Tag: Charleston

‘Burn the Confedrate Flag’

A Facebook petition is calling for a National “Burn The Confederate Flag” Day.

Only 8,000 people have “liked” the petition as of Monday morning.

“The Confederate flag has flown in America for 150 years too long. The Civil War is long over. Fortunately, our First Amendment right gives us the power of free speech that will allow us to display our feeling by burning the flag of slavery from sea to shining sea. Join us for a PEACEFUL DAY OF PROTEST and burn the Confederate flag,” the petition reads.

It continues, “This is our day to demonstrate that it is no longer acceptable to fly this flag anywhere. Organize a Confederate flag burning event in your area on Saturday, June 27th, and flood social media with pictures and videos using the hashtags #FeelTheBurn and #TakeItDown.”

The Confederate flag has become a topic of debate once again after a white gunman opened fire during Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week, killing nine. Suspect Dylann Roof, 21, has been charged with nine counts of murder.

In an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press, Joe Lapointe called for the Confederate flag to be burned.

“In that South Carolina will never willingly take down the flag, the time has come for opponents to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and burn the Confederate flag – at the state Capitol in South Carolina, in front of the White House, in front of Fox News or maybe even outside the Grand Ol’ Opry,” Lapointe wrote.”

Lapointe said the Confederate flag is as “evil and vicious to African Americans as the Nazi swastika flag is to Jews.”

“The display of the Confederate flag – anywhere – is a nonverbal statement of race hate. Its burning would be a nonverbal response to its crude attitude,” he wrote. “You’re sure not going to change their attitudes with sweet reason. Fight their figurative fire with the real thing.”

South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a 30-foot flagpole elsewhere on Statehouse grounds, where it has been flying at full staff.

Source: CBS

‘White people are terrorists’

Thursday while reporting for CNN on the tragic aftermath of the mass shooting live from outside the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston Don Lemon was yelled at by a Africa-American woman upset with the coverage.

Right before Lemon is in introduced you can hear the woman off camera shout, “Report the real truth. We are angry. White people are terrorists.”

Once Lemon came on the woman went on camera and said several times “Are you angry Don?”

Before they cut away she added, “The President is a puppet. Stop the Lies. He’s an uncle Tom too. President Obama is an Uncle Tom.”

Source: Breitbart

Lone shooter caught after church massacre

Dylann Storm Roof, 21, allegedly shot dead nine people in South Carolina last night.

He was pictured in an earlier photograph wearing a jacket incongruously showing both flags of apartheid-era South Africa and one from colonial British-ruled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

The white gunman has been caught in North Carolina.

The attack came just a day after the New York Times warned that “the main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists.”

Two months ago, after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighboring North Charleston, major protests occured highlighting racial tensions in the area.

The officer has been charged with murder, and the shooting prompted South Carolina lawmakers to push through a bill helping all police agencies in the state get body cameras. The black pastor was a sponsor of that bill.

It appears that Roof robotically said: “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go”,’ Sylvia Johnson, a church member said.

A five-year-old girl survived the attack after her grandmother told her to play dead. The gunman then fled.

Police launched a massive manhunt for Roof and released surveillance images showing him and his car, warning the public that he was dangerous. He was eventually caught on Thursday morning.

Roof’s uncle, Carson Cowles, told Reuters that his nephew had received a .45 caliber pistol as a birthday present in April. He called the 21-year-old ‘quiet, soft spoken’ and said he recognized him in the photo released by police.

In a photograph of Roof on Facebook, he is seen strangely displaying the flag of apartheid-era South Africa on his jacket. He is also wearing another flag depicting that of British colonial Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe.

Roof also displayed a Confederate flag on his license plate.

Court records show he was charged with a drugs offense in March 2015 and trespassing in April.

Police have since headed to the home of Roof’s mother, Cowles added.

Of the shooting, Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said: ‘We believe this is a hate crime – that is how we are investigating it.’

On Thursday, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have launched a hate crime investigation into the mass shooting, ABC reported.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined the investigation, Mullen said.

Obama called the killings ‘senseless’ and said it again highlighted the need for gun control.