This jerk at an NFL game doesn't feel folks should protest civil injustice against black Americans by kneeling, but thinks the flag is there to keep his ass dry. Read the rest

United States' top toady spent over $200K of taxpayer money flying to a football game he never intended to watch. Just another demonstration that the Trump administration continues to actively try and divide the country over race.

I do not know much about football, but the two things I've come to understand will happen at a San Francisco 49ers game is that a) some players will take a knee and b) the San Francisco 49ers will lose. I've never seen a game. If you go, you expect to see players take a knee. Pence knows this.

What I know is that the players who kneel rather than participate in the National Anthem are doing so to protest the incredible injustice suffered by black Americans on a daily basis. The US method of policing appears focused on killing them out of hand. The President and Vice-President of the United States seem bent on turning this protest into something about disrespecting our nation's veterans and service people. These things are not connected. The National Anthem and US Flag symbolize us all, and our freedom to do things like protest police abuse. This entire line of reasoning is smoke and mirrors.

The cost of carting Mr. Pence and his entourage to Indianapolis, so the VP could not attend the game, is estimated by CNN at over $200k. Apparently Pence had the press wait in the bus, because he didn't intend to stay at the game very long and had already planned a fundraiser in California that taxpayers had to pay to fly them all back to. Read the rest

The Huffington Post’s Black Voices breaks down a disturbing new report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty, which found that adults believe black girls seem older and less innocent than white girls of the same age and that this disparity starts as early as five years old. To conduct the study, researchers surveyed 325 adults from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, many of whom had a high school diploma or higher. As HuffPost explains:

“Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood,” released on Tuesday by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, shows that society’s perception of black girls leads to their “adultification.” The report shows that adults believe that black girls seem older than white girls of the same age, and think that black girls need less nurturing, protection, support and comfort than white girls. It also found that people assume black girls are more independent, know more about adult topics and know more about sex than young white girls.

…

Rebecca Epstein, lead author and executive director for the center, and Jamilia J. Blake, co-author and an associate professor at Texas A&M University, broke down the relationship adultification has on the ways black girls are disciplined during a press conference call Tuesday.

“One reason this might be occurring is because black girls are being held to the same stereotypes we have of black women,” Blake said. “Black women have historically and currently been seen as being aggressive, loud, defiant and oversexualized. And I believe, along with many other researchers, that the stereotypes of black women are being mapped on to black girls.”

The report stated that “potential implications” for the findings could be research exploring how these perceptions of black girls affect how they are disciplined at school and beyond.

Alfred Okwera Olango, who was black, was fatally shot by police in El Cajon, California on Tuesday. Police in the San Diego suburb city say the 38 year old Ugandan immigrant pointed a vape pen or e-cigarette device at them, before police shot the man to death.

Officers were responding to a call of a man behaving erratically, and walking in traffic. Olango's friends and supporters say court records show that he suffered from mental illness, and may have been experiencing a seizure before his death. An El Cajon police officer is believed to have shot Olango within as little as one or two minutes after arriving at the scene. Read the rest

The world's greatest living tennis player wrote something on Facebook today about police killings of unarmed black Americans. Read the rest

This powerful statement from the New York Times editorial board captures the cries of many people on the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina tonight. Read the rest

The governor of North Carolina has declared a State of Emergency after violence erupted on the second night of protests in Charlotte, over the police killing of a black man. The governor called for support from the U.S. National Guard, and Highway Patrol officers.

The protest tonight escalated into chaos, and what was at first reported as a death of a man in the crowds. Read the rest

WARNING: The video in this post is graphic and documents a violent death.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, police have released video that shows a white police officer shooting and killing an unarmed black man. In the video, Terence Crutcher can be seen raising his hands above his head. Read the rest

A report out this week from Bloomberg says that since January, 2016, people in the city of Baltimore, Maryland have secretly and periodically been spied on by police using cameras in the sky. Authorities today effectively admitted that the report is accurate. Read the rest

“When ordering at Starbucks, people have changed their name to “Black Lives Matter” so that, when their order is up, the baristas have to yell out their new moniker,” reports Taryn Finley at Huffington Post Black Voices. Read the rest

WWNO New Orleans Public Radio's Ryan Kailath, above, a reporter assigned to cover protests in Baton Rouge, was arrested there (with several other journalists) and charged with obstructing a highway. One of the officers looked at Kailath (who is of south Indian ancestry but booked as black) and said: "I’m tired of y’all saying you’re journalists."

Thing is, I'm not black. I'm Indian, yet booked as a black male. Cop: "I'm tired of y'all saying you're journalists" https://t.co/Q54NLTBkuE

— Ryan Kailath (@ryankailath) July 11, 2016

Read the rest

The Republican National Convention kicks off this Sunday in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the highest-profile activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are not planning to attend, but that didn't stop FBI agents from contacting them by phone, and showing up at their homes to interrogate them and their grandmothers. Read the rest

Photographers covering the black human rights protests throughout the U.S. this weekend produced powerful and iconic images that are now spreading worldwide on social media, often without credit. Here are 10 photos from photograpers with the Reuters news agency over the past few days of demonstrations against the killing of people of color by police. Read the rest

Ieshia Evans was arrested for "obstructing traffic" by heavily armored Baton Rouge police officers on July 9. Jonathan Bachman's photograph of the event tells so many stories.

Revealed in the margins is the impossibility of 'traffic' when a formation of riot police fills the street. In the center, Evans stands like a pillar in front of officers we know are advancing upon her, but who appear to be falling away. Police uniforms so overbearingly militarized it's a wonder they can move at all.

They can remove their armor at the end of the day. She can't remove hers.

The BBC describes the image, all of two days old, as legendary.

In an atmosphere of heightened racial tension, and amid growing debate over the seeming militarisation of American police, one photo has stood out. ... The photograph was taken outside the Baton Rouge police headquarters, where most of Saturday's protest was focused. ... AP reported that the woman in the photograph was grabbed by officers after refusing to move off the public highway.

Heavy.com reports that it was her first protest and spent the night in jail.

On Facebook, she thanked people for the well wishes and wrote: “I just need you people to know. I appreciate the well wishes and love, but this is the work of God. I am a vessel! Glory to the most high! I’m glad I’m alive and safe. And that there were no casualties that I have witnessed first hand.”

Evans was arrested in the same protest as DeRay Mckesson, whom The New York Times calls “one of the best known voices for the Black Lives Matter movement.” The Times says Mckesson spent 16 hours in jail in Baton Rouge before he was released on Sunday.

The National Rifle Association has been silent after Wednesday’s police killing of Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man who had a conceal carry gun license, and whose legal right to that weapon played a key role in his death. Read the rest

Philando Castile, 32, was shot dead tonight after being pulled over by a Minneapolis cop for a busted tail light. His girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, captured the aftermath of the shooting via Facebook Live video. She says he was shot while reaching for his wallet to produce identification.

Her daughter, 4, is reported to have been seated in the back seat of the vehicle when the police officer shot into it, striking Castile in the arm. The victim died of his injuries within hours at Hennepin County Medical Center nearby. Read the rest

Virginia authorities handcuffed a middle school student and charged him with larceny for "stealing" a milk carton from the school cafeteria earlier this year. The child has also been suspended from school. Read the rest