Category: Racism

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arrested at ICE detention facility in NJ

https://pix11.com/news/local-news/newark-mayor-ras-baraka-taken-into-custody-by-ice-in-new-jersey/

This is selective persecution which is illegal.  So if this ever goes to court he will have the charges dismissed.  In the meantime the hate party cult of tRump just made him a front runner for the mayoral election.  Hugs.

 

by: , , 

Posted: 

Updated: 

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for allegedly trespassing at an ICE facility in New Jersey on Friday afternoon, authorities said.

“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Alina Habba, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, posted on X.

Baraka was taken to an ICE field office at 620 Frelinghuysen Ave. in Newark, according to his office. The charges have not been announced.

“We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available,” his representatives said.

Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.

In video of the altercation shared with The Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the logo of the Homeland Security Investigations can be heard telling Baraka he could not join a tour of the facility because “you are not a congress member.”

Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”

“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.

Minutes later several ICE agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. As protesters cried out, “Shame,” Baraka was dragged back through the security gate in handcuffs.

“The ICE personnel came out aggressively to arrest him and grab him,” said Julie Moreno, a New Jersey state captain of American Families United. “It didn’t make any sense why they chose that moment to grab him while he was outside the gates.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that as a bus of detainees was entering the detention center, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin was quoted in the statement as calling it “beyond a bizarre political stunt” and saying it put agents’ and detainees’ safety at risk.

“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility,” McLaughlin said.

The department said the facility has the proper permits and inspections have been cleared.

The Newark mayor was visiting Delaney Hall to conduct oversight after the building was turned into an ICE facility.

Delany Hall was leased for $63 million annually from a private prison group known as The GEO Group. The city of Newark is suing for more inspections, claiming ICE has not indicated how many detainees it has in the building – which can only house 1,000 people.

Baraka said on Monday that the issues at Delany Hall go beyond the lack of safety inspections and proper permits.

This is a developing story please check back for updates.

Dominique Jack is a digital content producer from Brooklyn with more than five years of experience covering news. She joined PIX11 in 2024. More of her work can be found here.

–Associated press material was used in this report.

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Pride events are very expensive to put on.   Most of the cost is security and insurance.  The more threats from haters, normally fundamentalist religious people, the more security needed and the more costly insurance is.  It is another weapon the haters of the LGBTQ+ community have learned to use to shut down events for people they hate.  So much for freedoms these people keep demanding for themselves but want to deny to others.   Hugs

 

May 7, 2025

New York City’s NBC affiliate reports:

Kehlani ‘s planned concert in Central Park next month has been canceled after New York City’s mayor raised security concerns about the R&B star’s performance during Pride month, organizers announced Monday.

The “After Hours” singer had been set to headline a June 26 concert billed as “Pride with Kehlani” at the Manhattan park as part of SummerStage, an annual slate of free concerts at parks across the city.

But organizers, in their announcement, cited concerns from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration about the “controversy surrounding Cornell University’s decision to cancel Kehlani’s concert at the University, as well as security demands in Central Park and throughout the City for other Pride events during that same period.”

The Cornell Sun reports:

Following the April 10 announcement of Kehlani as the original Slope Day headliner, some students and parents criticized the artist’s anti-Israel rhetoric and social media presence. Cornellians for Israel also launched a petition against the selection of Kehlani as the Slope Day headliner that accumulated over 5,000 signatures.

Cornell revoked Kehlani’s invitation to headline Slope Day over what President Michael Kotlikoff labeled “antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments.”

But the cancellation sparked criticism from student groups about freedom of speech and institutional neutrality. The Community Slope Day Instagram account urged students to “boycott Slope Day,” writing that Kehlani’s “opposition to the genocide in Palestine isn’t hateful” and that the decision was made “without representative input of the student body.”

It doesn’t appear that Kehlani has any affiliation with NYC Pride itself. The cult is celebrating the cancellation. The recent single below has 32 million views on YouTube.

They’re doing it again, they are so messed up and hurtful. They are destroying everything they touch Part 2

House Panel Approves Sale Of UT And NV Public Land
OK Resolution Asks SCOTUS To Overturn Obergefell
Trump Admin Uses Tariffs To Extort Starlink Contracts
Anti-Vax “Wellness Influencer” Named Surgeon General
US Demands That Stockholm End Diversity Policies

Trump & Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver discusses the recent deportations by the Trump administration, the conditions in the facility people are being sent to abroad, and why even Henry Winkler could be in danger of being expelled from the U.S. Yeah, even national treasure Henry Winkler.

US Complicity In Israel’s Gaza Starvation Is Policy, Not Accident

Trigger warnings for starving and abused kids / people.   Sadly this is what the US government is supporting and keeping other world leaders from stopping.   This was because Biden was an old person who remembered being part of Israels founding and thought they were so important that it excused everything they did.  tRump doesn’t care about the human cost, he wants the value of the land or as much of the share he can get.  This is sickening.  Personal note.  I was so lacking nutrition in my childhood that my childhood doctors were concerned enough to tell my adopting mother if I did not get more food I would never see five feet in height.  I ended up in a child ICU rushed to the hospital by my grandfather and I had clinical death.  Hugs

 

They’re doing it again, they are so messed up and hurtful. They are destroying everything they touch Part1

Trump Suggests He Can Defy The US Constitution

WELKER: Your secretary of state says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree?TRUMP: I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.WELKER: Don't you need to uphold the Constitution?TRUMP: I don't know

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-05-04T13:58:54.479Z

DOJ Unit To Focus On “Voter Fraud” Not Voting Rights

In November, Dhillon appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to recount “all the crimes committed by Kamala Harris.”

Trump Admin Rehires Prominent “Plandemic” Covidiot
Trump Defends Cost Of Birthday Parade: “It’s Peanuts”

Other estimates have placed the cost of the parade at twice the $45 million cited by NBC.

Trump On US Invading Canada: “It Could Happen”
WH Gives Trump Evil Sith Lightsaber In Star Wars Day Message To “Radical Left Lunatics” Who Love MS-13
Ford Motor: Tariffs Will Cost Us $1.5 Billion This Year
FAA Orders Ground Delay For Newark Airport Amid Reports That Controllers Lost Contact With Aircraft
House GOP Battles Over Major Cuts To Food Stamps
Supreme Court Allows Trans Military Ban To Take Effect

BREAKING: The Supreme Court halts a district court injunction that had blocked Trump's ban on transgender military service. SCOTUS is clearing the way for Trump to enforce his purge of transgender troops. All three liberals dissent. http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25…

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2025-05-06T18:02:54.696Z
GOP House Reps Blast MTG’s “Gulf Of America” Bill
Top Pentagon Nominee To Senators: Sorry About All Those Times I Called Obama “Muslim Terrorist Leader”
GOP Rep: First Person Sent To Alcatraz Should Be Fauci
Second $67 Million US Fighter Jet Falls Into Ocean
DeSantis Signs Fluoride Ban, Attacks Fauci And Vax
GOP Rep Thinks San Diego Borders Gulf Of Mexico
WSJ: US Intel Agencies Ordered To Spy On Greenland
ICE Raids Restaurant Owned By CBS Anchor’s Husband
ICE Agents Raid Posh Washington DC Restaurants
US Will Now Refer To Persian Gulf As “Gulf Of Arabia”
764,000 Have Lost Money On Trump’s Grift Coin Scam

Peace & Justice History for 5/7

May 7, 1954
The battle at Vietnam’s Dien Bien Phu ended after 55 days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French colonial forces, and forcing their surrender. An agreement for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva, Switzerland.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946.

French prisoners being marched by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954
May 7, 1955
The Reverend George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in his hometown of Belzoni.

Rev George Lee
The county sheriff had initially refused to accept Reverend Lee’s poll tax (a tax collected before someone was allowed to vote, which became unconstitutional in 1964), but he was later allowed to vote after contacting federal authorities. That, and the subsequent registration of 92 other negro citizens he helped register, angered some white residents of the county.
His assailants were never caught, and Reverend Lee is considered the first martyr of the civil rights movement. 
More on Reverend Lee 
May 7, 1984

American veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court settlement with seven chemical companies in a class-action suit relating to use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate jungle cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S. military presence.
Book review about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange 
May 7, 1996
15,000 protesters demonstrated against the import of French nuclear waste to Gorleben, Germany. Water cannons were used to disperse the crowd.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may7

LGBTQ advocates celebrate wins after Pride flag banning bill and others fail this Session

LGBTQ advocates celebrate wins after Pride flag banning bill and others fail this Session

I think the tide is turning and the superexpressive attacks on the LGBTQ+ people, both adults and kids is not working well for republicans.  I think they will see at local levels people are not buying it and are working to stop efforts to wipe all mention of LGBTQ+ people from society.  Hugs

Gabrielle RussonMay 3, 2025

‘This is more than a policy victory,’ Equality Florida said.

LGBTQ advocates are celebrating several bills — including one that could have banned Pride flags flown at government buildings — stalling out this Session.

“Once again, we’ve done what many thought was impossible: not one anti-LGBTQ bill passed this session,” Equality Florida’s Executive Director Nadine Smith said in a statement Saturday.

The Legislative Session ended Friday although lawmakers failed to pass a balanced budget.

Some of the dead bills including HB 75/SB 100 that would have banned government buildings, schools and universities, from flying flags that represented a “political viewpoint.”

The proposal was sponsored by outgoing state Sen. Randy Fine before he left for Washington, D.C.

“How would we feel if the city of Palm Bay or the city of Ormond Beach flew the Make America Great Again flag from City Hall? How would we feel if a teacher hung that in their classroom?” Fine said during a March committee hearing. “The idea is whether it’s political viewpoints that we agree with or we disagree with, let’s keep that stuff out of government buildings.”

Equity Florida lobbied against the bill with its public policy director Jon Harris Maurer calling the flag ban “unnecessary, unclear, unconstitutional and dangerous.”

“It does not help Floridians struggling with insurance and housing affordability,” he said. “Instead, it is a made-up solution to a culture war for political purposes, but it will have real harms.”

Ultimately, Fine’s bill was withdrawn, failing to reach the Senate floor.

Equity Florida also heralded the defeat of other bills, including HB 1495/SB 440 to prevent governments from using the preferred pronouns for people who are transgender and other bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI.)

The organization pointed to its grassroots campaign this Session with 400 LGBTQ activists lobbying during “our largest largest advocacy week ever,” 16,000 emails sent to lawmakers and about 325 in-person meetings with legislators.

“It’s students and seniors, faith leaders and frontline workers, parents and teachers, standing together and making sure lawmakers hear us loud and clear: we will not back down,” Smith said in a statement.

Gabrielle Russon

Gabrielle Russon is an award-winning journalist based in Orlando. She covered the business of theme parks for the Orlando Sentinel. Her previous newspaper stops include the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Toledo Blade, Kalamazoo Gazette and Elkhart Truth as well as an internship covering the nation’s capital for the Chicago Tribune. For fun, she runs marathons. She gets her training from chasing a toddler around. Contact her at gabriellerusson@gmail.com or on Twitter @GabrielleRusson

4 Dead in OH; When The Sense Of The Congress Was Nuclear Freeze; and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/4

May 4, 1961
A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, DC for New Orleans in a first challenge to racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals; it was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). 
The Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery before traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Read more about the freedom riders  
50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 
May 4, 1970
Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-war protesters
at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others,
one permanently disabled.

The previous day, President Nixon had announced a widening of the Vietnam War with bombing in neighboring Cambodia.

There were major campus protests around the country with students occupying university buildings to organize and to discuss the war and other issues.
Read more about that day at Kent State with pictures 
May 4, 1983
A “sense of the Congress” resolution, intended to urge a halt to all testing of nuclear weapons, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives (287-149). The support for a nuclear freeze, ending all American and Soviet nuclear weapons testing, was widespread. In ballot resolutions in 25 states, the freeze had passed in all but one, losing in Arizona by just two points.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may4

1st Broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Fire Hoses in Birmingham, and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/3

May 3, 1808
Civilians were executed by Napoleonic forces putting down a rebellion by the citizens of Madrid, Spain on Principe Pio Hill. The event was memorialized in the painting by Francisco de Goya, “The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid.” Aspects of the painting inspired the design of the peace symbol by Gerald Holtom in 1958.
May 3, 1886

At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a rally was being held because of a strike at the McCormick Harvester plant, just two days after an enormous May Day turnout. Though the mass meeting was peaceful, a force of 176 police officers arrived, demanding that the meeting disperse. Someone, unknown to this day, then threw a bomb at the police.
In their confusion, the police began firing their weapons in the dark, killing at least three in the crowd and wounding many more. Seven police died (only one by the bomb), the rest probably by police fire.
Read more 
May 3, 1963
In Birmingham, Alabama, Public Safety Commissioner and recently failed mayoral candidate Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor used fire hoses and police dogs on children near the 16th Street Baptist Church to keep them from marching out of the “Negro section” of town.

With no room left to jail them (after arresting nearly 1000 the day before), Connor brought firefighters out and ordered them to turn hoses on the children. Most ran away, but one group refused to budge.
The firefighters turned more hoses on them, powerful enough to break bones. The force of the water rolled the protesters down the street. In addition, Connor had mobilized K-9 (police dog) forces who attacked protesters trying to re-enter the church.
Pictures of the confrontation between the children and the police were televised across the nation.
Read more about the Birmingham Campaign
May 3, 1968
More than 100 black students took over a building at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. They were demanding attention to their advocacy for inclusion of African-American history, literature and art in the curriculum. Their efforts led to the establishment of an African-American studies department which now offers a doctoral program.
How it happened 
May 3, 1971
The Nixon administration ordered the arrest of nearly 13,000 anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe who had begun four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C. on the first. They aimed to shut down the nation’s capital by disrupting morning rush-hour traffic and other forms of nonviolent direct action, skirmishing with metropolitan police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the capital.
The slogan of the Mayday tribe: “If the government won’t stop the [Vietnam] war, we’ll stop the government.“
Read more 
May 3, 1971
The first broadcast of National Public Radio’s evening news and public affairs program, “All Things Considered,” was aired on about 90 public radio affiliates around the country. The main story was the disruptive anti-Vietnam protests in Washington.It is now the fourth most listened-to radio program
in the U.S.

More about that first program 
May 3, 1980
Sixty thousand marched on the Pentagon to urge the end of U.S. military involvement in El Salvador.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may3