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INSIGHT NEWS A love supreme September 10 - September 16, 2012 • MN Metro Vol. 39 No. 37 • The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • www.insightnews.com
Michelle Obama said Presidency revealed Barack
F
irst Lady Michelle Obama addressed her speech to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, September 4. Read excerpts of the speech below. The full speech can be read at www.insightnews.com I have seen it in the incredible kindness and warmth that people have shown me and my family, especially our girls. I’ve seen it in teachers in a near-bankrupt school district who vowed to keep teaching without
pay. I’ve seen it in people who become heroes at a moment’s notice, diving into harm’s way to save others…flying across the country to put out a fire…driving for hours to bail out a flooded town. And I’ve seen it in our men and women in uniform and our proud military families…in wounded warriors who tell me they’re not just going to walk again, they’re going to run, and they’re going to run marathons… in the young man blinded by a bomb in Afghanistan who said,
simply, “…I’d give my eyes 100 times again to have the chance to do what I have done and what I can still do.” While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country…and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President…like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys…Saturdays at soccer
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First Lady Michelle Obama
Photos: Harry Colbert, Jr.
Eric Hightower displays a bruised face, injuries he says he received at the hands of officers of the St. Paul Police Department
Eric Hightower (far left) stands alongside the Rev. Melvin Miller, St. Paul NAACP President, Jeffry Martin, Tyrone Terrill, chair of the AfricanAmerican Leadership Council, the Rev. Darryl Spence and Bishop Divar Kemp as Hightower’s attorney, Seamus Mahoney addresses the media during a recent press conference regarding the videotaped kicking of Hightower by a St. Paul police officer
Video captures cop kicking unarmed suspect By Harry Colbert, Jr. Contributing Writer Community leaders are calling on the St. Paul Police Department and its chief to harshly deal with an officer who is seen in a video kicking an unarmed man.
In a video that appeared on the urban website, www. worldstarhiphop.com, and quickly went viral, St. Paul Police Officer Jesse Zilge is seen kicking a man who lay in the street, seemingly gasping and posing no visible threat to the officer. The man, Eric
Hightower, 30, was spotted walking near Lewis Park in St. Paul when Zilge approached Hightower regarding an outstanding warrant. The incident occurred on Aug. 28. The video surfaced on the Web the next day. The video begins with
Hightower already on the ground and Zilge standing over him. Approximately 75 seconds into the taping, Zilge turns to Hightower, who is gasping and spitting on the ground, and kicks Hightower in the chest. Following the kick, other officers arrived, picked
Hightower off the ground and Zilge and another unidentified officer slammed Hightower on the hood of a squad car. Hightower was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking and making terroristic threats against an ex-girlfriend, which was the reason for the stop.
“No individual deserves this type of treatment,” said Bishop Divar Kemp, senior pastor of Life Changes Church. “This can never, ever happen again.”
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Race: The most fallacious and dangerous idea Notes on the struggle By Mahmoud El -Kati
The idea of “race” may be the most fallacious and dangerous idea in the history of myth and human imagination. In the early 1940s, Dr. Ashley Montagu, the eminent cultural anthropologist at Princeton University, titled his book “Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race.” It is
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a work, which both objectively critiques and morally attacks the false notion of “race” as an indicator of individual ability and cultural achievement. In many ways and by many years, Dr. Montagu presaged the emerging narrative on “race.” In contemporary American life,
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more and more, we hear voices from a cross-section of thought leaders viewing “race” as a “social construction,” with no biological reality. And so “the cat,” somewhat, is finally “out of the bag,” e.g. there are no super humans! This fanciful belief that we,
the human species, belong to separate and discrete aggregates has proved to be unscientific; that is to say, inconsistent with scientific truth, and therefore a gross distortion of who we are as human beings. Modern science, e.g., anthropology, repudiates the notion that to be Black,
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white, yellow, real or otherwise, does not inherently connect to one’s native intelligence, morality, or sensibilities. When we say “race,” it begins with a focus on physical traits, e.g., skin color, hair form,
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Full Circle The way to a man’s heart
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