop Jim Lowe, pastor of the predominantly black Guiding Light Church in Birmingham, co-organized the march with Beck and marched with him at the front. As a child, Lowe attended Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where the march started, a headquarters church for the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Lowe and his sisters were in the church when a KKK bomb blew up the church and killed four little girls on Sept. 15, 1963.

Translation (H/T TRM), Links inserted for emphasis

They mocked a movement (Black lives Matter), they capitalized on the civil rights struggle concerning the desegregation of the Birmingham schools (with the screening of Woodlawn), they brought in thousands of people from around the country while keeping this a secret from the very people that live here, they disrespected the present leaders in our communities of color by not including them AND they make it a fundraiser! What could be worse than that? The fundraiser was NOT for our public schools or even the particular school that the movie was about (Woodlawn). nor was it about raising money for programs to help break the cycle of poverty (America has the highest childhood poverty rate of all developed countries) and it wasn't about improving race relations....no...the fundraiser was to rescue Christians in the middle east. Yup. All of this was a fundraiser to save the Christians from the Muslims in the middle east.

What's the matter with Alabama? 

We protest not to affirm the worth of our lives, but to expose the depth of the evil we face.

— deray mckesson (@deray) August 29, 2015

B-But They Looked So Happy Together....#SweetHomeAlabama #Hypocrisy

Governor Robert Bentley and First Lady Dianne Bentley watch the Inauguration Parade in Montgomery, Ala. on Monday January 19, 2015. , Mickey Welsh / Advertiser

Don't get me wrong, EYE am not gloating because a 50 year marriage is ending, EYE am gloating at the exposure of the rank hypocrisy of Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, soon to be ex First Lady Dianne Bentley, and the Alabama media  who enabled them to lie to the citizens of Alabama.

According to a Facebook post by Donald Watkins, the warm, fuzzy, hand holding, and smiles in Montgomery, AL  on Jan. 19, 2015 were as phony as a three dollar bill.  EYE blame Dianne Bentley for enabling this charade too.  She should have informed the voters Bentley was a Bible thumping, cheater before the election. 

The First Lady was prepared to end the marriage last Fall after she discovered the Governor's extramarital affair. The Governor convinced her to wait until after the November general election before filing her divorce complaint. The Governor won his race by a landslide. The couple then separated in January.

The Governor spent the New Year's holidays in New Orleans with his paramour. They basked together in the warm glow of their professed love for each other. The First Lady spent her holidays in Alabama.

Let the Alabama Media Group tell it, the only clouds on an otherwise perfect day were A small group of protesters affiliated with Birthplace for Justice 

The group sang "We Shall Overcome," chanted "black lives matter," and then turned their back on Bentley as he spoke.
A person associated with the group said protesters were upset the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was cancelled in favor of the inauguration parade.
"We protested today because in addition to it being the inauguration, it's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day," said member Michael Eric Grant in a statement. "We're fighting to keep his dream of unity and justice alive. We hope that Gov. Bentley will carry out his oath to office with a similar commitment."

So, for the past three years the republican Governor of Alabama has been having an affair with an unnamed (so far) reportedly younger paramour  right under our noses and not a peep in the press.   EYE wonder why?  Snark

Mainstream media organizations are afraid to report the details of Governor Bentley's secret love affair. Such reporting will likely cost the print media corporate advertising dollars and sponsorships, as well as revenues derived from legal notices published by the state of Alabama. It is well known that Bentley is mean-spirited, reckless, and vindictive. He is known to retaliate against individuals and entities that do not support this love affair. Additionally, they have a conflict of interest because nearly all of them endorsed Bentley's bid for reelection last November.

If Robert Bentley had been a democrat the media would have been on this like white on rice.  EYE sure do miss the good old days when the media prevented candidates and elected officials from lying to we the people, instead of enabling them. 

If Mrs. Bentley can be remembered for one thing as First Lady, she hopes that the people of Alabama will remember her stand for Christ. After all, the Bentleys feel that they have been called “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14) and always strive to remain in God’s will.

Un Huh. 

#KatrinaAnniversary: "Katrina Victims Were Forced Into Exile"

Victims of Hurricane Katrina argue with National Guard troops as they try to get on buses headed to Houston on Sept. 1, 2005. Willie Allen Jr./St. Petersburg Times/ZUMA

President Obama celebrated the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by traveling to the scene of the crime, making a nice speech, taking some nice pictures, singing a little song, then boarding Air Force One and flying back to Washington, D.C. 

 Photo Op complete.

It's like DejaVoodoo

All Over Again 

The more things change

Ten years later, it looks like the same people in New Orleans have been left behind again. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter. While tens of billions of dollars poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal. Many of the elderly and the poor, especially poor families with children, never made it back to New Orleans. The poverty rate for children who did made it back remains at disturbingly high pre-Katrina levels, especially for Black children.

The more they don't change

Well you know, black people have been going around the country looking for good neighborhoods, trying to settle down there if they were allowed to. That is the history of black folks. And part of that history is also that white people constantly run away from those neighborhoods. And that's why those neighborhoods then become concentrations of black people and poor people. The poor part usually comes later. Because when there are no more white people there then capital is withdrawn, the employers leave, the public sector ceases to serve that community, and the police are brought in to prey on that community, which diminishes further upward mobility and causes downward mobility.

Shock 

Just two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the city fired 7,500 public school teachers, launching a new push to privatize the school system and build a network of charter schools. Many accused lawmakers of trying to break the powerful United Teachers of New Orleans union. Today former President George W. Bush will return to the city to speak at the Warren Easton Charter High School. We speak to the New Orleans actor and activist Wendell Pierce, whose mother was a teacher and union member for 40 years, as well Gary Rivlin, author of "Katrina: After the Flood." He recently wrote a piece for The New York Times titled "Why New Orleans’s Black Residents Are Still Underwater After Katrina."

And Shame 

New Orleans actor and activist Wendell Pierce looks at how insurance companies discouraged poor and black families from returning to New Orleans after Katrina by refusing to honor homeowner policies. Pierce, whose great-grandfather came to New Orleans as a slave in the 1850s, talks about how Allstate gave his parents just $400 after they paid premiums for 50 year

The Obama surge in black optimism is over.

 Now, black Americans are back to their post-Katrina consensus; a deep sense that America is indifferent to their lives and livelihoods. Indeed, when read in that light, a movement like Black Lives Matter seems inevitable. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and its impact on the collective experience of black America, sowed the ground for a reckoning. Yes, Obama's election postponed it for a time, but the recent eruption of black death—at the hands of the state—gave it new urgency. And now, as we can all see, it's here.

Still waiting for HOPE and CHANGE we can BELIEVE in...

#KatrinaAnniversary "The Logic of Genocide"

Alan Chin 84-year old Milvertha Hendricks wrapped in an American flag blanket after spending five days on the street at the Convention Center. New Orleans ...

Today's Must Read by Glenn Ford

The best thing that could happen to poor Black people is for a Katrina-like catastrophe to hit their city, scattering them to the four corners of the country. So says an article in a leading “liberal” magazine, which maintains that “the forced exodus of Katrina should be replicated as public policy, for the good of both the purposely displaced and society as a whole.” In the real world, white supremacy and capitalism created the ghettos.

Katrina was a human rights disaster 

The human rights dimension of the disaster became clear immediately after Katrina struck, when the media struggled to find the right words to describe the estimated 1.3 million people uprooted from their homes and scattered around the country. Some called them "refugees" — a term met with outrage by Gulf residents, since it officially applies to citizens of another country crossing borders. "Evacuees" was also inaccurate, since tens of thousands of people — largely due to a flawed and scandal-ridden emergency response — were never "evacuated" after the storm hit.

Every Kid is Money  

This week commemorates a grim anniversary. Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. It wiped out the entire public school system and cleared the way for what has become the nation's first fully charterized district. In the New Orleans Recovery School District, traditional neighborhood public schools are gone, replaced by privately run charter schools.

B-but President Obama says New Orleans is moving forward after Katrina.... 

"Not long ago, our gathering here in the Lower 9th might have seemed unlikely," Obama says in speech excerpts released by the White House. "But today, this new community center stands as a symbol of the extraordinary resilience of this city and its people, of the entire Gulf Coast, indeed, of the United States of America. You are an example of what's possible when, in the face of tragedy and hardship, good people come together to lend a hand, and to build a better future."

EYE guess it depends on what the definition of moving forward IS.... 

“Plan and simple, the recovery efforts of the last ten years in New Orleans mostly benefited White residents,” said Ernest Johnson, FFLIC’s Statewide Juvenile Justice Reform Campaign and Policy Director. “America’s comeback city is one where the Black median income remains less than one half of the White median income. It is a city where the Black unemployment rate is nearly three times the rate of White unemployment rate. It is a city where only 30% of residents in the predominately Black Lower 9th Ward have been able to return to their homes. It is evident that recovery was out of reach and unavailable to African Americans.”

The more things change..... the more they don't. 

A Personal Post On #BernieSanders #BlackLivesMatter #Sandernistas and #Censorship

Frequent contributor Chip said the following in response to this comment EYE made in response to A Personal Note on Bernie Sanders and BLM 

Hi RedEYE, No, I didn't take the writer's slam personally, but I did refute that as a Bernie supporter I am "embedded in a white savior ethos that discount black thought leadership as unintelligent and unworthy."

I don't think of Bernie as a "white savior." Generally, I agree with many of his positions, and disagree with a few others, but I don't expect to agree with all of any politician's positions. That's just unrealistic.
Nor do I think that Bernie discounts black thought leadership as unintelligent and unworthy. The writer doesn't provide any evidence of that; she just states it as if it is a fact.
Bernie does emphasize that there is a need to "stand together" against corruption and injustice.

Some supporters of any politician are ill-mannered. No candidate can be held accountable for the actions or inactions of their followers.

It's really very simple. If you don't support Bernie's positions, don't vote for him. No one is, or can, force you to do anything. I expect that some voters will prefer Hillary, some will prefer Bernie, and some will prefer other candidates. That's just politics.

EYE would like to say publicly how much EYE appreciate the tone and tenor of this comment.  It has always been my personal mantra tolerant people can agree to disagree without resorting to name calling, personal attacks, and insults.  It's political not personal.  EYE was afraid we were heading down the Left in Alabama (and others) road , where people who EYE thought were friends, banned me for life because they took a political disagreement personal.

This brings me to the actions of the #Sandernistas, and yes, EYE am holding Bernie Sanders accountable for the actions of his followers.

It was absurd, from the onset, that BLM activists had to take the stage and take the mike AT AN ALLEGED PROGRESSIVE SPACE to even initiate discussion of the genocide against Blacks by a militarized police force. That discussion should have already been ongoing, prominent and robust.
But having done so, the reaction of White sandernistas has been not solidarity with Black Americans, but a demand that Black Americans sit down, shut up, and demonstrate solidarity with THEM. “Bernie Sanders is your best hope. You need to support him and stop being disruptive.” This is the kind of thing that has been coming out of White Sandernista mouths. It’s not solidarity, it’s the liberal face of White supremacy.

In order to solve the problem you have to admit there is a problem. 

I could be wrong about that, but I don’t blame any person of color for having a lingering bad taste in their mouth from your shenanigans at this point.

The Black Lives Matter Movement now has a legislative agenda. 

Now, that the Black Lives Matter movement has an agenda, it must effectively push that agenda. It must demand that all local, state and federal governments adopt that agenda. They must pressure Democrats and Republicans to embrace that agenda. Before disrupting campaign rallies and other political gatherings, the Movement should make a diligent effort to meet with the candidates to discuss the agenda.

If the politicians fail to meet with the movement, the disruptions will be justified. By the way, when asked about meeting with Black Lives Matter, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) called the idea "ridiculous." He has an earned a disruption or two. We must demand that both parties pass legislation to end racial profiling and police brutality.

This includes you Bernie Sanders. Sir.