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http://downtrend.com/71superb/marquette-university-celebrates-convicted-cop-killer-assata-shakur-with-a-mural

Whoever is in charge of this University is an anti-American propaganda machine.

What a load of poo.

Hopefully this mural will be taken down. Oh I know they'd never dare officially take it down, but hopefully someone has the good sense to vandalize it. Toss some ugly bright pink paint on it..do it something.

In fact yeah, I'd rather people vandalize it then they just remove it. Vandalize it and leave it up as a testament to the type of crap that just isn't going to fly anymore. Also the "quotes" from the woman they put up sound so asinine and smug considered what she did..it boggles the mind. Her quotes don't even have anything to do with gender or sexuality so..the f*ck is going on?

This also seems wildly unfair to the students of the school. Since now they kind of all look like pieces of sh*t who have cop killers for role models. I'm sure most of them do not feel that way, but I'd have a damn tough time justifying paying my hard earned money to go to school at a place that glamorizes a person like this.

It also needs to be said whoever approved this needs to be face punched. The saddest thing about this is that you KNOW that if anyone actually tried to get this legitimately taken down they'd be called racist. That is the society we've created for ourselves.

I mean the gas station down the street from my house has a nice mural featuring the characters from the "Wacky Racers" cartoon. Even this type of mural would of been more tasteful then the one this school put up.

Hopefully the thaw in Cuba might lead to this persons arrest.

I hope it is defaced and I hope someone then calls the cops to complain over it..only for the cops to promptly tell them to f*ck off. I honestly don't get how people who are sane approved this. I guess that is the thing, there isn't a hint of sanity here.

Plus if Cuba won't get her back I'd say screw relations with Cuba then. They don't get to hold onto murderers. Something tells me she is not living in squalor or anything either(like she should be).

Give it time, i'm sure folks supporting the mural will post.
Its the weekend, they're probably busy.

Originally posted by riv6672
Give it time, i'm sure folks supporting the mural will post.
Its the weekend, they're probably busy.

You are right they are probably busy, being crazy is a full time job.

I mean holy hell some people are going around saying "Assata taught me". THOSE are the type of people we need to be worried about. Round them all up and ask them what the hell they feel this trash has taught them.

Haha, imagine the answers.

Don't know a whole lot about Assata Shakur, if all the claims are true, she seems like a very awful person.

One thing I can say for sure, the guy who wrote that article is one angry and hate-filled man.

Assata is a hero in some communities- she is considered by them to be the victim of a major miscarriage of justice.

Understanding this is as simple as that.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Assata is a hero in some communities- she is considered by them to be the victim of a major miscarriage of justice.

Understanding this is as simple as that. Jesus, are you still here? You used to bore me to death years ago. You got a life yet?

The world just gets crazier and crazier if you browse some stories on that same site:

http://downtrend.com/robertgehl/because-too-many-black-students-are-getting-suspended-schools-dropping-punishment-altogether

Tell me this is a joke. Intelligent people couldn't of done this.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Assata is a hero in some communities- she is considered by them to be the victim of a major miscarriage of justice.

Understanding this is as simple as that.

Well any community that sees her as a hero is trash in itself. Christ, why aren't THESE ever the places folks decide to burn down?

Originally posted by Robtard
One thing I can say for sure, the guy who wrote that article is one angry and hate-filled man.

Are you basing this on other articles he wrote or something? Since the specific article in question, what did he write that was so bad to you? I agree he seems angry but then..this is something to be angry about. Everyone should be pissed off over this.

^^^good point/good question.

Gotta love a website that has a separate tab for "Hillary Exposed" news. Also, I run Adblock and got popup spam from it. Never a good sign. There are better sites you could have used.

I don't really think it's a good idea to have a mural for this, but in demanding it be taken down, there are free speech issues that are called into question. I don't bleed so liberal that I don't see the point of censorship at times (context is everything), but there are usually cogent philosophical arguments in defense of such art...even when the person/act/idea espoused by the art is reprehensible.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Assata is a hero in some communities- she is considered by them to be the victim of a major miscarriage of justice.

Understanding this is as simple as that.

Yea right. Let us all understand and rationalize with this type of behavior of a cop killing, fugitive and prison escapee who now is in Cuba.

Understanding is paramount.

Yeah, you can remain morally outraged at something while still attempting to rationally understand why someone might consider this guy a hero, and without taking arguments too far to the point of irrational hatred and generalizing. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say being able to do both is essential to making any sort of progress in a discussion about the mural. Without a detached understanding of the reasons for the mural, how can anyone begin to convince its supporters of their error (alleged or otherwise)? Otherwise it's just a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In that sense, I think this mural will probably reveal as much about its detractors as its supporters.

Rationally understand why they'd consider her a hero? That assumes there is any actual rationality to it. There isn't. Just stupid people. You talk about moral outrage, but then talk about keeping the outrage in control. I don't know about you, but the word "outrage" doesn't really conjure up images of control in my mind.

I'd say the worst he did was lump everyone into one group, but the other things? Like the finding this confounding? I went to Catholic schools my entire life, I find it confusing as well. I don't get you thinking he thinks gay people are filth. I saw that reaction as a knock tot he Catholic church, not gay people. He seemed surprised the Catholic church was trying to be tolerant.

I'm even more confused, though, on how the quotes have NOTHING to do with being gay or gender or anything. They sound like the stereotypical BS a wannabe "freedom fighter" would spout. Also, why this woman? This is a school, surely they have people who know history and all that, yes? So they have a gay resource center..out of all the people alive or dead they could put up a mural of..they choose her?

Also I'm sure some misguided folk out there consider George Zimmermann or the guy who shot Michael Brown as "heroes". Yet why do I get the feeling people would respond a lot differently if they were given murals on the sides of schools?

Originally posted by Surtur
Rationally understand why they'd consider her a hero? That assumes there is any actual rationality to it. There isn't. Just stupid people. You talk about moral outrage, but then talk about keeping the outrage in control. I don't know about you, but the word "outrage" doesn't really conjure up images of control in my mind.

I'd say the worst he did was lump everyone into one group, but the other things? Like the finding this confounding? I went to Catholic schools my entire life, I find it confusing as well. I don't get you thinking he thinks gay people are filth. I saw that reaction as a knock tot he Catholic church, not gay people. He seemed surprised the Catholic church was trying to be tolerant.

I'm even more confused, though, on how the quotes have NOTHING to do with being gay or gender or anything. They sound like the stereotypical BS a wannabe "freedom fighter" would spout.

Also I'm sure some misguided folk out there consider George Zimmermann or the guy who shot Michael Brown as "heroes". Yet why do I get the feeling people would respond a lot differently if they were given murals on the sides of schools?

My point is that outrage rarely creates change in the opposition; it just entrenches them more deeply in their beliefs. Were I railing against this in the media, I'd seek understanding so that my rebuttals would be catered to the situation, not to preconceived notions about generalized groups of people. And if I were truly outraged, I'd seek to focus that rage into some way of actually creating change, not just yelling into the wind, so to speak.

Because their answer to "why is he a hero?" is going to be vastly different from your answer to "why do they think he's a hero?" And in that divide is where inquiry should be centered. Rob's breakdown of the article's tone is case and point of the kind of thing that's the least productive in this situation.

I also have to say this is what pisses me off about the church. I was raised in it and luckily I got wise to what they were about, but let us break this down to the bare essentials. This in essence was a good thing. Catholics showing tolerance for gays? A good thing, and then they take a big dump all over it with an unnecessarily controversial mural on the side of the building.

I have a friend who's a Jesuit priest; one of the smartest and most considerate people I know. Be careful not to conflate an entire religion with what likely amounts to the decisions of a few.

Originally posted by Digi
I have a friend who's a Jesuit priest; one of the smartest and most considerate people I know. Be careful not to conflate an entire religion with what likely amounts to the decisions of a few.

I hope you are right, I hope most others of the religion go on record denouncing it.

I still think it is a shame because people will talk about it and they'll just focus on the controversial mural now as opposed to the actual steps forward being taken by the church.

Catholic priests are some of the dirtiest most detestful people in the world. The church proves itself which is represented by it's leaders. Immoral, disgusting prevented men that exist. Does not suprise me in the least.

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Catholic priests are some of the dirtiest most detestful people in th world. The church proves itself which is represented by it's leaders. Immoral, disgusting people.

Again conflating parts with the whole. I'm an atheist, but was raised Catholic, which should tell you something of what I think of Catholic doctrine. But I still count several Catholics - including priests and deacons - among my good friends and advisers.

The well-documented scandals they've gone through are indeed disgusting. But it remains - as these things usually do - a small percentage among an overwhelmingly well-meaning majority.

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Catholic priests are some of the dirtiest most detestful people in the world. The church proves itself which is represented by it's leaders. Immoral, disgusting prevented men that exist. Does not suprise me in the least.

In my Catholic grammar school they'd always send home a bunch of free collection envelopes with the students. They had each specific students name, address, etc. on them. When I say collection envelopes I mean that in the part during mass where people take up a collection the idea was to have your money prepared ahead of time and put in an envelope.

I come to find out the reason was so they could keep track of which families were regularly attending church and which were not. I remember just feeling creeped out when I found that out.

Though I don't want to lump them all into the same boat. There were a few priests I liked. I had a German priest for a Spanish teacher in high school and he'd always go on about how he got laid a lot. But of course he meant..when you go to Hawaii and they put that flowerly necklace around you? That is called getting "laid" or whatever..and the guy traveled to Hawaii a lot. He'd joke that he became a priest so the life of poverty would help him lose weight. So not all of them are bad.

Whisper- don't make flame posts like that again or it's a ban.

And indeed, a lack of any attempt to try and understand this thing can become a much bigger problem than the mural itself. These people may be mistaken but they do actually have genuinely felt reasons to believe what they do, and to write it off as people just being stupid, anti-American and/or senseless is tremendously unhelpful. This is all part of a massive cultural issue the US has to deal with, and as Digi says, simply showing outrage increases the divide.

In the UK, we had convicted terrorists being elected as MPs. That was outrageous to many, but such seething hate against it made the conflict worse, not better. A lack of effort to understand community feeling encouraged disaster.

It's easy here to get sucked into just trying to find people to hate or seeing things as a bigger mystery as they need to be. But as I said at first, it's really very simple. All your negative views you have on this person- they think you are utterly mistaken in them. You can try and understand that and deal with it rationally, or you can just get angry, but getting angry achieves nothing.

We certainly have here a very biased and unhelpful article- and from an objective perspective, the idea that 1970s cops engaged in a racially-motivated miscarriage of justice is, if nothing else, hardly a ludicrous idea. Language like 'cop-killer' is thrown around liberally, but note that she was never accused in court of shooting a cop (indeed, someone else was convicted of firing the bullets)- her murder conviction is that of being an accomplice to the shooter (not that this is not a crime, but it puts 'cop killer' into perspective). There are areas to explore here if you want to make sense of it.

All that considered, that some people see her as a hero has one of two reasons:

1. She is a victim of a miscarriage
2. She is not but they genuinely think she is

And note that the mindset in both cases is identical.

Disagree on the particulars of the case all you like, but you can't just write it off as senseless irrationality- there are reasons involved. There is no third option where these people are all just random idiots.

In any case, I understand the mural is being removed, which is likely a good thing. Regardless of freedom of speech, community aggravation cuts both ways, and making a mural in a place of education out of Assata, even if you think she is innocent, is needlessly provocative.

They have NOT given valid reasons why she is a hero. They feel she suffered a "miscarriage" of justice. Okay, the evidence is..where?

I mean if they totally have actual evidence that will clear her name should they not give it up? Orrr is it just "she is black, so she must be a victim of the justice system" ? It's either they support a murderer or do not think she did what she did or feel she was justified in doing it, in which okay when will they present evidence?

If they can't give any actual evidence for why they believe what they believe, then how could we not call it irrational BS? By all means, if they want to be taken seriously then they can give valid reasonable responses that make actual sense for why they think this. Now see, no..saying "oh I think justice wasn't done for her!" isn't enough, not by a long shot. Why don't they feel justice is done, what evidence is there, etc. etc. They don't get to spout silly crap like "Asshat taught me" and leave it at that.

Dude, calm down.

Here you go: http://www.assatashakur.org/

Feel free to not believe her, that's your right and choice and it could very well be the correct one. Some people believe she was a victim and persecuted due to her outspoken beliefs and the groups/people she mingled with.

I don't mean to sound like I'm not calm, but I just don't see why it is rational. The website you gave is her site. Of course she is going to be painted in a non-negative way. I would hope people have more then just "she said she was persecuted" when it comes to believing she is a hero.

That article has at least one factually incorrect error. The reward for her capture is not $2,000,000. It's $1,000,000.


"The FBI is offering a reward of up to $1,000,000 for information directly leading to the apprehension of Joanne Chesimard."

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/joanne-deborah-chesimard/view

This is from Wiki:

"Since May 2, 2005, the FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist and offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. On May 2, 2013, the FBI added her to the Most Wanted Terrorist List; the first woman to be listed. On the same day, the New Jersey Attorney General offered to match the FBI reward, increasing the total reward for her capture to $2 million."

Originally posted by Robtard
This is from Wiki:

"Since May 2, 2005, the FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist and offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. On May 2, 2013, the FBI added her to the Most Wanted Terrorist List; the first woman to be listed. On the same day, the New Jersey Attorney General offered to match the FBI reward, increasing the total reward for her capture to $2 million."

Okay, then. I checked the article and the wording says this:

"The FBI has her listed as a domestic terrorist and she is on their Most Wanted Terrorist List. There is a $2 million reward on her head."

I made the faulty assumption that he was stating that the FBI put a $2 million reward on her head.



But, yeah, I'm familiar with the FBI's most wanted/highest payouts because I it would be like winning the lottery if I even run across those people and turn them in.

When I read the article, I thought, "HAAA! He's wrong n'stuff. It's only $1 mil. WEEE!"

Originally posted by Surtur
In my Catholic grammar school they'd always send home a bunch of free collection envelopes with the students. They had each specific students name, address, etc. on them. When I say collection envelopes I mean that in the part during mass where people take up a collection the idea was to have your money prepared ahead of time and put in an envelope.

I come to find out the reason was so they could keep track of which families were regularly attending church and which were not. I remember just feeling creeped out when I found that out.

Though I don't want to lump them all into the same boat. There were a few priests I liked. I had a German priest for a Spanish teacher in high school and he'd always go on about how he got laid a lot. But of course he meant..when you go to Hawaii and they put that flowerly necklace around you? That is called getting "laid" or whatever..and the guy traveled to Hawaii a lot. He'd joke that he became a priest so the life of poverty would help him lose weight. So not all of them are bad.

That's an awesome priest.

This is abysmal failure for the school and the students and faculty.