All The Nations That Have To Be Combined To Equal Brazil’s Annual Homicides 

From Tennessee Lookout:

MASON, Tenn. – The Tennessee Comptroller issued an unusual appeal last week to residents of this small, majority Black town, which occupies fewer than two square miles in rural west Tennessee.

“In my opinion, it’s time for Mason to relinquish its charter,” Comptroller Jason Mumpower wrote in a letter mailed to each one of Mason’s 1,337 property owners.

Mumpower urged local residents to “encourage your local officials to do what’s necessary to allow Mason to thrive. There is no time to waste.”

State comptrollers, responsible for financial oversight of local government, typically communicate directly with elected local leaders and not their constituents. “We have not issued a letter to citizens like this before,” Comptroller spokesman John Dunn said, noting it is “unprecedented for us to publicly call for a town charter to be relinquished.”

But the Comptroller’s unprecedented public callout comes at an unprecedented time not only for Mason, but for the state. Mason, located in the southeastern corner of Tipton County, now finds itself with some of the most coveted real estate in Tennessee.

It’s one of the nearest towns to the massive new site to be built for Blue Oval City, a key component in Ford Motor Co’s multibillion-dollar pivot to electric vehicle manufacturing.

Mumpower’s letter has infuriated Mason’s part-time elected officials, who insist they have no intention of ceding their town’s 153-year-old charter – which would subsume the largely African-American, majority Democratic community under the governance of Tipton County, which is predominantly white and Republican.

“This is our home. We were born and raised here. The majority of the town is homegrown people that live here,” Vice Mayor Virginia Rivers said. “He is trying to conquer and divide us. It’s akin to a hostile take-over and it’s not hard to figure out why here, why now.”

Town leaders are accusing Mumpower and other state officials of big-footing a long-ignored, largely Black community now that major investment is heading its way.

Mason is 60% Black and includes descendants of men, women and children enslaved in the area before Emancipation. For more than a century the town was led by White elected officials.

That changed in 2016, when fraud and mismanagement allegations led to the resignations of nearly all City Hall officials, all of whom were White. Mason’s current mayor, vice mayor and five of its six alderman are Black.

“It’s because of the Black people that are in office,” said Rivers, who first became Vice Mayor in 2021.

“And it’s because of all the places in the world, Blue Oval could have selected, they selected here. There’s no way Mason won’t prosper and grow. And now they want to take it away from us.”

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The Comptroller’s office:

Yet again like in the past. New day, new Jim Crow-esque tactics, perfectly timed takeovers. This Black American town needs to be promptly saved without handing a damn thing over. The town elected mostly Black officials back in 2015. They’ve been trying to pay off the debt from when the town was previously ran by mostly white officials. Literally playing catch-up. 

This ain’t nothing but a glimpse of what it looks like before eventually uprooting and displacing Black people off the land they have resided on since forever and where their ancestors labored said land as property in chattel slavery and the move into Jim Crow.  

There’s a change.org petition to sign and share to get the word out there.

This person suggested to put Ford in the hot seat by sending a letter like this. Others are suggested to call their office. 

This is the CEO of Ford’s twitter.

Something gotta give. 

This shit should be on the news. But as usual, they make it known after the deed is done or not at all and you end up finding out years later. 

This is unbelievable. This is all done in the hospitals. This is the place we trust, when we don’t feel well, a place where we come to get help, a place where we want to be saved and we get killed instead. A 2-year-old boy got a lethal injection that killed his brain just to have his organs sold. A nightmare coming true. 

And we have so many missing kids right now. Missing black girls and boys. (X)

Terrifying. 

I'm making masks to donate to a hospital in Chicago. If you wanna support cashapp $blkproverbs a few dollars. You can also inbox me if you want some sent to you

Martin Delany: This is his personal response to the newly enacted Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

He is addressing the then mayor of Pittsburgh, PA:

“Honorable Mayor, whatever ideas of liberty I may have, have been received from reading the lives of your revolutionary fathers. I have therein learned that a man has a right to defend his castle with his life, even unto the taking of life. Sir, my house is my castle; in that castle are none but my wife and my children, as free as the angels of heavens, and whose liberty is as sacred, as the pillars of God.

If any man approaches that house in search of a slave, I care not who he may be, whether constable, or sheriff, magistrate or even judge of the Supreme Court, nay, let it be he who sanctioned this act to become a law. (President Millard Fillmore) surrounded by his cabinet as his bodyguard, with the Declaration of Independence waving above his head as his banner, and the constitution of his country upon his breast as his shield, if he crosses the threshold of my door, and I do not lay him a lifeless corpse at my feet, I hope the grave may refuse my body a resting place, and righteous Heaven my spirit a home. O, no! He cannot enter that house and we both live.”

who wore it better: irishman accidentally protesting  against heterosexual marriages vs Donald Trump seemingly opposing childbirth