Sing. That’s right, Samuel L. Jackson wants you to sing this song instead of dumping ice water on your head.
Samuel Jackson – “All you celebrities out there who poured ice water on your head, here’s a chance to do something else. I challenge all of you to sing the ‘We Ain’t Gonna Stop, Till People Are Free’ song. Here we go.”
“I can hear my neighbor cryin’, ‘I can’t breathe.’ Now I’m in the struggle, and I can’t leave. Callin’ out the violence of the racist police. We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free. We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free.”
He used his constitutionally protected First Amendment right to speak his mind on the violence exhibited against blacks and other minorities by police, with his choice to wear a t-shirt calling for justice for Tamir. For this, Andrew Hawkins, the wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, was slammed by the police union in Cleveland who called Andrew’s decision to wear the t-shirt “pretty pathetic.”
Well Andrew felt the need to express his feelings a little more that the t-shirt would allow, and on Monday, he called the press together and released this statement.
“I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that’s what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology.
“To clarify, I utterly respect and appreciate every police officer that protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way. And I don’t think those kind of officers should be offended by what I did. My mom taught me my entire life to respect law enforcement. I have family, close friends that are incredible police officers and I tell them all the time how they are much braver than me for it. So my wearing a T-shirt wasn’t a stance against every police officer or every police department. My wearing the T-shirt was a stance against wrong individuals doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons to innocent people.
“Unfortunately, my mom also taught me just as there are good police officers, there are some not-so-good police officers that would assume the worst of me without knowing anything about me for reasons I can’t control. She taught me to be careful and be on the lookout for those not-so-good police officers because they could potentially do me harm and most times without consequences. Those are the police officers that should be offended.
“Being a police officer takes bravery. And I understand that they’re put in difficult positions and have to make those snap decisions. As a football player, I know a little bit about snap decisions, obviously on an extremely lesser and non-comparative scale, because when a police officer makes a snap decision, it’s literally a matter of life and death. That’s hard a situation to be in. But if the wrong decision is made, based on pre-conceived notions or the wrong motives, I believe there should be consequence. Because without consequence, naturally the magnitude of the snap decisions is lessened, whether consciously or unconsciously.
“I’m not an activist, in any way, shape or form. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I keep my opinions to myself on most matters. I worked extremely hard to build and keep my reputation especially here in Ohio, and by most accounts I’ve done a solid job of decently building a good name. Before I made the decision to wear the T-shirt, I understood I was putting that reputation in jeopardy to some of those people who wouldn’t necessarily agree with my perspective. I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do. If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.
“As you well know, and it’s well documented, I have a 2-year-old little boy. The same 2-year-old little boy that everyone said was cute when I jokingly threw him out of the house earlier this year. That little boy is my entire world. And the No. 1 reason for me wearing the T-shirt was the thought of what happened to Tamir Rice happening to my little Austin scares the living hell out of me. And my heart was broken for the parents of Tamir and John Crawford knowing they had to live that nightmare of a reality.
“So, like I said, I made the conscious decision to wear the T-shirt. I felt like my heart was in the right place. I’m at peace with it and those that disagree with me, this is America, everyone has the right to their first amendment rights. Those who support me, I appreciate your support. But at the same time, support the causes and the people and the injustices that you feel strongly about. Stand up for them. Speak up for them. No matter what it is because that’s what America’s about and that’s what this country was founded on.”
And by “politicians” I mean Republicans. We heard all their falsehoods about Ebola as they set out to intentionally lie to their base to win the midterm elections. And the easily led sheep in their base drank it all in.
Thomas Eric Duncan left Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 19, for Dallas. Eleven days later, doctors diagnosed Duncan with Ebola.
Eight days after that, he was dead.
Duncan’s case is just one of two Ebola-related fatalities in the United States, and since Duncan traveled to Dallas,
more Americans — at least nine, and likely many more — have died from the flu.
Yet fear of the disease stretched to every corner of America this fall, stoked by exaggerated claims from politicians and pundits. They said Ebola was easy to catch, that illegal immigrants may be carrying the virus across the southern border, that it was all part of a government or corporate conspiracy.
The claims — all wrong — distorted the debate about a serious public health issue. Together, they earn our Lie of the Year for 2014.
Apparently, Kim Kardashian’s idea of a selfie is a picture with Kim Kardashian, and all others will be cropped, including her own daughter, North.
But don’t worry, after posting the cropped picture with her daughter’s face still partly visible to her 23 million followers, TMZ reports that her fans let her have it with comments like, — “Seriously you can’t even let your own child in a picture with you #selfishness” — “Lmao if she loved her child she wouldnt have cropped out the pic” — “Narcissism at it’s finest” — “crop game strongggg, poor North your mom would rather showoff a brick wall than you…..SHAME!!!”
“Selma,” the movie about the famed march by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists, opens in selected theaters on December 25th and nationwide on January 9th, but already the cast of the show is living up to expectations, following in the footsteps of the man and the movement the show is based on – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Following the lead of the civil rights activist and more recently professional athletes like LeBron James and Andrew Hawkins, the cast of “Selma” wore the I Can’t Breathe t-shirt at the premier if the movie. “I can’t breathe,” were the last words spoken by Eric Garner, as he was choked to death by a New York police officer.
The photo is striking: David Oyelowo, who plays Martin Luther King Jr. in the film, stands in front of a crowd that includes director Ava DuVernay and co-stars Lorraine Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, André Holland, Tessa Thompson, Omar Dorsey, and more. Many of them play King’s fellow activists, the people who joined him in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to plan what eventually became the famous march from Selma to Montgomery.
Apparently, professional athletes cannot have an opinion and if they do, they should not make their opinions known.
That is the argument from the President of the Police Union in Cleveland, Jeff Follmer, who denounced Browns’ wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a “Justice for Tamir Rice” shirt during warm-ups. Follmer called Hawkins “pathetic” for expressing his views.
“He’s an athlete. He’s someone with no facts of the case whatsoever,” Follmer said on Sunday. “He’s disrespecting the police on a job that we had to do and make a split-second decision.”
Follmer demanded an apology from Hawkins and the Browns organization, causing the Browns to issue a statement.
“We have great respect for the Cleveland Police Department and the work that they do to protect and serve our city,” the statement says. “We also respect our players’ rights to project their support and bring awareness to issues that are important to them if done so in a responsible manner.”
Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was gunned down by a Cleveland police officer while holding what turned out to be a toy gun. At the time of the killing, the police officer said that Tamir was asked numerous times to drop his weapon and when he did not, he was shot and killed. The police also said that Tamir was about 20 years old.
But there is a video and according to the video, the 12 year old is seen getting shot less than 3 seconds after a police car arrived on the scene.
The historic moment happened in the second quarter on a fee throw against the Minnesota Timberwolves.The 32,293 point put Bryant at number 3 on the NBA’s all time list. Michael Jordan dropped to the 4th spot with 32,292.
“I’m just honored to be here, man, to still be playing,” Bryant said. “I appreciate being able to play this long. Careers normally don’t last this long. I really appreciate the opportunity to still be out there playing and performing and doing what I do.”
Bryant still has some ways to go if he wants to unseat the number 1 spot currently held by, Abdul-Jabbar with 38,387, or the number 2, Karl Malone, with 36,928 in career NBA points.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
