Over the past year, those in America who have been less aware of the racial oppression and terrorism of African-Americans by official institutions and those in law enforcement have been woken up.  The travesty a year ago, in Ferguson, Missouri, seeing tanks rolling down the streets of our cities, with riot places shooting gas and bullets at African-American protesters will not leave the conscience of patriotic Americans.  Americans heard how readily people abusing their authority would take the life of an African-American, threaten children in the street, or even shoot a pastor trying to keep the peace.

There is only one word for such atrocities:  Terrorism – “the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization,” “the unlawful use of force and violence to intimidate or coerce a segment of a population,” “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce.”

Patriotic Americans must reject the forces of terror and oppression that seek to threaten our universal human rights from whatever source they come.   As we are united in our human rights, so we must be united against those who would use terrorist tactics to take them away.

But it just keeps getting worse and worse.  Every new “revelation” of institutional abuse leaves too many Americans stunned, outraged, mouth agape, with a dizzying cognitive dissonance – how – could this be in “our country”?  What will it take for the American people to say ENOUGH?

The truth is, however, it has been “worse” for a long, but the collective American public never really saw this, as it wasn’t reported by the largely white-controlled media.  The technical innovations of the iPhones, YouTube, and Twitter combined has changed this dynamic, and now the white-controlled media is now chasing the news that most of the rest of the public already knows and is acting on.

We also need to get the white steam media to change after such abuses; they don’t need to interview those with a professional obligation to defend ideologies or institutions right or wrong – they need to interview those committed to our universal human rights.

When people start to find out the truth about things, they ask inconvenient questions – inconvenient only to those who THINK they are in power.  Let us remind ourselves and each other who is REALLY in charge in America:  WE ARE.   Our representative government represents us, and everything they do good and bad both, is a reflection on our judgment and our willingness to accept their actions.  If they are doing something wrong, we need to TELL THEM, and make it CLEAR we WILL NOT ACCEPT IT.

Not just in Baltimore, New York City, Cleveland, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, but anywhere and everywhere we see injustice.  We need to organize to take our country back from those who would abuse our fellow Americans and fellow human beings.  This includes rejecting any candidate for any American office who doesn’t understand the PRIORITY of Americans’ universal human rights.

We need to fight for the human rights of African-Americans.   To white Americans, let’s be clear, that’s not just “their” responsibility – that’s OUR responsibility.

The growing terrorist violence against African-Americans has encouraged white supremacist groups, Confederates and Nazi extremists, who support, promote, and engage in such terrorist violence including the attack in June of the Charleston, South Carolina African-American church by white supremacist terrorist Dylann Roof, and subsequent arson attacks on multiple African-American churches.

We must defy terrorist attacks on our human rights from every source.

Our defense of our universal human rights must be the same as it is when we challenge abuses of human rights in Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Malaysia, Thailand, or anywhere in the world, without exception – including the United States of America.  As we challenge human rights abusers around the world, so we must challenge human rights abusers in America – from any and every source.

This must also include extremists who terrorize our people from institutional groups.

When law enforcement in any other part of the world oppresses, victimizes, and KILLS minority individuals, do we say “well, you have to understand?”  We do not.  Everyone knows I have background in law enforcement, and I have worked hard to maintain fairness and integrity in the American justice system.  But clearly, we cannot be blind to unfairness and lack of integrity that we see now in our justice system.  Americans cannot be hypocrites on this.

Over the past year, Americans keep waking up to one explosion of oppression after another in city after city, as we see the photographs, the videos, and learn the names of African-Americans who are victimized — by extremists in our law enforcement who MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO REPRESENT AMERICA.

Today, as this is written another travesty of justice takes place, this time again in Texas, where a young African-American woman, Sandra Bland, was pulled over for a routine traffic issue, which escalated into a white law enforcement member taking extremist measures to threaten to “light her up” with a Taser gun because she was smoking a cigarette and did not show him the deference that he desired.  She was ripped out of her car, her head beaten on the ground, and when she told the extremist Brian Encinia that she had Epilepsy, his response was “good.”  She ended up dead in a Texas jail cell, with the case under investigation.   The video of the arrest was edited and a federal investigation is underway.

We must stand to reject such terrorist efforts to unlawfully coerce and intimidate our citizens – no matter the source of such terrorism is.  When it comes from those who are to represent the American people, the American people MUST condemn and reject such abuse of authority.

This Spring, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) had an extensive private outreach campaign to our national law enforcement agencies, including Texas authorities.   The goal was to get leaders in law enforcement to publicly reaffirm their support for the Constitution of the United States as a means to defy and discourage extremists in law enforcement who would hijack the authority we have given them.  That campaign was not successful.   The deafening silence that was received when R.E.A.L. reached out with many offers of kindness was a statement of its own.    R.E.A.L. has been in contact with a new coalition called “Justice Together” that is working for reform of law enforcement agencies.

Such institutional change takes time.

But just as we have seen the racist Confederate flag start to come down after the white supremacist terror attack by Nazi/Confederate Dylann Roof, so we must use our national outrage to seek other changes.

We cannot and we MUST not accept the terrorism of the American people, whether it is by foreign extremists, domestic extremists, or God Forbid, by those who represent us.   Acts of terrorism must be consistently rejected no matter who the criminal terrorist culprit is, and whether or not the terrorist is citizen of our nation, or even if the terrorist wears a badge.

Wrong is Wrong.   Our human rights and laws apply equally to all people, as do our responsibilities.

We must stand defiant against those who would terrorize African-Americans and all Americans across the nation, just as we are responsible for equality and liberty.