Make Change-Shaun King

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."-Matthew 6:2

Grifting. Carpet bagging. Swindling. Fraud. Scam artist.

Dirty titles once they attach themselves to your name and all of which have been slanderously thrown in Shaun King's direction.

Are they merited? It is tough to say.

In the tumult of 2020, I found Shaun King to be the most ignorant of exploiters that loved to blast his horn of self-righteousness in the name of justice while simultaneously pouring gas onto the flames of a very rocky period in history.

He was (and is) one of the highest banner holders of cancel culture and once stretched so far as to claim that stained glass renderings of a pale skinned Jesus were a religiously veiled proclamation of white supremacy and that all statues coated in ivory must be taken down and the windows all be smashed. An avid Marxist who loves him some Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin and openly admits at the beginning of his book that his personal hero (who penned the prologue) is Bernie Sanders. A microcosm of the modern-day Democratic party, Shaun makes his living by adopting the issues of others as his own (mostly authored in race relations gone amok), exploiting the situation through his various social media networks, arousing the anger of digital lynch mobs to transfer power from the hands of systematically oppressive government systems into their own by canceling people and remorselessly slandering their reputation online, utilizing their anger as a means of justified fundraising, collecting a "modest fee" for his time, achieving absolutely nothing in the process, and moving on to the next area of the country that never asked for his help to begin with.

Then wash, rinse, repeat.

A lefty's wet dream.

Normally, someone who espouses such ridiculous ideologies while unabashedly self-aggrandizing on social media every time they give a bum a dime and writes a book about it, I wouldn't waste my valuable time with. But if the aim of 2024 is to break free of the obstinacy vacuum, then that means even blow-hard's like Shaun King get a fair shake.

 

***

Shaun's book, Make Change, works in tandem as both a biography and an inspirational manifesto.

We get the history of Shaun King and his upbringing in Versailles, Kentucky. A rural city (which he isn't shy in pointing out) that has a history of racism, as evidenced by a lynch mob that hung two black men in 1870 who had lead a resistance movement against a police officer who had pistol whipped a black citizen.

Shaun then provides what life was like for him as a child in a city where he was surrounded by hillbillies and white supremacists. He did not have a father growing up and it wasn't until high school—when he gravitated towards hanging out with black kids—that the problems with bullying began. Up until that point, thanks to the complexion of his skin, Shaun was perceived by everyone to be white. But once he started hanging out with the black kids, all of his white friends turned on him, and he embraced the hatred spewed in his direction and (despite overwhelming evidence pointing to the contrary) now identified as a black person.

The bullying ascended throughout High School with beatings so severe that he ended up having to endure several bouts of surgery to rectify the pain.

As a result, in his absence from school, Shaun began to fester a deepening hatred towards white people in general and began to think of ways that he could channel his energy into making a positive change in society.

After High School he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and becomes exceptionally inspired by Leopold Von Ranke, who presents the idea that, with every major event in history, there is a tectonic shift within the culture, most always tumultuous in nature, invisible to the eye. And this becomes his foundational thesis for the reasoning behind an uptick in Police Officers abuse of authority.

At Morehouse Shaun capitalizes on leadership opportunities and works hard at public speaking, eventually becoming elected president of the student government association.

This leads Shaun to other avenues of opportunity where he raises funds for various causes—on the surface of which, seem to be very noble. One in particular was the raising of money for tents to be shipped to those of whom had lost their dwelling places in Haiti. Shaun details the frustrations he had to endure of both dealing with the overwhelming response and finding spaces to house the tents, and then the disheartening realization that settles in years later when he sees that complicity prevailed over charity, and the tent cities in Haiti, thought to be temporary, were indeed permanent, and the funds raised for rebuilding the country, had largely been ransacked.

From there he shifts his focus to fighting for the unjustly accused and levy's enough support to overturn the death penalty case of a gentleman wrongly accused of murder.

Then the book shifts focus on what it takes, and what the reader can anticipate, in striving to create real change in fighting systemic oppression, even penning rebuttals to the common excuses people come up with when it comes time to getting involved. "I'm too white." "I'm not smart enough." "I don't have enough time." "I don't have the necessary funds." "I don't know where to start."

***

If read at the surface level, this book isn't as bad as the character of the person that has been crucified by both the mainstream media and folks online.

His idea of a revolution and goals reside on the complete opposite side of the spectrum as my own. But if you are lacking in the inspirational department of whatever cause you feel merits generating greater awareness for, then this book may help to add some pep into your step.

Shaun King writes with passion and I think beneath the controversy there are some noble qualities in what he is fighting for, which, at it's rudimentary base, is something I think we all should want, which is nothing more than a balanced scale. Where everyone who goes about life is given an equally fair shake and no preference is given to gender, skin color, height, weight, or sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, Shaun's short-range execution with the limited power that he possesses, only reverses the court system he hates so much back into it's primitive state—where lynch mobs shoot first, then ask questions later.

For instance, in his quest for seeking justice for Jazmine Barnes, Shaun condemned innocent man Robert Paul Cantrell on Twitter and called for his co-horts to make life a living hell for the man because overwhelming evidence (absent of the court of law) pointed to him as being a racist white supremeicist with an itchy trigger finger, and it was plain as day that he was the one who did it. Naturally, this was an errant accusation and it turned out that Robert Paul Cantrell had nothing to do with the shooting, but nevertheless received a multitude of threats from Shaun Kings cohorts and ended up hanging himself in his jail cell for fear of repercussions.

In essence, placing the blood of an innocent man on Shaun Kings hands.

And this is how change is made?

Then there is Shaun King's reputation as a heist man that grows by the day.

My own experience with blatant graft in life is very brief, but I will include it for the sake of transparency.

It was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. At Sunday School we were given foldable cardboard houses that had little chimney's at the top and a tiny slit along the apex of the roof for change to be dropped. They were for an organization called Habitat for Humanity. Me and another friend went around the neighborhood collecting change in ernest and ended up filling the house with quarters and dimes.

My families attendance at church was fairly sporadic at the time and was inconsistent to denomination. And so months proceeded to go by before we ever went back to the church where I got the house.

As any kid of the 90s can attest to, quarters and dimes chillin' on your desk have a way of calling your name on Saturday afternoons when allowance coffers dry out. So, unfortunately, those quarters and dimes never made it to those who so desperately needed it, but ended up in the cash register of a little general store on the other side of the railroad tracks at the time called Bay Drive Thru, where candy bars were only .50.

I'm certainly not proud of this moment in my history, but it happened.

Other people deal with this on a much grander scale but seem to remain forever ignorant of the long-lasting implications when charitable funds are acquired with ulterior motives of deceit.

One was a former co-worker of mine at the casino in a different department who had fallen on hard times and invited everyone who was available to attend a charity fundraiser at a local bar to help pay for his wife's medical bills.

"anyone who know's me, know's I wouldn't ask unless I really needed it."

That was embedded within the event's description.

I wanted to make an announcement at our pre-shift meeting, but something within my gut said to bite my tongue before I knew a little more about the situation. Later in the day I mentioned the event in passing to a few people who knew him better than me, and their reaction spoke for itself and validated my apprehension. They proceeded to tell me about, how just a year prior, he raised money under false pretenses through gofundme to help with a busted water pipe then proceeded to show up at work with a brand new Beats By Dre headset and Apple Watch.

Guilty? Not necessarily. But definitely not a good look.

Then, in a much larger duplicitous case, there was Ray Vierheller. A man whose name I am not shy in using due to his obscenely checkered history as a grifter. Ray was a regular down at the casino who acquired his funds by using his status in the local racing community to sell people used auto parts that didn't exist on online racing forums, pocket the cash, gamble it away, then ghost the person online or placate them with bullshit responses. He did this to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars and ended up doing a little jail time for mail fraud and money laundering. But that wasn't the end of it. As soon as he was out of prison he moved onto vinyl pressing and set his sights upon local merchants at county fairs. He would set up shop under a tent and collect down payments for t shirts, posters, and fliers and do the whole process over again. Ever the remorseless, once his name and techniques became unfounded, he switched his focus on over to fence installation and would collect down payments from honest customers for no work to be done until finally getting slapped with a slew of RICO charges.

As of this writing he is serving 6 years at Lorain County Correctional Institution. Please feel free to look this scumbag up.

Then, closer in league to Shaun King, is Myisha T Hill. Author of the book Heal Your Way Forward and founder and head of Check Your Privilege, a movement which espouses social justice and positivity while inducing feelings of guilt in malleable caucasian's for sins of their forefathers they had nothing to do with.

In 2020, Myisha was gambling at Mandalay Bay Casino and had a dispute with one of the security guards over another guest calling her a racist word. Because security didn't arrest the other individual, she sicked the digital dogs upon Mandalay Bay to thrash them on Google reviews and they went to town. Now, of course, I wasn't there to witness this event, and Mandalay Bay ignored the influx of delusional followers and is doing just fine. What is important to note of this whole foray was Myisha's mentioning of being a Platinum status member, as if this badge of wagers lost helps her plight. What people don't know is that to achieve Platinum status (or the equivalent) at MGM, which is one step below that of Noir (the highest echelon), you have to have circulated in the neighborhood of $85,000.00 within the fiscal quarter. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to win or lose $85,000.00. It just means that you have to be exchanging currency at the rate of about $170,000.00 via the medium of slot machines or table games.

On her webpage there are various links to where you can donate your hard earned money to the movement of Check Your Privilege and Heal Your Way Forward so Myisha can fight the good fight of systemic racism at various blackjack tables and slot machines up and down the strip.

And then there is Shaun King, whose kite tail of misapropriating funds could stretch from coast to coast.

Every single charitable endeavor he has entered upon is littered with allegations of complicity. The North Star, Seven Summits, Hope Mob, You Caring.org, Black Lives Matter etc. etc.

It's one thing to want to see change and beat that drum the loudest to clap a sound wave and wake people up. But flaunting opulence in the wake of your efforts is never a good look. And purchasing a $50,000.00 English bulldog is NEVER a good look.

But maybe I'm wrong about this guy and he's just painted as a bad guy because his ideas are so radical.

I doubt it. And this latest conversion over to Islam in the wake of the tumult between Israel in Palestine is a laughable gesture.

Bottom line.

Con artist, yes. Activist, no.

Fraud.

Grade: F

Verdict: Pass