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Bitkey is creating a very nice transfer of wealth plan. Nice job @jack and all the developers over at Block working on the Bitkey project. https://support.bitkey.world/hc/en-us/articles/32141067207444-What-is-Inheritance-and-how-does-it-work

We have to teach our children how to critically think and formulate independent ideas in a world where everyone is following and being controlled by “whatever goes”, “everything goes” and “whatever is trending” in popular culture. We have to be intentional about showing and teaching our children how to be independent, critical thinkers. Adults, young adults, and children are not thinking these days. They are “Googleing” and using their findings as the foundation/core and or starting point of their talking points and ideology/philosophy on life. This is pathetic and dangerous!

The view from the front seat of the rig are always breathtaking! #fireservice

Opt out. #bitcoin

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“Not being allowed to work in Harlem angered Williams, but work conditions at Engine 55 improved as time went by. The new men who entered the company included several probationary firemen who took over his previous duties, such as spittoon and bathroom cleaning. Also, while many of his company-mates remained hostile and dismissive, several began to converse with him. As an avid reader of history and an intellectual within a highly anti-intellectual workplace culture, Williams was ironically called upon to settle an interethnic dispute regarding the whiteness of Italians. When asked by an Irish fireman if Italians could be considered white, Williams told the predominantly Irish men in the company “that he didn’t know whether or not Italians were White, but he did know that when Ancient Rome was conquering the world people in Ireland were living in caves.”” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/8YJGqfU

“Discrimination in the assignment of firehouse tasks, vicious practical jokes, or in-house physical threats, while demeaning, disgusting, and dangerous, paled in comparison with the danger that Williams was subjected to while on duty. “The story they put out to the community,” he later recalled, “was that they ‘would burn the nigger up,’ and that I couldn’t take smoke because my nostrils were too wide.” In his first major firefighting duty, Williams and his company responded to a dangerous cellar fire in the Bowery district. Ordered to take the nozzle to prove his “courage and staying ability” to the rest of the company, Williams led while the others followed. He directed the nozzle’s stream at the heart of the fire, but a backdraft sparked a gas explosion. Williams’s company-mates, including his lieutenant, ran from the building into the street, leaving Williams for dead. Knocked on his back during the explosion, he somehow managed to maintain control of the hose, right himself, and quell the blaze by himself. Other fire companies on the scene snickered at the pack of cowards who had abandoned him, while Battalion Chief Ben Parker mocked Williams’s white company-mates, snidely remarking, “You were gonna burn him up? It looks like he burnt you fellas up.” FDNY officials later conceded that Williams had single-handedly “saved the building and probably the block.”” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/iv8b5Mr

“Williams’s career as a firefighter began on January 10, 1919. His credentials and connections did little to shield him from the onslaught of hate and discrimination he faced upon joining the department. Williams was assigned to Engine 55 on Broome Street, the Italian section of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. On Williams’s first day, the captain of the firehouse retired at roll call, and every fireman in the house, refusing “to work with a nigger,” requested transfers. Recognizing that no one would work with Williams if FDNY brass caved to these demands, the FDNY’s fire chief and fire commissioner (the two highest positions in the department) froze all transfers for one year so they could maintain full manpower at Engine 55 as well as any other company that Williams or another African American might be appointed or transferred to in the future.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/hC84mLn

“Williams’s composite test scores placed him at the top of a list of hundreds of applicants, but his appointment remained uncertain due to his race. All candidates were required to present three letters of recommendation and were then subjected to the department’s “selection process.” While almost all Blacks lacked the political clout to move beyond this point, Williams’s father managed to secure reference letters for his son from former president Theodore Roosevelt as well as Cardinal Patrick Hayes. Yet in the world of Tammany-controlled patronage politics, perhaps his most crucial letter of support might have come from florist and real estate mogul Charles Thorley. Thorley owned and operated the famed Thorley’s House of Flowers, served as J. P. Morgan’s personal florist, and provided extremely expensive arrangements for the city’s elite. Thorley, for many years, employed a number of African Americans in his shop, including Williams’s father during the 1890s and Langston Hughes for a brief period in 1922. Thorley bought and sold a number of real estate holdings in Manhattan, including the parcel of land that the New York Times purchased to build its headquarters. As a millionaire and active member of Tammany Hall, Thorley made frequent and substantial donations to the machine, which gave him tremendous power and sway. “It was Thorley,” Williams recalled, who “let the fire commission of the City of New York understand that regardless of how they felt about it, I was going to stay in the fire department.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/aZ9UOC9

“In 1918, Williams, who studied on his own because he was not allowed to take the Tammany-backed prep course, took the civil service examination for the FDNY and placed thirteenth out of 2,700 applicants. As an avid weightlifter, athlete, and bodybuilder whose physique was later described by sportswriters of the 1920s as comparable to that of Jim Thorpe, Williams had little problem with the physical examination and became only the second man in the department’s history to earn a perfect score on the physical exam.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/4zlvnwH

“Years after retiring from a storied career with the Fire Department of New York City, Wesley Williams, the most celebrated Black fireman in the nation’s history, occasionally made the journey to the graveyard. Williams had entered the FDNY in 1919 and eventually rose to the rank of battalion chief before retiring from the force in 1952. His ascent up the promotional ladder of the ethnically and culturally insular FDNY had not been an easy task. As one chronicler of his early career remarked, the struggles he faced “made Jackie Robinson’s stormy entrance into the Big Leagues look like a cap-pistol skirmish.” Still, “the Chief,” as Williams affectionately came to be known by Black firefighters across the country, always sought to turn the negative treatment he received into a positive. If anything, Williams’s resolve was fortified by his white company-mates’ racist bullying, intimidation, and attempts on his life. These staunchly racist firemen, from his earliest days on the job, as Williams later explained, “helped to make me a Superman in the fire department because of their prejudice.” It was these firefighters whose graves Williams visited. Well into his seventies, the Chief came not to pay his respects or to thank his antagonists for motivating him to become a better firefighter, but to urinate on them.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/eP9jObG

“With patronage jobs under the control of the Irish bosses of the Tammany political machine, Blacks were largely excluded from civil defense positions just as the public sector grew rapidly in the early twentieth century. New York’s fire department, for example, grew from a force of 1,000 firemen in 1888 to 7,500 men by 1930. And while the FDNY employed several different generations of firefighters during this forty-two-year period, only 5 African Americans managed to secure firefighting positions. 4” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/ejvzY9a

“Civil service represented one of the few areas where Blacks, in theory, were allowed to compete fairly. Yet in practice, the civil service reform of the late nineteenth century was used as a tool to prevent Blacks and political outsiders from gaining access to municipal jobs, particularly in the fire department. The FDNY had structured this reform to its advantage, consolidating departmental autonomy, solidifying Tammany control, and increasing racial and ethnic exclusion. What resulted was an even more insular, closed, and Irish-dominated department precisely at the moment when European immigration and Black migration had increased potential competition. By embracing the reform movement while bending it to their interests, the FDNY institutionalized patronage while simultaneously promoting the false notion that hiring was merit-based and open to all.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/1Cyheeh

“First, Tammany Hall subjected the FDNY to civil service rules and regulations but refused to openly publicize civil service openings. Instead, job openings were advertised exclusively through familial connections and ward bosses. Second, these contacts were required to attend preparatory school for upcoming civil service examinations, another key screening component of the patronage system. Finally, as sociologist Roger Waldinger explains, these “Tammany linked cram schools . . . prepared job seekers for essay exams graded by Irish examiners” and “held a virtual stranglehold on the flow of applicants to the Irish fiefdoms in police and fire, ‘training’ most of the applicants and almost all of the successful candidates.” 7” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg

“Between 1898 and 1913, five African Americans worked in the FDNY, including an inspector of combustibles, a clerk, and an inspector of oils, with only two men appointed as firefighters: William Nicholson and Jacob Fulcher. 12” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/8oupxBF

“William Nicholson, a former cement tester from Virginia, was officially hired by the FDNY as a fourth-class fireman in 1898. Joining the department two years after the Plessy v. Ferguson decision and in the midst of the highly racialized Spanish-American War, Nicholson was met with intense hostility from the day he entered his assigned Brooklyn firehouse, Engine No. 6. According to the company’s log, Nicholson was transferred immediately after reporting for duty in December 1898. Departmental historians and folklorists argued that Nicholson was then put to work cleaning the horse stables at headquarters in Manhattan. Contemporary accounts, however, have Nicholson, by 1902, working in the fire marshal’s office and, later, at headquarters, both in Brooklyn.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/2ktr5qK

“Williams was inspired by the heroism, manliness, and symbolic importance of Woodson’s trailblazing efforts, which occurred at a time, as historian Chad Williams noted, when Black achievements and accomplishments in military service—and, later, public service and public safety positions—had become linked to civil rights activism, to struggles for democracy, and “to specific claims for expanded citizenship and broader demands for self-determination.” Woodson’s letter, however, provided a more somber and pragmatic assessment of his trailblazing career and experiences and emphasized the lonesomeness faced by pioneering race men during this era. The letter provided a glimpse into Woodson’s struggles in the department, the tactics he used to survive, the anguish his maltreatment and isolation caused him, and how he saw himself in terms of his role and responsibilities in the larger freedom struggle. Woodson, as he explained to Williams, felt that it was his duty, “as a fellow race man,” to let him know what to expect. He warned that Williams would encounter “quite a lot of jealous and narrow minded men” and advised him “to do your work and do it as near perfect as you can, particularly everything the commanding officers tell you to do, no matter what it might be.” Woodson also explained how he had dealt with day-to-day firehouse racism, ostracism, and corresponding efforts to goad him into anger and conflict and recommended that Williams shouldn’t attempt to force his “friendship on anybody and if there is an argument don’t join them; just say I’m neutral. If they speak of our race before you, in your presence, as niggers, pay no attention—go and do something or take a newspaper and read.” Despite his bleak, honest portrayal of race relations within the department, Woodson closed his letter with a positive note, welcoming Williams into the department and wishing him “much success” and a “pleasant career in the Fire Department.”” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/3lowRV3

“As he explained in a 1917 interview, “I have been on the force 3 years nearly and never asked a man for his friendship or association. I made up my mind that I wouldn’t thrust myself on anybody. If they don’t like my skin, alright.” Unwilling to give the white firefighters what they wanted—an excuse to have him removed from the FDNY—he later shared his survival strategy and perspective in a letter to Wesley Williams, which he wrote after learning about Williams’s 1919 appointment to the FDNY in the Chicago Defender. 27 Williams received the letter upon entering the FDNY in 1919. As a teen, Williams had noticed Woodson’s picture and presence in the FDNY while reading about his daring 1916 rescue in the Black press.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/d75cQJD

“Williams, by all accounts, was an extraordinary man from an extraordinary family. In 1902, his father, James, the son of a former slave, became chief of Red Caps at Grand Central Station, a job he created after working for several years at a flower shop located on 5th Avenue, Thorley’s, and at Grand Central Station carrying bags for travelers. In 1892, “the enterprising Williams fastened a piece of red flannel to his hat as a means of identifying his availability to carry luggage to the passengers of Grand Central Station.” As a result of this marketing ploy, “the Red Cap came into being.” After working the night shift for several months to supplement his income from the flower shop, Williams began working full time as a porter and was soon after hired to serve as the chief of the Red Caps.” — Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg https://a.co/8X9OvQk