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TODAY’S HOLLER: TN GOP DISHONOR’S GAY BLACK TEEN’S MEMORY

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TODAY’S HOLLER:

TN GOP DISHONORS BLACK TEEN’S MEMORY: Talk about hypocrisy… TN Republicans have ignored the sins of confederate generals & KKK GRAND WIZARDS CHILD SEX ABUSERS, protecting their legacy with statues and holidays — yet they tried to to define a gay black 17 year-old girl who was shot to death -Ashanti Posey – by one unproven accusation, and refused to back a resolution honoring her on the house floor. Non-Facebook Link


Rep. Mike Stewart called it “the most astonishing vote I’ve ever seen”.

Rep. London Lamar: “That was one of the most immoral votes I’ve seen in my short time as a legislator.” ‬

‬Senator Jeff Yarbro called it “INDECENT” on Channel 5.

Rep. Gloria Johnson: “If you think that they did this for any other reason [other than] because she is black and gay, you’re sadly mistaken. They are bigots.”

“THIS IS MY DAUGHTER! THIS IS A HUMAN BEING! NOT A DRUG DEALER!” Ashanti Posey’s mother Amber Posey showed up at the Capitol to show William Lamberth & the GOP the humanity behind the 17 year old girl they slandered and refused to honor. Non-Facebook Link

BLACK CAUCUS ASKS FOR “INCLUSION” (and gets called racist for it: “HOW MANY PEOPLE OF COLOR HAD INPUT THAT LANDED IN THE BUDGET?” – Rep. Parkinson & the black caucus ask for “INCLUSION” in TN’s budget, telling the 99% white TN GOP it “hurts” to be consistently ignored. Non-Facebook Link

Rep. Matthew Hill got triggered. Rep. Jeremy Faison called it racist to even ask, saying there’s “Nothing remotely racist” about the GOP caucus– so HERE’S A THREAD WE MADE OF THE GOP CAUCUS BEING SUPER RACIST, which comes from a list in a TENNESSEAN ARTICLE.

Faison is either blind, or a liar.

Worth remembering: WILLIAM LAMBERTH failed to mention he gets?from private prisons that oppose marijuana reform. ?‬ We see you, William. ‬


Here’s how they voted… “Present Not Voting” was as good as a “No”.

ALSO:

-Unlike Reps Hill & White who say they’d change their vote today, Rep. Brandon Ogles of FRANKLIN stands by his vote to help block the resolution honoring the death of 17yo Ashanti Posey… but is vague about why, other than following “his leader”. Such leadership! Non-Facebook Link

‪-IMAGES from the balcony, where protestors were arrested after Republicans rejected the resolution to honor Ashanti Posey. ‬

-Speaking of racism and statues, in NEW MEXICO a video shows Trump supporter Steven Baca shooting an anti-racist protester, Scott Williams, over one.

-Intentionally antagonistic Tennessee Republicans are being very clear that they have no use for free speech or the concerns of black people. ‬Believe them. ‬(Also: We’d bet many of these troopers have smoked weed. #AshantiPosey ‬)

-Some good news – Ohio police have issued a warrant for a Trump supporter who sucker-punched a protestor in Bethel, OHIO… Our CLIP of the incident was seen over 1 million times. Hopefully it helped.

-The State & The Feds dismiss the $25 Million medical fraud case against TN GOP Senator Steve Dickerson for an UNDISCLOSED SETTLEMENT”? ??- must be nice to benefit from the inequality in our justice system.‬ (His company was accused of DEFRAUDING HEALTH PROGRAMS for $25M using “liquid gold” urine tests.)

We talked to the TEENS FOR EQUALITY, the impressive young girls who organized the biggest march in Nashville so far. Non-Facebook Link

-‪“GOVERNOR LEE, tear down this bust.” ‬Tennessee REPUBLICAN Jason Emert calls on Lee to do the right thing to help our state heal. ‬

WATCH: “LET US IN!” After 3 days of peaceful protest, the People are kept out of the People’s Plaza (and legislature) at the Nashville Capitol by Speaker Sexton & Governor Lee, who are attempting to make this a felony. Non-Facebook Link

“You took off your sheets and put on suits but we know who you are.” –  Justin Jones — 21 were arrested.

-His first time back at the Capitol, activist Justin Jones rides up in the elevator with the TN GOP’s admitted child sex abuser Rep. David Byrd… and serenades him. ? ? ‬Non-Facebook Link

-A black security guard was killed during protests in Oakland and many said he was killed by “looters” — but the suspect is a vet with ties to the Alt-right “Boogaloo“ folks, who actually killed 2 cops. Related: Still 0 “ANTIFA”-connected arrests.

-HOUSTON. ANOTHER black man found hanging. ‬That’s 5 across the country in recent days. ‬

Good point.

-We also spoke with the lawyer for Sterling Higgins, who died in custody in UNION CITY 15 months ago. “Imagine if there was a #GeorgeFloyd grand jury and the prosecutor decided NOT TO SHOW THE VIDEO.” ?‬ — we’ve now seen video of Sterling being held by the neck for over 6 minutes. No charges were filed. PODCAST ON ITUNES.

WATCH: TN SENATE REPUBLICANS KILL 4 AMENDMENTS TO HELP REGULAR FOLKS ?

-coverage for new moms
-Support for people with disabilities to live on their own
-$150M for schools about to lay off people
-cost of living adjustment EQUAL TO Gov. Bill Lee’s for EVERY state employee

Non-Facebook Link

-ICYMI — THE SUPREME COURT has ruled sexual orientation is protected under the Civil Rights Act. ?️‍? ‬(unfortunately many in Tennessee seem prepared to ignore it)

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REP. STEVE COHEN HAS ONE:

INTERVIEW: ATLANTA ANTIFA SPEAKS

The president has just attempted to declare Antifa a terrorist organization, and there has been a concerted effort by conservatives to blame the social upheaval we’re seeing on Antifa to distract from the real issues of police brutality and white supremacy.

There have been many videos of white people dressed in black causing destruction, but we’ve also seen that white supremacists are doing the same in an effort to pin the blame on Antifa… so where does the truth lie? What is Antifa exactly?

In an effort to hear from Antifa directly, we reached out to Atlanta Antifa on Twitter, and they responded and were kind enough to talk to us. This is what they had to say.

—-

HOLLER:  My first question is, what is Antifa?

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well I think at this point it’s a rapidly evolving word and it’s used in two ways, one is just generically anti-fascist. Anybody who doesn’t like Nazis. So in that definition, there is there’s a lot of people who say people who fought in World War II were Antifa, and you know in a certain perspective that’s totally true, but it’s also used in a more specific way to talk about the groups that rose out of the old anti-racist actions from the 80s and 90s which were specifically designed to fight the far right, to monitor and counter KKK, Nazis, racist boneheads…. and then in the modern era, the alt-right. So our group is part of that more specific meaning of the word Antifa and we consider ourselves to be in that tradition. It’s an international movement to monitor and counter the far-right.

HOLLER:  And when you say our group, who is our group?

Atlanta Antifa:  “Atlanta Anti-Fascists.”

HOLLER:  How much coordination is there among Antifa groups in America?

Atlanta Antifa:  “I would say we have a lot of coordination in terms of information sharing because really the vast majority of the work we do is monitoring, using open source intelligence. We will try to doxx Nazis and uncover their plans, de-platform them, so we share a lot of information, frequently publicly, in a decentralized way. We have no hierarchy, so there’s no leader of Antifa, groups don’t use real names, we tend to use a lot of information security because the Nazis are after us you know like the Base Plot for example, when they tried to assassinate two people they thought were our members, so we use a lot of security in order to keep ourselves safe because the people that we are after are pretty violent.”

HOLLER:  So how did it start if there’s no hierarchy?

Atlanta Antifa:  “I would say that while being an anarchist is not a prerequisite for entry, the group is fairly non-ideological when it comes to that, the dominant culture comes out of the anarchist political tradition in which you don’t want to have a strong structure or hierarchy because that a lot of times leads to abuse, so instead, folks contribute what they can. They do what they can and coordinate that way and operate by consensus and voting, and not “you do this, here and now.” We have coordination, but we don’t have hierarchy and leadership.”

HOLLER:  Is violence a part of what you do?

Atlanta Antifa:  “The vast majority of the time, no. Something like 99% of what we do is nonviolent. But, at the same time if it comes to that, we are definitely prepared to do that and we would not condemn it. I’m talking about stuff that Antifa, does encountering Nazis. For example, the protest in Newnan where there was a possibility of something like that happening but it was a community defense situation, it would have been defending AGAINST Nazis. So that’s pretty much the area where violence comes in. I would say our philosophy is we comment combat racism and fascism by any means necessary but almost all of the time those means are not violent.

HOLLER:  So, I’m assuming you’re seeing what’s happening in the country right now…

Atlanta Antifa:  “Yes.”

HOLLER:  “…And there’s been a concerted effort by Republicans, the President, the right-wing, Fox News, and all the way down the line to state and local legislators on the right, to essentially lay this at the feet, in large part, of Antifa. What do you think when you see that?”

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well it’s sort of a wary disappointment because it feels like this has all been done before. It’s damaging I think because a lot of what is happening this weekend is a black-led reaction to white racist police violence and it shouldn’t really be about us. Although we are definitely very against racist beliefs, we are not planning or coordinating any of this. We are just supporting it. We are a small group, so our support mainly comes from monitoring these protests and trying to keep an eye out if any Nazis and far-right militia members are showing up so that we can warn people. That’s what we see as our function, but we have been sort of cast in the central role as the villain when we’re not even on the stage, let’s just put it that way. And it echoes back to the 1950s and 60s when racists were trying to discount the Civil Rights Movement which was led by black people they would say oh “they’re being puppeted by white Communists, it’s all outside agitators,” and I feel like people are reaching for that same playbook again and using us in order to discredit this other group. The other thing I want to say is that it’s dangerous because it encourages law enforcement to just crack down so much harder on people who are just trying to defend themselves against racists in their communities and these people may not have any connection at all to our group, which is a very specialized group in this tradition that I’m talking about going back to the 1980s, but anybody who says Nazis are bad now could be “ANTIFA” and will get cracked down harder on by police and law enforcement.”

HOLLER:  Right, meanwhile though there are videos all over the place of white people just dressed in all black running around being destructive, and we as the public have come to recognize mostly white people dressed in all black as Antifa. We’ve seen pictures of white supremacists dressing up as Antifa to create this narrative, but is it possible that there are actually people who consider themselves Antifa who are doing this?

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well, the situation is very chaotic and confusing, and the fact that there are white people causing damage, sometimes white people causing damage is it even political, like if you look at all these riots that happen after football. I think right now there’s a lot of different stuff happening and people do not want to examine the situation it is complexity, so they picked a very simple narrative, and the narrative a lot of people have picked are that we are the villain. I will say that that’s really our number one thing, is that we are trying to monitor any far-right people who have shown up at these protests that we can warn other protesters and track them, but it’s difficult because sometimes people hide their identities. We do think that sometimes the participation of white supremacists has been overstated though.”

HOLLER: So you’re involved with communication right? There’s something called The Torch Network?

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well, The Torch Network is just a loose affiliation of some Antifa groups such as us, Portland, and so on. It’s an information-sharing network connecting the larger groups. There a lot of Antifa groups that are not members of The Torch Network. But the thing to understand is it’s totally decentralized and autonomous, so anybody can say that they’re Antifa, and anybody can say that they’re not Antifa. So the fact that somebody who is white and wearing all black and is destroying something doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “Antifa.”

HOLLER:  So you are involved in the communication theoretically of whatever this the closest thing to the centralized communication that there is. Is the goal to go out there and cause chaos or is it the opposite?

Atlanta Antifa:  “It’s neither. We have no goal, actually. When it comes to this protest, we basically we support any black-led rebellion against racist policing, let’s just put it that way. We support, it but we don’t have a role in controlling it, and if we could then we wouldn’t because we don’t think that’s our role. I know that the popular that perception is, that Antifa is all white, but that’s actually not the case. People who are involved in these Antifa groups all stay anonymous because we don’t want Nazis trying to kill us, and there are definitely members of Antifa who are not white, but those members tend to stay even more anonymous because they get even more negative attention.

When it comes to the riots, I keep saying this but it’s totally true – if you talk to these other groups they’ll say the same thing, that we are not planning this. We are not saying okay this is the goal and go do it. When groups are coming together and they’re tearing down Confederate statues or making the police retreat, we’re going to cheer that on because we believe that that’s a good thing, against fighting racism and fascism, but we are not coordinating this. We are not the Puppet Masters.”

HOLLER:  Right, so now the President has essentially said that they’re going to declare Antifa as a terrorist organization. How do you feel about that?

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well you know like I said at the beginning, we’re kind of used to it at this point because he made the same threats last summer. We’re not sure if it’s even legal or Constitutional for him to do that, although I’m sure it will result in an increased law enforcement presence, but you know like I said, most of the stuff that we do is completely legal and covered under the First Amendment anyway. We think that the crackdown that will result will probably not affect groups like ours, although it may affect our social media and things like that, but it won’t affect us as much as it will affect every day just regular people who are accused of being our members.”

HOLLER: Right, so now they can declare anybody Antifa and treat them as terrorists.

Atlanta Antifa:  “Yes, exactly, in his supporters already think that they can do that. They’re all saying “you’re going to be dragged off to GTMO,” and having all these fantasies of violent retribution.”

HOLLER:  “We had a courthouse burned here, and they caught a guy who seems to have been involved. There was also a guy in all black right in front of him, and immediately the narrative was “oh he’s Antifa.” Fox Nashville came out and said that with zero proof of it. Meanwhile, he had what looked to be a white supremacist tattoo, and he’s from Nashville and has done other stuff here. When that happens is there any communication among you all to say that he was or wasn’t one of ours? Is there any way to validate or invalidate those kinds of claims?:

Atlanta Antifa:  “Well, we’re all about transparent communication and public service, so if I knew anything about that case that was helpful I would say it, but I don’t.”

HOLLER:  Gotcha, mean I wasn’t expecting that you knew anything about that case, I was Just saying is your group of where that that happened, and is there any communication among you saying does anybody know this guy or has anybody heard of this guy that kind of thing?

Atlanta Antifa:  “No.”

HOLLER:  Is there any desire on the part of Antifa to control the narrative?

Atlanta Antifa:  “We really can’t control the narrative because the nation has gotten so polarized at this point that the right-wing believes what they want to believe, and in many cases the mainstream media is taking their cues from the right. All we can do is just say the truth and hope people will pick up on it. Our business is not to go around avowing or disavowing all these different actions that are taking place this week, we’re just we’re not focused on that.”

HOLLER:  Got it. I think people will be interested to have heard from you, so is there any message that you have either for people who are supporting the feelings black people are having, or for those who are trying to blame you like the president? Is there anything that you want to say?

Atlanta Antifa:  “I think that we have to take care of each other, do a lot of mutual aid, support each other, and listen to each other. But that kind of listening and process it has to start from the bottom up. It can’t go from the top down. We have to listen to the people who are the most hurt, and the most powerless in society, and not go the other direction.”

HOLLER:  All right well I appreciate you doing this and be careful out there.

 

VIDEO: The Justin Jones & Jeneisha Harris Hearing

Video from the hearing of Justin Jones & Jeneisha Harris last week, presided over by openly bigoted D.A. Northcott, who says Muslims are “evil” and refuses to recognize the supreme court’s marriage equality ruling and treat LGBT people equally under the law (both stories broken by the Holler).

He also refuses to bring in the TBI to investigate Speaker Casada possibly framing Jones, even though they have offered (see below).300 Tennessee attorneys just filed a motion to have Northcott’s law license taken away.

The next hearing is August 15th at 9AM in Courtroom 4D.

 

VIDEO: MEET ZULFAT SUARA – Candidate for Nashville Metro Council At-Large

There are 15 candidates running for 5 at-large seats on the Metro Council in the August election. Zulfat Suara is the first Muslim woman to have ever run for any position in the state of Tennessee- she ran in 2014 in Bolivar, Tenn., for school board – and if elected, she will be the first Muslim, male or female, ever elected in Tennessee.

She has been the target of hate online, but she has persevered, and was just recently one of the candidates endorsed by the Tennessean.

We spoke with Zulfat in Nashville at a candidates picnic at Vanderbilt, where one of her daughters is enrolled in Medical school. Please watch and SHARE the video.

MEET ZULFAT:

GOV. LEE SIGNS FIRST KKK GRAND WIZARD DAY PROCLAMATION

From the Tennessean today:

Gov. Bill Lee has proclaimed Saturday as Nathan Bedford Forrest Day in Tennessee, a day of observation to honor the former Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader whose bust is on display in the state Capitol.

Per state law, the Tennessee governor is tasked with issuing proclamations for six separate days of special observation, three of which, including the July 13 Forrest Day, pertain to the Confederacy.

There have been repeated protests of the bust of Forrest, the KKK’s first Grand Wizard, which is still featured prominently in the Tennessee state legislature to this day.

The Tennessean reports that Lee said “I signed the bill because the law requires that I do that and I haven’t looked at changing that law.”

They also remind us that Lee was found to have worn confederate uniforms in college, which he now says he regrets:

Lee earlier this year said he regretted participating in “Old South” parties at Auburn University nearly four decades ago as part of Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity that lists Robert E. Lee as its “spiritual founder.”

The governor, a college student at the time, was also pictured in an Auburn yearbook dressed in a Confederate Army uniform, a common practice for members of the fraternity at the time.

“I never intentionally acted in an insensitive way, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that participating in that was insensitive and I’ve come to regret it,” Lee said in February.

Lee has said he may be open to “adding context” to the statue rather than removing it, but has done nothing to pursue that.

Rep. Bob Freeman has proposed replacing it with a women’s suffrage statue, and has vowed to introduce that legislation in the next session.

Holler at your reps to support Freeman’s legislation, and holler at Governor Bill Lee if you think he should not be reaffirming Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.

VIDEO: “My Uncle Is A Terrorist” – Detective Fritts’ Niece

Cherish Hope Newman, niece of Knox County Sheriff’s Detective/Pastor Grayson Fritts – who has called for the mass execution of LGBT people – speaks out.

She says that side of her family is “mostly full of racist bigots”, she won’t stand by silently as her uncle tries to turn Christianity into ISIS, and that God is a “merciful and loving God” who does not “hate” anyone.

Comment on her YouTube video HERE.

First spotted on WVLT.

 

John Oliver Gloriously Roasts Casada & Cothren

Beyond our wildest dreams we never would have imagined the great John Oliver shining his light on the ugliness that is Casadagate, but that glorious day has arrived.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear John Oliver say the words “Cade Cothren’s Rapidly-Expelled Ejaculate”, now is your chance.

We wish he would have mentioned his support for Rep. Byrd, and possibly framing Justin Jones, but hey- we’ll take what we can get.

VIDEO: The Saddest White Supremacist Rally In TN History

White supremacist Rick Tyler held a rally at UT-Knoxville, but his audience forgot to show up. Protestors outnumbered them 10-1. Sad!

Shout-out to Chris Irwin for the awesome trolling.

 

VIDEO: THE SPEAKER CASADA SUPERCUT

A lot has happened in the past 2 weeks, so here’s our super cut of some of it. Watch and share.

It’s time for Speaker Glen Casada to resign. If you agree, holler at him HERE.

 

Casada Speaks After Meeting with the Black Caucus

Here’s our twitter thread breaking down Casada’s press conference after he met with the Black Caucus. We’re putting it here for those who don’t follow us on Twitter.