the Great Brain Robbery: Trump believers thought NPR tweeted propaganda. It was the Declaration of Independence

From [HERE] For about 20 minutes Tuesday, NPR traveled back to 1776.

To echo its 29-year on-air tradition, the public radio network’s main Twitter account tweeted out the Declaration of Independence, line by line.

There — in 113 consecutive posts, in 140-character increments — was the text of the treasured founding document of the United States, from its soaring opening to its searing indictments of King George III’s “absolute tyranny” to its very last signature.

Who could have taken issue with such a patriotic exercise, done in honor of the nation’s birthday?

Quite a few freaky white folks lost it and threatened to shut the station down.[HUH?] Yes jesusized Trump believers who love being dominated by him and love being necessary to his magical domination. [MORE]

Undeceiver Dr. Blynd explains in Funktionary:

Believer - one who accepts that which has no basis in reality. 2) a person who enjoys being deceived. A believer does not seek—just accepts theologies and/or ideologies. 3) one who is addicted to vanity and/or chained to convention with conviction. 4) one who lives in a cloud of illusions, confounded by language and its deceptions. Believers are people who make their lives subjective slaves to a mere belief—engineered my limited and fragmented understanding and fostered by erroneous conclusions based solely on effects and appearances. A true believer would rather believe in something and be wrong than not believe in it and be right. 

Jesusize - to believe in something (or someone—real, mythologized or imagined) or even worship it, based on little (scant and sketchy) to no evidence in support of it (single-source propaganda), and uncorroborated accounts that fly in the face of knows history, facts and science. 2) to turn fiction or fictional accounts into fact and history through propaganda, indoctrination coercion and violence.  Just because a man called "Jesus" did not exist in history does not mean that you cannot become the Christ you are awakening in (or at least to) the Divine Mystery. (See: Jesus Seminar & Christ Consciousness). [MORE]

Dr. Blynd further states, Racism is a "virus in the mind. A racist is a psychopath at war with his own being." [MORE] Suffering from the disease of constant comparison racists and their make believe beliefs, [imagining themselves to be a part of a hierarchy wherein persons unable to produce color & lacking melanin are supreme; imagining themselves to be higher than whatever they imagine you to be] are in a state of non-reality, a play world. "A divided mind, with the an unconscious and a conscious one, can never apperceive things as they are. Truth is adulterated with falsehood in the same proportion to which one is unconscious." 

These believers now have the media chasing granfalloons similar to the way non-white people chase racism and the false concept of race. A granfalloon "is an empty representation, of which one cannot even positively aver that it is even a concept." Dr. Blynd explains are necessary to "the Great Brain Robbery." Never fight (oppose) things that are not or 'what is not'  - as you will stratify your energy and disparate your life force while paradoxically strengthening what is not. If it is an absence - a granfalloon - then don't fight with it, seek the the thing of which it is the absence (for), find it and handle your business accordingly." [MORE]

Would you have a serious discussion with a child about his ramblings on finance? Like listening to a child's babble, there is also no actual substance to racist speech. Its not real. It is nothing to take seriously and analyze. 

Getting caught up in the substance of the story/illusion; that is, caught up in nonsensical unrealities is a trick bag or form of mental bondage, a trap intentionally set that you have been conditioned to fall into. 

21 States Are Making Misleading Claims About Turning Over Voter Data to Trump [Jim Crow Purge] Commission

States with a Republican as Secretary of State (labeled red) that have indicated to CNN & the public that they will “resist” Kris Kobach’s demand for full voter files—but have already given him those files. Four states with a Democrat as Secretary of State (labeled blue) have made the same inaccurate claim. North Carolina’s Democratic Governor last week ordered his Board of Elections not to hand over voter files to Kobach—but the Republican-controlled board had already turned over 6,745,639 voter files.

From [GregPalast] A national outcry followed last week’s request from Kris Kobach, Vice Chair of President Donald Trump's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, that state election officials provide him with a long list of personal information on every voter, including party affiliation, date of birth, last four digits of social security number, and more.

Election officials in forty-four states say they will refuse to comply with the June 28 written request from Kobach, whose advisory commission was created in May by Trump via executive order. Trump has made repeated and so-far unsubstantiated claims that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election.

“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” responded Mississippi's Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann.

“The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release,” said Louisiana’s Secretary of State Tom Schedler.

To the contrary, Schedler and voting officials from fifteen other Republican states, the majority of those allegedly “resisting” Kobach’s demand, have already shared detailed voter files with Kobach in his capacity as Secretary of State of Kansas. 

Records obtained by The Progressive from the Kansas Secretary of State office showed that Schedler turned over nearly three million voter files to Kobach earlier this year, including voter birthdates and Social Security information.

In Mississippi, Hosemann turned over the state’s entire voter rolls to Kobach, some 2,092,886 files. Each file includes voter names, last four digits of their social security numbers, voting address, and voting history.

Kobach, who has recently announced his candidacy for Governor of Kansas, has indicated the lists will be used to remove illegal voters. But voting rights advocates say the goal is actually to allow fewer people to vote.

Twenty-one states listed by CNN as refusing Kobach his demands for voter files have already turned over voter files to Kobach’s office.

“The lists will almost certainly be used to...suppress the vote of citizens of color,” says Dee Hunter of the newly formed Civil Rights Center. Hunter’s group is part of a coalition including the ACLU, Common Cause, the NAACP of Georgia, Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and other organizations calling for a halt to the expansion of Kobach’s Crosscheck system.

Voter lists from Mississippi, and twenty-seven other states, were turned over to Kobach beginning years ago as part of a voter-list purge program called "Interstate Crosscheck," Hunter explains. The list aims to identify Americans registered in more than one state and intending to vote twice in one election, which is a crime. Any names identified as potential double-voters receives a postcard which, if unanswered, could lead to removal from the rolls.

According to a Rolling Stone analysis of data obtained from states participating in Interstate Crosscheck, as many as 1.1 million names were purged from voter rolls before the 2016 election.

According to database expert Mark Swedlund, an astonishing one in six Hispanics and one in nine African-Americans are on Kobach’s “potential double registered” list of seven million suspects in the twenty-eight states.

But Crosscheck functions by merely matching the first name and last name of voters in the 28 Crosscheck states. This screenshot of the Georgia-Virginia suspect list created by Kobach shows that Barbara ANN Jackson of Georgia is identified as potentially the same voter as Barbara FAYE Jackson of Virginia. Similarly, Billy RAY Jackson may be the same voter as Billy MANUEL Jackson JR.

Detail from Crosscheck results identifying potential "duplicate" voters in Virginia and Georgia. [MORE]

Colin Kaepernick Goes To Ghana For The 4th

From [MoorInfo]

NY Times Finally Recognizes Trump's Use of "Interstate Crosscheck" to Purge [Millions of] Black & Latino Votes

From [NewYorkTimes] Last Wednesday, Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas and the vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, wrote a letter to all 50 states, requesting that they send the commission the personal information of all registered voters.

This includes full names, birth dates, addresses, political affiliations, voting history and last four digits of Social Security numbers. The letter says that all documents provided to the commission will be made public.

What could possibly go wrong?

There are obvious data privacy concerns. Digital security experts have called the plan a gold mine for hackers. Mr. Kobach’s letter says the data will be held on a “secure FTP site,” but offers no details. Mr. Kobach himself appears to be backtracking, recently saying that, notwithstanding his request to other states, he will not be giving Kansas voters’ Social Security information to his own commission.

More important, it’s obvious that the commission collecting this information is intended to sell President Trump’s lie that he “won” the popular vote (once you deduct the millions of supposedly illegal votes, of course).

We know this because Mr. Kobach, the de facto head of the commission, is a champion of that lie: “I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton,” he told reporters last fall.

This commission is not meant to ensure that America’s voter rolls are accurate. It is meant to disenfranchise voters. 

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Just take a look at Mr. Kobach’s record. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit rebuked him for the mass disenfranchisement of thousands of people who registered to vote when they renewed their driver’s licenses under the National Voter Registration Act, known as the “motor voter” law. In the same case, a federal magistrate judge fined Mr. Kobach for making “patently misleading representations to the court.”

Mr. Kobach will most likely use your data to make exaggerated claims about untold numbers of people who are supposedly registered and voting in multiple states. For years, he has operated an “Interstate Crosscheck” system, which purports to compare voter rolls in about 30 states, in order to identify possible double registrants. This new endeavor looks like Crosscheck on steroids.

Ensuring that voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date is a worthy goal. Comparing registration lists to find people who have moved can be a useful practice, but only if it’s done accurately and appropriate safeguards are built in, like giving voters notice and an opportunity to contest their removal in case they are mistakenly flagged. A reliable system that automatically updates voter rolls when people move could be an innovative way both to maintain the accuracy of rolls and to help voters participate without unnecessary bureaucratic headaches.

Mr. Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck program is not that system. A recent study found that using Crosscheck to purge the voter rolls in Iowa would “impede 200 legal votes” for “every double vote prevented.”

Crosscheck considers two names to be matches based on very loose criteria, like first and last name, even if the Social Security numbers don’t match. That generates many false positives and might result in lots of people getting purged who are legitimately registered in only one state.

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Gallup Poll Says Americans' feeling of freedumb is declining

From [HERE] Americans' feeling of freedom is declining. In 2006, 91% of Americans were satisfied with the freedom in their lives. Today, it's 75%.

The 16-percentage-point decline is dramatic -- but looking at how far the U.S. has fallen in comparison with the rest of the world, the decline is even worse. The U.S. ranked 11th when Gallup asked this question in 2006 (among 118 countries). In 2016, the U.S. came in 71st (among 139 countries). This puts the U.S. in the bottom half of all countries measured.

This decline isn't happening in other wealthy democracies. Denmark, Finland and Canada were all tied for first in 2006 -- 96% of people in each country expressed satisfaction with their freedom. Today, those figures are virtually unchanged, and all of them remain in the top 11.

Two things typically come to mind when people think about their personal freedom -- their financial situation and their government. [MORE]

In "FUNKTIONARY, THE KEY HOLDERS ENPSYCHLOPEDIA" Dr. Blynd, Ph.F. breaks down the diffeence between freedumb an freedom [HERE] 

freedumb -  the state of unrecognized psychological captivity that sheeple remain in because they don't speak truth to power - and when truth is spoken around them, refrain from being open, or impervious to it. 2) the mindset that proposes "since we are liberated, we are also free." 3) the mindset that operates upon the notion that you can have individuality without accountability or responsibility. 4) the pretence that reality is truth and vice-versa. People cherish and relish their freedumb because they have been socialized into self-censorship along with misidentification with the mind. (See Phreedom). 

A Monetary System of Bondage? 'Dollars Are Make Believe Units of Mental Money, the Greatest Hoax on Earth'

Bail Bonds Co. [charging Non-White Immigrants $420 per month for GPS Ankle Monitoring] Files Suit Against CALA

From [HERE] America’s only bond-security provider for immigrants claims in court that it is losing business because a nonprofit has been advising clients to remove the ankle bracelets that monitor their movements and ensure they show up for court.

When it comes to bond securitization for immigrants who have been detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Virginia-based Libre by Nexus is the only game in town.

In exchange for their freedom, immigrants sign contracts promising to pay Libre $420 per month while wearing the company’s GPS devices. But these contracts are the subject of lawsuits and allegations of fraud by immigrants who claim they didn’t understand them.

In interviews with The Washington Post, a dozen of Libre’s clients said they struggled to pay the monthly fee for the device — which they call a “grillete,” or shackle — and feared if they didn’t, they would be detained again. Most said Libre employees threatened them with exactly that. [MORE]

As explained in the complaint, filed on June 29 in Kings County Supreme Court, immigrant detainees typically lack traditional collateral, but Libre can guarantee their compliance to bail bondsmen because it monitors clients’ movements with GPS ankle monitors.

Libre, which collects a monthly fee from the immigrants for its services, credits its business model with having “successfully reunited thousands of detainees with their families while their immigration cases wind their way through court.”

Since at least 2015, however, Libre says it has lost contact with at least four clients counseled by Central American Legal Assistance, a New York charity whose name is abbreviated in the complaint as CALA.

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Public Housing Apartheid: White Urban Liberals are Inclusive Until It Comes to Living w/ Blacks & Latinos

From [NY Times] A mural on the wall of an elementary school here proclaimed, “All the world is all of us,” but the hundreds of people packing the auditorium one night were determined to stop a low-income housing project from coming to their upscale neighborhood.

The proposed 233-unit building, which was to be funded with federal tax credits, would burden their already overcrowded elementary school with new children, many people argued during a lively meeting last year. Some urged the Houston Housing Authority to pursue cheaper sites elsewhere.

As cheers rang out over nearly three hours for every objection raised, Chrishelle Palay, a fair-housing advocate, confronted the mostly white crowd.

“It’s time to face your fears,” Ms. Palay said as boos rang out. “Stop succumbing to misleading rhetoric, and begin practicing the inclusive lifestyles that many of you claim to lead.”

The outcome was familiar. Elected officials sided with the opposition. And an effort to bring affordable housing to an affluent, majority white neighborhood failed in Houston, where low-income housing is overwhelmingly confined to poor, predominantly black and Latino communities.

A review of federal data by The New York Times found that in the United States’ biggest metropolitan areas, low-income housing projects that use federal tax credits — the nation’s biggest source of funding for affordable housing — are disproportionately built in majority nonwhite communities.

What this means, fair-housing advocates say, is that the government is essentially helping to maintain entrenched racial divides, even though federal law requires government agencies to promote integration.

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California Reports Double-Digit Rise in Hate Crimes Against Blacks & Latinos

From [HERE] The number of hate crimes committed in California jumped 11 percent in 2016, including increases in attacks against black people and members of the LGTBQ community, state officials reported Monday.

According to an annual report by the California Department of Justice, there were 251 hate crimes reported against black people in 2016, up 8.7 percent from the previous year. Hate crimes against Latinos jumped to 83, while 56 events against Caucasians were reported.

The Golden State experienced a double-digit increase in total hate crimes for the second consecutive year, according to hate-crime data compiled from prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the report follows an “unsettling” national uptick of race and religious-related crimes.

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After Jim Crowing 75,000 Black Votes in Nov, Michigan has No Problem Complying w/Trump's Voter Info Request

Trump victory margin in Michigan:                    13,107 

Michigan Crosscheck purge list:                       449,922

Electionomist Greg Palast explains that Michigan officials declared in late November that Trump won the state's count by 10,704 votes. Yet a record 75,355 ballots were not counted. The uncounted ballots came mostly from Detroit and Flint, majority-Black cities that vote Democratic.

The votes went uncounted because Blacks in Detroit and Flint voted on old, broken down voting machines. An astonishing 87 machines broke down in Detroit, responsible for counting tens of thousands of ballots. Many more were simply faulty and uncalibrated. [MORE] and [MORE]

From [HERE] More than half of the states in the U.S. are reportedly refusing to provide some or all of the voter information requested by a commission established by President Trump to examine whether any fraud occurred in the 2016 elections.

But election officials in Michigan say they will have little problem giving the commission information about voters in the Wolverine state. That’s because they say most of that data is already available to the public.

The panel is requesting the personal information of voters in all 50 states.

President Trump says the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is investigating his controversial claim that millions of people voted illegally in the most recent U.S. elections. The President questioned if states who refuse to offer details on voters and voting behavior are trying to “hide” something. [MORE]

More on stolen election [HERE]

Cambodian Woman on Bike w/Child Asks White Man: 'Why Are You Calling Me Bitch? Why Are You Calling Me Nigger?'

Answer for Cambodian Woman: 1) 'Most white people hate non-white people. The reason that most white people hate non-white people is because whites are not non-white people. If you know this about white people, you need know little else. If you do not know this about white people, virtually all else that you know about them will only confuse you.' -Neely Fuller [MORE] Most White People Love to Hate Blacks. Its a Hatred that makes them feel good, righteous and justified.' [MORE] 2) Provocative racists love to provoke you to bring the nigger out of you for their amusement. Non-white people, especially Black people have been programmed to react in certain ways and they enjoy watching you react. 

You must become aware and meditative to deal with racism in the present moment. Analyzing a racist episode after it occurs does not help you deal with the present moment. Your knowledge will be stale and always too slow for the right now moment; it can only help you react not respond to what is going on. [MORE]

From [HERE] What was supposed to be a pleasant bike ride for a family in Sunnyvale, California, ended in a racist incident on Thursday evening.

Paula Nuguid was riding with her 9-year-old daughter when they needed to make a left turn.

An unidentified man in a car behind them apparently didn’t like waiting, so he began to honk the horn, according to Nuguid’s Facebook post. Nuguid said he called her a bitch.

She then confronted the motorist, an encounter she documented on video.

“Why are you honking at me? Why are you calling me a bitch? Why are you calling me a bitch? You’re in a two-ton vehicle and my daughter and I are on our bikes,” she can be heard shouting.

Nuguid added some additional information in the comments section:

“Some background: This happened to me today at 4:33pm as I was traveling south on Frances St in the downtown area of Sunnyvale, California, which is part of Silicon Valley. I was trying to make a legal left into a parking lot where Frances St and Olsen St intersect. His claim I made an illegal right is absurd [the substance of racism is make believe]. I was traveling east in the bike lane on Evelyn Ave and the light was green as I turned right. 

 “I was signaling left and waiting for oncoming traffic to pass when this man began incessantly honking at me, calling me a bitch, and telling me to get out of his way. I was attempting to make a left the way the California DMV recommends (see screenshot).”

In the video, as Nuguid tries to explain that she is making a legal left turn, she approaches the driver.

“How fucking dare you, you entitled white prick?” she can be heard saying.

He responds, “Oh, shut the fuck up.”

When Nuguid tells the driver she “can tell you’re not from California,” he replies, “You fucking Cambodian n****r, get out of here.”

When she informs him the encounter is going to be on Facebook, he grins while repeatedly saying, “Awesome.”

Nuguid told RawStory that she and her daughter both cried after the experience and that she’s been forced to explain racism to her kids. [MORE]

[Contravening the 2nd Amendment] NRA Ad Calls for Violence to Silence Legitimate Outrage @ Government Oppression

Messaging to Zombies. The NRA, a tricked out organization that whores for Doggy and Crimeth Inc., is looking for a few suckers or sheople to join its ranks. What the NRA is calling for here is the opposite of what the 2nd Amendment stands for as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression and tyranny from the Government. [MORE] In reality, the NRA are upholders, supporters and perpetrators of the institution of the White Supremacy Dynamic. [MORE] They sell fear to racists and support the Governmental oppression of non-white people. 

Dr. Blynd explains in FUNKTIONARY 

Crimeth Inc. - an elite class of intergenerational financiers and psychopathic human parasites. Crimethlnc. is a faction of men and their legal fictions created in this Matrix by those who make them rob widows and orphans, who take your sons and daughters into pre-emptive corporate invasions and occupations of foreign lands, who kill the innocent, jail the just, mine the womb of your daughters, devour the weak, terrorize and falsely imprison political activists, traumatize the oppressed, and covet the wealth of all. 2) Back-on-Track crime. 3) the twisted empty-souls of humanity's invisible oligarchy. Crimethlnc. is a geo­political agreement among territorial gangsters to share power over looted differential wealth of people's labor, minds, lands and natural resources. The objective pay-off is still empire no matter the condition of the ecology or many people expire. (See: Doggy. "Credit" & Reificarion)

Sheople - economic prey. 2) those who are both sheep and asleep. 3) people who mindlessly let others do their thinking for them. 4) people who are not in control of what they allow themselves to come to believe in. 5) people who have not taken personal responsibility to question their belief, faith, the content of truth, the nature of subjective reality. 6) those who watch major misinformation and propaganda television networks presumably for news that is factual. Sheople blindly follow a path where reality is excluded from the process. Are you the shepherd, or the flock? Are you the prisoner, or are you the lock? Sheople line up to get fleeced at the Baa Baa Shop. Scientific studies have found that it takes a minority of just 5 per cent of what they called "informed individuals" to influence the direction of a crowd of a minimum of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 per cent follow without even realising it. The coziness of millions of others just like you give you a false sense of safety, but there is no life worth living where reality isn't the glue. Sheople are those whose eyes the shepherd has pulled the wool over. Will the sheople ever wake up and see the light? Na aa aa.   (See: Internal Revenue Service, Authority, Regalia, Obedience, Judicial Victimization, Mind Viruses, Jury, Psychological Reversal, Memes, Shephard, Eugenics, Danger, Intellectual Incest, Faith Paradox, Belief, Predictive Programming, Conditioning. Fear, Gun Control & Predatory Economics) shenanigger - a Negro (neo-lawn-jockey) who carries out Step-n-Fetchit type activities/actions (shenanigans) for the dominant immoral minority (the psychopathic white power semi-organism), i.e., the Rhodes, Rothschild Anglo-Saxon Zionist power clique, unknowingly at the expense of him/herself and knowingly at the expense (sell-out/buy-out) of his/her people and culture. (See: McNegro, Coin-Operated, The Moteasuh Tribe. Sambo & SNigger).

Degenerate Hoax President is already running for re-[s]election, spending campaign cash @ Trump businesses

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[MORE] From [HERE] Simpleton President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.

The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Mr. Trump in WrestleMania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends with an onscreen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”  The wrestling video, which was also posted to the official @POTUS Twitter account, stirred criticism, disbelief and dumbfoundedness. [MORE]

The video that Trump tweeted appears to have originated from the infamous group on reddit.com that has long been known as a hub for racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and misogynist content. And Trump’s apparent endorsement showed he is “one of us,” noted a post in the group that celebrated how “Dr. President Trump uses /r/The_Donald for shitpost inspiration.” [MORE]

Even if CNN were fraudulent, it doesn't make Trump real. What in the world does CNN's status have to do with this hoax president? These subjects are unrelated to each other. 

Does Your State's Traffic Code Matrix Really Apply to You or Do You Just Believe That It Does?

70% of Homeless in Oakland are Black. Just Another Statistical Coincidence or Symptom of White Supremacy System?

From [SF Chronicle] Roberto Delgado gathered an armful of leather brogues and oxfords that had been placed on Northgate Avenue in Oakland by a passing motorist.

They were size 10, too small for him. But they were in good condition, and he knew someone in his community would want — no, need — a pair of shoes without holes in the soles.

Delgado didn’t leap out of the chair in front of his tent fast enough to sift through the sweaters and pants that were also dropped off. And the portable speaker, which could have been sold or traded for toiletries, cigarettes — anything — was long gone before he made it to the fresh pile of goods.

Delgado, 27, was wearing black Air Jordan sneakers, a black Raiders T-shirt and a black North Face jacket — clothes he either found or were given to him.

Black is also Delgado’s race.

It’s the race of many of the residents in the Northgate Avenue tent encampment under the Interstate 980 overpass.

And it’s the race of most of Oakland’s homeless population, which jumped by 25 percent to 2,761 between 2015 and 2017, according to a recent point-in-time count.

Dig into the city’s homeless statistics, and you should be moved by what they suggest: Black people in Oakland are more likely to lose their homes and end up homeless on the city’s streets than any other racial or ethnic group.

According to a survey administered by Alameda County weeks after the point-in-time count, almost 70 percent of the people living on Oakland’s streets are black. Yet black people were 28 percent of Oakland’s 2010 census population. And, 58 percent of Oakland’s homeless people said money issues were the primary cause of their homelessness. What’s more, 48 percent said rent assistance might have prevented their homelessness while 36 percent said employment assistance would have kept them in their homes.

That data should be dismaying to everyone, especially those who champion Oakland as a diverse, inclusive city.

“It is heartbreaking, but it is not surprising, that even in a city that has embraced black achievement ... we’re still dealing with the structural injustice in our economy,” said Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents the district that includes most of the tent cities.

She said the disproportionate number “of black people in the tents really just demonstrates that whole continuum of injustice that we see from the cradle to the grave.”

Black communities were once deprived of loans and investment, a practice known as redlining. But it’s those same communities that were targeted for subprime mortgages and loans, which left many drowning in debt and unable to make the payments necessary to keep their homes.

Then there’s folks like Marcus Emery, who got an astronomical rent increase. Emery, 53, said the rent on his Milton Street apartment jumped from $800 to $2,100, and he could no longer afford it. He moved to the Northgate camp and has been outside for nine months.

“I had a home for 18 years,” said Emery, lifting his shirt to show me the scar from a stab wound he suffered two months ago in the tent he now secures with a padlock. “It’s my first time out here. It’s so cruel.”

The convenient narrative about homeless people is that they’re lazy, mentally ill or drug addicts. Or just looking for handouts. But that’s not true. Stop by any homeless encampment, and you’ll likely find people who will tell you they simply can’t afford to keep a roof over their heads — and that they have nowhere else to go but the sidewalks under highway overpasses, where it’s cool in the summer and dry in the winter.

Oakland leaders have stressed that they’ve learned from San Francisco’s mistakes in dealing with homelessness. I wonder what Oakland has learned from San Francisco about its dwindling black population.

Delgado, an East Oakland native who told me he’s on a housing waiting list, has been homeless for four years since he was kicked out of his parents’ house. He didn’t tell me why.

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