AP, March 21, 2008
Six weeks after a deadly shooting rampage rife with racial overtones in Kirkwood’s City Council chambers, the issue of race has spilled over into the contest for mayor of this St. Louis suburb and produced a uniquely tense campaign.
A community activist, Michael Moore, is running as the sole black candidate in the four-way contest and has portrayed the Feb. 7 rampage as a symptom of smoldering black resentment in Kirkwood.
At a recent standing-room-only candidate forum, the 37-year-old truck mechanic let voters know he wants to overhaul a city government that he says ignores poor, black residents of a neighborhood known as Meacham Park.
“I think if the truth comes out about Meacham Park … I think you’ll understand the things that are going on. Even if I don’t condone it,” Moore told the crowd. And in a later interview, he warned: “Until the truth comes out, mark my words: Something else is going to happen.”
Some spectators squirmed as Moore made repeated references to the night a black Kirkwood resident, Charles “Cookie” Thornton, opened fire inside City Hall and killed five white people, including three city officials, before being gunned down by police. Mayor Mike Swoboda
was critically wounded.
{snip}
Moore doesn’t seem to have attracted a large following in Kirkwood, a city of about 27,000 people, 91 percent of them white.
“The guy obviously has an issue,” Charles Walbaum, who is white, said after the forum. “He has a race issue. That’s the only thing he could talk about. Granted, there are issues.” But as for the shooting rampage, “I’m not convinced it was a black-and-white issue.”
Moore and Thornton were neighbors in largely black Meacham Park, which has a long history of uneasy race relations with surrounding sections of Kirkwood.
Development stokes tensions
Kirkwood annexed Meacham Park more than a decade ago. Soon after, the city leveled neighborhoods there and helped build a strip of big-box stores, stoking tensions that remain high today.
In 2005, a black Meacham Park resident murdered a white police officer in his patrol car, widening the divisions. The killer said at his trial he was furious that police had not done more to save his 12-year- old brother when the boy collapsed and died of a heart defect earlier
in the day.
{snip}
At the first City Council meeting after the shooting, City Attorney John Hessel explained that in his opinion, state law prohibits postponing the election or adding a candidate to the ballot. Members of the audience who had begun the meeting with a moment of silence for
the dead booed and jeered Hessel.
Hessel hung his head and closed his eyes. Just two weeks earlier, he hid behind the dais as Thornton gunned down his victims. Hessel survived by throwing a chair in Thornton’s direction and running.
“For people to come out and attack me after such a short period of time, with a complete disregard for what had previously taken place, I was stunned by that and terribly disappointed,” Hessel said.
While the political atmosphere is tense, Moore said the shooting rampage might indirectly help the city.
“The community wants to understand the problems that are going on,” he said. “I think it has opened people up. Out of a very bad situation, a good thing happened.”
Original article
(Posted on March 21, 2008)
Comments
I hate to break it to you, but most of white Kirkwood thinks that way, too. This is why the Cookie Monster did what he did, because he was constantly pandered to for months and years on end.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:35 PM on March 21
Kirkwood should never taken over Meacham Park. Both sides would be happier.
Posted by at 6:54 PM on March 21
“The guy obviously has an issue,” Charles Walbaum, who is white, said after the forum. “He has a race issue. That’s the only thing he could talk about. Granted, there are issues.” But as for the shooting rampage, “I’m not convinced it was a black-and-white issue.”
Therein lies the problem. Even “conservative” whites these days refuse to recognize the racial aspect of what is going on around them. It seems like the label “conservative” has come to mean any white who believes that race doesn’t exist. How can anyone claim that the Kirkwood shooting wasn’t a “black-and-white issue”? A racist black who obsessed over white “oppression” walked into City Hall and started shooting white people.
Posted by Conrad R. at 7:09 PM on March 21
“At a recent standing-room-only candidate forum, the 37-year-old truck mechanic let voters know he wants to overhaul a city government that he says ignores poor, black residents of a neighborhood known as Meacham Park.”
How does government “ignore” poor, black residents? And how does it favor white ones?
How can government do anything to improve anybody’s lot?
Here it is again: Black failure being voiced as oppression and racism.
It’s like the joke goes: The psychotherapist was discussing his evaluation with his patient. “Good news, Mr. Smith. You don’t have an inferiority complex. You really ARE inferior.”
Posted by w.r. at 7:24 PM on March 21
To paraphrase Obama, Moore is a “typical African person”.
He connects no logical thoughts (says the quintuple murder was good as ‘I think it has opened people up’), a hate-monger (‘Something else is going to happen’), and of course an idiot (the only thing he could talk about was race).
Every time you hear someone such as Moore, just keep in mind that he probably received much of his spiritual guidance in a church such as the one that Barry Obama still attends.
In fact, when you are listening to an Easter sermon of how Jesus died to save us from our sins, consider the stench that’s probably coming out of some African pastor’s mouth at the same moment.
,
Posted by Annoyed In Illinois at 7:42 PM on March 21
Can anyone doubt that more and more blacks every day believe they have a moral right to kill whites?
Posted by Dwayne O. at 8:15 PM on March 21
‘“For people to come out and attack me after such a short period of time, with a complete disregard for what had previously taken place, I was stunned by that and terribly disappointed,” Hessel said.’
I’m afraid you’ll find very little empathy from a horde of obstinate blacks, Mr. Hessel, no matter what you may have been through.
One need only look at how the majority of them treat their own communities and offspring to see that is not one of their strongest traits.
Posted by ZKR at 9:08 PM on March 21
“….Some spectators squirmed as Moore made repeated references to the night a black Kirkwood resident, Charles “Cookie” Thornton, opened fire inside City Hall and killed five white people…”
The spectators SQUIRMED? SQUIRMED? That’s the best they could do? Not one of them stood up to this racist bigot who didn’t offer so much as an apology to the families of the FIVE White victims?
Moore said the shooting rampage might indirectly help the city.
“…’Out of a very bad situation, a good thing happened’…”
Five Whites are killed and ‘a good thing happened?’
If that had been one of my loved ones that was gunned down that night by a black racist and another excuse-making black ‘activist’ running for mayor said ‘a good thing happened’ I would have throttled him with everything I had until I was shot dead.
Moore is a disgrace to be sure but the Whites who only ‘squirmed’ and refused to challenge him are the true disgrace.
Until we Whites utilize the same tactics blacks use— i.e., shouting down speakers they don’t like, using open, unchallenged, racist rants against Whites, demanding apologies (and money), protesting loudly when they don’t get their way, screeching the same ad hominem arguments and using group force, we will forever be voiceless and stomped on.
Would that I had been in that audience.
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 10:34 PM on March 21
Obama exemplifies another double standard: whites cannot say “a typical black” while blacks can say “a typical white” and there’s no big outcry.
Whites are already split into many European countries of origin whereas blacks are blacks..not from any particular country but the continent of Africa. White origins are scattered from Germany, France, England, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Ireland, Scotland, and on and on. I have always wondered if that is one of the reason whites have never united as ONE strong group. When our European forefathers came to America they gathered in “Little Italy” “German Town” etc. Our origins have not united us whereas blacks have united themselves from the origin of slavery.
It’s time whites united as ONE STRONG BLOCK who WILL NOT appologize for our successes coming from hard work and endurance. Just something to think about….
Posted by ABC at 12:10 AM on March 22
I worked and lived for a number of years in Latin America and there is a pattern of behavior that the Black Community and Latin Americans share. They are always together - but never united. UNLESS it’s against a common enemy. For the first group its Whites, the second its Americans. It does have to be said though that there truly are people from both groups who don’t have any problem with us, though that’s truer for Latin Americans than it is for Blacks.
Anyway, I noticed something funny last time I was in Latin America. After years of habitual “Yankee Go Home” sentiment (though, again, I must say, NOT from most of the people I know there, on the contrary), that type of person is VERY quiet these days, almost somber, a bit lost, and somewhat confused.
But of course they are! Thanks to the Internet they know as well as we do here that America is finished, over, kaput, fahgettaboutit, put a fork in her, she’s done.
They don’t know what to do. It’s the funniest thing in the world. The collapse of America is bringing on an identity crisis throughout the third world. Namely, the anti-American crowd.
I was at a gathering of about 12 people four years ago in South America. It was friendly and lots of chatting. But it got around to the States (there’s a group of them that always bring it up to knock it down because they think we are looking down at them. Man they are SO insecure). One guy said to me, “You know, we used to be so impressed with your Country, but not anymore. We’re not impressed, at all.”
Thinking I would be wounded, my feelings hurt, I looked at him with a mixture of indifference and “don’t be so silly” and said, “Of course you’re not impressed with my Country, because it’s not my Country now, it’s yours.” He just stared at me, confused, cause he’s never been to the States. And I explained it to him. That since he was one of those Marxist “Third Worlders of the World Unite” types he should know that they, in fact, have united, in America.
I haven’t heard peep from that man since. Not one word.
To Be Continued.
Posted by Dedalus at 1:02 AM on March 22
It becomes clearer every day that the South’s system of segregation provided for reasonable relations between the races. Southerners’ worse fears about what integration would bring have been fully realized.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 1:06 AM on March 22
Conrad R at 7:09PM on 03/21,
Right you are. The word conservative has been misshapen to mean something else from it’s original definition. Most people who profess to be “conservative these days are far from what my beliefs are. Actually, they’re very liberal. Look at the people who are considered conservative on the radio and TV today. They’re all liberals.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 8:09 AM on March 22
“The killer said at his trial he was furious that police had not done more to save his 12-year- old brother when the boy collapsed and died of a heart defect earlier
in the day.”
Our American Africans are returning to their original state. The quoted statement reveals an attitude quite common to Africans in the bush; that black man’s misery stems from the white man withholding his “juju”.
Posted by Maggio at 11:03 AM on March 22
The late news is that the white politicians in Kirkwood want the U.S. Justice Department to come in and get involved in racial healing:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/1840227E3D7F4613862574130082984C?OpenDocument
One expects the rich areas of St. Louis like Ladue, Huntleigh and Warson Woods to be snooty liberal. And if you visit Kirkwood and don’t know any better, you would never expect that it is, too. Kirkwood, pound-for-pound, is the snootiest place in St. Louis County.
Evidently, the good white libs that run Kirkwood don’t think their pandering has pandered enough.
Posted by Question Diversity at 11:21 AM on March 22
As a Jew, I disdain these Jewish Walbaums, who are speaders of social liberalism and are cowards, thus being unable to defend themselves, their families, their culture, and the country.
Posted by alex at 1:06 PM on March 22
When the shooting happened, I kept a log on MSM coverage of the event, knowing that they would tell the truth then, but cover it up months after the fact:
http://stlcofcc.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/shooting-at-kirkwood-city-hall/
The lesson of the affair is that Official Kirkwood did nothing but pander and grovel to him, yet he set out to kill the people that were most on his (and Meacham Park’s) side. Alderwoman Connie Carr, one of the fatal victims, (Kirkwood’s aldermen are elected at-large), lived in the polar opposite in geography and economics from Meacham Park (one of her close neighbors was Sen. Claire McCaskill), yet she took it upon herself to be the unofficial de facto representative of Meacham Park. City Att’y John Hessel, who Cookie wanted to kill, but Hessel threw chairs at Cookie to throw him off his game, offered Cookie a deal to wipe out all those fines in arrears, but Cookie rejected.
Now, Kirkwood is so un-confident about its ability to pander and grovel that it’s calling in the US Justice Department to help them do it more and better (scroll up in this thread).
Official Kirkwood has learned nothing, and will continue to engage in the behavior that got them in the Rock Head / Cookie fix that they’re in. I predict that we’ll have another such event in Kirkwood within three years.
Posted by Question Diversity at 1:14 PM on March 22
I think it’s time to find out what Blacks really want. We should demand a list of their demands. They have held the country hostage long enough. Once we have a list of their demands and fully understand that they can never be met it will be time for a continuation of politics by other means.
We were willing to sacrifice a half million Americans to free the Black man, just how many will be needed to free the white man is an unknown.
We are at present engaged in a war to protect ourselves from a threat that may never materialize and we ignore a threat that is very real at the present.
The main terrorist threat is right here in the US. It’s either give us what we want or we will kill you. The Muslims only threaten but the Blacks are actually doing it.
Posted by Daniel at 1:43 PM on March 22
Previous post continued.
After growing up in a place with many blacks, and after living in Latin America, I can say without hesitation that Blacks are far more violent. In fact, there’s no comparison. But even if Blacks killed all White people alive today they would NEVER, EVER, get it together, EVER. They are simply too immature, too selfish, too dishonest, too combustible, and too violent.
The world is the way it is today because Whites have lost the will to live, to command, to rule – if I may use direct and un-PC like language. We don’t know what to organize ourselves around. Religion doesn’t work, Politics, Business, even Sports and Entertainment have lost their allure and excitement. Pop Culture used to be fun, but now it’s silly, even stupid, and depressing. Hardly surprising, since it was never meant to be an Orthodox Religion, just a fun distraction after the real work was done.
This being the case, the “snootiness” of the people in Kirkwood is laughable. Snooty about what? I have no doubt they are, I’m not questioning the poster who mentioned it, on the contrary. So then, what could they possibly feel so high and mighty about? Well, obviously, they think their way of living is the way all of us should live. And because others aren’t living that way they deserve to be looked down upon. Hence their snootiness.
The definition for this behavior is, Sincere Denial. Or, in a word, Delusional.
Also, I have to say, that I am not that impressed (not to say we shouldn’t be concerned) with all of the hysteria surrounding the whole numbers thing. “We are losing our numbers, and in 50 years we will be the minority”…etc.
In this respect Jews are a good model. They are only 2% of the population and yet they have enormous influence. I am convinced that we will too, if, and only if, we shake off the chains of guilt, as well as the shakles of the Left and Right, get an updated relationship going with our culture, organize around a set of very clear prinicples, and put it all into action. If none of that happens, well, do I have to tell anyone here what the future has in store for us?
Posted by Dedalus at 3:16 PM on March 22
Notice one very special thing about this character and those like him, which is also part of Wright’s bigotry, and that is they despise Caucasians so much they couldn’t worship Jesus until they made him black.
Take note that most every icon in white religious sites is one of a dark Jesus, looking very much like James Caveziel who played the role in Passion of the Christ. Nobody white I’ve ever run across ever tried to make a “whiter” version of him, because nobody cared whether he was representative of Caucasoids who are dark in hair, eyes, and sometimes a tan skin tone. He was a religious figure and his looks were unimportant.
Not so the black community, and the Hispanic community according to Linda Chavez. It is important to both of them that the Christ they worship look exactly like them. Wright calls his Jesus a black Jesus. Chavez expresses her relief that Hispanics can now worship a “darker” Jesus like them, instead of a blue-eyed, blond-haired one, irregardless of the fact that I doubt that there has ever been a depiction by whites of such an image of the Christ. Both concepts are expressions of racial bias in favor of their own and a hatred of whites. I doubt that neither of these racist bigots would concede that Jesus was indeed a Caucasoid, no matter what his hue might have been. Their Jesus must be Hispanic or black.
How’s that for the racism and bigotry they rail against?
Any group who would allow this Cone to work at their organization is either stupid, out-of-touch, or they amount to nothing more than self-hating whites.
Posted by investigator at 3:54 PM on March 22
“…But of course they are! Thanks to the Internet they know as well as we do here that America is finished, over, kaput, fahgettaboutit, put a fork in her, she’s done.
They don’t know what to do. It’s the funniest thing in the world. The collapse of America is bringing on an identity crisis throughout the third world. Namely, the anti-American crowd…”
I think it was in a Tom Clancy novel that I read this statement: (The Russian character, talking to Jack Ryan) “We are going to do the worst thing imaginable to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 4:11 PM on March 22
“Can anyone doubt that more and more blacks every day believe they have a moral right to kill whites?”
Now where in the world would Blacks get such an idea? Could it be from Obama’s preacher who for the last 20 years has been telling his congregation that Whitey is to blame for all of their problems?
Posted by at 5:29 PM on March 22
If whites had any pride and self respect then Moore would have been carried out of that meeting on a stretcher. He rubes the “Cookie” Thorton killings in everyone’s faces and the spineless whites just sit there and take it. Of course if any white person had reacted he/she would have been charged with a hate crime and sentenced to 10yrs in prison in “free” America.
I despise illegals and the problems they bring, but had Cookie killed mexicans you can bet there would have been retaliation.
Posted by Super Dave at 9:40 PM on March 23
