Insight ::: 01.16.2023

5 MLK QUOTES TOO RADICAL TO WHITE-WASH 5 MLK TOO RADICAL TO WHITE-WASH

It happens every year on Martin Luther King Jr. day, and it’s happening right now.

Well-meaning people share his more palatable, more agreeable statements while avoiding the simple fact that MLK held very radical views throughout his life, and those views are just as applicable today.

Here are a few of our favorites… “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

A Time to Break the Silence: April 4, 1967

“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power”.

—King to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) board on March 30, 1967.

“…the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction.”

—The American Dream: July 4, 1965 “White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.”

—Where Do We Go from Here? 1967 “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves

out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans…These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.”

— Where Do We Go From Here: 1967

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

—Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”

—The Three Evils speech, 1967

Posted in 2021 by City Heights Community Development Corporation, San Diego, CA

MONOPOLY TM, ® & © 1935, 2022 HASBRO. Must be 18+ to play.

How those who want to divide us use language to stoke violence

By H. Colleen Sinclair Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology, Louisiana State University

Events like the riots in Brazil, the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection two years before it and the mass shooting at the Colorado LGBTQ nightclub each occurred after certain groups repeatedly directed dangerous rhetoric against others. It’s the reason elected officials in the U.S. have begun examining the role language plays in provoking violence. As a social psychologist who studies

dangerous speech and disinformation, I think it’s important for citizens, legislators and law enforcement alike to understand that language can provoke violence between groups. In fact, there are different types of threat in rhetoric that in-groups – people we identify as “us” – use to trigger violence, against out-groups –people we perceive as “them.”

In my research, I call dangerous speech that paints outsiders as threats “threatoric.” Using this type of dangerous speech allows in-groups to justify violence as a defense against out-groups. For instance, recent polls indicate that 40% of people who primarily consume far-right news sources believe

that “true patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save” the country. Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens parroted this sentiment in a campaign ad while he was seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. In the ad, Greitens called for allies to “Get a RINO (Republican in Name Only) hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit. No tagging limit. And it doesn’t expire – until we save our country.”

Drawing on an array of scientific theories that recognize the key ingredients driving conflict between groups, I have identified five basic types of threatoric.

1. Physical threats – They are

going to harm us

Threatoric that paints the out-group as likely to physically harm or kill members of the in-group falls into this category. For example, ingroups sometimes use disease to paint the out-group as a threat to the in-group’s physical well-being. The accusations people lodged against Asian Americans and immigrants throughout the COVID-19 pandemic are examples.

In-groups also cast out-groups as physically aggressive or violent criminals for the same reason. Masters of threatoric are particularly fond of portraying out-groups

THREATS 7

Judiciary panel OKs bill to amend MN Human Rights Act to prohibit hair discrimination

By Tim Walker House Session Daily

People in this country and in this state have experienced discrimination at school, at jobs, and elsewhere based solely on the appearance of their naturally occurring hair, according to Rep. Esther Agbaje (DFL-Mpls).

She sponsors a bill to specify that racial discrimination prohibited under the Minnesota Human Rights Act would include discrimination based on “traits associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and hair styles such as braids, locs, and twists.”

HF37 was approved, as amended, on a voice vote by the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee Thursday and sent to the House Floor.

While the bill would apply to all hairstyles, Black people have been particularly burdened by discrimination based on hair, said Agbaje, who has felt pressure to straighten her hair out of fear of losing a job or not being taken as seriously in the workplace.

“(The bill would) ensure that people have the freedom to show up as they are and who they are in schools and at work, and focus at the task at hand rather than worrying about if their hair will be the cause for the loss of an education, or the loss of earning an income,” Agbaje said.

A similar bill sponsored by Agbaje last session passed the House but was not acted on by the Senate.

The language in the bill comes from the CROWN Act, which stands for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” and been adopted by more than a dozen states. “Black hair discrimination is racial discrimination,” said Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero.

Because courts decide discrimination cases based on explicit wording in laws, Lucero said it’s important the language be incorporated to provide clear guidance to judges that hair discrimination is real and is covered under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

Rep. Brian Johnson (R-Cambridge) asked whether the proposed changes would prevent employers from restricting certain hair styles based on existing laws on workplace health and safety.

Lucero said there would be no conflict with those laws as long as they were applied equally to all employees and not just those of one race.

By Craig Helmstetter

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s most recent Mood of the Nation Poll, conducted November 14-18, 2022, finds that a much higher proportion of Democrats than Republicans say that they trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that they believe FBI agents are fair.

In addition, the survey finds that a higher proportion of younger Americans believe that the FBI is biased against groups on the left, whereas larger proportions of older generations distrust the FBI due to a perceived bias against former President Trump.

Trust in the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Half of Americans trust the FBI either “most of the time” (40%) or “just about always” (10%). This is significantly higher than Americans’ trust in the federal government more generally; about one-quarter of Americans trust “the government in Washington” to do what is right either “just about always” or “most of the time.”

Trust in the FBI is significantly higher among Democrats than either Republicans or political independents. 

Only 4% of Republicans indicate that that they “just about always” trust the FBI to do what is right, compared with 17% of Democrats. 

Only 7% of Democrats indicate that they “hardly ever” trust the FBI to do what is right, compared with 30% of independents and 32% of Republicans.

Perceptions of potential bias within the FBI

Poll respondents were also asked to respond to a question which further probed their perceptions of the FBI: Still thinking about the FBI,which of the following comes closest to your opinion (even if none are exactly right)? 

Many FBI agents do not enforce the law fairly, because they are biased against former President Trump and his agenda 

Many FBI agents do not enforce the law fairly, because they are opposed to

liberals and groups like Black Lives Matter 

Many FBI agents do not enforce the law fairly, because they are poorly trained and not very competent

Most FBI agents enforce the law fairly, and criticisms of the FBI are unfair

Overall, a two-in-five plurality of Americans indicate that they believe FBI agents are fair. Here again, the largest group-to-group differences follow political allegiances, with half of all Republicans favoring the statement indicating perceived bias

against

The survey also found that generational differences in perceptions of FBI bias are also fairly pronounced.  Only 31% of Generation Z indicated that they feel FBI agents are fair, compared with 50% of the Silent Generation.

Thirty-eight percent of

Generation Z indicates that FBI agents are biased against groups

Bills safety Hamlin back in Buffalo to continue recovery

By John Wawrow and Carolyn Thompson Associated Press

Bills safety Damar Hamlin said he returned to Buffalo on Monday “with a lot of love on my heart” to continue his recovery in a hospital there, a week after going into cardiac arrest and having to be resuscitated on the field during a game in Cincinnati.

Hamlin was discharged from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in the morning and flown to western New York. He was listed in stable condition at Buffalo General Medical

“I can confirm that he is doing well. And this is the beginning of the next stage of his recovery,” said Dr. William Knight, one of his doctors in Cincinnati.

Doctors said Hamlin has been walking since having a breathing tube removed on Friday, eating regular food and undergoing therapy. They said he was on a normal or even accelerated trajectory in his recovery from cardiac arrest, which is considered a life-threatening event, and that normal recovery can be measured from weeks to months.

former President Trump. Among Democrats, over half favored the statement indicating that they perceived FBI agents to be fair.

Center/Gates Vascular Institute.

Rep Esther Agbaje

Photo by Atahan Guc on Unsplash

photo/Greg M. Cooper

FILE - Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin (3) leaves the field after an NFL football game against the New England Patriots, Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, in Foxborough, Mass. Quick onthe-field emergency care from well-rehearsed medical personnel is widely credited with helping save Damar Hamlin’s life. But whether his cardiac arrest could have been prevented is much less certain.

Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images

Military police clash with supporters of Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro after an invasion to Planalto Presidential Palace in Brasilia on January 8, 2023.

“Sometimes I sit counting the stars. Maybe one is my mamma and one is my daddy. And maybe that’s why sometimes they flicker a bit.” – Lonnie, Locomotion

audience into the life of 11-yearold Lonnie Motion, as he finds new tools - the result of a school poetry assignment – which help him to process the tumult of life in foster care. As Lonnie discovers the power of poetry, he experiences deeper connections to his new foster mother, his school friend Enrique, his teacher Ms. Marcus, and his beloved younger sister Lili.

Jacqueline Woodson is a renowned and best-selling author of works for children, middle-grade readers, young adults, and adults. In 2020, she received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius” grant. Woodson, best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming and her Newbery Honorwinning titles After Tupac and D Foster; Feathers; and Show Way, served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. In 2018- 2019, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020.

Locomotion was a finalist for the National Book Award, and author Jacqueline Woodson has adapted her acclaimed work for the stage. CTC’s production is directed

by Talvin Wilks, an awardwinning playwright, director, and dramaturg.

Locomotion plays from January 24 – March 5, 2023 at CTC’s Cargill Stage, 2400 Third Avenue South Minneapolis. Opening Night is Saturday, January 28 at 7pm. Tickets may be purchase online at childrenstheatre.org/ locomotion or by calling the ticket office at 612.874.0400. Ticket prices start at $15. “I am so excited to see Locomotion’s story on stage again,” says Playwright Jacqueline Woodson. “The story is one that is timely and timeless and speaks to all people, young and old.”

“Locomotion is a very important work in our current era of more diverse storytelling,” says Director Talvin Wilks. “The opportunity to see a young Black male’s journey as a universal story of overcoming hardships and the challenges of adolescence is vital and revelatory. That CTC is making a commitment to diversifying the canon of young protagonists is an important and vibrant investment, not only for youths of color to see themselves and their experiences on stage, but for all youth to begin to broaden their understanding of

universality, the act of seeing oneself through the lives of others. This opportunity is a great gift for our new era of awareness, and Jacqueline Woodson has created a story for everyone, a story that I am very excited to realize on stage.”

“We are thrilled to bring Jacqueline Woodson’s Locomotion to our community,” said Artistic Director Peter C. Brosius. “This brilliant book which was a National Book Award Finalist and a Coretta Scott King Honor book was adapted by Jacqueline herself and she has created a play filled with friendship, poetry, and the struggle to hold unto your family. These are characters who you cannot forget and who will absolutely fill you with joy. We are also hugely excited to welcome Talvin Wilks to CTC as the director. Talvin’s work has been seen across the nation and here in town at Penumbra and it is a delight to have Jacqueline’s words and images being brought to the stage with Talvin’s vision and heart.”

Locomotion Written and Adapted for the Stage by Jacqueline Woodson Directed by Talvin Wilks

January 24 - March 5, 2023

Cargill Stage This production is best enjoyed by everyone age 9 and up.

Lap passes will not be available for this production.

Runtime: 1 hour (no intermission).

Adult Cast

Charla Marie Bailey | “Mama/Ms. Edna/Ms. Marcus” Darrick Mosley* | “Daddy/Agency Man”

Student Cast

Mollie Allen | “Lili” Ellis Dossavi | “Enrique” Junie Edwards | “Lonnie”

Understudies

AmirByrd | “U/S Lonnie” De’Anthony Jackson | “U/S Enrique”

Rue Norman | “U/S Mama/Ms. Edna/Ms. Marcus” Mari PetersonHilleque| “U/S Lili” Glenn E. Williams II | “U/S Daddy/Agency Man”

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers.

Experience this Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) presents Jacqueline

Woodson’s Locomotion, a heartfelt and hopeful story of family, friendship, and the power of finding your voice January 24 - March 5, 2023. Adapted from Woodson’s own book, the production will be directed by Talvin Wilks. Locomotion takes the

Jacqueline Woodson

Talvin Wilks

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, a new in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century. Directed by Tracy Heather Strain, produced by Randall MacLowry and executive produced by Cameo George, the film premieres on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on Tuesday, January 17, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS Video app.

Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.

Immersing herself in the worlds of her participants, Hurston focused on building trust. She interviewed Cudjo Lewis, one of the last known surviving Africans of the slave ship Clotilda, collected folklore at lumber camps, phosphate mines and turpentine distilleries and studied “hoodoo” in New Orleans. Her techniques paid off, yielding a plethora of material, which Hurston turned into a series of papers, plays and stories. By 1932, she had been published twice in the Journal of American Folk-Lore.

In 1936, with the help of two Guggenheim fellowships, Hurston traveled to

Haiti and Jamaica and focused on her literary and scientific work. While in Haiti, she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, mixing memory, fiction and research. In 1937, the novel was published to acclaim, followed by Tell My Horse, her second ethnographic book, in 1938. But royalties from both books were not enough to give Hurston financial security.

Despite her success, the end of Hurston’s life was marked by money woes and a multitude of setbacks. To make ends meet, she published her autobiographical book Dust Tracks on a Road in 1942. While the book helped establish her as a literary celebrity, Hurston still struggled financially. She eventually landed in the Black community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where she worked a series of odd jobs.

On January 28, 1960, at the age of 69, Zora Neale Hurston died in near obscurity following a stroke in a nursing home. Although now heralded as a great literary figure, her work in anthropology — and her pivotal role in elevating Black culture and folklore — is only now being fully appreciated.

Credit: Yale University Library “Zora Neale Hurston has long been considered a literary giant

of the Harlem Renaissance, but her anthropological and ethnographic endeavors were equally important and impactful,” says AMERICAN EXPERIENCE executive producer Cameo George. “Her research and writings helped establish the dialects and folklore of African American, Caribbean and African people throughout the American diaspora as components of a rich, distinct culture, anchoring the Black experience in the Americas.”

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Zora Neale

Hurston: Claiming a Space will stream simultaneously with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS. org and the PBS app available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. The film will also be available for streaming with closed captioning in English and Spanish.

About the Participants Lee D. Baker is a professor of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and author of From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 18961954 and Anthropology and the

Racial Politics of Culture.

María Eugenia Cotera is an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latino Studies Department at the University of Texas and author of Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita González, and the Poetics of Culture.

Eve Dunbar is a professor of English at Vassar College and the author of Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers Between the Nation and the World and co-editor of African American Literature in Transition: 1930-1940.

Carla Kaplan is the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Northeastern University and author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance.

Charles King is a professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University and the author of The New York Times bestselling Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century.

Daphne Lamothe is a professor and chair of

the Department of Africana Studies at Smith College and author of Inventing the New Negro: Narrative, Culture, and Ethnography.

Irma McClaurin is an activist bio-cultural anthropologist who studies the social construction of inequality, poet, the editor of Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics,

Praxis, and Poetics, and founder of the Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Tiffany Ruby Patterson is an associate professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and the author of Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life.

Zora Neale Hurston

as predators of our society’s protected or vulnerable – groups like women, children and the elderly. Such characterizations make the out-group seem deplorable and action to “protect” the vulnerable seem noble.

Periodically, from as far back as the Middle Ages, different in-groups have leveled so-called “blood libels” against Jews, alleging the murder of Christian children as a part of a ritual. Today, we see echoes of this in QAnon conspiracy theories that accuse liberals of trafficking children. As a consequence, QAnon believers want to “save the children” and are willing to use violence to deal with the alleged threat.

2. Moral threats – They are degrading our society

Someone in an in-group who perceives the out-group as degrading society’s cultural, political or religious values casts the out-group as a moral threat.

For example, people frequently target members of the LGBTQ community with this sort of threatoric. Some believe homosexuality is morally wrong. And there are people who argue same-sex marriage poses a danger to marriage itself.

During the previous Congress, a Republican congresswoman crying on the House floor before the chamber signed the Respect for Marriage Act is one case in point. People have blamed the alleged immorality of the LGBTQ community for everything from natural disasters to terror attacks. And accusations that LGBTQ people are indoctrinating and grooming children are mainstays of political threatoric increasingly peddled today.

Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education bill, controversially called the Don’t Say Gay bill by some opponents and the Anti-Grooming bill by some proponents, prohibits

3. Resource threats – They are taking from us

Sometimes, members of the in-group portray the outgroup as a competitor for valued goods. We see this in the classic Robber’s Cave Experiment, in which boys attending a summer camp were arbitrarily divided into two groups – Rattlers and Eagles – and made to compete for valued resources. Animosity and conflict between the groups grew quickly.

To amplify perceptions of resource threats, people often play up the perception that access to resources is a zerosum game. If the out-group gets access to the desired resource, it will mean little to nothing is left for the in-group. The most common example in this type of threatoric is the accusation that immigrants are “stealing our jobs.” This threat can be extended to casting the outgroup as receiving an unfair share of other resources, like education, scholarships, health care or social services.

4. Social threats – They are obstacles to us

When members of the in-group blame the out-group for costing the in-group social status or access to important relationships, they are employing social threats. This can be triggered by demographic shifts in population. Alternatively, when in-group members view their status as undesirable, they can look to an out-group to blame. There are often themes of entitlement in this rhetoric, in which the speaker feels he is owed a certain social standing or relationship. For instance, among the Incel movement, a subculture of involuntarily celibate people – mostly men –rage against women for denying them sexual relationships is common. This rage can have lethal consequences, as in the 2018 shooting during a yoga class in Tallahassee, Florida. A man killed two women and injured six others.

5. Self threats – They make us feel bad

Lastly, the ingroup sometimes feels as if its collective self-esteem is threatened by the out-group, such as when they perceive that the out-group is dehumanizing them. This can lead to thinking along the lines of “they hate us, so we hate them.” Just search for “libtard” or “repugnican” on Twitter for examples. But in this case, the level at which the out-group is perceived as engaging in this derogation is exaggerated and ignores similar behavior by the in-group. The insults hurled by the other group are always cast as worse than any used by the in-group. This threatoric is particularly evident among political partisans.

In some cases, particularly when there has been historic conflict between groups, there is past evidence of a group actually representing a threat. But threatoric minimizes transgressions by the in-group and paints the out-group as essentially toxic to the in-group, threatening anything from their self-image to the lives of those they care about. The greater the perceived threat, the more justified extreme action appears. It becomes an “us or them” narrative.

Numerous studies over decades of research on intergroup conflict have supported this link between perceived threat and hostility and conflict. Even now, we see this playing out in our streets as, for the first time in history, half of all extremist attacks have been occurring during politically polarized demonstrations. We see it in the manifestos of known killers.

In America, we are fond of the idiom, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” However, we fail to acknowledge that no one throws those sticks and stones without reason. Threatoric gives us that reason.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Phyllis Wheatley Community Center believes in prioritizing peace above conflict, rejecting hate in favor of love, and helping people find their individual pathways to self-sufficiency. We support individuals on pathways to discovering their strengths, building the skills they need to leverage their talents for success, and taking control over their own futures. We believe in community as a source of strength, support, and opportunity, and strive to serve as a beacon of hope, offering services designed to break cycles – of violence, trauma, and hopelessness – and turn poverty to prosperity, disadvantage to resilience.

Be a part of our evolution this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. By choosing acceptance and love, and to weaken the power of revenge, aggression, and retaliation in our community, city, country, and world. “Man

teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in certain classrooms.

Change in trust and perceived bias over the past 4 years

From

on the left, an option chosen by none of the respondents from the Silent Generation.

From 3

Americans’ trust in the FBI at the end of 2022 is very similar to the level of trust found in a 2018 Mood of the Nation Poll that asked the same questions. However, the 2018 poll found lower levels of trust in the federal government.

“We continue to be ecstatic about his recovery,” Dr. Timothy Pritts said.

Hamlin’s return comes a day after he cheered on the Bills from his hospital bed during their regular season-ending 35-23 win over

The 2018 poll also found a somewhat higher proportion of respondents indicating that FBI agents are fair, and a somewhat lower proportion indicating that the FBI is biased against groups on the left than is the case in the late 2022 poll.

the New England Patriots. The game proved to be a cathartic outpouring of support for the Bills and Hamlin.

“Headed home to Buffalo today with a lot of love on my heart,” Hamlin said in a tweet. “Watching the world come

PARTNER FOR THIS SURVEY

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State promotes scholarship and practical innovations that defend and advance democracy in the United States and abroad. Through teaching, research and public outreach, the Institute

together around me on Sunday was truly an amazing feeling.”

Hamlin was so excited watching teammate Nyheim Hines return the opening kickoff 96 yards for a touchdown that “he jumped up and down, got out of his chair,

leverages the resources of Penn State and partners around the world to foster a model of deliberation, policymaking and responsiveness that is passionate, informed and civil.

The Institute’s Mood of the Nation poll offers a unique approach to public opinion polling. It allows Americans to

set every alarm off in the ICU in the process,” Pritts said with a laugh. “But he was fine. It was just appropriate reaction to very exciting play.”Pritts said it was still premature to comment on the potential cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest and that

speak in their own words through open-ended questions that focus on emotions like anger and hope, as well as commitment to constitutional principles.

For earlier findings from our collaboration with the McCourtney Institute, see our Mood of the Nation landing page.

more testing would be done.

“The goal of the transfer .... is to get him closer to home for further evaluation, recovery and eventually discharge and rehabilitation,” Buffalo General Medical Center/Gates Vascular Institute said in a news release.

The Bills wore No. 3 Hamlin patches on their jerseys Sunday and honored their teammate by raising three fingers in the closing minutes, while tight end Dawson Knox celebrated his touchdown by forming his hands into the shape of a heart. Fans joined in, with many holding up red heart and No. 3 signs.

“The same love you all have shown me is the same love that I plan to put back into the world n more,” Hamlin tweeted Monday. Bills coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane briefly saw Hamlin after he landed in Buffalo.

“We’re happy to have him back.” McDermott told reporters on a conference call. “He’s a little bit tired, but it was good to get to see him in person for the first time in a while.”

The 24-year-old from the Pittsburgh area has made significant progress in his recovery since spending his first two days at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center under sedation and breathing through a ventilator. He was awakened on Wednesday night and was eventually able to grip people’s hands. By Friday, Hamlin was able to breathe on his own and even addressed the team by videoconference, telling the Bills, “Love you boys.”

The last update from doctors came on Saturday, when they described Hamlin’s neurological function as “excellent,” though he remained listed in critical condition.

Pritts said doctors were able to upgrade his condition from critical on Monday, clearing the way for the flight home.

“We want to ensure that each organ system is stable to improving and that he needs a minimal amount of assistance such that he does not need intensive nursing,” Pritts said. “We have some awesome rock star nurses who’ve been with him from the beginning, but he no longer needs that level of nursing care and no longer needs intensive respiratory therapy from our respiratory care practitioners and is able to then move to a setting where he would have less intensive care.”

A doctor accompanied Hamlin to the airport. Doctors declined to speculate about whether Hamlin would be able to attend a game in person. By beating New England, the Bills (13-3) clinched home-field advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs. Buffalo is preparing to host division rival Miami in a wild-card playoff matchup on Sunday.

“Right now it’s just a young man recovering from a very serious illness, and we think that he will recover well from this,” Pritts said. “He has a great positive attitude.”

Hamlin’s heart stopped on Monday night after making what appeared to be a routine tackle in the first quarter against the Bengals. The game was initially suspended before officially being canceled later in the week.

News of Hamlin’s discharge from the hospital in Cincinnati was greeted with enthusiasm.

“That’s unbelievable,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said.

“I mean, just think about it — that was one week, not even a week ago. There’s no one in this room that would have expected he’d be in Buffalo,” he added. “God is great. He works miracles. This is certainly a miracle, there’s no question. ... And just an amazing moment for Damar.”

AP Sports Writer Mitch Stacy in Cincinnati contributed to this report.

AP NFL: https:// apnews.com/hub/nfl and https:// twitter.com/AP_NFL

Hamlin