KOUREN-RODNEY BERNARD THOMAS
FAMILY DEMANDS JUSTICE
FOR KOUREN-RODNEY THOMAS
By
Cash Michaels
Editor
The family of a 20-year-old black
man who was fatally shot while walking by the home of a white Raleigh homeowner
is demanding justice, saying that the gunman had no right to pull the trigger
because neither nor his family were ever at risk.
Published reports confirm that
Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas was just attending a party in the Northeast Neuse
Crossing neighborhood on the evening of August 7 when he and some friends
decided to leave. They carried no weapons, and walked on no one else’s property
as they left.
However, to neighbor Chad Cameron
Copley, 39, Thomas and his friends were “frigging
black males outside my frigging house with firearms” and also a “bunch of hoodlums.” He told the police
dispatcher he needed to scare them off with his shotgun from in front of his
Singleleaf Lane address. Copley allegedly fired once through his garage window,
fatally hitting Thomas.
Copley contended that the group in
front of his home was rowdy, cursing and threatening, thus the warning shot.
None of the witnesses to the shooting or the events leading up to it confirmed
Copley’s version.
Copley as charged with first-degree
murder and remanded without bond.
Days later, at a press conference by
the Thomas family and their attorney,
Justin Bamberg, Copley was called “George Zimmerman 2.0” after the
infamous killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida several years ago when
the black youth was innocently walking home one night.
The Thomas family said there was “nothing
‘hood’ about him, and there was no
evidence that he was doing anything other than walking home from the party that
night peacefully, not disturbing anyone.
Attorney Bamberg vowed that the
family will seek justice in the courts.
Kouren’s distraught mother cried, “
I don’t have him no more, and there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can
do.”
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NO SURPRISE, FEDS
STRIKE DOWN
28 LEGISLATIVE
DISTRICTS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Once again the US Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals has ruled that North Carolina’s Republican-led General
Assembly has illegally employed race to ensure partisan, yet unconstitutional
outcomes. This time, it was nine state senate districts and 19 NC House
districts of the state’s 170 legislative districts that the three-judge panel
ruled were racially-gerrymandered in absence of any compelling state interests.
It’s called “stacking and packing,”
where Democratic black voters were drawn into majority-minority districts for
the sole purpose removing them from swing districts so that white Republicans
could easily defeat white Democrats.
Those legislative maps have already
been used in two prior elections, and will be used again for the upcoming
November 8th general election because there isn’t time to redraw
them, the federal appellate court said. But when the NC General Assembly goes
back into session next January, the court has ordered it to redraw the voting
districts so that the maps comply constitutionally for the 2018 elections.
Democrats statewide weren’t
surprised, but they were outraged.
“This Republican legislature has
broken a record enacting the highest number of unconstitutional laws ever, and
all of them are raced-based,” Eric Ellison, chairman of the Forsyth County
Democratic Party said in blunt terms. “They’re
a bunch of racists, and our courts agree with us. These guys are underhanded,
they don’t believe in the Constitution, they
don’t believe in fairness, they don’t believe in democracy. They’re a bunch of
crooks, and it’s time to get them out of office, and get new leadership in
there, and the time to do it is now!”
Thirty-one North Carolina voters sued
the NC legislature in May, 2015 in federal court, claiming that the 2011
district maps unnecessarily increased the number of black voters in 28 districts
under the guise of complying with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Blacks and whites
were already in coalition electing black candidates of their choice in those
districts.
State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr. was
one of those black lawmakers who previously enjoyed strong support from a
racial coalition of support which included 42 percent of black voters from Durham and Granville
County. But his district lines were suddenly changed in 2011 to where he had
over 50 percent black voters in his district.
Indeed, prior to 2011, not one
state Senate district represented by an African-American had a majority of black
voters, because it wasn’t necessary.
The 2015 federal lawsuit charged that the 2011 Republican redistricting was
just a ruse to feign compliance with the 1965 VRA in order to gain political
advantage.
“They were just packing
African-Americans into those districts, and making it more likely that
Republicans would win the other ones,” Sen. McKissick said.
When state lawmakers return in
January, their first order of business will be to redraw the 28 legislative
districts so that they are in constitutional compliance, McKissick says. The legislature can still draw
majority-minority districts, just as long as it can legally demonstrate
candidates are more likely to be elected because of race, observers say.
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