A stuffed monkey hanging from an overhead utility line in an apartment complex near Bowman Field has sparked racial concerns and reports to a Louisville Metro Council member.
The incident was reported to Councilman Brandon Coan, D-8th District, who initially called it a “disgusting display of hatred, bigotry and racism.”
But later, after visiting the apartment complex and speaking with at least three residents, Coan said it’s possible the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
One neighbor told him it had been hung a few years ago to discourage birds along with other dolls that were no longer there. Others said it had been there for months or for just a few days, he said.
The scene appeared to play on the history in the United States of African Americans being lynched and portraying them as monkeys.
“It is hard to see it as anything other than an expression of hate,” said Louisville resident Brian Barnes, who lives in the area. He reported the incident to Coan. “This is shocking and unwelcome in a normally tranquil and friendly place. It’s very upsetting to many of us in the neighborhood.”
Coan said he was pleased that a work crew removed the toy at his request. But he questioned whether the incident might be an example of how on edge the community is in light of renewed racial tensions and the speed at which social media moves.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Friday banned public demonstrations at a statue to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond — for the time being.
McAuliffe signed an executive order saying it was necessary after the white nationalist rally over a Lee statue in Charlottesville turned deadly over the weekend.
“In the aftermath of this tragedy, several groups have requested permits to hold similar-styled events at the Lee Monument in Richmond. State and local officials need to get ahead of this problem, so that we have the proper legal protections in place to allow for peaceful demonstrations, but without putting citizens and property at risk,” McAuliffe said.
The crowd of anti-hate protestors is slowing dispersing after rumors that the KKK has backed off their planned rally.
Amid rumors of a white supremacist rally that was supposed to begin at noon in Durham, the county closed down government buildings and crowds flooded into to the street to counter-protest.
Twitter and other social media sites lit up with calls to action against the KKK rally.
Live streams from local media and social media show a crowd of about 200 people carrying “No hate” signs and chanting “No KKK. No Fascists USA.”
No rally materialized, and the sheriff’s office said roads will be reopened soon, and a street fair will go on as planned.
Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrew released a statement thanking the protesters for being non-violent:
“We want to thank the Durham community for a peaceful demonstration. Throughout the day, we have received numerous reports of potential counter protests in the Durham community. The Sheriff’s Office has been gathering and reviewing information related to potential counter protests throughout the week. We have taken steps to ensure public safety. At this time, law enforcement continues to monitor the area and has not confirmed reports of activity. We are urging residents to avoid joining the crowd in the downtown area as law enforcement continues to monitor the situation. Residents are encouraged to rely on verified information.”
On Monday evening, protesters tore down a statue of a Confederate soldier from its pedestal in front of a county building. The crowd gathered in response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
Steve Bannon is on his way out at the White House – but the fiery, anti-establishment conservative who helped Donald Trump win the presidency says he getting ready to wage his populist campaign from the outside.
“If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” Bannon told Bloomberg on Friday.
The outgoing White House chief strategist spent just over a year formally working for the president. On Friday, his job with Trump came to an end.
“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. “We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”
Breitbart announced Friday that Bannon returned as executive chairman of the populist news site he once ran that rails against the political establishment in both parties. He chaired its evening editorial meeting Friday, the site said.
“The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,” said Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow. “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”
The Trump Justice Department is ending an Obama-era program that had attempted to cut off credit to shady businesses but came under fire from Republicans for unfairly targeting gun dealers and other legitimate operations.
Just days after top House Republicans had pressed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to shutter Operation Choke Point, the department confirmed in a response letter that the program is dead.
“All of the Department’s bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in the Aug. 16-dated letter, calling it a “misguided initiative” from the prior administration.
Liberal website HuffPost sparked backlash on Friday after plastering their front page with the Jewish word “goy” in reference to newly fired White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“Goy” is a Jewish word used to refer to non-Jews. Several White House aides including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (who are also the president’s son-in-law and daughter, respectively), National Economic Council director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are Jewish. Bannon is not Jewish.
HuffPost editor in chief Lydia Green claimed the banner “was intended to be a mashup tribute to Yiddish and Beyoncé.” He added: “Any other interpretation was completely unintended.”
New York Post editor Seth Mandel, who is Jewish, interpreted the banner as: “HuffPo decides to reinforce the conspiracy theory that the Joos are running things and are picking off their enemies one by one.”
Twitter has rejected a conservative organization’s request to promote tweets highlighting the harmful effects of illegal immigration, apparently because using the word “illegal” to refer to immigrants violates the company’s hate speech rules.
Organizations can pay Twitter to re-up previously posted tweets in the form of promoted content. The promoted tweets function as ads, allowing businesses or advocacy groups to push their content out to a wider group of Twitter users.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, D.C.-based immigration research group, recently submitted three tweets for promotion:
Yvette Felarca, the Berkeley area school teacher and militant left-wing protester responsible for organizing the riot at the University of California, Berkeley in February 2017, claims that violence against the far-right is “not a crime.”
Felarca, who belongs to “By Any Means Necessary,” a far-left group, is currently facing assault charges after she was caught on video assaulting a white supremacist during a July 2016 rally in Sacramento, California.
The school teacher and her compatriots engaged in violent clashes against members of the far-right Traditional Worker’s Party, which had a permit to march in the city. The violence between the two groups resulted in a number of assaults and multiple stabbings. In July 2017, police charged Felarca with “assault by means of force likely to inflict great bodily injury, participating in a riot, and inciting a riot.”
Democrats introduced a resolution Friday to censure President Donald Trump over his comments made in response to the violent Charlottesville rally.
The resolution was introduced by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Buzzfeed reported. It has already garnered the support of some 75 Democrats.
The resolution follows last Saturday’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., which led to the death of one counter-protester. Heather Heyer was struck and killed by a car driven, police allege, by one of the rally’s attendants. During the aftermath, Trump attracted outrage from those on the left and right when he claimed “both sides” were to blame for the violence. Critics said the president failed to adequately condemn the white supremacists who organized the rally.
Despite negative news coverage and criticism from his own party, a poll released Friday shows nearly half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump on the causes of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
President Trump has maintained that “both sides” were responsible for violence surrounding a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. He also called out “troublemakers” among the counter protesters that came “with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.”
Trump’s statements outraged former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who write Friday that Trump must apologize for his response.
However, a SurveyMonkey poll conducted Thursday found a combined 49 percent of American adults believe that both groups of protesters were “most responsible for the violence in Charlottesville.”
Several people stopped by a statue of Father Junipero Serra in a park across from Mission San Fernando on Thursday after a photo made the rounds on social media appearing to show the statue had been vandalized.
A picture circulating Facebook showed the statue spray-painted red and the word “murder” written on Serra in white.
While city officials would not confirm the authenticity of the photo or the clean-up, CBS2 reporter Crystal Cruz saw red paint on Serra’s arm and a swastika on the statue of the child standing next to him.
“Everyone’s entitled to their own public opinions and thoughts,” said Cristian Mendoza. “But once it gets to this level I don’t think it’s right.”
“I came because some friends posted a photo of the defaced statue and I wanted to see if it was in fact correct,” Paul Minette said.
The photo comes at a time when many are calling for the removal of controversial statues. Some argue Serra is not the saint the Catholic Church paints him out to be. Instead, they claim he used California Indians and destroyed part of their culture.
“I think the statue should come down from this park, and then put some appreciation to the Native people that live here,” Cristian Ramirez said.
“It’s a beautiful park for people to enjoy and for others to come and take that away from us is wrong,” Minette said.
A new report from NBC Connecticut this week found that Connecticut veterans who served the U.S. are not receiving Honor Guard salutes at their funerals because the state won’t pay stipends during its budget crisis.
NBC Connecticut‘s Heather Burian investigated the issue, and found out Gov. Dan Malloy (D-Conn.) did not include the stipends in his executive order funding state government, as Connecticut tries to pass a two-year budget.
As of July 1, the state stopped paying a stipend to the Honor Guard detail that carries out the rifle salute. The state currently does not have a budget, and the executive order the Governor signed did not include funding for the Honor Guard, according to Chris McClure, a spokesperson for Governor Dannel Malloy.
…”They can’t get the honor they deserve. So our Posts are trying to pick up some of the slack on this,” said Ed DeGumbia, the state department commander of the American Legion.
Even as veterans are being denied a final salute, the Malloy-Wyman administration found time to pledge up to $6 million for Planned Parenthood if the federal government defunds the organization at any point.
WASHINGTON — The nationwide push to dismantle Confederate memorials divided Congress’s most senior Democrats on Thursday, as Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, pressed for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol while her Senate counterpart tried to keep the focus on President Trump’s equivocation over white nationalists.
“The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible,” Ms. Pelosi said, putting pressure on the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to act. “If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy, I call upon Speaker Ryan to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, took a very different tack, saying that Mr. Trump and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, were “trying to divert attention away from the president’s refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism and other forms of bigotry.”
At the first official “Pride Night” for the St. Louis Cardinals, the ceremonial first pitch will be thrown by transgender entertainer Tassandra Crush, reports multiple LBGTQ media outlets. It is believed to be the first time a transgender individual will throw a first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.
The game is on Friday, August 25 at Busch Stadium, and special Pride Night themed Cardinals hats will be the team’s promotional giveaway.
Crush is Pride St. Louis’ reigning Queen of Pride.
Boston’s Democratic mayor is warning people to “stay away” from a free speech rally set to take place on the Boston Common Saturday.
“People should not confront these rallies. So we’re urging everyone to stay away from the Common,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told reporters Friday.
Walsh said he has consulted the Southern Poverty Law Center on how to handle this weekend’s rally after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent last weekend. “They say that interacting with these groups just gives them a platform to spread their message of hate,” Walsh said.
The Boston Free Speech coalition obtained a permit for the rally Wednesday, which will let them start setting up at 10 a.m. on the Boston Common and hold a noon rally.
While Walsh has been clear that he does not want these demonstrations in his city, he conceded the group’s gathering is protected under the First Amendment.
“There have been questions about why we granted a permit for the rally tomorrow,” Walsh added. “The courts have made it abundantly clear. They have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are. But they don’t have the right to create unsafe conditions. They have the right to free speech. In return, they have to respect our city.”
Boston Police are preparing for large-scale counter protesters and say the groups will be separated by a barricade.
A day after the horrific violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one person dead when a white nationalist drove his car through a group of counter demonstrators, a rally against white supremacy was held in Richmond. A local CBS reporter was sent to the hospital when an Antifa protester struck him in the head with an object.
At the time, it was unknown if the person who assaulted the reporter was Antifa. Now, we do know —and they posted a recount of the events on their FB page. Of course, it was absurd. They claim he was acting like a drunken person, giving the finger with both hands to the crowd. This is a lie. You can see it on the video footage. The best part is that when they say you can hit someone because you feel scared, or something. That’s still assault, children.[…]
This man ran out of the The Camel as the funeral March proceeded by. He was not working at the time so we can only assume he was drinking and made one bad choice after the next.
He didn’t identify himself as press nor was he wearing anything that identified him as such.
This man ran at a crowd that was holding space for our murdered comrade with just his iPhone.
Due to the intensity and context of this time people are very scared of white men running full speed at them with iPhones as this is the exact behavior of a white supremacist trying to out identity of people of color and anti fascists in order to invoke fear.
The MTA says it is going to “modify” tiles in a Manhattan subway station that people have complained look like Confederate Flags.
The pattern of tiles have been in the Times Square station for almost 100 years. The architects are said to have installed them to pay homage to the Southern roots of former New York Times newspaper head Adolph S. Ochs.
The MTA has claimed the tiles actually are meant to honor Times Square’s nickname as the “Crossroads of the World” and are not Confederate Flags.
