GoFundMe page for Ke’Arre Stewart, one of the three victims of the Planned Parenthood terrorist. He was an Iraq war veteran and father of two young children. The money raised will go to his family to help with funeral and burial expenses.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/2rcg8j6s
I haven’t seen pages for the other two victims, Jennifer Markovsky and Officer Garrett Swasey.
Apparently office Swasey has on that has raised upwards of $70,000 ($100,000 goal)
“The fact that the members are African American is without a doubt the primary cause, but it is churches rather than African American colleges or NAACP offices that seem to have been singled out.”
oh brother…
Anyone wanting to terrorize black people will pick a location NOT guarded by campus police [ American colleges] OR located in OFFICE BUILDINGS loaded with security cameras aimed at doors and windows [ where most NAACP offices are located] .
So if you want to target groups of black people, who are overwhelmingly Christian, where else would you go??
"White Christian terrorists don’t target black churches because the congregation is Christian; white Christian terrorists target black churches because the congregation is black. "
CF said it better than I could.
Its not the CHURCH, its the PEOPLE inside, who are black, who are the targets of terrorists bigots hiding behind their “Christian” beliefs.
duh…
^ To add on, the whole goal of terrorism is to terrorize. Striking a place of worship, especially in populations where church is a central aspect of one’s life (like in many African American communities), is a way to especially strike terror into the heart of the person you’re going after. Places of worship are supposed to be safe… and when they’re not, it’s terrifying. I mean, I don’t even know of too many churches who lock their doors because it’s just supposed to be a universally agreed upon safe space- even among those of us who are not religious.
White Christian terrorists going after Black churches is nothing new. It’s been going on for decades and decades. It just generally doesn’t make the news.
(Self-censoring my semi-political rant as I think this thread should stay up. My apologies.)
@lady lorna:
The black churches that have been attacked (and were bombed back in the 1960’s), not because they were Christian, but because they were black, this was racial hatred at work, not religious hatred (and given where the attacks have happened, it is likely that the perpetrators were Christian as well. Among other things, fundamentalist Christian groups, like the Southern Baptists, were not exactly or still are not known for racially progressive ideals. When black churches were being bombed in the 1960’s, when a church bombing killed 4 little girls, the heads of the Southern Baptist convention, rather than condemning those who did it, blamed the government and ‘radical, communist’ preachers like Dr. King, for stirring up problems).
I also think dragging the middle east into this was not even close to being on topic. Yes, Christians in the Middle East, Africa, Egypt and other parts of the world do face being attacked and killed, there is no doubt about that, but what I was talking about were fundamentalist Christians and other conservative Christians who go around talking about the war on Christians in the US, as if Christians were being shot at, had their churches burned down, bombed, you name it , which unlike places like gay bars, LGBT centers, abortion clinics and planned parenthood, is a falsehood, what they are claiming is a 'war on Christians" is that most people in this country refuse to accept their agenda that their beliefs and such should be law and common custom. The hyperbole is unbelievable, to them, stores putting up “happy holidays” or legal same sex marriage is somehow a war on them, they literally see themselves as if they are being bombed or shot at; meanwhile, the Christian crazies in fact are attacking others and worse, their allies are excusing it or in many cases, are amping up the volume which leads to these kinds of attacks, the constant vilification of planned parenthood, the constant claims of slaughtering children to get body parts and the like, that stretches from any yahoo politician running for office in certain places to the stage of the current presidential election, has fed it, and if any of the current candidates running for the GOP nomination had a shred of decency, they would be ripping some of the other candidates to shreds over their part in villifying planned parenthood, but I won’t hold my breath.
In a just world, the families of the victims of the PP attack could get recompense from the makers of the faux video and from anyone who loudly and repeatedly promoted it. Especially those who promoted it, against all logic, for personal political gain. They all contributed to a hostile and violent climate that resulted in this terrorist attack.
We now know more about the terrorist Robert Dear.
According to the New York Times, he has three ex-wives, and was living with a fourth woman at the time of the attack. According to a relative of the woman he was living with, he and the woman were "very religious, read the Bible often and are always talking about scripture.” That woman has been in the hospital with pancreatitis since before Thanksgiving and has not been implicated in the attack.
His ex-wives and ex-neighbors report that he was at times violent. He was accused of raping a woman at knifepoint, but the one alleged witness refused to testify and the case was dropped by prosecutors.
“He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic,” said one ex-wife. He posted Christian rants in all caps on comment sections of websites. A number of people who knew him said he was anti-abortion. He reportedly noted as “heroes” the Army of God, a Christian terrorist group openly praising murderers of abortion doctors and suggesting that attacking women’s health care facilities and murdering health care workers is doing God’s work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/robert-dear-planned-parenthood-shooting.html?_r=0
He also had charges of animal cruelty against him.
Hmm… I wonder if he was on any terrorist watch lists. (Unlikely.)
That [Army of God](http://www.armyofgod.com/) website is skating on very thin ice, even for the most zealous of free speech advocates, I’d think.
They also praise murderer Paul Jennings Hill and Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph.
In his mug shot, this guy looked like he was on drugs. Or was psychotic. He had a very wild, scary look in his eyes. Has there been any mention of a drug screen being done?
The Times got its information from public records and from talking to Dear’s friends, relatives and neighbors. The Colorado Springs police department isn’t talking, so we have no information about any possible drug screen, what weapon(s) he used, whether the items he brought into Planned Parenthood were explosives, or what he said to police interviewers other than a couple of anonymous snippets.
In an interview last night on Rachel Maddow, Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, said that without the security measures Planned Parenthood had put in place, the casualty total could have been a lot worse. She was proud that the PP employees, who undergo detailed security training, had executed their security plans. Dear was prevented from accessing some parts of the clinic, and the police were able to use PP video cameras to track him during the standoff.
@Nrdsb4 - when they arrested him he was wearing glasses and his hair appeared neater. I don’t know what happened in the mean time or why they took the glasses away for the mug shot but he appears much more “wild eyed” in the mug shot than in the arrest photos.
That’s good to know that the PP employees actually were able to prevent this from being even worse.
@saintfan, that’s interesting. He really does look rather “insane” in the mug shot, to the extent that these things can be visualized.
Update: no question about the shooter’s motive. http://www.wdrb.com/story/30709371/colorado-planned-parenthood-shooter-says-hes-guilty claims he’s a “warrior for the babies”.
As if there were ever a question! I wonder who could have “radicalized” him? Whose intemperate rhetoric (and reliance, among other things, on fraudulent videos) inspired him? And, most importantly, should we ban anyone who engages in such rhetoric from entering the U.S.A., whether as an immigrant or a tourist? Perhaps track them in a database? After all, there have been such terrorist acts many times before, and the danger remains in the future. Just because the public and the media can’t keep two different terrorist acts within one week in their heads at the same time, doesn’t mean that the danger of the first kind, or the rhetoric that inspires it, is any less.
But, oh, right, he was a “mentally ill lone wolf,” and people like that can’t possibly be influenced by the ravings of extremists.
Given the enormous disparity in body counts, I’d have to disagree. The phrase ‘orders of magnitude’ come to mind.
^^ The phrase “orders of magnitude” does not come to the mind of anyone who knows what an order of magnitude is. The Colorado guy shot 12 people. The San Bernardino couple shot 35 people. That’s not even one order of magnitude, let alone orderS of magnitude. It’s not even three times bigger.
12^1=12, 12^2=144.
Boom! cc style