Omar Mateen said he “did the shootings” in Orlando during a 911 phone call just after the initial gunfire took place.
Mateen identified himself as an Islamic soldier and demanded the U.S. “stop bombing Syria and Iraq” according to partial transcripts of three calls Mateen placed to the emergency hotline.
While experts and pundits parse the transcripts and argue over the need to release them in their entirety to determine whether or not Mateen was radicalized on his own or directed by Islamic State or other group, there is strong evidence that homosexuals were Mateen’s target.
For America’s LGBT community, it’s not the first, nor will it be the last time.
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Orlando: The LGBT Debate
Posted June 20th, 2016 at 2:29 pm (UTC-5)
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South Carolina Church Massacre: Hate Crime or Terrorism?
Posted June 19th, 2015 at 12:58 pm (UTC-5)
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The killing of nine people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston by a young white man has thrust gun control and racism front and center once again in America. Among the many pained questions being asked is whether or not the shooting should be defined as a hate crime or an act of terror.
Let’s Call Charleston Shooting What It Was: A Terrorist Attack
Posted June 19th, 2015 at 10:16 am (UTC-5)
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It’s become quite the national pastime (centuries in the making, in fact) that when violent, racially motivated and genocidal-like tragedies befall African Americans, the reflex is to avoid calling it what it is: domestic terrorism.
If Clementa Pinckney Had Lived
Posted June 19th, 2015 at 8:57 am (UTC-5)
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I have no doubt that had the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney lived, he would have become known — and celebrated — across our country for his leadership, rather than sealed immortally in tragedy, one more black martyr in a line stretching back to the more than 800 slave voyages that ended at Charleston Harbor.