These were not impressionable young teens. The youngest was 16, one was 17, the rest were adults. This kind of hate has to be taught. This is what all the hate preaching, the hateful right wing news media, and the republicans in congress are creating. But these people want this. They want these young people to act out, to cause harm and fear to the LGBTQ+ community. They glory in this, they delight if they can scare people into being afraid to be themselves. I won’t do that. I won’t hide.
Yesterday morning I got dressed up in my pride attire, a pride shirt, pride suspenders, pride belt, and a pride hat. I headed out to the local Publix by my house. Publix is a good store / company but the founders were are very Christian. Their policies are to hire a lot of disabled, they hire a lot of people from churches. They hire teens from church to be baggers and cart runners. Ron and I are known at the store with many hellos from the workers we see most often. There were not many people in the store. I got my items and went to the only manned register. There was a young man in his 20s who was dressed in the gray of manager, and a middle aged woman. Both greeted me super warmly, the young man had sparkles in his eyes as he saw all my pride stuff. He hung on my every word, offering to even help me unload my cart seeing my cane and struggles. I did it myself. He kept offering to walk out to my car with me and to load the stuff in the van, something Publix is great for, but normally it is not the managers that do it. I have had to use that help a few times. They refuse any attempt to tip, are supper friendly. I write all this to show that not all Christians people are bigots or teach hate.
This acceptance and tolerance of the LGBTQ+ is what was being taught in schools and social media. It was what led to so much progress. The hateful bigoted right is desperate to change that progress forward to equality, so they write don’t say gay bills, ban books and media, insist that only straight cis Christian things be seen in schools, libraries, and social media. The right haters are loud, vocal, and willing to spend their money as a group to get what they want. We in the LGBTQ+ community had better step up to the plate and play their game as seriously as they do. The haters have already caused some stores to avoid selling pride merch or supporting pride events. Or we will lose all the gains we have made. Hugs
People cross the rainbow crosswalks at the intersection of 10th and Piedmont in Midtown Atlanta in 2019. (Evey Wilson/WABE)
This story was updated on Tuesday, June 24 at 8:34 p.m.
Four teenagers were arrested early Tuesday morning and could face hate crime charges after police say they stole and cut up Pride flags outside one of Atlanta’s most well-known gay bars.
Atlanta police say they responded to a vandalism call at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday at the intersection of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue. Witnesses told police that six males stole Pride flags and were cutting them up with a knife and riding around on scooters in the middle of the intersection, the site of the rainbow crosswalks. It’s unclear where the flags came from.
“Upon spotting officers, the six males fled the scene on motorized scooters,” Atlanta police said in a statement. “Thanks to the rapid response of our officers, four of the six males were apprehended.”
4 suspects in Pride flag vandalism could face hate crime charges
A preliminary police investigation reveals that the group coordinated and drove from the Dallas and Cartersville areas to Atlanta. The arrestees are one 16-year-old juvenile from Taylorsville and three others from Dallas, Georgia: 17-year-old Geami McCarroll, 18-year-old Logan Matthison and 18-year-old Ahmed Mechkouri.
They were charged with obstruction, criminal damage to property, conspiracy and prowling. Atlanta police say that hate crime charges are pending, but a prosecutor would have to decide whether to file such charges. Georgia passed a hate crime law in 2020 that allows enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’s race, religion, sexual orientation or other factors.
Police also issued a citation to Aaron Petrus, the 41-year-old father of the juvenile, for failing to supervise his son.
The investigation into the incident is active and ongoing. Police are asking anyone with information about the two male suspects who got away to contact Crime Stoppers.
“We’ve got some pretty good leads,” Sgt. Brandon Hayes said at a Tuesday press conference. Hayes is the department’s LGBTQ liaison. “As far as video surveillance, there is video of the incident. We’re still looking into more to see what video we can gather from the local community. That’s still in progress.”
A message left for Blake’s on the Park was not returned. The incident comes during Pride Month and just two days before the 10th anniversary of same-sex marriage being legalized nationwide.
City of Atlanta chief equity officer Candace Stanciel said the incident was “the antithesis of who we are as a community.”
“Our Rainbow Crosswalk is a symbol for inclusion and freedom, giving the LGBTQ+ community a tangible place for fellowship, celebration and a sense of belonging,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. “Anyone who tries to disrupt these ideals or spread hate of any kind will be held accountable.”
A Fulton County grand jury indicted a Pennsylvania man for allegedly vandalizing booths and defecating on a Pride flag at a Global Black Pride event in Atlanta in August 2024. Prosecutors were seeking hate crime enhancements in that case as well.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated where the Pride flags were stolen from. It has been updated to reflect that police say it’s unclear where they came from.
June 24, 1948 In Washington, D.C. President Harry Truman signed the Selective Service Act, creating a system for registering all men ages 18-25, and drafting them into the armed forces as the nation’s military needs required.
June 24, 1948 In Germany, the Soviet Union denied permission for Allied (U.S., France or Great Britain) forces to travel over Soviet-controlled territory to reach Allied-controlled West Berlin; the roads were allegedly closed for repairs and electricity was cut off to West Berlin. This was a blockade of food and all other supplies to the western enclave within East Germany and its population of more than two million.
June 24, 1970 The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution, which had authorized the president “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States,” was used by President Lyndon Johnson, absent a formal congressional, and constitutional, declaration of war, to justify open-ended pursuit of war in Vietnam. The resolution was passed in August, 1964 following a provocation by the U.S. destroyer Maddox in North Vietnamese territorial waters, which was portrayed as aggressive military action by North Vietnamese PT boats.
June 24, 1980 A general strike was held in El Salvador against death squads, primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government’s counterinsurgency strategy. Salvadoran death squad destroying a village The U.S. government helped fund and train Salvadoran police forces. Questioned about the nature of the aid in a Senate hearing, Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Elliott Abrams said, “I think that government has earned enough trust, as I think we have earned enough trust, not to be questioned, frankly, about exporting torture equipment. But I would certainly be in favor of giving it to them if they want it.” Noam Chomsky on El Salvador
June 23, 1683 “Tamanend,” sculpture by Raymon Sandoval, 1995, Front & Market Street in Philadelphia. Chief Tamanend (The Affable), leader of the Pennsylvania’s thirteen Lenni-Lenape tribes, and other chiefs went to Philadelphia to meet with William Penn. Penn wished to buy four parcels of land (most of current Montgomery County), and the chiefs agreed to the sale, each making their mark on the deeds which had been translated for them. Soon thereafter, Penn met with Tamanend at Shakamaxon under a large tree later known as the Treaty Elm. Penn said, “We have come here with a hearty desire to live with you in peace . . . We believe you will deal kindly and justly by us, and we will deal kindly and justly by you . . . .” Tamanend offered, “We will live in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”
June 23, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led a massive march down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue followed by a speech to a rally in Cobo Hall. The speech was essentially the same as that he delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. two months later, known as “I Have a Dream.” Photo of King speaking in Detroit from the Wayne State University’s Reuther Archive.
June 23, 1966 High school students in Grenada, Mississippi, tried to purchase tickets in the downstairs “white” section of the local movie theatre. Black moviegoers had always been required to sit in the balcony under Jim Crow segregationist laws. When they were refused tickets, they sat down on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Fifteen were arrested, including Jim Bulloch, a Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) organizer, who was charged with “inciting to riot.” Jim Bulloch, one of the SCLC organizers in Grenada, Mississippi Grenada Mississippi, 1966, Chronology of a Movement
June 23, 1972 Life magazine published a photo by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of children running from an attack with Napalm, an incendiary chemical weapon used widely by U.S. forces to burn out the jungle, thus eliminating cover (foliage) for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. Napalm, a sticky mixture of gasoline, polystyrene and benzene that burns at very high temperature, had been used in WWII and Korea. Read about the photograph
June 23, 1972 The Education Amendments of 1972, commonly known as Title IX, became U.S. law, prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions. More infoText of the law
June 23, 1973 The International Court of Justice granted an injunction, requested by the Australia and New Zealand governments, against French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
I got a lot from reading and re-reading this. I tried to comment there, but WordPress sigh. Anyway, as a show of respect, here is this. Very good info and commentary
June 21, 1877 The Molly Maguires Four members of the Molly Maguires were hung for murder in what was then Mauch Chunk, and in Pottsville, towns in Pennsylvania’s Carbon County. The Molly Maguires was a secret and violent Irish-Catholic organization of coal miners formed to combat the oppressive working and living conditions in the anthracite coal region of the state. Readmore (2 links)
June 21, 1908 A Women’s Sunday Suffrage rally, supporting the right of women to vote, drew several hundred thousand to London’s Hyde Park from all over the country. Women were encouraged to wear “the colours” – white (for purity), green (hope) and purple (dignity) – and in “as fetching, charming and ladylike a manner as possible.” As the Yorkshire Daily Post put it: “At least one half of the crowd was composed of the sort of people you would expect to see at a suburban garden party.” The women’s suffrage movement
June 21, 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three young Freedom Summer workers, disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while registering negroes to vote. Their bodies were found six weeks later, having been shot and then buried in an earthen dam. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan eventually went to prison on federal conspiracy charges related to the disappearance; none served more than six years. Schwerner and Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined CORE in 1963. Read more and hear versions of Pete Seeger’s song, “Those Three are On My Mind” More on Chaney Read about the movie
June 21, 1997 100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper workers in Detroit after nearly two years on the picket line. support rally march 1, 1997 photo: Paul Felton The Detroit Newspaper Agency (DNA) had refused to bargain in good faith (later confirmed by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board), even after the union members had worked for months without a contract, and the DNA, which ran both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, had begun to impose the changes they had been insisting on at the bargaining table.
After reflecting further on Piers Akerman’s recent assertion that my analysis of the situation in the Middle East was “utter bullshit” and not tethered to reality, I realised how angry that made me feel. As a white, elderly, Anglo-Saxon male, I believe I have earned the right to be most distressed by Western privilege and the arrogance which so often distorts reality, much like a fairground mirror. It paints Palestinians as irrational terrorists and Iranians as fanatical mobs, erasing the colonial fingerprints smeared across their histories. That is the real bullshit.
Take Iran: a democracy overthrown in 1953 by Anglo-American operatives for the crime of nationalizing its oil. The CIA’s coup reinstated the Shah—a tyrant whose torture squads (trained by SAVAK and Mossad) disappeared thousands. When Iranians finally revolted in 1979, the West recoiled not at the Shah’s brutality but at the loss of a pliant client. Now, the same powers that strangled Iranian democracy lecture its theocrats on human rights—a grotesque pantomime.
I am sorry to say that Netanyahu embodies this hypocrisy. He rails against Iran’s “aggression” while annexing Palestinian land, arms settlers who burn olive groves, and starves Gaza into submission. His hysteria over Iran’s nuclear program (still unproven after decades of sanctions) mirrors the WMD lies he helped sell in 2003. Remember his cartoon bomb stunt at the UN? Pure theatre. What truly terrifies him isn’t ayatollahs with centrifuges but a regional order where Israel isn’t the unchecked hegemon.
The West has perfected a sinister alchemy of psychological inversion—an Orwellian recalibration of language that transforms resistance into terrorism, domination into peace, and sovereignty into existential threat. When Hamas fires rockets, it’s decried as barbarism, while Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian land vanishes from view like morning mist. Apartheid walls that carve up stolen territory are rebranded as “security measures”, their concrete brutality softened by bureaucratic euphemisms. Iran’s civilian nuclear program sparks apocalyptic warnings, while Israel’s arsenal of 90 thermonuclear warheads—never inspected, never acknowledged—sits quietly in the Negev desert. This linguistic jujitsu doesn’t merely describe reality; it manufactures it, ensuring Western audiences see only mirrors and shadows where power and oppression stand plain as day.
I urge you to consider that none of this emerged in a vacuum. The US and UK engineered the Middle East’s instability—from Sykes-Picot’s arbitrary borders to arming Saddam against Iran, then crying havoc when blowback came. October 7th didn’t erupt from ancient hatreds; it was the predictable eruption of a people caged, humiliated, and drone-struck for generations. To focus solely on Hamas’ atrocities while ignoring Israel’s 56-year occupation is like condemning a burning man for screaming.
There can be no meaningful progress without first confronting uncomfortable truths. The West must reckon with its destructive legacy—the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran that strangled democracy, the 1967 war that birthed an occupation now in its sixth decade, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on fabricated WMD claims. These aren’t ancient histories but open wounds that continue to shape regional dynamics. Pretending otherwise isn’t diplomacy; it’s willful blindness.
Netanyahu’s hysterical warnings about “existential threats” must be exposed for what they are—not genuine security concerns but a naked fear of justice. His real nightmare isn’t Iranian centrifuges but the collapse of the apartheid system that preserves Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Every settlement expansion, every Gaza blockade, and every racist nation-state law reveals the true project: not coexistence but permanent domination.
We must fearlessly reject the false symmetry of “both sides” narratives. While Israelis live with the psychological trauma of potential violence, Palestinians endure the daily reality of military checkpoints, land theft, and indiscriminate bombardment. Comparing Hamas rockets to Israel’s occupation is like comparing a slingshot to a tank battalion—technically both weapons, but existing in fundamentally different universes of destructive power. True peace begins when we stop equating the oppressed with their oppressors.
The future demands more than temporary ceasefires. It requires dismantling the myths that let the West play both arsonist and firefighter. Otherwise, we’re just counting the days until the next explosion.
Scottie's Playtime 