Stoking The Fires

(Note: I rarely publish a post with so many links for readers to explore. But this time, I'm watching my step, especially in the portion below the fold. I don't want to face charges of copyright infringement!)

We don't need inflammatory rhetoric. We don't need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts ... all of us. — Barack Obama (2016)

Video that Gavin Eugene Long (Cosmo Ausar Setepenra) made while in Dallas after the police killings there. The link, from Zero Hedge, includes more information about the Baton Rouge killer.

Note that Gavin Eugene Long was a member of Nation of Islam.

More about Gavin Eugene Long aka Cosmo Ausar Setepenra, including the following:

1. Long, Who Served in the Marines, Registered a Website Under the Name Cosmo Setepenra in April After 2 Years Living in Africa

2. He Went to Dallas After the Attack on Police There & Called Shooter Micah Johnson ‘One of Us’

3. He Dropped Out of College for a ‘Spiritual’ Trip to Africa, His ‘Ancestral Homeland’.

What else is stoking these fires?

Our education system.

Please take a look at this recent poem “@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem” by 21st Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, America's poet laureate 2016.  I will not reproduce the poem here because of possible copyright infringement.

This poem is part of the Poem-a-Day Series, distributed by the Library of Congress and is used in English literature classrooms all over the United States, in Grades 5-12. Sample lesson plans HERE.

Required Summer 2016 reading for many public schools: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

This book is not on the required-reading list: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.