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BENNINGTON In the early summer of 2020, as the country raged in the aftermath of George Floyds death, 81-year-old Jane Sobel and her husband Stanley Rosen, 94, placed a Black Lives Matter sign in front of their North Bennington home of 48 years.

We wanted to let Black people know that theres support for them, Sobel said from her kitchen table. And that if you share those ideas of justice, that you know youre not alone.

That original sign proudly sat on their small lawn on Mechanic Street until a few months ago when she went outside one day and it was gone. Sobel and her husband immediately decided to put another one up to replace the original, but this time, Jane taped a small message on the front of the sign.

I wrote on it, please do not remove this sign, in small print so no one would see it except a person who was trying to remove the sign, she said. I asked instead that they please talk to me and leave their contact information in my mailbox.

That second sign disappeared also.

We are sad and angry that for the second time, our Black Lives Matter lawn sign was stolen, she said.

Then she asked a hard question.

What to do about racism in our community, let alone in our country?

Sobel and her husband have lived in the same house since 1973. They have four daughters between them.

Sobel grew up in New York City. She attended Bennington College, then left to get married to her first husband before returning to finish her degree. A job opening led her to work at the Dean of Studies Office at the college, later becoming a therapist in Albany.

Sobel has given a lot of thought to race and racism since the summer she put her sign up, especially after the signs disappeared.

I think theres a presence of racism everywhere, Sobel said. So, of course, theres some here in North Bennington. Racism is part of our history and our culture. I dont think you can grow up white in this country and avoid having to work through your racism that you may not even be aware of or recognize as such. I think were all recovering racists. I dont mean that just because youre white that youre supposed to beat yourself up. I think, however, that you have to find a way to engage in changing things.

This isnt about guilt. Its about a way forward, but a little guilt doesnt hurt, Sobel says with a smile.

Sobel doesnt know who took her signs, but she has a general idea about why someone would.

Im thinking its someone angry, someone who maybe feels marginalized themselves, she said. Maybe they are angry about the concern people have about Black people when they might feel that no one is concerned about them.

Sobel is serious about having that conversation with the person who took the signs.

I think the first thing Id do is to listen to what they had to say. We need to learn how to have difficult conversations. If you dont talk to people who feel differently, how are things ever going to change?

Theres a long, reflective stare out to the lawn before Sobel speaks again.

The only way were going to make good things happen for everyone is if we can learn somehow to work together and talk to one another, but it has to be for everyone. I think a certain white majority is terrified of becoming a minority, and thats driven a big interest in doing away with democracy in this country. I feel very strongly about that. Whatever programs we can come together on where people might feel less angry and afraid, thats the only way we make it past this moment and remain together. Its the only way we survive.

I feel a little tearful talking about this, truthfully. I feel awful. Its a violation, and its such a mild violation compared to what Black people endure all the time. But for the first time, it made me anxious living here. We started locking our doors for the first time in all these years.

Although Sobel feels anxious about racism and whats happened since that summer of 2020, she still feels lucky to be here in Vermont. She especially feels good about the next generation and its commitment to diversity and justice. Keep up the work youre doing to change the world, she said.

Sobel informed the Banner that the sign had reappeared overnight. The hand-written note was missing, but the sign was still intact, just lying on the lawn by the mailbox. Its going right back up exactly where it was, she said.

As she stood to open the door and reached for her coat, Sobel added, I just want to add that I greatly appreciate the return of the sign and the hope it brought with it.

Then she smiles and heads out to replant her sign along Mechanic Street.

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Sign of the times: Resident speaks on disappearance of Black Lives Matter sign - Bennington Banner

CHICAGO Oral arguments were heard Tuesday in the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals regarding eight Black Lives Matter protestersarrested and jailed beyond 48 hours aftera 2020 demonstration in Rockford.

The plaintiffs were arrested on a Friday evening and held for three days without bond hearings, a common practice in Winnebago County because there is no weekend bond count.

The defendants' attorneys said the Fourth Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to a bond hearing within 48 hours.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Adele Nicholas, a Chicago-based civil rights advocate, argued that the lack of weekend and holiday bond hearings in Winnebago County results in unreviewed, extended detentions and violates the Fourth Amendment.Reached after the hearing Tuesday, she called Winnebago County an "outlier."

Nicholas noted Cook County has court 365 days a year.

"If you get arrested on Christmas Eve, you get a hearing to determine whether you should be released on bail the next day," she said. "It's not really controversial that that's the appropriate process in almost all jurisdictions."

She added, "Winnebago County's procedures put people at very serious risk of losing their jobs, their income and not being able to take care of their families for no reason other thanWinnebago has deemed it more convenient to only have court on regular business days."

The plaintiffs are:Dylan Mitchell,26;Dayna Schultz, 23;Ivan Holland,25; AndrewEhrhardt,23; and Jaylen Butler, 20, all of Rockford; Ross Wagner,35, of Madison, Wisconsin;Larissa Walston,23, of Loves Park; and Michael Riggs,20, of South Beloit.

Previously: Protesters have spent 100 days outside Rockford City Hall, and they have no plans to leave

Many of the protesters, if not all, participated in one of several civil rights protests held in Rockford and around the country after the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd, a manwho died after a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Once the plaintiffs appeared appeared the following Monday before a judge, they were released on their own recognizance.

The plaintiffs' initial filing was dismissed by the district court, which noteda judge signs a probable cause statement within 48 hours.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs arguethe judge does so without the accusedor their attorneys present makingtheprobable cause hearings"constitutionally inadequate" because they deny people who could be released on bail the opportunity to request release within 48 hours.

Photos:Images from four months of protests in Rockford

The defendants are 17th Judicial Circuit Court Chief Judge Eugene Doherty,Sheriff Gary Caruana and Winnebago County.

Doherty is being represented by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. The county is being represented by the law firm of Hinshaw &Culbertson.

Michael Iasparro, a Hinshaw & Culbertson attorney, notedthe district court judgedetermined there is no constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment to abail hearingwithin 48 hours. He is hopeful the U.S. Court of Appeals will rule likewise.

"There'sa presumption of constitutionality if there is a finding of probable causefor somebody arrested without a warrant made by a judge within 48 hours," he said, "but that's never been extended to the right to a bail hearing under the Fourth Amendment."

There is no date by which the court must rule on the case.

Chris Green: cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

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Rockford Black Lives Matter case over bond hearings is now in hands of US Court of Appeals - Rockford Register Star

A Minnesota Black Lives Matter protester has been charged with trying to intimidate the judge overseeing Daunte Wrights manslaughter case after he posted live video outside her apartment door.

Cortez Rice who previously posed as a nephew of George Floyd was among a group shouting for justice a month ago outside a Loring Park high-rise condo where they believed Judge Regina Chu lived.

He admitted in an interview last month that he then got inside the building and filmed himself inside the hallways and at the front door of the apartment that he believed belonged to the judge.

Tight on her ass, we on her heels. Wont she think it sweet, he said in a since-deleted livestream video that was cited in his criminal complaint, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

We want cameras in the courtroom the people deserve to know whats going on, he continued, referring to the trial of Kimberly Potter, the ex-cop who claimed she thought she was using her Taser when she fatally shot Wright, 20, in April.

I dont know if this is her crib. I think this is her crib right here. We got confirmation that this is her house right here, he said in the video, according to the criminal complaint.

He said he was waiting for the gang to get up here.

Other footage appears to show him back outside bragging that hed been inside the building, saying, I was at that bitch door.

It was not immediately clear if he was at the right apartment, the local paper noted. A man who lived there claimed hed bought it from Chu, who had moved, but the judge said in court that the protest was staged at the presiding judges home, the Star Tribune said.

Either way, Chu told cops that she believed Rice was trying to intimidate her and to interfere with the judicial process, the complaint read.

Rice, 32, was charged last week with tampering with a judicial officer, a felony. The criminal complaint was unsealed late Friday afternoon, four days after he was booked into jail in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.

He was transferred to jail in Hennepin County, Minnesota, where he was being held Monday night on $50,000 bail, records show.

Before his arrest, Rice had admitted to the Star Tribune last month that he had been outside the judges door.

I just made a live video on it and I was just there to make sure she can hear us, he said at the time, insisting he was not there to intimidate her.

Chu later allowed cameras in the Potter trial but insisted in her ruling that the protest did not have any impact on the Courts decision, nor should it.

Rice previously wore Black Lives Matter garb as he gave tearful interviews to media claiming to be a heartbroken relative of George Floyd, whose murder by a Minneapolis cop in May 2020 sparked international protests.

However, Floyds real family later sent him a cease-and-desist letter to stop him making the claims, the Minnesota Sun noted. Rice then claimed he only meant that Floyd was like an uncle because blood dont make you family, the paper said.

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BLM protester charged with trying to intimidate judge in Daunte Wright trial - New York Post

Ten years ago, a group of mostly young activists took to the streets the expensive streets of New Yorks Wall Street. One of the worlds top financial centers, headquarters to the titans of finance and the companies they headed. The activists raised their voices to speak back to the 1% of the super wealthy who own most of the nations resources. We are the 99% was their rallying cry. The 99% of Americans who lived at the other end of the economic ladder. This was Occupy Wall Street that went from street demonstrations to a makeshift squatters settlement in Zuccotti Park.

Occupy Wall Streets message and movement found eager supporters around the country and the world. Occupy Boston set up tents in Bostons Dewey Square, inspired by the energy and spirit of the movement. The encampment grew to include a kitchen to feed the hungry, and even a library named for social justice legends Audre Lorde and Howard Zinn. Here, many first-time organizers received an on-the-ground education about grassroots actions from veteran activists who had lived through the civil, voting and womens rights movements. The intergenerational mix of protestors expanded as more Boston-area residents, and others, joined the protest as did the groups list of issues, eventually embracing anti-war efforts, health care access gaps and environmental concerns. On a visit to Dewey Square, then-Governor Deval Patrick observed to WBZ radio, Im just trying to understand, theres such a range of issues and interests.

All of the Occupy groups refused an organized structure and designated leaders, insisting their movement could be steered by any among them they were not leaderless but leaderful. They may not have been traditionally organized, but they were laser focused on the central mantra of the 99% vs. the 1%. They helped concretize and humanize the economic inequities, their frustration addressing the widening gap they felt between the haves and have-nots. At Dewey Square, 27-year-old Amy Fisher told WBZ, Im really sick of nothing happening to reduce income disparity. Its just going to get worse and worse and worse until violence takes over.

Her words seem prescient considering the ongoing street protests about living wages and low-income workers fight for a $15 minimum wage. And the economic pain and suffering levied by the impact of COVID, which has swelled the ranks of the unemployed.

Ironic that the 10th anniversary of 'Occupy' arrives as the super wealthy literally cant stop making money. As I noted recently, billionaire MacKenzie Scott, who founded Amazon with her ex-husband Jeff Bezos, has acted on her pledge to give away most of her fortune $8.5 billion so far to various institutions and causes addressing public health, climate change, pandemic assistance and more. But because of the way the wealthy are invested, she earned back all the money she gave away. (Ill point out that her ex-husband is spending some of his billions flying into space.)

Occupy Boston only lasted two and half months, before Boston police razed the encampment on Dec. 10, 10 years ago this week. But the mantra the 99 vs. 1% is now part of the lexicon. And the economic inequalities the mantra reflects are now generally understood. Whats more, many of the Occupy activists were forever changed by their experience and have gone on to work for the cause of the 99% in nonprofits, politics and, yes, other protests. Occupy lives through the marchers in last summers George Floyd protests for racial justice. Seeds of Occupy fueled #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Perhaps the late professor and activist David Graeber said it best. Back in 2011, he foresaw Occupys fundamental lesson, telling Time magazine, the system is not going to save us, were going to have to save ourselves.

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Ten years on, the 'Occupy' movement is mainstream - wgbh.org

While documenting my former high schools attempt to indoctrinate me with critical race theory six years ago, I remarked that now, several years later, the situation has undoubtedly worsened. Worsened it has. Now,Campbell Union High School District has promoted more than 100 equity resources to students and staff, including a document that taught students how to put a curse on those who say all lives matter.

The page serves as a vast library for CRT resources and features 60 different links, including a Google Drive folder with 45 different documents.The list made sure to include the full range of CRT buzzwords, with links like Raising Race Conscious Children, the infamous 1619 Project, Anti-Racism for Beginners, andSocial Identities and Systems of Oppression, among others.

One link takes you to anAnti-Racism Resource List, which teaches about white fragility and claims that racism can only be perpetrated by white people. One of the resources provided was a Trevor Noah speech labeled Why rioting makes sense, followed by an unhinged anti-white rant from Sonya Renee Taylor, demanding that white people throw your white body on police officers and put their bodies on the line for the purpose of justice.

The list also addresses white people when it says, We are socialized into white supremacy from the moment we are born before going on to sayIt is about completely dismantling how you see yourself and how you see the world, so that you can dismantle white supremacy.

Samuel Martin graduated from CUHSDs Branham High School in 2019 and was appalled by the districts actions. He told The Federalist, The idea that white students must dismantle themselves in the context of their personality is cultish. Not only is it cultish, but it is deliberate in that this school system wants its white students to hate themselves. Do these people honestly think that drilling racial identitarianism into childrens heads from a young age is going to make them less racist?

CUHSD also links to theBlack Lives Matter Resource Guide, specifically their section labeled high school, which itself includes 45 different texts. Amid a wide variety of CRT inspired assignments is a document that includes writing prompts on police brutality and racist violence.

One section titled Hex tells the reader, Hexing people is an important way to get out anger and frustration. It becomes increasingly deranged, suggesting that those who say all lives matter or commit microaggressions, should be targeted. Write your own hex poem, cursing that person, it instructs.

When asked her thoughts on the document that instructed K-12 students to use witchcraft on political opponents, Branham teacher Meredith Allen told The Federalist she hasnt read the documents her district recommends, so she cant comment, but that she is generally opposed to the all lives matter message.

Another section labeled A World With No Police cites police and military as systems or institutions that contribute to oppression. It asks What would the world be like without them? before telling the reader to write a poem discussing a world without these institutions.

The Black Radical Tradition, is a 565-page e-book that includes articles from the Communist League and Noel Ignatiev under the pen name Noel Ignatin. Ignatiev was a Marxist whoargued that abolishing the white race is so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists.

Then theres a slide show entitled What is the Black Lives Matter Movement? which is made for children and was produced in part by teachers at LAUSD.It includes a glossary of terms like white supremacy, the definition of which includes the line, systems, like schools and jails, have white supremacy built into them because white people have had so much power for so long.

The ADLs linked document George Floyd, Racism, and Law Enforcement defines racism as the oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people, a definition that reinforces the malicious lie that white people cant be the victims of anti-white racism.

Another ADL resourcecondemns colorblindness and provides carefully crafted methods to indoctrinate white students with the idea that they have privilege without incurring backlash while a Racial Equity Resource Guide advertises the White Privilege Conference.

The districts equity resources page is just the most visible result of a series of steps in support of CRT that started long ago. In fact, the district was a testing ground for CRT before it spread throughout the nation. The book Research Studies on Educating for Diversity and Social Justice was published in 2018 and describes the process. An entire chapter, written in part by my former teacher, is dedicated to discussing how CRT was used at my high school so it could be replicated.

The book noted the use of the theory, saying, CRT is used here to centralize the discussion of race and racism at Branham High School. It went on to describe an equity advisory class that I was placed in as a sophomore, where Students learn about the different types of oppression along with the privilege it affords the oppressors.The authors hoped their tactics would spread, writing, the intent behind sharing the process Branham underwent is to provide a model that could be followed by other schools across the nation.

The districts Board of Trustees supports this agenda, recently offering unanimous support for a resolutionresolving to dismantle institutionalized racism in our society and our school district and is committed to implicit bias training, Ethnic Studies, and resources that foster dialogue around the guiding principles of #BlackLivesMatter.

Note the districts adoption of the term equity rather than equality. Heressuperintendent Robert Bravotwo hours and 39 minutes into a board meeting saying he believes equity is about equity of outcomes.

CUHSD even established an Anti-Racism Team, which is divided into eight Equity Teams that include teachers, principals, administrators, and even two students who must be BIPOC. That means white students are banned from the Equity Teams. Theyre tasked with challenging imbalances of power and privilege, among other roles.

Michael Espinoza is a member of one such Equity Team and a teacher at Branham High School who won the districts teacher of the year award. Here he is calling a Native American tribe the rightful stewards of the lands our schools and district offices stand on and telling teachers to recognize the power of critical race theory and use it in our lesson plans.

He also gave a speech to the class of 2021, where he levied leftwing complaints against America and quoted Huey Newton, imploring students to engage in revolution instead of conforming to the machine that is the United States. On his Instagram account, Espinoza celebrates mandates for ethnic studies classes and complains of living under white supremacist, heteropatriarchal rule in a plea to his co-conspirators.

If this is CUHSDs model teacher, what does their model student look like?Espinozas students created a variety of leftwing postersin his ethnic literature class.One poster demanded Dear White PPL: Start Listening, Stop Talking and others that said Wear UR F-cking Mask and Give us back our land.Principal Lawton took down the posters amid outcry before caving in and apologizing to the leftwing agitators.

The full ramifications of our education systems descent into leftwing radicalism is yet to be fully realized, although we can be certain that many of the students it doesnt lose to homeschooling will be successfully transformed into co-conspirators. But as the rhetoric of revolution becomes standard for stodgy school administrators, its appeal to youth might wane.

Conversely, they run the risk of creating a small but clever cadre of conservative youth who understand from firsthand childhood experiences the consequences of toxic racial grievance politics.Dont be surprised if the propagandizers who intend to give permanency to left-wing hegemony instead give rise to a nascent conservative political force that will uproot it.

Update: After publication, CUHSD removed the Black Lives Matter Resource Guide. CUHSDs original equity resources list can be viewed here.

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District Tells Students To Cast Spells On People Who Say 'All Lives Matter' - The Federalist