PS: At least one person, Wendell Griffen, will devote some time to thinking about something other than picnics. CNBC

Wendell Griffen, the pastor and judge, sends a link to his blog’s July 4 column, “When I think about the 4th of July.”   Excerpts:

According to a June 25, 2017 Washington Post news article by Cleve Wootson, police in the United States have killed 461 people so far this year. Twenty-five percent of the people killed were black people. During 2016, police killed 963 people. Twenty-four percent (24%) of the people killed were black people. Wootson’s article covered the shooting of a black off-duty veteran police officer by a white on-duty police officer.

When I think about the 4th of July, I think about the ongoing state-sponsored, sanctioned, and sustained slaughter and other acts of terrorism against black, brown, and poor people by law enforcement agents and other vigilante actors with the same moral outrage expressed by Frederick Douglass concerning the abomination of human slavery when, in 1852, he delivered a historic address titled What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.

…. Fourth of July festiveness, food, and other hoopla do not change what I know about systemic, longstanding, and ongoing mistreatment suffered by people of color, poor people, workers, immigrants, religious minorities, my LGBTQ neighbors, and so many other vulnerable populations in this nation.

Now back to your regularly scheduled July 4 programs.

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