A Universe of Whatever

niggasandcomputers:

only goal right now is to get out of my own way

boat-face-mcgee:

boat-face-mcgee:

raavenreyes:

showersofhappiness:

baetology:

tunte:

baetology:

In 1989, George Bush gave a speech about crack. During the speech he pulled out a bag of crack and said “this bag was seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette park.”
Turns out, his speech writers had the idea to pull out a prop during his speech and in order to make it believable they had the DEA plant crack on this random 18 year old black kid. They lured him there. He didn’t even know where the White House or Lafayette park was. When he got there, they arrested them.
The plot was discovered by a journalist.

What journalist

Gary Webb

And then Gary Webb killed himself after he revealed that the CIA let crack infiltrate black communities through drug cartels making deals with the CIA. His wife left him and his career was ruined for exposing the drug war as a war against people of color.

There’s a really well done movie called Kill the Messenger (x) I suggest everyone should watch. It was done in partnership with his family and details the events from beginning to end.

Do we know the name of the “random 18 year old black kid” who was framed by the United States Government for a crime he didn’t commit?

Update:
His name is Keith Jackson. He has a wife and family now, and lives in the Baltimore/DC area. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t want anything to do with what happened to him. The charges against him for the Lafayette case were dropped, but he received a 121 month sentence for distributing drugs near a school. Keith Jackson was a senior in high school when he was arrested. He was released from prison in 1998, 10 years later.
We have to remember all of the time that was taken from him. We have to remember that he wasn’t just “some random 18 year old black kid.” The government chose him to become a caricature of who they wanted the “enemy” to be in the War on Drugs because he is Black. Remember Webb’s thesis.
Remember Keith Jackson’s name. Remember his story.

glumshoe:

goosegooseduck:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

My grandmother is a bitter old crab with nothing good to say about anything, but she does have a few good stories. She confronted the woman my grandfather had been cheating on her with - this other woman had no idea he was married, and was righteously angry.

The two of them schemed together. My grandfather’s mistress drove her convertible to the construction site where he was working. As he approached the car, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

“Married?! I’m not married!” he said.

My grandmother sat up in the back seat, where she’d been lying down, and said, “You won’t be for much longer.”

After they divorced, my grandfather begged my grandmother to come back to him. “I’ll marry you again if you buy me a house full of furniture,” she said.
“Deal,” said my grandfather.

So they got married again, he bought her the house full of furniture….. and then she divorced him.

Again.

Didn’t say she would keep being married to him.

There is a very real chance that my grandmother was some manner of mischievously literal-minded fay.

girl-germs:

“The basic plot, which cannot be ignored even in the films, is that Harry, Hermione and Ron give up everything for their political struggle. They drop out of high school, they go illegal, defy the government, belong to an underground organization [The Order of the Phoenix], operate out of safe houses and forests and even raid offices of the government and banking offices. This is all done in principled opposition to the Dark Wizard Voldemort and a corrupt bureaucratized government that has been heavily infiltrated with his evil minions. This is revolutionary activity. But the movie version does not present it as such or emphasize these radical aspects of the plot, thereby entirely missing the dramatic sweep and action present in the first half of the last novel. The novels recognize the importance of alternative media for political struggle. The mainstream press [The Daily Prophet] is shown as unreliable and unprincipled, eventually deteriorating into a fear-mongering propaganda machine for the Voldemort-controlled bureaucracy. For a while the alternative but above ground media [The Quibbler] publishes the real news, but it ceases to print after the daughter of the publisher is kidnapped. In the book, friends of Harry [Lee Jordan, with Fred and George Weasley as frequent guests] start broadcasting the real news from an underground radio station, encrypted with a password. This radio station becomes a critical link for the resistance, which is scattered and weak. Although we are treated to some radio broadcast updates in the movie, they are delivered by a disembodied and professional sounding voice, not our friends the Weasleys. This undermines the important message - a guiding principle behind the media coop - that in a serious situation it becomes necessary to produce your own media and not to rely on ‘professionals’. The novel makes it clear that in this phase of the struggle the characters romantic lives take a backseat to their political activity, as Harry breaks up with the love of his life [Ginny Weasley] so as to avoid making her a target for Voldemort’s forces, who are known to use torture and kidnapping as tactics. The ‘love triangle’ that becomes the focus of the movie isn’t even really present in the books. In the books, the relationship between Harry and Hermione is totally platonic - Ron is shown as jealous, but the feeling is entirely without foundation. In the book Harry says to Ron: “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew” (pg 378, DH US Hardback). This conveys that men and women can be close comrades and friends without being involved romantically. But in the film, Harry and Hermione are shown dancing romantically, and Harry’s line to Ron about his brotherly feeling towards Hermione does not even make it into the film. This completely undermines the important message that jealousy is counter-productive and has toxic effects, which is an important feminist message for young people.”

— How Hollywood Defanged Potter’s Radical Politics