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Black Kos Tuesday: "Falling Gleefully in the Abyss of Evil" [1]
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Date: 2025-07-01
Voices & Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Editor
For the longest time, I was intrigued by what motivated a human to exact terror and pain on another human. Why, if we are inherently “Good,” would humans be so cruel to each other? I just could never wrap my head around that humans are inherently “Evil,” it seemed to be a lazy, intellectual analysis. But I did construct a construction that allowed me to walk and Be among other humans, knowing the human capability to mindlessly devour anything on reflex, as if they are powered by some ancient lizard DNA.
For some, being and doing Good is the easiest thing in the world, while others struggle and eventually learn to be Good. But I have noticed the ease in which many humans fall, almost gleefully, into that abyss of Evil, an abyss that somehow wraps the hater in a warm glow of hate. How else to explain the packs of lone wolves hearing a world wide howl to lone wolf in unison at the proper hour and with the proper rage and at the proper targets in their synagogues, their mosques, their black churches during prayers, or even at home between legislative sessions? How else to explain the ambush of Idaho firefighters on an Aryan Nation anniversary? How else to explain the ease in which killers can cite Presidents as the reason to slaughter a three year old in a t aqiyah while live streaming the murderous affair for MAGA aficionados programmed to do the very same thing if given the chance?
None of this is new. The same racist bigotry that saw the rise of the KKK from the ashes of the defeated South to midnight ride Reconstruction into cities on fire, is the same hate that sympathizes with goosestepping brownshirt slave patrol bounty hunters, kidnapping free men and women off porches in broad daylight and for the world to see, broadcast across the world wide media, without a care in the world.
I have no words but swear words for the lizard brain haters gushing about the pain inflicted on unfortunate grandmas in an Everglades swamp. I have no words but swear words for the Vichy Press, the capitulating cowards and the know-nothing disease vectors drinking raw milk while proclaiming only the King could turn the giant Northern California water valve to save America.
And I swear, words will not be the end of it.
ninety-nine names for my god though i know none for my [ ] a failing not of my deity but of my arabic not the language itself rather the overeager mosaic i hoard i steal i borrow from pop songs & mine from childhood fluency i guard my few swearwords like tinkling silver anklets spare & precious & never nearly enough to muster a proper arabic anger proper arabic vulgarity only a passing spar always using the names of animals i am not polite i am only inarticulate overproud of my little arsenal a stranger blows a wet tobacco kiss through the window of my taxi & i deploy my meager weapons [dog] [pig] [donkey] & finally my crown jewel i pass my tongue across my teeth crane my neck about the window & call [your mother’s ] — Safia Elhillo “ Self-Portrait with Profanity”
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Outdoor Afro, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reconnecting Black communities with nature, is making waves with its mission to address a long-standing disparity in swim education. The organization has been spreading the word about their Making Waves program, which provides swimming scholarships—or “swimmerships”—to Black children, teens, and adults across the country, according to a report shared by journalist Phillip Lewis on June 24.
The initiative aims to tackle a troubling and persistent issue: Black Americans are significantly more likely to drown than their white counterparts due to their inability to swim. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over one-third (36.8%) of Black adults say they don’t know how to swim, and 63% report never having taken a swimming lesson—both figures well above the national average.
Equally alarming, the USA Swimming Foundation reports that 64% of African American children have little to no swimming ability—despite evidence that swim lessons can reduce the risk of drowning by up to 88%, according to a 2023 CBS report. Sadly, these troubling statistics are tied to America’s history of segregation, which kept Black families from accessing public swimming pools for much of the 20th century.
To close the gap, Outdoor Afro is teaming up with their exclusive partners, programs like Black People Will Swim in New York and Foss Swim School in Minnesota, to provide up to $200 per individual or $400 per family to cover the cost of beginner swimming lessons.
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Jermaine Thomas, son of a U.S. Army soldier, is unsure of his new life in Jamaica since being detained by ICE and deported to a country he’s never called home. He has no citizenship to any country, despite SCOTUS case. Austin Chronicles: Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported
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Ten years ago, Jermaine Thomas was at the center of a case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court: Should a baby born to a U.S. citizen father deployed to a U.S. Army base in Germany have U.S. citizenship?
Last week, Thomas was escorted onto a plane with his wrists and ankles shackled, he says. He arrived in Jamaica, a country he’d never been to, a stateless man.
“I’m looking out the window on the plane,” Thomas told the Chronicle, “and I’m hoping the plane crashes and I die.”
Thomas has no citizenship, according to court documents. He is not a citizen of Germany (where he was born in 1986) or of the United States (where his father served in the military for nearly two decades) or of his father’s birth country of Jamaica (a place he’d never been).
Thomas doesn’t remember Germany. He says he thinks his first memory is in Washington state, but he moved around so much in his military family that it was hard to keep track.
He spent most of his life in Texas, much of it homeless and in and out of jail, he says. His parents divorced when he was too little to remember. His mother, a nurse, remarried to another man in the Army. They moved a lot, and as she and the stepfather had their own kids, Thomas says he struggled in the new family setup.
So at about about 11 years old, he went to stay with his biological father in Florida. By then, his dad was retired from an 18-year career in the U.S. military, he says. His dad died from kidney failure not long after, in 2010.
“If you’re in the U.S. Army, and the Army deploys you somewhere, and you’ve gotta have your child over there, and your child makes a mistake after you pass away, and you put your life on the line for this country, are you going to be okay with them just kicking your child out of the country?” Jermaine says, phoning the Chronicle from a hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. “It was just Memorial Day. Y’all are disrespecting his service and his legacy.”
Jermaine Thomas, who says he was deported to Jamaica without a passport though he's never been to the country (Provided by Jermaine Thomas)
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For Damon Landor and many other incarcerated individuals who practice minority religions, the outcome could determine whether justice is just in name or inclusive of reparations. News One: Supreme Court To Hear Rastafarian Lawsuit Over Shaved Locs
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The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear the case of Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards in Louisiana, despite a clear legal precedent protecting his religious right to wear them.
According to the lawsuit, Landor, who had vowed not to cut his hair for nearly two decades as part of his faith, entered the Louisiana prison system in 2020 to serve a five-month sentence for a drug-related offense. At the time when he began his sentence, his locs fell nearly to his knees.
After serving all but three weeks of his five-month sentence, Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correction Center. He claims the violation occurred at that facility.
Landor states that he entered with a copy of a court ruling that made it clear that practicing Rastafarians should be given a religious accommodation allowing them to keep their dreadlocks. But a prison officer dismissed his concerns, and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while two officers reportedly shaved his head after throwing the documents in the trash.
“When I was strapped down and shaved, it felt like I was raped,” Landor said in a statement. “And the guards, they just didn’t care. They will treat you any kind of way. They knew better than to cut my hair, but they did it anyway.”
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Agreement aims to end decades-old conflict rooted in the 1994 Rwandan genocide but critics have described it as vague and opaque. The Guardian: Trump eyes mineral wealth as Rwanda and DRC sign controversial peace deal in US
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In a joint statement before the signing, the three countries said the agreement would include “respect for territorial integrity and a prohibition of hostilities” and the disarmament of all “non-state armed groups”. The statement also spoke of a “regional economic integration framework” and of a future summit in Washington bringing together Trump, the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, and the DRC president, Félix Tshisekedi. The deal has come under scrutiny for its vagueness, including on the economic component, with the Trump administration eager to profit from abundant mineral wealth in eastern DRC. The agreement aims to attract western investment to the two countries’ mining sectors, which contain deposits of tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium, while giving the US access to critical minerals. Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist who shared the 2018 Nobel peace prize for his work to end the DRC’s epidemic of sexual violence in war, last week said the mediation process was “opaque”, failed to talk about justice and reparations and avoided “recognition of Rwanda’s aggression against the DRC”.
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I missed this story. The North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee loaded the Juneteenth docket with bills designed to kill DEI initiatives and put guns in private schools. You read that right, folks. NC Newsline: NC Senate uses Juneteenth holiday to advance numerous bills, including DEI ban
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In a move that raised eyebrows and drew criticism from members of the public and Democratic lawmakers, the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday — the day of the national Juneteenth holiday — advanced a controversial bill to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in state government.
Juneteenth has been a federal holiday since President Joe Biden designated it as such in 2021. It is an optional state holiday in North Carolina. An event long celebrated by Black Americans, Juneteenth commemorates the event that took place 160 years ago in which enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the conclusion of the Civil War and two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
While many businesses and government offices (including the North Carolina House of Representatives) were closed or on very limited schedules Thursday in observance of the holiday, that was not the case in the North Carolina Senate.
In addition to placing nearly 20 bills on the chamber’s calendar for floor debate (an unusually heavy load for a Thursday, which is normally a getaway day for lawmakers, and one on which nine of the chamber’s 50 members were absent), Senate Republican leaders scheduled a busy slate of committee meetings. Several controversial proposals on topics that included the confirmation of a new Stein administration cabinet secretary, concealed handguns, and gender-affirming health care, were debated and approved in those meetings.
But if there was a subject that seemed to raise the most questions of appropriateness on a national holiday set aside to lift up the end of the nation’s original sin of human slavery, it was the decision to schedule and advance the DEI ban legislation — a bill that was approved on a party-line vote in the House on May 1 and has resided in the Senate ever since.
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