I can't tell you why but this feels as monumental to me as if the President had been shot

It's a moment where everything else recedes into the background, swamped by the horror of it. Presidential campaigns, Trade Agreements and everything else.

I feel physically ill.

It seems like a watershed moment. It's an act that recalls history, but emphasizes the deeply embedded racism that is endemic in our country. It is a reminder that much of that hate was rekindled by the election of President Obama and how, over the last several years, the polite fictions our dominant culture tells about racism fading, are nothing but lies the white community wants to believe. So much of the past bleeding into the present.


The massacre of those in prayer took place in a legendary church in Charleston, one deeply tied to the history of the fight against slavery from its beginnings in 1816- one of its founders, Denmark Vesey was executed for leading a failed slave rebellion. Vesey was a free man. He purchased his freedom with money he won in a lottery. He was unable to buy the freedom of his wife and children.

After his failed rebellion, Vesey and 34 others were executed by hanging. He had planned the rebellion in meetings with other church members. After the execution, Emanuel AME was razed to the ground. Church leader not executed, were banished.

http://www.ibtimes.com/who-denmark-vesey-charleston-church-founder-was-slave-rebellion-leader-african-1972855

Apologies for rambling. And I want to extend my deepest sympathies and sense of outrage to DU's PoC posters.