Latest news with #Klansmen
Los Angeles Times
12-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Dean Cain wants to join ICE. Forget Lex Luthor, this Superman is after Tamale Lady
There are people who keep reliving their glory days, and then there's Dean Cain. The film and TV actor is best known for his work in the 1990s series 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.' He was no Christopher Reeve or Henry Cavill. But enough people remember Cain in blue tights and a red cape so that he's a regular on the fan convention circuit. It's his calling card, so when the Trump administration put out the call to recruit more ICE agents, guess who answered the call? Big hint: Up, up and a güey! On Aug. 6, the up until then not exactly buzzworthy Cain revealed on Instagram that he joined la migra — and everyone else should too! The 59-year old actor made his announcement as an orchestral version of John Williams' stirring 'Superman' theme played lightly below his speech. Superman used to go after Nazis, Klansmen and intergalactic monsters; now, Superman — er, Cain — wants to go after Tamale Lady. His archenemy used to be Lex Luthor; now real-life Bizarro Superman wants to go to work for the Trump administration's equally bald-pated version of Lex Luthor: Stephen Miller. 'You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,' Cain said, flashing his bright white smile and brown biceps. Behind him was an American flag in a triangle case and a small statue depicting Cain in his days as a Princeton Tigers football player. 'If you want to save America, ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America's streets.' Later that day, Cain appeared on Fox News to claim he was going to 'be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP.' a role Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin later on clarified to the New York Times would be only honorary. His exaggeration didn't stop the agency's social media account to take a break from its usual stream of white supremacist dog whistles to gush over Cain's announcement. 'Superman is encouraging Americans to become real-life superheroes,' it posted 'by answering their country's call to join the brave men and women of ICE to help protect our communities to arrest the worst of the worst.' American heroes used to storm Omaha Beach. Now the Trump administration wants their version of them to storm the garden section of Home Depot. Its appeal to Superman is part of their campaign to cast la migra as good guys while casting all undocumented people as shadowy villains who deserve deportation — the faster and nastier the better. But as with almost anything involving American history, Team Trump has already perverted Superman's mythos. In early June, they put Trump, who couldn't leap over a bingo card in a single bound let alone a tall building, on the White House's social media accounts in a Superman costume. This was accompanied with the slogan: 'Truth. Justice. The American Way.' That was the day before Warner Bros. released its latest Man of Steel film. Even non-comic book fans know that the hero born Kal-El on Krypton was always a goody-goody who stood up to bullies and protected the downtrodden. He came from a foreign land — a doomed planet, no less — as a baby. His alter ego, Clark Kent, is humble and kind, traits that carry over when he turns into Superman. The character's caretakers always leaned on that fictional background to comment on real-world events. In a 1950 poster, as McCarthyism was ramping up, DC Comics issued a poster in which Superman tells a group of kids that anyone who makes fun of people for their 'religion, race or national origin ... is un-American.' A decade later, Superman starred in a comic book public service announcement in which he chided a teen who said 'Those refugee kids can't talk English or play ball or anything' by taking him to a shabby camp to show the boy the hardships refugees had to endure. The Trumpworld version of Superman would fly that boy to 'Alligator Alcatraz' to show him how cool it is to imprison immigrants in a swamp infested with crocodilians. It might surprise you to know that in even more recent times, in a 2017 comic book, Superman saves a group of undocumented immigrants from a man in an American flag do-rag who opened fire on them. When the attempted murderer claimed his intended targets stole his job, Superman snarled 'The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul ... is you.' Superman used to tell Americans that immigrants deserved our empathy; Super Dean wants to round them up and ship them out. Rapists? Murderers? Terrorists? That's who Superman né Cain says ICE is pursuing — the oft repeated 'worst of the worst' — but Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that 71% of people currently held in ICE detention have no criminal records as of July 27 . I don't think the real Superman — by whom I mean the fictional one whom Cain seems to think he's the official spokesperson for just because he played him in a middling dramedy 30-some years ago — would waste his strength and X-ray vision to nab people like that. Dean 'Discount Superman' Cain should grab some popcorn and launch on a Superman movie marathon to refresh himself on what the Man of Steel actually stood for. He can begin with the latest. Its plot hinges on Lex Luthor trying to convince the U.S. government that Superman is an 'alien' who came to the U.S. to destroy it. 'He's not a man — he's an It. A thing,' the bad guy sneers at one point, later on claiming Superman's choirboy persona is 'lulling us into complacency so he can dominate [the U.S.] without resistance.' Luthor's scheme, which involves manipulating social media and television networks to turn public opinion against his rival, eventually works. Superman turns himself in and is whisked away to a cell far away from the U.S. along with other political prisoners. Luthor boasts that '[constitutional] rights don't apply to extraterrestrial organisms.' Tweak that line a little and it could have come from the mouth of Stephen Miller. Director James Gunn told a British newspaper that his film's message is 'about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.' He also called Superman an 'immigrant,' which set Cain off. He called Gunn 'woke' on TMZ and urged Gunn to create original characters and keep Superman away from politics. Well, Super Dean can do his thing for ICE and Trump. He can flash his white teeth for promotional Trump administration videos as he does who knows what for the deportation machine. Just leave Superman out of it.
Vancouver Sun
28-06-2025
- Sport
- Vancouver Sun
This Day in History, 1940: The remains of the Denman Arena become an outdoor church
The Denman Arena burned down in a spectacular blaze on Aug. 20, 1936. But part of Vancouver's first big hockey rink remained — the lower concrete walls. So in 1940, the enterprising evangelist Clem Davies decided to turn the site into a 10,000-seat 'out-of-door' stadium for his Sunday night sermons. 'The cement walls of the Arena have been painted light green on the inside, and the pillars which supported the gallery have been removed,' said a story in the June 29, 1940 Vancouver Sun. 'A stage 30 feet by 12 feet has been erected 14 feet above floor level. Workers have built 1,700 benches, each with a seating capacity of six, which have been painted a darker green than the walls. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 'They spread out across the great floor area, over which crushed stone walks have been laid. A vast backdrop, portraying an ecclesiastical motif, dominates the speaker's rostrum. 'The stage is flanked by purple and gold drapes, and accommodates an electric organ.' The Sun story said the stadium cost $3,500, and had been put together by 50 to 100 volunteers working 'every day since the project began.' It sounds totally over the top, but seemed to work: a photo in July 20, 1940, shows Davies lecturing to a full house. Davies is all but forgotten today, but was a big deal from the 1920s till the 1950s, because he pioneered delivering sermons on radio. When he died at 61 on Dec. 21, 1951, his obituaries said Davies had made 15,000 radio broadcasts over three decades. Davies was born in Birmingham, England, and moved to the U.S. when he was 19. After graduating from Methodist ministerial college in Minnesota, he became a doctor of divinity at Oskaloosa College in Iowa. He came to Victoria in 1922 to preach at Centennial Methodist church, and started doing a radio broadcast in April, 1923, two years before future Alberta premier 'Bible Bill' Aberhart started broadcasting in Calgary. Davies started lecturing at the Empire Theatre, mixing religion with topics of the day. He was identified with British Israelism, which Wikipedia calls 'a pseudo-historical' belief that the British people are 'genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants' of the 10 Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. On Nov. 11, 1925, he did a sermon/lecture at the Victoria City Temple called 'Shall We Join the Ku Klux Klan?' For Davies, the answer was yes — the Victoria Times reported he was chairman of the 'Victoria's first Ku Klux Klan function' at the Crystal Ballroom on Jan. 18, 1926. 'The feature of the evening was a demonstration of the Ku Klux Klan wedding ceremony,' said the Times. 'Fifty Klansmen in full regalia with hoods and flowing robes solemnly paraded up the centre of the hall and up in cross formation to face the platform. As the lights were dimmed, there blazed up the flaring fiery cross, which glowed through the whole hall.' Davies seemed to put his association with the KKK in the closet when he moved to Vancouver about 1937. But he continued to retain some controversial views. He raised eyebrows on Feb. 5, 1938, when he told an audience in the old Hotel Vancouver that when King Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson in 1936, he was hypnotized and drugged by an 'international gang of Jesuits.' According to Davies, the Jesuits in Rome made a wax effigy of the former King, 'encircled it with hypnosis and day after day concentrated upon the figure until they had sublimated it into life.' Still, Davies was popular, with a daily radio show on CKWX and sermons Sunday and Wednesday at the Georgia Auditorium. With the advent of the Second World War, his sermons had titles like 'Samson and Delilah Modernized … Showing How Britain Seduced to Weakness is Now Gaining Strength.' He left Vancouver for Los Angeles in 1941, where he proved as popular as in Canada. He died from malaria, which he contracted on a trip to Africa. The Los Angeles Evening Citizen News reported Davies left an estate of $55,000 to his executive secretary, Eileen Bennett, but nothing to his wife or two kids. He'd been separated from his wife for two decades. jmackie@
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Leonard Zeskind, Who Foresaw the Rise of White Nationalism, Dies at 75
Leonard Zeskind, a dogged tracker of right-wing hate groups, who foresaw before almost anyone else that anti-immigrant ideologies would move to the mainstream of American politics, died on April 15 at his home in Kansas City, Mo. He was 75. The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, Carol Smith, his wife, said. Long before Donald J. Trump's nativist rhetoric in 2023 accusing immigrants of 'poisoning the blood' of the United States, Mr. Zeskind, a single-minded researcher, spent decades studying white nationalism, documenting how its leading voices had shifted their vitriol from Black Americans to nonwhite immigrants. His 2009 book, 'Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream,' resulted from years of following contemporary Klansmen, neo-Nazis, militia members and other right-wing groups. His investigations earned him a MacArthur 'genius grant' in 1998. 'For a nice Jewish boy, I've gone to more Klan rallies, neo-Nazi events and Posse Comitatus things than anybody should ever have to,' Mr. Zeskind said in 2018. Recently, 'Blood and Politics' was one of 381 books removed from the U.S. Naval Academy library in a purge of titles about racism and diversity ordered by the Trump administration. One of Mr. Zeskind's central themes was that before the 1960s, white supremacists fought to maintain the status quo of segregation, especially in the South. But after the era of civil rights victories, he maintained, white nationalists began to see themselves as an oppressed group, victims who needed to mount an insurgency against the establishment. Their principal adversaries were immigrants from the developing world who were tilting the demographics of the United States away from earlier waves of Northern Europeans. Despite the subtitle of Mr. Zeskind's book, asserting that white nationalists had moved 'from the margins to the mainstream,' many reviewers in 2009 were skeptical, treating his work as a backward look at a fringe movement led by racist crackpots whose day was over. The United States had just elected its first Black president, and extremist movements such as Christian Identity, which preached that white Christians were entitled to dominate government and society, seemed antiquated. The Los Angeles Times waved away those hate groups as questing after 'an impossible future.' NPR noted that 'while a handful of bigots' were still grumbling about the South's defeat in the Civil War and spreading conspiracies about Jews, 'some 70 million others have, in a testament to the overwhelming tolerance of contemporary American society, gone ahead and elected Barack Obama president.' Mr. Zeskind insisted that white nationalists should not be underestimated, and he was especially concerned about their influence on Republican politics. He identified those influences in the candidacies of David Duke, a former Klan leader who won a majority of white voters when he ran for statewide office in Louisiana in 1990, and in Pat Buchanan, who fared well in presidential primaries in the 1990s, running on a platform of reducing immigration, opposing multiculturalism and stoking the culture wars. Mr. Buchanan's issues offered a template for Mr. Trump, who leveraged similar ideas to wrest control of the Republican Party from centrists. Mr. Zeskind spoke about Mr. Trump in a 2018 town hall speech in Washington on the one-year anniversary of the march in Charlottesville, Va., by young white supremacists, whose zealotry the president had minimized. Mr. Zeskind said that Mr. Trump hadn't created an upsurge in hatred of nonwhite people — he was a product of it. 'White supremacy and white privilege have been dominant elements of our society from the beginning,' he said. 'It breeds a whole set of behaviors in people, and it should be deeply and widely discussed in every level of our society.' Leonard Harold Zeskind was born on Nov. 14, 1949, in Baltimore, one of three sons of Stanley and Shirley (Berman) Zeskind. His parents, who ran a pension management business, moved the family to Miami when Leonard was 10. He graduated from Miami Senior High School, and then studied philosophy at the University of Florida and the University of Kansas, though he did not graduate. Ms. Smith, his wife, said he was expelled from college in Kansas after taking part in a 1960s campus protest of the Reserve Officers Training Corps. Mr. Zeskind earned a welding certificate from the Manual Career and Technical Center in Kansas City, and for 13 years worked as a welder and ironworker and on assembly lines. He was also a community organizer on Kansas City's East Side, seeking to lower tensions between white working-class families and their Black neighbors. He met Ms. Smith in 1979. She had grown up on a dairy farm in Kansas, and through her he became aware that during the farm crisis of the 1980s, a conspiracy movement known as Posse Comitatus had spread among economically ravaged farmers, who were convinced that they had been targeted by Jewish bankers and others because they were white Christians. Mr. Zeskind was invited to speak about Posse Comitatus to a group of progressive farmers in Des Moines, and he mobilized Jewish groups nationally to counter the conspiracy movement. From 1985 to 1994, he was the research director at the Center for Democratic Renewal (previously the National Anti-Klan Network). In 1983, he founded the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a study and watchdog group focused on hate groups. Besides Ms. Smith, he is survived by a brother, Philip. His first marriage, to Elaine Cantrell, ended in divorce. At the 2018 town hall meeting in Washington, Mr. Zeskind called on Democrats in Congress to vehemently oppose a little-noticed bill sponsored by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to end birthright citizenship, the post-Civil War guarantee that anyone born in the United States is a citizen. The cause had become a focus of anti-immigrant groups warning of threats to the 'white race.' 'They want to smash up the 14th Amendment,' Mr. Zeskind said, addressing Democratic officials, 'and I think you guys should scream about it.' The following year, in an article in The New York Times about how Mr. King, a backbencher in his party, had anticipated many of Mr. Trump's anti-immigrant stances, the congressman said in an interview, 'White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?' Republican leaders in the House stripped Mr. King of his committee assignments over the remark, and he lost re-election in 2020. But the issue did not die. One of President Trump's first moves in January was an executive order to end birthright citizenship. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments over Mr. Trump's order.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Youth program leader shares story
MASON Mich. (WLNS) – As an Air Force veteran, author, advocate for the youth and more, Lashaunta Waller puts service before herself. Waller has a calling for investing in communities and is always looking to create more impact. She attributes her strength and perseverance to her grandmother. 'This woman never complained. No matter how it was presented to her, she just understood that we take the punches and we just keep moving,' said Waller. Originally from Ohio, Waller has spent the past 16 years living in Michigan. While she has gotten more comfortable in the Great Lakes State, she said moving to Mason was not a welcoming experience for her family. 'Someone had broken in and busted out all of the drywall. There was graffiti, all kinds of profanity throughout. They egged the home,' Waller said. Waller said the graffiti included racial slurs, and she said that incident wasn't the end of it. 'We had the Klansmen in the front yard. They followed us to flag football practices and would bang on our windows,' Waller continued, 'I'm thinking, 'They don't even know us. How do you hate us and don't know us?'' Waller is not the type to let hate win, though, and she knew she had to rise above it. So, they stayed. 'I wanted to show my kids that we didn't see the faces of the guys, but we saw their arms and a part of their hands, and that everyone with that skin color isn't a bad person,' said Waller. She took that message and expanded it, creating the nonprofit organization Garden of Hope. 'To give back to the same community that didn't want us,' Waller said. The youth program teaches kids self-sufficiency while giving them a deeper understanding of the world around them. This is accomplished through activities involving art, music, community service, STEM, and agriculture. Anything that helps them grow their confidence, like learning how to budget and make money. 'We've helped many get into Harvard, Yale, and some of the local colleges,' Waller continued. 'Just to help them achieve their goals has been our biggest success.' Waller said the after-school program also offers scholarships for students. She said that in the last year and a half, Garden of Hope has erased more than $3 million dollars of student loan debt. Garden of Hope has become a national program as well, now in 5 different states with hundreds of members. 'We just want to be able to be a resource for many,' Waller said. Waller joined the Air Force when she was 17 years old and said her decades of service played a big part in shaping her and her nonprofit. 'You see there's a problem and you either be a part of the problem or you be a part of the change,' said Waller. In 2024, she was honored with a Governor's Service Award for National Impact. A month before that, her family received a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award from the Biden Administration. Not to mention, Waller is also an author with 5 children's books so far that share messages of strength. 'If you can build a foundation of hope, it gives not just today a fair chance, but it gives our future a brighter chance as well,' said Waller. Knowing she can't change the past, but she can change the future, Waller focuses on the youth with the hopes of creating a kinder, more understanding generation. A goal for Waller is to have Garden of Hope available in every state, and with her Grandma's work ethic motivating her, there's nothing that can stop her remarkable ways. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Demonstrations against Jared Taylor speaking engagement at CMU
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX) — The speaking engagement of Jared Taylor at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) sparked controversy across the Grand Valley, with two demonstrations taking place in response. 'We had Jared Taylor speaking on a microphone for at least 50 minutes about how we need to be racially segregated,' said TikTok star Dean Withers. WesternSlopeNow was not able to attend the speech but was able to reactions from attendees as they left. 'Because as soon as I opened my mouth to express how I feel to counter how he felt,' said Withers. 'Guess what, I was told if I opened my mouth again, I'd be kicked out. So, I'd ask this, not only about the university administration, but the sponsors of the WCC (Western Culture Club, who invited Taylor to CMU), tell me why. If you value free speech enough to let a white supremacist be platformed and speak at your school, how come I can't speak?' Outside the University Center, two separate demonstrations were taking place, both in protest to the speaker. A march, organized by Mesa County Democratic Socialists of America, started at the corner of North Avenue and 12th Street and began its march just after 5 p.m. Media liaison of the group, Bishop Walden, provided several examples of Taylor's statements that influenced her to stand against his ideals. 'It has concerned me a lot to read the kinds of articles that are published in American Renaissance. Honestly, any public figure that rubs shoulders with neo-Nazis and known Klansmen, I believe, has no place on a college campus.' Richard Crespin was a member of the march. Crespin shared some words about CMU President John Marshall and the university's decision to allow Taylor to speak. 'If you have to have the university center packed and surrounded with police officers and snipers on the rooftops, that the content of the speech… If you have to go to those greatest of security measures, then there is something inherently wrong with the content of the speech.' The second demonstration on campus was organized by the Campus Unity Organization and Club. This demonstration was a university-sanctioned event. Vice President of the club Sam Hartley talked about why their demonstration needed to happen. 'What we wanted to do with this event is show what this community can be when everybody stands together. I think that was really important to provide for students so that they had a safe option to show what this community is really about.' WesternSlopeNow will be reaching out to CMU President John Marshall for comment on the speech's aftermath. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
