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US Police Shooting Rates: African Americans vs white Americans

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US Police kill African Americans at twice the rate of white Americans. There seems to be some debate around this even all the numbers are publicly available. Here's how the computation works: We want to compare the two rates. The easiest way to do this is by comparing the ratios of African Americans shot to whites shot, and this requires only four numbers. First you need to know how many black people and white people are killed by the police each year. The Washington Post has this information. ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ ) The Washington Post reports that over the last five years 1351 African Americans have been shot by the police. In the same time 2597 white Americans (non-hispanic) have been shot.  Next you need to know the two populations' representation in the total US population. Wikipedia reports that African Americans are 13.4 percent of the population, and whites (non-hispanic) are 60.1 percent of the population. (

Rose City Antifa and Project Veritas: Dissecting Propaganda

Antifa is a handy label for people who like to dress up in black and beat up fascists. Those of us who go to political protests see them from time to time. Or we see people wearing black. Usually they're in their late teens or early twenties. They're kind of jerks, but they're mostly harmless unless you're a fascist stupid enough to get agro at a rally against fascism, or if you're stupid enough to hold a right-wing rally in Berkeley. Despite their niche existence, during the last year the right has turned them into boogiemen. Some weeks ago a Trump supporter challenged my description of them. She insisted that they were a national network with international connections. When I challenged her to present evidence, she posted a link to a video by a group called Project Veritas: https://www.projectveritas.com/f085d003-ac4b-472a-b008-384d12bafd5b After viewing this video, I thought the assertions were full of it, and debunking it wasn't worth my time. I came out of