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Meet the People Trying to Prevent Minority Voters From Bailing on Trump

by FlorPilgrim353 Posted on August 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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With less than 100 days to go until the election, the Donald Trump campaign will officially launch its outreach effort to black voters on Sunday at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For some of the prominent Trump backers taking part in the event, it’s the culmination of a monthslong fight to keep minority support for the Republican candidate from crumbling altogether amid a seemingly endless series of scandals that have prompted charges of racism.

The National Diversity Coalition for Trump, a group originally conceived after a contentious meeting between Trump and black ministers last year, began operations in April. The coalition, a volunteer effort that is not formally connected to the Trump campaign, is the brainchild of a handful of vocal Trump supporters. Bruce LeVell, a black businessman and Georgia delegate to the Republican National Convention, serves as the organization’s executive director. Michael Cohen, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and Darrell Scott, a black Cleveland-area pastor, are also leaders of the group. Omarosa Manigault, a former Apprentice contestant who serves as Trump’s director of black outreach and will deliver a sermon at Sunday’s event, was vice chair of the coalition prior to joining the campaign. The group’s advisory board includes leaders of groups such as American Muslims for Trump, African-American Pastors for Trump, and Korean Americans for Trump.

Despite abysmal poll numbers, members of the coalition contest the perception that Trump is struggling among nonwhite voters. “There are a lot of minorities who are for Trump, but the media doesn’t report that,” Dahlys Hamilton, a coalition adviser and the founder of the conservative group Hispanic Patriots, says in an email. Hamilton is currently helping the group plan its Hispanic outreach strategy.

Coalition members have become some of Trump’s most reliable media surrogates, frequently making appearances on television and radio in an effort to cast the candidate in a better light. It’s not surprising that media bookers turn to them, given the dearth of prominent Trump supporters of color.

The coalition is attempting to reverse a precipitous slide in minority support for the Republican Party. After Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, party insiders wrote an “autopsy” of the election that called for bringing more nonwhite voters into the party, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced a $10 million minority outreach initiative the next year to aid in the effort. This year, polls in some states show minority support for Trump far below Romney’s numbers. (An online poll conducted by Florida International University and Adsmovil and released Wednesday found Trump with one-third the support among Latinos in Florida that Romney had.) Earlier this week, Sally Bradshaw, a longtime adviser to Jeb Bush and one of the co-authors of the autopsy, said she would leave the Republican Party rather than support Trump. “Ultimately, I could not abide the hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump and his complete lack of principles and conservative philosophy,” she told CNN.

Even within a party that has struggled to attract voters of color, Trump has seemed to go out of his way to turn off one minority group after another. First, of course, there was his wall to prevent Mexican “rapists” and drug dealers from entering the country. Then came his ban on Muslim travel, his frequent retweeting of white supremacists, skirmishes between black protesters and Trump supporters at rallies, his suggestion that a federal judge was biased because of his Mexican heritage, and, most recently, a feud with the parents of a Muslim American Army captain killed in combat in Iraq.

“There is a deliberate effort by the Clinton campaign to label him as a racist,” says Paris Dennard, a member of the coalition’s advisory board and a black outreach staffer at the White House during George W. Bush’s second term. “Hillary Clinton can only win this election by voter suppression, by stopping Republicans, independents and moderates from voting for Trump.”

Members of the coalition say Trump hasn’t been given a chance to explain how his policies will help minority communities and argue that the candidate’s racially charged rhetoric on the campaign trail does not match his behavior in private meetings. They believe his business experience, his stance on criminal justice reform, his positions against free trade and outsourcing, his call for limiting immigration, and his support of school choice will appeal to conservative nonwhite voters frustrated by the Obama presidency. (Trump’s campaign website does not list a specific justice reform platform, but the candidate has said he wants a return to “law and order,” using misleading interpretations of crime data to argue that “this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement” has caused an increase in crime.)

Changing the narrative around the Trump campaign hasn’t been an easy task. At times, the coalition has been hindered by its lack of official status in the campaign. According to NBC, when the group held its launch meeting at Trump Tower in April, members spent more time going through security than interacting with Trump. Last month, BuzzFeed reported that Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager until June, complicated the diversity coalition’s attempts to guide Trump’s minority outreach strategy when he “made the decision that the campaign would not launch outreach initiatives in favor of a broader message aimed at the entire country.” NBC notes that when the coalition met with Trump in April, Lewandowski was not in attendance.

In July, with Lewandowski gone, several members of the group spoke onstage at the Republican National Convention, and the Trump campaign has reportedly hired several staffers to work on minority outreach efforts. At a press conference last week, Trump told reporters that his campaign would hold a news conference discussing its Hispanic outreach effort sometime “over the next three weeks.” On Sunday, Manigault told NPR that the campaign has created a “76-page strategy” targeting black voters. Manigault did not respond to a request for comment.

But the outreach efforts have come against the backdrop of an exodus of minority staffers from the GOP leadership. The Republican National Committee’s director of Hispanic media relations left the organization in June amid reports that she was “uncomfortable” working with the Trump campaign. In March, the RNC’s director of African American outreach became the fourth black staffer to leave the committee in the past year, although people who know her said she didn’t leave because of Trump.

The Trump campaign has turned down numerous invitations to speak before prominent minority organizations like the NAACP, the National Association of Black and Hispanic Journalists, and the National Urban League. In June, the National Council of La Raza, one of the largest Hispanic civil rights organizations in the country, announced that it would not invite Trump to speak at its annual conference, citing his “indiscriminate vilification of an entire community.” A meeting with Hispanic community leaders in Florida has been rescheduled multiple times in the past month, and an event with Hispanic business leaders in Texas was scrapped entirely.

If recent polls are any indication, the coalition faces an uphill climb as it tries to win over minority voters. A June Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 89 percent of Hispanic voters surveyed viewed Trump negatively, suggesting that despite an ongoing debate over the accuracy of polls measuring Trump’s level of support among Latinos, it is unlikely that he will win more Latinos than the roughly 40 percent George W. Bush managed in 2004 or the 27 percent won by Romney in 2012. Among black voters, things are even worse: Last month, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed zero percent support for Trump among African Americans living in Ohio and Pennsylvania, key battleground states this year.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday showed Trump garnering 17 percent support among nonwhite respondents nationwide. Among black voters, Trump had just 1 percent support.

The National Diversity Coalition is unfazed by those numbers. “You can pick a poll and find what you want,” says Dennard. “There are a lot of black people that will not come out and say that they will support Donald Trump, but will pull the lever for him in November.”

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Meet the People Trying to Prevent Minority Voters From Bailing on Trump

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We’re starting to understand just how Zika and climate change go together

by Sal05Hrbzqzqh Posted on August 5, 2016

We’re starting to understand just how Zika and climate change go together

By on Aug 4, 2016

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

Athletes and tourists converging on Brazil this week are crowding into a country where rapid environmental change and natural weather fluctuations nurtured a viral epidemic that has gone global.

The Zika virus has exploded throughout South America, up through Mexico and Puerto Rico and into Florida, but the conditions it needed to fester in northern Brazil were rooted in urbanization and poverty. The initial Brazilian outbreak appears to have been aided by a drought driven by El Niño, and by higher temperatures caused by longer-term weather cycles and by rising levels of greenhouse gas pollution.

A truck sprays insecticide near grounds workers at Olympic media accommodations as part of preventative measures against the Zika virus.REUTERS/Chris Helgren

This combination of human and natural forces is emerging as the possible incubator of a disease that’s painfully elusive to detect, despite its cruel effects on unborn children.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an unprecedented domestic travel advisory this week, warning pregnant women to avoid a Miami neighborhood where more than a dozen Zika cases were confirmed.

The warning came six months after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency “of international concern” in Brazil, where the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics is scheduled for Friday.

Most Zika infections produce no symptoms, turning their hosts into unwitting harbors for the disease, which is mainly spread through mosquito bites. Unborn children risk microcephaly when their mothers are infected, meaning their heads are small — the result of unusual brain development.

While the effects of El Niño and other weather cycles are beyond the control of humans, the recent spread of the disease into the U.S. is a savage reminder of the heavy toll that humans are taking on their planet — and of the potential for those changes to bite back.

Climate Central research recently showed that warming temperatures have lengthened the mosquito seasons in three quarters of major cities in the United States.

For Americans unaccustomed to fearing tropical diseases at home, the northward march of the outbreak is delivering an exotic threat. Researchers are warning that the disease could reach the halls of power in Washington D.C. and the dense metropolis of New York.

Mosquitoes rely on water to breed and flourish, yet a drought that beset northern Brazil amid a heatwave in 2014 and 2015 — while the disease was stealthily taking root — is thought to have worked in the mosquitoes’ favor.

That’s because households began storing more water, ushering breeding mosquitoes and their larvae inside their homes. Like other developing countries, many in Brazil lack regular access to piped water.

“If you have a drought, you don’t have reliable water access, and that makes you go and get water and store,” said Sadie Ryan, a medical geographer at the University of Florida. “By storing it, you’re creating mosquito habitat.”

Small puddles and ponds of water that accumulate in urbanized areas also tend to favor the lifestyles of the types of mosquitoes that spread Zika, compared with those that tend to thrive in more remote regions. Ryan called these types of mosquitoes “urban capable.”

“In South America up to the ‘70s, there was a really big push for vector control,” Ryan said, referring to efforts to control mosquito populations, such as spraying insecticides. “Then the money went away for it.”

Meanwhile, temperatures have been rising globally because of the polluting effects of fossil fuel-powered industrialization, deforestation and livestock farming, and natural climate cycles have been exacerbating the rate of warming in some places, such as in northern Brazil and California. That’s significant, because mosquitoes can only survive above certain temperatures.

“Once you’re over that minimum temperature, there’s nothing killing the vector,” Ryan said. “There’s nothing slowing it down.”

In a February letter published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, the University of Haifa’s Shlomit Paz and Jan Semenza of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported discovering a “striking overlap” between areas in Brazil that were afflicted by extreme weather linked to El Niño, and areas where Zika was lurking one month later.

More recently, a team of American and Venezuelan scientists took a closer statistical look at the relationship between climate and the Zika outbreak, and reported that El Niño and climate change were not the only important factors — though they were both important.

While the team blamed El Niño for the drought that fueled the Zika outbreak, they concluded that climate change and long-term weather cycles, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is a long-term cycle in trade winds that influences surface temperatures globally, played important roles in pushing temperatures up to those favored by Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

The findings were hurriedly pre-published without being peer reviewed on the website bioRxiv. That provided health officials and policymakers with rapid information about the findings while the details continue to be reviewed and improved.

Anthony Janetos, a professor of earth and environmental studies at Boston University, who wasn’t involved with the recent study, warned that it does not definitively prove the links that the researchers reported.

Because of that, Janetos criticized the researchers for their choice of headline for the paper, which states that the Zika epidemic was “fueled by climate variations.”

“If they’d been able to show that the same patterns occurred in other outbreak regions, such as Puerto Rico, then their circumstantial case would be stronger,” Janetos said. “But they haven’t done that.”

Ángel Muñoz, a climate scientist with affiliations at Princeton and Columbia universities who led the research, acknowledged Janetos’s criticisms, and he said the headline would be changed prior to final publication.

“This paper is not an answer for a lot of the questions that we have, but it’s an important step,” Muñoz said.

“It’s not possible right now to show a formal link between Zika and climate, because no one has enough data,” Muñoz said. “You need years, not months.”

With models warning that the epidemic will worsen before it begins to improve, the human suffering that’s expected in the months and years to come may help scientists continue to tease apart roles of natural forces in driving the outbreak from those of climate change and other problems caused by humans.

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We’re starting to understand just how Zika and climate change go together

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Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet

by Myrna Posted on August 2, 2016

Scientists have some bad news for Earth. Bernhard Staehli/Shutterstock This story was originally published by the Guardian. The world is careening towards an environment never experienced before by humans, with the temperature of the air and oceans breaking records, sea levels reaching historic highs and carbon dioxide surpassing a key milestone, a major international report has found. The “state of the climate” report, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with input from hundreds of scientists from 62 countries, confirmed there was a “toppling of several symbolic mileposts” in heat, sea level rise and extreme weather in 2015. “The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Michael Mann, a leading climatologist at Penn State, told the Guardian. “They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.” Last year was the warmest on record, with the annual surface temperature beating the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit). This means that the world is now 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, largely due to a huge escalation in the production of greenhouse gases. The United Nations has already said that 2016 is highly likely to break the annual record again, after 14 straight months of extreme heat aided by a hefty El Niño climatic event, a weather event that typically raises temperatures around the world. The oceans, which absorb more than 90 percent of the extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, also reached a new record temperature, with sharp spikes in the El Niño-dominated eastern Pacific, which was 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) warmer than the long-term average, and the Arctic, where the temperature in August hit a dizzying 8 degrees C (14.4 degrees F) above average. The thermal expansion of the oceans, compounded by melting glaciers, resulted in the highest global sea level on record in 2015. The oceans are around 70 millimeters higher than the 1993 average, which is when comprehensive satellite measurements of sea levels began. The seas are rising at an average rate of 3.3 millimeters a year, with the western Pacific and Indian Oceans experiencing the fastest increases. These changes are being driven by a CO2 concentration that surpassed the symbolic 400 parts per million mark at the Mauna Loa research station in Hawaii last year. The NOAA report states that the global CO2 level was a touch under this, at 399.4 ppm, an increase of 2.2 ppm compared to 2014. NOAA said other “remarkable” changes in 2015 include the Arctic’s lowest maximum sea ice extent in the 37-year satellite record, recorded in February 2015. The world’s alpine glaciers recorded a net annual loss of ice for the 36th consecutive year and the Greenland ice sheet, which would balloon sea levels by around 7 meters should it disintegrate, experienced melting over more than 50 percent of its surface. The rapid changes in the climate may have profound consequences for humans and other species. In June last year, a severe heat wave claimed over 1,000 lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Severe drought caused food shortages for millions of people in Ethiopia, with a lack of rainfall resulting in “intense and widespread” forest fires in Indonesia that belched out a vast quantity of greenhouse gas. Diminishing sea ice is causing major walrus herds to haul themselves out on to land. Arctic marine species, such as snailfish and polar cod, are being pushed out of the region by species coming from further south, attracted to the warming waters. A huge algal bloom off the west coast of North America harmed marine life and fisheries. Scientists have said there were underlying climate change trends at play but last year was also influenced by the strong El Niño event, which is when equatorial Pacific waters warm, leading to an array of weather effects around the world. El Niño has also helped spur searing heat in 2016 but has now petered out. Thomas Karl, director of NOAA national centers for environmental information, said that last year’s climate “was shaped both by long-term change and an El Niño event. When we think about being climate resilient, both of these time scales are important to consider. “Last year’s El Niño was a clear reminder of how short-term events can amplify the relative influence and impacts stemming from longer-term warming trends.” Kate Willett, a senior scientist at Britain’s Met Office, said that there was a 75 percent annual increase in the amount of land that experienced severe drought last year. “Looking at a range of climate measurements, 2015 was yet another highly significant year,” she said. “Not only was 2015 the warmest year on record by a large margin, it was also another year when the levels of dominant greenhouse gases reached new peaks.” The state of the climate report is now in its 26th year. The peer-reviewed series is published annually by the American Meteorological Society. Read more:  Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet ; ; ;

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Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet

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Here’s a Cure for America’s Latest Zika Panic

by SamaraWaylen4 Posted on July 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Health officials have reported that four cases of Zika in Florida were likely spread from person to person by domestic mosquitoes. This is the moment Democratic politicians—and a few southern Republicans—have been warning about. The finding is bound to create a lot more scary rhetoric and dire headlines.

But here’s the thing: There’s no need to freak out—not yet, at least.

We knew this was going to happen. Back in May, I spoke with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is leading US efforts to create a Zika vaccine. Here’s what he said:

It is likely that we will have restricted local transmission—small local outbreaks? My call would be that we will. Because we’ve had dengue and chikungunya, which are in the same regions of South and Central America and the Caribbean, and are transmitted by exactly the same mosquito. Historically we’ve had small local outbreaks of dengue in Florida and Texas, and a small local outbreak of chikungunya in Florida, which makes me conclude that sooner or later, we have going to have small local outbreaks of Zika—whether that’s five cases or 30—likely along the Gulf Coast.

This is exactly what we’re seeing. And why is this not a huge problem? Because we’re almost certainly not going to let it become one. Just as Fauci predicted, this likely outbreak—scientists haven’t actually found any infected mosquitoes yet—is highly isolated. According to the New York Times, the suspected “area of active transmission is limited to a one-square-mile area” near downtown Miami.

Aedes aegypti, the most likely culprit, is what University of California-Davis geneticist Greg Lanzaro calls a “lazy mosquito.” It doesn’t fly far. In its entire lifespan of two to three weeks, it might travel a few hundred meters, another expert told me. So it’s not coming for you. The mosquitoes that picked up the virus may be limited in to one small neighborhood.

Here’s what happens when we have such an outbreak: Mosquito-control workers and public health officials swarm all over it. Aegypti is an elusive little bugger, but you can bet that within that one square mile, eradication specialists and epidemiologists will be going house to house until they get to the bottom of this, figure out where the aegypti are breeding, and wipe them out.

Compared with, say, Puerto Ricans, Americans are also protected by our lifestyle. People in the Deep South tend to have air conditioning and screens on their windows. We also don’t usually store drinking water in open containers, as families often do in the tropics. We spend more time indoors, out of the heat. And all of this helps minimize contact with the mosquitoes. Consider that before Zika became a problem, as Fauci mentioned, we also had periodic outbreaks of dengue and Chikungunya, spread by the same mosquito. As I pointed out previously:

When was the last time you worried about Chikungunya or dengue—or malaria, for that matter? Those diseases are far scarier than Zika. WHO estimates (conservatively) that malaria infected at least 214 million people last year and killed 438,000, mostly children under five. Then there’s dengue, named from the Swahili phrase ki denga pepo (“a sudden overtaking by a spirit”)—which tells you something about how painful it is. Each year, dengue, also called “breakbone fever,” infects 50-100 million people, sickens about 70 percent of them—half a million very severely—and kills tens of thousands. Brazil, in addition to its Zika problem, is experiencing a record dengue epidemic. Health authorities there tallied 1.6 million cases and 863 deaths last year—and the 2016 toll is on track to be worse. Zika is seldom fatal.

This doesn’t mean we should ignore the latest news, of course. If you’re pregnant, especially in southern Florida, you’re probably already taking precautions to avoid mosquito bites, like using repellents and eliminating any standing water on your property. FDA officials are asking people in Miami-Dade and Broward counties to refrain from giving blood until we know what’s going on. But most Americans, even most southerners, have little reason to freak out.

Only one of the six scientists I interviewed was concerned that Zika might take off in the continental United States. “You would never see Zika virus, Chikungunya virus, or dengue virus sweep across the country the way West Nile did, even in the regions where these mosquitoes are,” UC-Davis epidemiologist Chris Barker told me. “Because that’s just not how it works in our country.”

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Here’s a Cure for America’s Latest Zika Panic

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Video: Rep. Alan Grayson Freaks Out on Politico Reporter

by TeodoroFuhrmann Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) clashed with a Politico reporter following a DNC event in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, threatening to report the journalist to the Capitol Police and saying he hoped the reporter would be arrested. Grayson, currently running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Florida, had shown up to an event on tech in politics hosted in Politico‘s DNC event space, sitting in the front row, on the very same day that the publication published a detailed examination of a history of domestic-abuse allegations leveled against Grayson by his ex-wife.

Following the event, Politico reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere tried to question Grayson about the article, and things quickly turned hostile.

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Video: Rep. Alan Grayson Freaks Out on Politico Reporter

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Walmart wants to sell you ugly fruits and veggies — and that’s a good thing

by MichaleMargarot Posted on July 21, 2016

FUGLY

Walmart wants to sell you ugly fruits and veggies — and that’s a good thing

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

Walmart may be best known for low prices — and low wages — but now the company is vying for a new reputation: the nation’s largest seller of ugly food.

Earlier this year, the retail giant started selling “Spuglies,” or ugly potatoes, as part of an effort to cut down on food waste. This week it announced that it will begin selling a line of cosmetically challenged Washington state apples called “I’m Perfect” (a play on imperfect — get it?). The apples will start rolling out in 300 Walmart stores in Florida this week, where they will sell for lower prices than their sightlier sisters.

“One of the challenges growers have is that Mother Nature can throw a curveball such as a hailstorm, high winds, or even a string of very hot sunny days, which can damage the exterior finish of fruits,” wrote Walmart Senior Vice President Shawn Baldwin in a blog post. “While the texture and flavor remain perfect, the exterior damage usually renders these fruits unsellable in the fresh market because they fail to meet traditional grade standards. We’re proud to be the first retailer to bring these apples to you.”

Walmart is also trying to curb food waste by requiring some of its suppliers to standardize their date labels: Instead of the confusing “best by,” “use by,” or “sell by” wording, they’ll be using more understandable “best if used by” language.

Food waste is a huge problem worldwide. Americans throw away an estimated $29 billion worth of food annually. Globally, 40 percent of the food we produce is never consumed. That’s not just wasteful, it’s hugely costly for the planet, squandering water, land, and other resources.

Now, if only Walmart would do something about those slave wages.

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Walmart wants to sell you ugly fruits and veggies — and that’s a good thing

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Spotted Lake in British Columbia

by Myrna Posted on July 20, 2016

A video shot by a drone over Spotted Lake in August 2014. Originally from:  Spotted Lake in British Columbia ; ; ;

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Spotted Lake in British Columbia

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No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

by sharonhinder880 Posted on July 20, 2016

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

Biking from Maine to Florida might sound like a nightmare to lots of people — but it’s a proposition that could become much more appealing if the East Coast Greenway Alliance gets its way. A 3,000-mile bikes-only, no-cars-allowed trail that stretches the length of the East Coast could become a reality for the super-bikers among us.

OK, you may be thinking. When will this actually be finished, if ever? 

Roll up your pants and grab a helmet, because you can bike the East Coast Greenway today — some of it, at least. At the moment, only 850 miles are designated, off-road bike paths. But the goal is for 95 percent of the route to be traffic-free by 2030.

The path will be one of the longest bike trails in the United States. The trails are locally owned and managed, so if you’re an East Coaster excited about getting the Greenway up and running in your area, you can help make that happen.

Many bike trails already exist along rivers, old railways, and other scenic locations along the East Coast — but the challenge is to bring them up to code and connect the dots. Once that happens, we’ll have the cycle-friendly equivalent of the Appalachian Trail at our fingertips.

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No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

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African-American Gun Ownership Is Up, and So Is Wariness

by ThurmanBounds1 Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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The video that made the rounds following the police shooting of Philando Castile, a black man shot during a traffic stop in a Minnesota suburb last week, sparked outrage on social media and international protests over the weekend. According to Castile’s fiancé, who shot and narrated the video, Castile was reaching for his ID when he was shot, after he had informed the officer he was armed and had a permit to carry. The shooting, and other cases like it, has sparked concern among black gun owners, and questions about whether the Second Amendment is being applied equally to them. “It terrifies me,” the founder of the Dallas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which advocates black gun ownership, told the New York Times.

The number of black Americans who own guns appears to be on the rise. According to a 2014 Pew survey, 19 percent of black adults said they owned a gun, up from 15 percent in 2013. In another 2014 survey, 54 percent of black adults said they believed owning a gun makes people safer. Two years earlier, only 29 percent said so.

Black Americans have historically been the target of black codes and Jim Crow laws aimed at disarming them, notes Philip Smith, founder of the National African American Gun Association. He attributes the ownership increase to several factors. Many blacks, he says, are simply feeling the need to protect themselves against violent crime. (Black Americans are more likely to be the victim of a gun homicide than are members of other ethnic groups.) Fear of terrorism also comes into play, he says—the reasons, he adds, vary by sub-demographic—single women, married fathers, rural vs urban, etc.

Smith launched his organization in Atlanta in February 2015. It now boasts more than 11,000 members, he says, and has chapters or groups interested in forming one in about a dozen states—65 percent of the members are women. Before, it was, “‘Don’t get a gun because you can kill yourself’ or ‘your kids can hurt themselves.’ But people are saying, ‘Hold on, if I’m in a home by myself at five o’clock in the morning and someone comes banging through my door to rob and kill my family, the police are not going to make it there in enough time. So I need to be able to deal with that threat.'”

Smith, who has a concealed carry permit, says he has been pulled over more than once while carrying a gun. He told the officers that he was carrying, and there were no problems. But he’s certainly aware of encounters that did not go so smoothly. “I’ve seen situations on YouTube and stories on the internet and in newspapers where people had been in situations like mine where they say, ‘Get out of the car! Put your hands on the hood!’ They arrest you or put you in the back of the car, they take your gun, and they run your gun. It can go a thousand ways.”

Another encounter that went south took place in Florida one night last October, when Palm Beach Gardens police officer Nouman Raja approached 31-year-old Corey Jones, whose vehicle had broken down on a highway exit ramp late at night. Raja, who didn’t identify himself as a cop, was dressed in plain clothes and driving an unmarked police van. He opened fire after Jones, likely unaware that he was dealing with law enforcement, allegedly drew a gun on Raja, according to the Associated Press. Jones also had a concealed carry permit. (The officer was charged with manslaughter and attempted murder, the AP reported.) Jones’ family published an open letter to Castile’s parents last week, reading in part, “Your son’s life mattered. Our son’s life mattered.”

After watching the Castile shooting video, Smith told me, he will no longer tell an officer who pulls him over that he is armed. “I keep my gun on my hip. They don’t know I have it there anyway. Give me my ticket and I’m on my way,” he says. “I don’t want to add any layer of additional pressure to that situation when I interact with the cops.”

A 2015 study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that people will shoot at images of armed black men more quickly than images of armed men of other races, and take more time to decide not to shoot when presented with an image of an unarmed black man. More recent data suggests that black people are no more likely to be shot by an officer than white people, although cops are more likely to use other kinds of force against African Americans.

Robin Wright, who studies implicit bias at Ohio State University, told the New York Times that black gun owners face negative perceptions about their intent. “It’s really just getting at what we know to be a pervasive stereotype of blackness and criminality,” she said. “If you see a black person with a weapon, you don’t assume that it’s legal.”

Racial bias may also have played a role in the police shootings of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and 22-year-old John Crawford in separate Ohio incidents in 2014. Both were carrying toy guns, and were shot even though Ohio is an open carry state. (Another black man, Jermaine McBean, was shot in 2013 while walking through his Broward County, Florida, apartment complex carrying a toy rifle.)

In a CNN interview, Castile’s mother said that on the day before her son was shot, her daughter—who also has a concealed carry permit—expressed concern about carrying a gun because the police might “shoot first and ask questions later.” Smith told the Times over the weekend that black gun owners need to be aware of the racial dynamics, but that that shouldn’t deter them from exercising their right to bear arms: “If I went around worrying about what everybody’s thinking as I’m carrying a gun on my hip,” he said. “I would go crazy.”

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African-American Gun Ownership Is Up, and So Is Wariness

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Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

by LeaMichalski Posted on July 1, 2016

Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

By on Jul 1, 2016Share

A man died in a car crash while his Tesla sedan was in autopilot mode, the company announced on Thursday. It was the first known fatality involving a self-driving vehicle.

The accident, which occurred in on a Florida highway in May, killed Joshua Brown, 40, a former Navy SEAL from Ohio. Traffic safety regulators opened an investigation into the collision. Tesla described the accident on its website:

What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S.

Brown was an advocate for self-driving technology and maintained a YouTube page with videos of his Tesla Model S driving on autopilot. One video, now viewed more than 2 million times, shows his Tesla — which he called “Tessy” — narrowly avoiding a collision. “Tessy did great,” Brown wrote in a caption under the video. “I have done a lot of testing with the sensors in the car and the software capabilities. I have always been impressed with the car, but I had not tested the car’s side collision avoidance. I am VERY impressed.”

While Tesla recommends that drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times, even while autopilot is engaged, Brown, according to the driver of the tractor trailer, was watching a Harry Potter film at the time of the accident. “It was still playing when he died and snapped a telephone pole a quarter mile down the road,” driver Frank Baressi said in an interview with the Associated Press. A portable DVD player was found in the car after the accident.

While self-driving vehicles have been heralded by some technologists as safer and more efficient than standard vehicles, others argue that the technology could have major negative impacts on transportation systems — including by putting more cars on the road. One study found that automated technology could increase vehicle miles traveled by as much as 60 percent. As Roland Hwang, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s transportation program, put it, “There’s a utopian vision of what this looks like, but there’s also a dystopian vision.”

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Harry Potter implicated in first driverless car death

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