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A California State University professor who also leads the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter might be headed to jail after being charged with eight criminal counts related to her anti-police activism, including battery on an LAPD officer.

“This is about so much more than me,” wrote Dr. Melina Abdullah, who could spend more than a year in jail if convicted. “It’s an attempt to criminalize Black protest. We ain’t having that!”

The charges stem from Abdullah’s behavior at LAPD Commission meetings, which have become notorious for being disrupted and shut down by police abolitionists affiliated with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles (BLM-LA). She has justified her conduct by claiming to advocate on behalf of families who have lost loved ones to police brutality and officer-involved shootings.

Abdullah, 46, is receiving pro bono legal counsel from an assortment of progressive lawyers led by Carl E. Douglas, a protégé of the late Johnnie Cochran, who became nationally known decades ago as a member of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” of defense attorneys. Douglas has referred to Abdullah as “One Badd (sic) Sister!!!”

“He volunteered to represent me,” Abdullah said. “This is the way that he contributes to our movement.”

The National Lawyers Guild and ACLU are also part of Abdullah’s legal squad.

Prosecutors from the L.A. City Attorney’s Office affirm that 17 police officers are prepared to testify that Abdullah’s tactics have gone far beyond free speech and peaceful protest, crossing a boundary to “obstructing and intimidating” LAPD commissioners.

Following a pretrial hearing last week, Abdullah and Douglas addressed activists and other supporters who had packed the courtroom as a sign of solidarity.

“They are killing our people, and then they are criminalizing us for having the audacity to push back,” Abdullah told allies over a megaphone. “What kind of backward world do they think we live in? We’re not the criminals. They are.”

Abdullah then called on the crowd to march to LAPD headquarters nearby, where a police commission meeting was underway.

“Fill up that room,” Abdullah said.

“Scare the shit out of them.”

Activists went on to disrupt the meeting, which was ultimately adjourned and moved into a closed session after an attendee appeared to threaten LAPD Commission President Steve Soboroff. Soboroff’s son, Jacob, is a reporter with NBC News.

My News LA reports that Abdullah is charged with eight misdemeanor counts involving crimes that allegedly occurred during three separate meetings that date back to 2017. The charges include one count each of battery on a public officer, resisting arrest, refusing to disperse and interfering or obstructing a public business establishment; three counts of unlawfully disturbing and breaking up an assembly and meeting; and two counts of unlawfully and intentionally interfering with the lawful business of the LAPD Commission.

The battery charge originated from a meeting last May when Abdullah was arrested along with Sheila Hines-Brim, a fellow BLM-LA comrade whose niece, Wakiesha Wilson, died in police custody in 2016. At that meeting, Hines-Brim threw what she claimed were Wilson’s cremated remains at then-LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

As theLAnd recently reported:

Detective Jason Curtis…had placed Hines-Brim’s hands behind her back and was escorting her through a crowd to the hallway. Near the rear exit of the room, Curtis told investigators, he felt a tug at his arm, turned around and saw Abdullah standing there. “Get Melina,” witnesses remember hearing an officer say shortly before Abdullah was arrested.

Abdullah told detectives that she did not remember grabbing Curtis’ arm.

Most of the charges against Abdullah focus around confrontations that occurred during two police commission meetings in the summer of 2017. In July of that year, Abdullah refused to leave the podium during public comment after her allotted time to speak had elapsed.

“I don’t give a fuck about getting arrested,” she told police commissioners at the time.

Although Abdullah was not detained, the meeting was moved to a closed session away from the public.

Three weeks later Abdullah had disrupted another meeting. She attempted to restructure its agenda, dared officials to have her arrested, then refused to vacate the room after being ordered to leave.

Abdullah’s next court date is next Thursday, February 7, at the Criminal Courts Building in downtown L.A.

“I give you my word that there will be no plea to an assault on a police officer,” Douglas told supporters. “If we cannot reach a resolution that satisfies my client, there will be a trial. And at that trial, we will expose the corruption of the LAPD.”

Follow Jeffrey Cawood on Twitter @Near_Chaos.

The president of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees has stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at board meeting over its ties to “white nationalism.”

According to a report from Campus Reform, President Robert Miller of the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees says that the board will no longer cite the Pledge of Allegiance because it is racist.

“I decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” Miller said in an email correspondence with a professor at the college. “I have discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.”

But that’s not all. Miller said that the Pledge of Allegiance violates the separation of church and state principle upon which America was founded.

“I also object to the phrase ‘one nation under God,’” Miller added in the email. “The First Amendment not only protects freedom of speech and religion [but] it also expressly prohibits laws that establish a religion.  The U.S. Supreme Court has expressly extended those rights to those who express no belief in God. Thus, I disagree with the 1955 act of Congress to add this phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Professor Celeste Barber is not a fan of Miller’s decision to ban the pledge at board meetings. When she appeared before the board to criticize Miller’s ban, a group of student protesters began shouting at her, attempting to drown her voice out.

“You are an elected body at a public institution at a public institution serving a community college,” Barber said during the board meeting. “When you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are recommitting your oath to uphold and defend this country’s constitution.”

A former student at Santa Barbara City College told Campus Reform that Miller’s decision is proof that the college does not care about American values.

“All it really was is proof in print that they officially disregard America,” the student said. “[Miller] says in his email that he would rather pledge allegiance to the Constitution and that’s great and all that but if that really was the case, why [does] he and the rest of Santa Barbara City College embrace removing different aspects of the First Amendment? Why do they not openly embrace the Second Amendment if they’re so enamored by the Constitution?”

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” rancher and Breitbart contributor Chris Burgard took his plea for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit his and others ranches on the U.S.-Mexico in Arizona to get a firsthand account of the threats coming from the south and the effectiveness of a wall versus a fence.

Burgard explained the situation, which initially involved heavy illegal alien and drug trafficking.

“Four-and-a-half years ago, she did not take us up on our invitation, and if she would she would have seen how bad things are,” Burgard said. “My buddy John, conservatively at the time, had 2 million illegal aliens come through his ranch. In two years, 53 truckloads of dope making it through there.”

Burgard credited improvements to the fence on his ranch and coordination with local sheriff’s departments for the decrease in drug trafficking and Pelosi would see the results.

“What these ranchers live with every day is beyond comprehension of most humans,” he said. “I mean, can you imagine 2 million strangers coming across your ranch? Try running a ranch operation when the trucks carrying the dope are breaking fences. Your cows are getting out, how do you run a breeding program when you can’t keep your bulls and heifers separated? And everything that hits him then goes on to the cities.”

The Arizona rancher criticized Pelosi for not taking Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s information more seriously because if she had, it could make a difference.

“You know, it is so disheartening when the Speaker of the House doesn’t believe DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen,” Burgard said. “She doesn’t believe her DHS facts. Well, right now it is a fact more people are dying in the United States from heroin and opioid overdoses than car accidents. Well, this is where it is coming from. If you stop it at the border, you will save lives in the rest of America, and it is just something that needs to be acknowledged, and you need to do something.”

Burgard insisted the initial offer made to Pelosi is still on the table.

“The offer still stands — and John says he will even feed her, but she has to eat meat because beef is what is for dinner,” he added.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Leave it to the satirical website The Onion to perfectly capture the moment: “Howard Schultz Considering Independent Presidential Run After Finding No Initial Support Among Any Voter Groups.”

That’s right, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is mulling a run for president in 2020. But here’s the twist: Schultz, who says he’s a lifelong Democrat, would run as an independent, and the fact that he’s a multi-billionaire ($3.4B at last count, Forbes reports) means he could mount a serious effort.

The last multi-billionaire who tried the feat, H. Ross Perot, won more than 19 million votes nationwide, which was 18.9% of the vote. He proved a spoiler for George H.W. Bush, who won 37.4% of the vote but lost to Bill Clinton, who took the White House with just 43%. But that was way back in 1992, in the very early days of a crazy thing called the “world wide web” and long before social media.

Still, you’ve got to go all the way back to 1968 to find a third-party presidential candidate who won any Electoral College votes. That’s when former Alabama governor George Wallace won 46 electoral votes in the South on the American Independent Party ticket.

But if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that every four years, America changes exponentially. Who expected a first-term senator with the middle name of Hussein to win in 2008, or an egomaniacal reality TV show host to pull out a remarkable upset in 2016? And 2020 will be no different.

The most fascinating reaction from Schultz’s musings over a 2020 run came from Democrats — especially limousine liberals, the ones who love their frappuccinos from Starbucks.

“Howard Schultz running as an independent isn’t about bringing people together,” Tina Podlodowski, the Democratic Party chair in Schultz’s adopted home state of Washington, said in a statement on Sunday. “It’s about one person: Howard Schultz.”

Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote Saturday on Twitter that she’ll boycott Starbucks if Schultz gets in the race. “Vanity projects that help destroy democracy are disgusting. If he enters the race, I will start a Starbucks boycott because I’m not giving a penny that will end up in the election coffers of a guy who will help Trump win,” she said. No more venti lattes for her.

“If Schultz entered the race as an independent, we would consider him a target… We would do everything we can to ensure that his candidacy is unsuccessful,” said Patrick McHugh, executive director of Priorities USA, which shelled out $200 million in the 2016 presidential election to back loser Hillary Clinton.

Schultz, who held a campaign-style event at the Barnes and Noble in New York City was heckled immediately. “Go back to Davos with the other billionaires!” someone shouted. “Don’t re-elect Trump!”

But Schultz isn’t just going after President Trump, he’s targeting the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. 2020 hopefuls like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris endorse free health care and jobs for all, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who Democratic Party chairman Tom Perez calls “the future of the party” — is pushing for a top tax rate of 70%.

“It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left,” Schultz told CNBC last June. “I ask myself, ‘How are we going to pay for all these things?’ in terms of things like single-payer or people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job. I don’t think that’s realistic.”

“I respect the Democratic Party,” Schultz told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Monday. “I no longer feel affiliated because I don’t know their views represent the majority of Americans. I don’t think we want a 70 percent income tax in America.”

Schultz, a true American success story who grew up in public housing in Brooklyn, N.Y., and was the first in his family to go to college, says he’s well aware of the fact that he may play spoiler if he chooses to run. “I wanna see the American people win,” he said. “I wanna see America win. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas. And I will be an independent person, who will embrace those ideas. Because I am not, in any way, in bed with a party.”

And he says Americans are mostly middle of the road, neither far-left nor far-right. “What we know, factually, is that over 40 percent of the electorate is either a registered Independent or currently affiliates themselves as an Independent,” Schultz said, “because the American people are exhausted. Their trust has been broken. And they are looking for a better choice.”

Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire who mulled a 2016 before staying out of the race, urged Schultz not to run on Monday. “It’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it. The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before. In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now. We must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

All we can say is, 2020 just got a whole lot more interesting.