This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, is fundamental to our free society. — Thurgood Marshall
Paraphrase: Speech that is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech that is truthful but also dangerous (you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater).
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
In our various media platforms, we have warned that a White supremacist terrorist plot, detected November 18, could be activated against the African American community. This column is being written three hours after White supremacist terrorists, wearing body armor and carrying heavy weapons, opened fire on at least 100 demonstrating African Americans at 10:45 pm, Monday, November 23, 2015, on Morgan Avenue N., about a block north of the Fourth Precinct station. Five were wounded. Future columns will provide updates.
The supremacist shooting was in response to protestors tying up Highway 94 and demonstrating outside the Fourth Precinct, led by Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and the NAACP Minneapolis brach, which in turn was in response to another young Black man killed by police. Both sides are angry. Both sides are “shooting first, asking questions later.” Both sides are escalating.
Neither side wishes to wait to see what the investigations reveal. Let’s not show the world and ourselves that our freedom of speech is made in exchanges of bullets, but instead demonstrate we exchange using words and corrective action.
On my weekly TV program, Sunday, November 22, I warned that a dangerous and volatile conspiracy was at play. We were aware that the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and federal authorities were attempting to track down conspirators, after intercepting a video transmission of terrorists discussing and planning their action.
In a press conference on the 19th of November, at the MPD’s North Minneapolis training facility, I publicly stated for the record that Black anarchists on one side and White supremacist terrorists on the other were each planning action, each driven by vastly different philosophies and hatreds. The White supremacist terrorists’ plans included using bullets. The Black anarchists’ plans included protest marches, protest signs, and throwing stones. The media took no note of my warning nor the warning from the MPD.
We are faced, in our city of Minneapolis, with a severe and dangerous racial backlash, backed by well-planned, military-style terrorist acts against the African American community. These are not to be taken lightly. They have recruited bomb makers to escalate terrorist activities and actions, especially actions against African Americans.
We have threats to our democracy with both sides urging our young people to burn down their own communities. It is just a matter of time before weak but dangerous minds in different ideological camps move to implement plans of terror on the streets of Minneapolis, unless we can figure out a formula of peace that will enable all to coexist, the challenge of our modern era and its different “altars.”
Let’s support “let my people go” for all people, and not “back to the plantation” to unacceptable “others.” God help us as a community, as a city, and as a state to bring these White terrorists to justice. Let’s support all affected neighborhoods and downtown, and especially our African American neighborhoods.
In closing we would expect elected and appointed officials as well as White and Black clergy to act responsibly, and to denounce any act of terror, regardless of by whom, against communities that merely wanted their voices heard. Instead of letting this be a great day for neo Nazi activists in America, let us make it a great day for peaceful freedom of expression.
Stay tuned.
For Ron’s hosted radio and TV show’s broadcast times, solutions papers, books, and archives, go to www.TheMinneapolisStory.com. To order his books, go to www.BeaconOnTheHillPress.com.
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