Ty Smith, a parent who hosts a weekend radio show in central Illinois, blasted Critical Race Theory (CRT) in a blistering short speech before a crowded district school board meeting, the latest in a growing chorus of frustrated parents who view CRT as an ideology that flies directly in the face of the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King
Smith disputed some of the central tenants of CRT. “You’re going to deliberately teach kids, ‘this white kid right here got it better than you because he’s white’? You’re going to purposely tell a white kid that black people are all down and oppressed? How do I have two medical degrees if I’m sitting here oppressed?” he said to loud cheers from the crowded meeting.
“No mom, no dad in the house. Worked my way through college, sat there and hustled my butt off to get through college. You gonna tell me somebody that looked like y’all white folks kept me from doing that? Are you serious? Not one white person ever came to me and said ‘well, son, you know you’ll never be able to get anywhere because the black people’”, an incredulous Smith argued.
He went on to explain that currently, black Americans are being told they won’t be able to make it because ‘the white man is going to keep you down’ but his own story proves that narrative is false. “Well how did I get where I am right now if some white man kept me down? How am I now directing over folks that look just like you guys in this room right now. How? What kept me down? What oppressed me? I worked myself off the streets to where I am right now and you’re going to sit here and tell me this lie of Critical Race Theory? That this is the reason black folks can’t get ahead, because of white folks? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”
Smith closed out his impassioned comments with remarks about Dr. Martin Luther King, saying it’s the “complete reverse” of MLK’s message of judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
“When February comes around, don’t talk about Martin Luther King. Don’t talk about Black History Month if you’re pretty much going to pee on his grave with this nonsense.”
The head of a leading black organization that supports Israel said Tuesday that the Black Lives Matter movement in America has been co-opted by people who are making millions of dollars from donations and using their platform to push an anti-Israel message instead of concentrating on black rights.
Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel director Joshua Washington.
“We at the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) have been asking this question for years now, and still have not received an answer,” IBSI director Joshua Washington wrote in Times of Israel.
“If Black Lives Matter is supposed to be about police killings of unarmed black people, why is part of its focus on Israel thousands of miles away – as opposed to, for example, the African slave trade in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania or Qatar?” asked Washington. “BLM leaders are using the Black community as a cudgel against Israel, garnering much personal wealth in the process.”
Washington noted that since its inception in 2013, the Black Lives Matter organization has amassed tens of millions of dollars in corporate and individual donations, with $90 million raised last year, particularly after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
However, since 2013, the lack of financial transparency in the BLM organization has been the topic of multiple investigative articles, with BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors being questioned as to why she recently bought her fourth house worth over $1 million.
Instead of using the funds to help solve the problems of police disproportionately targeting black people, BLM has been diverting funds for alternate agendas like its anti-Israel activism.
“This is not a movement that was hijacked. On the contrary … BLM is the hijack,” said Washington.
Following the 2014 killing of Mike Brown Jr. by a white cop in Ferguson, Montana, “the world saw the Israeli-Palestinian conflict forcibly injected into the bloodstream of what was supposed to be a movement about police brutality and criminal justice,” noted Washington.
“‘From Ferguson to Palestine’ was the rallying cry created in order to demonize Israel, falsely correlating the plight of the Palestinians with black Americans, and even blaming the Jewish State for American police violence,” Washington said.
He noted that in a 2016 interview, BLM leader Patrisse Cullors said: “It was important for the Black Lives Matter movement to show up to Palestine … we believe that Palestine is the new South Africa.”
Washington slammed those comments, saying it is “reprehensible and manipulative” for falsely trying to link Israeli counterrorism efforts with any sort of racism or injustice by American police.
“Alluding to Israel as apartheid South Africa is equally reprehensible … even if Cullors and BLM leadership truly felt this way, how does attacking Israel help the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or Ahmad Aubery? Answer: It doesn’t,” Washington said.
The BLM movement even uses the donated funds to sponsor solidarity trips to “Palestine.”
Washington noted that American civil rights leader Bayard Rustin warned years ago that black leaders should not side with Yasser Arafat, who built his reputation as a violent terrorist.
“We risk becoming the unwitting accomplices of an organization committed to the bloody destruction of Israel — indeed of the Jewish people,” Rustin wrote at the time.
Without directly mentioning left-wing anti-Israel agitators, Washington noted that the anti-Israel stance of BLM can also be explained by the fact that “many of those who continue to defend BLM are not members of the black community.” But bottom line BLM is just another tool like Critical Race Theory that Satan is using to attack Israel in these last days.
In September, 2020 Washington addressed an #EndJewHatred event at the University of Southern California, demanding an end to discrimination against Jews on campuses. Saying that Jewish students are being “bullied” to reject Zionism, “their liberation movement, to satisfy anti-Jewish fetishes on campus,” he encouraged those students to stand strong.
“Nah. I’m not going to call for peace. We’ve tried peace. For years. Y’all don’t understand that language. We are calling for a complete dismantling of American policing. It’s NOT broken. It was built to work this way. And mayhem is the consequence. You earned it.”
In a new episode of Fox Nation’s“No Interruption,” Tomi Lahren sat down with the president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, Hawk Newsome, who argued that his organization and others like it are justified in using destruction to call attention to their grievances with American society. “The riot is the language of the unheard,” said Newsome, who compared modern-day protests to The Boston Tea Party.
The quote “language of the unheard” is from Martin Luther King Jr’s “The Other America” speech, delivered in 1967 and 1968. In the speeches, King did not defend rioting but said it was the result of understandable anger.
“What if you throw a whole bunch of tea in the water and start a war?” Newsome continued at another point in the interview. “That’s what this country was built on.”
Lahren specifically challenged Newsome over recent anti-police protests in the New York area and, most notably, a Jan. 31 demonstration involving reportedly thousands of protesters who flooded transportation stations and hubs around New York City. The protests were reportedly organized by a collection of 30 grassroots groups called “Decolonize This Place.”
Protesters carried signs with slogans like “F— the Police” and “No cops! No fares!” NYPD Chief Terence Monahan said in a tweet that some individuals even attempted to “physically assault” police officers.
“There are a lot of black people who say ‘f— the police,'” said Newsome. “But the majority of the people out there who are saying ‘f— the police’, in these particular events, are white people.”
“You have to really start to ask why people say, ‘f— the police,'” he continued. “You really have to take away this fetish or the way that we fantasize policing and really look at it for what it really is.”
COPS GTFO
“From day one, black people’s interactions with the police had been negative,” argued Newsome, who says that the “institution of policing” is racist. “They started out with slave patrols,” he said, pointing to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, which allowed for the capture and return of enslaved people.
“The Fugitive Slave Act, where they would take black people, stop them in the street, ask them for their papers, if they couldn’t produce them they’d send them back into slavery,” he said. “Sometimes they sent free people back into slavery. The interaction between black people and police in this country has never been good.”
While Lahren said she disagreed with Newsome’s assessment of the police, she said she wanted to focus on the tactics of the movement.
“I’m not going to disagree with what you believe in… What I’m saying is this — when we’re talking about solving problems, the methods in which I’ve seen groups like Black Lives Matter advance their ills or societal grievances — when it turns into burning, looting in the streets, I don’t see it being productive,” said Lahren.
Newsome claimed that destructive protests are rare, but he did not condemn them.
“For a country that drops bombs on people, for a country that incarcerates people, for a country that enslaves people — to criticize us for vandalism is preposterous,” said Newsome.
“I want to make sure I’m getting you clearly,” pressed Lahren. “It is OK to vandalize, to light things on fire and to loot businesses because the United States of America drops bombs on other countries, and because we have problems… people have grievances.”
“It is OK to act in that manner? And you co-sign on to that as the chairman of Black Lives Matter. You were saying that that is OK?”
“I think that it is a tool of white supremacy to say if you want freedom, then you get it by protesting peacefully,” said Newsome.
“Why is it a tool of white supremacy?” he concluded. “Because the white supremacists who built this country never earned anything peacefully. They did it through bullets and blood. And that’s the American way.”
Juan Riesco and his brother, Jose, were heirs to a flourishing family business — Nini’s Deli — in downtown Chicago. But it all came crashing down in early June, when the beloved eatery, owned by their foreign-born parents, found itself in the crosshairs of the increasingly progressive Black Lives Matter movement.
Having since left Chicago in the wake of the restaurant’s forced, permanent closure, Riesco told Faithwire he and his brother are focusing on ministry.
“If they’re gonna protest,” he said, “we’re gonna preach.”
Riesco, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba and Mexico, was once lauded by numerous publications as an up-and-coming entrepreneur with a knack for viral branding. He had enjoyed so much success with the deli and his personal business, Chicago Native, that brands like Nike and Adidas launched collaborations with him. But when Riesco refused to wholly endorse the official Black Lives Matter movement, he and his family were made villains on blogs and news outlets, many of which labeled them as “racist” and “homophobic.”
NINI’S DELI BEFORE CLOSURENINI’S DELI BEFORE CLOSURE WITH FIVE STAR RATING ON YELPNINI’S DELI AFTER CLOSURE
Rather than kowtow to the demands of a movement with which they harbor many disagreements, the Riescos stood firmly by their convictions. In early June, after being asked if they “believe Black Lives Matter,” Riesco published an official statement on the deli’s since-shuttered Instagram account. In it, he wrote he and his family believe “all people were created equal in the image of God.” The lengthy statement continued, “We believe that all black lives matter and we know that only God can bring about justice that is deserved.”
Riesco told Faithwire that, because of the success of Nini’s Deli, which had a five star rating on Yelp, locals were eager to see the restaurant throw its weight behind the Black Lives Matter campaign. Rather than totally embrace the movement, though, Riesco said it was important to use his platform to share his faith.
“I had felt in my spirit that I needed to, yes, take a stand [against] injustice, but also take a stand, most importantly, for Christ,” Riesco explained. “Because my business was so successful, by God’s grace, we had a lot of eyes waiting on us to make a statement about what was happening.”
“We used that platform — all those eyes on us, waiting to make a statement — to say, ‘We believe black lives matter, but we believe that because they’re made in the image of God,” he added.
However, by distancing themselves from the overarching Black Lives Matter movement, as other Christians have done, the Riescos drew the ire of many progressive protesters. After posting a statement to the restaurant’s Instagram handle on June 3, Riesco said “all hell essentially broke loose.
The Christian entrepreneur recalled receiving an onslaught of threats and promises to protest his family’s restaurant as a result of his statement on racial injustice. On Friday, June 5, just two days after the initial post to Instagram, Nini’s Deli shut down permanently as liberal protesters descended on the once-popular eatery.
Tensions only rose when Riesco’s brother Jose began brashly preaching during the raucous protest outside the deli, calling out many of the protesters for their “wicked agenda.” With his at times confrontational style, he talked about how his brother once identified as gay but “Jesus fixed him, straightened him
He also spoke out against the Black Lives Matter campaign’s affiliations with Planned Parenthood, the LGBT movement, and calls to defund the police.
Ultimately, the social pressure proved to be too much: the constant protests, the endless stream of social media posts slandering the restaurant, and the cancelled partnerships with big-name brands resulted in Nini’s Deli having to permanently closed its doors after a decade of business.
The pain of what they’ve lost remains fresh. Through tears, Riesco said he and his family “poured our hearts into loving our community, despite gender, despite sex, despite whatever you want to identify as.”
Nevertheless, even though the family company is gone, the Riesco brothers — both of whom became Christians at the deli — said they are “blessed.”
“I was just sharing with our team yesterday that my circumstances have changed, but my identity in whom I trust hasn’t,” Riesco said, adding he is still in “a position of gratitude toward our God.”
Moving forward, Juan and Jose Riesco plan to dedicate themselves to ministry.
Their website blacklivesmatter.com says, BLM’s mission is: “Imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive.” (Obviously, most everybody wants Black lives to thrive). They then say they want to “connect Black people from all over the world,” so this is a global organization, “who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities.”
They see the fundamental problem as this, and it’s why BLM’s founders say they exist, is because there is “rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us [Black people] by the state.” This persecution by the State is what they call systemic racism. Systemic racism can be defined as “a system or structure with an unfair impact upon a particular group, even if no law mentions the race.” So, BLM believes that it is not just racism against Black people from individuals or small groups around the world, but that governments are organized to inflict systemic racism against Black people.
BLM is clearly a political party, so don’t get that wrong. They say right on their website that they are a “political home for many,” and have “ousted anti-Black politicians, won critical legislator to benefit Black lives,” and so on.
Black Lives Matter’s motive, it says right there on their website, desires to “continue the work of our ancestors in fighting for our collective freedom” and “healing ourselves and each other.”
When I read that motivation, it sounds like they are connecting the racism their ancestors experienced, speaking of the slavery that existed in the United States and around the world that ended over 150 years ago, to a wound that continues to be felt and a desire to right a wrong that happened many decades ago.
They also believe that racism is almost just as bad now as it had been back in the 1800s and that racism can only be purged systemically, in other words, by overthrowing all existing governmental systems.
If you go to Black Lives Matter website and you listen to the comments of some of their leading organizers and the people who originated this movement, they are unashamedly Marxist. The Marxist ideology is built upon the notion that there is class oppression, and that the masses are being oppressed by the bourgeoisie middle and upper classes. The Marxist ideology foments the idea that the poor are oppressed by the rich, and therefore, they need to overcome oppression by seeking a new form of justice. But, in the process of doing that, they create terror. Terror is exactly what has happened on many of the American streets as of late. A lot of people have gotten sucked up into that mob mentality because, as you say, who can be against justice?
Patrisse Cullers, who is the founder and head of BLM, is a blatant outright Communist. Yusra Khogali, who is the head of the Toronto branch, has been texting that she wants to murder White people. She has been saying that White people are genetic defects. She prays to Allah that she won’t kill Whites. So, there’s an Islamic influence there as well.
Looking again at the Black Lives Matter website on their What We Believe statement, they say BLM “affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny…” Misogyny is the latest PC word that now means being against anything doing with men being in charge, where the word once used to mean men who hate women. They continue, “…and environments in which men are centered…. We dismantle the patriarchal practice.” In other words, BLM seeks to end men having any kind of authority.
We dismantle cisgender privilege
“We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.” It also says, “We dismantle cisgender privilege.” Here is one of those new PC words. Cisgender means you identify with the sex you were born with, and often means heterosexual in orientation, not same-sex. BLM also says, “We foster a queer-affirming network… freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather the belief that all in the world are heterosexual.” They want to stop people thinking of heterosexuality as the norm, but rather to make homosexuality equal in thinking in our society.
In summary, freedom to the BLM movement means freedom from God and His moral restraint. Justice instead means revenge. BLM takes these words and makes them mean the opposite.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 