90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 17, 2015

Girls With Guns

Empowerment Series: Women With Weapons #53

Just a day after Tax Day, the Internal Revenue Service has placed a lien on MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry and her husband, James Perry, reports the Washington Times.

The couple owes $70,000 in back taxes from the year 2013. Harris-Perry said that she was aware of the debt that she and her husband owed but was unfamiliar with the lien placed against them. So far the couple had paid $21,721 of their debt when they filed on Wednesday. The deadline for people to file their taxes for 2014 was Wednesday.

She also said that she and her husband are working to pay off the rest of their debt as quickly as possible. The couple set up a payment plan with the IRS but claim to have gone through a series of...

LOUISVILLE — Jordan and Tommy Gray's 3-year-old daughter was watching SpongeBob Squarepants when two armed men broke into their home near Buechel on March 21, 2013, and robbed them at gunpoint.

Two years later, when one of the offenders was about to be sentenced, Jordan wrote in a victim impact statement that her daughter was still "in constant fear of black men." Both robbers were African-American.

"Whenever we are running errands, if we come across a black male, she holds me tight and begs me to leave," the mother said. "It has affected her friendships at school and our relationships with African-American friends."

Tommy Gray also wrote that since the crime, his daughter had been terrified of black males and that probation was not sufficient punishment for Gregory Wallace, 27, who had pleaded guilty to robbery.

"If holding a little girl at gunpoint gets you probation, then our system is flawed," Gray said.

But when Wallace was brought up for sentencing Feb. 4 in Jefferson Circuit Court, it was the parents, not Wallace, who suffered Judge Olu Stevens' wrath.

"I am offended. … I am deeply offended that they would be victimized by an individual and express some kind of fear of all black men," he said.

"This little girl certainly has...

Three men were walking across a bridge in Phoenix early Sunday morning when a stranger approached them, pulled out a handgun, and began pistol-whipping one of them.

He wasn’t counting on his “victim” being armed.

It happened at approximately 2 a.m. in downtown Phoenix on the 16th Street bridge, north of Jefferson Street.

Officers responding to a call were flagged down by three individuals.

They said they had been in an altercation with a man, later identified by police as 22-year-old Darell D. Hitchins.

They said Hitchins approached them and without provocation pulled out a handgun. They said the man struck one of them in the head, possibly with the...