Can Maxine Try To Tell Anyone They Should Not Be In Politics?
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) reportedly blasted musician Kanye West on Monday evening for talking “out of turn” when asked about West’s recent praise for President Donald Trump.
“Kanye West is a very creative young man who has presented some of the most revolutionary material in the African-American community. … But we also think that sometimes Kanye West talks out of turn and perhaps sometimes he needs some assistance in helping him to formulate some of his thoughts,” Waters reportedly told Politico at an Oakland event with members of the Congressional Black Caucus that pushed for more diversity in Silicon Valley. “We don’t think that he actually means to do harm, but we’re not sure he really understands the impact of what he’s saying, at the time that he’s saying it and how that weighs on, particularly the African American community – and for young people in general. … And I think maybe he should think twice about politics, and maybe not have so much to say.”
West created a firestorm last week when he tweeted that the “mob” cannot make him not love his “brother” Trump.
“You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy,” West tweeted. “He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.”
Trump thanked West for his complimentary tweet soon after Breitbart News White House Correspondent Charlie Spiering asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week at a press briefing whether Trump had recently communicated with the musician.
Trump also praised West over the weekend, saying that West has done a “very important thing” for his legacy, and touted the record-low unemployment numbers for black Americans under his presidency.
“In all fairness, Kanye West gets it,” Trump said on Saturday at a Washington, Michigan, Rally. “He gots it. He gets it! And he saw that. When he sees that African-American unemployment is the lowest in history, you know, people are watching. That’s a very important thing he’s done for his legacy. It’s a very important thing.”
In a Monday video, West said he finds Trump “inspiring” even though he does not agree with “half the shit Trump does.”
Kanye West has performed a great service to the Black Community – Big things are happening and eyes are being opened for the first time in Decades – Legacy Stuff! Thank you also to Chance and Dr. Darrell Scott, they really get it (lowest Black & Hispanic unemployment in history).
You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.
Black American residents of Baltimore, Maryland, are now blaming a lower police presence for the city’s soaring murder rate despite three years of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists insisting that police be pulled from their neighborhoods.
Baltimore has now experienced higher murder rates for three years in a row after riots and BLM-sponsored protests began rocking the city after the death of Freddie Gray, a suspect who died in police custody in the spring of 2015, National Public Radio (NPR) reported.
Since the riots, police morale has collapsed, and city officials began planning a lighter police footprint in response to complaints of residents and protest leaders.
But now, black leaders are blaming cops for the spiraling murder rate, saying that the police pullback has put them in danger.
The Rev. Kinji Scott, a Baltimore activist, is blaming city hall for leaving the neighborhoods unprotected.
“We wanted the police there,” Scott insisted. “We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”
Scott and others are now pressuring the city to bring police back in as a deterrent to the soaring crime rate.
Despite the loud proclamations from BLM activists that the police are the problem, Scott and his fellow activists are now claiming that they never wanted police to go away.
In an interview with NPR, Scott claims only the progressive activists wanted cops to be eliminated:
No. That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community. Because we know for a fact that around the time Freddie Gray was killed, we start to see homicides increase. We had five homicides in that neighborhood while we were protesting.
What I wanted to see happen was that people would be able to trust the relationship with our police department so that they would feel more comfortable. We’d have conversations with the police about crime in their neighborhood because they would feel safer. So we wanted the police there. We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.
Scott also blamed the city for not fostering a community atmosphere between police and the neighborhoods.
The primary thrust nationwide is what President Obama wanted to do: focus on building relationships with police departments and major cities where there had been a history of conflict. That hasn’t happened. We don’t see that. I don’t know a city—Baltimore for certain—we’ve not seen any changes in those relationships. What we have seen is that the police has distanced themselves, and the community has distanced themselves even further. So the divide has really intensified, it hasn’t decreased.
And of course we want to delineate the whole culture of bad policing that exists—nobody denies that—but as a result of this, we don’t see the level of policing we need in our community to keep the crime down in our cities that we are seeing bleed to death.
This is despite Baltimore protesters carrying signs that read things such as “disarm the police,” or wearing T-shirts promising to kill cops.
The reverend’s claims also seem to fly in the face of a list of 19 demands issued by protesters in 2015, one of which demanded that police be barred from entering certain buildings or parts of neighborhoods they had designated as “safe” from police. Clearly, the protesters wanted police removed from Baltimore’s neighborhoods. But now that they’ve gotten their wish, community leaders have suddenly realized what a bad idea such a pullback is.
Palm Springs Will Remove ‘Racist Trees’ Separating Black Neighborhood from Golf Course
The city of Palm Springs, California, announced that it would remove a row of trees blocking a black neighborhood from viewing a municipal golf course.
Palm Springs Mayor Robert Moon and other city officials told residents Sunday they would be removing the line of trees and a chain link fence separating the properties after residents said the trees kept property values in the predominantly black neighborhood down, the Desert Sunreports.
Residents in the area say the trees were planted there in the 1960s as a form of racism — because the invasive tamarisk trees blocked views of the golf course and the San Jacinto mountains, keeping property values low so black families could not make money on their property.
We want in your “HOODS” Damit!
City manager David Ready warned that the tree removal would not happen right away because the full city council would have to vote on the issue. He added that the trees would be down in three months.
The city estimates that the tree removal would cost $169,000.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel stopped by “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Monday night to declare Chicago a “Trump-free zone.”
It was Emanuel’s first appearance on the show since Colbert took over for David Letterman in 2015, and he took the opportunity to escalate his criticisms of President Donald Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration policy.
“Our motto: A city he’ll never sleep in. We don’t want him,” Emanuel said to kick off his segment.
Colbert questioned the enforcement of that rule, particularly with “a Trump hotel right on the river there,” to which the mayor touted his record of opposing the Trump administration.
Emanuel mentioned free community college for students, including so-called DREAMers, who maintain at least a B average in high school, suing the Environmental Protection Agency over U.S. Steel dumping in Lake Michigan, as well as the recent adoption of climate change policies by mayors from around the world at a summit in Chicago.
“Look, Donald Trump is driving forward looking through the rearview mirror and I’m not going that way because I want my city going that way,” he said, gesturing forward, “and I want it to be a Trump-free zone.”
These Peaceful Guys Are Welcome Because They Are On Their Way To College.
“He really, never really likes it when I do that though,” Emanuel added.
Colbert then questioned Chicago’s status as a “sanctuary city,” a term used for jurisdictions that do not detain undocumented immigrants arrested on charges unrelated to their immigration status and turn them over to federal authorities for possible deportation.
“How is that not sort of a constitutional crisis?” Colbert asked.
Emanuel deflected at first, returning to a familiar anecdote about the arrival of his immigrant grandfather in Chicago 100 years ago, proclaiming that the city that welcomed his ancestors and made him mayor is “the greatest city in the greatest country in the world.”
“That doesn’t necessarily answer my question,” Colbert pushed back. “I’m all for what you’re doing, but I’m just curious how it doesn’t violate federal law for you to do this.”
“Because the police department in the city of Chicago is not supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws of the United States government. That’s what the federal government is for,” Emanuel responded, adding that stricter enforcement of immigration laws would counteract his work “building relationships between the police department and communities” – an area that has been the subject of intense scrutiny and structural reform in the wake of high-profile police shootings like that of Laquan McDonald in 2014.
“I’m not driving a wedge – that is what Donald Trump wants, is a wedge on the philosophy of community policing,” Emanuel told Colbert. “It’s absolutely antithetical to everything we’re trying to do.”
The duo then delved into a rapid-fire question game called “Fast Round” from the mayor’s podcast “Chicago Stories.”
Emanuel chose Cubs over Sox, thick crust over thin, Hancock over Sears, then (begrudgingly) Willis over Sears, lake over river and 16-inch softball over 12 – a Chicago summer tradition that Colbert said “looks like the moon is eclipsing when it comes at you.”
Colbert’s final question for Emanuel centered on Trump’s declaration last week that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, asking why the presidents Emanuel worked for (Obama and Bill Clinton) didn’t do it before him.
“First of all, no Democrat or Republican president would ever do this,” the mayor said, calling it “bad policy.”
“The fact is, for a whole host of reasons, you do not want the United States in the middle of negotiations about a two-state solution,” Emanuel continued. “You know, my father is from Israel, I’ve been to Israel, my son’s been Bar Mitzvahed there. This is not what a president should be doing.”
Emanuel landed one final dig at Trump, saying his “bigger worry is that he’s not also moving the nation’s capital to Alabama and I’m really more concerned about what he’s doing there,” in a reference to the high-stakes, contentious race to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat.
