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Dems/liberals can't possibly get any dumber. They will prove you wrong about that every time!!!

Vote on evergreen tree as new mascot delayed over Portland community lynching concerns

Portland Public Schools opted to rename formerly Woodrow Wilson High School to Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, and the school was set to vote last week on an evergreen tree being the new mascot —  under the old name, they were the Wilson Trojans.

That is until concerns were raised about the tree’s potential ties to lynching.

Turns out, Wells-Barnett was a prominent black journalist and activist who focused on black men being lynched in the late 1800s.

“I’m wondering if there was any concern with the imagery there, in using a tree … as our mascot?” Portland Public Schools Board of Education Director Michelle DePass asked at a meeting last week, according to the Portland Tribune.

“I think everyone comes with blind spots and I think that might’ve been a really big blind spot,” she added.

A committee of students, staff and community members put forth the evergreens as the school’s new mascot, the newspaper reported.

“Evergreens are characterized by the life-giving force of their foliage, the strength of their massive trunk, and the depth of their roots—in an individual tree and as a forest of trees,” said teacher Ellen Whatmore, who’s on the committee. “They provide shelter and sustenance. They have histories that preclude us and will continue in perpetuity after we are no more.”

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But where some see a tree of life, others see a tree of death.

DePass shared community concerns about a tree being a reminder of hanging people with ropes from its branches.

Principal Filip Hristic said the committee did not speak with the Wells-Barnett family about the choice, stressing that they are taking the concerns seriously.

“We take this seriously and I definitely want to follow that commitment to protect, preserve and promote the legacy of Ida B. Wells,” Hristic said, according to the paper.

“The focus and opportunity was really to marry this sentiment that we heard from a lot of our stakeholders during our naming process, which was the desire for a local connection,” he added. “Ida B. Wells was somebody who stood strong and stood proud against what Woodrow Wilson and many others promoted.”

Democrats are pushing to rename schools named after America’s founding fathers, including George Washington, the father of the country, and Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration of Independence, but Wilson is seen as being very much a racist — the irony being that he was a Democrat.

Committee member Martin Osborne, who is black, said evergreens “had nothing to do with the horrible history of lynching in the United States. Lynching trees typically are not evergreens.”

“We did talk about it, but we were looking at the symbolism more as a tree of life, than a tree of death,” Osborne told the school board. “You could certainly take it either way, depending upon your position.”

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There’s no arguing that the Democratic Party’s go-to tactic in pushing its agenda is playing the race card, this being almost instinctive in post-Obama America.

But is it possible that even our roads are racist? In a word, yes.

That’s according to Pete Buttigieg, who was tapped by President Biden for Secretary of Transportation. In Biden’s eyes, being the mayor of a small American town of just over 100,000 qualifies one to head up the national agency overseeing transportation — being a gay man certainly ups the ante in an administration that places diversity ahead of character and qualifications.

The process of selling Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan is underway, this being a plan that has less to do with roads and bridges than it does social justice. A plan that is supposed to redesign the nation’s transportation system with “equity” in mind.

In an interview with theGrio’s Trump-hating White House correspondent April Ryan, Buttigieg claimed “there is racism physically built” into American infrastructure. He further stated that this “wasn’t just an act of neglect,” but a “conscious choice.”

“There is racism physically built into some of our highways, and that’s why the jobs plan has specifically committed to reconnect some of the communities that were divided by these dollars,” Buttigieg said.

The remark being a reference to a belief that bridges, overpasses, and highways were built as barriers in some areas to maintain racially segregated communities.

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“Well if you’re in Washington, I’m told that the history of that highway is one that was built at the expense of communities of color in the D.C. area,” Buttigieg said. “There are stories and I think Philadelphia and Pittsburgh [and] in New York, Robert Moses famously saw through the construction of a lot of highways.”

Biden’s infrastructure plan has been panned as a wealth redistribution plan centered around pushing the Green New Deal, with a goal of steering 40% of federal funding to minority businesses.

More from theGrio:

The work to correct the transportation equity issues will be funded by government contracting. Unlike in the Trump years, minority contracting is a large part of the Biden administration’s fix with its Justice40 Initiative. A White House fact sheet says its goal is to deliver 40% of “the overall benefits of relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities and tracks performance toward that goal through the establishment of an Environmental Justice Scorecard.”

Buttigieg says former U.S. ambassador Susan Rice, who serves as director of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, is in charge of the plan to begin equally distributing minority contracts.



Fox News’ Tucker Carlson highlighted a “racist highway” in New Orleans last week that is a part of the administration “modernizing” our roadways.

He explained an activist named Amy Stelly has been demanding the removal of the Claiborne Expressway, which cuts through her neighborhood, because the road is “an eyesore and it contributes to pollution.”

“For years, she’s demanded local leaders get rid of it. But they refused. People use it. It’s an important stretch of road,” he said. “But now the White House, and Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, have decided that highway is an example of ‘historic inequity’ and that can be solved by ‘billions in new spending.’”

“In other words, it’s a racist highway, and we’ve got to pay to tear it down,” he said, adding that America can “expect a lot more highways to meet that fate.”

Another highway seen in this light is I-710 in Los Angeles, is another highway activists say exposes over half a million people living in communities of color to higher risks for cancer, heart disease, and childhood asthma in the region.

Make BLM pay to paint over it.



ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Atlantic City says it will redo a Black Lives Matter tribute on a street because the original painting of those words across the entire road confused motorists who didn’t know where to drive on it.

Instead, the words “Black Lives Matter” will be painted onto the repaved road in a manner that does not obscure lane divider markings, Mayor Marty Small said Thursday.

The City Council voted Wednesday night to spend $36,000 to repave the road, which police said had become so confusing to motorists that the city blocked it off at either end with barriers to prevent anyone from driving on it.

“It was an oversight on our part, and when we realized it, we fixed it,” Mayor Marty Small said. “The words 'Black Lives Matter' will still be on the street.”

The road needs to be repaved because the type of paint used in the display cannot be painted over, officials said.

Last September, the city held an event in which volunteers donated paint, materials and labor to write “Black Lives Matter” in huge capital letters stretching from curb to curb on a section of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the city’s downtown.

But the giant yellow letters obscured the yellow dividing line of the four-lane roadway, as well as the broken white lines on either side marking travel lanes.

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