Trayvon Martin: National call goes out for Black men to do something.

by Staff March 26, 2012 4 Comments News Opinion Weekly Columns

Like Love Haha Wow Sad Angry

(ThyBlackMan.com) Many people all over the world have expressed outrage over the shooting death of 17 yr-old Trayvon Martin. Rallies and vigils have been held across theUnited Statesdemanding justice for Trayvon Martin, which starts with the arrest of George Zimmerman. When the local news announced that there would be a rally for Trayvon Martin in Charlotte, NC, I knew I had to be there to acknowledge not only the tragedy of Martin’s killing but to be united with other Black people who are fed up with this kind of thing happening to our men, women and children all over the country. While George Zimmerman was certainly not a law enforcement officer with any authority to stop and question people on the street, theSanford, Police Department appears to have covered up the crime thus making themselves a party to it.

Even though one of the responding officers, Ricardo Ayala, wrote in his report that Trayvon Martin was the victim of a negligible homicide offense, and either he failed to list Zimmerman as the offender or the report was changed after it was decided Zimmerman would not be charged. It does not seem logical that you can have a victim of an offense but no offender. It is difficult to say when the Sanford Police Department became an accessory to the crime after the fact. At the very least, there appears to be evidence of obstruction of justice and the number of suspects should include anyone who made the decision not to arrest George Zimmerman for the negligible homicide reported by Officer Ayala.

John Barnett, a local civil rights activist, put the rally together in Charlotte, NCand it was held at the Chapel Memorial Baptist Churchin the Thomasvillecommunity. One of the speakers at the rally was Joseph Guzman. Guzman was in the car with his friends Sean Bell and Trent Benefield in Queens, New York on November 25, 2006, when plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers fired 50 rounds into the car in which they were traveling. Joesph Guzman who was hit 16 times in the hail of NYPD bullets would miraculously survive. He now lives in Charlotte, NC. Mr. Guzman still suffers from his injuries but would make his way up to the podium to speak about Trayvon and while he did not speak for long, one sentence, just one remains cemented in my mind. Guzman said, “Black men, we have to do something”.

Just seven words, but words that ring true in the minds of many Black men across the country who have for the most part felt helpless to protect their communities, their families and their children from bullets often fired by police into the bodies of far too many unarmed Black men and boys and more recently, an unarmed Black woman gun downed while hanging out with friends by an off-duty Chicago cop. It seems even when off duty, cops make time to kill Black people. Her family compares the tragedy to the Trayvon Martin case.

“First you got Trayvon, now you got Rekia,” said Martinez Sutton, the brother of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd.

One group of Black men is doing something. While some people in the Black community do not agree with the New Black Panther Party’s call for the capture of George Zimmerman, it seems fewer and fewer are opposing the group’s call to action. One of its leaders, Mikhail Muhammad, along with other party members are protesting in Sanford, Florida and recently announced a bounty of 1 million dollars while calling for the mobilization of 5,000 Black men to find and detain George Zimmerman. It is feared that since Zimmerman has yet to be charged with the crime of murdering Trayvon Martin, he may flee the country to escape paying for his action the night of February 26, 2012. “If the government won’t do the job, we’ll do it,” said Mikhail Muhammad.

A grand jury is not scheduled to convene on the matter until April. Muhammad also called out President Obama who to this point has avoided speaking to racial issues in a country whose citizens have sent him thousands of death threats perhaps by people angry that a Black family occupies the White House. Muhammad said, “To President Obama, you got to do your job on this one buddy, we don’t need a beer, we don’t need to laugh and have a good time, our children are dying”. The beer comment was in reference to the only time President Obama has addressed the relationship between law enforcement and the Black community when a white cop arrested the President’s friend Skip Louis Gates. The President invited the two men to the White House for what was dubbed “the beer summit”.

Staff Writer; Scotty Reid

To join this brother Black Talk Radio Movement feel free to visit; BT Radio Network.

Also connect via Facebook; Black Talk Fan Page.

4 Comments

Harry says:

October 7, 2016 at 11:55 am

95% OF JEWS ARE PRO-ABORTION

THE CURIOUS CONSENSUS OF JEWS ON ABORTION
by Roger Price
February 1, 2013
That different Jews have disparate views is not news. What is news is when most Jews agree on a particular idea or approach. And so it is with the curious consensus of Jews on abortion.
In mid-2012, the Public Religion Research Institute (“PRRI”) published its findings from a 2012 survey of Jewish values (the “Jewish Values Survey”). The survey sought to measure the opinions of American Jews on a wide variety of political and economic issues, as well as with respect to certain religious beliefs and practices.

While Jews varied considerably in their views of a wide range of topics, on one – abortion – they were not only reasonably cohesive in their attitude, but strikingly different from other groups. Given the emphasis in the Jewish tradition on valuing life, on equating the preservation of one life with the preservation of a world and, conversely, the destruction of one life as the destruction of the world (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5), this result, on its face, seems as anomalous as it is clear.

First, let’s look at the PRRI data. Essentially regardless of denominational affiliation or demographics, American Jews think abortion should be legal in all (49%) or almost all (44%) cases. That is, fully 93% of all American Jews support legalized abortion in some fashion. Even political leanings, while influential, are not determinative. Among Jewish Democrats support is 95%, but 77% of Jewish Republicans also favor legalized abortion in all or most cases, far exceeding the rate of other groups studied.

The comparable numbers for other faith groups is quite different not only in their overall support or opposition to legalized abortion, but in the internal differences within each group. Jews are the only group surveyed in which a plurality support abortion in all cases. While about half of all Jews support abortion in all cases, in no other faith group does such support exceed 25% of the population. Moreover, in comparison to the 93% total of Jews who support legalized abortion in all or most cases, the only other group surveyed that showed clear majority support for legalized abortion was white mainline Protestants (59%). The comparable numbers for black Protestants and Catholics are 50% and 48%. Just one-third of white evangelicals support abortion in all or most situations.

Moreover, while the survey found that just 6% of Jews oppose legalized abortion in most cases and 1% did in all cases, the other groups surveyed were much more diverse in their views. For instance, while 19% of Catholics thought abortion should be illegal in all cases, 31% said only in most cases. Similarly, 21% of white evangelicals opposed legal abortion in all cases, but 44% only opposed it in most cases.

So, why are Jews so much different from others on this issue? Is there something in the Jewish tradition which leads inexorably to the overwhelming consensus most Jews have reached?

The Torah itself, indeed the entire Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), is silent on the topic of abortion. A passage in the Torah, however, does reflect a biblical view of a fetus. The passage concerns an injury to a pregnant woman which causes a miscarriage of her fetus. The Torah states that such conduct warrants financial compensation but nothing greater, specifically not the same penalty that would be imposed for murder. (See Exodus. 21:22-23.) In other words, this passage considers the fetus as not fully a nefesh, a person, and more akin to personal property.

When the ancient sages talked about abortion, they did so in the context of the knowledge of their day and with at least one eye on the Bible. Consequently, as a matter of principle, abortion was generally prohibited because, for example, it destroyed something created in God’s image (see Genesis. 1:26-27; 9:6), and that destruction was also contrary to the first commandment, to populate the world (see Genesis. 1:28).

At the same time, the sages’ understanding of fetal development was quite limited. Within the first forty days of pregnancy, they thought the mother to be carrying “mere fluid.” (See BT Yevamot 69b.) In later stages of pregnancy, they viewed the fetus as a part of the mother like a limb or appendage of the mother. (See, e.g., BT Gittin 23b.)

By the middle ages, essentially two positions existed. The great commentator Rashi (1040-1105 CE) accepted the principle that the fetus was not a person. The philosopher and physician Maimonides (1135-1204 CE), took a different view, though. When considering a threat to the mother’s life from a fetus, Rambam analogized the fetus to a rodef, or pursuer, for whom one was not to have pity. Abortion was justified, even though the fetus was of high value, because the fetus was characterized an active endangerment to the mother.
The position of contemporary American Jewish leaders is remarkably, although not entirely, uniform. In responsa, resolutions and other literature and statements, non-orthodox rabbis express a reverence for the sanctity of life, reaffirm the traditional Jewish belief that personhood, and the rights attendant to it, begin at birth, not conception, and support the “right” of a woman to choose an abortion, not on demand or for trivial reasons, but in cases where, for instance, continuation of a pregnancy might cause the mother severe physical or psychological harm.

The issue of abortion in the Orthodox community is hotly debated, indeed seen by some almost as a litmus test of one’s commitment to Modern Orthodoxy or, alternatively, to a pre-modern, culturally conservative orthodoxy. The latter tends to hold that abortion is permissible only where the danger to the mother’s life is clear and direct and generally forbidden otherwise. But there are exceptions. And one can even find rulings of respected Orthodox rabbis permitting abortions in cases of substantial emotional difficulty such as when the expectant mother becomes suicidal or when pregnancy is the result of adultery.
Consequently, while it is clear that for over two thousand years, Judaism has understood (1) personhood begins at birth and not conception and (2) that the life of a mother supersedes that of a fetus which threatens that mother, the notion reportedly expressed by roughly half of American Jews that abortion should be permissible in all cases is absolutely unwarranted by Jewish tradition and values, whether filtered through an Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist or Reform lens. For instance, and without limitation, abortion for purposes of gender selection, convenience or purely economic reasons, especially at any time in gestation, is not defensible Jewishly.

To be clear, the 2012 Jewish Values Survey did not describe the reason(s) for the hypothetical abortion being considered. Consequently, it is not even clear that a majority of American Jews really do approve of abortion in “most” cases, though they surely do in many cases. To the extent the view of American Jews on abortion is premised on the argument that abortions are not properly the subject of criminal laws, that view finds stronger support in the Jewish tradition.

At the same time, we have knowledge and tools and insights today that the ancient sages surely lacked. We know how a fertilized human egg develops from zygote to embryo to fetus and then, on birth, to a baby. We know, for instance, that by the fourth week of pregnancy, in an embryo barely one-twenty-fifth of an inch long, the embryo’s brain and spinal cord and its heart have begun to form, and arm and leg buds have appeared. Within two weeks, the heart starts to beat, blood to flow, and the embryo is the size of a lentil, maybe a quarter of an inch long. Brain activity commences. By the end of the eighth week, all essential organs and external body structures, including eyes and eyelids, have begun to form. The embryo is about an inch long, but still weighs less than one-eighth of an ounce.

The fetal stage begins after week eight. In an uneventful pregnancy, the fetus will grow to about three inches and almost an ounce at week twelve and to four to five inches and almost three ounces at week sixteen. A translucent skin begins to form and the fetus can make sucking motions. If you want to read detailed descriptions or see images of fetal development, they are readily available.

Moreover, we also know today, and really only recently, that while only one-fifth to one-third of babies born at 23 weeks of gestation survive, by week 24 fifty percent or more do. By week 26, over ninety percent of babies born prematurely can survive.

Science can and should inform the discussion in the Jewish community way more than it does. Among other things, science teaches that an embryo in its first forty days is more than “mere fluid.” No, the embryo is not at all viable at that stage, but to deny that it is alive and might, without interference, emerge someday is at best disingenuous.

Similarly, science teaches that a fetus throughout pregnancy is neither a “mere limb” of its mother nor a pursuer. Through sonograms in the first trimester of pregnancy we can literally see the shape and specific features of a fetus. We can see its head, monitor its heart beating. What we cannot do – or ought not do – is deny its essence. Assuming viability, an abortion not related to saving a mother’s life cannot fairly be analogized to ridding one’s self of personal property or amputating one’s limb. Nor, although a fetus may well be the direct or indirect cause of a mother’s life-threatening condition, is it accurate to say that the fetus is a “pursuer.” There is no evidence, and really never was in Rambam’s day either, that the fetus possessed the capacity to form an intention to kill its mother or, indeed, do any harm.
Yet, to acknowledge that life is present and that Jewish tradition is based on archaic concepts is not to conclude the inquiry. Science cannot, for example, extinguish the rape or incest that may have caused the pregnancy. In short, medical science is informative, but not dispositive of the questions to be considered with respect to abortion.

In fact, modern medical science perhaps raises more questions than it answers. For instance, just as it can provide information that make the fetus appear to look more like a baby, today medical science can also tell us if that potential child is afflicted with a serious defect or disease. Today the human genome has been mapped, and many of us can get tested for genetic anomalies at relatively nominal cost. What do we do with the information we learn? If we find that a female fetus has a mutation on either gene BRCA 1 on chromosome 17 or on BRCA 2 on chromosome 13, and therefore has a statistically significantly greater likelihood of developing breast cancer than a mutation free female, what then? What about a finding of a mutation of the ApoE gene on chromosome 19, which suggests an increased chance of Alzheimer’s after age sixty? What of the literally dozens of diseases that affect groups of Jews disproportionately, from ataxia-telangiectasia to Werner syndrome? We have only just begun to have a discussion about the need to have a discussion about these issues.
Dennis Prager sees the approach of American Jews to abortion as a matter of “moral disappointment,” but also as part of the substitution of “leftism” for Judaism. Prager’s frustration with American Jewry on abortion is understandable, but his argument is not persuasive. Whatever he may mean by “leftism,” it seems hard to sustain that assertion when the statistics indicate that 93% of the group is on one side of the issue. That is, if almost everyone is on the “left,” then there is no “left” anymore, or “right” for that matter. Invoking the left/right dichotomy is generally not very helpful or productive on political matters. On issues as knotty as abortion, it is next to useless.

And Prager’s suggestion that one can be pro-choice, i.e., anti-criminalization of abortion, and still recognize that “many abortions have no moral defense” is not on much firmer ground. He wants pro-choice Jews, “especially rabbis,” to say that they regard “most abortions” as “immoral.” But, to be polite, this approach lacks precision. How can “most abortions” be immoral if only “many abortions” have no moral defense? Exactly which cases is he referencing and what is the source of his data? What precisely does he mean by “moral” and “immoral” in this context? And why “especially” rabbis, as if (1) they have an impeccable track record on moral issues and (2) the rest of us are too obtuse to understand what’s at stake?

The difficult challenge here is not whether to be pro-choice or pro-life. Those are false and incomplete options, especially in Judaism which is neither really pro-choice nor pro-life as those terms are commonly used today. Moreover, while American Jews are not in sync with Jewish tradition, Jewish tradition is not in sync with modern medical science. Instead of knee jerk reactions, we need nuanced reflections. We all do, rabbis and laity, physicians and patients.

Fortunately, the biblical view on the status of the fetus is not one of those rules literally or figuratively written in stone. Nor is the tradition that developed subsequently. We remain free to struggle over how and where to draw the line we inevitably must draw when faced with situations about which we would rather not know much less contemplate and resolve. The true challenge, when considering matters of life and death, is to be cautious when others are certain, to be sensitive when others are strident, and to exercise humility when others exhibit hubris.
________________________________________
Note: Another version of this post was published previously at http://www.judaismandscience.com.

Reply
Harry says:

October 7, 2016 at 11:52 am

ABORTION: THE HIDDEN HOLOCAUST

IN GERMANY 1936
The German Supreme Court refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as legal “persons”. From that point on they had no rights or protection under the German Constitution. Shortly thereafter the Nazis began their “final Solution” – putting over 6,000,000 Jews to death.

JEWS AS “SUB-HUMAN”

“The sub-human, that biologically seemingly complete creation of nature with hands, feet and a kind of brain, with eyes and mouth, is nevertheless a completely different, dreadful creature. He is only a rough copy of a human being, with human-like facial traits but nonetheless morally and mentally lower than an animal… For all that bare a human face are not equal. (Pamphlet published by the Race Settlement Main Office, Germany, 1942)

JEWS AS “PARASITES”

“The Jew was always only a parasite in the body of other peoples.” (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 419.)

JEWS ARE A “MASS”

“It had nothing to do with humanity, it couldn’t have; it was a mass – a mass of rotting flesh.” Franz Stangl, Treblinka commandant explaining how he viewed his part in the destruction of almost 1,000,000 men, women and children. (In interview with author Gitta Serenny which later appeared in the book Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (1983).

KILLING JEWS IS SIMPLY”EVACUATION”

An official Nazi report of the fate of 15,000 Jewish women and children killed in the area of Serbia in mobile gas vans was discovered. Jews were locked up in the air-tight rear container while exhaust fumes from the truck’s engine were fed in to suffocate them. The report simply stated that they had been “evacuated to the East”, just one more in a long list of euphemisms for “killed”.

TORTURE IS “MEDICAL RESEARCH”

To left the concentration camp experiments Dr. August Hirt supplied this rational, “These condemned men will at least make themselves useful,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to execute them and send their bodies to the crematory oven without giving them an opportunity to contribute to the progress of society.”
(Aziz, Doctor of Death, 3, 305)

IN AMERICA1973
The U.S. Supreme Court in its Roe v. Wade decision ruled that unborn babies are not legal “persons”. From that point on they have had no rights or protection under our constitution. Since that decision, over 45,000,000 babies have been put to death by abortion in this country.

UNBORN BABIES ARE “SUB-HUMAN”

“Fetuses, especially those as old as five or six months, elicit our sympathy… because they look disconcertingly like people… But, this sympathy is misplaced… While [it] may, perhaps, possess some flickering of sensation, or some capacity to feel pain, this is equally true… of creatures like fish or insects… a proper respect for the right to life requires that it not be respected where it does not exist.” (Commentary on “Can The Fetus Be An Organ Farm?”)

UNBORN BABIES ARE “PARASITES”

“A woman would have the right to abortion just as she has a right to remove any parasitic growth from her body.” (Gloria Steinman, author and feminist leader, on CNN, Sept. 9, 1981.)

UNBORN BABIES ARE A “MASS OF TISSUE”

“What is aborted is a protoplasmic mass and not a real, live, grown up individual.” This statement was made by Drs. J.F. McDermott and W.F. Char in an effort to pacify nurses at a Hawaiian hospital when they became extremely upset by “dead fetuses and pieces of limbs, fingernails and hair” in the operating room.” (Sereny, Into that Darkness, p. 201.)

ABORTION IS SIMPLY £EVACUATION”

Between 1970 and 1977, California millionaire-abortionist Dr. Edward Allred was personally responsible for destroying 35,000 human lives before birth, including some 7,000 mid-trimester abortions by salt poisoning. When asked by a reporter what happens in an abortion, Dr. Allred said: “the contents are evacuated.” (Assignment Life, New Liberty Films)

TORTURE IS “MEDICAL RESEARCH”

In 1980, Dr. Martti Kekomaki justified conduction experiments involving slicing open the stomachs and cutting off the heads of live late term aborted babies, “An aborted baby is just garbage and that’s where it ends up,” he declared, “Why not make use of it for society?” (National Examiner, 8-19-80 pp. 20-21.)

YOU BE THE JUDGE

Not everything a government allows is moral, ethical, or right. Sixty years ago the Nazis tried to change reality by changing words. With new words, they were able to put 6,000,000 Jews to death. With new words, we in America are killing our unborn at nearly the same rate that Hitler killed Jews – only we have killed 45,000,000 in our brazen efforts to exterminate unwanted babies.
Judge for yourself. Are we killing babies? Or is this just some unwanted piece of garbage? Reality cannot be changed because we call abortion a “choice” or if we make the debate about “woman’s rights” instead of what it really is.

Reply
Harry says:

October 7, 2016 at 11:50 am

THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
author@johnwfountain.com Last Modified: May 6, 2012

Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict. Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I.

Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now picture all of them dead. The national tally of black males 14 and older murdered in America from 1976 through 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics: 214,661. The numbers tell only part of the story of this largely urban war, where the victims bear an uncanny resemblance to their killers. A war of brother against brother, filled with wanton and automatic gunfire, even in the light of day, on neighborhood streets, where little boys make mud pies, schoolgirls jump rope, where the innocent are caught in the crossfire, where the spirit of murder blows like the wind. It is, so far, a ceaseless war in which guns are often the weapon of choice, and the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at a black male is most often another black male’s.

The numbers alone are enough to make me cry — to wonder why — we as African Americans will march en masse over one slain by someone who is not black, and yet sit silent over the hundreds of thousands of us obliterated from this mortal world by someone black like us, like me. It is a numbing truth borne out by hard facts: From 1980 through 2008, 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks. Translation: For every Trayvon Martin killed by someone not black, nine other blacks were murdered by someone black.

In 2005, — blacks — accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population but 49 percent of all homicides. The numbers are staggering, the loss incomprehensible. Add to the tally of black males 14 and older slain across the country from 1976 to 2005, another 29,335 (slain from 2006 to 2010), and their national body count rises to 243,996, representing 82 percent of all black homicides for that 35-year period. What also becomes clear is this: We too often have raised killers. And this war is claiming our sons. But that’s still not the end of the story. Add to that number 51,892 black females ages 14 and older, plus five whose gender was not identifiable, and the total, not counting children, is 295,893 — more than the combined U.S. losses of World War I, the Vietnam, Korean and Mexican-American wars, the War of 1812 and the American Revolutionary War.

Is the blood of these sons and daughters somehow less American? Two hundred ninety-five thousand eight hundred ninety-three . . . Imagine the United Center, Wrigley Field, U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field nearly all filled simultaneously with black boys, girls, men and women. Now imagine that twice over. Now imagine them all dead. As far as I can see, that’s at least 295,893 reasons to cry. And it is cause enough for reticent churches, for communities, for lackadaisical leaders, for all people — no matter our race, color or creed — to find the collective will and the moral resolve to stamp out this human rights atrocity occurring right under our noses. Just imagine the human carnage and the toll to us all if we don’t.

I can’t. I won’t.
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

PUTTING THE NIGGER INTO THE DUMPSTER!

“Several years ago, when 17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los, Angeles, California, some 12-15,000 were observed to be black.” –Erma Clardy Craven (deceased) Social Worker and Civil Rights Leader Countdown to Extinction

BLACKS & ABORTION

APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF BLACK AMERICAN DEATHS SINCE 1973

AIDS =203,695

VIOLENT CRIMES=306,313

ACCIDENTS=370,723

CANCER=1, 638,350

HEART DISEASE=2, 266,789

ABORTION=30,000,000

All figures are based on cumulative statistics provided by the U.S. Center for Disease Control

30,000,000? That’s 30 Million Michael Browns

Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion.

On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States. This incidence of abortion has resulted in a tremendous loss of life. It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had about 16 million abortions.

Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member.” A highly significant 1993 Howard University study showed that African American women over age 50 were 4.7 times more likely to get breast cancer if they had had any abortions compared to women who had not had any abortions.

Reply
Marque Anthony says:

January 11, 2016 at 1:27 pm

Do something? What about teaching our children to walk away? What about knowing where our children are? What about personal and parental responsibility?

Reply