• Racist agitator Jasmine Richards gets well-deserved 90 days in prison cell.
By John Friend —
The notorious Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which has wreaked havoc in major American cities for months now, has finally been served a small taste of justice for its often violent and destructive behavior.
On June 7, Jasmine Richards, a well-known community organizer and leading activist with BLM, was sentenced to 90 days in jail for her actions last year.* During a protest organized by BLM at La Pintoresca Park in Pasadena On August 29, 2015, Ms. Richards, the founder of the local chapter of the subversive protest movement, attempted to interfere with police officers arresting another woman who allegedly failed to pay her bill at a nearby restaurant. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors argued that Ms. Richards attempted to intervene during the arrest of the woman, who was black, and encouraged others to do so as well. Once the woman was in police custody, Ms. Richards continued to interfere and apparently attempted to free the woman from custody.
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After being convicted in a Pasadena courtroom, Ms. Richards was transferred to a local jail to serve the remainder of her sentence. She also received three years of probation and one year of anger management classes.
Video of the woman’s arrest shows no foul play or unnecessarily forceful behavior on the part of law enforcement officials. However, BLM activists and supporters are seen surrounding police officers, harassing and cursing at them as the arrest is made. Ms. Richards was arrested just days after the incident and was charged with attempting to incite a riot, child endangerment, obstructing police officers, and felony lynching, a particularly controversial charge given its historical—and highly distorted—context.
Ms. Richards’s arrest sparked outrage in the leftist activist community, especially because she was originally charged with “felony lynching,” which is described as the forceful or otherwise unlawful removal of an individual from police custody. California Governor Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown Jr. eventually removed the term “lynching” from California’s criminal code, after Sacramento prosecutors accused a woman of “lynching” after a protest of police deadly force of unarmed blacks.
Lynching is often associated with the highly distorted and truly weaponized narrative of racial relations in the United States, where it is alleged so-called “white supremacists” routinely organized mobs to attack and lynch blacks, particularly in the South, in previous periods of American history. Although the official charge was changed and the term “lynching” was removed, BLM activists felt government officials were attempting to send them a direct message by intimidation.
“So it’s really disgusting and ironic that she’s charged and convicted with felony lynching, when the real lynching that’s carried out is done in the same way it was carried out in the late 19th, early 20th century, where it’s supposed to punish those who dare to rise up against a system,” Melina Abdullah, a BLM leadership team member and Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, recently stated.
Unsurprisingly, Ms. Abdullah and other BLM activists fail to understand the basic concept that if someone commits a crime in America, there are usually repercussions for their behavior, which is exactly what happened in Ms. Richards’s case. The BLM movement and the sympathetic mainstream mass media regularly downplay or dismiss the violent, criminal, and degenerate behavior all too common in the black community, blaming “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” for the ills plaguing blacks in America.
Ms. Richards’s conviction is an encouraging development in the eyes of Americans who care about the rule of law. BLM has organized and staged particularly violent and destructive demonstrations across America ostensibly in protest of police brutality, “inequality,” “systemic racism,” and other fanciful leftist causes. Due to political correctness and, in some instances, direct orders from top political officials, those responsible for the criminal actions and general disorder spearheaded and championed by BLM rarely face any consequences for their actions.
As this newspaper has reported, BLM has caused major mayhem and destruction in cities across the U.S. on numerous occasions. Following the death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old thug who assaulted a convenience store owner before stealing a box of cigars and then assaulting a police officer, protesters associated with BLM in the St. Louis metropolitan area staged massive demonstrations. Stores were looted, private property was damaged, and violence ensued. Additionally, riots, looting, and widespread criminality were on brazen display in Baltimore, Maryland in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, a notorious heroin dealer who died while in police custody. Tragically, much of the violence and vandalism has been directed at other poor blacks in neighborhoods that were in the middle of the protests. Very few of those protesters have been arrested for their criminal behavior, as local law enforcement officials have had their hands tied by politicians more concerned with appeasing violent, irrational thugs than law and order.
It should be obvious to all that BLM is not interested in protesting responsibly or actually helping improve the lives of their fellow black citizens. They are merely pawns in a much bigger, more insidious game: the overthrow of Western civilization and the rule of law.
* On June 18, after serving less than 12 days of a 90-day sentence, Ms. Richards was released on bail.
John Friend is a California-based writer who maintains a blog.
Michael Brown asked the store owner for two boxes of cigars. He gave him the first box which Brown handed to Dorian Johnson.
The store owner then insulted Brown when he told him to pay for the first box before he would give him a second box. An angry Brown reached over the counter and grabbed the second box along with some loose cigars that fell to the floor.
Like any other customer Brown decided he was not going to buy anything from this rude store owner and returned the second box to the counter. Following his lead Johnson put the first box on the counter. The store owner then removed both boxes from the counter.
However, thinking like the Indian foreigner he was, he thought Brown was obligated to pay for the first box and considered it stolen. Stolen because, contrary to his instructions, Brown took the second box without paying for the first box.
The store owner came from behind the counter to make Brown pay for the first box of cigars while Brown was stooped down picking up those loose cigars. There is no reason to believe he was not going to return this $5.00 worth of cigars to the counter with the $100.00 worth of cigars they had already returned.
With keys in hand the owner intended to lock the door so Brown could not leave the store which is quite illegal! A move that caused Brown to bolt for the door neglecting to put the loose cigars back on the counter.
The owner initiated the physical contact at the door because Brown had not paid for the first box of cigars. The box Johnson had already put on the counter. This is the box of cigars the owner’s daughter reported to police as stolen.