WE ARE HEADED TOWARDS A NEO-FASCIST REGIME WITH THE NAFTA GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS!
A Small Business Complained About Crime in Chicago. Then the Feds Came After It.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that Townstone Financial violated civil rights law
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2017 began investigating Townstone Financial, a small mortgage company in Chicago, over possible violations of civil rights law.
The bureau bars lenders from making statements that "discourage" minorities from applying for loans. Townstone may have violated that regulation, the agency said, when its employees discussed crime in Chicago on a company-hosted radio show about the mortgage market, which also advertised Townstone's services.
The offending statements, plucked from five episodes recorded over a three-year period, included a reference to the South Side of Chicago as a "war zone," as well as a recommendation that home sellers "take down the Confederate flag." Merely mentioning the flag, the agency argued, could scare off black applicants.
Facing a possible lawsuit and potentially stiff penalties, Townstone in 2019 retained a consumer testing firm, Kleimann Communication Group, to see if the remarks did in fact alienate African Americans.
The results were reassuring: Not a single black Chicagoan interviewed by the firm found the radio segments offensive, according to a copy of the firm's report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Some even said they were more inclined to use Townstone for mortgages after hearing its employees' banter, which they found funny and relatable.
But in July 2020—two months after the death of George Floyd—the bureau sued Townstone anyway.
What followed was an unprecedented legal
battle between a small business with under 10
employees and a powerful federal agency that
claimed to know better than the consumers it
was allegedly protecting. Where working-class
black people heard harmless chit-chat, agency
officials heard disparaging dog whistles, which
their lawsuit said amounted to "redlining."
Such claims are usually levied at big banks with deep pockets. Townstone marked the first time the bureau, set up in 2010 by Elizabeth Warren, had brought a redlining complaint against a non-bank mortgage lender, which would struggle to afford the multimillion-dollar payouts typical of a settlement with the agency.
It felt like "David and Goliath," said Barry Sturner, Townstone's president. And it was happening in a country that ostensibly bars the government from targeting citizens for their speech.
"They twisted innocuous statements about crime into something nefarious and then tried to use it to ruin my reputation and destroy my business," Sturner said. "When a federal agency with an unlimited budget and army of lawyers comes after your business and smears you as a racist, you're forced to give in and take it or choose an uphill fight."
Three years later, Sturner is still fighting. Though a district court dismissed the lawsuit in February, the bureau is now appealing that decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which could catapult the case to the Supreme Court.
While the odds are stacked against the agency in both venues—the Seventh Circuit, like the High Court, is majority-conservative—the persistence illustrates how government bureaucrats, armed with the mandate of civil rights, can bully and bankrupt businesses for constitutionally protected speech.
Legal fees alone often reach hundreds of thousands of dollars in a case like Townstone's, said Jessica Thompson, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, who represented Sturner pro bono. Throw in the possibility of damages, and it's often safer to settle—a dynamic that allows the government to chill speech merely by opening an investigation and dangling the possibility of a lawsuit.
The result, Thompson said, is a system ripe for constitutional abuses.
"Content- or viewpoint-based restrictions on speech are antithetical to the First Amendment," she told the Free Beacon. "That means it's unconstitutional for agency bureaucrats to appoint themselves as speech police to censor discussions on public issues just because they might be offensive to some."
At least some of that censorship seems to have been due to the cultural distance between inner-city Chicago and Northwest Washington, D.C.
On a 2017 episode of Townstone's radio show, Sturner referred to a grocery store in the South Side of Chicago, Jewel-Osco, as "Jungle Jewel," adding that it was "a scary place" with patrons "from all over the world."
The agency cited the nickname as an example of language that "would discourage" minorities "from applying for credit." In fact, the jungle moniker has been widely used by black Chicagoans themselves, one of whom told Kleimann Communication Group that Sturner's comments were "reliable and helpful," according to the firm's report.
Other statements the agency cited were blunt but boilerplate. "You drive very fast through Markham," Sturner said on a 2014 broadcast, referring to a majority-black Chicago suburb that experiences more crime than 95 percent of American cities. "You don't look at anybody or lock on anybody's eyes." On a November 2017 broadcast, a Townstone employee likened the "rush" of skydiving to "walking through the South Side at 3 a.m."
The agency also chided the hosts for stating, in January 2014, that listeners should "take down the Confederate flag" before putting their homes on the market—guidance that reflects the official policy of the National Association of Realtors, which says displaying a Confederate flag may violate housing discrimination law.
"The Townstone Financial Show has regularly included statements that would discourage African-American prospective applicants from applying for mortgage loans," the lawsuit said. And its "home-selling advice has included recommendations regarding displays of the Confederate flag."
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declined to comment.
It is doubtful that anyone complained to the agency about these statements, said Ted Frank, a well-known conservative attorney who tackles regulatory overreach. Instead, agency officials likely noticed that Townstone made fewer loans in black neighborhoods than others and began poking around.
African Americans only accounted for just 1.4 percent of Townstone's loan applications between 2014 and 2017, according to the agency's complaint, and less than 1 percent of its loans were for properties in predominantly black neighborhoods, which comprise around 14 percent of Chicago's population.
Though such disparities are not illegal in and of themselves—lenders can consider race-blind factors, such as credit scores, that vary on average between racial groups—they can be evidence of discrimination and the catalyst for a lawsuit. The result, Frank said, is a "racial spoils system" in which quotas, while not officially required, are effectively mandatory.
"If you don't have proportional representation among loan recipients, agencies will look for disparate impact and go after you," Frank said. "It's problematic to see Kendism"—a reference to "antiracist" activist Ibram X. Kendi, who argues that all racial disparities reflect racism—"be the official policy of the U.S. government."
Something like that policy has now been written into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's operations manual. The bureau said last year that it would sue lenders for disparate impact "regardless of whether it is intentional," something Congress never authorized it to do.
It was the latest move by an agency that has long taken an expansive view of its mandate, at times interpreting laws to cover far more conduct than their plain text implies.
The Townstone litigation centers on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which makes it illegal to "discriminate against any applicant" for credit on the basis of race. The agency has interpreted that law to include "prospective applicants" in addition to actual ones—a potentially massive category. It relied on this inflated interpretation to go after Townstone, arguing that the lender could be guilty of discrimination even if it had not discriminated against anyone who had applied for credit.
The argument was so bold that Franklin U. Valderrama, the district court judge presiding over the case, didn't address the First Amendment issues in his opinion. He dismissed the lawsuit purely on separation of powers grounds, saying the bureau, an Executive Branch agency, had ignored the clear meaning of a congressionally enacted law. For now, it remains an open legal question whether lenders can speak candidly about crime.
The appeal to the Seventh Circuit comes as the bureau's entire funding structure is under review at the Supreme Court. The existential stakes of that case have stirred debate about how the agency should be reformed and what it is for.
At a congressional hearing in March, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) answered the second question by pointing to Townstone.
"I for one am glad the agency took action against discriminatory lending practices," Pressley told the House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, citing the company's "racist messages." "We need more, not less, of the CFBP."
Ryan Nevin contributed to this report.
Dozens Shot During Juneteenth Celebrations
Dozens of people were shot across the country during Juneteenth celebrations over the weekend.
Nearly two dozen people were shot, one fatally, in an Illinois parking lot Saturday just after midnight, and two others were injured in a shooting at an Asheville, N.C., festival the same evening. The shootings took place at Juneteenth holiday events marking the end of slavery.
Gunfire erupted in a Willowbrook, Ill., strip mall parking lot where a "large gathering of people was happening," according to Eric Swanson, the deputy chief of the sheriff’s office. Twenty-three people were shot and one person died from their injuries. No suspects were in custody as of Sunday.
The North Carolina shooting resulted in the arrest of a 16-year-old. Two juveniles were injured in the incident, which took place at a downtown Juneteenth festival.
The shootings are the latest example of rising crime in the country. Illinois suffers from violent crime rates higher than the national average and in 2022 saw its violent crime rate rise for the second consecutive year.
North Carolina's violent crime rate also increased last year and sits above the national average. But the state's Democrats are focused on addressing the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding.
Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is widely available. See also www.cashill.com.
Barack Obama Pushes ‘Digital Fingerprints’ to Fight ‘Misinformation’
Barack Obama, who was instrumental in fueling the media’s “misinformation” narrative before he left office, has a new buzzword — “digital fingerprints.”
The former Democrat president wants the origin of digital information such as photos and videos to be clearly traced, to fight the spread of deepfakes.
“That technology’s here now,” said Obama in a discussion with his former advisor David Axelrod on the latter’s CNN podcast. “So, most immediately we’re going to have all the problems we had with misinformation before, [but] this next election cycle will be worse.”
President Barack Obama signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act alongside Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd (center), Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Barney Frank (second right), Vice President Joe Biden (far left), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (second left) on July 21, 2010. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
“”And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true.”
The idea of fighting “misinformation” by tracing the origin of digital info is not new. A coalition of tech and media companies led by Microsoft is already trying to make this technology the industry standard, as is a coalition with similar goals led by Adobe.
Before he left office, President Obama helped spark the media panic over “fake news” — later rebranded as “misinformation” — that was adopted by the media, NGOs, and tech companies as a pretext to suppress conservative content.
Hours before election day 2016, the Democrat president was giving interviews to the media about the dangers of “fake news,” and in the weeks following the election of Donald Trump, used public appearances to talk about the problem of “misinformation.”
Prior to this, the topic was not discussed widely in the media. Afterwards, it was everywhere. And by 2020, it was a key part of the media and tech industry’s efforts to interfere in the election.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election
NAME ONE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED CITY NOT IN MELTDOWN DUE TO BLACK CRIME! JUST ONE!!!
Neely also had a long rap sheet, a fact conveniently overlooked by most media sympathizers. According to the Daily News, Neelly has been arrested 42 times in the last 10 years, most recently in November 2021 for slugging a 67-year-old female stranger in the face as she exited a subway station. He had a history of mental illness.”
Wanna Be a Good Samaritan? Fuhgeddaboudit…
This past May 1 was a typical day on the New York City subways. Commuters and tourists were transiting beneath the chaos of overhead Manhattan, only to witness New York’s subterranean version of Dante’s Inferno.
Specifically, a homeless man, now euphemistically called an “urban camper” or “displaced person,” was harassing fellow subway passengers. The Guardian went further in their descriptors, calling Neely “a talented dancer” who was “remembered as kind and loving” and even “had a fan club.”
Neely also had a long rap sheet, a fact conveniently overlooked by most media sympathizers. According to the Daily News, Neelly has been arrested 42 times in the last 10 years, most recently in November 2021 for slugging a 67-year-old female stranger in the face as she exited a subway station. He had a history of mental illness.”
Enter ex-Marine Daniel Penny, a fellow traveler on one of New York’s subterranean mental institutions on wheels, noting how Neely was harassing and threatening other passengers. With the assistance of several other like-minded passengers, Penny restrained Neely until he stopped resisting.
Penny then put Neely into a recovery position (with passengers complimenting his actions), hardly the moves of someone intent on killing Neely. "He’s a hero," said another passenger, who has lived in New York City more than 50 years.
One man’s hero is another man’s criminal, specifically to a left-wing Manhattan District Attorney. Soros-funded DA Alvin Bragg, taking a break from chasing Donald Trump over supposed dressing room hanky-panky at Bergdorf Goodman, convinced a grand jury to indict the 24-year-old White Marine veteran for second-degree manslaughter.
Penny’s real crime was that he was acting as a Good Samaritan, trying to do the right thing, protecting his fellow subway riders from harassment and potential injury. His other crime was his skin color.
YouTube screengrab
That last bit is not hyperbole. Noted in an NBC News article on the indictment was this paragraph, “Penny, who is white, said he acted to protect himself and other passengers when he confronted Neely, who was Black.”
If skin color wasn’t relevant, why did NBC mention it? It wasn’t an issue for Penny. “I didn’t see a Black man threatening passengers. I saw a man threatening passengers,” Penny said.
But to the corporate media and left-wing politicians, everything is about race. NBC went further playing the race card, “The incident evoked memories of the 1984 shooting of four Black teenagers on a New York City subway by Bernhard Goetz, a white man who feared he was being mugged.”
Not surprisingly, NBC neglected to mention another NYC race hustle, the Tawana Brawley fake-rape case, where she tag teamed with racial provocateur Al Sharpton to fabricate a story about a Black teenager being raped and kidnapped by a group of white men.
If a crazed white guy on the NYC subway shouted to passengers, “I’m gonna’ kill you”, as Neely did and a Black Marine veteran took him down, restraining him to protect fellow passengers, he would be lauded as a hero, making the rounds of cable news shows and “The View.” He would certainly not be indicted and facing years in prison, as Daniel Penny is.
“A shirtless man assaulted a 75-year-old woman as she left a Macy’s store in Manhattan at Sixth Avenue and West 34th Street over the weekend, according to NYPD.” Will DA Bragg pursue this recent Black assailant with any of the vigor directed toward Daniel Penny? Don’t hold your breath.
The concept of the Good Samaritan goes back to Biblical times, specifically the book of Luke, chapter 10, and the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.”
What’s the message for fellow New Yorkers, or residents of any large American city under full Democrat control? Is it wise to borrow from Spike Lee’s movie, Do the Right Thing?
Or is the now smarter course of action to say, “Fuhgeddaboutdit”? Those wanting to lend a helping hand had better beware, especially if they are White. If anything goes wrong, they will be castigated, prosecuted, and possibly incarcerated for their noble efforts.
Remembering Bob Dylan’s great song “Hurricane” about racial injustice toward black boxer Rubin Carter, the skin colors and discrimination in the song have done a 180-degree flip since the mid-1960s in Paterson, New Jersey.
Words from the song are appropriate for any Good Samaritan wanabees on the NYC or other big-city transit systems, as it was for Daniel Penny trying to do the right thing, “He had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down.” With a crucial follow up admonition, “Don't forget that you are White.”
It is not only on subways but also in stores that Good Samaritans are persona non grata. In a metro Denver, supermarket King Soopers fired five employees for stopping a shoplifter. A food worker union in Washington told employees to not stop shoplifters. Uber-woke Lululemon fired store employees for trying to stop shoplifters with the CEO standing behind this decision.
Good Samaritans are chumps. Why not make cash registers and paying for merchandise optional? Employees should just watch TikTok videos on their phones and respond only to direct questions from customers. They can leave the store as a free-for-all for thieves. Doing the right thing only leads to big trouble, such as loss of job, or in Daniel Penny’s case, loss of freedom.
Forget Jesus’s Bible teachings. If the Parable of the Good Samaritan now becomes a criminal act, expect wanton crime and violence in Democrat cities to exponentially increase as those wanting to do the right thing follow the lead of the parable’s priest and Levite, looking down and walking away.
Want to be a good Samaritan and do the right thing? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer.
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Biden Admin Gave University Over $2M For ‘Monitoring Microaggressions’
The National Institutes of Health has, since September 2021, been funding a $2.2 million program at the University of Miami examining how "microaggressions" affect "Black cisgender queer women" who have HIV.
According to a grant listing from the Department of Health and Human Services, the program, known as Monitoring Microaggressions and Adversities to Generate Interventions for Change, seeks to discover how "comments, jokes, and behaviors that are demeaning to a marginalized group" affect health outcomes.
Queer black women with HIV "live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities and within social structures that take a daily toll," the grant description states. However, the impact of microaggressions on this group has "largely been ignored."
The program is supervised by Sannisha Dale, an associate professor of psychology, who chairs the department’s Diversity and Equity Committee.
Dale's first contact with the project was in 2019, according to the University’s website. Through text messages and regular visits, the grant team monitored 151 women to understand how microaggressions affected their daily levels of distress and consumption of medication.
"[Microagressions] can be someone saying, ‘She doesn’t look like she’s positive,’ as if HIV has a face," Dale said. "Or ‘I’m HIV negative, I’m clean,’ as if someone else is dirty."
The Biden administration has shown a willingness to shell out cash for LGBT initiatives. Biden’s most recent budget proposal included a $400 million State Department program to help LGBTQ Africans access the internet. In January, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a grant to translate a gay dictionary into Spanish.
Illegal Immigration Drives 110% Increase in NYC Homeless Shelter Population
New York City’s homeless shelter system is “buckling” as waves of illegal aliens migrate to the sanctuary city, with local taxpayers left paying the price, a Washington Post report details.
Since the spring of last year, close to 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City under Mayor Eric Adams’ watch. Adams has not asked the Joe Biden administration to end the inflow, but instead, has urged the White House to expedite work permits for new arrivals.
Watch: Democrat Mayor Eric Adams Says Sanctuary NYC Didn’t “Ask for” Influx of Migrants
NYC Mayor's Office / YouTubeAccording to figures published in the Washington Post, the city’s shelter system has grown more than 110 percent since Adams took office — leaving New Yorkers footing the bill:
The influx of migrants in New York has pushed the city’s total shelter population to 95,000, up from 45,000 when Adams took office in January 2022. [Emphasis added]
“We have reached a point where the system is buckling,” Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services, told reporters at a news conference in late May. [Emphasis added]
At roughly $380 per person daily, New York officials say the cost of caring for the migrants will reach $4.3 billion over the next 12 months. In a statement this week, Adams thanked Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) for helping to secure $104 million in federal funding for the city, while also calling for more resources. [Emphasis added]
Late last week, Adams announced a plan to more quickly allow border crossers and illegal aliens in the city’s shelter system to secure rental assistance money funded by local taxpayers. The goal, Adams said, is to get new arrivals out of shelters and into neighborhoods.
Desperate to find space for a steady stream of illegal immigration, Adams recently opened a warehouse near the John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport as a migrant shelter. Lawmakers have warned that the plan poses “a security threat to one of America’s largest transportation hubs.”
Watch: Migrants REFUSE to Leave NYC Hotel, Demand Taxpayers Give Them “Permanent Homes”
@datainput via StoryfulAdams has also suggested that he may open Gracie Mansion, where the city’s mayor typically resides, to newly-arrived border crossers and illegal aliens, while stating that New Yorkers should consider opening their homes to migrants as well.
The mayor’s most expansive program involves funneling millions of dollars in local taxpayer money to the hotel industry by paying hotels to house migrants in rooms free of charge to them.
As a result of the cost of the migrant hotels program, Adams has said the city may have to adopt public services like meals for senior citizens and library hours for New Yorkers.
Watch: Sanctuary NYC Dem Mayor Complains Asylum Seekers Will “Impact Every Area of Life”
Mayor Eric Adams / FacebookJohn Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Soros and Garland: Because They Really Believe
This week we got two useful pieces of information on the politics front.
First, George Soros is handing over his fortune to his younger son Alex. Alex will use control of the fortune to "broaden his father’s famously woke interests to include issues like voting and abortion rights as well as 'gender equality.'”
In a way, this is comforting. Son Alex seems to be an out-of-the-box wokie believer, that prays at all the usual woke shrines. His father, George, was a more complex character.
Second, the Department of Justice issued a report on the Minneapolis police department and found that it is racist, uses "excessive force, including unjustified deadly force, unlawfully discriminates against blacks and Native Americans," and so on. Attorney General Merrick Garland said it was all "deeply disturbing."
To you and I, all this is laughable. We see the results of Soros prosecutors putting violent criminals back on the streets; we see soaring crime rates in the black community and we sneer at the Justice Department's accusation of systemic racism in the Minneapolis police force.
But I go back to Sun Tzu and his famous quote:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Therefore I say: never mind that Alex Soros is a wokey twerp, or that the Biden Administration's World War on systemic racism is a lie.
The fact is that our liberal friends really believe! They believe that we are all going to die of climate change; That systemic racism is a monstrous injustice on Black people.
Let us understand them. Let us understand ourselves. And then go out into the public square ready for a hundred battles.
Our liberal friends really believe that their analysis of the human world as the oppressors and the oppressed is a true and faithful understanding of reality. And they regard the failure of Blacks to thrive since the civil-rights era as proof of systemic racism and the power of white supremacists. They must believe this 
because otherwise they would have to understand that their programs and policies have Made Things Worse. What human ever does that?
At Powerline Scott Johnson goes into the whys and wherefores of how the Minneapolis police force is just dealing with the fact that
Every study ever conducted (including victim surveys) has shown that blacks are arrested in the same proportion as they offend.
But,
The [DoJ] report finds that blacks are treated differently than similarly situated whites, controlling for the reason, for the stop/use of force, and for the “similar behavior” of the offender.
We conservatives look at the studies and confirm that police use of force against Blacks is about right, considering that Blacks commit a lot more crimes. Liberals look at the studies and see disproportionate use of police force. Sophisticated people say that we all tend to interpret reality as "confirming our priors."
I tell you what would change things: if one fine day Blacks stopped voting Democrat, like the White working class did in 1980 when the "Reagan Democrats" voted for the "amiable dunce" Ronald Reagan.
Maybe one of the reasons that the White working class has switched to the GOP is encapsulated in this quote from longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer in "The Negro Revolution" in The Temper of Our Time published in 1966.
The simple fact is that the people I have lived and worked with all my life… have not the least feeling of guilt toward the Negro. The majority of us started to work for a living in our teens, and we have been poor all our lives… My kind of people does not feel that the world owes us anything, or that we owe anybody -- white, black, or yellow -- a damn thing.
But politics. There is no politics without an enemy, and in the politics of Allyship, we Allies fight with the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressor, because Change.
But politics is also about friends. Thus, the immortal quote of Óscar Benavides, president of Peru from 1933-39:
For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
Especially former President Trump.
For our liberal friends the friend /enemy distinction is extended into the moral, of good vs. evil, where fighting systemic racism is what All Good People Do, because Justice. So our liberal friends have a perfect moral-political system that explains everything, until the day after it collapses in ruins.
So we know liberals. Whatabout us? Sun Tzu says we should know ourselves.
We are like the Hobbits that just want to live peacefully and wive and thrive in Hobbiton. But, unfortunately, we are called, from time to time, to battle with the Saurons of the world, and wrest from them the Ring of Power before they destroy the world.
And that is what we are called to do with our liberal friends.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Image: Pixabay
Is Juneteenth becoming black-on-black violence day?
Juneteenth, a holiday that most Americans had never even heard of until Congress made it a federal holiday in 2021 to celebrate the end of slavery, is starting to acquire some very unpleasant associations.
According to CNN:
At least 22 people were injured and one person was killed by gunfire overnight in Illinois, in a peaceful Juneteenth celebration turned deadly, police say.
An unknown number of suspects fired multiple rounds from multiple weapons into the large crowd of people gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, according to a statement from the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office.
Several other victims were injured in the chaos as people attempted to flee the area, and victims are being treated at hospitals in the area, the sheriff’s office said.
The shooting took place around 12:30 a.m. in a parking lot in Willowbrook, about 21 miles west of Chicago.
...and this, from WSPA in North Carolina:
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WSPA) – A juvenile was charged in connection to a shooting that injured two people at a Juneteenth festival on Saturday.
According to the Asheville Police Department, officers responded to reports of shots fired at a downtown festival in the area of Court Plaza around 8:15 p.m.
Upon arrival, officers found two juveniles suffering from gunshot wounds.
Both were taken to a nearby hospital for their injuries. One has been released, and the other remains in critical but stable condition.
...and this from San Diego, according to local NBC7:
One person is dead and another was injured after a shooting broke out at a Liberty Station park during a Juneteenth celebration Saturday evening, according to San Diego police. The shooter has not yet been found, police said.
The shooting was reported at 6:45 p.m. at NTC Park at Cushing Road and Womble Road, where personnel from San Diego Police Department and San Diego Fire Department were seen giving CPR to one victim.
..and this from St. Louis, according to ABC News, which doesn't mention Juneteenth but suggests it in quoted comments about family gatherings near the bottom of the story:
An overnight shooting at a party in a downtown St. Louis office building injured at least 10 people and killed one person, St. Louis police chief Robert Tracy said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.
Eight out of the 11 victims, including the deceased, were minors, according to St. Louis police. Five of the victims were male, while six were female.
The victims are between 15 and 19 years old, according to police.
The previous two years have seen the same sort of Juneteenth violence, with black gunmen shooting black people attending festivities, and mass lootings not uncommon. If you didn't know what Juneteenth was, you'd think it was a good day to board up the shops and avoid public gatherings. How did it morph into something better described as black-on-black violence day? Who told the shooters that today's a fine day to get out there and shoot other black people?
Obviously, there are some peaceful celebrations -- this one described by the Santa Fe New Mexican describes what appears to be a lovely summer celebration. I've always been a supporter of the idea of Juneteenth, because it involves all of us -- those who were freed after enslavement, but also, those among our ancestors (black and white) who died to free the enslaved people after our country's bloodiest war.
But there are too many of these nasty events to avert one's eyes and pretend nothing else is happening.
Part of the blame has to be a failure to understand the event as it evolved historically and then disappeared, only to be revived in wake of the George Floyd riots.
It began as spontaneously, as family celebrations by black people in Texas, who got news of the end of slavery on June 19, 1865, three months after the Civil War had ended.
According to the Santa Fe New Mexican:
Juneteenth, observed June 19, honors the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay in Texas and announced the freedom of more than 250,000 enslaved Black people — 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. While celebrations of the event had been held in Texas and in many other communities throughout the nation for more than 150 years, it wasn’t recognized as a federal holiday until 2021. That was the year the first celebration was held in Santa Fe.
It was happy, joyful and family-oriented. What could be more wonderful than celebrating freedom after bondage? What could be more natural and normal and spontaneous? And why couldn't everyone who isn't black celebrate this, too?
Today it sounds angry and downright dangerous, based on these violent manifestations.
Thomas Lifson yesterday wrote about some of the problems here.
To start, it's been distorted in meaning by radical intellectuals into a grievance group event, with some arguing that it shouldn't be joyful at all, it should be a time to nurse boiling rage and grievances at being "robbed" as one put it, rather than to savor the freedom from bondage.
This sort of ignorance keeps real knowledge of the holiday and its wholesome origins from reaching the ears of young people who might benefit from what it was and what it meant.
A look at the profiles of the shooters and those engaged in the violence on this holiday suggests that they are largely young black men without intact families.
That's sad. Since slavery's end, the black family has endured both slavery and the Jim Crow horrors with families intact. The damage to black families came in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" programs, which were cynically crafted at least in part with the aim of creating a permanent black voting base for the Democrats, except that Johnson used far more repulsive language. Those programs effectively replaced fathers with the state, doing great harm to the black family that had otherwise managed to survive oppression. Shelby Steele writes an important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing that terrible dynamic that serves as a petri dish for violence.
Another problem seems to be social media and the greedy entertainment complex -- checked out any lyrics lately from the most popular black rappers on YouTube? Play those over and over to impressionable young people without any other input and see what happens.
Now we see the results of this grievance-group obsession and the impulse towards violence to solve any personal or public problem out there, and it's ruining a great holiday that should be celebrated as enthusiastically as every other holiday.
We shouldn't be reading about mass shooting events every time Juneteenth rolls around. We should be looking at why these things are happening and whether it's really Juneteenth as its original creators had once celebrated, or now just another repeat of the George Floyd riots as a sort of baleful commemoration day anyone who doesn't like violence should want to stay away from.
This holiday shouldn't bring to mind mass violence every time the word comes up. Maybe some real leadership from the black community will finally end the grievance-group nursings, and restore the holiday's original celebratory origins.
Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License
At Least 55 Shot During Father’s Day Weekend in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Chicago
At least 55 people were shot, seven of them fatally, during the Father’s Day weekend across Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (D) Chicago.
Breitbart News reported 27 people were shot Friday into Sunday morning alone in Chicago, and three of those shooting victims succumbed to their wounds.
On Monday morning, ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times noted the total number of shooting victims for the weekend had reached 55, with four additional shooting fatalities.
One of the additional shooting fatalities was a 26-year-old man who was shot in the back Friday around 6:30 p.m. “in the 3900-block of West Gladys Avenue.”
WATCH:Hawkins: Chicago’s New Mayor Means “Same Song, Different Verse” on Gun Policy
ahawkinsHe was taken to hospital, where he died.
Another shooting fatality was that of a 48-year-old man who was found at 1:30 a.m. Sunday “in the 6600-block of South Evans Avenue.” He had a gunshot wound to the head.
Sunday evening, five people were shot during a shooting “in the Roseland neighborhood near West 99th Street and South Princeton Avenue.”
Two men–a 33-year-old and a 37-year-old–died as a result of their wounds.
Police investigate the scene where approximately 16 people were shot, one fatally, in a parking lot outside BCD Liquors in Willowbrook, Illinois in the early hours of June 18, 2023. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Breitbart News observed at least 21 people were shot, one of them fatally, during a Juneteenth celebration in Willowbrook, Illinois, early Sunday morning. Willowbrook is 21 miles from Chicago.
The Sun-Times pointed out that 262 people were killed in Chicago January 1, 2023, through June 18, 2023.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
At Least 21 Shot at Juneteenth Celebration in Gun-Controlled Illinois
At least 21 people were shot, one of them fatally, at a Juneteenth celebration in gun-controlled Illinois on Sunday morning around 12:30 a.m.
CNN reported the shooting occurred “in a parking lot in Willowbrook, about 21 miles west of Chicago.”
FOX 32 pointed out two of the wounded remain in critical condition.
FOX News noted DuPage County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Eric Swanson indicated that deputies patrolling the area near the parking lot heard the gunshots and responded.
Swanson said, “The motive behind this incident is unclear and this is still an active investigation.”
Police tape blocks an area at the scene of an overnight mass shooting at a strip mall in Willowbrook, Ill., Sunday, June 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Matt Marton)
No information has been released on the number of shooters involved in the incident.
Illinois has a red flag law, an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, a 72-hour waiting period, and a gun owner licensing requirement via the Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card system, among other controls.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
Mass shootings and violence leave dead and injured across the US this weekend
CHICAGO (AP) — Mass shootings and violence killed and wounded people across the United States this weekend, including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area alone. Four people were found shot to death in a small Idaho town, a Pennsylvania state trooper was killed in an ambush, and bullets struck 11 teenagers, killing one, at a party in Missouri.
The shootings happened in cities and rural areas alike, following a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Officers responded to mass shootings in Washington state, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southern California and Baltimore.
“There’s no question there’s been a spike in violence,” said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.”
Researchers disagree over the cause. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.
Only the Idaho killings fit the definition of a mass killing in which four or more people die, not including the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the weekend cases matches the widely accepted definition for mass shootings.
Here's a look at the shootings this weekend:
CHICAGO
Five people were shot, two fatally on the city's South Side on Sunday evening when someone opened fire from a car that pulled up to a gathering, according to police.
Another four men were shot, one fatally, during an altercation in a garage in the West Side neighborhood of Austin around 3 a.m. Sunday, police said. Other shootings with fewer victims added to the tally — city data shows 29 gun violence victims Friday evening through Saturday.
Meanwhile in the suburbs, at least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.
The DuPage County sheriff’s office described a “peaceful gathering” that suddenly turned violent as multiple people fired shots into the crowd in Willowbrook, Illinois, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.
A motive wasn’t immediately known. Sheriff’s spokesman Robert Carroll said authorities were interviewing “persons of interest,” the Daily Herald reported.
“We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped,” a witness, Markeshia Avery, told WLS-TV.
The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.
“Gathering for a holiday gathering should be a joyful occasion, not a time where gunfire erupts and families are forced to run for safety,” Pritzker said.
KELLOGG, IDAHO
Police in Idaho arrested a suspect in a shooting that killed four people on Sunday at a home behind a church.
Responding officers found four people, all dead from gunshot wounds, at a residence in Kellogg, according to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office and news reports. Idaho State Police said a 31-year-old man was detained, KXLY-TV reported.
A neighbor at the scene told the TV station that there had been an ongoing dispute between neighbors at the location. It happened behind the Mountain View Congregational Church, the Shoshone News-Press reported.
ST. LOUIS
An early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded 11 other teenagers, the city’s police commissioner said.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.
Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.
The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old and had injuries including multiple gunshot wounds. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.
Shell casings from AR-style rifles and other firearms were scattered on the ground.
WASHINGTON STATE
Two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.
The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.
A public alert advised people of an active shooter in the area and advised them to “run, hide or fight."
The festival carried on until early Sunday morning, Grant County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kyle Foreman said. Organizers then posted a tweet saying Sunday’s concert was canceled.
CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA
One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.
The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.
Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.
The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens, who went up in a helicopter to coordinate the search for the 38-year-old suspect.
“What I witnessed ... was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed,” Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that “would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them.”
A motive was not immediately known.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
A shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.
Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.
The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. They were taken to hospitals and two were listed in critical condition, the statement said.
Authorities said they found another 16-year-old boy with a gunshot wound when they responded to a call about a vehicle that crashed into a wall nearby.
BALTIMORE
Six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.
Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.
Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26, Baltimore Police Department spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said.
SAN FRANCISCO
Six people were injured after a “car-to-car” shooting in the streets of San Francisco on Sunday evening, police said.
Two victims sustained gunshot wounds, one with life-threatening injuries, in the moving shootout beginning shortly before 7 p.m., San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at a news conference Sunday.
Suspects in two cars, a black SUV and a white sedan, “drove very recklessly and chased each other while engaged in gunfire” near the northern waterfront, Scott said. The area includes Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.
Three victims were injured by glass shards caused by “errant gunfire,” Scott said, with none of the injuries considered to be life-threatening.
Two girls, ages 10 and 16, were struck by one of the two vehicles while walking their bicycles across the street. The younger girl was injured and transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries while the older girl was not injured, Scott said.
“It appears that this was an isolated incident and these individuals were targeting each other. We don’t believe this was random at all," he said.
PHILADELPHIA
A 4-year-old boy was among five victims of a shooting in south Philadelphia Saturday night.
Police responded to the block shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday and found a 58-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to the legs, a 54-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to her wrist and leg, and the boy, who was brought to Presbyterian Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
A 30-year-old man also arrived at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the wrist and a 40-year-old man was brought in with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The last victim was listed in critical condition; all others were said to be in stable condition.
Police said the shooter was an unidentified person wearing dark clothing.
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Brown contributed from Billings, Mont. Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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