Standing 6 feet apart so African American Alabamians will not be 6 feet under #COVID19 #ExpandMedicaidNow

"Stand up and fight back Don't let them stop us God has not given us the spirit of fear but the power and a sound mind, Forward together not one step back. Now we must fight back just to stay alive. Wake-up everybody. "

Members of the Save Ourselves for Justice and Democracy Movement are fighting back against Governor Kay Ivy's dangerous gamble putting Black Alabamians at risk.

Attorney and former State Senator Hank Sanders said: “I was here 55 years ago today when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question, “How Long?” about voting rights and other rights. I and the rest of the massive crowd responded, “Not Long!” We are here today standing six feet apart so that Alabamians will not be lying six feet under. Dr. King asked, “How Long?” 55 years ago, and today we are asking, “How Long” will it be until Alabama expands Medicaid so that the working poor can have health insurance and health care so they can stand a chance to be tested and treated, not only during the coronavirus pandemic but afterwards? I hope and pray the answer to “How Long? is “Not Long!”

B-But every life is precious.....

“When it hits the black belt, when you see how few clinics and hospitals are in those rural areas, there’s no way in the world you’re going to be able to deal with all those cases,”

Residents in the #BlackBelt are already underserved

“We have a very serious problem with medical care and accessibility to it. Our rural transportation services can help, but it’s very difficult for a lot of our citizens not only in Macon but as far west as Sumpter and Green County, they’re having the same problem," said Lee. "So, counties across the Black Belt are experiencing extreme difficulty getting health care, even before this epidemic.”

Its time to stop playing petty partisan politics with people's lives. 

Therefore, we are here, standing six feet apart so fewer Alabamians will not be lying six feet under. We know we take a risk by being here, even with all of our precautions, but the risk of not standing up and speaking out now and not expanding Medicaid now is profoundly greater. That is why we are here.

"You People be nice don't be threatening" #WhenTheySeeUS

Every black man, woman, and child who have ever heard the words YOU People and threatening knows exactly who/what the speaker is talking about.

There can be no more pretenses.

To be white in America is to assume, with total self-confidence and little afterthought, the personal ownership of public spaces. To be white in America is to have the confidence to say, without a second thought: this space, this neighborhood, this city, this county, this country is mine. Myself and those who look like me have the right to decide who can be here, and even what language can be spoken here. It doesn’t even have to be intentionally malicious. These assumptions just are. They exist inside the American body.
From the moment black and brown people were imported into this country, not as citizens but as worker bodies, transgressing these “white-owned spaces” — from rail cars to restaurants to whole parts of town — could mean humiliation or persecution or even death. It still can today. What has changed is the scale.

So this is not the first time black women reporters have been publically humiliated and disrespected by Trump and it's probably not going to be the last time because everyone knows black women don't deserve respect.

Crenshaw noted that Trump’s attacks on black women are rooted in fear, his own allegiance to patriarchy and an especially toxic brand of masculinity.

“Trump is more vulnerable to them because black women are the political constituency that is the least persuaded by anything he has to say,” Crenshaw said. “They know that a vote for Trump is not a vote for the working class because no group is more working class than them. So, it is not surprising that at the very moment people are starting to recognize that black women are onto something, he sets out to undermine their intelligence and professionalism.”

This is what happens when there is a lack of diversity in mainstream media.

Despite being in majority-minority cities, the newsrooms of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, for instance, are both 81 percent white. The Washington Post is 70 percent white. Minorities make up 72 percent of the population of Los Angeles, but only 33 percent of the Los Angeles Times. According to the Radio Television Digital News Association, the numbers in other media look slightly better, if still not impressive: in 2018, about a quarter of staffers in TV newsrooms are people of color; in radio, it’s 11.7 percent. The American Society of Magazine Editors doesn’t track racial and ethnic diversity, though its industry’s mastheads remain stacked with old white men.

Enough is Enough!

Sherrilyn Ifill, president, and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was not satisfied with the responses.

“Trump’s insult of [black female journalists] goes too far. And I will not accept the ‘weary with outrage’ that is supposed to excuse the failure to stand up and refuse to accept this racist treatment of a professional doing her job,” Ifill tweeted. “There are so many serious issues we must confront in the coming days. But we cannot let this pass as business as usual.”She came up with a hashtag to continue organizing: #EnoughIsEnough.

The actress Anika Noni Rose tweeted a suggestion:

“Dear news outlets, you want to do something radical and powerful? Next white house press event with the president, only send your Black woman reporters. #IfYouHaveAny.”

Michelle Norris, a former colleague at The Washington Post and an NPR reporter, replied: “Please make this happen: a room full of black women . . . gathering information.”

What EYE don't understand is why not one of their colleagues stand up for them.  Strike that.  Yes, EYE do.

It's the media, I won't say stupid, because we aren't stupid, the media just thinks we are stupid.

Republican Governors Playing Partisan Politics with Peoples Lives #COVID19

Governors in the red, republican, Confederate, slave states are showing they care more about appeasing Trump than they care about the people they were elected to represent, their states and their country by not ordering people to stay home.

Alabama Gov. Refuses To Issue Shelter In Place Order: ‘We Are Not California’ https://t.co/l6u2dtZ20f pic.twitter.com/0Kpv93lqRU

— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) March 27, 2020

People will die because of them. 

Someone's parents, grandparents, brothers or sisters will die. 

Sadly, people in those states are in for a very scary awakening.

Meanwhile in the Blue States...

The question facing us all now as citizens is whether or not the response of our country to a worldwide pandemic is being driven by the basic strategy of the Piranha Brothers. That is, whether or not the president* is withholding vital medical aid during a national health crisis for the purpose of muzzling criticism of his obvious incompetence, and for the auxiliary purpose of gaining political advantage in November’s election. If the answer to either of those questions is “yes,” then we have an unreconstructed monster running the country and there’s no telling what he might do next.

B-But built that wall...

B-But every life is precious.....

The quiet part is now out loud...

Now that America has an incompetent, dimwitted dictator as the head of the household, the Republican policy of plausible deniability has been ruined. The dunderheaded daddy of the GOP has exposed his party’s ultimate goal—maintaining their status as the sole beneficiaries of America’s corporate, economic and political profiteering

Corporate greed over human needs. People are dying.@AOC is right.

And we need #Medicare4All and #MasksNow — not a “president” who ignores recommendations, spreads misinformation and tweets jibberishpic.twitter.com/ohgjulQUCu

— Anti-Fascist AWK (@AWKWORDrap) March 27, 2020

Redeye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray.

It looks like Nathaniel Woods isn’t the only person Gov. Kay Ivey is willing to put to death.

See, This is Why Republicans Are Unworthy of The Public Trust

Watch the mayor of Lake Worth Beach, Florida and the majority of the City Commissioners attempt to disrespect, marginalize and minimize fellow Commissioner Omari Hardy's legitimate concerns and see him speak truth to power. 

Let's recap  
This whole thing started when a request for an emergency meeting by Lake Worth Beach County Commissioner Omari Hardy was rejected.

Commissioner Omari Hardy wants the city to discontinue shutoffs of water and electric to city residents with derelict accounts during the crisis. Hardy is also calling for the city to pay employees’ out-of-pocket medical expenses related to the pandemic and allow paid leave for city workers if operations are curtailed or if they are parents who need to stay home with the school-age children.
But city officials say no special meeting is planned and pushed back on Hardy’s request.

Then comes the emergency power struggle

Hardy said that others on the commission have the approach in past emergencies of allowing Bornstein to “do whatever he wants to do.”
’What’s bothering me is that they are not going on record to give him broad power,” Hardy said. “They’re just refusing to do anything and creating a vacuum and licensing him to step into that with their silence and let him do whatever he thinks is right.”

Then come the threats and the accusation Commissioner Omari Hardy is being uppity

“We should have been talking about this last week. We cut off people’s utilities this week and made them pay what could have been their last paycheck to us to turn their lights on.”
Triolo recessed the meeting in an unsuccessful attempt to get Hardy to stop talking.
“You’re done. You’re done,” Triolo told him. “Disrespectful.”

"Disrespectful" is code for watch how you talk to #Colonizers. 

It seems like this OVID19 crisis is shining a light on the difference between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans only and the Democrats are the ones who care about the people.

  #OmarHardy for President

Rowan Williams: "The Poorest Deserve the Best" pic.twitter.com/qQLGVo9xpI

— Commissioner Omari Hardy 🚶🏾‍♂️🚲 🛴 🚉 🌳 🏘 🌇 (@OmariJHardy) July 21, 2016

Cue in Pray For Me

President Hillary Clinton would have been on top of #CVID19 #WeTriedToTellYa

Clinton would have listened to the scientists. Clinton would have been focused on transmission rates, test kits, and the production of necessary equipment.

The Trump administration was told in January that coronavirus was likely to become a pandemic.

They refused to act for fear of spooking the markets, losing weeks of time to prepare that we won’t get back. https://t.co/By195ltXMt

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 21, 2020

"Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee because of Black voters not in spite of Black voters"

Life on the Democratic Party Plantation Cue in the theme song to Roots

Joe Biden won forty-eight per cent of the vote in South Carolina’s Democratic Presidential primary on Saturday.Photograph by Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty

Thanks to South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden carried all of the red, voter suppressing, Confederate, Slave States on Super Tuesday when African American voices are finally heard.  Candidate Biden didn't have to spend not one dime or make one promise to African American voters.  All it took was the word of one powerful Black man. 

A Trump presidency that’s been disastrous for America has been catastrophic for Black people.
From spikes in hate crimes to Trump’s racism, Black communities have suffered mightily under this administration. Certainly, more progressive policies pitched by Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren would benefit Black people, yet there is also a sense that this nation has no real appetite to foster economic or racial equality espoused by candidates on the left.
“I like [Warren and Sanders], but I don’t see them winning, because I think they’re too progressive for a lot of white people in his country,” said Marsha, a jewelry maker who offered political analysis along with her deft recommendations for good barbecue joints in Charleston. “I don’t think white people generally vote in a way that will benefit them if it also benefits Black people.”

So now we know for sure the power of the black vote is used to benefit white people.  And all Black voters can do is vote blue no matter who and HOPE and pray white people will decide to treat us as equals someday. 

My read of the South Carolina vote is that black people know exactly what they’re doing, and why. Joe Biden is the indictment older black folks have issued against white America. His support is buttressed by chunks of the black community who have determined that most white people are selfish and cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They believe if you make white people choose between their money and their morality—between candidates like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who somehow finished fifth in South Carolina, behind Pete Buttigieg) and candidates like Biden and Michael Bloomberg—they will choose their money every time and twice on Election Day.

EYE HOPE the candidate with the most votes wins this time. 

"Every life is precious" My Donkey! #AbolishTheDeathPenalty #JustMercy #SweetHomeAlabama #SayHisName #NateWood

(Lady, you executed a man last night.) https://t.co/FwEp4XdyQL

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 6, 2020

EYE don't condone the Bloomberg endorsement but EYE understand the Bloomberg endorsement~Redux

EYE know EYE keep vacillating on the Alabama Democratic Conference's endorsement of Mike Bloomberg but after watching this video and listening to the words of Dr. Claude Anderson EYE understand their rationale and their reasoning, and EYE approve the endorsement.

Watch.  Listen.  Learn. Vote.

EYE am willing to forgive Mike Bloomberg but EYE can't forget what Mike Bloomberg did

This sample ballot is misleading and incorrect.

Cue in Aretha Franklin-Willing to Forgive 
"Because you really, really hurt me this time".  Someone EYE love was racially profiled in New York City under the Stop and Frisk policy so this is personal to me.  

The young man in question is the son of a very dear friend of mine. I've known him since he was an infant. His only crime was being a young black man between the ages of 18 and 24 years of age.

As my wise Daddy once told me, I will support and defend you when you are done wrong, but I won't support and defend you when you do wrong and there is no right way to do the wrong thing.

 EYE don't condone the decision of the Alabama Democratic Conference to endorse Mike Bloomberg and this morning EYE wake up to the news the endorsement will bite them in the Donkey, which EYE suspect was the plan all along.

THERE IS NO AMBIGUITY HERE. IF YOU VOTE FOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG FOR PRESIDENT AND VOTE FOR “UNCOMMITTED” DELEGATES THINKING THAT THEY WILL SOMEHOW BE ASSIGNED TO HIM AFTER THE ELECTION, YOU ARE MISTAKEN.
Your vote for Bloomberg for President will count. Your vote for Uncommitted delegates will be ignored.
And yet, this the sample ballot distributed outside churches in Madison County today seems to indicate that you can vote for Bloomberg AND the ADC’s endorsed “Uncommitted” delegates. You can; the machine won’t reject your ballot. But it also won’t count the votes for the Uncommitted delegates.

There is a concerted effort to control African American voters in Alabama, and EYE guess we aren't supposed to notice we are fighting with each other while the DNC is standing on the sideline egging it on. 

Ironically Americans from across the nation converged on Selma, Alabama to re-enact Bloody Sunday but the struggle is not over. Then as now, we are struggling to vote.  Republicans suppress the Black vote, Democrats depress the black vote.  What to do and where to go?

RedEye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray.