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The slave patrols live.
Just ask any of the people at Nike who answer the phones and are dealing with an avalanche of angry white callers throwing the N-word around and complaining about Nike treating Kaepernick with respect. Trump, Pence, and billionaire Rupert Murdoch's Fox News are ginning up even more racist hysteria on a near-daily basis.
But this doesn't come out of thin air. There's a long history of whites trashing blacks when they protest the systems whites have put in place to keep them down.
Policing people of color, which our history teaches was a "government function" handled by the southern states back in the day, was actually a largely civilian effort, although it depended on the support and constant encouragement of political leaders within government.
Policing people of color, which our history teaches was a "government function" handled by the southern states back in the day, was actually a largely civilian effort, although it depended on the support and constant encouragement of political leaders within government.
So, too, today's largely civilian, male, and white "slave patrols" are on the lookout for anybody who may support Colin Kaepernick in his protests of police killings of unarmed black people. And those civilians, being called to arms by Trump and Pence with lies that Kaepernick doesn't "respect" the flag or the national anthem, are flooding into the public square, from Twitter to retail stores.
At the core of modern American policing (particularly in the South), and at the creation of the Second Amendment, we find the slave patrols that were the first militia of the southern states. They're also essential to the modern neo-confederate and white supremacist efforts to demonize black people whenever they stand up for their rights.
In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, the colonial government passed laws in 1755 and 1757 that required all white men 17-47 years old to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed Militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of every slave in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias, and explicitly required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.
Sally E. Hadden, in her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators, and wealthy white students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men - including physicians and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered Whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the gun toting mostly civilian militias.
As I've written before, the Second Amendment was written the way it was - mentioning "state" instead of, as in its original version, "country" - to allow the southern states to keep their militias intact, and those militias were overwhelmingly slave patrols.
As a result, for the two-plus centuries since then, American police - and, in the 19th century, American slave patrollers - have largely had carte blanche to execute black men who they think are "out of line."
In the 21st century the publicly-known (and partial) list of the victims of this white and "blue" violence runs long: Akiel Denkins, Gregory Gunn, Samuel DuBose, Brendon Glenn, Freddie Gray, Natasha McKenna, Walter Scott, Christian Taylor, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Yvette Smith, Jamar Clark, Rekia Boyd, Shereese Francis, Ramarley Graham, Manuel Loggins Jr., Sean Bell, Ronald Madison, and Kendra James (among others).
Not to mention Treyvon Martin, killed by the most notorious recent civilian volunteer "slave patroller," George Zimmerman.
None of the killers of any of these human beings are in prison for that crime. All of the killers were afforded great deference and privilege - something that wouldn't have happened if they'd been European cops - because of our uniquely long history of slave patrols.
Our history is also filled with stories and anecdotes about times black people protested this treatment - the story of the response to the brutal murder of Emmit Till is probably best known in the 20th century. There was also the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a protest known now as the Selma to Montgomery march.
Protest has now moved from the streets to social media, and then into the venue most visible to white men in American public life: the NFL's football fields.
Predictably, this inflamed the older white men who run the GOP - particularly President Trump and Vice President Pence - who are regularly shouting out to today's somewhat less organized but no less enthusiastic "slave patrollers," encouraging them to "police" the unruly African Americans among us.
At the top of Trump and Pence's hit list is Colin Kaepernick, who began the protests against these police killings.
But in order to sanitize the naked racism of Trump, Pence, and their lickspittles at Fox News, they had to add a twist to the story: the lie that Kaepernick "hates" and "doesn't respect" the flag and the national anthem.
But in order to sanitize the naked racism of Trump, Pence, and their lickspittles at Fox News, they had to add a twist to the story: the lie that Kaepernick "hates" and "doesn't respect" the flag and the national anthem. Fox has even gone so far as to have (white) soldiers' widows come on and respond to leading questions about Kaepernick "disrespecting" their dead husbands.
But Fox and Trump/Pence have it all wrong, as they well know.
If you're going to protest police killings of black people during the national anthem, the most respectful way to do it, according to many veterans, is to take a knee. Kaepernick got the idea from special forces veteran Nate Boyer, who suggested to him that he should consider going to his knee to respectfully protest the police killings, rather than just sitting on the bench.
"Soldiers take a knee in front of a fallen brother's grave, you know, to show respect," Boyer told a reporter he'd told Kaepernick. "When we're on a patrol, you know, and we go into a security halt, we take a knee, and we pull security. ... [P]eople take a knee to pray. So for me it was a common ground, at least, to start from."
Kaepernick loved the idea and adopted it, and now this respectful, almost prayerful protest has spread across the NFL. And Trump and Pence are cynically using it as new and useful shorthand for "uppity black people" that they can use to call out the modern-day slave patrol.
What's so breathtaking about the entire thing is how often the media in America allows Trump's and Pence's slanders of Kaepernick to go unchallenged when its repeated in speeches and rallies. Trump, Pence, and hard-right media have clearly adopted the model, "When one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it."
But Americans are figuring it out.
Just as African Americans have been economically disenfranchised since the founding of America, the white billionaire owners of the NFL are continuing that tradition by denying Kaepernick an opportunity to practice his craft. Now Trump and Pence are encouraging the NFL to extend that economic segregation, that redlining, to any other players who may join the protest.
Nike has now stepped up to embrace Kaepernick, in what many Republicans are calling a "crazy" marketing campaign, which has brought this all to the top of the news again. But is it crazy?
Maybe. Or maybe it's just crazy enough to finally wake white America up to what's been happening for centuries to our black brothers and sisters.
Some of the state legislators were at least aware of the attention stand-your-ground laws have drawn. As Democratic Rep. Mia Jones explained to her colleagues: "The world is looking at Florida and ... we don't look good right now." This is not, perhaps, a persuasive argument in a state that leads the nation in both incidents of human cannibalism and "zombie foreclosures". The so-called "warning-shot" bill passed 93-24.
Shamelessness aside, the renewed passion of Florida politicians for the expansion and protection of this type of loophole - the very kind that let George Zimmerman run free, even if he got off on self-defense - at least raises a different question: Why are those local legislatures passing such embarrassing laws in the first place?
As the nation's statehouses have splintered off from the on-year electorate, states such as Florida (really, especially Florida) serve up the best examples for how our "laboratories of democracy" have become playgrounds for mad scientists - particularly, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. Almost all of Florida's legislative antics (including some off-the-clock holiday jaunts) can be traced back to ALEC, including its original stand-your-ground law. ALEC designs the legislation, compliant legislators cut-and-paste it into law - literally, in the instance of Florida Rep. Rachel Burgin, who forgot to remove ALEC's mission statement from the text of an anti-tax bill she submitted in 2012.
Anyone with even a casual interest in the escapades of "Florida man" and "Florida woman" knows that the state's gun crazy extends beyond the crazy stand-your-ground law to which the death of Trayvon Martin introduced us all. The state has some of the most permissive open-carry and concealed-carry laws in the country (with the added bonus of not running mental health background checks on individuals who apply for the permits!). A bill currently before the Florida Senate (with the backing of the governor and the National Rifle Association) would extend conceal carry privileges to all gun owners "during a mandatory evacuation in a state of emergency". Because we know how even-keeled and slow-to-anger people are during those types of situations. Last fall, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi joined the NRA in a bid to allow 18- and 19-year-olds to purchase handguns. Justin Bieber with a Glock - exactly what Florida needs.
But the gun laws themselves are just the collateral damage of a spun-out legislature that has become one of the most successful case studies for ALEC's push to enact pro-business, pro-conservative legislation across the country. Florida's stand-your-ground law, shepherded by ALEC protege and then-state senator Marco Rubio, was the first of its kind in the nation. The process became a model not just for the expansion of the so-called "Castle Principle" legislation but for how to pass ALEC-scripted laws in general.
There are 13 ALEC-ordered bills in consideration in Florida right now, one of which would exempt companies from revealing the chemicals used in oil and gas extraction. Last June, Gov Rick Scott signed into law an ALEC bill that blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave.
Florida is also the epicenter of many of ALEC's other, broader legislative aims, from privatizing prisons and profiting from prison labor (Florida is home to the nation's second-largest private prison firm) to, significantly, legislation sold as "vote fraud protection".
Via voter ID legislation, ALEC insures that the democracy lab experiments are rigged. Jekyll shows up one day, Hyde the next. If we had consistent voter turnout, the government might more closely resembled the governed. Jekyll and Hyde might still both show up, but at least they'd be forced to work together.
Well, that's not quite right, because as it stands, once one of them gets in the lab, he does everything he can to keep the other out. And the Republican Hydes are much, much better at this than the Democrat Jekylls. Indeed, ALEC's minions spend much of their time establishing ways to preserve their control over the lab, rather than making any particular forward progress on other issues: of the 62 "voter ID" bills introduced in state legislatures in 2011 and 2012, over half were written or sponsored by ALEC-associated politicians.
It is telling that of all the measures the Florida House attached to its expanded stand-your-ground law, the most subversive amendment had to do with the power of the pen and not the sword - or gat, as the case may be. Because despite all the damage that guns have done to Florida (and, oh boy: gun injuries in the state are double the national average), it is the pens of Floridian legislators that have made it a model for the worst American democracy has to offer.
Thousands of people across the country have poured into the streets -- from New York to Sanford, Florida -- to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Hundreds of thousands more stepped up to protest online. In response to the public outcry, the Sanford chief of police has temporarily stepped down and the state prosecutor has stepped aside. But nearly one month after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was stopped, stalked, shot and killed while walking home from a convenience store, armed only with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea, his killer, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested. Today, the Children's Defense Fund released its new report, Protect Children, Not Guns 2012, dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Martin and the thousands of children and teenagers killed by guns in America, including the 5,740 children killed in 2008 and 2009 according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Where is the outrage over every single one of the thousands of children and teens killed by guns -- too many by gun slinging Americans unrestrained by common sense gun control laws. Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, also known as the "shoot first, ask questions later" law, is now under national scrutiny. But will it and others be changed to protect children rather than gun owners and sellers?
April 16 marks the fifth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 students and faculty were killed by a gun, 25 others were injured, and many more were traumatized. Each year since then has seen gun victims -- young children, teenagers, young adults, a member of Congress, a federal judge and many more. Days, weeks, months and years go by and little or nothing -- except fleeting headlines, tears, trauma and talk -- is done to protect children instead of guns.
By any standards of human and moral decency, children in America are under assault, and by international standards, America remains the unchallenged world leader in children and teen gun deaths.
Analysis of the most recent data from 23 high-income countries reported that 87 percent of all firearm deaths of children under 15 were in the United States. The rate of U.S. gun homicides for teens and young adults 15 to 24 was 42.7 times higher than the overall gun homicide rate for that same age group in the other countries.
Why are common-sense gun regulations so shockingly absent in our country? Even in the wake of the Tucson tragedy and the near-fatal shooting of one of their own, Congress failed to act. Calls for banning high-volume ammunition clips and tightening up the federal background check system were ignored. Our leaders once again capitulated to the powerful gun lobby over the rights of children and citizens to life and safety. In November 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act. If a similar bill is passed by the Senate and becomes law, a person with a permit to carry a concealed handgun in one state -- a person like George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida -- could carry that concealed weapon in another state even if it was against the second state's law. Proponents of such dangerous laws maintain the fiction that guns promote personal safety. It is long past time to acknowledge gun violence as a hugely serious threat to children, teens, and overall public health and safety.
Our leaders in Washington, D.C. are not alone in refusing to make America safer. Forty-two states have adopted preemption laws to ensure state legislatures control of gun policy, impeding the ability of cities to develop local solutions to gun violence in their own communities. In 2011, Kansas, Mississippi and Utah enacted laws allowing concealed weapon permit holders to carry loaded, concealed firearms in or on the grounds of elementary and secondary schools. With all eyes on Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, few noticed a law passed last year that, if upheld, threatens loss of a medical license for doctors who ask patients about whether a gun is in the home although it is not at all unusual or inappropriate for pediatricians particularly to ask patients and parents of patients about possible safety hazards in the home including guns.
We have so much work to do to build safe communities for our children. We need leaders at all levels of government who will protect children over guns. We need a relentless, powerful citizens' voice to break the gun lobby's veto on common sense gun policy. Our laws must control who can obtain firearms and close the gun show loophole, require consumer safety standards and childproof safety features for all guns, and strengthen child access prevention laws that ensure guns in the home are stored safely and securely. And all must take action and ask political candidates this fall what steps they will take to protect children from guns. We must remove guns from our homes where children so often find them and put themselves and others in harm's way and combat cultural glorification of guns and violence. As a nation, we must aspire and act to become the world leader in protecting children against guns rather than leading the world in child victims of guns. Every child's life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it.