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Proviso Probe

Friday, August 24, 2007

PETA writes to Maywood Village President Henderson Yarbrough

PETA press release:
This morning, PETA sent a letter to Maywood Mayor Henderson Yarbrough Sr. and the Village of Maywood Trustees urging them to enact legislation that would ban the use of bullhooks, electric prods, and other devices commonly used to inflict pain on elephants. PETA's request comes in light of Carson & Barnes Circus' scheduled August 31-September 3 visit to Maywood. Carson & Barnes is a chronic violator of the federal Animal Welfare Act, and its animal care director has been caught on videotape viciously attacking elephants with bullhooks and electric prods. PETA points out that similar legislation is already pending in Chicago and has requested to meet with Mayor Yarbrough and the village trustees to discuss making next weekend's Carson & Barnes performances the last time that these instruments are used against elephants in Maywood.

A wise anarchist once made an argument that resonated with me. He said that anti-abortion activists and animal rights activists were both activists who wanted to take on morally black-and-white cases.

Because animals and fetuses lack the capacity to make moral decisions or judgments they can never disappoint their advocates. Anti-abortion activists and animal right activists have staked out a niche where they will never be disappointed by the entities they advocate for.

If someone advocates for poor people, women, veterans, immigrants, African-Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis, there will always be individuals who behave badly. And the opposition is always able to throw an anecdote of someone behaving badly in the face of the activist.

But animal rights activists and anti-abortion activists don't have to worry about this.

BTW, Angry Black Bitch wrote about the Michael Vick case. I disagree with her somewhat, but she makes some interesting observations.

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4 Comments:

  • Among other conclusions reported by the Post:

    -- Blacks are more likely than whites or Hispanics to be victims of crime.

    -- Blacks are more likely than any other group to be victims of "serious violent crime," such as rape, assault and robbery.

    -- Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be confronted with a firearm during a crime.

    "Overall, the new Justice findings jibe with previous studies," said the Post. "For example, a review of FBI data from 2004 by the Violence Policy Center, a liberal-leaning group that campaigns for stricter gun control laws, found that blacks accounted for about half of the nation's murder victims that year."

    "Black victimization is a real problem, and it's often black on black," said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Toledo who studies crime statistics.

    "Often"? Correction, Harris. As the Post reports and Justice concedes, in more than nine out of 10 cases, black victims are murdered by fellow blacks.

    Utterly absent from the Post story and Justice Department stats is anything about white victims of crime. Not a word. Do white folks not count, though they are two-thirds of the population?

    Yet, in "The Color of Crime: Race, Crime and Justice in America," produced by the "right-leaning" New Century Foundation in 2005, using the same FBI and Justice surveys, startling facts emerge:

    -- "Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against other blacks." Forty-five percent of the victims of violent crime by blacks are white folks, 43 percent are black, 10 percent are Hispanic.

    -- Blacks are seven times as likely as people of other races to commit murder, eight times more likely to commit robbery and three times more likely to use a gun in a crime.

    -- "Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit violent crime against a white person than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery." (If decent black folks have trouble hailing a cab, and they do, these numbers may help explain it.)

    -- Black-on-white rape is 115 times more common than the reverse.

    Even the two most famous sexual assaults by white men on black women in the last two decades -- the Tawana Brawley and Duke rape cases -- turned out to be hoaxes.

    What do these statistics tell us? A message the Post will not report. The real repository of racism in America -- manifest in violent interracial assault, rape and murder -- is to be found not in the white community, but the African-American community. In almost all interracial attacks, whites are the victims, not the victimizers.

    Why does the Post not report such statistics? My guess: Because the stats would shatter the Post's cultivated image of America as a land where white racism is the great lurking malevolent monster. Stories that conform to the image get play. Stories that contradict it are buried.

    But, if the Bush Justice Department is doing in-depth studies on black victims of crime and who is responsible, why not one on the victimization of Americans of all colors and who is responsible?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:25 PM, August 25, 2007  

  • There seems to be a bit of confusion as to what Dissolution entails/ involves,
    how the process works and what good it would do.

    The process can be initiated by petition of registered voters or by motion of the Board of
    Education. (another subtle hint to Bob Cox).

    Once put on the ballot, the question to the voters would be: Shall School District 209 be dissolved. Yes or No.

    If the Yes side prevails, there would no longer be a District 209. There would still be schools and classes and teachers, taxes and everything else that happens. Instead of being run by the current structure, it would be monitored and administered by a State appointed
    Transition Authority.

    In effect, it would create 10 free agent communities who would be required to submit an education plan to the State within a set time period. During that time, Proviso East, West and PMSA would go on “normally”. An audit of district 209’s assets and liabilities would take place and each of the communities would be assigned their shares. Nothing would be liquidated. There would NOT be an instant exodus or collapse. It would simply begin a process of community-based discussion and decisions for the betterment of all concerned.
    The books would be opened and available for inspection, evaluation and objective scrutiny.

    The goal of dissolution is a district or districts that serve and reflect the community, meet or exceed the state standards, have the support and confidence of the citizens and are
    better positioned to meet challenges in the future. Each community would assess its present / future needs, wants and desires, and determine what is best for them.

    It would be a search for common ground and provide a vehicle to attain what people have said they’ve wanted from our public high school all along. 209 is a relatively wealthy district with a strong tax base. There is a strong sense of civic pride within each of the individual communities. There is also a strong resentment toward 209’s using them against each other to maintain control.

    It would be naïve to think that the current power players would not seek to take advantage of this opportunity, but they would control nothing unless approved by the citizens, state board and, more likely than not, the courts.

    The criteria would be community based, with oversight. Studies could be made of any and all possible permutations of the current alliances and potential mergers so that all interests are protected and the outcome, while not without risk, will truly represent what
    people want and expect from a community-based high school.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:57 AM, August 26, 2007  

  • How did dissolution get into this post? It may be off-topic but the post is relevant because some of the people that are advancing the concept of dissolution seem to be bigots. Information has been collected in regard to bigoted statements made by some of these people or their supporters and will soon be disseminated to people across District 209 through the print media, at local church gatherings, political get-togethers, etc.

    The dissolution movement, like a stinky bowel movement, is designed for the relatively well-off Caucasians to shit all over the Blacks and Hispanics --- again.

    The movement seems to have had its beginnings in Forest Park where a group of individuals want to run their own schools, pearly white schools, and discard people of color to rubbish bin schools in other areas. Surely, these individuals have all sorts of rationalizations for dissolution just as the Ku Klux Klan had all sorts of rationalizations for their philosophy (some of which were actually published on The Probe). They'll talk about their tax dollars going to waste, how they want their children to get the best education possible, and how dissolution will be good for everyone in District 209. Don't you believe these statements for a minute. Look below the surface at who is advancing these statements. What race are they? What is their socioeconomic level? What people of color endorse or even condone the idea of dissolution? Once you get the answers to these questions, you'll be able to clearly see the hidden agenda ... that they want their sons and daughters Kyle, Bruce, Samantha to be as far as away as they can be from Tyrone, Willie, Aracely,Jesse, and Tunisia.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:27 PM, August 26, 2007  

  • This idea of Diss-the People of Color-Solution reminds me of the when the Southern states wanted to secede from the Union rather than allowing Blacks to control their own destinies.

    It seems bigotry will be here forever, doesn't it?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:30 AM, August 27, 2007  

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