If you’re new to my blog, you may wonder who that young firebrand challenging the political status quo is. His name is Bernie Sanders and he is running for President. Some of you may be discovering who Bernie Sanders is for the very first time, and this is okay. Bernie Sanders is one of those best kept secrets, a politician who has both a brain and a heart. Compassionate to a fault, Sanders is one of the few politicians who is neither beholden to corporate interests nor concerned about catering to corporate economic dismantling of the dwindling “middle class” in America. I came to know about Bernie Sanders a number of years ago through a podcast/YouTube broadcast called The Thom Hartmann show, where Bernie Sanders meets with Thom on Fridays to discuss the issues of the nation. Bernie takes calls, answers questions and challenges issues that need challenging, in plain language, no BS, no filler.
A junior senator of Vermont, Sanders considered himself an Independent, working neither of the major parties and sometimes finding fault with both. He’s been a senator since 2007 and has been involved in politics since 1979. I’m not going to spend a lot of time going through Bernie Sander’s political history, that’s what Wikipedia is for. What I will say is this: if you have read my blog, particularly the entries on politics, political funding, educational funding, prison advocacy and other ideas which promote equality and opportunity in this nation, you will see Bernie Sanders and I agree on almost EVERY level.
If I were Frankenstein seeking to create the perfect politician to run for office on the ideals I believe this nation should be supporting, I would have created Bernie Sanders (I might have made him a bit younger) but I suspect, should Bernie win, the energy and vitality he has brought to his job as Senator Sanders will only increase as President Sanders. I plan to transcribe this speech when I don’t have as many deadlines pending. Listen to it while you are doing something else if you’re really busy, but listen to it. He is talking about the things few, if any politicians are saying today, things that need saying and changing. If he should win the Democratic nomination, I would vote for him without hesitation (and if he could convince Elizabeth Warren to run as vice president) it would be the most fantastic nomination ticket in the history of the United States, or at least since Senator Barack Obama…
Published on Apr 11, 2015
Watch Bernie and be inspired! Vermont’s Independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks on topics from climate change to income inequality in a Town Hall Meeting in Austin, Texas, on March 31st, 2015.
The Town Hall Meeting discussion items includes: How to . . . 1) Overturn Citizens United and Get Big Money Out of Politics; 2) Deal with Obscene Wealth and Income Inequality. 3) Combat Climate Change. 4) Create Democracy NOT Oligarchy. Learn more at: http://BernieSanders.com Videography/Editing by Jeff Zavala, Grace Alfar and Ruwan Perera An Austin Indymedia Production http://austin.indymedia.org
Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’
Valerie Strauss April 6, 2013
Increasingly teachers are speaking out against school reforms that they believe are demeaning their profession, and some are simply quitting because they have had enough.
Here is one resignation letter from a veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti, a social studies teacher at Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y.:
Mr. Casey Barduhn, Superintendent Westhill Central School District 400 Walberta Park Road Syracuse, New York 13219
Dear Mr. Barduhn and Board of Education Members:
It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30, under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some point as a substitute teacher.
As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet.
I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a lesson, a lecture or a presentation.
With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised.
STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill.
A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our own administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian.
This situation has been exacerbated by other actions of the administration, in either refusing to call open forum meetings to discuss these pressing issues, or by so constraining the time limits of such meetings that little more than a conveying of information could take place. This lack of leadership at every level has only served to produce confusion, a loss of confidence and a dramatic and rapid decaying of morale. The repercussions of these ill-conceived policies will be telling and shall resound to the detriment of education for years to come. The analogy that this process is like building the airplane while we are flying would strike terror in the heart of anyone should it be applied to an actual airplane flight, a medical procedure, or even a home repair. Why should it be acceptable in our careers and in the education of our children?
My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom.
Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case.
After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists. I feel as though I have played some game halfway through its fourth quarter, a timeout has been called, my teammates’ hands have all been tied, the goal posts moved, all previously scored points and honors expunged and all of the rules altered.
For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean.
Sincerely and with regret,
Gerald J. Conti Social Studies Department Leader Cc: Doreen Bronchetti, Lee Roscoe My little Zu.
This is not from me. This was eloquently written by a true expert in their field whom everyone should listen to, educator, Gerald J. Conti. I picked it up from an article in the Washington Post by Valerie Strauss. Read it and learn…there will be a test after.
In February, we are told it is Black History Month. We are allowed to celebrate our accomplishments and display them with pride before a nation that is only too happy to appropriate from us whatever it wants and give us nothing in return.
As it has always been. When Black Apologists say the past is the past and we should get over it, I hang my head in shame for their ignorance. It is clear that such people are given a pulpit to speak because it promotes the ideals so necessary for the system of disenfranchisement we live under to continue.
We can accept that stupid people will say stupid things and move on, or we can stand up and fight for what we know to be right.
Nothing that happened in America should be forgotten. The near-genocide of the Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the decimation of new immigrants and ultimately the financial enslavement of an entire planet.
This is why we must never forget the indignities of the past. They are a persistent illusion perpetuated for profit. A canker that disfigures and stigmatizes the efforts of People of Color in America, acting as if our efforts were never meant to do any more than serve those who perceived themselves to be our betters.
Though they were not able to maintain their control over slavery, they have allowed it to be redesigned, re-purposed and hidden in plain sight in the modern era. They call it Jim Crow, Segregation, Separate but Equal, Economic Redlining, the School-to-Prison Pipeline, the Prison-Industrial Complex, the War on Drugs, and their latest addition, Sanctioned Police Brutality and Murder of People of Color in the Line of Duty (now with added vacation time!).
Today the chains are softer, internalized, and often self-perpetuated. Housewives of Atlanta, Self-Hating Rap Music, Celebrity and Sports obsessions, and a good ole America standby, Religion and all of its various self-loathing aphorisms.
The game has changed, but the message is still the same. You can’t compete. We won’t let you. We don’t say no. We just don’t say yes, either.
If you are able to be successful, many times you must do so by casting down your culture and claiming your identity from the one we allow you to wear. Marry White, move away from your people, don’t past down your wealth, disavow your past.
Wear your chains, know your place. I have no use for Black History Month. You cannot give me what I have already earned.
I am the dream of America. I am its awful reality. I cannot be broken and I will not relent. You cannot pretend I don’t exist. Change the media, warp the minds, create your lies.
The truth is far simpler than you would care to believe. For all of your power, all of your cleverness, the only thing you have proven to be superior in is keeping all of humanity in chains to whims better forgotten.
Promoting selfishness as a virtue is foolish. Promoting division among people to maintain your control is wasteful. How many lives have been thrown away furthering an agenda that benefits only a privileged few?
Billions, I’d imagine.
In a few decades, you reign of terror will be over. You will huddle in your walled enclaves and believe in your superiority while you count your worthless billions and hope no one scales the wall to make you pay for your generations of criminal activity.
In the meantime remember this: I will not be stopped. Not now. Not ever. Keep Black History Month for yourselves.
I claim the YEAR, all three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days of it to reminding you WE ARE STILL HERE.
Stronger than you can imagine. More fiercely determined to make our way.
And to be honest, we’re just not that into you. Never were.
Thaddeus Howze is a California-based technologist and author who has worked with computer technology since the 1980’s doing graphic design, computer science, programming, network administration and IT leadership.
His non-fiction work has appeared in numerous magazines: Black Enterprise, the Good Men Project, Examiner.com, and Astronaut.com. He maintains a diverse collection of non-fiction at his blog, A Matter of Scale. He is a contributor at The Enemy, a nonfiction literary publication out of Los Angeles.
He is a contributor to the Scifi.Stackexchange.com with over a thousand articles in a three year period. He is now an author and contributor at Scifiideas.com. His science fiction and fantasy has appeared in blogs such as Medium.com, the Magill Review, ScifiIdeas.com, and the Au Courant Press Journal. He has a wide collection of his work on his website, Hub City Blues. His recently published works can be found here. He also maintains a wide collection of his writing and editing work on Medium.com.
His speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (2012), and Possibilities (2012).
He has written two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013). In 2015 he will be releasing Visiting Hours and A Millennium of Madness, two collections of short stories.
If you have enjoyed this publication or any of the other writing he does, consider becoming a Patron. For what you spend on a cup of coffee once per month, you can assist him in creating new stories, new graphics, new articles and new novels. Creating the new takes a little support: http://patreon.com/ebonstorm.
The most powerful invention created by humanity right after fire, agriculture and the thrown rock (though not necessarily in that order).
The written word allows us to share information across time and space. To store ideas frozen for generations for new thinkers to review, revise, and even renew. Writing connects us with our past and with the future. From the Rosetta Stone to the Gutenberg Bible, writing consistently proved its value to Humanity again and again, allowing ideas, even forbidden ones, social and cultural taboos, their chance at immortality.
If they can get by the censors. For as long as we’ve been writing, there has been someone to say: Oh my god! You can’t write that! What if <insert sheltered group here> were to see this?
Censoring knowledge, hiding the written word is not new. Books can go from being literature to being banned in less than a generation. The Steinbeck classic, The Grapes of Wrath incited rage and banning soon after its release. Today, it is taught as a classic work of early American literature. Want to see a southern sixth grade teacher foam at the mouth? Mention teaching Huckleberry Finn and watch the foam fly. America’s on again, off again love of what is arguably an American classic, Huckleberry Finn, one of Mark Twain’s most famous works, falls into and out of grace like clockwork. The list of authors who have been banned might astound you. I happened to stumble upon this excellent infographic and wanted to share it with anyone who can appreciate just how good you have to be, to be considered BAD for post-literate America.
Post-literacy is the concept of a society where almost everyone is taught to read and no one feels compelled to actually engage in reading. An unfortunate part of the recent anti-intellectualism sweeping the nation. If even one book on this list makes you curious, READ IT. I have read most of them simply because I had a more diverse education than is taught in school today. But all of these books are still available and if someone deemed it worthy of banning, you should read it just because they don’t want you to.
And because TV is lowering your IQ just by being on when you’re in the same room with it.
Dress as you would for Sunday morning communion.
Black women appear least aggressive with heads bowed,
while kneeling.
Black rage does not photograph well.
2.
Quote I Corinthians, every grandmother’s go to book.
Call on Jesus.
Even as your stomach knots, restricts to a rawness that numbs,
convince them that this is His will, and that His will shall be done.
3.
Plead for the peace your child was unworthy of while alive.
Pause deliberately.
Denounce. Distance yourself from the riotous fires
that have done more to honor him than this law has.
4.
Quote an out of context syllogism,
preferably“I Have a Dream.”
After all, you are grieving
and no one has studied it anyway.
5.
Tell them they must vote.
This will not happen if they simply vote
…more.
often.
They can move Forward with their Obamas and Holders
on their shoulders. Tell them he cannot really speak for you.
He is not the President of Black America.
6.
Make it plain you’ve raised all of your children to be color blind.
in church.
You are Christians in spite of your dead son’s
Kindergarten suspension.
7.
Call for faith in a system that has failed you for 400 hundred years.
Tell them justice must run the same course
as the too many bullets that splintered your child’s temple,
opened up his abdomen like some twisted Cracker Jack prize.
8.
Mention the good police.
Not all bad. Not all vigilante.
Not all trigger happy. Not all racist.
Yet all more alive and well than your child.
9.
Be respectable. Remind them of Black on Black crime.
Tell them the police kill them because they kill themselves.
Tell them that they are responsible for the smashed skulls
of their own daughters and sons
with their sagging pants, poverty,
and murderous rhymes that malign collective progress.
10.
Repeat:
“This is not about race.”
“This is not about race.”
“This is not about race.”
Repeat as you watch yet another mother fold her tears in her already bulging purse.
Watch while she strains to push her child back inside the safety of her womb.
Stare as she leans over a son who looks oddly like your own:
Dead and stiff and indicted and tried more than his murderer.
11.
Repeat:
“This is not about race.”
“This is not about race.”
“This is not about race.”
Remind them of Black on Black crime.
Of Black on Black Crime.
Of Black on Black crime.
“This is not about race.”
12.
Convince her it is necessary
that she believes it too.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
~~ Tolstoy
It’s unavoidable. It is your destiny…
Emperor Palpatine’s words to Luke Skywalker resonate with everyone who heard them because from the time we are young children, we are told we can change the world. It is something everyone grows up considering to be part of their personal manifesto.
Television adds to this mental framework showing us how it’s possible to acquire instant fame (just add water and social media), motivational gurus tell us we need to put it out into the universe and the universe will change to accommodate our desires (Pay for my secret methods, he says, it will help you get rich, he says.) Usually the only person getting rich is the guru. We are lead to believe changing the world is a simply want it to be different.
I suspect the problem with changing the world starts with this simple quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
Cassius:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Shakespeare hoped to convince his viewers that it’s not fate that determines our future. It’s our personal volition to take charge of our lives. This is where we come in to contact with an inherent instability in the system. Everyone wants to change the world to suit their perspective of it. Politicians believe they can lie the world into a shape they can control. Warlords believe they can kill their way to the top. Media stars dream of entertaining their way into power. Each believes their talent, their genius is just what the world needs.
If we’re so smart, why are things so screwed up?
Humanity is blessed and cursed with the idea that it is the most clever creature to have ever lived on Earth. We believe we have created technologies and systems so advanced that in a few years, they may begin thinking for themselves.
Unfortunately, while we postulate on the ideas of singularity and transcendence, quantum computers and the beginnings of the Universe, we wage war all over the planet.
We allow people who could be fed, to starve; we dump pollution everywhere in a consumer-driven orgy to create products out of flora and fauna alike. We turn living things into dead things for money and profit.
Makes you question how smart we think we are, doesn’t it?
While the ability to turn natural things into something that can be sold may be laudable and financially lucrative, it has cost us something, a thing so vital and yet so ephemeral, we don’t even recognize that we have lost it.
We have lost our connection to each other.
More importantly, we have lost our connection to ourselves.
Our cooperative drive to make the lives of other people better has been subsumed by our urge to read about Celebrity X or follow Basement Cat and Ceiling Cat memes.
We have turned the trivial into the important and the important has been hidden so the wealthy can acquire more wealth they can never spend, put greater distance between each other in their private enclaves on the hill.
This is an untenable future.
One where we watch the world burn, onscreen, in real-time, in the comfort of our homes, while forests are clear-cut, while children are enslaved, while coral reefs starve and great elephants are cut down for their tusks to make art and penile-enhancement poultices.
It’s not too late to make a difference.
By choosing to be connected to live people, to be invested in their lives and have their lives affect mine. By defying what has been said to be the natural order of things. By resisting the urge to hide, to cower in fears created by others, telling me how to live. I have helped people without profit being the primary goal.
I have changed the world, incrementally, one mind at a time. As a teacher and mentor, my goal is to change people touching one heart at a time. Sharing that transformation with others who see things need to change.
Most importantly, I am making the changes in me, I want to see in the world. I am aware of the constant need for personal change. You cannot make the world better if you choose to support the ideas that are corrupting it in the first place.
I have changed the world by teaching. By learning. My students are aware of the insidious nature of corporate powers who seek to demean them, imprison their minds, their hearts and their creativity in a never-ending cycle of consumption.
My students question authority. Even mine. They ask questions. They challenge all pretenses of authority, requiring it to validate itself through reason, through discourse, through interaction.
The modern world does its level best to prevent our youth from knowing anything; in the United States we price education beyond the reach of most. Those forces now realize if they can keep you clicking your smartphone in a self-celebratory masturbation, they can steal the future from beneath your feet.
The world cannot be changed by any single individual. That way lies madness. The only single individual you can change is you. Being the best you, that you can be will lend itself toward changing the world by proximity.
Change the World by Changing You
Release yourself from the mental prison so crafty created for you. Stop following worthless celebrities who produce nothing; your obsession with them absorbs your most precious of resources. The one thing you have a fixed and finite amount of and can never recover no matter how rich you become…
Your time.
Use your time, wisely. Read works that transform how you think. Experience life, share what you have with others, get out and see the world. Make your relationship to the world one you are excited about.
See the world as something worth having, worth saving. You can only save something you value.
Connect to people, not just on the internet, but in person. See them. Feel them. Know them. Become one with their dreams; value their hopes and ambitions the same way you value YOURS.
You see, in this lies the saving of the world.
If we spent less time finding differences, creating emotional disconnects, promoting fear and loathing, separation for exploitation sake, demonization of our unique natures, we would learn a truth those in power don’t ever want us to know:
We are more alike than different. That our collective fates lie in the hands of each other, more than anyone who believes they have power over us.
In truth, we are not trying to save the world. If science is to be believed, the world has existed for four billion years. It has had six extinction events where nearly all life on Earth was extinguished. Put in a different way, 90% of all Life that has ever walked the Earth has died.
And yet it is still here, teeming with billions of lifeforms engaging in a delicate dance of living and dying in harmony.
It is likely, that even if we make the Earth an inhospitable ball of burning of burning toxic waste, killing all of humanity, the world will find an equilibrium and return to being as fecund as it always has.
We are not trying to save the world.
We are trying to save ourselves – from extinction.
Be protean, be open to changing yourself. Be willing to adapt how you see people you don’t know. Eat a meal you do not know, with a person you didn’t know yesterday. Such ripples are what the future is made of.
So often the complaint goes something like this: “Changing myself won’t make a difference and I sure as hell don’t have any faith in man to change on its on in my lifetime or the next. Evil exist and controls this world. People are sheep, lead by the elite programmed, manipulated, divided, structured in such a way to serve them. You are Borg, you are assimilated, resistance is futile. Just my humble opinion.”
No one asked you to change your mind, you are free to stay exactly the same as you are. But Einstein had a point: “You cannot change the world with the mind that created it.” The future comes from thinking differently, creatively. “Imagination is greater than Intelligence.”
People are often sheep, but not all of them: Fighting back takes will, independence, strength of spirit and character. Things most people don’t realize they even possess until something forces it out of them.
Evil IS prevalent but not OMNIPRESENT: The fact you can make your statement and not find a neo-Gestapo police force breaking down your door for making it means it is still a world where choices can be had.
People ARE dividedbut still find time for what they think is important: Judging from the quiet protests in the streets, some people are UNITING for a better world.
We are not Borg. If we were, we would all be doing the same thing, in the same ways, with no need for things like social media to share our perspectives. We would already be one large Hive Mind working toward a common goal of absorbing other intelligences. NO. We are not Borg, yet.
Resistance is never futile. I can never be assimilated because I will not allow it. Assimilation is about choice. You can choose to stand there and say, it is impossible to change the world.
You cannot hope to change the world until you are first master of your individual self. World changing comes when you are aware of your individual power to make change. Then change happens around you because you are centered and aware of the ability you have to make a difference.
Don’t change the world. Change yourself and make all the difference.
To quote Ashleigh Brilliant: “If you can’t change your mind, how do you know you still have one?”
Watch the video, the entire eight minutes of it. I could have grabbed the last 30 seconds of Tamir’s life but there is something important you will be missing if you don’t watch the whole thing. Something innocent and child-like, something young Black children rarely get to be anymore.
Watch the video and see if you can see past your partisan bullshit and see just a child, being a child and dying because someone couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about him, as a person. For all you folks who will say this child is dead because they followed policy. We need new damn policies.
I watched the entire seven minute and forty second version of this film. For more than six minutes the boy is just walking around, minding his own business, doing nothing in particular.
Know that while he is doing nothing, someone is reporting him as threatening people in the park with a gun.
When the child sits down on the bench in the park he is probably just resting but little did he know he would be dead in two minutes.
The police do not arrive on the scene and park a discrete distance away to ASSESS the situation. They do not arrive at a distance to DETERMINE THE NATURE OF THE THREAT.
They instead drive up within three feet of their subject. They do not ANNOUNCE their presence. And they surely couldn’t have because they are leaving their vehicle within three seconds of their arrival.
Two seconds after the door to the police car is open, the officer is shooting and the child is dead. Only then do they call in shots fired.
To sum this up:
The police could have arrived at a distance and announced their intention, while still within their vehicle (as they do when they pull me over to the side of the road, with their internal loud-speaking system).
“This is the police. Put your weapon on the ground and step back. Put your hands behind (or above) your head.”
Once the boy complies (and he most assuredly would since HE KNEW he was armed with a toy gun) they would have been able to approach and determine the nature of the threat called in and the boy playing in the park were NOT the same thing.
And Tamir Rice would still be alive. This is negligence, pure and simple. Neither of these policemen should still be allowed to be remain custodians of the law. Their blatant disregard for young Black men is clear in their approach and use of unnecessary force.
Rest assured, there will be another media shuffle where they vilify this child or his family, call him dangerous and his death was a boon to society. And these two officers will get two weeks of paid vacation. At least at home, they won’t kill anyone else.
Tamir Rice’s 14-year-old sister was handcuffed and left to watch her 12-year-old brother dying in the snow after he was shot by a Cleveland police officer on Nov. 22, 2014, as seen in a new video released by the city late Wednesday. The teen, who was tackled and detained as she tried to approach her wounded brother, witnessed the ordeal unfold from the back of a police cruiser less than 10 feet from his body.
The disturbing new details, which match the account given by Rice’s mother, Samaria, at a press conference in December, are taken from an extended surveillance video clip obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group. City officials had initially released a short portion of the video and refused to release the full version to the public.
Tamir Rice was confronted by officers while waving an air pistol in an empty Cleveland park. Officer Timothy Loehmann, seen in the video exiting from the passenger side door, opens fire less than two seconds after the stepping out of the vehicle.
Here is the full 30-minute clip. Rice’s sister approaches the scene from the left-hand side at the 1:42 mark:
“This has to be the cruelest thing I’ve ever seen,” Akron, Ohio-based attorney Walter Madison told Cleveland.com after watching the extended video.
No help: Neither the first-year officer who shot Rice, nor his partner Frank Garmback, appear to offer the wounded boy medical aid or comfort. Garmback is the one seen confronting Rice’s sister and pushing her to the ground. The first person to administer first aid is an FBI agent who arrived on the scene by chance.
Paramedics arrive eight minutes after the first shot is fired, and Rice is stretchered into an ambulance about five minutes later.
Unfit for duty: Hours before they received extended surveillance tape Wednesday, the Northeast Ohio Media Group also reported that Loehmann failed an exam to become a deputy with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department in September 2013. According to internal documents, his application was denied after he scored a 46% on a written cognitive test. Seventy percent is considered a passing grade.
Most of my friends have passed away, and of those remaining, they suffer from health problems in some way
I am myself totally deaf and partially blind. I live by myself
I am writing this at 6am in the morning
Today, if the weather is fine
I will go for a walk
I will chat with friends
I will do my shopping
I will do my laundry
I will feed the cat
I will tidy up what needs to be done
I will put out the garbage
I will do what most people do who are not really old and know that death is imminent
Because there is no feeling of being old
There is a feeling that you can’t do what you used to do
There is a feeling that you might lose your independence, or if you already have, a feeling that you should try and do as much as you can by yourself
There is a feeling that you should spend as much time as possible with those you like to be with
There is a feeling that time is precious. Of course it always was, but one becomes more aware of it
There is a feeling that many things one does will be done for the last time
There are passing thoughts about those who respect you because you are old, and about those that dismiss you because you are old
There is the aspect that life is changing fast with all the new advances that inundate us daily
There is the aspect of life that nothing changes
Mothers still smile at their babies
Children are still enthralled with their first pet
Learning to ride a bike is still as much fun as starting a company
Blowing out your birthday candles is still as satisfying at eighty as it was at eight
It is not that death is imminent that is important, but that when the curtain comes down, the audience leaves with a sense of satisfaction
As someone once said
The World is a stage
You played your part for what it was worth
You take your bow
and leave
I am surprised at the number of responses this answer has recieved, and in particular from young people concerned about getting old
I am 84. My generation is probably the last generation to get old in the usual sense of ‘getting old’
My predicted life expectancy is 81.5 years so I am already living on borrowed time
But 1 in 4 people will live past 100, and the first person to live to 150 is alive now. It may be me http://www.dailymail.co.uk/scien…
But living for a long while is not the same as getting old
The normal image for an old person is:
Loneliness
Loss of faculties
Becoming dependent on others
Being out of touch with the world
Constant illness
Confusion
Being house bound
Not being able to contribute to society
Unmotivated
Losing close friends
Living in the past
Finding young people impatient
Not being catered for in the world generally
But perhaps the worst thing is being viewed as old
I used to practice judo, but I don’t now. That’s because I haven’t practised for many years. But age is not the problem. Here is someone teaching it well past 100 http://luzijian.com/
I used to play guitar in a band. I don’t now. But I could if I wanted to. There are plenty of professional musicians of my age and older who do. Les Paul was still playing at 90
I used to go scuba diving. I don’t now. But I could. My friend Reg Vallintine was teaching into his 80’s and is still active in the field https://www.google.co.uk/search?…
It is not age that prevents one doing these things, providing ones health is OK, but ones priorities with the time available
I am a writer. I have published two books this year, and have others with publishers. I have nine websites and blog, and write daily on Quora
I have a friend who at 78 met his old sweetheart of sixty years ago at college. She was a great grandmother, now a widow. He had never married. They fell in love again and married. He says he has never been happier
I have a friend of 81 who out of loneliness took up dancing a year ago. He is now training to be a dance teacher and courting a dance teacher half his age
I have a lady friend of 76 who dates guys on the internet and then dumps them as frequently as any twenty year old
Most of my friends of my generation are fully active.
They always were fifty or sixty years ago when I first knew them. It was because of their positive attitude to life that we became friends in the first place
Why you will never grow old
With the internet etc. you will never be lonely in the traditional sense;
With the many advances in medical appliances and related fields you will be able to care for yourself well into old age, or will allow others to care for you much easier than now;
With home surveillance and the internet of things, you will be largely self-dependent, secure, and in touch with those you need be;
As a matter of course you will become more aware of your needs to eat well, be active, and generally take care of yourself
Your work will be less stressful than the past, and you will work shorter hours. There will be more activities for you to participate in and more social events for you to join
In all, though you will getold you will not beold.
You will die when your time comes, but you will not be forgotten because your life will be digitally immortalised;
Be thankful that your great, great, great, great, grandchildren will be able to know you, and that you live on in their genes.
The Republican party is counting on poor voter turnout to win back the Senate on November 4th, 2014. Do your part to help the GOP and STAY HOME.
The Midterm elections are often thought of as a different thing from the Presidential elections. I am sure that is not an accident. The midterms are where we vote for Congress, members of the House and the Senate and a bunch of local offices most people could give a damn about.
But that idea needs to change. We need to understand the President is only one branch of the government. The Congress is another. And if they are not in sync, they cannot work together, then you get what we have been having for the last six years, the worst Do-Nothing Congress in the History of the United States. No, really, look it up. I’ll wait. Back? Good. Now I want you to enjoy the video up there because it IS funny. In the way watching a parkour acrobat not quite make the jump from one building to another and he plummets…er…my wife says that’s not funny.
Anyway, watch the video. Laugh and then get your asses down to the voting booth and get some of these crazy people who don’t believe Congress should do ANYTHING out of office. Please.
About Rogue Kite
Rogue Kite is a collaboration between Michelle Boley and Taylor Gill. Michelle Boley is a comedy writer and director with a passion for social satire, parody, and general silliness. Taylor Gill is a cinematographer, editor, and Young Turk.
If you’re an adult, you hate paying for it. Car insurance can double the cost of your car payments, if you own a home, you need to have a variety of coverage plans depending on where you live and for some things you just can’t afford it no matter what you do. See: Earthquake insurance in California…
Well, now there’s a new insurance we wish existed but until it does, you can laugh at these poor guys who wish they had… Racism Insurance!
If you’re new to my blog, you may wonder who that young firebrand challenging the political status quo is. His name is Bernie Sanders and he is running for President. Some of you may be discovering who Bernie Sanders is for the very first time, and this is okay. Bernie Sanders is one of those best kept secrets, a politician who has both a brain and a heart. Compassionate to a fault, Sanders is one of the few politicians who is neither beholden to corporate interests nor concerned about catering to corporate economic dismantling of the dwindling “middle class” in America. I came to know about Bernie Sanders a number of years ago through a podcast/YouTube broadcast called The Thom Hartmann show, where Bernie Sanders meets with Thom on Fridays to discuss the issues of the nation. Bernie takes calls, answers questions and challenges issues that need challenging, in plain language, no BS, no filler.
A Matter of Scale 