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Black Kos, Week In Review: Fearless Lawrence O'Donnell & the arc of the moral universe [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-06
Commentary by BlackKos editor JoanMar
I often use the Parkway south to get to work. But to get there, I must first drive 2 ½ miles north. When I finally exit, I am 3 miles west of my destination. In rush hour, traffic is so gosh darn gridlocked that I’m often forced to abandon the Parkway, or the highway when I use that, and wind my way through a maze of local roads. Those local routes are so circuitous, it’s like navigating pretzel loops. It will take many, many minutes, countless turns, and a whole heap of patience, but I do eventually get to my destination.
Lately, as I sit in traffic listening to my favorite podcasts recount the atrocities of the previous day, I’ve been wondering if my daily drives are in any way analogous to MLK’s, “The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” It’s a comforting thought. Despite all the twists and turns, and hills and valleys, we are moving resolutely toward a more just society, right? I’ve got to believe in something. I’ve got to believe that the dream is not dead. Because on so many days, it does seem that the forces of hate and evil have done far more bending than justice has. More than 500 years after genocidal murderer Christopher Columbus got lost on the high seas, we are still fighting to make permanent the progress our ancestors have given life, blood, limbs, freedom, and labor for. Our grim reality in 2025 is that the hard-won progress bought at such great sacrifice can be so easily undone, often with the stroke of a pen and at the whim of any one heartless, soulless megalomaniac.
It’s a grim debate, you know. How exactly did the arc bending toward justice work out for Indigenous populations faced with rampaging Europeans? For those who have already died — and those who are dying now — there is no time left to wait for justice to arrive. The promise of a slow, tortuous, eventual bend in that arc means very little to the child who will die today because USAID’s life-saving food and medicine sit rotting in a storeroom.
Lawrence O’Donnell is one of the handful of media personalities worth watching of late. He understands the existential threat we are facing, and unlike so many of his peers, he doesn't report atrocities with smiley faces, grins, and snark. (Looking at you Maddow & Psaki.) On his June 3rd show, Lawrence brought me — and himself — to tears as he detailed the ways in which hatred has been working overtime to dismantle the progress we have made. The whole show is worth watching, but here are just a few of quotes:
“The people who would be counting how many people Elon Musk killed by killing USAID were the very people who Elon Musk fired from USAID. So Elon Musk commits the greatest crime of the 21st century against the poverty population of the world and fires everyone who would be able to quantify for us the enormity of the crime. The worldwide cruelty campaign launched by Elon Musk and trump now includes deporting people who have never committed a crime to countries where they have never lived and do not speak the language. Bill Gates, the former richest person in the world, said the picture of world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”
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From Lawrence O’Donnell again,
“The bending of the arc toward justice means nothing to those who will die because of evil men and the decisions they make.”
In other words, delayed justice is (often) the same as no justice at all. And there the analogy to a road trip ends. Even though MLK delivered the quote with such certainty and solemnity, and Barack Obama repeated it with with such eloquence and passion, the truth is that a twist in this arc can span generations going in the opposite direction to justice. But we are the only force capable of bending it back. And right now, the Democratic Party as flawed as it is, is the only institution — the only vehicle — with the power and infrastructure anywhere near equipped to meet the moment. It would be beyond foolish to abandon it.
Thank you for your fearlessness, Lawrence.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Near the end of “This House,” a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience.
“History’s the only thing to survive,” soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: “You may have left us, but we will never leave you.”
Ricky Ian Gordon’s lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29.
’I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,” Gerber said, “but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.”
Now 27, Gerber started “This House” as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for “Ruined” and “Sweat, ” suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage’s partner on “Intimate Apparel” at Lincoln Center Theater.
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The family of Bruce Tucker gave their loved one the home-going service he deserved after years of pain. According to ABC 8 News, on May 30, relatives of the 54-year-old gathered together at a private ceremony organized by Virginia Commonwealth University Health (VCU Health) to honor Tucker, who died in 1968, following a severe head injury from a fall. Tragically, what followed the death of the Stony Creek native was equally heartbreaking.
On May 25, 1968, physicians at the Medical College of Virginia (now VCU Health) declared him dead. Without notifying or obtaining consent from Tucker’s family, surgeons—acting with a medical examiner’s permission—removed his heart and kidneys. His heart was then transplanted into a white man in what became Virginia’s first and the world’s 16th recorded heart transplant.
In response, Tucker’s brother William filed a wrongful death lawsuit. However, in 1972, the jury ruled in favor of the defendants after being instructed to consider the concept of brain death, despite it not being recognized in the Code of Virginia at the time.
To honor Tucker’s legacy, VCU Health established a historical highway marker in the Stony Creek area of Dinwiddie County. The marker details the events surrounding Tucker’s case, a gesture hospital officials say is part of an ongoing effort to acknowledge and address the violations of his medical rights and privacy.
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Rising Democratic star U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas is seeking a powerful congressional role that would position her as one of her party’s most influential leaders. In a letter to the Democratic House Caucus, Crockett announced her candidacy to be the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the main investigative body of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Our country is in an existential crisis driven by an out-of-control Executive with a flagrant disregard for our Constitution, our way of governance, and our very way of life as citizens of a democratic republic,” the 44-year-old congresswoman said in the letter. “We must pull back the curtain on the unmitigated chaos under Trump 2.0 and translate our findings to the American people in a way they can digest.”
The ranking member, the top position held by the minority party of any given committee, is the party’s de facto leader–and positions them to be the committee’s chairperson in the event the party is in the majority. The House Oversight Committee’s most recent ranking member, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, died on May 21 at 75. His death left the powerful position vacant, resulting in a growing field of candidates. U.S. Reps. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts have also submitted bids to be the ranking member. Crockett and Garcia’s candidacies present an opportunity for a generational shift in House Democratic leadership. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a popular progressive, made such a bid against Connolly earlier this year, but was unsuccessful. She declined to run again after his death.
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Outcry has focused on the way the artist was detained over alleged non-violent offences: handcuffed, shirtless and barefoot. Footage of the arrest was broadcast repeatedly on television and splashed across the front pages of Brazilian newspapers.
“This is persecution [against me],” the funk singer told journalists as he was transferred from the police station to jail. “There is no evidence.”
Activists say the case is the latest example of the criminalization of funk music – and, by extension, of Black culture; something researchers argue has been a systemic feature of Brazilian society since the abolition of slavery in 1888.
Like most Brazilian funk artists, MC Poze – born Marlon Brendon Coelho Couto da Silva – is Black and raised in a favela.
He rose to prominence in 2019 and has since succeeded with songs depicting daily life in those communities, including some tracks that openly reference drug trafficking.
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