We now know he killed himself as an environmental protest. What a waste. [foxnews.com]

I would like to point out that on this day in 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. It was the start of the civil rights movement - this happened b4 Rosa Parks, Brown vs the Board of Education and the integration in the military.

After the Philly incident we have a ways to go.

Thanks for posting this. I saw it on facebook. It is truly disturbing. One person tried to defend these men and the police were having none of it. Clearly these men were treated differently.

The grinding prejudice that people who are visably different is ugly and non acceptable. Each of us who do not stand up are just as a big a problem - it normalizes it.

trump and the current administration are making it much worse.

During the 2016 primary cycle I was engaged in a discussion with what was one of my best childhood friends over a post I made about the increase in violence towards LGBT's and Muslims. Being highlighted mostly by independent news sources but even some MSM sources at the time they covered Trump so much as they propelled him to the top. He tried to argue I was wrong and was only seeing the few actions being over exposed. When I posted a number of recent articles, which also stated a rise in such, after he made that claim and with a reminder of what he did for a living, his only remark was that those were indeed sad occurrences. He's a cop in a neighboring city. Of Native American decent even. When you have cops that no longer work the streets without every move being micromanaged by a superior shift manager, even one that's descendants were targets of colonialism, they also can become oblivious to the establishments control of the populations managed perception. How can you expect a community to be aware or even care of that in which the few of us keep trying to bring to light?

"Out Of The Illusion "

The social issues raised as well as other social/ethical issues in our society come about because we as a people fail ,to use scientific methology to challenge our prejudicies and preconceived cognitions. As with religions,the majority of the population presumes their believes are fact and therefore fails to challenge their individual thinking.It is a sad state of affairs when issues concerning the survival of humanity, are presumed to be valid based on prejudice. We need to begin teaching critical thinking early in our schools.

I don't think we're so much shrugging as we're exhausted and thoroughly sick of other human beings.

We have a population of 300 some odd million people. Horrible things happen daily, and much worse than either of these. Racism/ transphobia are shitty, but you need to consider the fact that the vast majority of people are fundamentally decent.

The apparent suicide of the LGBTQ attorney is horrible. This short notification provides no context so I have to assume ths person was in a very, very bad place to feel that ending his life was his only option. So very sad. I saw many of the twitter acknowledgements.

On the Starbucks incident, well, that is just plain wrong. As many of the twitter commenters stated, when you go into SB all you see is folks chilling out. The company apology is nice, but I have to agree that a failure to acknowledge any ownership/wrongdoing or to give any indication that their employees would be disciplined in any way is disappointing to say the least.

It's so hard to believe that this kind of shit can still happen in one of the (for now anyway) freest nations on Earth.

Today Americans say it has nothing to do with them. Most would say that LGBT was a choice that others make because "they are not right with god and they just want to sin." My proof is in the fact the Evangelicals are always wanting (and claiming) to make gay people straight again. Some bright guy came up with the idea that men just want to wear a dress and rape young girls in the women's restroom. All this because of LGBT in America. I remember when I believed these things myself but not today. I remember unisex restrooms in Germany in the 1960's. They had no problems.

As for the 2 black men in Starbucks it was believed that they came inside simply to use the restroom. Some have said the same could happen if it was McDonald's. I say it would likely have not been noticed so much if it was 2 white men.